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Article published In:
Journal of Historical Linguistics
Vol. 11:3 (2021) ► pp.499–533

Pre- and postnominal onymic genitives in (Early) New High German

A multifactorial analysis

| Freie Universität Berlin
This empirical study focuses on the diachrony of adnominal genitives of proper names in (Early) New High German (17th to 19th centuries), e.g., Carls Haus vs. das Haus Carls ‘Carl’s house’. Starting from the observation that word order variation exists within the whole period investigated, the study identifies determining factors for this variation and weights them in a multifactorial model of word order variation and change, the first time this has been done for German. The focus is on formal factors such as syntactic complexity, a factor that increases in importance over the observed time span. The historical data allow not only the investigation of established formal parameters but also the identification of new factors such as the type of inflectional marker (due to genitive allomorphy in older stages of German). In addition to these formal factors, genitive semantics, pragmatic information status and genre are also taken into account. Explanations for the trend towards the postnominal position of complex adnominal genitives as well as the stability of bare name possessors in the prenominal position are discussed.
Keywords: word order variation, syntax, adnominal genitive, (Early) New High German, historical corpus linguistics, multifactorial data analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Diachronic and synchronic variation between pre- and postnominal genitives in German: A brief overview
  • 3.Diachronic corpus study
    • 3.1Corpus and data
    • 3.2Monofactorial analyses
      • 3.2.1Time and genre
      • 3.2.2Syntax: Complexity
      • 3.2.3Morphology: Type of inflectional marker
      • 3.2.4Semantics: Type of genitive
      • 3.2.5Pragmatics: Information status
  • 4.Multifactorial model
  • 5.Stability of prenominal bare name possessors
  • 6.Conclusion and future studies
  • Notes
  • Corpora
  • Sources
  • References
Published online: 2 August 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.19028.ack
References (53)
Corpora
DTA = Deutsches Textarchiv <[URL]>
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