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A typology of relative clauses in German dialects
Abstract
This paper establishes a cross-dialectal typology of relative clauses in various German dialects and Yiddish according to their form and function. A great variety of different types of relativizers and relative clauses can be observed, including various pronouns, particles, and zero relatives. Combinations of these types occur, one of the most typical involving a resumptive element in a clause introduced by a particle. Concepts developed in typology such as the Accessibility Hierarchy can be used with great profit for this study. It turns out that for the German relativization system, a basic opposition between subject and direct object as opposed to oblique holds in virtually every variety, whereas the indirect object is much less stable. Some of the types observed fit into larger linguistic areas. In the varieties observed, significantly more relative particles and resumptive elements occur as compared to Standard German, which turns out to be quite atypical. © 2004 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin. All rights reserved.
... We use Eisenberg (2020) and Zifonun (2017) as our reference grammars for Standard German; Fleischer (2017) for Hessian (= West Central German); Bräuning (2020) and Weber (1987) for Alemannic (= West Upper German); Pittner (1996) for Bavarian (= East Upper German); and Fleischer (2017) for Saxonian (= East Central German). For a general overview, finally, we use Fleischer (2004Fleischer ( , 2005. Alemannic can further be subdivided into Swiss German, Alemannic as spoken in Vorarlberg (Austria), Alemannic as spoken in southwest Germany, and Alemannic as spoken in Alsace (France). ...
... Wo can be used as a locative relativizer in the dialects of Germanm too (cf., Fleischer 2004). In Alemannic, wo can even relativize the subject (see the following example), object, and oblique (including locative) function; what is more, wo can be regarded as default and only relativizer (at least in Swiss German where the relative pronoun is rejected by most speakers; cf. ...
The aim and scope of this article is to take a closer look at the functions and semantics of the three relative particles da, so , and wo , and to show that they have developed differently over a period from 1350 to 1800, continuing up to our modern dialects and the standard language. We will focus on wo because it is the only relativizer which is attested both as locative relative and as general relative clause marker, and we will propose that wo has extended its functional domain from a locative relative to a general relative marker. We will furthermore discuss if there has been a grammaticalization path “relative locative > general relative clause marker” in German diachrony or not. Finally, we will suggest that standardization processes are responsible for the different degrees of functional extension of wo attested in the historical/modern varieties and the standard language.
... Such polyfunctionality of locative relatives has so far been documented in a number of languages, and it is commonly believed that locative relatives that expand their syntactic range do so in compliance with the accessibility hierarchy (e.g. Romaine 1984, Fleischer 2004. ...
... This commonly accepted assumption is however only based on the observation of synchronic data from grammars: since the distribution of these general relativizers of locative origin ultimately conforms to the AH, then they are also believed to have extended in a stepby-step fashion from the bottom to the top of the AH (thus e.g. Romaine 1984, Fleischer 2004. ...
The accessibility hierarchy was first proposed by Keenan & Comrie (1977)
to describe the cross-linguistic distribution of relative markers in terms of
likelihood of relativization of different syntactic roles. The hierarchy is also
commonly believed to reflect constraints on possible changes in the domain
of relativization. For example, the hierarchy predicts that locative relatives
that develop into general relativizers should expand their functional range
in a step-by-step fashion from lower to higher roles. In this paper, we revise
existing claims about the diachrony of locative relatives. In doing so, we
survey known cases of locative relatives that develop into general
relativizers and we also discuss data from linguistic variation in nonstandard
varieties in European languages, with a focus on social variation in
Italian. As we argue, data from Italian suggests that another possible cline of
development of locative relatives should be acknowledged, that is, locative
> concern > subject.
... In pursuit of this goal, the focus is the knowledge and use of one exemplary grammatical phenomenon that is formally different in the two varieties under study: relative clauses. German relative clauses in speech have been investigated from different point of views: grammar, semantics and information structure (Weinert 2004;Birkner 2008) and dialectal variation (Fleischer 2004(Fleischer , 2005, but also form the developmental perspective in first and instructed second language acquisition (Brandt et al. 2008;Byrnes and Sinicrope 2008, who, however, focus on written language). These studies establish a basis upon which to examine relative clauses as used by second language learners in a mostly untutored situation with variation in the input. ...
... In contrast, in the Alemannic dialects the uninflected particle wo serves as the main relative marker. It is used for relativization on subjects and (direct) objects and in some Alemannic dialects also on indirect objects (Fleischer 2004: 227, using the terminology of Keenan and Comrie 1977). Indirect, genitive, and oblique object relative clauses mostly require additional elements (prepositions, pronouns), 6 but their use is very limited in speech. ...
... Boef (2012: 141); in Afrikaans, relatives involve invariant wat for subjects and objects, while for oblique positions the relative pronouns wie/wat are used (Harbert 2007: 443ff.). While relatives in Standard German use the relative D-pronoun only, many German varieties allow the co-occurrence of the relative D-pronoun with da 'there'/was 'what'/wo 'where', see Weise (1916), Bayer (1984), Fleischer (2004. The particle wo lit. ...
... 'where' (to be distinguished from the homophonous relative adverb) also occurs on its own as a relative marker in Alemannic varieties, see van Riemsdijk (1989van Riemsdijk ( , 2008 Another invariant complementizer found in German varieties is was 'what' (see also Yiddish vos). Wh-relatives (based on welch-'which') are restricted to the standard language (and Yiddish, which has velkh and ver) and never co-occur with a complementizer, see Fleischer (2004). Relative clauses without any kind of marking, viz., zero relatives, do not seem to exist in either German or Dutch. ...
an overview of long-distance dependency constructions in Germanic and their salient properties
... Dieser Überlappungsbereich fügt sich in einen breiteren Kontext zwischen den Polen der syntaktischen Aggregation und der Integration (s. Raible 1992, Hennig 2009, in dem auch extremere Ausprägungen der Hypo-und Parataxe möglich sind: So kann die Unterordnung beim VS-Relativsatz anstelle des potenziell ambigen der/die/das (10)und zusätzlich zur Verbspäterstellungdurch ein eindeutiges Relativpronomen (wie welcher/welche/welches) markiert werden (9), oder durch eine zusätzliche Relativpartikel, wie etwa wo oder was (zur regionalen Verteilung s. Fleischer 2004Fleischer , 2005 im heutigen oder da im historischen Deutsch. Umgekehrt kann beim appositiven V2-Relativatz die prosodische Integration fehlen (13) oder das d-Pronomen von der ersten Stelle weiter nach hinten im Satz erscheinen (14), wodurch der unmittelbare Anschluss an den vorausgehenden Matrixsatz verlorengeht. ...
... (72)-(73)), als auch was den Numerus, Singular und Plural,angeht (vgl. (74)- (75) Die Asymmetrie Subjekt -Direktes Objekt auf der einen Seite und Subjekt -Indirektes Objekt auf der anderen entspricht der Situation in vielen binnendeutschen Dialekten und folgt nach Fleischer (2004) dem allgemeinen Prinzip der Accessibility Hierarchy von Keenan & Comrie (1977: 66). Fleischer (2005: 181- (83)), ohne weiteres auch von älteren Sprechern verwendet und sogar der Strategie mit bo vorgezogen wird (vgl. ...
... pu 'where' in Modern Greek (Murelli 2011: 184)), but elsewhere they are limited to non-standard varieties. For example, wo 'where' can relativise all cases in some German varieties (Romaine 1984;Fleischer 2004). In Romance, something similar happens in non-standard Italian with dove 'where' (Cerruti 2016). ...
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... was not stilted at all in its grammatical properties? In fact, relative particles are typically a feature of dialects and spoken varieties (Fleischer 2004, 2005.3), while inflected relative pronouns are a quirk of written European standard languages (Comrie 1998, Haspelmath 2001: 1494−1495. The situation becomes even more puzzling considering that some of the surviving chancery constructions display fairly complex, written-like grammatical properties. ...
While research on language change has formulated robust empirical generalisations about processes and motivations underlying the emergence and spread of linguistic elements, their decline and loss is less well understood. So far a systematic investigation into the processes and motivations of decline and loss in language change is lacking. This book is a first step towards remedying this state of affairs. It brings together a varied set of empirical investigations into decline and loss, spanning morphology, syntax and the lexicon, in different languages. Their authors apply diverse methodologies and represent different theoretical approaches. On the basis of this broad span of studies, authors and editors propose generalisations related to decline and loss and assess similarities and differences with processes and motivations of emergence and spread. The book aims to inspire and provide hypotheses for further studies of decline and loss. It will appeal to historical linguists and others interested in language change.
... Pasartea gutunari nolabaiteko erreferentzia egiten dion perpausean txertatzen da (33): sintaktikoki erlatibozko perpausak bezala funtzionatu ezin duen arren, semantikoki oso hurbil dago. Hain zuzen ere, era horretako zenbait adibide aurkitu ditugu erabilitako corpusean: erlatibo faltsuak dira (22) Izenordain lokatiboak beste hizkuntza batzuetan ere perpaus erlatiboaren marka orokorrak izan daitezke: alemanaren zenbait dialektotan, esaterako, wo 'non' izenordainak kasu guztiak erlatibiza ditzake (Fleischer, 2004). ...
Artikulu honetan zein ereduko erlatibozko perpausen erabilera eta bilakabidea dugu aztergai, eta indar berezia egiten dugu erlatibozko izenordaina sistematikoki eta argumentuaren kasu-marka edozein izanda ere modu berean markatzen duten egiturak azaltzeko. Egitura ez-estandar hori ez da agertzen testu historiko kanonikoetan, baina XVII.-XIX. mendeen artean ohikoa da testu-genero jakin batzuetan: gutun pribatuetan, administrazio-agiri eta -gutunetan, eta notariotza-agirietan. Bada, soziolinguistika historikoaren ikuspuntu eta hatsarreak baliatuz, behin-behinean okertzat jo litezkeen erlatibozko egituren jatorria eta bilakabidea dugu aztergai: egitura ez-estandarraren erabilerak idazle eta idazlari elebidunen hizkuntza-ezagutzarekin lotu behar direla proposatzen dugu eta, are zehatzago, egitura formulaikoen erabilerarekin eta imitazio inperfektuarekin.
... Regarding doubling in German relative clauses, it must be stressed that the regular pattern involves wo in these dialects (Brandner and Bräuning 2013), and the relative pronoun can lexicalise the operator under certain conditions. The complementiser wo relativizes all types of head nouns (see also Fleischer 2004;Brandner 2008): adding an overt relative pronoun results in a doubling pattern (which was observed early on; see Weise 1917). ...
The paper addresses the issue of Doubly Filled COMP effects in embedded interrogatives in West-Germanic languages, with particular attention paid to German: in these patterns, an overt interrogative operator co-occurs with an overt complementiser. Such configurations are ruled out from standard West-Germanic varieties, while they are attested in non-standard dialects. The paper argues that there are both theoretical and empirical arguments against the postulation of a Doubly Filled COMP Filter, proposing instead that the insertion of a visible complementiser in non-standard dialects in fact follows from the properties of the general syntactic paradigm in which empty complementisers are generally not possible. It is shown that doubling is not restricted to embedded constituent questions, but it may occur in polar questions as well. Further, the finiteness feature can be checked off by verb movement, as is the case in V2 patterns in German (and generally in Germanic, including historical English) and in T-to-C-movement in English. In this way, the property of V2 is linked to Doubly Filled COMP; in either case, there is no need to postulate a cartographic template with multiple projections but a minimal, merge-based model is sufficient and in fact favourable. The proposed model aims at accounting for the possible correlations between the properties of the head element and the properties of the fronted element merged as a specifier (if there is any). Finally, the observed syntactic differences between standard varieties and dialects in West Germanic can be attributed to minimal lexical differences.
... Of interest also is another, even closer German parallel, i.e., the use of uninflected was 'what' in combination with a resumptive pronoun, one of the most wide spread innovations in the north-west (in the North Saxon dialect of Husby in Schleswig) and, predominantly, in the east, namely, in East Pomeranian, the Upper Saxon dialect of north-western Bohemia, North Bavaria, and the Lubica linguistic island within the Slovak language area. Fleischer (2004: I believe that in Ukrainian as well as other (Indo-European) languages the use of relative clauses with the uninflected relativizer speaks of a strengthening of the secondary analytic features in the inflecting language system characterized by primary synthetic features (Haarmann 2004: 82-83). Thus, unlike the inflected relative pronoun strategy premised on hypotactic subordination, the use of the relativizer in Ukrainian and Balkan Slavic, using absolute relativizers, tends to demonstrate a similar level of analyticity in paratactic constructions (Krapova 2009). ...
... (3)); a preposition is obligatorily present 6 : This stands in contrast to certain restricted uses of non-wh free relatives found in standard German, such as those described by FuB and Grewendorf (2014: 166 The data from East Franconian constitute what is considered to be a dialectallyflavored version of the standard language (Clyne 1984). On this view, there is a gradient cline of language from full dialectal varieties to the standard language (for more on relative clauses in East Franconian, see e.g., Schübel 1955 andFleischer 2004). The examples given in this paper are written in the standard orthography (Schriftdeutsch) and reflect the flavored standard language of speakers from the region; each sentence has been tested with a speaker of this variety. ...
The ‘missing-P’ phenomenon (Bresnan and Grimshaw in Linguist Inq 9:331–391, 1978) refers to free relative constructions in which one of two prepositions appears to be missing. This paper provides an account of free relatives in German that straightforwardly extends to this phenomenon, drawing on evidence from standard free relatives as well as from previously undiscussed free relatives in East Franconian, which may be formed with a non-wh relative pronoun. Both types of free relatives are argued to be derived from light-headed relatives—to which they are structurally identical underlyingly—through a haplology-like process grounded in featural redundancy over pairs of adjacent spans (Williams in Representation theory, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2003). Contextual allomorphy in the postsyntactic component of the grammar is argued to trigger the non-pronunciation of a matrix argument in a light-headed relative, resulting in a super light-headed relative. As the conditioning environment for allomorphy occurs over multiple terminal nodes, the proposal offers further evidence that spans are morphological units targetable for vocabulary insertion (Svenonius in Spanning. Manuscript, University of Trømso, 2012; Merchant in Linguist Inq 46(2):273–303, 2015). The analysis improves on previous analyses of free relatives in German by providing a unified account of both nominal and prepositional free relatives, meanwhile providing new insight into feature-triggered allomorphy over adjacent spans as well as a method of accounting for the variation observed in the form of the relative pronoun across two varieties of German.
... One last remark on e&f from a dialectologist's point of view: It might be instructive to look at the morphosyntactic variation observable in present-day Language Dynamics and Change 6 (2016) 27-30 figure 1 wave NeighborNet network: OE/ME/EModE relative to the l1 and l2 varieties of English and historical varieties of continental West Germanic dialects. Here we find a number of features that seem to puzzle e&f (e.g., in the domains of relativizers, complex subordinators, do-support), where North Germanic influence is clearly out of the question (cf., e.g., Fleischer, 2004, andvarious contributions in Kortmann, 2004). Why should such developments (as internal, not contactinduced changes or even borrowings) not have taken place in the dialects spoken in medieval England about 800-1000 years ago, too, especially in the North and the East Midlands? ...
The Viking Hypothesis neglects (i) the significant degree of stability from Old to Middle (and even Modern) English grammar and (ii) parallel, but independent, developments not induced by North Germanic in the grammars of continental West Germanic dialects.
... Strategies providing no overt indication about the syntactic role, as well as the gender and number, of the relativized item are used either when the corresponding information is not communicatively relevant (as is the case in the relativization of time circumstantials), or when this information is easily recoverable from the context anyway (as is the case with certain types of possessor relativization). Both of these cases reect the general economic principle invoked by Keenan and Comrie (1977) to account for the distri- It should also be pointed out that gapping (either as such, or in combination with adpositions) shows a geographically limited distribution, in that it appears to be systematically used only in English, Scandinavian languages, and Basque (as well as in a number of German dialects, for which see Fleischer 2004). ...
This volume is a collection of 12 papers which originated from a research project on ‘Europe and the Mediterranean from a linguistic point of view: history and prospects’. The papers deal with specific morphosyntactic aspects of language structure and evolution. The comparative perspective is adopted both from a synchronic (typological) and a diachronic (historical) angle, focusing in particular on possible contact phenomena. Therefore, methodological key words of this book are areal typology and linguistic area . The issues addressed cover such diverse aspects of language structure and change as verb morphology, relative clause formation, Noun Phrase determination, demonstrative systems, possessive markers in Noun Phrases, conjunctive, disjunctive and adversative constructions, non-canonical object marking, impersonal constructions, reduplication and early translations of the Gospels. These topics are discussed particularly in relation to Romance, Germanic, Celtic and Semitic languages, both modern and ancient. This book will interest researchers in typological, historical, functional and general linguistics.
... Accessibility Hierarchy (AH) subject > direct object > indirect object > oblique > genitive > object of comparison In various studies on English and German dialects this hierarchy has been drawn upon (notably inHerrmann 2005 andFleischer 2004). Let us look at just one particular observation concerning relative clauses in Standard English vis á vis English dialects. ...
... Originally, er was restricted to 'locative RCs' and place adverbials (i.e. headless locative RCs) and then it gradually spread to eventually refer even to subject and object NPs (Fleischer 2004: 234, cf. Hendery 2012. ...
This paper investigates previously undiscussed data regarding the distribution of
subordinating elements in the left periphery of (long-distance) argument A-bar dependencies
in Scandinavian, specifically the distribution of som in restrictive relative clauses and
embedded wh-questions. We show that traditional analyses of som in Mainland Scandinavian
– which take it to be an expletive-like element that satisfies the EPP and enables subject
extraction – cannot adequately account for the distribution of som in long-distance A-bar
dependencies. We sketch the outlines of a new analysis according to which som is a
complementizer marking A-bar dependencies, and its distribution is sensitive to the
interpretability of the features on the CP phase-head(s).
This paper aims to explain recent empirical findings on subjunctive II formation in the Bavarian dialects of Austria from both functional and formal perspectives. For this purpose, the explanatory power of the functional principles of natural morphology (NM) is compared with the formal framework of constructional morphology (CxM). It is argued that the two approaches complement each other. Thus, it is shown that the key concepts of NM (constructional iconicity, uniformity and transparency) can easily be adapted in terms of CxM. These adjustments are needed to explain the ongoing changes in subjunctive II formation in the Bavarian dialects of Austria. This is due to the well-documented shift towards the use of periphrastic constructions (with the täte- and würde-auxiliary) that are located at the interface between morphology and syntax.
Dieser Beitrag setzt sich anhand des diachronen Predigtenkorpus SermonC (800–1900) mit Wandel und Variation der Relativa in der Sprachgeschichte des Deutschen auseinander. Im Zentrum stehen dabei drei Varianten der Relativsatzeinleitung, der/die/das, welcher/welche/welches und so. Dabei wird insbesondere die Frage untersucht, inwiefern sich die Entwicklungen mit linearen Konzeptionalisierungen von Sprachwandel und Standardisierung vereinbaren lassen. Dazu werden zunächst einige gängige Vorstellungen in diesen Bereichen diskutiert und in Bezug auf ihnen innenwohnende perspektivische Verengungen problematisiert. Dabei wird deutlich, dass übliche Theorien und Methoden der Sprachwandel- und Standardisierungsforschung nichtlineare Prozesse nicht systematisch berücksichtigen. Die Untersuchung des diachronen Korpus zeigt hingegen, dass nichtlineare Prozesse nicht nur vorkommen können, sondern vielfach in verschiedenen Formen auftreten, die durch die linguistische Theoriebildung nicht oder nur peripher erfasst werden. Die Entwicklung der Relativa in historischen Predigten führt vor Augen, dass unvollständige und retrograde Ausbreitungsvorgänge im Sprachwandel sowie Aufbau von Variation in der Standardisierung entgegen gängigen Theorien immer wieder auftreten, was sich in sowohl in regionalen wie konfessionellen Unterschieden im Sprachgebrauch äußert.
The relative constructions in several Palaungic languages (Htanaw, Wa, Lawa, Rumai Palaung, Samlong Palaung, and Rucing Palaung), here shown to be participant nominalizations, display striking mutual similarities, while conspicuously diverging from the dominant relativization strategy within the Austroasiatic family. Instead of the common n [rel (s) v (o)] pattern, the Palaungic constructions examined exhibit the following structural features: (a) rel invariably precedes the verb complex directly; (b) internal constituent order is vs(o) , with the exception of Htanaw. An unusual functional trait is additionally found in the three Palaung varieties: the construction only performs object relativization. By placing the findings in a diachronic perspective, we propose two new pathways of branch-internal syntactic change that may explain this unusual synchronic status. Among these, the lexical-to-clausal-nominalization pathway in particular offers a plausible alternative scenario to the earlier hypothesis that such verb-initial structures are inherited from Proto-Austroasiatic ( Jenny 2020 ). Furthermore, a tentatively suggested etymological origin of the relativizer, pAA * pa ‘place’, provides an account of the narrow semantics in Palaung.
Despite a vast literature on Yiddish relative clauses, their linguistic and geographical aspects have often been neglected. Based on data from the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry (JCAAJ), the areal distribution of subject and oblique relative clauses is analyzed for the first time. I show that vos ‘that; what’, which also introduces non-relative complement clauses, is the most common element to introduce subject relative clauses, whereas in oblique relative clauses, the pronoun velx - ‘which’ predominates. This contrast suggests a division of labor between nonpronominal and pronominal elements depending on the syntactic role of the relativized NP. As to the areal aspect, vos accompanied by a resumptive personal pronoun is primarily used in Central Eastern and Southeastern Yiddish, whereas nonrelative comple-mentizing vos is typical of Southeastern and central Northeastern Yiddish. These areal distributions mirror patterns of coterritorial Slavic languages: The more widespread use of nonrelative complementizing vos is reminiscent of the corresponding use of Ukrainian ščo and Belarusian što ‘what; that’, whereas the preference for resumptive personal pronouns is observed in Polish and Ukrainian. Comparatively recent convergence with Slavic seems to play a role in the emergence of resumptive pronouns and nonrelative complementizing vos in the varieties of Yiddish.*
This volume offers an up-to-date survey of linguistic phenomena at the interfaces between syntax and prosody, information structure and discourse – with a special focus on Germanic and Romance – and their role in language change. The contributions, set within the generative framework, discuss original data and provide new insights into the diachronic development of long-burning issues such as negation, word order, quantifiers, null subjects, aspectuality, the structure of the left periphery, and extraposition. The first part of the volume explores interface phenomena at the intrasentential level, in which only clause-internal factors seem to play a significant role in determining diachronic change. The second part examines developments at the intersentential level involving a rearrangement of categories between at least two clausal domains. The book will be of interest for scholars and students interested in generative accounts of language change phenomena at the interfaces, as well as for theoretical linguists in general.
While research on language change has formulated robust empirical generalisations about processes and motivations underlying the emergence and spread of linguistic elements, their decline and loss is less well understood. So far a systematic investigation into the processes and motivations of decline and loss in language change is lacking. This book is a first step towards remedying this state of affairs. It brings together a varied set of empirical investigations into decline and loss, spanning morphology, syntax and the lexicon, in different languages. Their authors apply diverse methodologies and represent different theoretical approaches. On the basis of this broad span of studies, authors and editors propose generalisations related to decline and loss and assess similarities and differences with processes and motivations of emergence and spread. The book aims to inspire and provide hypotheses for further studies of decline and loss. It will appeal to historical linguists and others interested in language change.
Violations of the Doubly-filled COMP filter (DFCs), most notably in the context of embedded questions, can be observed in Germanic, Romance, and even Slavic varieties in the Alpine regions. Using the direct survey technique, we examine DFC-phenomena in several dialects of Southern Bavarian (including language islands) and the adjacent Italian regions (Venetian, Friulian, etc.) in order to check for relevant similarities as well as differences. Whereas there is some indication for a structural parallelism between Germanic and Romance in terms of the wh-items involved, both language groups are set apart when it comes to DFCs in root sentences.
The article talk examines the distribution of relativising strategies in English in a cross-Germanic perspective, arguing that English is quite unique among Germanic languages both regarding the number of available options and their distribution. The differences from other Germanic languages (both West Germanic and Scandinavian) are primarily due to the historical changes affecting the case and gender system in English more generally. The loss of case and gender on the original singular neuter relative pronoun facilitated its reanalysis as a complementiser. The effect of the case system can also be observed in properties that are not evidently related to case. Specifically, choice between the pronoun strategy and the complementiser strategy is known to show differences according to the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy. While English shows a subject vs. oblique distinction in this respect, matching its nominative/oblique case system, German dialects show a subject/direct object vs. oblique distinction, matching the nominative/accusative/oblique case setting in the language. The particular setting in English is thus not dependent on e.g. a single parameter but on various factors that are otherwise present in other Germanic languages as well, and it is ultimately the complex interplay of these factors that results in the particular setup.
The study of how linguistic variation is acquired is considered a nascent field in both psycho- and sociolinguistics. Within that research context, this book aims at two objectives. First, it wants to help bridging the gap between researchers working on acquisition from different theoretical backgrounds. The book therefore includes contributions by both psycho- and sociolinguists, and by representatives of further relevant sub-disciplines of linguistics, including historical linguistics and dialectology. Second, in order to enable cross-linguistic comparison, the book brings together research carried out in different sociolinguistic constellations, as most obviously found in different language areas or different countries.
This article reports on a study investigating the use of regional language features by young people of (mostly Turkish or Balkan) background who were born, or raised from an early age on, in Stuttgart/Germany. The results of the Stuttgart study show that most young speakers from migrant families do not accommodate the local or regional dialect, but rather speak their own (multiethnolectal) variety of German. Existing evidence on dialect (non-)acquisition and (non-)use by speakers with similar social, linguistic and cultural backgrounds in other parts of Germany suggests that this finding reflects a general tendency. Some possible explanations for the non-acquisition and non-use of dialectal features are discussed.
This contribution explores the concept of selection as an integral part of Haugen’s standardisation model from a theoretical as well as an empirical angle. It focuses on different types of factors of selection and how they are relevant to the study of selection processes both on the level of individual variants and whole varieties. The question of why standard languages appear to differ systematically from vernaculars and at the same time exhibit remarkable resemblances among each other is addressed, and characteristic features of standard languages are traced to general conditions of standardisation processes. A case study on the standardisation of German relativisers illustrates how different factors of selection combine in the dynamics of linguistic structure, variation, attitudes, and codification. It also shows how general tendencies of selection can lead to similar structures across standard languages, while it becomes clear that register variation and the historical development and changing evaluation of stylistic varieties can be crucial in order to explain the selection or de-selection of linguistic forms.
This paper elaborates on the developmental scenario of relative clauses in East Slavonic. Premised on a system of areal, diachronic, and sociotypological criteria, the author offers a cross-dialectal typology of relative clause types and their overt linkage markers both inflected U jakyj, B jaki, R kakoj; U kotryj, B katory, R kotoryj ‘which’ and uninflected U ščo, B što, R čto ‘what’; U de, B dze, R gde ‘where’. I argue that, instead of a unilateral developmental trend from the free juxtaposition of clauses to hypotaxis to subordination, one should distinguish between two developmental clines (micro-pathways), one leading from parataxis to paratactic subordination and the second conducive to hypotactic subordination in East Slavonic. In the view of parallel relativization strategies in other Indo-European languages, in particular German dialects, I maintain that the formation of paratactic and hypotactic subordination is dependent on a historically prevalent type of discourse within a language community. Such a type is preconditioned by a particular number of societal factors, including the amount of language contact (based on adult second-language learning). The latter is likely to bring about reduction in syntagmatic redundancy leading to a ‘simpler’ syntactic organization, in particular the development of paratactic subordination.
It is standardly assumed that the German declarative dass-complementizer evolved from the demonstrative pronoun (Old High German thaz) used cataphorically. On this analysis, the source structure would be a paratactic sequence of two sentences in which thaz occurred in the final position of the first clause and pointed forward to the content of the second clause. Out of this structure, thaz developed into a subordinate conjunction/complementizer via a shift of the clause boundary (as in Mary knows that: Peter is lying → Mary knows that Peter is lying). This article takes issue with the standard assumption and puts forward an alternative account in which the declarative complementizer developed from a correlative construction (as in Mary knows that, that Peter is lying). The correlative construction (arguably also with an optionally silent correlative) is robustly attested in the old Germanic and old Indo-European languages. The source structure was thus not a sequence of syntactically independent clauses, but a hypotactic structure with an explicative relative clause associated with a silent correlative element in the main clause. In line with the hypothesis currently under discussion-that apparent noun-complement clauses are in fact relative clauses-it is argued that the explicative clause in the correlative structure was a relative clause, and thus the declarative complementizer developed from the relative complementizer thaz. The syntactic reanalyses involved in this new scenario are far less radical than in the traditional one. The new scenario is furthermore supported by crosslinguistic evidence: the development of relativizers into complementizers is a frequently attested grammaticalization path.
This article scrutinizes the diachrony of relativizers and complement clause subordinators in Russian, Polish, and Czech. Historical morphology indicates a development from agreeing relative pronouns via noninflected relativizers to complement clause subordinators. This concurs with recent findings on Germanic (Axel-Tober 2017), but contradicts more traditional proposals that derive subordinators from demonstratives. The respective syntactic reanalyses are demonstrated on diachronic Slavic corpus data. Moreover, a quantitative comparison of sixteenth- to seventeenthcentury East Slavic texts with and withoutWest Slavic interference suggests that the use of kotoryj ‘which’ as a relative pronoun spread into Russian as an inner-Slavic contact-induced change.
This article has two objectives, one descriptive and the other methodological. On the level of grammatical description, an analysis of the German relative clause construction is undertaken from the point of view of a contrast with corresponding constructions in other European languages, in particular English, French, Polish and Hungarian, the core contrast languages of the project "German grammar in a European comparison". Reference is made to the central concepts of the project, 'functional domain' and 'variance parameter'. The functional domain of the relative clause is defined as a contribution to the general function of nominal constructions, i.e. reference, specifically as referential modification of the conceptual core by the circumstances in which it is embedded. Three parameters which differentiate between the languages are picked out and discussed in their correlation with one another. As far as the methodology is concerned, the example of the relative clause is used to show how typological generalisations, contrasts between languages - in this case predominantly closely related languages or languages which have long been in contact with one another - and characteristics specific to individual languages are connected, always with a view to obtaining a better insight into the way the German language functions.
In this paper I try to demonstrate the benefits of interaction between the fields of historical syntax of German on the one hand and linguistic typology on the other hand. Using four examples for each direction, I argue that both fields need each other’s input: German historical syntax can learn to avoid various forms of parochialism, and at the same time it can feed its vast amount of detailed knowledge into discussions of general linguistics.
Relative clauses introduced by vos (e.g., der bokher vos ikh ze 'the boy that I see') are the most typical relative clause pattern in Eastern Yiddish the construction has characteristic traits: although vos derives from the interrogative pronoun WHAT, which is restricted to non-humans, relative vos has no restrictions with respect to the semantics of the relativized nouns. In addition, depending on the syntactic function of the relativized noun, resumptive pronouns can or must also be present (e.g., der bokher vos ikh ze im lit. 'the boy what I see him') the present article is concerned with the origin of this construction. To this end, it is compared to German, Semitic and Slavic constructions that display similar or identical characteristics the comparison encompasses older stages as well as modern non-standard varieties of the relevant languages. It turns out that vos relative clauses owe their origin to Slavic, rather than Semitic or German. This finding is discussed with respect to the contact situation of Eastern Yiddish in more general terms. It may be that in the realm of syntax, the role of Semitic has been overrated, whereas the role of Slavic has been underestimated in many previous accounts.
Contrastive linguistic studies have focused almost exclusively on contrasting the synchronic grammars of modern standard language varieties. There may be some merit in expanding the scope of the enterprise to include contrastive investigations of grammatical systems with respect to how they change over time. Full understanding of some contrasts between grammars requires reference to the diachronic axis. This paper illustrates the point with one particular case in the Germanic languages, involving parallel instances of reanalysis of relative pronouns as relative complementizers in Yiddish, Afrikaans and Gothic. These parallel changes, operating on grammatical systems with slight differences in initial conditions, yield sharply different outcomes.
'Microvariation', i.e. variation between closely related dialects, has become a focus of interest in syntactic theory in recent years. Yet the consequences of variation within a variety for the architecture of grammar are still relatively poorly understood. In the present paper we discuss an interesting case of grammar-internal variation, namely relativization in Alemannic. The use of resumptive pronouns is obligatory for obliques and impossible for subject and direct object. However, as for datives, resumptive pronouns are optional for most speakers. The empirical evidence suggests that this kind of optionality must be rooted in the grammar itself, as it cannot be attributed to extragrammatical factors such as style or register mixing. We will analyze the optionality of dative resumptives as the absence of a strict ranking between two conflicting constraints on grammatical well-formedness. Employing the framework of Stochastic Optimality Theory, we do not only capture the optionality as such but also provide a straightforward account of individually variable preferences.
This paper looks at negation in Finnish dialects from a typological perspective. The focus is on standard negation, i.e. the negation of declarative verbal main clauses. The dialectal variation that Finnish shows in its negative construction is examined in the light of current typological knowledge of the expression of negation. Developmental trends connected to the micro-typological variation are also discussed, Finnish dialects are compared with related and neighbouring languages, and relevant theoretical and methodological issues relating to the meeting point of typology and dialectology are addressed.
This paper examines cyclical changes involving complementisers, for instance, whether in the history of English. Whether starts out as a pronoun and after frequent topicalisation is reanalysed as an element in the left-most layer of the sentence. The same is true with prepositional phrases that are fronted and then reanalysed as part of the CP layer. The paper uses a Minimalist approach in that it seeks answers for the linguistic changes in terms of Economy Principles such as Specifier-to-Head Reanalysis. It examines two sources of renewal of complementisers, full phrases such as demonstrative pronouns and heads such as the verbs that reanalyse as question particles in Chinese.
Dative relativization in the Swiss German language area is subject to a lot of variation, but does not show clear geographical patterns. Rather, there is widespread inter- and intra-speaker variation. I discuss the importance of various sources in variation research and propose an account that models the variation by means of realizational constraints that interact in Optimality-theoretic fashion.
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