In this paper, we investigate the properties of Old High German relative clauses. A striking fact is that the finite verb in these constructions may either precede or follow its object(s). We survey different possible factors proposed in the literature that could determine the relative order of the verb and its objects (VO/OV order), such as type, time, and place of origin of the text, information-structural properties of the object of the relative clause, presence of a relative particle, definiteness of the antecedent, specificity of the referent, and type of the relative clause (restrictive or appositive). Our investigation is based on a corpus of nontranslated texts. It reveals that the only factors that have statistically significant influence on word order are the type of the relative clause and some information-structural properties of the object of the relative clause.*

The present study investigates the instability of adjacent liquids in a variety of Southern Bavarian German. The focus is a synchronic process converting /r/ to [d] before or after /l/—a process argued to involve a dissimilation of the phonological feature [liquid], which itself is triggered by a specific OCP constraint, *[liquid][liquid]. In addition to providing evidence for the feature [liquid], the present article also supports a model of segment structure in which the traditional feature [sonorant] is replaced with the privative node [Sonorant Voice] (SV). The Bavarian dialect also displays a number of OCP-motivated constraints that ban other sequences of identical manner features, namely, [continuant], [nasal], [strident].*

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.*

Shannon (1990) argues that the notions of lexical aspect (Aktionsart) and transitivity are a central part of perfect auxiliary variation. This paper builds on Shannon's (1993, 1995) analyses of perfect auxiliary selection in German and other related languages. Shannon accounts for perfect auxiliary variation by means of prototypes for high transitivity and high mutativity as well as the notion of Aktionsart. This paper examines the transitivity/mutativity parameters and the concept of Aktionsart using the examples of perfect auxiliary + past participle found in the Old Saxon Heliand. An examination of some 150 examples reveals that the choice of auxiliary can be explained by Aktionsart and a definition of transitivity that is characterized by conceptual imagery.

This paper considers the linguistic status of West Germanic alliterative, formulaic, syntactically tight pairs. These hendiadys binomials are phonetically interwoven, phrasally autonomous units. Echoic reduplication, including hendiadys, is a common way for language to generate iconic forms. Building on recent work on sound-symbolic expressives, iconicity, and the significance of poetic features (compression, phrasal symmetry) for language, this study argues that alliterative binomials are fundamentally affective, with proverb-like sentential characteristics, deriving idiomatic force from their iconically self-signaling structural properties. Like Stabreim, phonetically reinforced and with reciprocally highlighted components, they define a cohesive utterance (saying, phrase, metrical line). In this they share phrase-level contour properties with Behaghel's Law, which shapes the linguistic structure of day-to-day poetics, particularly in fixed idioms. The inquiry examines phrasal syntax, phrase-level iconicity and expressive symbolism, and the poetics of folk-discourse genres, reflecting language's structure.*

To understand a sentence, it is crucial to understand who is doing what. The interplay of morphological case marking, argument serialization, and animacy provides linguistic cues for the processing system to rapidly identify the thematic roles of the arguments. The present event-related brain potential (ERP) study investigates on-line brain responses during argument identification in Zurich German, a High Alemannic dialect, and in Fering, a North Frisian variety, which both exhibit reduced case systems as compared to Standard German. Like Standard German, Zurich German and Fering are Continental West Germanic varieties, and indeed argument processing in sentences with an object-before-subject order engenders a qualitatively similar ERP pattern of a scrambling negativity followed by a P600 in all tested varieties. However, the P600 component—a late positive ERP response, which has been linked to the categorization of task-relevant stimuli—is selectively affected by the most prominent cue for argument identification in each variety, which is case marking in Standard German, but animacy in Zurich German and Fering. Thus, even closely related varieties may employ different processing strategies based on the language-specific availability of syntactic and semantic cues for argument identification.*

The preference for bimoraic stressed syllables in pre-Old High German necessitated the phonological restructuring of syllables with stressed, short vowels either by early implementation of open syllable lengthening (non-shifting dialects north of the Benrath line) or by triggering an autochthonous phonological shift of +t, +p, +k after short vowels (shifting dialects). From there, the OHG dialects “progressed” though the rest of the shift in a largely parallel fashion. Asymmetry of the shift of +-p and +-k and geminate +-pp and +-kk was caused by place bias, however, especially in the Rhenish dialects where tone accents could sometimes delay or block the shift of these segments. The greater susceptibility of the more marked labial and velar affricates (-pf- and −kx-) to weakening limited their later occurrence to dialects outside the Rhineland. The reanalysis of aspirated +t- [th], +p- [ph], +k- [kh] as affricates in initial position was possible only when the corresponding geminate had already shifted, exemplifying both the effects of place bias as well as a kind of phonological reanalysis Blevins (2004) calls “choice.”

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).*

The article deals with segmentation and stress in early Germanic. An attempt is made to isolate minimal prosodic units of Germanic, not traditional syllables. These units are then analyzed in terms of morae and phonemes. Alternations by the Akzentumsprung and Verner's law are interpreted as indicating that early Germanic had sentence rather than word stress.

Evidence suggests that Germanic languages resisted the spread of historical umlaut processes. We propose that examples of such superficially varied umlautless residues all yield to a single coherent phonological account. Specifically, these vocalic assimilations show strong preferences for reducing more extreme differences in place of articulation between trigger and target while failing to assimilate articulatorily closer vowels, so that triggering /i, j/ first and most consistently mutated /a/ and last and least consistently mutated /u(:)/. This vocalic cline interacts with the consonantal material intervening between trigger and target, so that obstruent clusters (especially velar or labial) are prone to inhibit umlaut. In both cases, the smaller the phonetic difference between target and trigger, the less likely umlaut is to occur. While umlaut failure has long been consigned to the margins of theories of umlaut, we argue that it is crucial, providing a snapshot of how umlaut unfolded across western and north Germanic.

The paradigm of some possessive pronouns, adjectives, and some other modifiers in Gothic contains an instance of morphological variation in the neuter nominative and accusative singular, where the bare stem of the modifier alternates with the pronominally inflected form in -ata (for example, jugg versus juggata ‘young’). In an effort to account for this morphological variation, this paper examines the evidence for the competition between the bare stem and inflected forms in -ata attested in the Gothic New Testament. Further, it assesses the synchronic and diachronic implications of the variation with a view to gaining a better understanding of the development of the Germanic strong modifier inflection. It demonstrates that -ata is a stylistically charged form observed in specific contexts and grammatical environments. From a diachronic point of view, the evidence of -ata sheds light on the development of the Germanic strong modifier inflection, pointing toward a lexical diffusion-type development, with the inflection of demonstrative pronouns spreading across the lexicon of modifiers through possessive pronouns and quantifiers to adjectives and participles.*

Resultatives in English and Dutch have developed special degree readings. These readings stem from a reinterpretation of the resultative predicate as indicating a high degree rather than an actual result. For example, when a parent says I love you to death, one need not call the cops, since the sentence is not about love turning lethal, but merely indicative of a high degree of affection. Such cases have often been noted in the literature as idiomatic, but this view ignores the fact that these are not isolated cases but productive constructions that can be used with a variety of verbs. We explore various resultative constructions in English and Dutch, and give a classification of the subtypes involved as well as their diachronic development from ordinary to degree interpretation. We link these subtypes to lexical semantic classes of verbs. Both English and Dutch show a steady growth in the lexical and structural diversity of degree resultatives throughout the early modern and contemporary periods (1600-2000). We focus in our paper on the period 1800-2000, for which we did an extensive corpus study using the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) and Delpher (a collection of digitized Dutch newspapers, journals, magazines, and other resources). One of our findings is that, similar to other types of expressive language, such as degree modification and emphatic negation, taboo expressions play a role in degree resultatives; in fact, their role is excessive. We outline a number of the commonalities among the semantic domains of expressive language used in resultatives.

This paper pursues an “ingenerate” or phonetically based account of i-umlaut as it unfolded in North Germanic. We focus on a famous problem relating to umlaut distributions in i-stem nouns: In the long stems of that class (gestr ‘guest’, from earlier *gastiz), where umlaut is arguably less motivated phonetically, it is generally reflected throughout the paradigms, but in short stems (staðr ‘place’, from earlier *staðir), where it is more expected, umlaut is generally absent. A central feature of our understanding of these and other Norse facts is the interleaving of processes of sound change and analogy, the latter of which, by an assumption validated elsewhere, comes into play only under extraordinary circumstances. In contrast to previous work on the conundrum of umlaut in Old Norse, we situate this account in the context of umlaut as a general phenomenon, with parallels in development to that of its West Germanic sisters.Besides many members of the audience at the XVIth International Conference on Historical Linguistics (Copenhagen, August 2003), where a preliminary version of this paper was presented, we thank two anonymous readers for this journal and the following colleagues for their comments and discussion: Anthony Buccini, Rob Howell, Monica Macaulay, Richard Page, Michael Schulte, J. C. Smith, as well as Laura Catharine Smith and other members of the UW Phonology Group. As may become clear in the course of the paper, these individuals do not necessarily agree with what follows; of course, any shortcomings remain our own. The translations of Danish and Norwegian quotes are likewise our own.

The present study uses variationist sociolinguistic methods to examine the intensifier system in Oslo Norwegian. Results indicate that both linguistic and social factors influence intensifier use. Predicative adjectives were intensified more frequently than attributive adjectives, women used intensifiers more frequently than men, and younger speakers had higher intensification rates than older speakers. Apparent time analyses also reveal a change in progress toward the use of skikkelig ‘proper’, a change led predominantly by young women. Although veldig ‘very’ was the most frequently used intensifier, its use decreases in apparent time, whereas skikkelig increases in frequency among younger speakers. The development of the intensifier skikkelig appears to follow a common pathway of change from adjective to manner adjunct to degree adverb, as well as from appropriateness to intensification. Comparisons with work on English, German, and Norwegian reveal several crosslinguistic tendencies about the linguistic and social conditioning of intensifiers. This study provides the first variationist sociolinguistic analysis of intensifiers in Oslo Norwegian; it provides support for several crosslinguistic claims about intensifier use; and it contributes to the visibility of variationist sociolinguistic work in the study of Norwegian variation and change.

In Early New High German the word for ‘greyhound’ was wind, but in Modern German it is Windhund. This kind of change from an original simplex to a compound is called “pleonastic compounding,” a term used as little as the topic itself is discussed in the study of word formation. In Modern German some ninety (or more) native and borrowed words from the realms of animals, plants, minerals and others have developed in this way. This essay provides the first detailed account of the pleonastic compounds in Modern German. These words are first collected and presented in conceptual groups. Further goals are to describe and categorize them morphologically; to illustrate the semantic relationship between their respective constituents by application of the concept of hyponomy, which is expanded by means of zoological taxonomy in order to deal with selected animal names; and to describe the possible causes of their formation.

Co-compounds (sometimes termed “copulative compounds”) are com-pounds whose elements are of equivalent status and which can be glossed as having coordinated meaning (usually linked by and, but occasionally, in some languages, by or). There are several distin-guishable kinds of co-compounds, including dvandvas, appositional compounds, co-participant compounds, and so on (Wälchli 2005, Bauer 2008a). These were not available in early Germanic. Accordingly, co-compounds in modern Germanic languages are innovations, and it is scarcely surprising to see that there is much agreement about the types that are available. However, this apparent unity hides a host of differ-ences across languages. This paper focuses on the differences between Danish, English, and German in the use of co-compounds.*

This paper presents the results of a corpus study of pronominal gender agreement in Middle Dutch. In present-day Dutch and in several other Germanic varieties, pronouns show semantic gender agreement that is based on the degree of individuation of the referent. Dutch pronouns show variation between this type of agreement and lexical gender agreement. This study investigates how old semantic agreement based on individuation is. In particular, it aims to answer the question of whether semantic agreement has developed in response to the change from the Germanic three-gender system to a two-gender system or dates back to before this change. The results show that agreement based on individuation already existed in Middle Dutch, when the original three-gender system was still in place. This shows that this type of agreement did not develop in response to the change from three to two nominal genders. The semantic interpretation of the genders along the lines of individuation apparently existed already and could be an old Germanic, possibly Indo-European, feature. What seems to have changed over time is the proportion of semantic to lexical agreement, as semantic agreement appears to occur more frequently in present-day Dutch than in Middle Dutch. This shift in agreement preference may be due to the loss of adnominal gender marking and the resulting reduced visibility of lexical gender in the noun phrase.

The formation of the Pennsylvania German dependent infinitive construction varies across Pennsylvania German speech communities. The use of zu to mark infinitives which do not complement modals is receding in all communities and has been replaced variably by far or far…zu. Younger nonnative speakers have grasped the (far)…zu construction as template for producing discourse. Sectarians (Amish and Mennonites) mark dependent infinitives less frequently than nonsectarians, and Amish speakers often avoid the construction by the progressive aspect. The influence of English on these developments is indirect. The loss of zu, the use of (far)…zu, and the sectarian omission of far and zu represent generalizations of different rules. The contact seems to have promoted generalization, but has influenced each group to generalize differently

This study investigates why an epistemic interpretation of modal verbs is possible only in the present or preterit, not in the perfect. Epistemic modals are argued to be predicates of propositions; they are not associated with a time variable and therefore cannot be tensed. The tense in which an epistemic modal appears is either a pleonastic tense or a tense determined by the discourse context. This analysis, unlike the analyses provided by Diewald (1993), Zifonun et al. (1997), and Wurmbrand (1998), automatically predicts the scope of temporal adverbials in sentences with modals. It also has implications for two additional issues related to the study of modal verbs: the classification of evidential modals and the grammaticalization of modals.I would like to thank a number of people for their help in various ways with this article (for serving as native informants, for providing language data and valuable references, and for helpful discussion): Susanna Bauer, Byron W. Bender, Amy Dahlstrom, Wolfgang Ertl, Gert Webelhuth, Ann S. Wilke, and Werner W. Wilke. Thanks also to anonymous JGL reviewers for their comments and suggestions on an earlier draft.

The modern history of Germanic and English (synchronic and diachronic) linguistics reveals two main types of scholarly approach to language data: positivism (labelled ‘God's truth’) and theoreticism (labelled ‘hocus-pocus’ by American structuralists). The latter seems to have been dominant in the last decade.