Article published in:
Studies on German-Language IslandsEdited by Michael T. Putnam
[Studies in Language Companion Series 123] 2011
► pp. 385–412
From preposition to purposive to infinitival marker
The Pennsylvania German fer…zu construction
Kersti Börjars | The University of Manchester
Kate Burridge | Monash University
The development from an allative preposition to a purposive marker to an infinitival marker is a common one cross-linguistically. In this paper, we look in some detail at this change in Pennsylvania German. We demonstrate that fer has completed this change in that it now occurs in a full range of complements. It has gone paired with a loss of the original infinitival marker zu. Functionally, the element has undergone a drastic change and given the loss of zu, one might expect that there would be equally far-reaching structural changes. The standard account of this type of change is one of reanalysis, but in this paper, we argue that the change is likely not to have involved reanalysis. Key words: Allative; grammaticalization; infinitival marker; Lexical-Functional Grammar; Pennsylvania German; purposive; reanalysis
Published online: 31 January 2011
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.123.15bor
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.123.15bor
Cited by
Cited by 3 other publications
Burridge, Kate
Burridge, Kate & Simon Musgrave
Börjars, Kersti, Nigel Vincent & George Walkden
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