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Aspectual Verbs in German: A Diachronic View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2025

Ilaria De Cesare Open the ORCID record for Ilaria De Cesare [Opens in a new window]  and
Ulrike Demske Open the ORCID record for Ulrike Demske [Opens in a new window]
Ilaria De Cesare*
Affiliation:
Institut für Germanistik, Universität Potsdam, Germany
Ulrike Demske
Affiliation:
Institut für Germanistik, Universität Potsdam, Germany
*
Corresponding author: Ilaria De Cesare; Email: ilaria.de.cesare@uni-potsdam.de
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Abstract

Aspectual verbs with infinitival complements are often considered ambiguous when it comes to the question of whether they should be classified as raising or control verbs. In present-day German, argument structure properties seem to favor a raising analysis, but arguments for a control analysis cannot be dismissed. Word order properties do not provide conclusive evidence either and seem to support the ambiguity of aspectual verbs in present-day German. However, new diachronic evidence on word order properties of infinitival complements in uncontested raising and control constructions shows that well-established word order differences between raising and control constructions are a fairly recent development in the history of infinitival constructions (De Cesare 2021): Until about the mid eighteenth century, infinitival complements of both raising and control verbs tend to precede the finite verb in final position, with the preference of control verbs for extraposition developing only later. In present-day German, the extraposition of infinitival complements is considered a strong criterion for the sentential nature of the postposed infinitive and thus of the biclausal structure of the infinitival pattern, at least since the influential work of Bech (1983). In the present article, we look into the word order properties of ingressive aspectualizers over time and evaluate them against the emergence of a systematic distinction of raising and control verbs in the recent history of German, aiming at a deeper understanding of the syntactic behavior of aspectual verbs in present-day German.

Keywords

aspectualsraisingcontrolrestructuringword orderGermandiachronic view

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Articles
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Journal of Germanic Linguistics , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , June 2025 , pp. 163 - 189
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© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Society for Germanic Linguistics

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