Markedness and Blocking in German Declensional Paradigms

The loss of regular case endings in modern German has led to highly syncretic noun paradigms that neutralise many of the distinctions retained in more conservative determiner and adjective paradigms. Genitive and dative are, for all intents and purposes, the only cases marked in noun paradigms. Strong nonfeminine nouns have a genitive singular in -s. Strong nouns whose plural ends in a schwa or a liquid have a dative plural in -n. No noun paradigm contains a distinctive accusative. Noun paradigms may thus contain at most four distinct forms: a basic stem, such as Mann ‘man’, a genitive singular,Mannes, a general plural,Männer, and a dative plural,Männern. The simplest description of German noun paradigms would likewise recognise at most four entries, one corresponding to each distinct form. The genitive singular and dative plural entries would be assigned the appropriate number and gender features. However, the analysis of basic stems and general plurals presents an interesting descriptive challenge, since neither form can be assigned a case value in isolation. A basic stem is associated with a case-neutral singular interpretation if, as in the case of Frau ‘woman’, its paradigm lacks a genitive singular. Yet if, as in the case of Mann, the stem is opposed by a genitive singular, it acquires a nongenitive interpretation. General plurals exhibit a similarly complementarity. The general plural Frauen is not opposed by a distinctive dative plural and thus maintains its case-neutrality. In contrast, the existence of dativeMännern determines a nondative interpretation of general pluralMänner. This paper proposes an essentially Jakobsonian account of this complementarity. Following Jakobson 1932, 1936, the lexical entries of basic stems and general plurals are literally unspecified for case features. In the absence of case-marked opponents, the entries for Frau and Frauen sanction case-neutral structures in a syntagmatic context. Although the entries forMann andMänner are also unspecified for case, negative case values are inferred on the syntagmatic structures that they sanction, reflecting the opposition of case values on themarked entriesMannes andMännern. A similar mechanism determines the interpretation of unmarked adjective and determiner forms. Section 2 elaborates the approach outlined above, and applies it to some representative declensional paradigms. Section 3 provides a more comprehensive description of the major noun classes in German. Section 4 concludes with a brief discussion of some alternative approaches.