Cover not available

Article published In: The Evolution of Expletives: Theoretical and diachronic perspectives
Edited by Eric Fuß and Benjamin L. Sluckin
[Evolutionary Linguistic Theory 6:1/2] 2024
► pp. 122–157

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

Non-referential elements in the history of Low German

 | Bergische Universität Wuppertal
Published online: 6 March 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/elt.00056.pet
Abstract
The paper investigates the development of the system of non-referential elements in Low German from a cross-Germanic perspective. The data is taken from the currently available reference corpora, which cover the period from the beginning of the attestation in the late 9th century to 1700. The analysis of the corpus data suggests that the equivalents of the neuter pronouns it and that act as cataphoric elements already in the earliest Low German records, and that they gradually acquire additional non-referential functions, including that of an existential expletive. This contrasts with the assumed situation in the contemporary Low German varieties which, according to traditional descriptions, lack pronominal expletives comparable to German es but rather display adverbial expletives, comparable to existential there in English and er in Dutch. Examining the distributional properties of the pronominal expletive it in the history of Low German, the paper observes that this type of expletive is prototypically present in formal written registers and likely remains outside the domain of spoken, colloquial style, which is the focus of the traditional dialectal descriptions.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Typology of non-referential elements
    • 2.1Argumental status
    • 2.2Inventory
    • 2.3Distributional restrictions
  • 3.The system of non-referential elements in contemporary LG dialects
  • 4.Corpus study
    • 4.1Data and methods of corpus search
    • 4.2Results
      • 4.2.1Old Saxon
      • 4.2.2MLG
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Corpora and online tools
  • References
References (48)
Corpora and online tools
Forschungszentrum Deutscher Sprachatlas. Wenkerbogen-App. Philipps-University Marburg. [URL]
Krause, T. ANNIS4. Humboldt-University zu Berlin. [URL]
ReN-Team (2021). Reference Corpus Middle Low German/Low Rhenish (1200–1650); Referenzkorpus Mittelniederdeutsch/Niederrheinisch (1200–1650) (Version 1.1) [Data set]. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Walkden, G. (2015). HeliPaD: the Heliand Parsed Database. Version 0.9. [URL]
Zeige, L. E., Schnelle, G., Klotz, M., Donhauser, K., Gippert, J., & Lühr, R. (2022). Deutsch Diachron Digital. Referenzkorpus Altdeutsch. Humboldt-University zu Berlin. [URL].
References
Axel-Tober, K. (2018). Origins of verb-second in Old High German. In A. Jäger, G. Ferraresi & H. Weiß (Eds.), Clause Structure and Word Order in the History of German (pp. 22–46). Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bayer, J., & Suchsland, P. (1997). Expletiva und leere Subjekte im Deutschen. Groninger Arbeiten zur Germanistischen Linguistik, 411, 12–38.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Behaghel, O. (1923). Deutsche Syntax. Eine geschichtliche Darstellung. Vol. 11. Die Wortklassen und Wortformen. A. Nomen. Pronomen. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bernhardt, J. (1903). Zur Syntax der gesprochenen Sprache (Ein Versuch). Jahrbuch des Vereins für niederdeutsche Sprachforschung, 291, 1–25.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Booth, H., Breitbarth, A., Ecay, A., & Farasyn, M. (2020). A Penn-Style Treebank of Middle Low German. In N. Calzolari et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 12th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2020) (pp. 766–775). Marseille, France: European Language Resources Association.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Booth, H. (2018). Expletives and Clause Structure. Syntactic Change in Icelandic. [PhD-Thesis. The University of Manchester].
Breivik, L. E. (1989). On the causes of syntactic change in English. In L. E. Breivik & E. H. Jahr (Eds.), Language Change: Contributions to the Studies of Its Causes (pp. 29–70). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Breucker, F. (1904). Gedichte Brunos von Schonebeck. Jahrbuch des Vereins für niederdeutsche Sprachforschung, 301, 81–146.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures in Government and Binding. The Pisa Lectures. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cognola, F. (2023). Free Inversion in Old High German and Cimbrian. On the Status of tho/da as CP Expletives and Their Connection with pro-drop. Journal of Historical Syntax, 7(1), 1–63.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Elmentaler, M. (2015). Dialektaler Wandel in Schleswig-Holstein. Die wechselvolle Geschichte von et und dat. In R. Langhanke (Ed.), Sprache, Literatur, Raum. Festgabe für Willy Diercks (pp. 301–351). Bielefeld: Verlang für Regionalgeschichte.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fleischer, J. (2011). Historische Syntax des Deutschen. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fuß, E., & Hinterhölzl, R. (2023). On the Historical Development of Pronouns Referring to Situations: The Rise of Pre-Finite ‘expletives’ in German. Journal of Historical Syntax, 7(2), 1–54.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gallée, J. H. (1993). Altsächsische Grammatik: Mit Berichtigungen und Literaturnachträgen. Nach Wendelin Försters letzter Ausgabe in Auswahl bearbeitet und mit Einleitung und Glossar versehen. Berlin, New York: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grimme, H. (1910). Plattdeutsche Mundarten. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haider, H. (2010). The Syntax of German. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hartmann, J. M. (2008). Expletives in Existentials. English there and German da. [PhD-Thesis. Tilburg University].
Hinterhölzl, R., Petrova, S., & Solf, M. (2005). Diskurspragmatische Faktoren für Topikalität und Verbstellung in der althochdeutschen Tatian-Übersetzung (9. Jh.). Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS), 31, 143–182.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hinterhölzl, R. (2024). Giving Content to expletive es in German. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics, 27(2), 1–31. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Klein, T. (2000). Soziokulturelle Voraussetzungen und Sprachraumdes Altniederdeutschen (Altsächsischen). In W. Besch, A. Betten, O. Reichmann & S. Sonderegger (Eds.), Sprachgeschichte. Ein Handbuch zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und ihrer Erforschung (pp. 1241–1247). Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krause, T., & Zeldes, A. (2016). ANNIS3. A new architecture for generic corpus query and visualization. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 311. [URL].
Larsson, I. (2014). Choice of non-referential subject in existential constructions and with weather-verbs. Nordic Atlas of Language Structures (NALS) Journal, 11, 55–71.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lindow, W., Möhn, D., Niebaum, H., Stellmacher, D., Taubken, H. & Wirrer, J. (1998). Niederdeutsche Grammatik. Leer: Verlag Schuster.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lowell Sluckin, B. (2021). Non-canonical subjects and subject positions: locative inversion, V2-violations, and feature inheritance. [Doctoral dissertation, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin]. [URL]
Mayerthaler, E., & Mayerthaler, W. (1990). Aspects of Bavarian Syntax. Or ‘Every Language Has At Least Two Parents’. In J. Edmondson, A. C. Feagin & P. Mühlhäusler (Eds.), Development and Diversity. Language Variation across Time and Space. A Festschrift for Charles-James Bailey (pp. 371–429). A publication of The Summer Institute of Linguistics and The University of Texas at Arlington.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McCawley, J. D. (1998). The Syntactic Phenomena of English. Second edition. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Peters, R. (2000). Soziokulturelle Voraussetzungen und Sprachraum des Mittelniederdeutschen. In W. Besch, A. Betten, O. Reichmann & S. Sonderegger (Eds.), Sprachgeschichte. Ein Handbuch zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und ihrer Erforschung (pp. 1409–1422). Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Petrova, S. (2006). A discourse-based approach to verb placement in early West-Germanic. In Ishihara, S., M. Schmitz, & A. Schwarz (Eds.), Interdisciplinary studies on information structure (ISIS) 51 (pp. 155–182). Potsdam University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2012). Multiple XP-fronting in Middle Low German. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics, 15(2), 157–188. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pütz, H. (1986). Über die Syntax der Pronominalform es im modernen Deutsch. 2nd ed. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Richey, M. (1755). Idioticon Hambrugense oder Wörter-Buch zur Erklärung der eigenen, in und üm Hamburg gebräuchlichen Nieder-Sächsischen Mund-Art. Hamburg: Conrad König.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sasse, H.-J. (1987). The thetic/categorical distinction revisited. Lingistics, 251, 511–580. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schrodt, R. (2004). Althochdeutsche Grammatik II: Syntax. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schwabe, K. (2016). Sentential proforms and argument conditionals. In W. Frey, A. Meinunger & K. Schwabe (Eds.), Inner-sentential Propositional Proforms: Syntactic Properties and Interpretative Effects (pp. 211–240). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sievers, E. (1878). Heliand. Halle: Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sudhoff, S. (2003). Argumentsätze und es-Korrelate. Zur syntaktischen Struktur von Nebensatzeinbettungen im Deutschen. Berlin: WVB.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thies, H. (2021). Plattdeutsche Grammatik. Formen und Funktionen. Fourth edition. verlag.marless.deGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vikner, S. (1995). Verb Movement and Expletive Subjects in the Germanic Languages. Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wallmeier, N. (2012). Uneingeleitete Nebensätze mit konditionaler Semantik im Mittelniederdeutschen. In R. Langhanke, K. Berg, M. Elmentaler & J. Peters (Eds.) Niederdeutsche Syntax (pp. 32–55). Hildesheim, Zürich, New York: Olms.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Weiß, H. (1998). Syntax des Bairischen: Studien zur Grammatik einer natürlichen Sprache. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue