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Article published In:
Linguistic Variation
Vol. 21:2 (2021) ► pp.322–369

Variation and dynamics of “complementizer agreement” in German

Analyses from the Austrian language area

| University of Vienna
| University of Vienna

To date, there has been limited empirical research on complementizer agreement (CA). We investigate CA drawing on a corpus of 144 speakers from 13 locations across Austria that was elicited through computer supported language production experiments and recorded in conversations. We investigate the linguistic factors that govern the occurrence of CA, as well as its areal distribution. We further explore the role of CA in speakers’ linguistic repertoires. The study finds evidence for the hypothesis that the (non-)occurrence of CA is strongly dependent on the structure of its hosting C-elements and finds regional patterns. It also identifies CA as a phenomenon which speakers place in a non-standard register. We use the collected data to test a theory of the emergence of CA from clitic pronouns for Bavarian varieties of German.

Keywords: complementizer agreement, morphology, syntax, grammaticalization, dialectology, linguistic repertoires, methodology, experimental linguistics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Research on complementizer agreement in German
    • 2.1State of research
    • 2.2CA: Explanations and emergence
  • 3.Analyses of complementizer agreement in Austria
    • 3.1Larger project context
    • 3.2Data elicitation: Language production experiments (LPEs)
    • 3.3Analyses of experimental data: CA-variation in Austria
      • 3.3.1Linguistic factors
      • 3.3.2Situational factors
      • 3.3.3Areal factors
    • 3.4Analyses on ‘natural data’: CA variation in “conversations among friends”
    • 3.5The emergence of CA paradigms in Austrian varieties of German
  • 4.Summary and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 6 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.00014.fin
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