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In:The Diachrony of Word Class Peripheries
Edited by Tanja Ackermann and Christian Zimmer
[Studies in Language Companion Series 238] 2025
► pp. 81–100

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Chapter 4
Relational adjectives as a phantom in the history of German?

A contrastive corpus study of Old and early New High German

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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

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Published online: 7 November 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.238.04wer
Abstract
Relational adjectives (such as kindliches Spielen ‘children’s playing’) are a frequent phenomenon of present-day German. In contrast to the historical development of qualitative adjectives denoting properties (as in mutige Katze ‘brave cat’, lustige Geschichte ‘funny story’), the focus of research on relational adjectives so far was more on synchronic than on diachronic matters. This is why relational adjectives are considered a phantom in the history of German. In the theoretical literature, relational adjectives constitute an adjectival subclass which can be subdivided into thematic (i.e., argument-based) vs. non-thematic adjectives. This chapter presents historical corpus data by comparing Old vs. early New High German. It is shown that a subtype of relational adjectives, namely so-called thematic (i.e., argument structure based) adjectives, is not systematically attested at the earlier language stage but it has developed historically. This is shown by a comparison of corpus data from early New High German. The result nicely shows for the first time that a language change has taken place in the history of German, where morphology and syntax are intertwined and in which relational-thematic adjectives based on argument structure combine with productively derived nominals. In the determination of POS, the results show that also peripheral members of POS need to be emerged in a specific way, here, by an interplay of derivational markers between the adjectival and nominal domain.
Article outline
  • 1.Part of speech systems and their peripheries
  • 2.Relational adjectives in German as “peripheral adjectives”
  • 3.Relational adjectives in the history of German: A phantom?
  • 4.On the diachronic investigation of relational adjectives
  • 5.In search of language change: OHG vs. early NHG
  • 6.Conclusion and further research
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • References
References (44)
Sources
ReA corpus = Referenzkorpus Altdeutsch [Reference Corpus Old German]. URL: [URL] (15/02/2023).
GermanC corpus = Historical Corpus of German Newspapers 1650–1800. URL: [URL] (15/02/2023).
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Hübener, Carlotta J.
2025. German noun-participle combinations as peripheral adjectives. In The Diachrony of Word Class Peripheries [Studies in Language Companion Series, 238], ► pp. 101 ff. DOI logo
Paul, Katharina & Marco Coniglio
2025. Adjectival adverbs or adverbial adjectives?. In The Diachrony of Word Class Peripheries [Studies in Language Companion Series, 238], ► pp. 60 ff. DOI logo

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