Cover not available
Article published In:
Morphology and its interfaces: Syntax, semantics and the lexicon
Edited by Dany Amiot, Delphine Tribout, Natalia Grabar, Cédric Patin and Fayssal Tayalati
[Lingvisticæ Investigationes 37:2] 2014
► pp. 275–289

What drives morphological change?

A case study from the history of German

| University of Mainz

This paper investigates the role of syntactic, semantic, and lexical factors in the diachronic development of German nominalization patterns. Drawing on an extensive corpus analysis of Early New High German and New High German texts, it is shown that (a) deverbal nominals in the suffix -ung tend to develop more reified meaning variants, which is reflected in the syntactic patterns in which the word-formation products preferentially occur, and (b) infinitival nominalization becomes more productive and is established as the new default word-formation pattern deriving nouns from verbs. These considerations fit in neatly with a cognitively-oriented theory of word-formation change situated in the framework of Construction Grammar.

Keywords: morphology/syntax interface, Cognitive Linguistics, Construction Grammar, word-formation change, morphology/semantics interface
Published online: 22 May 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/li.37.2.06har
References
Barz, I
(1998) Zur Lexikalisierungspotenz nominalisierter Infinitive. In I. Barz, & G. Öhlschläger (Eds.), Zwischen Grammatik und Lexikon (pp. 57–68). Tübingen: Niemeyer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Booij, G. E
(2002) Constructional idioms, morphology, and the Dutch lexicon. Journal of Germanic Linguistics, 141, 301–327. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2010) Construction morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Croft, W
(2001) Radical Construction Grammar. Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Demske, U
(2000) Zur Geschichte der ung-Nominalisierung im Deutschen. Ein Wandel morphologischer Produktivität. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 1221, 365–411. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dressler, W. U
(1987) Word-formation (WF) as part of natural morphology. In W. U. Dressler (Ed.), Leitmotifs in natural morphology (pp. 99–125). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Durrell, M., Ensslin, A., & Bennett, P
(2007) The GerManC Project. Sprache und Datenverarbeitung, 311, 71–80.Google Scholar
Goldberg, A. E
(2006) Constructions at work. The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hartmann, S
forthcoming) “Nominalization” taken literally. A diachronic corpus study of German nominalization patterns. To appear in: Italian Journal of Linguistics, Special Issue “New Territories in Word-Formation”.
Hilpert, M
(2014) Construction Grammar and its application to english. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Hilpert, M., & Gries, S. T
(2009) Assessing frequency changes in multistage diachronic corpora. Applications for historical corpus linguistics and the study of language acquisition. Literary and Linguistic Computing, 241, 385–401. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hollmann, W. B
(2013) Nouns and verbs in Cognitive Grammar. Where is the ‘sound’ evidence? Cognitive Linguistics, 241, 275–308. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Howell, D. C
(2010) Statistical methods for psychology (7th ed.). Belmont: Wadsworth.Google Scholar
Kastovsky, D
(1986) Diachronic word-formation in a functional perspective. In D. Kastovsky, & A. Szwedek (Eds.), Linguistics across historical and geographical boundaries. vol. 1: Linguistic theory and historical linguistics (pp. 409–421). Berlin, New York: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langacker, R. W
(1987) Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Vol. 1. Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
(1991) Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Vol. 2. Descriptive application. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
(2008) Cognitive Grammar. A basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nübling, D., Dammel, A., Duke, J., & Szczepaniak, R
(2013) Historische Sprachwissenschaft des Deutschen. Eine Einführung in die Prinzipien des Sprachwandels (4th ed.). Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Vogel, P. M
(1996) Wortarten und Wortartenwechsel. Zur Konversion und verwandten Erscheinungen im Deutschen und in anderen Sprachen. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scherer, C
(2006) Was ist Wortbildungswandel? Linguistische Berichte, 2051, 3–28.Google Scholar
Stefanowitsch, A., & Gries, S. T
(2003) Collostructions. Investigating the interaction of words and constructions. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 81, 209–243. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taylor, J. R
(2002) Cognitive Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Thielmann, W
(2007) Substantiv. In L. Hoffmann (Ed.), Handbuch der deutschen Wortarten (pp. 791–822). Berlin, New York: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Traugott, E. C., & Trousdale, G
(2013) Constructionalization and constructional changes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Werner, M
(2012) Genus, Derivation und Quantifikation. Zur Funktion der Suffigierung und verwandter Phänomene im Deutschen. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar