This paper re-examines the notions of “linguistic purism” and “linguistic nationalism” with respect to public discourses of language cultivation in recent years in a number of Germanic-speaking countries (Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and, briefly, Norway). In particular, the paper considers domain protection and attitudes to spelling variability and spelling reform. While in Germany linguistic nationalism and linguistic purism meet in speaker attitudes towards loanwords and spelling reform, in other Germanic-speaking countries linguistic nationalism may also take different forms, and linguistic purism may have other targets and motivations.

This paper applies the methods of linguistic hermeneutics devised by Wengeler (2005) to the pre- and early First World War propaganda essays of Paul Rohrbach. The analysis illustrates the discourse strategies and rhetoric of this staunchly nationalist German writer who was also Settlement Commissioner to German South-West Africa between 1903 and 1906. The texts are good examples of German nationalist propaganda of the Second Empire and were widely read at the time of their publication and afterwards. Their influence is likely to have extended to the period after the First World War, when National Socialism was inchoate.

In a time of rapid shift and loss of smaller, regional and minority languages it becomes apparent that many of them continue to play a role as post-vernacular varieties. As Shandler (2006) points out for Yiddish in the United States, some languages serve the purpose of identity building within a community even after they have ceased to be used as a vernacular for daily communication. This occurs according to Shandler through a number of cultural practices, such as amateur theatre, music and folklore, translation, attempts to learn the language in evening classes, etc. This paper demonstrates that the paradigm developed by Shandler for Yiddish can be applied to other linguistic communities, by comparing the post-vernacular use of Yiddish with Low German in Northern Germany. It focused on the linguistic strategies that individuals or groups of speakers apply in order to participate in a post-vernacular language community.

In standard German, the non-occurrence of -s plurals as the first element of a lexical compound (e.g., *Auto-s-berg ‘heap of cars') vs. the regular occurrence of the other plural suffixes (e.g., Kind-er-club ‘children's club', Frau-en-fete 'women's party') has often been quoted as evidence for a dual mechanism model of morphology, which sees irregular forms as stored in the mental lexicon while regular forms are generated by rule (see Marcus et al. 1995). However, in colloquial northern German, where the s-plural is more widely used than in the standard language, it is possible to form productive compounds containing this suffix (e.g., Mädel-s-treff ‘girls’ meeting'). This paper investigates to what extent -s plurals are acceptable within compounds in colloquial northern German, whether they are subject to any linguistic constraints (for example, morphological or phonological), and what implications they might have for current morphological theory.*

Although cleft sentences are possible constructions in both English and German, they are far more frequent in English texts. Durrell (2002: 479) observes in his Hammer's German Grammar and Usage that “with the exception of the type Er war es, der mich davon abhielt […], cleft sentence constructions sound unnatural in German and should be avoided.” The article discusses the form and function of cleft sentences in the context of other focusing devices. It shows that, although German and English cleft sentences have the same information structure, their stylistic value is very different. Using a short translation, Durrell's observation is confirmed: in translating cleft sentences into German, semantic equivalence is often sacrificed for stylistic appropriateness. Although structural features of both languages are the ultimate cause of the contrast, they cannot explain choices in each individual case. The article argues that structural typology should be complemented with a typology of parole: the respective frequencies of cleft sentences in both languages reflect neatly into the more verbal style, more hierarchical sentence construction and, in certain respects, greater semantic transparency of English texts (by comparison with their German counterparts).*

A problem in the formatting and coding of entries in a valency dictionary for learners of German is the need to reflect the flexibility of German word order without having recourse to a multiplicity of potentially confusing symbols. In sentences with dummy-es and postponed nominative subject or subject clause, failure to code and indicate the position of the subject may be vital (even if the subject might otherwise be omitted in coding), as errors of the type *Jetzt besteht es keinen Grund, daran zu zweifeln frequently occur. This paper summarises the way the problem has been addressed in earlier valency dictionaries and in a number of standard grammars of German before suggesting strategies for coding and layout with the aim of compiling entries that are easy to understand but which help learners to avoid these and related errors.

The complex sociolinguistic system for Dutch forms of address presents students of Dutch as a foreign language with particular difficulties in learning to use second person pronouns appropriately. This article discusses the role of a period of residence in the Low Countries in advancing these students’ proficiency in this respect. The research is based on interviews with final-year students of Dutch in the UK. The analysis is framed in terms of intercultural communicative competence and approaches to learning.

As a contribution to research into conditional constructions, this article presents a novel analysis of the Modern Dutch construction defined by the conditional conjunction mits ‘provided that', a less frequent subordinating conjunction that differs in meaning from the main conditional conjunctions als and indien (both ‘if'). Using examples from a corpus of 300 text passages containing the construction, we discuss its syntactic and semantic characteristics. It is found that clauses introduced by mits are only appended as a condition to matrix expressions that imply the existence of some specific desirability. We discuss the general viability of the notion of desirability for grammatical analysis. In the interpretation of each instance of a mits-construction, the precise identity of the desirability concerned has to be determined, as well as its locus. This process makes knowledge available about a specific balance of interests of the communicators and other concerned parties. The Dutch mits-construction is thus found to lead the interpreter to understand details of configurations of diverging interests.*