Archaic Dutch declension


The Dutch language in its modern form does not have grammatical cases, and nouns only have singular and plural forms. Many remnants of former case declensions remain in the Dutch language, but none of them are productive. One exception is the genitive case, which retains a certain productivity in the language. Although in the spoken language the case system was probably in state of collapse as early as the 16th century, cases were still prescribed in the written standard up to 1946/1947. This article describes the system in use until then. For a full description of modern Dutch grammar, see Dutch grammar. See also History of Dutch orthography.

Case usage

The four Dutch cases were the nominative, genitive, dative and accusative. They were still alive and in use in Middle Dutch, but they gradually fell out of use in early modern Dutch. Seventeenth-century grammarians and those that came after them attempted to keep the case system alive, and codified a written standard that included them. This standard was prescriptive—an attempt to influence how people wrote and spoke Dutch rather than to reflect how they already spoke naturally. It included not just the crumbling case system, but also a strict separation between masculine and feminine genders, falling out of use in some dialects as well. Many grammarians of the time attempted to make Dutch more like Latin and Greek, and even included cases such as the ablative and locative which had not existed in any ancestor of Dutch since Proto-Indo-European times.
By the 18th century, the everyday spoken language had lost its case system in most dialects, but it remained present in the written standard. Rules for the use of cases were relaxed in the Marchant spelling of 1934, and were finally abolished in the 1946/1947 spelling reform, along with many other archaic features. After the reform, the use of cases was discouraged, although they were still allowed by the standard. In modern Dutch, they are preserved in certain fixed expressions. They also continue to be used when writers want to make something sound deliberately archaic.
Only the nominative case or the accusative case survives in the modern spoken language ; which case survives depends on the dialect. In dialects with accusativism, the masculine and feminine genders remain distinct; in dialects with nominativism, they are merged. This is because in the older declension, the nominative was the same for the masculine and feminine gender, but the accusative forms differed:
In the older standard, the nominative was used for the following:
The genitive was used in the following cases:
Many of these uses are replaced by the preposition van in modern Dutch. A few cases use other prepositions.
The genitives of the personal pronouns are replaced by the possessive pronouns.
The possessive form of the genitive is still productive when used with proper names. This form does not resemble the old genitive, which was a full case and had distinctive endings on each word in a phrase. Instead, it is a possessive clitic much like in English, and attaches to the last word in the whole phrase. For example, "Jans auto" is productive and in common usage. However, in some cases the old form is still productive to evoke a certain style: de generatie der babyboomers or to avoid using van too often: de wensen van de meerderheid der Nederlandse bevolking.
A partitive genitive form of the adjective is still used after words like iets, niets, e.g. iets nieuws.
Gerunds can sometimes still be found in the genitive case in expressions involving tot... toe: tot vervelens toe, tot bloedens toe

Dative

The dative was used in the following cases:
In modern Dutch, the dative case is technically still required after the preposition te. However, this preposition itself has fallen out of use, and is found only in fixed expressions. These expressions tend to keep the original dative form. For example, "ten slotte", "te allen tijde". It is also used somewhat productively in relation to proper place names, without any case marking. For example, "Het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam". Even this is still dated to some degree.
Nouns of action on -ing can still be combined with the feminine form ter: ter herdenking and enjoy a modicum of productivity: ter wikifiëring is certainly acceptable Dutch.

Accusative

The accusative was used in the following cases:
The accusative case was left for objects of transitive verbs and objects of all prepositions except for te. However, as distinctions between the grammatical cases were only weakly felt among speakers of Dutch, the feminine and neuter declensions were identical in the nominative and accusative, and the masculine declension was identical for the accusative and dative, endless confusion reigned.

Articles

Definite article

The forms in brackets are shortened forms that were occasionally used. They were somewhat colloquial.
The preposition te contracts with a following definite article: te den → ten, te der → ter. Compare this to German zum, zur.
Because Dutch had many spelling reforms, some forms had different spellings in the past. The stem was formerly spelled een- regardless of the ending, so eenen, eener etc. The modern spelling, given in the table, are written according to the rules of modern Dutch orthography.
The forms in brackets are shortened forms that were occasionally used. As with the shortenings of the definite article, these are colloquial.
A distinction was made between strong and weak declensions. The weak declension had most cases with the ending -en in the singular, while the strong declension had other endings. This distinction wasn't as important in 19th century standard Dutch as it was in earlier Old and Middle Dutch. The two types were much more distinct in Old and Middle Dutch, but gradually became mixed together. The older strong plural forms disappeared so that all nouns became weak in the plural. In the singular the opposite happened: the weak declension was replaced with the strong declension in most nouns. The difference was then only relevant for the singular, the plural was the same for all nouns.
The older standards of Dutch maintained a strict separation between the masculine, feminine and neuter gender. While this is not significant in the modern language without cases, it was important in the older standard because the masculine and feminine nouns declined rather differently. Masculine and neuter nouns declined the same, and were usually strong, with some nouns retaining the weak declension. Feminine nouns declined differently, and there was no strong-versus-weak distinction for them.
Because the difference between masculine and feminine was disappearing or had already disappeared in the spoken language, some nouns tended to mix masculine and feminine endings. One will come across fixed expressions such as te zijner tijd alongside destijds. This confusion was largely eliminated when cases were abolished, but on the occasion that cases are used in modern Dutch, this confusion is very frequent in areas where the spoken language has only a single "common" gender. Thus, masculine and feminine case endings, when used nowadays, may be almost interchangeable.

Masculine and neuter nouns

The following declension was used for most masculine and neuter nouns. It had also come to be used for female proper names, but normal feminine nouns used a separate declension, seen further below.

Strong nouns

Most nouns had -s in the genitive singular. This was extended to -es when it would have caused an awkward-to-pronounce combination of sounds otherwise, but it was also used occasionally for nouns that didn't require it. If the noun ended with a long vowel, then an apostrophe was included as in modern usage.
The -e of the dative singular was frequently dropped.
Some masculine and neuter nouns became feminine in the dative singular. See below under "mixed nouns".
The plural could end in either -en or -s. A few had plurals in -eren. This is the same as in modern Dutch, see Dutch grammar for more details.

Weak nouns

Some nouns retained a weak genitive in the singular, including nouns with a nominative sg. in -e and substantivised adjectives. Examples are mens, bode, and dappere.
SingularPlural
Nominativemensmensen
Genitivemensenmensen
Dativemense/mensmensen
Accusativemensmensen

SingularPlural
Nominativedapperedapperen
Genitivedapperendapperen
Dativedapperedapperen
Accusativedapperedapperen

Many of the weak nouns were words for people, including bediende graaf, heer, hertog, knaap, prins, vorst. Hart belongs to the same group.
Some relics remain of the weak declension in modern Dutch. The cities of 's-Gravenhage and 's-Hertogenbosch both still show the original weak genitive ending in their names. The Christian expression dag des Heren also retains it.

Feminine nouns

Feminine nouns had a simpler declension. When separate endings were used, the genitive and dative singular forms would end in -e. Female proper names did not follow this declension, but were declined as strong masculine/neuter nouns instead.
SingularPlural
Nominativevrouwvrouwen
Genitivevrouwe/vrouwvrouwen
Dativevrouwe/vrouwvrouwen
Accusativevrouwvrouwen

Mixed nouns

Some nouns mixed several types of declension. The most common irregularity was a feminine dative singular replacing the masculine or neuter one.
The older standard distinguished between predicative and attributive adjectives, much as the modern standard. It also distinguished definite and indefinite declensions. However, the difference was three-way rather than two-way:
This distinction still exists in modern German. In modern Dutch, the mixed and strong declensions have fallen together, becoming the indefinite declension, while the weak declension remains as the definite declension.
Adjectives ending in -en did not receive any endings, like in modern Dutch.

Weak declension

Mixed declension

The masculine and feminine endings in -en and -e of the indefinite article were frequently dropped even in written language. However, the endings in -en and -e of een, geen, mijn, uw, zijn, hun, and haar were strictly maintained in government and administrative documents until 1946/7.

Strong declension

There also was a special vocative form for the neuter singular: Lieve kind. However, this form was not widely accepted, and the nominative was used instead.

Pronouns and determiners

Most pronouns and determiners followed the strong adjective declension. Some pronouns declined as nouns and had only -s in the genitive but no endings otherwise. Those that were irregular in some way are given here.

Personal pronouns

Uniquely, modern Dutch retains the use of cases in the personal pronouns. The older forms were the same as the modern ones, with the modern object form used for both the dative and accusative, and the subject form for the nominative. For the genitive, the possessive determiners were used, but there were also special pronoun forms which used the genitive form of the possessive.
An exception was the third-person plural. The standard prescribed that hen was the accusative form, while hun was the dative.

Possessive determiners

The possessive determiners declined like strong adjectives. In modern Dutch, they don't decline at all, except for ons.
Like in modern Dutch, a different declension was used when the possessives were used as nouns. This declension resembled the strong declension of nouns in the singular, but with an extra -e added in many cases. In the plural, the strong adjective declension was used, but the neuter nominative/accusative had only -e, not -en.

Demonstratives

The proximal pronoun deze:
The distal pronoun die:
The interrogative pronoun wie declined the same way.

Historical overview

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. In addition, many surnames, toponyms and set expressions still exhibit fossilised inflected forms of the article and noun.

Middle Ages

In Middle Dutch, 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.

CaseMasculineFeminineNeuter
Nominative die cleine wormdie cleine daetdat cleine broot
Genitive des cleins wormsder cleiner daetdes cleins broots
Dative den cleinen wormeder cleiner daetden cleinen brode
Accusative den cleinen wormdie cleine daetdat cleine broot
Nominative die cleine wormedie cleine dadedie cleine brode
Genitive der cleiner wormeder cleiner dadeder cleiner brode
Dative den cleinen wormenden cleinen dadenden cleinen broden
Accusative die clene wormedie cleine dadedie 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 Renaissance 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 . 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. would stand alongside des heers, den here
Another artificial distinction, still in use today, between the plural personal pronouns hun and hen was created by Christiaen van Heule, who wrote De Nederduytsche spraec-konst ofte tael-beschrijvinghe . 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. 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 ; 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, 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 Lennep in his De vermakelijke spraakkunst , in which he noticed that the case system was hardly used in 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. 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.
CaseMasculineFeminineNeuter
Nominative de kleine wormde kleine daadhet kleine brood
Genitive des kleinen wormsder kleine daaddes kleinen broods
Dative den kleinen wormde kleine daadhet kleine brood
Accusative den kleinen wormde kleine daadhet kleine brood
Nominative de kleine wormende kleine dadende kleine broden
Genitive der kleine wormender kleine dadender kleine broden
Dative den kleinen wormenden kleinen dadenden kleinen broden
Accusative de kleine wormende kleine dadende 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.
Number \ GenderMasculineFeminineNeuter
Singularde kleine wormde kleine daadhet kleine brood
Pluralde kleine wormende kleine dadende kleine broden

Numerous remnants of the old system remain in the language, usually on the level of individual idioms, but there are larger issues. One part of the legacy involved the formation of compounds, like bijenkorf. In modern Dutch the two parts of a compound are typically linked by either -e-, -en- or -s- and historically these linkers descend from the genitive endings of the old case system. Particularly the question when to use -e- or -en- became a source of a plethora of spelling errors, because the system that produced the forms was no longer understood. In 1995 and 2006 spelling changes were adopted that introduced new rules that abandoned any relationship with the historical development of the word.

Sampling

From the Dutch language Wikipedia: