Overview
This volume presents the first comprehensive generative account of the historical syntax of German. Leading scholars in the field survey a range of topics and offer new insights into central aspects of clause structure and word order, outlining the different stages of their historical development. Each chapter combines a solid empirical basis with descriptive generalizations, supported by a detailed discussion of theoretical analyses couched in the generative framework. Reference is also made throughout to the more traditional descriptive model of the German clause. The volume is divided into three parts that correspond to the main parts of the clause. Part I explores the left periphery, looking at verb placement (verb second and competing orders), the prefield, and adverbial connectives, while Part II discusses the middle field, including pronominal syntax, the order of full NPs, and the history of negation. The final part examines the right periphery with chapters covering basic word order (OV/VO), prosodic and information-structural factors, and the verbal complex. The book will be a valuable resource for researchers and students in historical syntax and the Germanic languages, and for both descriptive and theoretical linguists alike.
Full Product Details
Author: Agnes Jager (Professor of Historical German Linguistics, Professor of Historical German Linguistics, University of Cologne) ,
Gisella Ferraresi (Professor for German Linguistics and German as a Foreign Language, Professor for German Linguistics and German as a Foreign Language, University of Bamberg) ,
Helmut Weis (Professor of Historical German Linguistics, Professor of Historical German Linguistics, University of Frankfurt)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Volume: 28
Dimensions:
Width: 16.50cm
, Height: 3.00cm
, Length: 24.20cm
Weight: 0.794kg
ISBN: 9780198813545
ISBN 10: 0198813546
Pages: 424
Publication Date: 22 March 2018
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Author Information
Agnes Jäger is Professor of Historical German Linguistics at the University of Cologne. Her research interests include diachronic syntax and its interfaces with semantics and morphology, dialectal variation, and theories of language change. She is the author of History of German Negation (Benjamins, 2008) and of Vergleichskonstruktionen im Deutschen: Diachroner Wandel und synchrone Variation (de Gruyter, 2018), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters on the topics of negation, indefinites, and comparatives, among others. She is the co-editor, with Chiara Gianollo and Doris Penka, of Language Change at the Syntax-Semantics Interface (de Gruyter, 2015). Gisella Ferraresi is Professor of German Linguistics and German as a Foreign Language at the University of Bamberg. After receiving her Ph.D in 1997 from the University of Stuttgart, she held positions at the Universities of Hamburg, Hannover, and Frankfurt am Main. She has (co-)edited several volumes on language change and language contact and is the author of three monographs and many articles on language change, grammaticalization, Gothic syntax, language contact, and second language acquisition. Her current research explores topics such as connectives, particles and clause structure, and aspectuality from a diachronic and acquisitional perspective. Helmut Weiß is Full Professor of Historical German Linguistics at the University of Frankfurt. He is one of the leading experts in the syntax of German dialects, and is co-editor, with Jürg Fleischer and Alexandra Lenz, of The Syntactic Atlas of Hessian Dialects and, with Günther Grewendorf, of Bavarian Syntax (Benjamins 2014). He is the author of Syntax des Bairischen (Niemeyer 1998) and of multiple journal articles and book chapters on subjects including complementizer agreement, negative concord, possessive constructions, and pronominal syntax.
