The paper presents an in-depth study of the conditions under which unaccusative verbs in German take part in the formation of so-called ADJECTIVAL PASSIVES. It provides corpus-linguistic as well as psycho-linguistic evidence arguing that combinations of sein ‘to be’ with the participle of an unaccusative verb are systematically ambiguous between a present perfect reading (with sein as auxiliary) and an adjectival reading (with sein as copula). The first part of the paper highlights the adjectival character of the construction in question. The second part presents the results of three rating studies that help unravel the pragmatic conditions that govern the adjectival conversion of unaccusatives. This leads to the conclusion that what has become known as the “adjectival passive” construction is a rather general, broadly available word formation process that is characteristically shaped and controlled by pragmatic factors.*

This article seeks to explain the synchronic variation found in the second person singular inflectional ending (attested both as -s and -st) in the Old High German Evangelienbuch, while at the same time pro-viding a diachronic account of the introduction and extension of the -st ending in German. In order to achieve these goals, in my analysis I rely on the notions of cliticization and formal analogy, arguing that the innovative and original endings correlate with different syntactic environments (V1/V2 versus Vfinal), on the one hand, and different formal shapes (is versus ôs/ês), on the other. After presenting an account of the development of -st in OHG, I draw conclusions regarding the broader question of how clitics become (part of) inflection, a discussion which in turn has implications for the theories scholars use to describe and explain language change, specifically that of grammaticalization.*

In the Kiel German regional variety (KG), /ɡ/ undergoes spirantization after vowels and /ʀ/ but not after /l/. KG contrasts with data provided by Wiese (1996) for a dialect that he calls Northern Colloquial Speech (NCS), in which /ɡ/ spirantizes not only after vowels and /ʀ/, but also after /l/. I argue that G-Spirantization in both regional varieties is an example of an assimilation which spreads [+continuant] from a vowel or /ʀ/ in KG (and /l/ in NCS) to a following coda /ɡ/. The difference between the /…lɡ/ environment in the two dialects can be explained by lateral ambivalence, as described in detail by Mielke (2005).*