The "Possessive" Case in German

Abstract

In their discussions of the four cases of German, most elementary grammars devote very little space to the genitive. In itself there is nothing wrong with this: its functions have indeed become fewer and fewer. The average textbook tells the student that it is primarily used to show possession. This too is quite correct, but the explanation seldom goes far enough to clear up certain mistaken notions which all too frequently arise. Many students, for instance, are at first puzzled because an expression like my father does not in German always appear in the genitive case, since the idea of possession is quite clear. Their difficulty lies in failing to distinguish between LEXICAL and STRUCTURAL meaning. The possessive adjectives (or pronouns) are instances of the former: mein, dein, sein have the meaning of possession regardless of their syntactic function. The genitive CASE, however, is a formal phenomenon that, according to the structural frame in which it occurs, is capable of various semantic references.