Variation and Dynamics of „Complementizer Agreement“ in German. Analyses from the Austrian language area

Matthias Fingerhuth, Alexandra Lenz

Publications: Contribution to journalArticlePeer Reviewed

Abstract

To date, there has been limited empirical research on complementizer agreement (CA). We investigate CA drawing on a corpus of 144 speakers from 13 locations across Austria that was elicited through computer supported language production experiments and recorded in conversations. We investigate the linguistic factors that govern the occurrence of CA, as well as its areal distribution. We further explore the role of CA in speakers' linguistic repertoires. The study finds evidence for the hypothesis that the (non-)occurrence of CA is strongly dependent on the structure of its hosting C-elements and finds regional patterns. It also identifies CA as a phenomenon which speakers place in a non-standard register. We use the collected data to test a theory of the emergence of CA from clitic pronouns for Bavarian varieties of German.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)322-369
Number of pages48
JournalLinguistic Variation
Volume21
Issue number2
Early online date6 Aug 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2021

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

  • 602014 German studies

Keywords

  • complementizer agreement
  • dialectology
  • experimental linguistics
  • grammaticalization
  • linguistic repertoires
  • methodology
  • morphology
  • syntax
  • Complementizer agreement
  • Methodology
  • Linguistic repertoires
  • Dialectology
  • Experimental linguistics
  • Morphology
  • Grammaticalization
  • Syntax

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