Case system of the Spanish language

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The case can generally be described as a grammatical category , rasgo gramatical o categoría gramatical declinable words. Functionally, the case depicts a syntactic dependency. Case can be realized as a morphological category (morphological case), caso morfológico , which is characterized by a system of opposing series of forms. In addition to morphological means of expression, there is the prepositional case , i.e. marking with functional words.

In Spanish there is no longer a morphological case system for nouns, only the preposition case exists here (in addition to the other possibilities to signal grammatical functions, such as order). Word forms for case, however, exist in the system of Spanish pronouns.

The extensive abolition of the case system in the Romance languages

While classical Latin still has six or, depending on the counting method, seven cases as inflected forms of nouns, adjectives and pronouns, namely nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , vocative , ablative and possibly locative , their number was already reduced in vulgar Latin . Vulgar Latin was hardly ever written, but it can be deduced that only two or three cases were used in these spoken forms of Latin as early as the 3rd century. Vulgar Latin was the linguistic starting point of the individual Romance languages and, even in antiquity, was not uniform either socially, geographically or temporally. All Romance languages ​​have almost completely lost the cases (compare, for example, exception in the case system in Romanian ) and only retained case relicts for the personal pronouns. The loss of the morphologically marked case reveals one of the basic typological features that distinguish the Romance languages ​​from Latin.

Spanish is part of this development: the place of an inflected case is replaced by prepositions , which are increasingly being grammaticalized as case markers. - example: 

 Anstatt  lateinisch: Homo homini lupus.
 wird spanisch:  El hombre es un lobo para el hombre.

Further examples with the case genitive and dative:

Classical Latin Vulgar Latin Italian Spanish
Genitive filius regis - the king's son filius de rege "de" il figlio del re el hijo del rey
dative da librum patri - give the book to the father da librum ad patrem "ad" da il libro al padre da el libro al padre

The cases of the nominative (for the subject) and accusative, which were no longer differentiated according to their endings, but rather by their position before or after the predicate, showed a similar development. The omission of the case mark went hand in hand with a less free word order in the successor languages ​​of Latin.

In general, the following rule can be established for the Indo-European languages : the more important a case system is for a language, the less relevant the prepositions that are used in this language and vice versa.

The case system of Spanish nouns

Instead of case endings on the noun, Spanish marks the direct and indirect object partly with a preceding element a , and the relationship, which corresponds to a genitive assignment, with a preceding de. These markings go back to the Latin prepositions ad for “to, add” and dē for “from ... down”, which had a specific, place-related sense in Latin. In contrast, the subject remains unmarked.

Direct object

If the direct object designates something inanimate, it is no longer marked. In the case of persons or animals as a direct object, however, the preposition a is placed in front ( prepositional accusative ). Together with the article el , the form al is created . - Examples: 

 Compra una mesa Er kauft einen Tisch.
 Llama a los amigos Sie ruft die Freunde.
 Llama al amigo. Sie ruft den Freund.

The element a also precedes (non-clitized) pronouns that denote people. - Examples:

¿Viste a alguien? Did you see someone
No vimos a nadie We didn't see anyone
¿A quién has saludado? Who did you greet

The direct object marked with a can appear with a (clitic) pronoun attached to the verb (a phenomenon called " clitic doubling " in linguistics ): 

 Juana lo espera a Carlos Juana wartet auf Carlos.

The a can also be omitted from animated direct objects if the object is unspecific, as in the first example below in contrast to the second: 

 Busco un gato Ich suche eine Katze.
 Busco a mi gato Ich suche meine Katze.

This makes Spanish an example of a language with differential object marking .

Indirect object

For the indirect object (dative object) the preposition a also applies to persons . Direct and indirect objects can therefore look the same. - Examples: 

 Juana compra puritos al marido Juana kauft ihrem Mann Zigarillos (indirektes Objekt, Dativ).
 Florentina contesta a un amigo Florentina antwortet einem Freund. (einziges Objekt, im Deutschen Dativ)

Genitive

“Genitive” attributes are marked with the preposition de , the contracted forms are del . 

 Es el regalo de Florentina Das ist das Geschenk Florentinas.
 Es la puerta de la cabaña. ¿De qué es la puerta? De la cabaña. Es ist die Tür der Hütte. Wessen Tür? Der Hütte.

Further examples with all three cases

The mother buys a car for her friend's daughter.

" The mother buys her friend's daughter a car ."

The mother the subject (in the nominative), the daughter the dative object (= addition in the dative), her friend the genitive attribute (= addition in the genitive) and a car the accusative object (= addition in the accusative)

In Spanish: La madre compra un coche a la hija de su amiga.

" La madre compra un coche a la hija de su amiga ."

La madre the subject (in the nominative), un coche the direct object (accusative) (= addition in the accusative) a la hija the indirect object (dative) object (= addition in the dative), de su amiga the genitive attribute (= addition in genitive)

In pronominalized form: La madre se lo compra The mother buys it for her.

" La madre se lo compra."

La madre the subject (in the nominative), se the indirect object (dative) object (= addition in the dative), lo the direct object (accusative) (= addition in the accusative) compra .

Case relics in personal pronouns

This article or section needs to be revised: A systematic overview of the case forms of clitic pronouns is missing; Material Ex. S. o. and possibly s. u. Commented out text
Please help to improve it and then remove this marking.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ José Luis González: Una teoría de la oración. Escribano Universidad de Oviedo, 1991, ISBN 84-7468-491-9 , p. 295 f.
  2. ↑ Wolf Dietrich , Horst Geckeler: Introduction to Spanish Linguistics: A Text and Work Book. 4th edition, Schmidt, Berlin 2007, ISBN 3-503-06188-6 , p. 127 f.
  3. ^ Trudel Meisenburg, Christoph Gabriel: Romance Linguistics. UTB basics, UTB, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8252-2897-2 , p. 140.
  4. ↑ Federico Hanssen : Spanish grammar on a historical basis. Niemeyer, Halle a, p. 1910, p. 129 f.
  5. ^ Christian Lehmann: Sprachwandel: Grammaticalization. March 7, 2016
  6. ^ Trudel Meisenburg, Christoph Gabriel: Romance Linguistics. UTB basics, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8252-2897-2 , p. 140.
  7. ^ Leonard R. Palmer : The Latin language: Fundamentals of the history of language and the historically comparative grammar. Helmut Buske Verlag, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-87118-900-6 .
  8. ↑ Compare the accusative , accusative object (direct object) and semantic role types in languages ​​with a case terminology .
  9. ↑ Compare the dative and dative object (indirect object) in the case terminology .
  10. ^ Georg Bossong : Differential object marking in Romance and beyond. In: Dieter Wanner, Douglas A. Kibbee (Eds.): New analyzes in Romance linguistics. Benjamin, Amsterdam / Philadelphia 1991, pp. 143-170.