German Case Evolution

[Abi]

I keep reading that cases come from affixes prepositions, how then, did German get cases on its' articles? I wouldn't think "the in dog house" would occur...

[TaylorS]

The definite article is derived from the demonstrative pronouns, which inflected to agree with the nouns they modified.

[Jipí]

And, the use of articles arose when the shifts from Old High German to Middle High German wrecked the original case marking with suffixes, most notably because of V → ə / [-stress]_ (which also simplified conjugation). I imagine the Romance languages developed articles out of demonstrative pronouns for similar reasons?

EDIT: Lookit http://alexmidd.co.uk/Marmaria/ohg/ohg_primer_09.htm!

[el morón]

I keep reading that cases come from affixes prepositions, how then, did German get cases on its' articles? I wouldn't think "the in dog house" would occur...

I think markedcasogenesis can sometimes be described in terms of affixed prepositionalish particles, but you'd have to go further back in time and see how it worked in Proto-PIE. German, OHG, Proto-Germanic or PIE never had a structure analogous to "the-PREP", they had "the-CASEMARKER". The process through which affixed prepositions become case markers doesn't have to repeat itself in all the daughter languages.