Demonstrative vs Personal and Zero Pronouns in Spoken German

This paper examines the position of the genitive case in present-day German, focusing on the relationship between language users’ perceptions of the genitive (as portrayed in lay linguistic work), their actual use of the genitive, and the long-term diachronic developments that the genitive is undergoing. Two aspects of the genitive – possession marking and its use as the case governed by some prepositions – are exemplified with data from everyday language. It is concluded that the situation, commonly perceived as a simple decline of the genitive, involves a more complex rearrangement of possession marking and case selection in German.