The present article investigates the patterning of glides in Westphalian German. One question to be addressed is the structure of onglides, for example, the in Nase ‘nose’ and the in ‘village’. I argue that surface onglides are in the nucleus and not in the onset. The proposed representation contrasts with the ones for onglides in related languages, that is, English and Frisian. I show that Westphalian German also possesses a labial approximant [υ]—also known as a consonantal glide—which is distinct from both the onglide and the fricative [v]. I argue that onglides are underlying short vowels, which are parsed as glides by syllabification. The approximant [υ] is argued to be derived from /v/. The proposed analysis is shown to be superior to one in which [υ] derives from /u/, as proposed by Wiese (1996) for New High German.*

PGmc. *-ārjaz was borrowed from Latin, and became a productive masculine agentive suffix in the older Germanic languages, gradually displacing various native agentive suffixes. Despite some assertions to the contrary, OE -estre can be shown to have been a feminine agentive suffix of Germanic origin that was also applied to certain feminine animal names. During the Old English period, a pattern obtained whereby masculine agent nouns were frequently derived using -ere (< PGmc. *-ārjaz), while the corresponding feminine agent nouns used -estre. This system was partially preserved in Modern Dutch, but died out in English as -er was increasingly used to form agent nouns of both genders.*

OE ge- functions synchronically as a proclitic, contrary to widely held views. This morphological status is an integral part of a broader diachronic pattern in Germanic, namely grammaticalization of an old particle to a prefix. OE g e- provides a clear example of grammaticalization. Following its path from Proto-Indo-European adverbial to Old English proclitic, and from its near grammaticalization as a past participle marker and subsequent loss, one can see easily the cline of grammaticalization.

This article provides an overview of Jugendsprache, youth language, as spoken in the German Democratic Republic, a variety far less studied than its West German cousin. Attitudes toward and perceptions of GDR youth language are treated, showing far greater diversity than previous Western discussions have found. More importantly, this study provides empirical data from a variety of sources for a sociolect previously largely lacking such evidence.

In Present-Day English, the particle out is obligatorily adjacent to the following of PP, as in He pulled the plugs out of his ears / *He pulled out the plugs of his ears, even though particles can normally precede or follow the object of the particle verb, as in Hepulled out the plugs / Hepulled the plugs out. Interestingly, in Old English and Middle English, the particle out could occur either adjacent or nonadjacent to the of PP. Based on corpus data covering the period from Old English to Late Modern English, I show that the change in the syntax of directional out of involves grammaticalization: The bleaching of the directional meaning of the preposition of led to a structural reanalysis by which the of PP became included in the particle's phrasal projection and could no longer be separated from the particle out. This in turn led to phono-logical reduction of the preposition of. The loss of the nonadjacent option is argued to be connected to the status of particles as optionally projecting elements.*

I examine the development of for to and for in several stages of English. I argue that as prepositions grammaticalize, they acquire certain intrinsic features and occupy special positions. In Old English, for to is a P, related to Case, and has some future sense (through an extension of the locative meaning). Verbs do not subcategorize for complements with for (yet), however. In early Middle English, for to is used to introduce a complement with future meaning. Now, for (to) occupies C, which I assume is universally true for purpose/future indicators. In late Middle English, the situation solidifies, and more verbs select a complement with for (to) indicating purpose and futurity. In Early Modern English, for to disappears, but for separated from to takes over its function of introducing purposive adjuncts and future complements.

This article reports on a study of the extent and nature of the use of English loanwords in the writing of German legal professionals. A variety of texts are examined, showing that although the use of English loans is limited, their use across texts is essential for serving various pragmatic functions. The study demonstrates the value of systematic genre-based studies in contributing to a general description of English loan use among speakers of German.

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 any difference compared to Standard Denmark Danish with respect to the definite suffix, gender marking on prenominal determiners differs from that in Standard Danish. More specifically, the less frequent neuter gender is more vulnerable, and common gender tends to be overgeneralized. Further, complex NPs with attributive adjectives show more variation in gender marking on prenominal determiners than simple NPs. As to sociolinguistic variation, the analysis shows that tokens produced by older speakers and speakers from settlements with a higher degree of language maintenance are consistent to a higher degree with Standard Danish gender marking. The paper compares these results with the results of studies of gender marking variation in other Germanic heritage languages. We conclude that the overall stability of grammatical gender in the Germanic heritage languages is a general pattern that only partly relates to social or societal factors.*

Both Iverson and Salmons 2004 and Voyles 1982 develop viable theories of the Old Norse i-umlaut. It is argued, however, that while Iverson and Salmons' theory posits implausible changes, the changes assumed by Voyles are plausible and well attested.

Dutch partitive constructions of the type one of the (few) X who Y show a striking pattern of singular subject-verb agreement in their relative clause. This paper presents a corpus study showing that the prescriptively “incorrect” singular agreement pattern is in fact the dominant pattern in Dutch. In order to explain this, we argue that this type of partitive construction often has a specific function in context, namely, to point out that the subject is special or extraordinary, usually for the reason presented by the relative clause. We apply a usage-based approach to this construction within the framework of Construction Grammar, arguing that the prevalent implicature of the subject’s specialness has become a conventionalized part of the meaning of the construction. This analysis then can be used to explain the syntactic pattern of singular agreement within the relative clause. A similar albeit less pronounced pattern can be found in German.*

Anatoly Liberman's recent article in this journal (“The phonetic organization of Early Germanic” 2,1:1990) contains a number of potentially important claims about the nature of early Germanic accentuation. (1) His major conclusion appears to be twofold: first, the syllable struture of early Germanic disyllabics must have normally been CVC.V (using “.” to represent a syllable boundary), because CV (and by extension therefore CV.CV) was not a possible structure of a Gothic word. Second, early Germanic possessed no lexical stress (“word stress”), but instead only phrasal stress. (2) These conclusions are at least provocative to those familiar with the massive literature on Germanic accentology, and this was no doubt their intent. In this brief piece, I would like to note several implications and possible extensions of the points Liberman raises and the conclusions he draws, but also to disagree on some points. My perspective here differs from Liberman's primarily in focusing not on early Germanic in relation to its attested daughter languages, but rather on Germanic vis-à-vis Indo-European and some data from the languages of the world, that is, typological data.

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 meanings, depending on the auxiliary verb, its tense and mood. Moreover, the relationship between the semantics of the main verb and the meaning of the whole construction is investigated. Finally, the competition with alternative verbal complex constructions expressing the same meaning is also explored. The analysis is carried out on the basis of Middle Low German texts from different times, language areas, and genres.

This paper deals with the misplacement of the infinitival marker zu ‘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 of zu in Standard German due to auxiliary fronting, as well as other types of zu-misplacement found in dialects. I propose two parsimonious options for the analysis of the standard language as well as dialect cases, namely, i) precedence rules and ii) a special kind of infixing operation that was first proposed in the framework of Categorial Morphology (Bach 1984, Hoeksema 1985). I show that even though the first approach has its merits, the second one is more advantageous.*

This article proposes a configurationality parameter based solely on the issue of criteriality for fulfillment of the fundamental function of syntax, which is the establishment of linkage between lexemes and their grammatical relations. The two alternative linking systems discussed here are structural and morphological (S-systems and M-systems). S-systems are found in all language, whereas M-systems are found only in certain languages, and there only in isolated pockets which co-occur with specificity gaps in the respective S-system. In the past, observations about the authenticity and idiomaticness of the language of the Gothic Bible have been based on the examination of very limited phenomena as well as on subjective impressions. A general methodology is suggested here for thorough comparison of the Gothic with the Greek original. Application of this methodology to four sample chapters reveals significant and consistent variation in certain areas, although very little variation is found in the area of word order. The latter fact, along with some other considerations, suggests that Gothic had an M-system somewhat comparable to that of Koine Greek.

Reduction of case morphology is not unusual in the history of languages, especially Germanic. What sets Pennsylvania German apart from an otherwise routine process is the fact that two distinct communities are reflecting two distinctly different developments in their case system—one group, the nonsectarians, is linguistically conservative; the other, the sectarians, is innovative. Therefore, it has been suggested that the internal argument for change is not applicable to Pennsylvania German; rather, the linguistic innovation of the sectarians is indicative of external pressure brought about by bilingualism. This paper argues that the reduction in case markings cannot neatly be assigned to one theory or another; instead, it is a combination of factors acting in tandem to bring about change. Data from Ohio, where case markings have been contracted more recently, provide the link, which points to “multiple causation” as the basis for morphological loss. Quantitative and qualitative evidence is presented from sectarian and nonsectarian groups in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

This paper investigates the influence of Dutch, Swedish, and English on the syntax of Pidgin Delaware, a contact language used in the Middle Atlantic region in the seventeenth century. Arguments are presented against Thomason's (1980) view that the pidgin predated European contact; instead, the structures of the pidgin are viewed from the perspective of Dutch speakers attempting to learn the Delaware language. The theoretical framework of Van Coetsem 1988 is used to explain which Algonquian features were successfully acquired by the Dutch and where the Dutch imposed features from their native language in the early, formational stage of the pidgin. In addition, subsequent changes in Pidgin Delaware are attributed to its use by Swedish and English speakers.

This paper deals with the role of the distinction between Germans from speech islands (the so-called Volksdeutsche) and Germans from Germany (the so-called Reichsdeutsche) in conceptualizing the German community in urban Canada. First, 64 interviews with members of this community were analyzed for stretches of talk in which that distinction was made relevant. Then, a subset of these was chosen for the analysis presented here. Our analysis of these six excerpts employs both conversation analysis and positioning theory in order to show how participants draw on various aspects of place, ethnicity, and time in constructing a German space in Canada and their own ethnic identities in connection with it.*

In this paper I examine the effect of the semantic relationship between an attributive genitive and its head noun on the relative ordering of the two during the ENHG period. Data were collected from five sources, all written between 1500 and 1550 by men who were natives of the city Nuremburg. Since it has been shown that personal genitives more frequently preceded the head noun, while nonpersonal genitives more often followed, the data were broken down into those two categories. It is shown that personal subjective and objective genitives are more likely to follow the head noun than personal genitives in general, while personal possessive and relational genitives are more likely to precede.