Genitive Prepositions Used with the Dative in Spoken German

Abstract

When introducing the genitive prepositions (an)statt, trotz, wahrend, and wegen, a few firstand second-year German textbooks and some grammars note that in spoken German there is a tendency to use the dative after these prepositions.1 In order to determine the extent to which the dative is actually used with these prepositions in colloquial speech and to verify that statements made in grammars about their use with the dative indeed reflect current usage, this study examines all occurrences of these four prepositions in the Corpus of Spoken German of the Institute for Basic German (IBG Corpus) and the Corpus of Spoken German of Brigham Young University (BYU Corpus). The IBG Corpus was completed under the direction of J. Alan Pfeffer in 1961 and was replicated thirty years later in the BYU Corpus by Randall L. Jones. These two corpora of spoken German together comprise over 800 interviews with a broad cross section of the German-speaking population and now can be accessed by microcomputer for comparative analyses like this.2 The data from these two corpora for the first time provide evidence that is concrete rather than anecdotal and that is statistically significant regarding the frequency of use of the dative with the genitive prepositions in colloquial speech. In addition, it is now possible to identify the regions in German-speaking countries where the dative is used with these prepositions with greater frequency. Already thirty years ago in the first edition of German: A Structural Approach, Lohnes and Strothmann make reference to the fact that with trotz and wegen the genitive could be replaced by the dative in colloquial speech (e.g., trotz dem Regen, wegen dem Regen).3 In his Reference Grammar of the German Language, Lederer states that the preposition trotz may be used with either the genitive or dative, and (an)statt, wdhrend, and wegen are followed by the dative only in spoken German and with pronouns. Lederer also notes that the dative is always used with wegen when it is followed by indefinite pronouns (wegen etwas anderem) and nominal adjectives (wegen dem Gefdhrlichen) and before personal pronouns (wegen mir). While wegen may precede or follow the noun it governs, in postposition it is always used with the genitive (ihres Sohnes wegen) and written together with personal pronouns (meinetwegen).4 In the second edition of Hammer's German Grammar and Usage, Durrell indicates that, although the use of the dative with these prepositions is common in everyday colloquial speech, it is still regarded as substandard by some. However, the use of the dative occurs in written German in order to avoid the use of the genitive of personal pronouns (Langsamfahren wegen uns! on a road sign outside a kindergarten), to avoid a series of nouns in the genitive (trotz dem Rollen des Zuges -Thomas Mann), and for stylistic purposes (Freies Denken statt starrem Lenken slogan on an election poster). In formal written German, these prepositions are used with the dative when they are followed by a plural noun without a declined article or adjective (wahrend fUnf Jahren), if the noun following is preceded by a possessive genitive (wdhrend Vaters kurzem Urlaub), and when wdhrend is followed by a relative pronoun (die Reise, wdhrend der wir so viel Sch6nes sahen).5 The explanation of the use of the dative with these four genitive prepositions in the most recent Duden Grammatik (1995) has been taken over almost word for word from the fourth edition of 1984 and offers no additional insight. The Duden still considers this use of the dative as veraltet oder umgangssprachlich (wegen des Geldes [standardspr.]/wegen dem Geld [ugs.]).6 It permits the use of the dative only where the genitive is not vis-