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In:Varieties of German in Contact Settings: Studies in honor of William D. Keel
Edited by B. Richard Page and Michael T. Putnam
[Studies in Germanic Linguistics 10] 2025
► pp. 157–184

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Chapter 8
The for … zu construction in Texas German

 | The University of Texas at Austin
 | The University of Texas at Austin
Published online: 27 November 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/sigl.10.08bo
Abstract
While Standard German uses um … zu (‘in order to’) in sentences that contain a clause with an infinitive, Texas German (TxG), a critically endangered diaspora dialect of German, employs the for … zu (‘in order to’) construction to mark infinitival clauses. This can be seen in sentences like “Nie gewusst, dass Du das Ding pushen musst for Wasser zu kriege” (‘I never knew that you had to push the thing to get water’). In this paper, we investigate possible sources of the TxG for … zu construction by discussing a range of internal and external factors, and then show how the distribution of the present-day for…zu construction in TxG can be described and analyzed using Diasystematic Construction Grammar.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Pennsylvania German fer … zu construction
  • 3.The for … zu construction in Texas German
  • 4.A constructional analysis of the TxG for…zu construction
    • 4.1Diasystematic Construction Grammar (DCxG)
    • 4.2The TxG for … zu construction in Diasystematic Construction Grammar
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
References (86)
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