Petr Biskup
University of Leipzig
www.uni-leipzig.de/~biskup/
12.1.2007
The Weak Declension, Strong Declension and Gender
Comments welcomed!
It is a well-known fact that German has the weak, strong and mixed adjectival declension.
Depending on the presense and the type of the article, for e.g. [x old man] in N,SG,MASC, we
can get: der alte Mann (the weak declension), ein alter Mann (the mixed declension) and
alter Mann (the strong declension). The emerging generalization is that if the marker –er is
not present on the definite article, it must appear on the adjective. In this paper, I argue that
this can be attributed to the peculiar behavior of the gender feature and that it can be analyzed
in an approach that assumes the spellout of non-terminal elements.
1. Basics
1.1. Declensions
1.1.1. The determiner declension
The determiner markers, see (2), which are common for personal pronouns and determiners,
express case, gender and number. This is evidenced e.g. by example (1). Thus, Weerman &
Evers-Vermeul (2002) propose that pronouns spell out the whole DP or CaseP (which
dominates DP).
(1) (D)er hat Probleme.
(2)
MASC
FEM
NEUT
PL
N
er
e
es
e
A
en
e
es
e
G
es
er
es
er
D
em
er
em
en
1.1.2. Adjectival declensions
All adjectives can appear in both weak and strong form.
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1.1.2.1. The weak declension
The weak adjectival endings are used if the adjective follows determiners like the definite
article or dieser, jeder…, see (3). In the weak declension, only two markers can be used:
1. -e
in N,SG for all genders.
A,SG,FEM,
A,SG,NEUT,
2. -en all other SG environments
all plurals
(3)
MASC
FEM
NEUT
PL
N
der
alte
die
alte
das
alte
die
alten
A
den
alten
die
alte
das
alte
die
alten
G
des
alten
der
alten
des
alten
der
alten
D
dem
alten
der
alten
dem
alten
den
alten
1.1.2.2. The strong declension
The strong markers are used if the adjective does not follow a determiner. If you compare this
declension with (2), you can see that it is almost identical to the determiner inflection, the
only difference is the G,MASC and NEUT.
(4)
MASC
FEM
NEUT
PL
N
alter
alte
altes
alte
A
alten
alte
altes
alte
G
alten
alter
alten
alter
D
altem
alter
altem
alten
1.1.2.3. The mixed declension
This declension is used with indefinite article ein, negative kein, possessives: mein, dein, sein,
ihr, unser, euer, ihr. Strong endings are used in:
N,SG in all GENDERS
A,FEM,SG
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A,NEUT,SG
The weak exponent (-en) appears in:
All other contexts in SG
In all plural contexts
(5)
MASC
FEM
NEUT
PL
N kein
alter
keine alte
kein
altes
keine alten
A keinen
alten
keine alte
kein
altes
keine alten
G keines
alten
keiner alten keines
alten
keiner alten
keiner alten keinem alten
keinen alten
D keinem alten
2. Analysis
After the narrow syntax, before spellout, DPs carry the following features: case, gender,
number. This is illustrated in (6). This is a set of features (labels) of the elements in the DP
plus assigned case. The features must be spelled out in German.
(6)
DP {case, gender, number}
D
NP
AP
N
The comparison of the determiner declension (2), take e.g. der Mann (the manNOM), with the
strong declension (4) shows that if a marker (the appropriate features) is not spelled out on a
determiner, it must be spelled out lower, on the adjective: alter Mann (old manNOM, the strong
adjectival declension).1 Let us now look at the contrast between alter Mann, der alte Mann
(the old manNOM, the weak adjectival declension) and ein alter Mann (an old manNOM, the
mixed declension). One can observe that the adjective and the article compete for the same
(common) marker; marker –er can appear either on the definite article or on the adjective(s),
but not on both (*der alter Mann, *einer alter Mann). This commonality is expressed by the
syntactic structure because both elements are dominated by the DP node, see (6). Hence, the
competition for the marker can be very well analyzed if we assume spell out of non-terminal
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nodes (as in already discussed Weerman & Evers-Vermeul (2002) or Neeleman & Szendrői
(2005) and Caha (2006)).
2.1. The weak declension
Let us look at how the spellout procedure works in more detail. I will begin with the weak
declension der alte Mann:
(7)
DP
d D
alt AP
d, alt, Mann, N, MASC, SG
NP alt, Mann
N Mann
So, spellout begins with DP. As to the DP in (7), in the lexicon, there is no vocabulary item
(VI) that could express d, alt, Mann and N, MASC, SG. Hence, spellout is going down, first
to the left to the specifier, as is standardly assumed. For the combination d, N, MASC, SG,
there is der in the lexicon, hence, it is inserted; we have already seen that determiner markers
(here, –er) express case, gender, number. Then, spellout is going to the NP but there is no VI
for the NP in the lexicon (there is only surname Altmann). Thus, we are moving down to the
adjective. The question is why we get the marker –e on the adjective alt, and not –er as on the
D. I propose that the reason is that the gender feature is already deleted; it can be spelled out
just once in German (more specifically, only on one category).2 After spellout of D, the
gender feature is deleted. Thus, the so called agreement of adjectival modifiers with the noun
does not include the gender feature. The next question is why we get the marker –e on alt, and
not –en. If we look at the weak declension in (3) and the mixed declension in (5), we see that
marker –en can be analyzed as the adjectival default marker (it can appear in all case
environments as well as gender and number environments).3 More concretely, (5) shows that
in the cases where the determiner marker (2) appears on the indefinite article or kein (D), -en
appears on the adjective; the only exception is N/A,FEM,SG. And if the determiner marker
does not appear on the D, it must appear on the adjective, see N,MASC,SG and
N/A,NEUT,SG. Now consider the exceptional N/A,FEM,SG environment. The adjective
1
For some reason, the marker –es G,MASC/NEUT is on adjectives spelled out as –en, in all other cases the
markers on adjectives in strong declension are identical to the determiner markers.
2
Fabian Heck pointed out to me that it could be attributed to the idiosyncracy of the gender feature, as opposed
e.g. to the case feature. But there are languages in which the gender feature can coexist on D and adjective(s)
(e.g. Czech).
3
In fact, -(e)n looks like a general default marker in German. Consider its occurrences in verbal morphology:
singen, relatives: dessen (deren), plural: Frauen, the weak noun declension: Studenten.
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there carries the –e marker. The weak declension table (3) shows that –e prevents the default
marker –en from appearing in the N/A,SG, that is, from the singular structural case
environments (for –en in A, MASC,SG, I have no explanation). This is exactly what happens
in our example (7). Since in the set of features, there are N and SG, the marker –e instead of
the default –en must be inserted. Therefore, I am going to argue that only the gender feature is
deleted from the featural set after its spellout. The case and number features live the whole
spellout procedure, they can be spelled out many times. This is shown in (8)4:
(8)
d-er arm-e alt-e Mann
the poor old man
Note that certain nouns can carry a case ending as well (and the case feature is not intrinsic to
them); consider the contrast between der Student and dem Studenten. Finally, after spellout of
alte, spellout is going to the noun and it is spelled out as Mann.
2.2. The mixed declension
Now, I will turn to the mixed declension (5). I have argued that in the weak declension in (3),
–e prevents the default marker –en from appearing in the singular structural case
environments (with the A, MASC,SG exception). The same happens in (5), too, but in
N,MASC,SG and N/A,NEUT,SG –e cannot be inserted because D does not carry the
appropriate determiner marker. Given the fact that (k)ein appears only in singular and only in
nominative in MASC and in nominative and accusative in NEUT and the fact that marker –es
is always common for nominative and accusative in NEUT,SG, it shows that the main task of
the determiner marker (-er or –es) on the adjective in N,MASC,SG and N/A,NEUT,SG is to
differentiate the masculine gender from the neuter gender. So, now, we want to spell out (8).
(8)
DP ein, alt, Mann, N, MASC, SG
ein D
alt AP
NP alt, Mann
N Mann
There is no VI in the lexicon that can spell out ein, alt, Mann with N, MASC, SG. Hence,
spellout is going to D. As to the combination ein, N, MASC, SG, only the determiner ein can
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An alternative proposal would be that as a general principle, the appropriate marker is always copied on all
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be spelled out but it does not spell out the gender feature.5 Therefore (after going through the
NP with alt, Mann and N, MASC, SG), we want to spell out the gender feature on alt. Hence,
the gender feature is spelled out as alt-er (together with the N, SG features) and is deleted.
Then N is spelled out as Mann.
A similar spellout procedure can be proposed for cases like du alter (you old). Compare
the DP before spellout in (9). In German, du expresses case and number but does not express
gender. So, after spellout of D as du6 the gender feature is still alive (as well as the number
and case feature, which generally are not deleted, as I argued above). Consequently, the
gender feature must be spelled out (as –er) on the adjective and we get the right du alter.
(9)
DP d, alt, N, MASC, SG
d D
AP alt
2.2. The strong declension
Here, the following NP should be spelled out (alter Mann). In the lexicon, there is no VI able
to spell out alt, Mann; N, MASC, SG, hence spellout goes to the adjective. The point is that
there is no D in the derivation, which could spell out the relevant features, therefore the
features (including the gender feature) are spelled out as –er on the adjective and we get
alter.7 Then the noun is spelled out as Mann.
(10)
NP alt, Mann, N, MASC, SG
alt AP
N Mann
3. Conclusion
In this paper, I have argued that differences between the strong, weak and mixed adjectival
declension in German are due to the gender feature that can be spelled out only once (on one
category).
instances of the category.
5
As to einer in e.g. Einer kam. (One came.), one can propose that einer can be spelled out in the case where D
also carries other (relevant) features (see also note 7). Or one can propose that if there is no other element in the
DP that can host the marker, that is, after the spellout procedure went through the whole DP, the features must be
spelled out on ein in D. Or it could be a spellout of N with all the appropriate features.
6
There must be other feaures, too, to get the personal pronoun exponent, but I leave details aside.
7
One might propose that there is a null D and ask why we do not get er alte Mann. A possible answer is that
determiner markers cannot be spelled out by themself. This is possible only if the relevant node is also specified
for other features, e.g. pronominal, anaphoric, as discussed in Neeleman & Szendrői (2005).
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References
Caha, P. (2006), The Superset Principle. Ms. University of Tromsø.
Neeleman, A. & K. Szendrői (2005), Pro Drop and Pronouns. In Proceedings of the 24th West
Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, ed. John Alderete et al., 299-307. Somerville, MA:
Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Weerman, F. & Evers-Vermeul, J. (2002), Pronouns and Case. Lingua 112, 301–338.
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