TY  - JOUR
U1  - Zeitschriftenartikel, wissenschaftlich - begutachtet (reviewed)
A1  - Klein, Andreas
A1  - Kopf, Kristin
T1  - Der s-Plural im Alemannischen. (K)ein Fremdkörper?
JF  - Linguistik online. Alemannische Dialektologie – Forschungsstand und Perspektiven. Sonderheft
N2  - It is commonly agreed that the plural -s has become a part of Standard German inflection, yet in dialects such as Alemannic it is often seen as an intruder. We challenge this view based on data from a written survey amongst speakers of Swiss German dialects. Our analysis of pluralised loanwords (e.g. Mango) and abbreviations (e.g. WG ‘flat share’) shows a strong effect of both speakers’ age and grammatical gender that points towards a progressive integration of the plural -s into the dialectal system.While masculine and neuter nouns can express number syntagmatically (using articles that differ in singular and plural), feminine nouns rely heavily on suffixes (as the definite article is d’in both cases). A comparison of the -s plural with traditional dialectal plurals shows clear advantages for -s plurals in both cue strength (output) and scope (input) of the plural schema. We argue that it is  due  to  this  that  feminine  nouns  show  a  significantly  higher  percentage  of -s plurals compared with masculine and neuter nouns in speakers aged 25 and above. The difference disappears for younger speakers while the overall number of -s plurals increases drastically. Combined, we have an apparent time scenario that shows how the -s plural is first borrowed with nouns that rely on overt plural markers, and later spreads to most loans and other words with non-native structure.
KW  - Alemannisch
KW  - Mundart
KW  - Plural
Y1  - 2019
UN  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-93882
SN  - 1615-3014
SS  - 1615-3014
U6  - https://doi.org/10.13092/lo.98.5928
DO  - https://doi.org/10.13092/lo.98.5928
VL  - 98
IS  - 5
SP  - 31
EP  - 49
PB  - Bern Open Publishing
CY  - Bern
ER  -