Language variation and the rise of genitive compounds

in Early New High German

Ulrike Demske

Fri. 9-10:40 B

1. Two assumptions concerning the actuation of language change are widely held by linguists (cf. Weinreich,Labov & Herzog 1968, Labov 1972, Bailey 1973, Coseriu 1974): (i) the introduction of a new variant is restricted to particular environments and (ii) it is adapted by a particular group of speakers and spreads through the speech community. Hence, theoretical frameworks implying the requirement of homogeneity in a speech community fail to account for language change in an appropriate way. I shall challenge this view. In the spirit of the Constant Rate Hypothesis (Kroch 1989), I argue that the rise of so-called genitive compounds in Early New High German (ENHG) is a surface effect of a language change in the underlying structure, i.e. it reflects a change in noun phrase structure, emphasizing that a distinction has to be drawn between the actuation and the transmission of language change.

2. In ENHG a new word formation pattern arises: N + N with the first noun exhibiting genitive case (Friedens-Tractaten 'peace- GEN.STRG contracts', sonnen auffgang 'sun-GEN.WK rise'). The rise of this word formation pattern is accounted for in terms of lexicalization of a syntactic structure, as (1) illustrates (cf. Pavlov 1983): The syntactic structure in (1a) with a prenominal genitive modifier is reanalyzed as a nominal compound (cf. (1b)). According to Pavlov (1983), the reanalysis is triggered by the structural ambiguity of examples like (1)

(1) a. dieser Stadt Graben 'that city moat'

what should be here?]

b. [dieser [Stadt Graben]] translation?

The rise of genitive compounds has been related to the prenominal position of the genitive modifier in ENHG and the rise of semantic and morpho-syntactic constraints affecting that position since the 15th century (cf. Wegera 1984, Pavlov 1983, Paul 1920, Wagner 1905). It is the aim of this paper to demonstrate that both changes are surface effects of a change on a more abstract level: the change of the determiner system in ENHG.

3. There are good reasons to assume a DP structure for nominal phrases in NHG (Haider 1988, Bhatt 1990, Olsen 1991) with the functional category D denoting semantic and morphological determination of the head noun (Vater 1991). Determiners, prenominal genitive modifiers and possessive pronouns are base generated in the head and the specifier position of the DP respectively; thus reflecting that they share the property to determine the head noun semantically and/or morphologically. In the history of the German language however, and still at the beginning of ENHG, empirical arguments provide strong evidence for a determiner system different from NHG: The distribution of determiners like der, die and das suggests that they determine the head noun only semantically. They do not realize the morphological AGR features as indicated for example by coordination structures where a single determiner semantically determines two nouns exhibiting different AGR features like gender or number. Further arguments include (i) the correlation between adjectival inflection features (weak or strong) and the presence of definite determiners; and (ii) cooccurrence facts of prenominal genitives with definite and indefinite determiners.

4. Quantitative evidence is provided that the rise of genitive compounds is related to the change in noun phrase structure: Depending on the context, both changes proceed at the same rate, cf. Constant Rate Hypothesis (Kroch 1989).

References

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