Dutch declension
Encyclopedia
Dutch
, like many other Indo-European languages
, has gradually moved its nominal morphology from synthetic
to chiefly analytic. It has retained some vestiges of the original case system, more so than English
, but to a much lesser extent than German
. In modern Dutch, nouns and articles
are no longer inflected for case, although an elaborate case system was used in the written language until the middle of the 20th century.
, a productive case system was still in existence, which was very similar to that of modern German
. Given below is the so-called "strong" inflection.
(adjective clein = small, noun worm = worm, daet = deed/action, broot = bread)
onward, the view that the Dutch language should somehow be 'ennobled' with an extensive case system after the model of Latin
was widespread. Hendrik Louwerisz. Spieghel, an influential 16th-century grammarian, tried to reform and standardize the Dutch case system in his book on grammar, Twe-spraack van de Nederduitsche Letterkunst (1584). In particular, Spieghel wanted to create a distinction in grammatical function between two existing forms of the definite article
, de and den, having de pertain to subjects and den to objects. (In this system, no distinction was made between masculine and feminine nouns, as was later done; des vrouws, den vrouwe (f) would stand alongside des heers, den here (m).)
Another artificial distinction, still in use today, between the plural personal pronouns hun (for the indirect object) and hen (for the direct object) was created by Christiaen van Heule, who wrote the De Nederduytsche spraec-konst ofte tael-beschrijvinghe (printed in 1633). In the same vein, the distinction between masculine and feminine
nouns was rigidly maintained, although this distinction was felt only vaguely at best in the northern dialects. (In the dialects of the Southern Netherlands
, however, the distinction did indeed exist and is still in existence today.) Celebrated poets such as Joost van den Vondel
and Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft
often disagreed in assigning gender to nouns, which they arbitrarily based on equivalents in Latin, German
, or other languages whenever they saw fit. Their choices were adopted by the grammarian David van Hoogstraten in his Aenmerkingen over de Geslachten der Zelfstandige Naemwoorden (1700); where Vondel and Hooft disagreed, Van Hoogstraten would assign a gender to a noun by his own choice. These "gender lists" were steadily extended, especially by professor Adriaan Kluit (1735-1807), who revised Van Hoogstraten's work. Kluit's list formed the basis of later 19th-and early 20th-century practice.
in his De vermakelijke spraakkunst, in which he noticed that the case system was hardly used in the spoken language. The practice of approaching Dutch as if it were a classical, inflecting language comparable to Latin and Greek was gradually abandoned in the 19th century, and it was recognized that word order
played a far greater role in defining grammatical relationships. R.A. Kollewijn (1857-1942) advocated radical spelling reforms for the whole of the Dutch language, at a time when a rather extensive case system was maintained in the written language by the De Vries-Te Winkel spelling. The table below shows the conventions of the written language in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Only the "strong" inflection is shown here.
Since 1946/1947, only one form is used for all cases, and the only remaining distinction is the one between singular and plural.
The -n has been lost in adjective nouns.
The genitive of the personal pronoun is usually replaced by the possessive pronoun.
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, like many other Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
, has gradually moved its nominal morphology from synthetic
Synthetic language
In linguistic typology, a synthetic language is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio, as opposed to a low morpheme-per-word ratio in what is described as an isolating language...
to chiefly analytic. It has retained some vestiges of the original case system, more so than English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, but to a much lesser extent than German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
. In modern Dutch, nouns and articles
Article (grammar)
An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...
are no longer inflected for case, although an elaborate case system was used in the written language until the middle of the 20th century.
Middle Ages
In Middle DutchMiddle Dutch
Middle Dutch is a collective name for a number of closely related West Germanic dialects which were spoken and written between 1150 and 1500...
, a productive case system was still in existence, which was very similar to that of modern German
German declension
German declension is the paradigm that German uses to define all the ways words can change shape to reflect their role in the sentence: subject, object, etc...
. Given below is the so-called "strong" inflection.
(adjective clein = small, noun worm = worm, daet = deed/action, broot = bread)
| Grammatical Case | Male | Female | Neuter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative (sing Grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions .... ) |
die cleine worm | die cleine daet | dat cleine broot |
| Genitive (sing Grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions .... ) |
des cleins worms | der cleiner daet | des cleins broots |
| Dative (sing Grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions .... ) |
den cleinen worme | der cleiner daet | den cleinen brode |
| Accusative (sing Grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions .... ) |
den cleinen worm | die cleine daet | dat cleine broot |
| Nominative (pl Plural In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one... ) |
die cleine worme | die cleine dade | die cleine brode |
| Genitive (pl Plural In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one... ) |
der cleiner worme | der cleiner dade | der cleiner brode |
| Dative (pl Plural In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one... ) |
den cleinen wormen | den cleinen daden | den cleinen broden |
| Accusative (pl Plural In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one... ) |
die clene worme | die cleine dade | die cleine brode |
16th to 18th centuries
It was already observed in the 15th century that there existed no distinction between the nominative and accusative forms of nouns and articles in the northern dialects. From the RenaissanceRenaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
onward, the view that the Dutch language should somehow be 'ennobled' with an extensive case system after the model of Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
was widespread. Hendrik Louwerisz. Spieghel, an influential 16th-century grammarian, tried to reform and standardize the Dutch case system in his book on grammar, Twe-spraack van de Nederduitsche Letterkunst (1584). In particular, Spieghel wanted to create a distinction in grammatical function between two existing forms of the definite article
Definite Article
Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzard's 1996 performance released on VHS. It was recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre...
, de and den, having de pertain to subjects and den to objects. (In this system, no distinction was made between masculine and feminine nouns, as was later done; des vrouws, den vrouwe (f) would stand alongside des heers, den here (m).)
Another artificial distinction, still in use today, between the plural personal pronouns hun (for the indirect object) and hen (for the direct object) was created by Christiaen van Heule, who wrote the De Nederduytsche spraec-konst ofte tael-beschrijvinghe (printed in 1633). In the same vein, the distinction between masculine and feminine
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
nouns was rigidly maintained, although this distinction was felt only vaguely at best in the northern dialects. (In the dialects of the Southern Netherlands
Southern Netherlands
Southern Netherlands were a part of the Low Countries controlled by Spain , Austria and annexed by France...
, however, the distinction did indeed exist and is still in existence today.) Celebrated poets such as Joost van den Vondel
Joost van den Vondel
Joost van den Vondel was a Dutch writer and playwright. He is considered the most prominent Dutch poet and playwright of the 17th century. His plays are the ones from that period that are still most frequently performed, and his epic Joannes de Boetgezant , on the life of John the Baptist, has...
and Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft
Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft
Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft - Knight in the Order of Saint Michael - was a Dutch historian, poet and playwright from the period known as the Dutch Golden Age.-Life:...
often disagreed in assigning gender to nouns, which they arbitrarily based on equivalents in Latin, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, or other languages whenever they saw fit. Their choices were adopted by the grammarian David van Hoogstraten in his Aenmerkingen over de Geslachten der Zelfstandige Naemwoorden (1700); where Vondel and Hooft disagreed, Van Hoogstraten would assign a gender to a noun by his own choice. These "gender lists" were steadily extended, especially by professor Adriaan Kluit (1735-1807), who revised Van Hoogstraten's work. Kluit's list formed the basis of later 19th-and early 20th-century practice.
19th and early 20th centuries
This artificial approach to the Dutch language remained the prevailing practice through the 17th and 18th centuries, but attitudes began to change in the 19th century. The rigidity of the written language was satirized in 1865 by Jacob van LennepJacob van Lennep
Jacob van Lennep was a Dutch poet and novelist.-Early years:He was born in Amsterdam, where his father, David Jacob van Lennep , a scholar and poet, was professor of eloquence and the classical languages in the Atheneum...
in his De vermakelijke spraakkunst, in which he noticed that the case system was hardly used in the spoken language. The practice of approaching Dutch as if it were a classical, inflecting language comparable to Latin and Greek was gradually abandoned in the 19th century, and it was recognized that word order
Word order
In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...
played a far greater role in defining grammatical relationships. R.A. Kollewijn (1857-1942) advocated radical spelling reforms for the whole of the Dutch language, at a time when a rather extensive case system was maintained in the written language by the De Vries-Te Winkel spelling. The table below shows the conventions of the written language in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Only the "strong" inflection is shown here.
| Grammatical Case | Male | Female | Neuter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative (sing Grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions .... ) |
de kleine worm | de kleine daad | het kleine brood |
| Genitive (sing Grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions .... ) |
des kleinen worms | der kleine daad | des kleinen broods |
| Dative (sing Grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions .... ) |
den kleinen worm | de kleine daad | het kleine brood |
| Accusative (sing Grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions .... ) |
den kleinen worm | de kleine daad | het kleine brood |
| Nominative (pl Plural In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one... ) |
de kleine wormen | de kleine daden | de kleine broden |
| Genitive (pl Plural In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one... ) |
der kleine wormen | der kleine daden | der kleine broden |
| Dative (pl Plural In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one... ) |
den kleinen wormen | den kleinen daden | den kleinen broden |
| Accusative (pl Plural In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one... ) |
de kleine wormen | de kleine daden | de kleine broden |
Later 20th century to present
Kollewijn's proposals for a much simplified spelling, which included the effective abandonment of the case system, were adopted by Minister of Education Marchant for use at schools in 1934, which meant that the case endings were no longer taught at school. Kollewijn's spelling was officially implemented by the Belgian and Dutch governments in 1946 and 1947 respectively.Since 1946/1947, only one form is used for all cases, and the only remaining distinction is the one between singular and plural.
The -n has been lost in adjective nouns.
| Grammatical Case | Male | Female | Neuter |
|---|---|---|---|
| singular Grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions .... |
de kleine worm | de kleine daad | het kleine brood |
| plural Plural In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one... |
de kleine wormen | de kleine daden | de kleine broden |
Personal Pronoun
The only true relic of productive case markings in Dutch nowadays can be seen with personal pronouns, where there is a morphological subject/object distinction.| Singular | |||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | ik ('k) | jij (je), gij (ge), u | hij, zij, het |
| Dative | mij (me) | jou (je), u | hem, haar, het |
| Accusative | mij (me) | jou (je), u | hem, haar, het |
| Plural | |||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | wij (we) | jullie, gij (ge), u | zij (ze) |
| Dative | ons | jullie, u | hun |
| Accusative | ons | jullie, u | hen |
The genitive of the personal pronoun is usually replaced by the possessive pronoun.
Reflexive pronoun
The reflexive pronoun is always accusative or dative:| Singular | |||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dative | mij(zelf) / me(zelf) | je(zelf), zich(zelf), u(zelf) | zich(zelf) |
| Accusative | mij(zelf) / me(zelf) | je(zelf), zich(zelf), u(zelf) | zich(zelf) |
| Plural | |||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dative | ons(zelf) | je(zelf), zich(zelf), u(zelf) | zich(zelf) |
| Accusative | ons(zelf) | je(zelf), zich(zelf), u(zelf) | zich(zelf) |