Synchrony and diachrony of verb clusters in Pennsylvania Dutch

Louden, Mark L.

doi:10.1075/slcs.123.08lou

Part of

Studies on German-Language Islands
Edited by Michael T. Putnam
[Studies in Language Companion Series 123] 2011
► pp. 165–186

Synchrony and diachrony of verb clusters in Pennsylvania Dutch

Mark L. Louden | University of Wisconsin-Madison

This paper presents the major synchronic facts about verb clusters in modern Pennsylvania Dutch (Pennsylvania German) and indicates how they have developed historically. Although Pennsylvania Dutch is descended from primarily Palatine German dialects, the behavior of verb clusters in the modern language is distinct from what is found in European German dialects. Focusing on three- and four-verb clusters in subordinate clauses, it is observed that Pennsylvania Dutch observes a strict rule whereby a maximum of one lexical verb may occur within a clause; additional lexical verbs are located to the right of the clause periphery. The analysis presumes that non-lexical verbs in verb clusters, specifically the finite auxiliary hawwe 'have' and a non-finite modal, form a single syntactic unit.

Published online: 31 January 2011

https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.123.08lou

Cited by

Cited by 5 other publications

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Abels, Klaus

2016. The fundamental left–right asymmetry in the Germanic verb cluster. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 19:3 ► pp. 179 ff.

Brown, Joshua R.

2019. Civil War writings of the Pennsylvania Dutch. Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics 5:2

Flores, Cristina, Esther Rinke & Claudia Wagner

2022. To hón ich imma insistieat. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 12:3 ► pp. 251 ff.

Hopp, Holger & Michael T. Putnam

2015. Syntactic restructuring in heritage grammars. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 5:2 ► pp. 180 ff.

Salzmann, Martin

2019. On the limits of variation in Continental West-Germanic verb clusters: evidence from VP-stranding, extraposition and displaced morphology for the existence of clusters with 213 order. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 22:1 ► pp. 55 ff.

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