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German noun plural reconsidered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 1999

Dieter Wunderlich
Dieter Wunderlich
Affiliation:
Seminar für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Heinrich-Heine-Universität, D-40225 Düsseldorf, Germanywdl@phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/sfb282/wd1.htm
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Abstract

German noun plurals not ending in -s are not as irregular as Clahsen suggests. Feminine nouns get the -n plural, unless they umlaut and are subject to a constraint that requires a reduced final syllable in the plural. Another regular class is masculine nouns ending in schwa, which are weakly inflected. It is suggested that more differentiated psycholinguistic experiments can identify these regularities.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 22 , Issue 6 , December 1999 , pp. 1044 - 1045
Copyright
© 1999 Cambridge University Press

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