Why all John's Friends are Dutch, Not German: On the Determiner-Like Characteristics of the Inflection on the Universal Quantifier in West Germanic

The word order in a phrase such as all John's friends , in which a universal quantifier is immediately followed by a genitive, is perfectly grammatical in Dutch but unacceptable in German. This article shows that there are three explanations for this difference between the two closely related languages. First, in German, the Saxon Genitive is a true case assigned in Spec, NP. In contrast, in Dutch and English, genitive case cannot be assigned in Spec, NP without a preposition. The Saxon Genitive in these languages is comparable to a possessive adjective that originates as the head of PossP and... Mehr ...