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The Phonology of Mid Vowels in Germanic Languages Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-17 Andrew Kostakis
In phonological theory there are multiple ways to represent mid vowels. SPE conventions maintain that they are non-[high] and non-[low]. Conversely, frameworks like Element Theory argue that mid vowels are simultaneously [high] and [low]. This article examines eight processes (and groups of processes) within the Germanic language family, which strongly indicate their specification as simultaneously
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(Den) eneste måten – When the Prenominal Determiner Can Be Omitted from Norwegian Double Definite Phrases Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-03-27 Yvonne van Baal
Norwegian, like Swedish and Faroese, exhibits double definiteness: modified definite phrases normally contain both a prenominal determiner and a suffixed definite article on the noun. However, exceptions—phrases with only the determiner or only the suffixed article—can be found. This article investigates adjectives which do not need to be preceded by the prenominal determiner in Norwegian. Corpus data
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Processing Factors Constrain Word-Order Variation in German: The Trouble with Third Constructions Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-01-11 Claudia Felser, Sina Bosch
A subset of German control verbs allows for the discontinuous linearization of their infinitival complements, a word-order pattern known as the “third construction” pattern. Compared to alternative word-order options (notably, extraposition), third constructions are very rare in present-day German. Here we ask whether the third construction pattern’s low occurrence frequency can be accounted for by
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Pronominal Adverbs in German: A Grammaticalization Account Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-01-11 Karin Pittner
Pronominal adverbs in German, which consist of da ‘there’, hier ‘here’, or wo ‘where’ as first element and a preposition as second element, like davor ‘before’, hierbei ‘hereby’, worin ‘wherein’, have often been explained by a movement of the first element out of the complement position of the preposition. This article points out some of the problems of movement analyses and presents an alternative
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What the Schwartzes Told Me about Allomorph Priority Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2024-01-11 Noam Faust
In Standard Yiddish, -s and -ən are used as default allomorphs for plural word formation. It is argued here that the choice is left to the phonology, with -s acting as a default within a default. This status is used to explain the exclusive use of -s in the pluralization of proper names, which are claimed to be formed with no sensitivity to the phonological form of the base.
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Top-Down Versus Bottom-Up Approaches to Aspect: The Case of the Dutch Prepositional Progressive Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-11-29 Maarten Bogaards
Progressive constructions in Germanic are usually studied as progressive constructions—that is, exclusively so. I characterize this as a top-down approach to aspect, which, I argue, harbors the risk of overlooking relevant language-specific structures that are similar in form and meaning. This paper, therefore, advocates taking a bottom-up approach. Based on a case study of the prepositional progressive
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Mass, Iteration, and Pejoration: On the Evolution of Iterative Adverbs from Indefinite Quantifiers in German Varieties Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-11-29 Sophie Ellsäßer
This article deals with the formal and functional development of aspectual adverbs from indefinite quantifiers in German. More specifically, it focuses on the functions of adverbs that prompted their development into different iterative markers. Through a corpus analysis of spoken language data, insights were gained into the semantic spectrum of the nonstandard adverb als ‘always’. This adverb can
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Prospective Aspect and Current Relevance: A Case Study of the German Prospective Stehen vor NP Light Verb Construction Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-11-29 Jens Fleischhauer
The paper presents a detailed corpus-based analysis of the German prospective stehen vor NP light verb construction. The starting point of the analysis is the claim that the construction is restricted to change-of-state nouns in the NP-internal position (Fleischhauer & Gamerschlag 2019, Fleischhauer et al. 2019). Based on corpus data, I demonstrate that although the construction shows a strong preference
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The Present Participle with Wērden and Wēsen in Middle Low German: A Corpus-Based Analysis of Structure and Meaning Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-11-29 Sarah Ihden
A comprehensive description of the combination of the finite auxiliary verbs wērden ‘become’/wēsen ‘be’ and a present participle in Middle Low German is still a strong desideratum. This study presents a corpus-based analysis of the aforementioned phenomenon with a special focus on its grammatical structure and its different meanings. In particular, it focuses on a wide range of temporal and aspectual
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Pseudo-Coordinated Sitzen and Stehen in Spoken German: A Case of Emergent Progressive Aspect? Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-11-29 Nadine Proske
This paper investigates the aspectual potential of posture verb pseudo-coordination in spoken German. In a corpus study of sitzen ‘sit’ and stehen ‘stand’, it is shown that despite a preference for activity verbs, verbs of all aspectual classes occur in the second conjunct. The posture verb imposes its durative meaning component on the second verb, thus making a progressive interpretation of the construction
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Grammatical Innovations in German in Multilingual Namibia: The Expanded Use of Linking Elements and Gehen ‘Go’ as a Future Auxiliary Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-08-14 Sheena Shah, Christian Zimmer
In this paper, we provide an overview of the history and sociolinguistic setting of Germans and German in Namibia, which serves as a backdrop for our discussion of two grammatical innovations in Namibian German. German has been actively used in Namibia since the 1880s, having been brought to the country through colonization, and it remains linguistically vital today. Via a questionnaire study, we investigate
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Old Saxon and Middle Low German Adverbs of Degree: A Case of Diachronic Discontinuity? Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-08-14 Lourens Visser
Middle Low German is generally considered to be a direct successor to Old Saxon. However, later dialects, including Middle Low German, differ from Old Saxon with respect to a number of features, which is unexpected under a direct succession relationship. To account for the presence of such features, some scholars attribute them to High German influence on Middle Low German (Wolff 1934, Stiles 1995
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From Naming Verb to Copula: The Case of Wangerooge Frisian Heit Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-05-11 Jarich Hoekstra
In the now extinct Frisian dialect of the island of Wangerooge, the naming verb heit ‘to be called’ had partially grammaticalized into a copular verb ‘to be’ competing, to some extent, with the original copula wízze ‘to be’. In this paper, I discuss the development and the status of the copula heit in some detail and consider what it might tell one about the taxonomy of copular clauses (Higgins 1979)
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Je-Desto, Je-Umso: An Analysis of the German Comparative Correlative Construction Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-05-11 André Meinunger
This paper argues that German je-desto-sentences are regular verb-second structures. Unlike left-dislocation(-like) structures (such as wenn-dann-clauses or free relative clause constructions with case mis-match and resumption), je-desto-strings are normal, regular prefield structures. A proposal from the literature is developed further, accord-ing to which je-clauses, like relative clauses, belong
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Natiolectal Variation in Dutch Morphosyntax: A Large-Scale, Data-Driven Perspective Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-02-08 Robbert De Troij, Stefan Grondelaers, Dirk Speelman
In this article, we report a large-scale corpus study aimed at tackling the (controversial) question to what extent the European national varieties of Dutch, that is, Belgian and Netherlandic Dutch, exhibit morpho-syntactic differences. Instead of relying on a manual selection of cases of morphosyntactic variation, we first marshal large bilingual parallel corpora and machine translation software to
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Nominal Compounds in Old English Meter and Prosody Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2023-02-08 Donka Minkova, Z.L. Zhou
What is the lexicon’s role in licensing the selection of phonologically-marked structures in Old English verse? Specifically, what is its role in the avoidance of certain nominal compounds in verse, even though the same compounds are used apparently freely in prose (Terasawa 1994)? Using a simulation of the Old English lexicon, we offer a statistical analysis of the poetic use of nominal compounds
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Auxiliary Selection in Yiddish Dialects Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-11-14 Lea Schäfer
The variation of the two past tense auxiliaries (HAVE and BE) is a well-studied phenomenon in European languages, especially in the West Germanic varieties. So far, however, the situation in Eastern Yiddish has not been examined. This paper focuses on auxiliary selection in these Yiddish dialects based on data from the Language and Culture Archive of Ashkenazic Jewry, which were collected in the 1960s
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A Variationist Sociolinguistic Analysis of Intensifiers in Oslo Norwegian Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-11-14 James M. Stratton, John D. Sundquist
The present study uses variationist sociolinguistic methods to examine the intensifier system in Oslo Norwegian. Results indicate that both linguistic and social factors influence intensifier use. Predicative adjectives were intensified more frequently than attributive adjectives, women used intensifiers more frequently than men, and younger speakers had higher intensification rates than older speakers
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Syllable Structure Spatially Distributed: Patterns of Monosyllables in German Dialects Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-08-01 Alfred Lameli
This study presents a micro-typological description of German dialects, focusing on the structure of 13,492 tokens of monosyllables, across 182 locations within Germany. Based on data from the Phonetischer Atlas der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, systematic geographical differences in both the segmental and prosodic organization of syllables are explored. The analysis reveals a North–South contrast in
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Faroese Preaspiration: A Nucleus/Onset Interaction Analysis Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-08-01 Laurence Voeltzel
This paper focuses on Faroese preaspiration, a phenomenon observed in Western Nordic and in some Eastern Nordic dialects, where fortis stops are preceded by a glottal frication noise in specific contexts. After observing all environments where the mechanism is triggered, I provide phonological representations of the phenomena based on Government Phonology 2.0. In this model, the segmental structures
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Wh-Ever Constructions in American Hasidic Yiddish: The Rise of a Germanic Construction Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-04-26 Dalit Assouline
This paper discusses the hitherto undocumented wh-ever constructions in contemporary American Hasidic Yiddish. Employment of these Germanic constructions in both written and spoken American Hasidic Yiddish raises the question of their origin and the possibility that several Germanic varieties have influenced this seemingly new pattern. Specifically, these constructions might have originated from German-ized
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Absence of Morphological Case and Gender Marking in Contemporary Hasidic Yiddish Worldwide Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-04-26 Zoë Belk, Lily Kahn, Kriszta Eszter Szendrői
This paper demonstrates that the language of the post-War generations of adult Haredi (that is, strictly Orthodox), primarily Hasidic, speakers of Yiddish in the major Hasidic centers worldwide lacks morphological case and gender. Elicited spoken and written data from native Haredi speakers of Yiddish from Israel and the United States, aged 18–87, and limited additional evidence from Canada and Belgium
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On the Symmetry of V2 in Yiddish and Some of Its Consequences for Extraction Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-04-26 Molly Diesing, Beatrice Santorini
This paper examines the distribution of V2 in Yiddish and its effects on extraction. Specifically, we show that both Spec-to-Spec antilocality (Erlewine 2020) and minimality (Rizzi 2006) constrain wh-extractions from embedded clauses in Yiddish. This explains the pattern of that-trace effects in Yiddish, as well as the apparent absence of an escape hatch in certain constructions.
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Eastern Yiddish Relative Clauses in an Areal Perspective: An Analysis Based on the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-04-26 Jürg Fleischer
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
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Werden and Periphrases with Present Participles and Infinitives: A Diachronic Corpus Analysis Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-02-08 Valentina Concu
The scholarship on the Modern German periphrastic future, or the werden future (that is, werden + infinitive) has brought forth different hypotheses about its origins. One of these hypotheses states that it developed from werden + present participle in the 13th century (for example, Bech 1901). While many have criticized this hypothesis, no one until now has proposed a valid solution for the problem
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Historical Diaglossia and the Selection of Multiple Norms: Mij and Mijn as 1st Person Singular Object Pronouns in 17th- and 18th-Century Dutch Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-02-08 Gijsbert Rutten
This paper argues that the Dutch sociolinguistic situation in the 17th and 18th centuries should be analyzed as diaglossic, that is, involving a wide spectrum of variation in between localized spoken dialects and the supposed written standard. In fact, multiple instances of norm selection for writing render this diaglossic situation even more complex. The paper shows that multiple norm selection even
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Tapping into German Adjective Variation: A Variationist Sociolinguistic Approach Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2022-02-08 James M. Stratton
Following the Labovian paradigm, the present study uses variationist quantitative methods to examine the linguistic and social factors influencing adjective choices in German. By focusing on adjectives of positive evaluation (such as cool ‘cool’, toll/geil ‘great’), an analysis of over 3,000 tokens reveals that the choice of using one adjective over a competing counterpart is structured systematically
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Using Historical Glottometry to Subgroup the Early Germanic Languages Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-11-11 Joshua R. Agee
Historical Glottometry, introduced by Kalyan & François (2018), is a wave-based quantitative approach to language subgrouping used to calculate the overall strength of a linguistic subgroup using metrics that capture the contributions of linguistic innovations of various scopes to language diversification, in consideration of the reality of their distributions. This approach primarily achieves this
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On the Grammaticality of Poetry: The Asyndetic Verb-Late Clause in Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-11-11 Katerina Somers
This article discusses asyndetic verb-late clauses in Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch, which has long been considered a problematic text within the Old High German corpus in part because of clauses like these. Clauses with a dependent clause’s verbal syntax and no complementizer have been characterized as ungrammatical and/or rare (Behaghel 1932, Schrodt 2004, Axel 2007) and thus have not been included in
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A Psycholinguistic Investigation into Diminutive Strategies in the East Franconian NP: Little Schnitzels Stay Big, but Little Crooks Become Nicer Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-11-11 Eva Wittenberg, Andreas Trotzke
Upper German dialects make heavy use of diminutive strategies, but little is known about the actual conceptual effects of those devices. This paper is the first to present two large-scale psycholinguistic experiments that investigate this issue in East Franconian, a dialect spoken in Bavaria. Franconian uses both the diminutive suffix -la and the quantifying construction a weng a lit. ‘a little bit
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A Contrastive Grammar of Brazilian Pomeranian. By Gertjan Postma. (Linguistik Aktuell 248). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2018. Pp. 312. Hardcover. $158.00. Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-07-28 Michael T. Putnam
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Grammatical Gender and Declension Class in Language Change: A Study of the Loss of Feminine Gender in Norwegian Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-07-28 Yulia Rodina, Marit Westergaard
In this paper, we investigate an ongoing change in the grammatical gender system of Norwegian. Previous research has shown that the feminine form of the indefinite article is quickly disappearing from several dialects, which has led to claims that the feminine gender is being lost from the language. We have carried out a study of the status of the feminine in possessives across five age groups of speakers
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Gender Assignment in Six North Scandinavian Languages: Patterns of Variation and Change Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-07-28 Briana Van Epps, Gerd Carling, Yair Sapir
This study addresses gender assignment in six North Scandinavian varieties with a three-gender system: Old Norse, Norwegian (Nynorsk), Old Swedish, Nysvenska, Jamtlandic, and Elfdalian. Focusing on gender variation and change, we investigate the role of various factors in gender change. Using the contemporary Swedish varieties Jamtlandic and Elfdalian as a basis, we compare gender assignment in other
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The Acquisition of Grammatical Gender of Determiners in Danish Monolingual and Bilingual Children: An Experimental Study Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-05-06 Frans Gregersen, Leonie Cornips, Ditte Boeg Thomsen
This paper examines the acquisition of grammatical gender of indefinite and definite DPs in Danish. It investigates which grammatical contexts further acquisition and which slow it down, and whether distinguishing between monolinguals and bilinguals makes a difference. Danish has a two-way gender distinction (common and neuter), fusing gender with definiteness in the DP. In order to answer our research
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Tonal Variation and Change in Dalarna Swedish Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-05-06 Gjert Kristoffersen
This article questions the prevalent account of North Germanic tonogenesis, which proposes that at the outset, Accent 2 was characterized by a double-peaked melody close to the one found in central Swedish today (Riad 1998, Kingston 2011). The spreading patterns observed in the data analyzed here are difficult to reconcile with this hypothesis. My analysis instead offers support in favor of the alternative
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Grammatical Gender in the German Multiethnolect Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-02-10 Peter Auer, Vanessa Siegel
While major restructurings and simplifications have been reported for gender systems of other Germanic languages in multiethnolectal speech, this article demonstrates that the three-way gender distinction of German is relatively stable among young speakers from an immigrant background. We investigate gender in a German multiethnolect based on a corpus of approximately 17 hours of spontaneous speech
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Weighing Psycholinguistic and Social Factors for Semantic Agreement in Dutch Pronouns Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-02-10 Lien De Vos, Gert De Sutter, Gunther De Vogelaer
Previous research has shown that Dutch pronominal gender is in a process of resemanticization: Highly individuated nouns are increasingly referred to with masculine and feminine pronouns, and lowly individuated ones with the neuter pronoun het/’t ‘it’, irrespective of the grammatical gender of the noun (Audring 2009). The process is commonly attributed to the loss of adnominal gender agreement, which
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Argentine Danish Grammatical Gender: Stability with Strongly Patterned Variation Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-02-10 Karoline Kühl, Jan Heegård Petersen
This paper investigates the expression of grammatical gender in Heritage Argentine Danish. We examine a subset of the Corpus of South American Danish of approximately 20,500 tokens of gender marking produced by 90 speakers. The results show that Argentine Danish gender marking in general complies with the Standard Denmark Danish rules. However, there is also systematic variation: While there is hardly
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Grammatical Gender: Acquisition, Attrition, and Change Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-02-10 Terje Lohndal, Marit Westergaard
This paper discusses grammatical gender in Norwegian by bringing together data from first language acquisition, Norwegian heritage language, and dialect change. In all these contexts, gender is often claimed to be a vulnerable category, arguably due to the relative non-transparency of gender assignment. Furthermore, the feminine gender is in the process of being lost in many Norwegian dialects, as
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Dead, but Won’t Lie Down? Grammatical Gender among Norwegians Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2021-02-10 Toril Opsahl
This paper examines grammatical gender from the sociolinguistic perspective. The question pursued is to what extent exponents of grammatical gender are tied indexically to identity categories. Building on literature and corpus data, I claim that within the Norwegian context, grammatical gender is associated with sociolinguistic dimensions such as the urban/rural distinction, political views, class
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Sievers’ Law and the Skåäng Stone Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2020-11-18 Bernard Mees
Early runic inscriptions are the best evidence for the oldest historical development of North Germanic. Yet among the many unexpected features of the inscriptions as they are usually presented is the apparent presence of vowels before glides that seem to occur contrary to Sievers’ Law. These include perhaps most prominently the sequence usually read as on the Skåäng stone where the Vimose comb preserves
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On the Performative Use of the Past Participle in German Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2020-11-18 Bjarne Ørsnes
In German, past participles not only occur in root position with a directive force, as in Stillgestanden! ‘Stop!’ lit. ‘stood still(ptcp)’, but also as performatives in responses: A: Du sagst also nichts zu Papi. ‘So you won’t tell dad.’ B: Versprochen! ‘I promise!’ lit. ‘promised(ptcp)’. Here B performs the speech act denoted by the verb by saying that it has been performed. The propositional argument
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Case Syncretism, Animacy, and Word Order in Continental West Germanic: Neurolinguistic Evidence from a Comparative Study on Standard German, Zurich German, and Fering (North Frisian) Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2020-07-31 Alexander Dröge, Elisabeth Rabs, Jürg Fleischer, Sara K. H. Billion, Martin Meyer, Stephan Schmid, Matthias Schlesewsky, Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky
To understand a sentence, it is crucial to understand who is doing what. The interplay of morphological case marking, argument serialization, and animacy provides linguistic cues for the processing system to rapidly identify the thematic roles of the arguments. The present event-related brain potential (ERP) study investigates on-line brain responses during argument identification in Zurich German
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Asymmetrical Intercalation in Germanic Complex Verbs Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2020-04-23 Thomas Berg
A shared feature of the Germanic languages is the occurrence of complex verbs consisting of the verb itself and what I refer to as the adverbal unit (AU). I examine the nature of the units that can be inserted into such complex verbs and compare intercalation patterns in AU-Vs and V-AUs. AU-Vs are found to be much more resistant to intercalation than V-AUs. The former accommodate the past participle
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Polarization and the Emergence of a Written Marker. A Diachronic Corpus Study of the Adnominal Genitive in German Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2020-04-23 Simon Pickl
This article investigates the diachrony of the adnominal genitive in written German by analyzing its usage in a diachronic corpus of sermons from the Upper German dialect area spanning the time from the 9th to the 19th century. The wide temporal scope allows for a better assessment of the events relating to the genitive’s disappearance from spoken German in Early New High German and the successive
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Adjective Intensifiers in German Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2020-04-23 James M. Stratton
While the study of English intensifiers has been a topic of much empirical discussion (Bolinger 1972, Paradis 1997, Ito & Tagliamonte 2003, Xiao & Tao 2007, Fuchs 2017), intensification in the German language is underexplored. The present study operationalizes variationist methods to comprehensively examine the syntactic intensification of adjectives in German by investigating how adjective intensifiers
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Clause structure and word order in the history of German. By Jäger Agnes, Gisella Ferraresi, & Helmut Weiß. (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics 28.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xvi + 402. Hardcover. $115.00. Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2020-02-07 Christopher D. Sapp
ed. by Ana Deumert & Wim Vandenbussche, 211–244. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Stein, Stephan. 1995. Formelhafte Sprache: Untersuchungen zu ihren pragmatischen und kognitiven Funktionen im gegenwärtigen Deutsch. Frankfurt am Main: Lang. Wierzbicka, Anna. 2013. Imprisoned in English: The hazards of English as a default language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wray, Alison. 2002. Formulaic language and
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A Note on Misplaced or Wrongly Attachedzuin German Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2020-02-07 Oliver Schallert
This paper deals with the misplacement of the infinitival markerzu‘to’ in German. While this phenomenon only occurs in certain config-urations in the standard language, such as auxiliary fronting, it is common in dialects and shows quite a high degree of variability. I discuss the misplacement ofzuin Standard German due to auxiliary fronting, as well as other types ofzu-misplacement found in dialects
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The Intonation of Information-Seeking and Rhetorical Questions in Icelandic Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2020-02-07 Nicole Dehé, Bettina Braun
We investigate the intonation of information-seeking and rhetorical questions in Icelandic. The results for the information-seeking questions largely confirm observations in previous literature based mostly on introspective data: Polar questions are mostly realized with late rise nuclear accents where the peak aligns after a stressed syllable (L*+H), wh-questions with peak accents (H*); wh-questions
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Evidence for sk in German as a Complex Segment Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2020-02-07 Sarah M. B. Fagan
This squib provides evidence from the superlative in support of Wiese’s (1996) position that s (sibilant) + stop sequences in German behave as complex segments. With the exception of the sequence /sk/, the consonants that require schwa epenthesis before the superlative suffix are all coronal obstruents: nettest- [ˈnɛtəst] ‘nicest’, süßest- [ˈzyːsəst] ‘sweetest’, frischest- [ˈfrɪʃəst] ‘freshest’, brüskest-
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Aspekt und Genitivobjekt. Eine kontrastiv-typologische Untersuchung zweier Phänomene der historischen germanischen Syntax. By Olga Heindl. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag, 2017. Pp 266. Paperback. €49,80. Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2019-11-06 Jens Fleischhauer
It is a long-standing debate whether or not old Germanic languages, such as Old High German, Gothic or Old English, had a category of grammatical aspect. The position that the old Germanic languages possessed grammatical means of expressing perfective aspect as in the (contemporary) Slavic languages has been defended and criticized by various authors. Defenders of this view usually propose that verbal
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Three Typological Differences Between the North and the West Germanic DPs Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2019-11-06 Dorian Roehrs
This paper discusses three typological differences between the North Germanic DP and the West Germanic DP. While North Germanic has suffixal definite articles leading to cases of double definiteness, weak adjective endings regulated by definiteness, and doubly-filled definite DPs, West Germanic does not. These three properties cluster together in that they all have to do with definiteness. It is claimed
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The Use of Modal Particles in Netherlandic and Belgian Dutch Imperatives Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2019-11-06 Carol Fehringer, Leonie Cornips
This paper investigates the use of modal particles in spoken Dutch imperatives. Two types of particles are differentiated: mitigating, which are often used as a politeness strategy, and reinforcing, which add extra force to the utterance (Vismans 1994). Our findings show that in Netherlandic Dutch, the use of mitigating particles is determined by the type of occupation that the speaker has: Speakers
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FOREWORD Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2019-09-02 Rajend Mesthrie
The papers in the special focus issues of the Journal of Germanic Linguistics (13.4 and 14.1) testify to the continuing significance of Afrikaans sociohistorical linguistics. Even before its official “birth,” recognition, and christening, Afrikaans had been the subject of debate, discussion, dissension, and adulation. Within linguistics, it has excited attention from Hesseling onward on account of
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CONVERGENCE AND THE FORMATION OF AFRIKAANS Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2019-09-02 Paul T. Roberge
As a phenomenon to be explained, convergence in historical linguistics is substantively no different than in creolistics. The general idea is that accommodation by speakers of “established” languages in contact and the formation of new language varieties both involve a process of leveling of different structures that achieve the same referential and nonreferential effects. The relatively short and
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IN MEMORIAM CARLA LUIJKS Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2019-09-02 Paul T. Roberge
Afrikaans linguistics suffered a major loss with the death of our colleague Carla Luijks, from cancer, on December 30, 2001, at the cruelly young age of 43 (two weeks shy of her 44th birthday).
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CAVEATS AND COMMENTS Journal of Germanic Linguistics (IF 0.4) Pub Date : 2019-09-02 Fritz A. Ponelis
By way of wrapping up this two-part special issue, Focus on Afrikaans Sociohistorical Linguistics (JGL 13.4 and 14.1), I will touch on some of the significant issues raised by the contributors from my own, mainly dissident, point of view.