Article published in:
Continuity and Change in GrammarEdited by Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas, Sheila Watts and David Willis
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 159] 2010
► pp. 13–34
What changed where?
A plea for the re-evaluation of dialectal evidence
Katrin Axel-Tober | University of Göttingen
Helmut Weiß | Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt-am-Main
In the field of generative diachronic syntax, it has often been disregarded at which level of the language (dialect or Standard) syntactic change has occurred. However, just as in the case of phonological developments, the syntax often (though not always) turns out to be more conservative at the dialectal level. In this article we will present four cases studies on the syntax of German: the diachrony of pro drop (null subjects), of negative concord, of possessive constructions and of word-order changes in the verbal cluster. Our plea for taking into account dialect data in historical linguistics converges with the growing significance dialects and dialectal data have gained within theoretical linguistics.
Published online: 29 July 2010
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.159.01axe
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.159.01axe
Cited by
Cited by 3 other publications
Larrivée, Pierre
Somers, Katerina, Mary Allison, Matthew Boutilier & Robert Howell
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