Variation and dynamics of “complementizer agreement” in German

Abstract

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.

Exploring syntactic variation by means of “Language Production Experiments”: Methods from and analyses on German in Austria

“…Weiß, 2005), another as “doubly-filled COMP” (subsequently referred to as DFC; cf. Bayer & Brandner, 2008; Fingerhuth & Lenz, accepted; Weiß, 2017). The LPEs in the SFB DiÖ target both phenomena, which have been rarely investigated in connection with each other (for exceptions, cf.…”

“…The LPEs in the SFB DiÖ target both phenomena, which have been rarely investigated in connection with each other (for exceptions, cf. Fingerhuth & Breuer, accepted; Fingerhuth & Lenz, accepted; Weiß & Strobel, 2018). They are illustrated in (2) by means of SFB DiÖ examples from the Austrian Bavarian dialect areas.…”

“…Regarding Austria, the phenomenon appears predominantly in the Central Bavarian dialect area and here in the 2SG and 2PL (cf. Fingerhuth & Lenz, accepted). In the 2PL, Central Bavarian varieties predominantly show the morpheme -s , but the morpheme -ts , common in Northern Bavarian, has also been documented (cf.…”

“…Larsson, 2014) over West Flemish to Alemannic and Bavarian dialects (Penner, 1993; Schallert, Dröge & Pheiff, accepted). Different factors influencing the occurrence of DFC have been discussed, including a frequent co-occurrence with stressed interrogative pronouns, as well as the occurrence in dependence on the complexity of wh -words, and animacy (Bayer & Brandner, 2008; Fingerhuth & Lenz, accepted; Schallert et al, accepted).…”

Language production experiments as tools for corpus construction: A contrastive study of complementizer agreement

“…As we will explain in further detail, CA appears to be governed by complex syntactic factors (see Fingerhuth and Lenz 2020). The study compares the responses of 22 speakers using two different elicitation techniques, both of which we understand to be language production experiments (LPE).…”