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The syntactic rules of today's High German are generally thought to have crystallized during the 18th century. One can therefore expect that during that time the processes of grammaticalization had a particular influence on doubtful cases in the usage of language. The syntactic development varied from region to region and was accompanied by theoretical controversies. One of the controversial issues was word order. The debates focused primarily on the order in verbal complexes and on the possibility of extraposing simple components and dependent clauses. This paper is based on the assumption that the theoretical controversies in some way reflected the doubtful cases in the usage of language. In order to identify the actual variants, the theoretical controversies will be outlined first. Then the analysis will focus on whether and how these variants were used in a corpus of 18th century texts. The objective is to determine the language-internal, sociological, and geographical factors of the variants' usage and thus to model the situations in which the doubtful cases ocurred. In conclusion, the following issues will be discussed: the relationship between the doubtful cases and diachronic language developments, the language-external factors of the doubtful cases, and the approach of language theorists to doubtful cases.
The variation of the strong genitive marker of the singular noun has been treated by diverse accounts. Still there is a consensus that it is to a large extent systematic but can be approached appropriately only if many heterogeneous factors are taken into account. Over thirty variables influencing this variation have been proposed. However, it is actually unclear how effective they can be, and above all, how they interact. In this paper, the potential influencing variables are evaluated statistically in a machine learning approach and modelled in decision trees in order to predict the genitive marking variants. Working with decision trees based exclusively on statistically significant data enables us to determine what combination of factors is decisive in the choice of a marking variant of a given noun. Consequently the variation factors can be assessed with respect to their explanatory power for corpus data and put in a hierarchized order.
Among the German negative-conditional connectors in the range of consequens markers there are the prototypical cases sonst and ansonsten. Morphological alternatives (sonsten and ansonst) are rarely mentioned in contemporary grammars and dictionaries but they actually occur with considerable frequency. The four connectors are used in two functions: as a conjunctional adverb which can occupy various positions within the sentence or as a specific kind of subordinating conjunction (Postponierer). The large IDS corpora allow us to reveal specific distributions of the lexemes and of their different ways of use. Comparing the frequencies and the distributions can indicate to which extent the phenomena are part of the standard language. The paper will report on the results and demonstrate how the findings can be deduced from the corpora. It will draw conclusions for assessing the acceptability of the variants and the extent to which they can be considered standard language additionally testing statistical instruments to visualise and calculate the variance of phenomena as association plots and DPnorm.
Pizze, Pizzas oder Pizzen? Plural bei Fremdwörtern. (Aus "Grammatik in Fragen und Antworten")
(2012)
Some grammatical phenomena that only seldom appear in the corpora of written language often coincide with Speakers' uncertainty about a given form's grammatical Status. Such display of uncertainty is often subject to prescriptive criticism, which pays little attention to actual usage. However, thorough and discriminating corpus analyses can help in a proper description of various low-frequency phenomena and in situating them more adequately in the grammatical System, against the background of different contexts, communicative situations, and language varieties. To exemplify this potential, this study examines three linguistic phenomena in German, using a corpus-based approach: the dative singular ending -e, the construction aus aller Herren Länder, which lacks the dative plural ending -t and the non-standard preterite form frug. The results can be seen as a contribution to a more precise grammatical description on the one hand and, on the other, as a basis for an improved, more usage-oriented approach in providing practical advice to language users.