Dialect syntax

Das Jiddische war „once a vast linguistic continuum, the largest European speech area next to Russian“ (WEINREICH 1962: 7). Mit dem Holocaust ist dieser einstige Sprach- und Kulturraum untergegangen. Die alten Dialekträume existieren nicht mehr. Die jiddischen Dialekte, insbesondere die ostjiddischen auf vorwiegend slavischem Sprachgebiet, sind hinsichtlich einiger phonologischer und lexikalischer Strukturen gut dokumentiert. So fußen moderne Einteilungen der jiddischen Dialekte auf einigen wenigen phonologischen und lexikalischen Isoglossen (HERZOG et al. 1992: 50–55, Karten 1–6; KATZ 1983: 1023). Doch wissen wir noch immer sehr wenig darüber, wie sich die jiddischen Varietäten in ihren syntakti- schen Strukturen verhielten und wie stark der Unterschied unter den einzelnen Dialekten in diesem Bereich überhaupt war.
Im Rahmen des Projekts „Syntax ostjiddischer Dialekte / Syntax of Eastern Yiddish Dialects (SEYD)“ wird nun erstmals diese Wissenslücke zur syntakti- schen Variation in den alten jiddischen Dialekträumen angegangen, indem das Potenzial von bisher vernachlässigten Materialien des „Language and Culture Archive of Ashkenazic Jewry“ (LCAAJ) genutzt wird.
Dieser Beitrag fasst den forschungsgeschichtlichen Hintergrund der Materialien zusammen und liefert eine Skizze des SEYD-Projekts. Am Beispiel ausgewählter Phänomene werden Quellenpotenzial und Methodik illustriert.

Morphosyntactic dialect variation, once a neglected area of dialect research, has recently witnessed a large growth in interest. Various methods from geospatial data analysis have been applied to morphosyntactic data. To date, the focus has largely been on analysing the distribution of stable patterns of variation. This article extends this work to examine patterns of ongoing change. It uses a body of data from the Syntactic Atlas of Welsh Dialects and the Siarad Corpus of spoken Welsh to examine the innovation and diffusion of a new second person
singular pronoun, chdi, examining the usefulness of Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) as a method for identifying and modelling patterns of ongoing syntactic change. It is shown that GWR provides plausible models of the diachronic development of changes that are still in progress. Furthermore, it allows us to test whether rates of change are constant across geographical space, allowing us to test whether the Constant Rate Hypothesis (that diffusion of change proceeds at the same rate in different environments) holds between dialects.

Im Beitrag wird das syntaktische Verhalten von Personennamen in den Regionalsprachen des Deutschen untersucht.  Im Zentrum des Interesses steht die Frage, welchen Beitrag die Kasusmarkierung am Definitartikel (im Folgenden kurz „Artikel“) liefert, um die semantischen Rollen des Handlungsverursachers „Proto-Agens“ (P-Agens) und des Handlungserleidenden „Proto-Patiens“ (P-Patiens) bei Personennamen zu kodieren und zu identifizieren.  Sprach-übergreifend gelten die (morphologische) Kasusmarkierung und die Seriali¬sierung (und ihre Beziehungen zueinander) als besonders geeignete Kandidaten zur Form-auf-Inhalt-Abbildung für semantische Rollen (z. B. PRIMUS 1993). In einem Spannungsfeld zwischen Kasusmorpho-logie und Positionsfestigkeit befindet sich das Deutsche, das zumindest in der Schriftsprache und im gesprochenen Standard semantische Rollenkodierung sowohl über Kasus (Nom. vs. Dat. und Akk. am Substantiv, Adjektiv und Pronomen) als auch über Wortstellung (präferierte P-Agens-vor-P-Patiens-Abfolge) ausdrückt. Vereinzelt anzutreffende Befunde aus der Forschung weisen jedoch darauf hin, dass für Namen-NPs besonders im Nieder- und Oberdeutschen klare Präferenzen zugunsten der einen oder anderen Alternative bestehen. So deuten erste flächendeckende Erhebungen von BELLMANN (1990: 274) und EICHHOFF (2000: 76) für standard¬nahe regionale Sprechlagen darauf hin, dass Sprecher südlicherer Sprachräume Personennamen (hier: Rufnamen) häufig mit Artikel (d. h. potentiell mit Kasusmarkierung) verwenden, während der Artikel vor Personennamen im norddeutschen Raum deutlich seltener und nur in bestimmten pragmatischen und syntaktischen Kontexten verwendet wird, was eine stärkere Beschränkung der Wortfolge als formales Mittel zur semantischen Rollenkodierung nahelegt. Hierzu passen auch die Befunde von SHRIER (1965), wonach Kasus im Niederdeutschen generell stär¬ker abgebaut ist als im Mittel- und Oberdeutschen. Diese Erträge sollen im Beitrag durch eine detaillierte morpho-syntaktische Analyse erhärtet werden. Hierzu werden Daten aus einer Kompetenzerhebung mittels Fragebogen vorgestellt und interpretiert, die im Rahmen des Projektes „Syntax hessischer Dialekte“ (SyHD) im gesamten Bundesland Hessen sowie punktuell in angrenzenden Bundesländern durchgeführt wurde. Es zeigt sich, dass der Artikelgebrauch bei Personennamen im Untersuchungsgebiet überwiegt. Darüber hinaus weisen die Daten Gefälle hinsichtlich der Kriterien „Arealität“ und „syntaktische Position“ auf, indem die artikellose Variante im Norden des Untersuchungsgebietes signifikant häufiger auftritt als im Süden und in der Position des ersten Arguments seltener als in der nachfolgenden Position. Letztgenannter Befund kann dahingehend gedeutet werden, dass Kasusmarkierung eine wesentliche (wenn auch sicher nicht die einzige) Motivation für die Artikelsetzung am Personennamen ist.

This paper examines how each of the two argument NPs, in Màda double object constructions (DOC), receive abstract Case in order to prevent a violation of the Case filter. Màda, a Platoid language of the Benue-Congo subfamily, is spoken predominately in Nasarawa State and few adjoining states in the Middle Belt, Nigeria (Kaduna and Plateau States). It has long been observed in the literature that abstract Case could be assigned either structural or inherent derivable at the D-structure or S-structure. In principle, a verb must not only govern its complement but assign abstract Case to it constrained by government and adjacency conditions. However, there are lexically closed verbs that can co-occur with double object NPs without any overt Case marker in Màda. This type of construction violates Case filter. The question we intend to answer here is how abstract Case is assigned to the Caseless NP in a typical Màda double object construction. Our focus in this paper is to show how Case is assigned in Màda and how to address the problem of Case assignment in Màda DOCs within the Principles and Parameters model. In an attempt to solve the problem, we adopt Chomsky's (1981) Alternative approach and Sanusi's (2001) Unified approach. Data for this study is elicited through introspection corroborated with insights from competent speakers of Màda. Finding from this study reveals that Màda lacks overt dative marker and dative shift is not allowed in its syntax. The study concludes that double object verbs are shown to reanalyze with their direct objects to form complex predicates, which inherit the Case assigning properties of their main verbs (via GTC) and therefore have the ability to govern and assign abstract Case to the ungoverned NP thereby escaping a major violation of Case filter.

El uso de las construcciones de adverbio locativo con pronombre posesivo en el español peninsular: un primer acercamiento diatópico Abstract: This diatopic study examines the characteristics of the locative adverb constructions that select possessive pronouns as complements in Peninsular Spanish oral corpora. Firstly, the range of locative adverbs that take part in this construction are scrutinised, as well as their frequency of use with respect to that of their counterparts, in which a prepositional phrase appears as a complement to the locative adverb. Secondly, the geographic spread within Spain and the diatopic differences between the various autonomous communities are discussed. Thirdly, this paper also explores the variation in use between the possessive affixes-o and-a and the motivations traditionally given for this variation: to wit, the analogy with the final vowel of the locative adverb and the agreement with the referent of the possessive pronoun. Finally, it is proposed that diatopy, not previously considered in the literature, might be an influencing factor in said variation, given that there appears to be a strong link between the region and the use of one or another desinence of the possessive. This is, for instance, the case for Andalusia, where the vast majority of the locative adverb cases with posses-sives exhibit the suffix-a.

У раду се анализира употреба инфинитива у говору Тутина и околине.
Имајући у виду балканистичку тенденцију повлачења инфинитива пред конструкцијом да + презент, широко присутну у источнијим деловима српске етнојезичке територије, а својствену и стандардном језику, настоји се најпре утврдити у којој мери је овај глаголски облик очуван на испитиваном терену. Анализа грађе показала је да у говору Тутина инфинитив има стабилно место у глаголском систему, чиме се испитивани простор уклапа у шири ареал који се одликује добром очуваношћу овог глаголског облика.
Испитује се, даље, у којим језичким ситуацијама су два облика допуне (инфинитив и да + презент) конкурентни, и њихова замена не уноси разлику у значењу, а када синтаксичко-семантички услови онемогућавају факултативност у избору. Показало се да се највећа ограничења јављају при употреби уз облике глагола хтет/шћет, а потом, у одређеним синтаксичким условима, и уз глаголе моћ/мој и смет. Нису, међутим, ретки ни случајеви када постоји могућност слободног избора допуне, с тим да је фреквентност у употреби неједнака

Data gathered from social media have been used extensively to examine lexical dialect variation in widely used languages such as English and Spanish, but their use to date in morphosyntax and for lesser-used languages has been more limited. This paper tests the usefulness of using data derived from Twitter to address traditional questions in dialect syntax and sociolinguistics. It uses two cases studies from Welsh – the form of the second-person singular pronoun in various syntactic contexts, and the availability of auxiliary deletion – to assess whether datasets based on Twitter data can successfully replicate and enhance results derived by traditional means. The results of the case studies coincide to a large extent with distributions established in existing studies, even ones using entirely different methods, such as dialect questionnaires or acceptability judgment tests. Twitter data also show considerable success in establishing implicational hierarchies and conditioning factor...

In this paper I link 'floating features' in clitic clusters with two third- person participants to a split object marking system, indicative of a language change in process.
in: Australian Journal of Linguistics, 2013, Vol. 33, No. 2, 152-169, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2013.814528

У раду се анализира употреба потенцијала у говору Тутина и околине. Потенцијал се најпре посматра као глаголски облик употребљен у својој примарној служби. Примећено је да се у анализираном говору њиме казује широк спектар модалних значења обједињених семантиком будуће временске перспективе. При временском транспоновању, потенцијал се најчешће употребљава за обележавање прошлих понављаних радњи. Показало се да је у испитиваном говору потенцијал основно језичко средство којим се казују радње које су се у прошлости понављале према утврђеном редоследу, односно по навици, посебно у случајевима када је посреди емоционално интониран дискурс.

This paper examines the present-day characterisation and historical development of non-referential uses of the pronoun ello/ele/ell (ELLO) in certain Ibero-Romance varieties. Since overt expletives are predicted to be incompatible with referential null subjects, the appearance of ELLO in an apparently expletive position and function is typologically anomalous with respect to the null subject parameter as traditionally conceived. Recent treatment in the literature places ELLO in the C-domain, and exceptionally in SpecTP. However, existing accounts tend to assume a unified characterisation across varieties for what we claim is actually a heterogeneous phenomenon. Novel empirical data show that ELLO displays both expletive-like and discourse-oriented properties even within the same variety, targeting different structural positions cross-dialectally. Today’s variation is argued to be an effect of ELLO reaching different stages of grammaticalisation across varieties, originating from its usage in impersonal epistemic contexts. We may therefore wish to revise our typology of expletives so as to encompass a more nuanced range of parametric values.

This article analyses the function and distribution of the so-called “overt subject expletive” ello/ele/ell in certain non-standard Ibero-Romance varieties. Novel empirical facts are presented to illustrate the phenomenon’s heterogeneous characterization, the present-day variation of which is argued to be explained by the different degrees of change undergone by the expletive element in each Ibero-Romance variety. The pragmatic import of today’s Iberian expletive resembles the semantic value of the oldest and most commonly attested examples of the phenomenon in the historical corpora used. This observation serves as the point of departure for the diachronic reconstruction of the element’s development from its proposed origin in epistemic contexts to the present day, where the alleged Iberian expletive exhibits both expletive and pragmatic characteristics even within the same variety.

En este artículo se analiza la función y distribución del llamado “sujeto expletivo visible” ello/ele/ell en ciertas variedades ibero-románicas no estándares. Se presentan nuevos datos empíricos con el fin de demostrar la caracterización heterogénea del fenómeno, cuya variación actual, según se argumenta, se ve explicada por los distintos grados de cambio sufridos por el elemento expletivo en cada variedad ibero-románica. La contribución pragmática del expletivo ibérico actual semeja el valor semántico de las pruebas empíricas más antiguas y más frecuentes del elemento en los corpus históricos consultados, observación que sirve de punto de partida para reconstruir la trayectoria diacrónica del elemento desde su propuesto origen en contextos impersonales y epistémicos hasta la actualidad, en que el presunto expletivo ibérico demuestra características tanto expletivas como pragmáticas incluso dentro de la misma variedad.

Variation in Breton morphology and syntax is less well known than regular phonetic and lexical dialect reflexes. Certain morphemes of the central, innovative NE-SW dialects appear to have spread robustly during the 20th century. Verbal syntax is described using a matrix with three constructions (1) simple verb; (2) auxiliary constructions (perfect tenses, copula, existential); (3) double syntactic/lexical verb (e.g. progressive), each in bare presentation (a) predicate, or lead-in presentations (b) subject, (c) object, adverb, etc., each in affirmative and negative and with pronominal and lexical subjects. Much verbal syntactic variation can be explained by the obsolescence in some areas of certain frames in the matrix, e.g. reluctance to use the RA do construction with lexical subjects, or even, reportedly in parts of Gwened, with verb-included pronominal subjects. Finally, a number of specific constructions are examined which are known to have variants, e.g. me meus xwant mond / DA vond ‘I want to go’, but whose geographical distribution is unclear. With the end of traditional native Breton speech now in sight, it is becoming a matter of urgency to investigate and document such variation.

This paper presents data and analysis relating to null subjects in spoken colloquial English. While English is not a „pro-drop‟ language (i.e. subjects must usually be overt), a corpus of speech collected on Tyneside and Wearside in 2007 shows that null subjects are permitted in finite clauses in certain contexts. This paper analyses these examples and follow-up questionnaires, and compares the data with the other types of null subject described in the literature (pro-drop, topic-drop, early null subjects, aphasics‟ null subjects and „diary-drop‟), ultimately concluding that the colloquial English phenomenon is most closely related to diarydrop.

In this paper, I challenge Bayer’s (2010) syntactic analysis of wh-drop in terms of agreement and recoverability. I argue instead that the licensing condition for wh-drop is pragmatic. The argument I develop for this analysis comes from the behavior of the particle enn in Thuringian. The particle enn appears in wh-questions but also in yes/no-questions. So enn cannot be an agreement suffix for moved wh-phrases. Yet it is obligatory in wh-drop. I argue that wh-drop is only possible in clauses that are unambiguously marked as questions. This derives that enn is required in wh-drop because questions are marked by enn in Thuringi-an. The obligatoriness of ‘n in wh-drop is a special case of this general require-ment as only wh-questions have to be marked as questions in North Bavarian.

This article investigates themorphosyntactic status of dative case in Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese. We hypothesize that these three languages represent three diachronic stages signalled synchronically by the degree of preservation or non-preservation of dative under movement. Thus, we explore the synchronic status of dative under passive movement and topicalization in the three languages, while simultaneously paying attention to the larger questions of diachronic preservation and non-preservation of dative. We suggest that our findings have interesting ramifications for the categorization of case as structural and non-structural in generative grammar.

Data gathered from social media have been used extensively to examine lexical dialect variation in widely used languages such as English and Spanish, but their use to date in mor-phosyntax and for lesser-used languages has been more limited. This paper tests the usefulness of using data derived from Twitter to address traditional questions in dialect syntax and sociolinguistics. It uses two cases studies from Welsh-the form of the second-person singular pronoun in various syntactic contexts, and the availability of auxiliary deletion-to assess whether datasets based on Twitter data can successfully replicate and enhance results derived by traditional means. The results of the case studies coincide to a large extent with distributions established in existing studies, even ones using entirely different methods, such as dialect questionnaires or acceptability judgment tests. Twitter data also show considerable success in establishing implicational hierarchies and conditioning factors comparable to those typical of the field. Where the results differ from existing studies, the differences may be due to the younger demographics of Twitter users, or to differences in the quantity of data provided by different methodologies. The results produce patterns closer to spoken data than to written data, giving us reasonable confidence in such data as a relatively good proxy for spoken usage of large numbers of language users.

Dialectal classifications and dialect characterization generally leave aside syntactic
aspects of linguistic variation. Recent developments on dialect syntax enlarged the
empirical ground for researching dialect differentiation and call for new regards upon
the identification of dialects. This paper presents and discusses the geographical
distribution of a selection of non-standard syntactic constructions in European
Portuguese, drawn from the dialect corpus CORDIAL-SIN. The aims of this study are
twofold: (i) to identify the areal distribution of some dialectal constructions in the
Portuguese territory; (ii) to show how these syntactic areas meet, to a certain extent,
important boundaries already identified for Portuguese dialects.

Against the background of the widely spread contemporary approaches to language variation, which take advantages of the quantity relevant methods usual for natural sciences, the dialectology of Balkan languages employs traditional methods of humanities. The Balkan linguistics addresses qualitatively relevant representative linguistic data, studies in detail the linguistic context of phenomena, reckons systemic restrictions in distribution, looks for isosemantic, isomorph and isofunctional cross-linguistic parallels, interprets areal facts through language contacts and history. The article applies these approaches to the prepositionless nonfinite predicates governed by modal verbs – the infinitive, participle and verbal substantive of the Balkan languages. It comes out on the one hand that the relevance of variation parameters is significantly different and the inventories of forms and structures are language-specific. On the other, the contact-induced character of the binary isosemantic and isomorph crossBalkan parallels under investigation is obvious. Language contact is a systemic factor which makes morphosyntactic variation in the Balkans more complex, and search for the new parallels will ever remain a promising task of the Balkan linguistics.

This presentation focuses on syntactic variation in European Portuguese from a geolinguistic perspective. Beyond the conceptual and methodological difficulties of identifying and studying variables in syntax, this study investigates the areal distribution of non-standard syntactic constructions in European Portuguese, through the empirical evidence provided by CORDIAL-SIN. This corpus compiles a geographically representative body of selected excerpts of spontaneous and semi-directed speech from fieldwork interviews for linguistic atlases. A tagged level of the corpus provides access to the precise morpho-syntactic and geographical information required for this study. Besides evidence for non-standard syntactic constructions that spread over all Portuguese dialects (even if absent from spoken standard Portuguese), CORDIAL-SIN displays non-standard constructions that mainly occur in a restricted part of the European Portuguese area (such as existential impersonal constructions with the verb ter ‘to have’ or aspectual constructions involving the gerund form of a main verb, a.o.). The areal distribution of such dialectal constructions will be shown to meet, to a certain extent, important dialectal boundaries already identified within European Portuguese.

Negation with indefinite items in English can be expressed in three ways: any-negation (I didn’t have any money), no-negation (I had no money) and negative concord (I didn’t have no money). These variants have persisted over time, with some studies suggesting that the newest variant, any-negation, is increasing at the expense of no-negation (Tottie 1991a, 1991b). Others suggest that although this variable was undergoing change in earlier centuries, it is stable in Modern English (Wallage 2017). This article examines the current state of the variability in four communities within two distinctive English-speaking regions: Toronto and Belleville in Ontario, Canada, and Tyneside and York in Northern England. Our comparative quantitative analysis of speech corpora from these communities shows that the rates of no-negation vary between Northern England and Ontario, but the variation is largely stable and primarily conditioned by verb type in a robust effect that holds cross-dialectally: f...

Im vorliegenden Artikel wird aufgezeigt, wie syntaktische Phänomene durch die indirekte Methode erfolgreich erhoben werden können. Die empirische Basis der Diskussion liefern Daten aus dem DFG-Projekt "Syntax hessischer Dialekte (SyHD)", in dem an insgesamt über 160 Orten in Hessen (sowie zusätzlich in zwölf auf einer Ellipse um Hessen verteilten Orten) syntaktische Phänomene durch indirekte Fragebogenerhebungen gesammelt werden. Im Rahmen der SyHD-Erhebungen finden verschiedene Aufgabentypen (Bewertungsaufgaben, Bild- und Bildsequenzbeschreibungen, Übersetzungsaufgaben, Ergänzungs- und "Puzzle"-Aufgaben) Verwendung, die im Artikel ausführlich beschrieben und in Bezug auf ihre jeweiligen Vor- und Nachteile diskutiert werden. Anhand exemplarischer Karten werden erste Resultate vorgestellt, die das Raumbildungspotenzial der untersuchten Phänomene in Abhängigkeit von den Aufgabentypen demonstrieren. Dabei lassen sich methodische Adäquatheit und ein beträchtlicher Erkenntnismehrwert erreichen, indem gezielt ein Aufgabentyp auf einen ganzen Phänomenkomplex bzw. mehrere Aufgabentypen auf ein und dasselbe Phänomen angewendet werden.

In diesem Aufsatz untersuche ich Kombinationen von Komplementierern und Operatoren, die mit der Markierung des Satztyps assoziiert werden. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf eingebettete Fragesätze, Relativsätze, und eingebettete Gradsätze. Die Daten aus verschiedenen deutschen Dialekten weisen darauf hin, dass das Auftreten von zwei overten Elementen innerhalb einer CP angepasst werden kann; die Spaltung der CP in zwei Projektionen ist nur dann nötig, wenn bestimmte – überwiegend semantisch bedingte – Eigenschaften nicht in der gleichen CP untergebracht werden können. Damit kann es festgestellt werden, dass eine minimale CP, deren Größe von Anforderungen der Overtheit und der Semantik bestimmt ist, eine bevorzugte Analyse zu traditionellen kartographischen Ansätzen bietet.

In this paper I will provide a new argument for post-syntactic morphology.
e empirical evidence comes from so-called displaced morphology in German, where the non-finite verb form selected by a given governor does not end up on the immediately dependent verb but rather on the last verb of the verb cluster. The placement of the morphology thus depends on linear notions such as adjacency rather than hierarchical relations (c-command, minimality). I will argue that the exponents for non-finite morphology are inserted into separate functional heads which are linearized clause-finally. At a late stage of the PF-derivation, the exponents are associated with their verbal hosts by means of Local Dislocation (Embick & Noyer 2001). As a consequence, the nonfinite morphology always comes last in the verb cluster. Displacement arises once the order in the verb cluster deviates from the strictly descending 321 order. The placement operation is thus always the same, displacement emerges just a side-effect of (partially) ascending verb cluster orders. Restrictions on displacement follow from the selectional requirements of the vocabulary items.