German Syntax Research Articles

Vorfeld as one of the key terms of German syntax

The article examines the notion of Vorfel ‘prefield’, one of the basic terms of German syntax. The article is diachronic and covers the period from the 17th century to 1937, when Erich Drach first introduced the term Vorfeld in his work Grundgedanken der deutschen Satzlehre. The aim of this article is to show whether and to what extent the prefield (Vorfeld) and the ways it can be filled were addressed by the grammars and scholarly treatieses of the period under discussion, as well as by Drach’s work. Additionally, the authors ponder upon the role played by sentence bracket (Satzklammer) in older grammars while defining the prefield. The article opens with a brief description of the term Vorfeld from a contemporary perspective.

The processing and interpretation of sich in German as a second language by Japanese and Korean learners

Abstract This study investigates the processing and interpretation of the reflexive pronoun sich by Japanese and Korean learners of German as a second language. This is explored through the emergentist reflexivity approach, which hypothesizes that these learners will utilize their first language pragmatic strategies to bind sich, instead of syntactic binding found in German. Employing psycholinguistic methodology, a self-paced reading experiment is undertaken, utilizing antecedent judgements and introspective measures. The results show that instead of using the pertinent German syntax to bind sich, the learners continue to fall under the influence of their first language pragmatics. These results are discussed against the larger picture of reflexive theory, showing how German as a second language can advance our understanding of reflexivity.

Konjunktiv II в немецких энантиосемичных синтаксических конструкциях

The article investigates enantiosemy as a linguistic phenomenon. It is understood here as a complex, multidimensional object, which is both a phenomenon that reflects a certain essence and a general linguistic category. Along with studies into enantiosemy at the phonetic, morphological, lexical, phraseological and phraseosyntactic levels, publications on enantiosemy at the syntactic level are of particular interest, since this research area is at the initial stage of development. Therefore, the purpose of this article was to study enantiosemic syntactic constructions. As the material the author used German-language works of fiction. The paper considers several enantiosemic syntactic constructions in the form of complex sentences with adverbial clauses of comparison with conjunctions als ob and als (with als wäre, als hätte, als würde). These constructions are characterized by the use of a predicate in Konjunktiv II. The asymmetry of the form and content of the syntactic constructions is investigated. Considering that enantiosemy is based on opposition, context plays an important role in the actualization of the opposite meaning. The author found that when determining the enantiosemic nature of the constructions under study, context is not always required. In addition, it is noted that in most cases the selected syntactic constructions are asymmetrical. According to the results of the study, some of the proposed schemes, which can help to identify such constructions in the German language, can be introduced into scholarly discourse. The analysis of enantiosemic syntactic constructions contributes to further research into German syntax and can be of use when translating German texts.

Context Factors in Clause-Type Disambiguation: Old High German ibu- Clauses in the Syntagma

In the history of studies in German syntax, clauses have typically been described based on their most salient internal features on various structural levels. Constructional approaches, however, prioritise a holistic and often usage-based view of grammatical structures, in which the distribution of a construction is also information necessary for its correct usage and interpretation. The present study of Old High German syntax adopts this viewpoint and considers distributional regularities of conditional and complement clauses introduced with ibu, comparable to present-day English if and French si. Such clause types have many internal formal features in common, so that they appear to be formally ambiguous. Curiously, they rarely pose interpretation problems. Here, it is argued that part of the knowledge language users have of clausal constructions details their use in a syntagmatic context. This is demonstrated with corpus data showing that clause order, matrix verb semantics and the presence of resumptive adverbs are relevant for the interpretation of clauses. This is supported with evidence that pragmatic effects furthermore play a role in the disambiguation of these clause types and shines light upon methodological and theoretical problems.

WORD ORDER STRATEGIES IN THE OLD HIGH GERMAN NEGATIVE SENTENCE

This paper presents a description of word order patterns in Old High German with special emphasis given to the negative constructions. The Old Germanic syntax exhibits a relatively high variety in ordering constituents in the surface sentence structure, derived from the SOV-, SVO- and VSO-patterns. The study highlights the peculiarities of OHG word order with its verb-first, verb-second, and verd-third/last position of the finite verb regarding the conditions of such syntactic arrangement. The special attention is paid to the negative clauses, with the emphatically charged NEG-clitic in the proposition to the foregrounded finite verb. Sentence negation strategies in OHG (eighth-eleventh century) that display early signs of grammaticalization have been presented in the context of the available linguistic triggers, i.e., structural pressure and discourse specific to requirements of the texts under consideration. The paper provides the data-based analysis of NEG V1 patterns, retrieved from the OHG sources, aiming to show the role of the negative clitic in the word order arrangement. We assume that it was the interaction between the specific samples of the Old High German discourse and grammar that brought about the foregrounding of the negated head-initial VP. The discourse prose is regarded as a special case in the overall bulk of texts in the religious prose. The material shows that preposed negative clitic is placed separately or merged with the finite verb. The last option is represented rather strong in the negative verb-initial sentences. It is claimed that negation itself is an influential factor of the verb-first word order tightly related to the discourse peculiarities, shaped by the features of the religious texts of the mentioned period.

South Korean immigrant workers in Germany: L2 German verb placement and sociolinguistic factors

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: This study explores the asymmetric placement of the finite verb in Korean L2 German speakers and examines the effect of sociolinguistic factors on the produced verb placement patterns. Design/methodology/approach: Fifty-eight participants performed a sentence completion task that elicited the preferred placement of the (finite) verb in matrix and subordinate clauses. In addition, language background interviews were conducted to better understand the sociolinguistic circumstances of the Korean immigrants. Data and analysis: The experimental data are analyzed using implicational scaling to identify patterns of verb placement. The effect of sociolinguistic factors was tested fitting an ordinal logistic regression model. Findings/conclusions: Contrary to the developmental stages of L2 German syntax found in previous research, the experimental results revealed that target-like subordinate clauses are produced more robustly than verb second (V2) constructions. It is argued that this result is better explained with difficulties producing subject-verb inversion, V2, than with facilitative L1 transfer effects from Korean, producing German subordinate clauses with V-final order. Concerning social factors, the type of occupation (coal miner or nurse) was most significant in predicting the preferred L2 verb placement pattern, followed by L2 education and age of immigration. Originality: This article adds to the understanding of L2 German syntax by revisiting previously identified stages of L2 German development with data that target the preferred verb placement in matrix and subordinate clauses from less-researched L1 Korean speakers. The intra-group distinction of Korean immigrants into coal miners and nurses further allows a differentiated look at the role of sociolinguistic factors. Significance/implications: This research is significant as it aims to draw a comprehensive picture of L2 German acquisition and usage in the context of labor migration, highlighting a less-studied group of immigrants.

The Impact of Grammar on the Construal of Discourse Alternatives in German and English

This paper investigates additive links to discourse alternatives in picture comparison dialogues produced by adult native speakers of English and German. Additive relations are established across turns when participants are confirming the presence of matching objects on both pictures (A: “I have X”. B: “I also have X”). Speakers thereby describe their own picture and construe the interlocutor (or rather: the interlocutor’s picture) as a discourse alternative. Whereas the vast majority of the confirming descriptions in German contain an additive particle (auch), less than half of the corresponding confirmations in the English data do (“also”, “too”, etc.). Numbers differ even more drastically in polarity questions (“Do you (also) have X?”) that are equally typical for the dialogue task. Such frequency differences are at odds with recent accounts treating additive particles as being quasi obligatory when their presupposition is satisfied. An in-depth contrastive analysis of lexical, syntactic and information structural properties reveals that the default mapping of information units on syntactic functions (subject) in conjunction with the SVO word order of English leads to a structure in which subject, initial (topic) position and the particle’s associated constituent coincide. This would make the relation to its discourse alternative more prominent than warranted by the dialogue task and speakers of English leave this relation unmarked or resort to alternative constructions instead. The V2 syntax of German, on the other hand, allows for a dissociation of discourse topic and associated constituent. It allows the speaker to topicalize reference to the matching object, to highlight the confirmation of its presence on the speaker’s picture, and to relate the changing information to its discourse alternative in a non-contrastive way.

An den Grenzen des Systems: Vom Wert von Psalmenübersetzungen für die Erforschung der mittelniederdeutschen Syntax

Abstract Normally, translated texts are avoided in research into the syntax of older stages of a language in order to avoid erroneous analyses of potential influences from the source language. However, autochthonous texts, too, sometimes raise doubts as to their representativeness for a given stage of the language. The current article aims to see how much independent Middle Low German syntax can be found in two different psalm translations. This serves to ascertain whether translated texts may be valuable in research on Middle Low German syntax after all, particularly as they may contain features that are underrepresented in other genres. It is shown that translated texts can indeed be used to cross-check statements about syntactic features of Middle Low German.

On the notion of the subordinate clause in German linguistics

In traditional linguistic research on German syntax the term “subordinate clause” is defined on the basis of its two distinguishing features, namely its syntactic-functional integration into the matrix, as well as its formal exponents (the presence of introductory elements and the placement of the finite verb at the end of the clause). However, this classical approach to subordination is in fact a descriptive simplification which leads to the exclusion of all reference to the scalar character of this category from syntactic description. In this paper, an alternative approach to subordination is presented through defining the dependent clause as a scalar category, encompassing a wide range of representatives differing in the degree of prototypicality. The proposed model consists of four interrelated components: a precisely defined set of integration features, type-independent general principles, a description of the type-specific clusters of integration features and the differences in the degree of integration between representatives of the same syntactic class, as well as construction-specific restrictions.

Metrical evidence for the evolution of English syntax

Kuhn (1933) proposed that the evolution of Germanic syntax began with a need to restore acceptable sentence rhythm after a shift to fixed initial stress. Kuhn found support for his hypothesis in ‘laws’ for word placement that applied in alliterative poetry but not in prose. Kuhn assumed that his laws were syntactic rules of Proto-Germanic maintained by conservative poets. Here I argue that Kuhn's Laws were rules of poetic meter that obscured basic word order. Adopting the universalist approach in Russom (2017), I integrate Kuhn's Laws with the metrical constraints observed by Sievers (1893) and explore the interaction between meter and syntax. When there are no adverse metrical consequences, subject-object-verb order is employed with remarkable consistency in Beowulf, our most valuable source of poetic evidence. My analysis receives independent support from Smith (1971), a study of the earliest Germanic texts that focuses primarily on prose.

Энантиосемичные синтаксические конструкции с als würde в немецком языке

This paper discusses the grammatical tense form Konjunktiv II and its use in enantiosemic syntactic constructions with the als würde component. The concept of enantiosemy at the syntactic level in the German language and the concept of asymmetry in syntactic constructions are investigated. The research material included fiction in German and examples from the German DWDS corpus. The main content of the work is the analysis of enantiosemic syntactic constructions with als würde. The following methods were used: comparison and analysis of the structural and semantic features of enantiosemic syntactic constructions and contextual analysis. During the research, syntactic models of sentences with enantiosemic meaning were identified, as well as conditions contributing to the development of their opposite meaning. The paper studied enantiosemic syntactic constructions in the form of complex sentences with an adverbial clause of comparison with als würde, including the verb of behaviour tun and verbs of impression aussehen, scheinen, klingen, as well as with the component es war in the main clause. The research revealed that enantiosemy, which is characterized by asymmetry of form and content, is inherent in these syntactic constructions. The analysis of enantiosemic syntactic constructions with als würde demonstrated that they do not require context in order to be recognized, since the discrepancy between grammatical form and content is inherent in the constructions, namely, in the adverbial clauses of comparison expressing an unreal action. According to the results, certain schemes of syntactic constructions with enantiosemic meaning can be introduced into scientific discourse, which can help identify such constructions in the German language and facilitate further research into the issues of German semantics, stylistics, and syntax.

The Oxford Guide to Middle High German

The Oxford Guide to Middle High German

On the Grammaticality of Poetry: The Asyndetic Verb-Late Clause in Otfrid’sEvangelienbuch

This article discusses asyndetic verb-late clauses in Otfrid’sEvangelienbuch, 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 accounts of early German syntax. I argue that asyndetic verb-late clauses are grammatical and that they can function as main or dependent clauses. Crucially, they demonstrate that main verb fronting was not obligatory in 9th-century German. Although Otfrid marked the main-subordinate asymmetry by various grammatical means, including verbal syntax, I demonstrate that verbal prosody also influenced syntax: Heavy verbs are more frequent in clause-late or -initial position and light verbs in clause-second position, regardless of the main–dependent distinction. I suggest that prosodically-sensitive verbal syntax is characteristic of Otfrid’s exclusively oral vernacular. In contrast, Otfrid imports the concept of differentiating main and dependent clausesgrammaticallyfrom Latin. TheEvangelienbuch, then, represents an attempt to transform an oral vernacular into a written language by imposing, however imperfectly, the norm of grammatically distinct main and dependent clauses onto a prosodically-sensitive verbal syntax.*

Zentrum und Peripherie in der deutschen Syntax.

In Linguistik online 2021, I presented a four-level centre-periphery model of German syntax (with the categories “prototype”, “variants”, “competitive forms” and “free stylistic variation”) and tested and refined it on the basis of two well-researched grammatical phenomena, conditionality and passive structures. In the present paper, this model is applied to the sentence types of German, with comparative side glances at English and French. The model proves to be particularly fruitful in the functional area of exclamation, where a great variety of forms can be observed. I argue here that scientific grammars should not only record the form inventory of sentence types but should supplement this with information on their frequency of occurrence, especially with key figures on the relative proportions of the individual structures in their functional field of competition, broken down by different communicative situations or text types. The motto for the grammar writing of the future should be: From the “structures” to the “structures in use”.

The syntax and semantics of Swedish copular sentences: a comparative perspective

This paper investigates the (recent) case alternation in Swedish equative and predicational copular sentences (‘Cicero is Tully’, ‘Cicero is a nice guy’). A central contribution of the paper is showing that this alternation is an LF-phenomenon, contra Sigurðsson (in: Hartmann, Molnárfi (eds) Comparative studies in Germanic syntax: from Afrikaans to Zurich German. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 2006) who conjectures that Swedish is changing in the direction of English and Danish, where all postcopular DPs receive Accusative case, regardless of interpretation. The Swedish alternation is shown to track the same semantic dimension that conditions the choice of predicate case in languages like Polish, Russian and Dutch, namely the distinction between stage and individual level predication. Interestingly, the Swedish alternation is also shown to share distributional properties with the predicate case alternations in these languages. To account for these observations, I propose that the morphological and semantic contrasts between the two alternants are mediated by a structural difference, such that Nominative case involves a biclausal structure, and Accusative a monoclausal structure. This paper further adds to the typological picture, showing that Swedish patterns like Polish, Russian and Dutch, but unlike English and Danish, not just in terms of equative and predicational sentences, but also in specificational copular sentences (‘The fastest runner here is Lisa’). I argue that a particular kind of predicate inversion analysis is required to account for the Swedish type of specification.

Zentrum und Peripherie in der deutschen Syntax.

The present paper is the first part of a larger essay which, due to space constraints, will be published in two separate parts. Using evidence of two small corpora, I develop a centre-periphery model inspired by the prototype theory and apply it to the syntax of German. In doing so I proceed in two steps. In the first part, published here, the graded four-level model of linguistic variation presented below (with the categories “prototype”, “variants”, “competitive forms” and “free stylistic variation”) is tested and refined on two already well-researched grammartical phenomena, namely conditionality and passive structures. In the second part (to be published in the next issue of Linguistik online) I apply the model to the more complex subject of sentence types in German, in particular the so-called minor sentence types. A complete description of a language should not only list the grammatical categories, but also contain quantitative information, on both the frequency of occurrence of a particular category and on the position and relative share of this category in the field of its competing means of linguistic expression. A grammar of contemporary German, which not only records the structures, but shows the “structures in use” in different domains and text types, still remains a desideratum.

Entwicklung der Verbstellung beim fortgeschrittenen Erwerb des Deutschen als Fremdsprache

This article investigates the acquisition of verb placement in German as a foreign language at an advanced stage of development. The main objective of the investigation is to analyse written and spoken language production in terms of the use of subject-verb-inversion, verbal bracket, and verb-final placement in subordinate clauses. The results reveal a discrepancy between written and spoken language production with respect to correct usage of the verb placement rules. While correctness in the written production task exceeded 97% for all phenomena, the oral translation task generated less correct sentences, but only for inversion and verb-final placement. The non-target usage of inversion and verb-final pattern in spoken production points to processing problems when translating from Polish into German, which are further confirmed by lower accuracy for these two phenomena. At the moment of testing, the verbal bracket has already been acquired, which is in line with the universal developmental sequence in the acquisition of German syntax.

Editorial: Recent advances in Germanic syntax across syntactic domains

Editorial: Recent advances in Germanic syntax across syntactic domains

Композиционные и лингвистические особенности кулинарных рецептов российских немцев

The article is concerned with the issue of linguistic specificity of small-sized texts, describing their text structure (also referred to as composition) as well as linguistic properties and characteristics. A cooking recipe may be defined as a specific genre of this text category. In particular, the paper aims to describe semantic structure and linguistic features of the oral cooking recipes of the Russian Germans collected during a dialectal expedition in Krasnoyarsk region, Siberia. Culinary recipes of Russian Germans may be regarded as an evidence of the preservation of their linguo-culture, traditions and ethnic identity because they reflect a number of sociocultural parameters, societal and individual values. Sociocultural parameters make it possible to regard the text of the cooking recipe as a linguocultural phenomenon. The basis of the study is a field method: digital audio recordings of the recipe texts from German dialectal informants and a comprehensive analysis thereof as compared with the recipes found in the published books. For the graphic fixation of ‘dialectal’ recipes (that is in the transcripts) which combine features of the West German and East Middle German dialects the author used the spelling close to the norms of the standard German language. As a result of the study, certain distinctive textual and linguistic features of culinary recipes were established. As far as the text and semantic structure of the oral ‘dialectal’ recipe is concerned it is normal to omit the ingredients section, information about the duration of cooking. They don’t include any clarifications or parts equivalent to subtitles and footnotes of the standard written recipes. At the phonetic, morphological, syntactic, and lexical levels culinary recipes possess typical colloquial and dialect features of the language of Russian Germans. The analysis of the recipes allowed to define the nature of changes in their linguistic components, to identify discrepancies between the recipes in the German standard language and those recorded in Krasnoyarsk region, Siberia at all linguistic levels. In addition, it became possible to discover in the dialectal material some cultural borrowings as well as to determine the linguistic impact of the other languages encountered by the informants during their life in Russia and earlier. The influence of the Russian language is exemplified among others in the mixing of elements of the Russian and German syntax and, in particular, violation of the typically German sentence framework.

The syntax, information structure, and prosody of German ‘VP’-fronting

AbstractThis paper explores fronted verb phrases in German, drawing attention to the difference between passive/unaccusative VPs and fronted agentivevPs. While both kinds of verb phrases have been discussed in the literature as being frontable, it has been largely overlooked that frontedvPs typically come with a certain kind of post-fronting context and a rise-fall or bridge-contour intonation, which is characteristic of I-topicalization. We observe that, unlike VPs, agentivevPs essentially need to be I-topics, with a high tone at the right edge of the fronted domain, in order to be frontable. Given the special context required for frontedvPs, the situation described by thevP does not contain new information but must already have been under discussion and is now being commented on. We present the results of two experimental studies and appeal to the thetic/categorical distinction to offer a new angle on the definiteness effect that has been associated with fronted verb phrases. We propose that a subject-containing frontedvP is associated with a thetic rather than the default categorical judgment, which means that the fronted subject and predicate form only one information-structural unit (a topic) rather than two (topic and comment). Contributing to the literature on theticity, we observe that, unlike in non-fronting thetic statements, the subject in frontedvPs cannot be a true definite. We attribute this to clashing intonation restrictions on theticity in non-fronting constructions versus theticity in just the fronted portion of a sentence.