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This sentence appears in today's transcript of "DW Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten":

Damit wächst in Libyen die Gefahr einer direkten Konfrontation türkischer und ägyptischer Streitkräfte.

Isn't there a word missing here? In order to be grammatically correct, shouldn't the sentence read:

Damit wächst in Libyen die Gefahr einer direkten Konfrontation zwischen türkischer und ägyptischer Streitkräfte.

Source: https://www.dw.com/de/deutsch-lernen/nachrichten/s-8030

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    Your alternative should be "zwischen türkischen und ägyptischen Streitkräften".
    – πάντα ῥεῖ
    Jul 21, 2020 at 16:53

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According to Duden there are two possibilities with slightly different meanings:

1) Gegenüberstellung nicht übereinstimmender Personen, Meinungen, Sachverhalte

A comparison or confrontation between different persons, opinions or circumstances.

Examples include:

die unerwartete Konfrontation des Angeklagten mit den Zeugen verfehlte nicht ihre Wirkung

the unexpected confrontation of the defendent with the witness achieved the desired effect.

die Konfrontation von Geschichte und Gegenwart

the confrontation of history/past and present

Please note: This usage requires the genitive without a preposition and the dative after von.

2) Auseinandersetzung zwischen Gegnern

Confrontation between opponents

Examples include:

es kam zu einer Konfrontation zwischen Demonstranten und der Polizei

a confrontation between demonstrants and police emerged

Please note: this requires the objects after zwischen to be in dative.

Conclusion:

Technically speaking you are correct, they should have used zwischen. However, even I as a native speaker wasn't aware of that before I looked up. So I wouldn't blame the authors too much.

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    "This usage requires the genitive." as you can clearly see in the given example: die Konfrontation von Geschichte und Gegenwart. ;)
    – Olafant
    Jul 21, 2020 at 16:00
  • Well, to be fair, there's an extra preposition. I fixed that, thank you.
    – infinitezero
    Jul 21, 2020 at 16:11
  • Just browsing through Lingee's & DWDS' usage examples it appears that usage of Konfrontation is nearly identical to English "Confrontation". It can be used as an uncountable noun: "He prefers to avoid confrontation," or with one or both of the parties listed with a preposition: "He prefers to avoid a confrontation with his neighbors," or with one or both parties list with the genitive: "In the past, neighbors' confrontations have only lead to misfortune." The example could be translated "... confrontation of the Turkish and Egyptian armed forces." Unusual maybe but legal.
    – RDBury
    Jul 21, 2020 at 20:32
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    @infinitezero I disagree with your conlusion. There is no need for the "zwischen". The DW example matches the case of "die Konfrontation von Geschichte und Gegenwart" where you don't need it either. You can replace "von" and the Dativ case with Genitiv in certain cases, which is what was done here.
    – Javatasse
    Jul 21, 2020 at 22:25
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    But the sentence in question is about a military confrontation between two armies, so zwischen seems required. Such a confrontation could not possibly be thought of as, "A comparison or confrontation between different persons, opinions or circumstances."
    – user44591
    Jul 22, 2020 at 3:37
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No, there is no word missing.

Explanation: The sentence you cited,

(A) Damit wächst in Libyen die Gefahr einer direkten Konfrontation türkischer und ägyptischer Streitkräfte.

boils down to the same semantics as your altered version,

(B) Damit wächst in Libyen die Gefahr einer direkten Konfrontation zwischen türkischer und ägyptischer Streitkräfte.

However, the latter is a slightly different sentence in that it makes something explicit that is left implicit in the former.

In (B), the constellation of parties involved in the conflict is explicitly stated. (B) says explicitly that Turkish and Egyptian armed forces may fight against each other.

Even if we assume that this meaning can only be expressed with "zwischen" (of which I'm not completely convinced, due to the low number of examples e.g. on Duden), the conclusion that "zwischen" is missing in (A) does not follow:

(A) does not explicitly say who may fight whom (although readers will trivially figure this out from context). (A) merely says that there may be confrontations in which both Turkish and Egyptian armed forces are involved. For this statement, using just a genitive is totally appropriate. Note that this is not an instance of meaning 1 from Duden. It is simply a usage of the unspecific noun "Konfrontation" that is then further specified with genitive attributes.

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