Cover not available
Part of
Morphological Variation: Theoretical and empirical perspectives
Edited by Antje Dammel and Oliver Schallert
[Studies in Language Companion Series 207] 2019
► pp. 283–310

Variation in non-finiteness and temporality from a canonical perspective

| LMU München
In this paper, I take widely varying data on the occurrence and acceptability of overt future infinitives in German as evidence for their current emergence. Such a change, however, seems to conflict with a (tentative) prediction from Canonical Typology: Temporally marked infinitives are less canonical than temporally unmarked ones but change is expected to lead to the more canonical. The aim of the contribution is to save the prediction by bringing the canonical notion of non-finiteness closer to the original core of this framework.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology and data discussion
    • 2.1Finiteness in German
    • 2.2Variation in German (non-)finiteness
  • 3.Theoretical framework
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Abbreviations
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Corpora
  • References
Published online: 27 June 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.207.10rei
References

Corpora

Used

WebCorp Live
[URL] (last accessed for this study on 4 November 2014).
DeReKo = Deutsches Referenzkorpus
(‘German reference corpus’) [URL] (last accessed for this study on 4 November 2014).

Mentioned

DWDS = Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache
Digital dictionary of the German language’) [URL]
DTA = Deutsches Textarchiv
German text archive’) [URL]
Abraham, Werner
2001 Modals. Towards explaining the ‘epistemic non-finiteness gap’. In Modalität und Modalverben im Deutschen [Linguistische Berichte Sonderheft 9], Reimar Müller & Marga Reis (eds), 7–36. Hamburg: Buske.Google Scholar
2004 The grammaticalization of the infinitival preposition. Toward a theory of ‘grammaticalizing reanalysis’. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 7(2): 111–170. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017 Modalpartikel und Mirativeffekte. In Grammatische Funktionen aus Sicht der japanischen und deutschen Germanistik [Linguistische Berichte Sonderheft 24], Shin Tanaka, Elisabeth Leiss, Werner Abraham & Yasuhiro Fujinawa (eds), 75–107. Hamburg: Buske.Google Scholar
Bond, Oliver
2013 A base for canonical negation. In Brown et al. (eds), 20–47.Google Scholar
Brown, Dunstan, Chumakina, Marina, Corbett, Greville G., Popova, Gergana & Spencer, Andrew
2012 Defining ‘periphrasis’. Key notions. Morphology 22(2): 233–275. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, Dunstan, Chumakina, Marina & Corbett, Greville G.
(eds) 2013 Canonical Morphology and Syntax. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan L.
2003 Tense. Definition. International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Vol. 4, 2nd edn, William J. Frawley (ed.), 223–224. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Corbett, Greville G.
2011 The penumbra of morphosyntactic feature systems. Morphology 21(2): 445–480. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 Features. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Diewald, Gabriele & Smirnova, Elena
2010  Evidentiality in German. Linguistic Realization and Regularities in Grammaticalization [Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 228]. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dowty, David R.
1991 Word Meaning and Montague Grammar. The Semantics of Verbs and Times in Generative Semantics and in Montague’s PTQ [Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy 7]. Dordrecht: Kluwer. (Reprint from 1979).Google Scholar
Eide, Kristin M.
2016 Introduction. In Finiteness Matters. On Finiteness-related Phenomena in Natural Languages [Linguistics Today 231], Kristin M. Eide (ed.), 1–44. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fabricius-Hansen, Cathrine
1999 “Moody time”. Indikativ und Konjunktiv im deutschen Tempussystem. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 29(1): 119–146. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fortescue, Michael
1984 West Greenlandic. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Gaeta, Livio
2013 Multiple sources for the German scandal construction. Studies in Language 37(3): 566–598. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Givón, Talmy
1990 Syntax. A Functional-typological Introduction 2 Vols. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Harris, Alice C. & Campbell, Lyle
1995 Historical Syntax in Cross-linguistic Perspective [Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 74]. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Helbig, Gerhard & Buscha, Joachim
2001 Deutsche Grammatik. Ein Handbuch für den Ausländerunterricht. Berlin: Langenscheidt.Google Scholar
Holmberg, Anders
2015 Verb second. In Syntax. Theory and Analysis [Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft 42.2], Tibor Kiss & Artemis Alexiadou (eds), 342–383. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Iatridou, Sabine
2000 The grammatical ingredients of counterfactuality. Linguistic Inquiry 31(2): 231–270. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klein, Wolfgang
1994 Time in Language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
1998 Assertion and finiteness. In Issues in the Theory of Language Acquisition. Essays in Honor of Jürgen Weissenborn, Norbert Dittmar & Zvi Penner (eds), 225–245. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
2008 The topic situation. In Empirische Forschung und Theoriebildung. Beiträge aus Soziolinguistik, Gesprochene-Sprache- und Zweitspracherwerbsforschung; Festschrift für Norbert Dittmar zum 65. Geburtstag, Bernt Ahrenholz, Ursula Bredel, Wolfgang Klein, Martina Rost-Roth & Romuald Skiba (eds), 287–305. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria
1993 Finiteness. In The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol. 3, Ronald E. Asher (ed.), 1245–1248. Oxford: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Maienborn, Claudia
2003 Die logische Form von Kopula-Sätzen [Studia Grammatica 56]. Berlin: Akademie. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martin, Roger
2001 Null Case and the Distribution of PRO. Linguistic Inquiry 32(1): 141–166. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mithun, Marianne
1999 The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Müller, Stefan
2018 Grammatical Theory. From Transformational Grammar to Constraint-based Approaches, 2nd edn [Textbooks in Language Sciences 1]. Berlin: Language Science Press. [URL]Google Scholar
Myers, James
2009 Syntactic judgment experiments. Language and Linguistics Compass 3(1): 406–423. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nikolaeva, Irina
2007 Introduction. In Finiteness. Theoretical and Empirical Foundations, Irina Nikolaeva (ed.), 1–19. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
2013 Unpacking finiteness. In Brown et al. (eds), 20–47.Google Scholar
Palmer, Frank R.
2001 Mood and Modality, 2nd edn. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pinkster, Harm
2015 The Oxford Latin Syntax, Vol. 1: The Simple Clause. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reiner, Tabea
2015 An emerging future infinitive in present day German? De Gruyter Open Linguistics 1: 503–518.Google Scholar
2017  ??…sehen werden kann. Ergebnisse einer Korpusstudie. Sprachwissenschaft 42(2): 191–202.Google Scholar
2018 Existiert ein Infinitiv Posterior im Gegenwartsdeutschen? Habilitation thesis, LMU Munich. Supplement: [URL]
Reis, Marga
2001 Bilden Modalverben im Deutschen eine syntaktische Klasse? In Modalität und Modalverben im Deutschen [Linguistische Berichte. Sonderheft 9], Reimar Müller & Marga Reis (eds), 287–318. Hamburg: Buske.Google Scholar
Rothstein, Björn
2013 Belege mit doppeltem Futur im Deutschen? Ergebnisse einer Internetrecherche. Sprachwissenschaft 38(1): 101–119.Google Scholar
Schallert, Oliver
To appear. A note on misplaced or wrongly attached zu ‘to’ in German. Journal of Germanic Linguistics.
Seiler, Guido
2015 Syntactization, analogy and the distinction between proximate and evolutionary causations. In Variation in Language. System- and Usage-based Approaches [Linguae & Litterae 50], Aria Adli, Marco García García & Göz Kaufmann (eds), 239–264. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stirling, Lesley
2006 Switch-reference. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Vol. 12, 2nd edn, Keith Brown (ed.), 316–323. Amsterdam: Elsevier. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thieroff, Rolf
1992 Das finite Verb im Deutschen. Tempus - Modus - Distanz [Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 40]. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Vater, Heinz
1975 Werden als Modalverb. In Aspekte der Modalität [Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 1], Joseph P. Calbert & Heinz Vater (eds), 71–148. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Zeller, Jochen
1994 Die Syntax des Tempus. Zur strukturellen Repräsentation temporaler Ausdrücke. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zifonun, Gisela, Hoffmann, Ludger & Strecker, Bruno
1997 Grammatik der deutschen Sprache [Schriften des Instituts für Deutsche Sprache 7]. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Reiner, Tabea
2021. Comparative concepts are not a different kind of thing. In Linguistic Categories, Language Description and Linguistic Typology [Typological Studies in Language, 132], ► pp. 211 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 november 2023. 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.