SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC ROLE OF CASES IN GERMAN-LANGUAGE PUBLIC DISCOURSE TEXTS

Abstract

The article considers the relationship between syntax and semantics on the example of case forms of nouns in German public discourse from the perspective of communicative and stylistic integrity and reader’s perception. The distortion of meaning due to a case form inappropriate to the original meaning of the phrase may have different causes, but one significant consequence, namely, the misunderstanding of a public utterance by a wide range of readers. Adequate conveyance of meaning allows for variation in the syntactic structure of the sentence, and certain stylistic differences between more colloquial and clerical forms are revealed. Achievement of the desired communicative effect is conditioned by the choice of the official business style taking into account the syntactic functions of the cases characteristic of the German language. The description of the syntactic status of the genitive and the von + Dativ construction, known by their synonymy for the expression of possessive, revealed the presence of their common object semantics. The syntactic function of the article-expressed cases, similar to the function of sentence members, coincides with the semantic role of the nouns corresponding to them. The choice of an inappropriate case changes the semantics of the sentence as a whole.