Complementizer agreement in eastern Wisconsin: (Central) Franconian features in an American heritage language community

Bousquette, Joshua

doi:10.1515/stuf-2014-0029

Cited by 4 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…“Do you know to whom you gave the money?” (Bousquette, , p. 567)

(4) East Franconian Is des de Mann , mit dem st du gesprochen hast? is that the manwith rel‐dat‐2sgyou spokenhave

…”

Section: C(omplementizer)‐agreementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the majority of WHG speakers with C‐agr (9 of 14 consultants, in Bousquette's study) direct lineage can be traced to first‐generation immigrants born between 1819 and 1854 in “Franconian speaking regions along the modern border regions of Germany, Luxembourg, and France: Kreis Mayen and Kreis Daun in the Eifel; Bingen am Rhein; and the Mosel region. Three additional speakers may trace their origin to the Rhineland” (Bousquette, , pp. 563–564).…”

Section: C(omplementizer)‐agreementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Inflection in 2.sg is characteristic of all C-agr varieties, and we restrict our discussion accordingly to this common ground. 8 In terms of formal linguistic analysis, C-agr involves the checking of uninterpretable phi-features (u-Phi) in the CP domain by a maximally local nominal element, for example, a subject pronoun, from which it gets interpretable phi-features (i-Phi) for person and number (Bousquette, 2014;Carstens, 2003;van Koppen, 2005;Putnam & van Koppen, 2011). 9 Historically, the innovative inflectional suffix on complementizers is derived from a reanalysis of C-oriented cliticization as an inflectional affix (Bousquette, 2014(Bousquette, , 2015Fuß, 2004Fuß, , 2005Fuß, , 2008Wratil, 2014); the analogical extension of innovative affixes specific to the Wackernagel position (i.e., second) in the left periphery of the clause (cf.…”

Section: Final Revised Version Accepted 27 April 2019mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In terms of formal linguistic analysis, C‐agr involves the checking of uninterpretable phi‐features ( u ‐Phi) in the CP domain by a maximally local nominal element, for example, a subject pronoun, from which it gets interpretable phi‐features ( i ‐Phi) for person and number (Bousquette, ; Carstens, ; van Koppen, ; Putnam & van Koppen, ).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Historically, the innovative inflectional suffix on complementizers is derived from a reanalysis of C‐oriented cliticization as an inflectional affix (Bousquette, , ; Fuß, , , ; Wratil, ); the analogical extension of innovative affixes specific to the Wackernagel position (i.e., second) in the left periphery of the clause (cf. DeVogelaer, ; Somers, ).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Redefining Language Death: Evidence From Moribund Grammars

Bousquette¹,

Putnam

2019

Language Learning

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The present work presents a critical assessment of claims in recent literature that moribund language varieties exhibit accelerated language decay, and that attrition in individual grammars has a causational relationship with language shift to the majority language. We show these claims to be unfounded. Based on two empirical points taken from moribund heritage varieties of German—complementizer agreement and the restructuring of the morphosyntactic properties of dative case—we provide evidence that (a) attrition in the form of simplification of the heritage grammar is often times minimal, especially when compared to the nonstandard input varieties (rather than to Standard German), and (b) that systematic restructuring of the grammar is a typological pattern in language contact settings. These empirical findings point toward the limited effects of attrition on particular domains of grammar systems across the lifespan.

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“…“Do you know to whom you gave the money?” (Bousquette, , p. 567)

(4) East Franconian Is des de Mann , mit dem st du gesprochen hast? is that the manwith rel‐dat‐2sgyou spokenhave

…”

Section: C(omplementizer)‐agreementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: C(omplementizer)‐agreementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Final Revised Version Accepted 27 April 2019mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Redefining Language Death: Evidence From Moribund Grammars

Bousquette¹,

Putnam

2019

Language Learning

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Variation and dynamics of “complementizer agreement” in German

Fingerhuth

Lenz

2020

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To date, there has been limited empirical research on complementizer agreement (CA). We investigate CA drawing on a corpus of 144 speakers from 13 locations across Austria that was elicited through computer supported language production experiments and recorded in conversations. We investigate the linguistic factors that govern the occurrence of CA, as well as its areal distribution. We further explore the role of CA in speakers’ linguistic repertoires. The study finds discovers that the (non-) occurrence of CA is strongly dependent on the structure of its hosting C-elements and finds regional patterns. It also identifies CA as a phenomenon which speakers place in a non-standard register. We use the collected data to test a theory of the emergence of CA from clitic pronouns for Bavarian varieties of German.

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You Take the Low Road and I’ll Take the High Road: Variation in Agreement Structure in Wisconsin Heritage German

Bousquette

2018

J. Lang. Contact

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This article presents on interviews with 10 bilingual speakers of American English and Wisconsin Heritage German (WHG), with respect to their licensing of high (NP1) versus low (NP2) agreement. In terms of linguistic typology, English copular constructions license only NP1 agreement, in which the verb agrees in person and number with the first—or syntactically high—nominal element in the clause; Standard German copular constructions license NP2 agreement with the lower nominal element in the clause (though subsequent topicalization of this element is also licit). As a second variable, a subset (7) of these speakers license complementizer agreement (C-agr) in WHG, which obtains from a second, syntactically high agreement structure in the complementizer field, in addition to the canonical German NP2 structure. These data were compared to a control group of the remaining three WHG speakers who did not license C-agr. Data presented here suggest a bi-directional transfer of both NP1 and NP2 agreement structures for both groups of heritage language (HL) speakers. The control group produced a majority of forms consistent with both English and German language-specific grammars. Evidence of NP2 structures in the control group’s English, however, suggests that these speakers are HL-dominant—since NP2 is categorically prohibited in English. WHG speakers with C-agr, in contrast to the control group, produced a majority of NP1 forms in both languages, with the presence of C-agr being a predicting factor in the presence of NP1 agreement in the English of WHG speakers. It is here argued that the presence of C-agr in the HL is similar to the canonical NP1 structures of Standard English, allowing for overlapping licit NP1 structures in both varieties. Data from Assumed Identify Constructions (AICs) suggests that canonical NP2 agreement in C-agr WHG may have been weakened as a result. This research suggests that even superficially English-like grammar may obtain not from a direct transfer from the L2 into the HL, but rather from the interaction of English grammar with the autochthonous grammatical structures of non-standard HLs.

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Complementizer agreement in eastern Wisconsin: (Central) Franconian features in an American heritage language community

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Redefining Language Death: Evidence From Moribund Grammars

Redefining Language Death: Evidence From Moribund Grammars

Variation and dynamics of “complementizer agreement” in German

You Take the Low Road and I’ll Take the High Road: Variation in Agreement Structure in Wisconsin Heritage German

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