Main Content

Project C2 - Winner and loser forms of morpho-syntactic language change 

PI and Ko-PI: Prof. Dr. M. Cysouw und Prof. Dr. H. Fischer

Research Context

At the morphosyntactic level, language change leads to a change in the forms of expression for linguistic categories. This can also lead to a strong degradation or complete loss of morphological forms of certain categories (e.g. loss of preterite or genitive). In the transition between different forms of expression, “quasi”-synonymous constructions often arise with differences in meaning that are often difficult to define (e.g. “optional” reflexive pronouns, as in „ich schaue (mir) das Spiel an“). The complete loss of synthetic forms in morphology is often related to the conversion to analytical forms, which is preceded by a change in linguistic representations.

The dissertation project is aimed at doctoral students with interests in typology, dialectology and/or historical linguistics. The project enables the combination of corpus linguistic, dialectological, statistical and contrastive or typological research into morphosyntactic language change.

Exemplary topics

• Variation and change between case and prepositional marking of actants (e.g. „Er schreibt ihr Briefe“ vs. „Er schreibt Briefe an sie“).
• Loss of the synthetic causative in German (Urgermanic „-jan“) and the development of analytical alternatives (e.g. „lassen“+infinitive or „halten+am“+infinitive).
• Reorganization of syntactic subordination (e.g. „wo“-relative clauses or „weil“-subordination).