The paper presents an in-depth study of the conditions under which unaccusative verbs in German take part in the formation of so-called ADJECTIVAL PASSIVES. It provides corpus-linguistic as well as psycho-linguistic evidence arguing that combinations of sein ‘to be’ with the participle of an unaccusative verb are systematically ambiguous between a present perfect reading (with sein as auxiliary) and an adjectival reading (with sein as copula). The first part of the paper highlights the adjectival character of the construction in question. The second part presents the results of three rating studies that help unravel the pragmatic conditions that govern the adjectival conversion of unaccusatives. This leads to the conclusion that what has become known as the “adjectival passive” construction is a rather general, broadly available word formation process that is characteristically shaped and controlled by pragmatic factors.*

The movement of people and their languages on an unprecedented scale has been exerting increasing pressure on the model of the nation state and the ideal of socially and linguistically homogeneous societies. Sociolinguists analyzing recent changes in language policies and citizenship legislation have focused on the global-local interface, as well as issues of territoriality and group membership, thus connecting with cultural geographers and anthropologists who study the relationship between language and senses of place. Although frequently regarded as the domain of linguistics, language policies and practices are inseparable from issues of power and identity. Scholarly investigations have demonstrated the need to view the dynamics of language contact in relation to “external” linguistic dimensions that are central to the field of sociology, including social class, gender, and ethnicity, together with acts of compliance with or resistance to social and linguistic norms.

This paper reviews the available evidence in support of a diaglossic account (Auer 2005, 2011) of the 20th century history of Belgian and Netherlandic Dutch, whereby the national varieties of Dutch are argued to be developing towards a stratificational configuration without discrete intermediate strata between the base dialects and the standard. However, we show that the processes leading to diaglossia differ significantly in the two varieties. While the recent history of Netherlandic Dutch is characterized by downward norm relaxation (top to bottom), Belgian Dutch is characterized by bottom-up (re)standardization. Building on a refined version of Auer’s diaglossic model, we reflect on the exact nature of linguistic standardization in the Low Countries and outline scenarios for the further development of Belgian and Netherlandic Dutch.

As a complement to C. B. van Haeringen's classic comparative study (1956) that positioned the grammar of Dutch in between the grammars of English and German, this study compares the productivity of three kinds of “raising” patterns in these languages: Object-to-Subject, Subject-to-Object, and Subject-to-Subject raising. It establishes the extent to which Dutch, as well as English and German, have evolved from the old West Germanic starting point these languages are assumed to have shared in this area of grammar. The results are a test case for Hawkins' (1986) case syncretism account of the difference in “explicit-ness” between the grammars of English and German.*

In English, auxiliaries form a cohesive category—unlike main verbs, they all raise to T. In Danish, it is not so obvious that auxiliaries form such a unified category. In root clauses, all verbal elements can raise to T (and then to C), while in embedded clauses they always stay in situ. Therefore, determining the position of a verbal element in the extended verbal projection is a challenging task. We examine the Danish verbal element g⊘re ‘do’ that shows up when the verb phrase has been topicalized, elided, or pronominalized. Even though on the surface g⊘re might appear to be of category T or v, we argue that it is located right in the middle. We argue that it is an auxiliary, but, unlike other auxiliaries, g⊘re is defective because it only subcategorizes for vPs that are pronominal.*

This article seeks to explain the synchronic variation found in the second person singular inflectional ending (attested both as -s and -st) in the Old High German Evangelienbuch, while at the same time pro-viding a diachronic account of the introduction and extension of the -st ending in German. In order to achieve these goals, in my analysis I rely on the notions of cliticization and formal analogy, arguing that the innovative and original endings correlate with different syntactic environments (V1/V2 versus Vfinal), on the one hand, and different formal shapes (is versus ôs/ês), on the other. After presenting an account of the development of -st in OHG, I draw conclusions regarding the broader question of how clitics become (part of) inflection, a discussion which in turn has implications for the theories scholars use to describe and explain language change, specifically that of grammaticalization.*

This paper deals with the role of the distinction between Germans from speech islands (the so-called Volksdeutsche) and Germans from Germany (the so-called Reichsdeutsche) in conceptualizing the German community in urban Canada. First, 64 interviews with members of this community were analyzed for stretches of talk in which that distinction was made relevant. Then, a subset of these was chosen for the analysis presented here. Our analysis of these six excerpts employs both conversation analysis and positioning theory in order to show how participants draw on various aspects of place, ethnicity, and time in constructing a German space in Canada and their own ethnic identities in connection with it.*

This article explores the theory of pluricentricity from an empirical perspective. With a particular focus on the written lexicon, and using questionnaires and statistical analysis, I examine how native speakers from Austria (n=115) and Germany (n=104) rated the standardness of 36 words designated as representing either Austrian Standard German (ASG) or German Standard German (GSG). Analyses of quantitative data offer preliminary empirical support for the pluricentricity of the German language. Ultimately, my study (a) justifies the need for more extensive empirical research on perceptions of standardness among native speakers in Austria, (b) demonstrates the value of eliciting attitudes of nonlinguists to assess the validity of theories posited by linguists, and (c) provides an initial model for investigating coexisting standard varieties which, it is hoped, future researchers will adopt and improve on.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, eastern Wisconsin went from being heavily German speaking to almost entirely English speaking. The largest city, Milwaukee, is claimed to have experienced language shift more rapidly than the state's rural German communities. We examine this apparent asymmetry, comparing evidence for language shift in urban Milwaukee, the city of Watertown, and the small town of Lebanon, drawing on census data, reports on language of church services, and information on the German language press. Our findings show little asymmetry in rate of shift across the three communities, but evidence is consistent with a correlation between shift and Warren's Great Change.*

In Modern English, function words such as this, that, and the are pronounced with a voiced onset, while content words have the original voiceless onset. A statistical analysis of the distribution of <ð> and <þ> in Vices and Virtues, a text preserved in London, British Library, Stowe MS 34 (circa 1200), reveals a distribution, whose most plausible interpretation is that these two letters were used to encode stress-conditioned differences in voicing. This sets the voicing of function words, normally dated to the fourteenth century, back to circa 1200 or earlier.*

In the Kiel German regional variety (KG), /ɡ/ undergoes spirantization after vowels and /ʀ/ but not after /l/. KG contrasts with data provided by Wiese (1996) for a dialect that he calls Northern Colloquial Speech (NCS), in which /ɡ/ spirantizes not only after vowels and /ʀ/, but also after /l/. I argue that G-Spirantization in both regional varieties is an example of an assimilation which spreads [+continuant] from a vowel or /ʀ/ in KG (and /l/ in NCS) to a following coda /ɡ/. The difference between the /…lɡ/ environment in the two dialects can be explained by lateral ambivalence, as described in detail by Mielke (2005).*

The rapid movement of people and information on a global scale has contributed to the renegotiation of ethnicity and group membership, especially as new networks have been formed across large geographical distances. The focus here is on Belgium, Wisconsin for two interrelated reasons: one of the largest concentrations of people of Luxembourgish descent in the United States is domiciled in that area; moreover, the grand opening celebration of the Luxembourg American Cultural Center took place there in 2010. Taking an ethnographically grounded geosemiotic approach, this paper provides an analysis of Luxembourgish linguistic and cultural heritage displays in Belgium, Wisconsin and explores how localized practices are being renegotiated in the context of augmented transatlantic cooperation.*

The study of relationships between language and place has a long tradition in the context of Germanic languages, from 19th century dialect geography to late 20th century contact linguistics. However, thecontemporary processes of migration, coupled with the emergence of new communication technologies and structural changes in the economies of states and regions, have created challenges for the study of linguistic practices and their place in the lives of individuals and socialgroups. The preceding papers in this volume take these challenges as an opportunity to reflect in new ways on past migrations. This concluding paper discusses the contributions they make to the study of language, migration, and place in relation to (speakers of) Germanic language varieties in North America and suggests ways in which they open up different spaces of representation.