Infinitival constructions (ICs) have received considerable attention from syntacticians and typologists, but less so from variationist linguistics. Based on new data from a comprehensive dialect survey, this study investigates the variation and change of ICs in Austrian dialects. The results reveal clear geographical patterns for different IC variants in Austria. Regarding linguistic factors, several constraints are identified, most importantly with respect to the IC’s syntactical function and governing element (e.g., phase verbs). Moreover, an apparent-time analysis shows that one variant (zum + infinitive) has been grammaticalized and spread at the expense of all other variants, presumably due to both dialect leveling and dialect-standard advergence.

This study revisits the V3 linearization AdvP>Subject>finite verb in Kiezdeutsch, comparing it to resumptive verb-third Left Dislocation and Hanging Topic Left Dislocation. Using corpus data, preverbal object DPs are shown to almost never occur across verb-third distributions, yet preverbal nominative subjects and spatio-temporal elements are unproblematic. This behavior is argued to involve a low C-domain position encoding a Subject of Predication requirement (see Cardinaletti 2004) tied to aboutness and nominative Case-assigning features, but not a strict D-related subject EPP. Based on comparison with other corpora and analysis of metadata, speakers from non-German-speaking homes, namely successive bilinguals, are argued to have innovated this property. A novel account is suggested for the emergence of V3 based on claims that it results from a natural informational order (Wiese et al. 2020), which is formalized as a Minimal Default Grammar (Roeper 1999) available to children before they fully acquire CP and TP. Children acquiring a V2 language must either reject V3 or incorporate it into a V2 syntax. Lacking adequate counterevidence in their input, Kiezdeutsch speakers do the latter.*

The topic of impersonalization has received a lot of attention in the literature, but the focus has mostly been on a limited number of strategies, such as the use of personal and indefinite pronouns and passive constructions. Impersonal strategies have thus far been examined using: (i) grammars, (ii) corpora, and (iii) language-based questionnaires. These methods suffer from several shortcomings if one wants to study the range of impersonal strategies. The present article aims to argue for a new way of investigating impersonal strategies that complements the other approaches, by reporting on the results of a visual questionnaire. More precisely, it discusses a visual questionnaire completed by speakers of Dutch and Afrikaans to determine whether this method is a satisfactory way of studying impersonal strategies and to also examine and compare the impersonal strategies of the two languages.*