LINGUIST List 17.2382
Thu Aug 24 2006
Diss: Historical Ling/Syntax: Sapp: 'Verb Order in Subordinate Clau...'
Editor for this issue: Hannah Morales
<hannahlinguistlist.org>
Directory
1. Christopher
Sapp,
Verb Order in Subordinate Clauses from Early New High German to Modern German
Message 1: Verb Order in Subordinate Clauses from Early New High German to Modern German
Date: 24-Aug-2006
From: Christopher Sapp <csappolemiss.edu>
Subject: Verb Order in Subordinate Clauses from Early New High German to Modern German
Institution: Indiana University
Program: Department of Germanic Studies
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2006
Author: Christopher D. Sapp
Dissertation Title: Verb Order in Subordinate Clauses from Early New High German to Modern German
Dissertation URL: http://home.olemiss.edu/~csapp/research.html
Linguistic Field(s):
Historical Linguistics
Syntax
Subject Language(s): German, Standard (deu)
Dissertation Director:
Kari Ellen Gade
Rex A. Sprouse
Barbara Vance
Dissertation Abstract:
This dissertation investigates the change from the nearly free relativeorder of verbs in subordinate clauses in Early New High German (1350-1650)to the more fixed order of Modern Standard German. Chapter 2 presents acorpus study of nearly 3,000 subordinate clauses from 30 texts from a broadrange of dialects from the 14th to the 16th century, the most comprehensiveoverview of ENHG verb clusters to date. Several factors that influenceverb order are identified: syntagm type, prefix type, extraposition, focus,and sociolinguistic factors. Chapter 3 breaks this data down by dialectand individual text, showing that most of these factors have similareffects across the dialects and tracing the decline of particular ordersand favoring factors over time. Chapter 4 examines these orders incontemporary German, concentrating on the effect of focus on verb order. Asurvey with speakers of Austrian dialects and Swabian shows that althoughthe Standard German orders are preferred, the non-standard orders may occurunder the appropriate focus conditions. A magnitude estimation experimentdemonstrates that variation in the Standard German werden-modal-infinitiveconstruction is also sensitive to focus. In Chapter 5, the data from theprevious chapters are used to demonstrate that the more traditional SOVapproach to the structure of German is slightly preferable to the SVOhypothesis and that non-SOV surface orders are derived by rightwardmovement. Additionally, a principle is proposed to account for therelationship between focus and word order: a non-normal word orderindicates a marked focus interpretation. Chapter 6 discusses theimplications of this research for the history of the German language andfor language change in general.
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