Factors of selection, standard universals, and the standardisation of German relativisers

Funder: Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100005156Funder: Isaac Newton Trust; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100004815Abstract: 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

Polarisation and the Emergence of a Written Marker. A Diachronic Corpus Study of the Adnominal Genitive in German

This article investigates the diachrony of the adnominal genitive in written German by analysing 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 its successive rise in written German. While sermons make it possible to cover such a long time frame on a consistent basis in terms of genre and region, they are themselves subject to stylistic trends as a genre that combines characteristics of both spoken and written language, which is valuable for gaining insights in the divergent development of genitive use between these poles. In order to characterise this divergence better, I use the concept of polarisation, which describes the differentiation of linguistic usage between disparate contexts such as speech and writing. It becomes clear that the changes in genitive use found in the corpus cannot be viewed independently of sociopragmatic factors and their impact on the stylistic shape of the texts.Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Isaac Newton Trust Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme German Endowment Fund Stiftungs- und Förderungsgesellschaft der Universität Salzbur

Using Sermons to Investigate Grammatical Change in German

With this poster, I outline an ongoing research project that uses historical sermons to study language change in German. While a long-term single-genre corpus like this has restrictions with regard to its representativeness of language use at a given time, it also has unique advantages over short-term multi-genre corpora. Because sermons are relatively uniform as a genre over long periods of time while at the same time being fairly close to oral speech, they are ideal for studying long-term developments of language in an oral setting. Besides outlining the design and structure of the corpus, I exemplify the benefits of this approach by reporting from a case study that shows how sermons can further our understanding of how German grammar changed over time

Wandel und Variation der Genitivstellung in einem diachronen Predigten-Korpus. Eine epochenübergreifende Längsschnitt-Studie

Die Forschung zur Diachronie der Stellung des adnominalen Genitivs im Deutschen ist ein gutes Beispiel dafür, dass sich einzelne Fallstudien nur schwer zu einem schlüssigen Gesamtbild kombinieren lassen, wenn diese jeweils Zeitabschnitte mit unterschiedlichen Textsorten aus verschiedenen Regionen untersuchen. Durch uneinheitliche Quellenlage und Methodik wird die Vergleichbarkeit von Einzelstudien stark eingeschränkt. In diesem Beitrag wird ein alternativer Ansatz verfolgt, der auf einen zeitlichen Längsschnitt setzt. Indem sich der Fokus auf eine bestimmte Textsorte richtet, wird die annähernde Abdeckung der Zeit vom 9. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert auf einer gleichförmigen, wenn auch nicht repräsentativen Grundlage möglich. Als Textsorte wurden hier Predigten gewählt, da sich diese als Prosatexte gut für die Untersuchung syntaktischer Fragestellungen eignen und eine relativ lange, breite und kontinuierliche Überlieferung aufweisen. Neben der zeitlichen Entwicklung wird die Auswirkung verschiedener interner und externer Faktoren auf die Genitivstellung untersucht. In der Diskussion der Ergebnisse zeigt sich einerseits, dass der nachgestellte Genitiv durch seine größere syntaktische Flexibilität begünstigt wird; zum anderen wird deutlich, dass der Schwund des Genitivs im Gesprochenen nicht ohne Folge für seine Stellung blieb.Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Isaac Newton Trust German Endowment Fund Cambridge Humanities Research Gran

Die Dynamik der Relativa in historischen deutschen Predigten: Zur Relevanz attitudinaler Faktoren in Sprachwandel und Standardisierung

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

Formen und Funktionen des Konjunktivs II in historischen ostoberdeutschen Predigten.: Eine Langzeit-Perspektive

This article presents a diachronic survey of forms and functions of the subjunctive II grammatical category in historical German. The subjunctive II is historically based on the subjunctive preterit form but has lost its temporal function and become a purely modal category. It has developed a variety of synthetic and analytical forms since Old High German, especially in vernacular varieties, but also in Standard German, and fulfils a range of functions, chiefly that of non-affirmativity. The present study aims to shed light on the historical development of the subjunctive II’s form and function. Its focus is on East Upper German, and its temporal scope spans over a millennium from the 9th to the 19th century. In order to study the usage and development of the subjunctive II in historical East Upper German sermons, the south-eastern part of SermonC, a diachronic corpus of historical German sermons, is analysed. While this (sub‑)corpus is restricted in terms of region and genre, it provides a unique window to written language usage, variation and change in a clearly defined domain over a very long time. The results show that the refunctionalization of the subjunctive preterit as a purely modal category does not date to prehistoric times, as is generally assumed; instead, they point to the 11th century as the likely time for this change, with limited temporal uses persisting into the 15th century. The 15th century is also the time when the synthetic subjunctive II form with -et/-at, a typical feature of Bavarian dialects, seems to have emerged in the spoken register. Analytical forms started to appear from the 13th century, and the periphrasis with würde, today accepted in Standard German, prevailed among several written German analytical variants in the 18th century. While Standard German has preserved the distinction between two subjunctive categories, East Upper German spoken language has in effect reduced a two-way morphological system (tense and mood) to a pure mood system, with tense expressed syntactically, in effect refunctionalizing morphological tense as a mood marker. &nbsp

A Diachronic Corpus of Sermons. Tracing Grammatical Change throughout the History of German

In this contribution, a single-genre diachronic corpus of German sermons spanning nearly one millennium will be presented. It is being compiled in order to be able to study grammatical change focussing on the diachronic aspect, keeping other factors of variation as uniform as possible, especially genre. There are two main reasons for the decision to design a diachronic corpus that is based on the single genre ‘sermons’. Firstly, the received history of grammatical change in German is characterized by a heterogeneous data basis. For instance, Old High German has been studied especially on the basis of translations of Latin religious texts, Middle High German has typically been portrayed as the language of courtly poetry, and studies on Early New High German have focussed predominantly on the language of chancery and trade (cf. Fleischer/Schallert 2011, 26–27). It is not always clear, therefore, if the differences identified between these periods are to be attributed exclusively to diachronic change or at least partly to inter-genre variation. Narrowing down the view by focussing on a single genre that is well documented throughout the history of German is a way of mitigating this problem. A second problem lies in the type of source material typically used when studying grammatical change in the past. Usually the sources come from widely available material, which is often representative of registers detached from orality. This restriction has been tried to overcome by using sources ‘from below’ (cf. Elspaß 2005) or ‘ego-documents’ (cf. Rutten/van der Wal 2013), which exhibit more oral features than the written registers. Sermons offer a different take on historical orality: they represent a reproduction or imitation of physically oral (albeit monologic) communication from the pulpit (cf. e.g. Mertens 1991) and retain a typical set of oral features even in their written form (cf. e.g. Mertens 1992). The corpus is designed to include prints and manuscripts of sermons from different German-speaking regions. The texts are transcribed using TEI and manually annotated to make the corpus searchable for grammatical phenomena to be investigated, especially inflection. This presentation will sketch the outline of the project and its current status along with some first results. References Elspaß, Stephan (2005): Sprachgeschichte von unten. Untersuchungen zum geschriebenen Alltagsdeutsch im 19. Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Fleischer, Jürg / Oliver Schallert (2011): Historische Syntax des Deutschen. Eine Einführung. Tübingen: Narr. Mertens, Volker (1991): “‚Texte unterwegs‘. Zu Funktions- und Textdynamik mittelalterlicher Predigten und den Konsequenzen für ihre Edition”. In: Danielle Buschinger / Wolfgang Spiewok (eds): Mittelalterforschung und Edition. Amiens: Université de Picardie, 75–85. Mertens, Volker (1992): “Predigt oder Traktat? Thesen zur Textdynamik mittelhochdeutscher geistlicher Prosa”. In: Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik 24/2, 41–43. van der Wal, Marijke J. / Gijsbert Rutten (eds) (2013): Touching the Past. Studies in the historical sociolinguistics of ego-documents. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins

Neues zur Entwicklung der Negation im Mittelhochdeutschen

Abstract This paper investigates the development of sentential negation in Middle High German using sermons from the Upper German dialect area. To this end, a heterogeneous yet fine-grained corpus of Alemannic and Bavarian sermons is analysed with respect to diachronic development, geographical distribution and language-internal factors. What becomes clear is that Jespersen’s Cycle, a cross-linguistic model of the development of negation that can be seen as part of the received history of German negation, fails to account for the mechanisms in the development of sentential negation in German. These mechanisms cannot be understood independently of the – in some respects parallel – development of n‑indefinites. It appears that the interplay of variation and the grammaticalisation of the n‑indefinite nicht, which co-occurred with ne but could also appear on its own, played a more important role in the emergence of the negation particle nicht than previously thought. It is argued that when nicht was grammaticalised it retained the variation of the n-indefinite nicht, and that the subsequent loss of ne was a parallel development in both usages of nicht. Für wertvolle Hinweise zu einer früheren Version dieses Beitrags möchte ich mich bei Stephan Elspaß, Helmut Graser, Nils Langer, Sonja Müller, Konstantin Niehaus, Hannes Scheutz und zwei anonymen GutachterInnen herzlich bedanken. </jats:p

Verdichtungen im sprachgeografischen Kontinuum

In dialectology, there are two competing conceptualizations of linguistic space: one based upon dialect areas/regions and the other on the idea of a dialect continuum. To date these two have been neither theoretically nor methodologically unified. In this article an attempt is made to furnish a theoretical basis from which both concepts can be derived, and a compatible method for the evaluation and interpretation of empirical data is introduced. Gaetano Berruto’s suggestion that varieties be seen as concentrations of co-occurrent variants serves as a starting point; when applied to linguistic geography this implies that diatopic varieties can be conceived of as regions of concentration within a geolinguistic continuum. As such, they are fuzzy and can overlap one another. A prototype-theoretical dimension is added to the model, allowing varieties to be understood as abstract dialect types that are manifested to varying degrees in concrete individual dialects. To operationalize this concept, factor analysis, a statistical technique for dimensionality reduction is employed as a category-building instrument in linguistic geography; its mode of operation is eminently suited to identifying and quantifying regions of concentration, i. e., plausible structures within a geolinguistic corpus. At the same time, linguistic co-occurrences are employed to identify systematic relations between variants. Applying the method to lexical data from the Sprachatlas von Bayerisch-Schwaben reveals the usefulness of the procedure, not just for the categorization of linguistic space, but also in the search for previously unidentified spatial structures.Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG