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In diesem Beitrag werden zunächst zwei Perspektiven auf sprachliche Variabilität diskutiert: Im Fokus stehen zum einen die Variation der Form und zum anderen die Variation der Funktion. Im Anschluss daran werden im Bereich der formalen Variation zwei Fälle eingehender untersucht: die Acl-Konstruktion mit ihren Kovarianten und die Relativsatzeinleitung mittels das oder was. Dabei wird der zuvor modellhaft entworfene methodische Rahmen auf die differenzierte Praxis linguistischer Forschung angewendet und das heuristische Potenzial des Prinzips der „Variationsreduktion“ genauer illustriert.
In the present-day Germanic languages, free relatives (FRs) share formal properties with indirect question in that both constructions are introduced by w-pronouns. However, at least in German (and historical stages of a larger set of languages, including English), there is an additional pattern which involves the use of d-pronouns such as German der/die/das ‘that.masc./fem./neut.’, which typically introduce headed relative clauses. Focusing on presentday German, this paper shows that d-FRs are set apart from w-FRs by a number of properties including syntactic distribution in the matrix clause, behavior with respect to matching effects, inventory of pronominal forms, and semantic interpretation. From these observations, it is concluded that d-FRs should not be analyzed on a par with w-FRs. More precisely, we argue that d-FRs are in fact regular headed (restrictive) relative clauses where the relative pronoun has been deleted under identity with a demonstrative antecedent. This apparent instance of syntactic haplology is then analyzed as resulting from the same mechanism that eliminates copies/traces in movement dependencies.
This paper focuses on the origin of the V2 property in the history of Germanic. Considering data from Gothic and Old English (OE), it is suggested that the historical core of the V2 phenomenon reduces to V-to-C movement that is triggered in operator contexts. Therefore, the historical system shares basic propertieswith limited V2 in Modern English. It is shown that apparent deviations from this pattern that can be observed in Gothic can be attributed to the influence of Greek word order. Concerning the apparently more elaborate V2 properties of OE, it is claimed that a large part of them in fact do not involve a Spec-head relation, but rather result from linear adjacency between the clause-initial element and a finite verb located in T0. Special attention is paid to the placement of pronominal subjects in OE, which are claimed to occupy SpecTP. This contrasts with a lower position of full subjects due to the absence of an EPP in OE. Finally, the loss of superficial V2 orders in the Middle English period is attributed to the development of an EPP feature in T.