German genitives revisited

[Stephen M. Wechsler]

Footnote:
In the recent exchange about German genitives, Stefan (answering my query)
claimed a restriction that genitives must show case inflection.  Hans
demurred, noting that 'bare' NPs like mass nouns are bad even if inflected
(see msgs below).  However, there seems to be something to Stefan's claim
after all, at least according to Plank 1980 (cited in Bayer et al draft),
who notes constrasts like:

Bewohner    Moskau-s / London-s / *Paris / *Graz
inhabitants Moscow-GEN / London-GEN / Paris / Graz

Still begs the question of how to explain Hans's data.  Of relevance is
this deadjectival example, good according to Plank:

Benachteiligungen Andergläubig-er
discriminations   heterodox-GEN
'discriminations of the heterodox ones'

--Steve

At 9:11 PM +0100 4/25/2000, Hans Uszkoreit wrote:
>Stefan,
>
>Nothing against an ad hoc solution in the absence of a
>more principled acount. However, why do you call your
>feature +/-INFLECTED.
>
>You could not say:
>
>*der Geruch Holzes
> the  smell  wood
>           [CASE gen]
>"the smell of wood"
>
>as opposed to
>
> der Geruch frischen   Holzes
> the  smell    fresh    wood
>             [CASE gen][CASE gen]
>"the smell of fresh wood"
>
>The form "Holzes" is inflected and
>unambiguously exhibits genitive case.
>
>So what's really going on?
> 
>
>Best,
>
>Hans
> 
>
>Stefan Mueller wrote:
>>
>>Hi,
>>
>>You have a similar situation with the genitive in German:
>>
>>die Berater  der    Praesidenten
>>the advisors of.the presidents
>>
>>die Berater  kluger    Praesidenten
>>the advisors of.smart  presidents
>>
>>* die Berater  Praesidenten
>>  the advisors presidents
>>
>>The inflection can be marked by the determiner or adjective, but without
>>anything the sentence is not processable.
>>
>>der Berater zweier Pr"asidenten
>>the advisor two    presidents
>>
>>der Berater der zwei Praesidenten
>>the advisor the two  presidents
>>
>>* der Berater zwei Pr"asidenten
>>  the advisor two  presidents
>>
>>If you come up with a solution to such problems that is less ad hoc than
>>a +/-INFLECTED feature, please let me know.
>>
>>Greetings
>>
>>        Stefan
>
>-- ________________________________________
>Hans Uszkoreit
><http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~hansu/>http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~hansu/
>Email: Uszkoreit at dfki.de
>________________________________________
>Personal email: Hans at Uszkoreit.net
>Personal Homepage: <http://hans.uszkoreit.net>http://hans.uszkoreit.net
> 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 2573 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/hpsg-l/attachments/20000510/43fae204/attachment.bin>