Leipzig fourmille de typologues : Genitive objects in comparison (original) (raw)

This paper examines genitive objects in a range of familiar European languages, in particular German, English, Latin, French and Italian. Three initial examples are given in (1)-(3) (in each case, the genitive object is in boldface). (1) French Claire fleurit le balcon de géraniums. 'Claire plants the balcony with geraniums.' (2) Latin (Lucilius 272) quarum et abundemus rerum et quarum indigeamus 'of which things we have too many and of which we have too few' (3) German Michael gedenkt der gemeinsamen Jahre. 'Michael thinks of the years spent together.' * An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Drittes Bamberger Romanistisches Arbeitsgespräch, 12 April 1997. We thank the participants for useful discussion, especially Annegret Bollée, Peter Koch, and Max Grosse.