Open Access

Thilo Weber, Sandra Hansen

• The present corpus-study investigates fluctuations between the so called “weak” and “strong” nominal inflection classes in German. Corroborating previous studies (Köpcke 1995, Schäfer 2019), we show that the tendency for traditionally weak masculine nouns to join the strong pattern is strongest for nouns displaying phonotactic and semantic properties that are atypical of weak nouns. Conversely, we show that among strong masculine nouns attested in a weak form at least once, nouns with phonotactic and semantic properties typical of weak nouns are overrepresented compared to masculine nouns not attested in weak forms. Using logistic regression, we show, among other things, that non-canonical forms are more likely to occur in informal texts (represented by internet forum discussions) than in (more formal) newspaper texts. While this is fully expected for the traditionally weak nouns, where the use of the non-canonical (strong) forms involves a loss of case suffixes (viz. the loss of -(e) n in the accusative and dative singular), it is perhaps more noteworthy with respect to the traditionally strong nouns, where, conversely, the use of the non-canonical (weak) forms leads to additional case morphology. Moreover, we find that the shift from strong to weak differs from the shift from weak to strong with respect to grammatical case (accusative / dative vs. genitive). We propose that is connected to the status of the genitive as a marker of formal / written style.