Prepositional phrases used instead of morphologically marked Genitive or Dative (on the basis of the north-eastern dialects of Polish, colloquial German and English)

Abstract

The article discusses selected examples of the interplay between prepositional phrases and morphologically marked cases (Genitive and Dative). Section One briefly introduces the concept of prepositions on the basis of data from Polish and English. Prepositions in the two languages show similarities and differences. Because Polish prepositions assign cases, further analogies are drawn between Polish and German (which, similarly to English, is a Germanic language). Section Two focuses on the replacement of Dative with the preposition dla ‘for’ governing Genitive, which phenomenon is characteristic of the north-eastern dialects of Polish in Podlasie (especially in the area of Białystok and Suwałki) and in the Eastern Borderlands. In the same local dialects of Polish, the reverse tendency has been observed. It results in the replacement of dla + Genitive with the Dative case (due to hypercorrectness). The interplay between the two cases is also observable in colloquial German, in which morphologically signalled Genitive is replaced with the preposition von ‘from’ + Dative. The phenomenon is illustrated in Section Three. Finally, Section Four discusses the overlap between Genitive, Dative, and prepositional phrases in other structures in German and English.