Article published In:
NOWELEVol. 71:1 (2018) ► pp.56–98
Verb-third in Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch
This article investigates the status of so-called verb-final declaratives in Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch, with a focus on whether clauses in which there is no apparent subordinator and the finite verb occurs later than the expected verb-first or verb-second position can be treated as verb-third (V3) clauses, as they are defined for Old High German in works such as Axel (2007) and Tomaselli (1995). Drawing on a set of 746 clauses, I argue that there is no evidence that the finite verbs in these clauses have undergone verb movement, as is claimed in the aforementioned works, nor are the asyndetic verb-late clauses with a verb in surface third position consistent with the patterns identified in the generative literature for the V3 type.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.A review of literature that deals with the V3 clause type in OHG
- 3.A clausal typology of Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch
- 3.1Determining clause type in Otfrid
- 3.2Clause types and their frequencies
- 3.2.1V1/V2 and Verb-late clauses – clauses with unambiguous left or right bracket finite verbs
- 3.2.2Ambiguous clauses
- 3.2.3Asyndetic verb-late clauses
- 4.Are there V3 clauses in Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch?
- 4.1Verb movement in V3 clauses?
- 4.2Is there a V3 clause type in Otfrid?
- 4.2.1Claim 1: Violations of verb-second in OHG are V3 and show the order XP-SubjPro-Vfin
- 4.2.2Claim 2: Pronominal subjects, pronominal objects and light adverbs are most frequently attested in V3(+) clauses, full DP/NP subjects and objects more rarely, PPs not at all
- 4.2.3Claim 3: Intervening constituents in V3 (and V4(+)?) constructions are discourse-given
- 5.Conclusions
- Notes
-
References
References
Antonsen, E.
1975 A concise grammar of the older runic inscriptions. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Bech, K.
2001 Word order patterns in Old and Middle English: A syntactic and pragmatic study. Ph.D. dissertation. University of Bergen.
Behaghel, O.
1932 Deutsche Syntax. vol. IV1. Heidelberg: Winter.
Bible Gateway, ESV Bible
Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.
[URL].
Bostock, J. K.
1976 A handbook on Old High German literature. Oxford: Clarendon.
Dal, I.
1966 Kurze deutsche Syntax auf historischer Grundlage. 3rd edn. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Dresher, E. B., Lahiri, A.
2003 Main stress left in Early Middle English. Paper presented at the 16th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. University of Copenhagen, 11th–15th August 2003.
Ebert, R. P.
1978 Historische Syntax des Deutschen. Stuttgart: Metzler.
Eggers, H.
(ed.) 1964 Der althochdeutsche Isidor. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Eggenberger, J.
1961 Das Subjektpronomen im Althochdeutschen. Ein syntaktischer Beitrag zur Frühgeschichte des deutschen Schrifttums. Grabs: Selbstverlag.
Ekerot, L.
1988 Så-konstruktionen i svenskan: konstruktionstypen “om vädret tillåter, så genomföres övingen” i funktionellt grammatiskt perspektiv. Lund: Lund.
Eythórsson, T.
1995 Verbal syntax in the early Germanic languages. Ph.D. dissertation. Cornell University.
Harbert, W.
2007 The Germanic languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hinterhölzl, R., Petrova, S.
2010 From V1 to V2 in West Germanic.
Lingua 1201. 315–328.
Hopper, P.
1975 The syntax of the simple sentence in Proto-Germanic. The Hague: Mouton.
Jaeggli, O., Safir, K.
1989 The null-subject parameter and parametric theory. In
O. Jaeggli,
K. Safir (eds.),
The null subject parameter. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Jäger, A.
2005 Negation in Old High German.
Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 241. 227–262.
Koopman, W.
1997 Another look at clitics in Old English.
Transactions of the Philological Society 951. 73–93.
Lenerz, J.
1985 Diachronic syntax: Verb position and COMP in German. In
J. Toman (ed.),
Studies in German grammar, 103–132. Dordrecht: Foris.
Lockwood, W.
1968 Historical German syntax. Oxford: Clarendon.
Magoun, F.
1943a Otfrid’s Ad Liutbertum
.
PMLA 58(4). 869–890.
Magoun, F.
1943b Otfrid’s Ad Liutbertum and OHG Tatian.
Modern Languages Notes 58(5). 357–361.
Näf, A.
1979 Die Wortstellung in Notkers Consolatio. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Petrova, S.
2006 A discourse-based approach to verb placement in Early West-Germanic. In
S. Ishihara,
M. Schmitz,
A. Schwarz (eds.),
Interdisciplinary studies on information structure (ISIS) 5, 1–32. Potsdam: Universitätsverlag.
Piper, P.
(ed.) 1884 Otfrids Evangelienbuch. II. Teil: Glossar und Abriss der Grammatik. Freiburg: Akademische Verlagsbuchhandlung.
Robinson, O. W.
1997 Clause subordination and verb placement in the Old High German ‘Isidor’ translation. Heidelberg: Winter.
Russom, G.
2001 Metrical evidence for subordinate stress in Old English.
Journal of Germanic Linguistics 131. 39–64.
Schrodt, R.
2004 Althochdeutsche Grammatik II: Syntax. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Sievers, E.
(ed.) 1961 Tatian: Lateinisch und altdeutsch mit ausführlichem Glossar. 2nd edn. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Somers, K., Dubenion-Smith, S.
2014 The intersection between syntax and meter in the Old Saxon Hêliand
.
Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 721. 83–134.
Somers Wicka, K.
2009 From phonology to syntax: Pronominal cliticization in Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Sundquist, J.
2007 Variable use of negation in Middle Low German. In
J. Salmons,
S. Dubenion-Smith (eds.),
Historical linguistics 2005: Selected papers from the 17th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Madison, 31 July–5 August 2005. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
TITUS edition of Otfrid Evangelienbuch
Last modified August 23, 2010.
[URL].
Tomaselli, A.
1995 Cases of verb-third in Old High German. In
A. Battye,
I. Roberts (eds.),
Clause structure and language change, 345–69. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Vollmann-Profe, G.
(ed.) 1987 Otfrid von Weissenburg. Evangelienbuch. Althochdeutsch/Neuhochdeutsch. Stuttgart: Reclam.
Walkden, G.
2014 Syntactic reconstruction and Proto-Germanic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wissmann, W.
1960 Zum althochdeutschen Tatian. In
W. Krause (ed.),
Indogermanica. Festschrift für Wolfgang Krause, 249–267. Heidelberg: Winter.
Wöllstein-Leisten, A., Heilmann, A., Stepan, P., Vikner, S.
1997 Deutsche Satzstruktur. Grundlagen der syntaktischen Analyse. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Wunder, D.
1965 Der Nebensatz bei Otfrid. Untersuchungen zur Syntax des deutschen Nebensatzes. Heidelberg: Winter.
Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
Petrova, Svetlana
2023.
Hauptsätze mit Verbspäterstellung im Althochdeutschen: Bestand, Distribution, Interpretation
.
Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 145:4
► pp. 515 ff.
Somers, Katerina
2021.
On the Grammaticality of Poetry: The Asyndetic Verb-Late Clause in Otfrid’sEvangelienbuch.
Journal of Germanic Linguistics 33:4
► pp. 358 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 8 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.