Project 8

German verbs with particles or prefixes in language change: Form, meaning, and syntax

In German word formation, Prefix Verb is the name for a set of word formations forming an inseparable word unit from a verb and a prefix. Prefixes are semantically bleached and cannot appear freely in a sentence (e.g., be-, ver-, zer-). Particle Verbs, on the other hand, are word formations for which the particle can be separated from the verbal base to create a sentence bracket (Satzklammer). These two-word formation processes fall together for a small group of morphemes: They can be used both as a prefix and a particle. Also, they exist as free prepositions. One of these morphemes is durch-. (e.g., durchschauen – ich durchschaue den Betrug; ich schaue den Katalog durch), which is also the focus of this project. This group of morphemes is well known and has been described on multiple occasions (cf. Fleischer/Barz 42012: 392; Erben 52006: 80ff.; for the historical time period of Early New High German cf. Habermann1994).

Even though prefixation and particle-verb formation have existed as word formation processes in the German language since Old High German times (cf. Erben 52006: 136f.; Dipper et al. 2013: 96), a diachronic description on empirical grounds is still to be desired. Generally, descriptions of Old High German and the early New High German time periods are scarce from the angle of word formation (cf. Schwarz 2019: 243; Habermann/Müller/Munske 2002). This is where the project sets off and wants to contribute.

The focus of the project is on three main points, as described in Müller (2015: 1867f.):

  1. The description of historical-synchronic word formation systems (in this case with durch-)
  2. A preferred usage of historical corpora over historical dictionaries
  3. The description of diachronic developments by comparing the historical-synchronic states

Different to previous word formation analyses, the historical evidence will be described as constructions in the sense of Construction Grammar. While using and discussing concepts used in Diachronic Construction Grammar (cf. Barðdal/Gildea 2015), diachronic developments of the word formation morpheme durch- will be documented. An example of a diachronic study about the morpheme um- reaching from Old High German to present-day German can be found in Habermann (2023). The focus is on describing the development of form patterns (e.g. valency) and meaning patterns (e.g. semantic filling of valency slots; idiomatization processes), as they appear in historical corpora of German (Referenzkorpus Altdeutsch; Referenzkorpus Mittelhochdeutsch; Referenzkorpus Frühneuhochdeutsch). Another focus is on determining the quantitative distribution patterns of separable and inseparable durch-verbs over the course of time, describing their respective word formation meanings, and the productivity of said word formations. At the same time, word formation schemata (cf. Fleischer/Barz 42012: 68) will be described, as well as how they develop while being in competition to the other same-form constructions of durch-.

 

References:

Barðdal, Jóhanna/Gildea, Spike (2015): Diachronic Construction Grammar: Epistemological context, basic assumptions and historical implications. In: Barðdal, Jóhanna et al. (ed.): Diachronic construction grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. S. 1–49. (= Constructional approaches to language 18).

Dipper, Stefanie et al. (2013): HiTS: ein Tagset für historische Sprachstufen des Deutschen. In: Journal for Language Technology and Computational Linguistics 28, S. 85–137.

Erben, Johannes (2006): Einführung in die deutsche Wortbildungslehre. 5. Aufl. Berlin: Erich Schmidt. (= Grundlagen der Germanistik 17).

Fleischer, Wolfgang/Barz, Irmhild (2012): Wortbildung der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. 4. Aufl. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Habermann, Mechthild (1994): Verbale Wortbildung um 1500. Eine historisch-synchrone Untersuchung anhand von Texten Albrecht Dürers, Veit Dietrichs und Heinrich Deichslers Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. (= Wortbildung des Nürnberger Frühneuhochdeutsch 2).

Habermann, Mechthild/Müller, Peter O./Munske, Horst Haider (ed.) (2002): Historische Wortbildung des Deutschen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. (RGL 232).

Habermann, Mechthild (2023): Diachrone Wortbildung und Konstruktionsgrammatik. In: Lasch, Alexander / Ziem, Alexander (ed.): Konstruktionsgrammatik VII. Wandel im Sprachgebrauch. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, S. 27–50.

Klein, Thomas/Wegera, Klaus-Peter/Dipper, Stefanie/Wich-Reif, Claudia (2016): Referenzkorpus Mittelhochdeutsch (1050–1350), Version 1.0, https://www.linguistics.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/rem/. ISLRN 332-536-136-099-5. (last retrieved: November 21st, 2023)

Müller, Peter O. (2015): Historical word-formation in German. In: Müller, Peter O. et al. (ed.): Word-Formation: An International Handbook of the Languages of Europe. Berlin, München, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. S. 1867–1913. (=Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft 40, Band 3).

Schwarz, Christian (2019): Wortbildungswandel im frühen Deutsch: Vergleichende Analysen der Referenzkorpora Altdeutsch und Mittelhochdeutsch. In: Jahrbuch für Germanistische Sprachgeschichte. Band 10, Heft 1. S. 241–260.

Wegera, Klaus-Peter/Solms, Hans-Joachim/Demske, Ulrike/Dipper, Stefanie (2021): Referenzkorpus Frühneuhochdeutsch (1350–1650), Version 1.0, https://www.linguistics.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/ref/. ISLRN 918-968-828-554-7. (last retrieved: November 21st, 2023)

Zeige, Lars Erik/Schnelle, Gohar/Klotz, Martin/Donhauser, Karin/Gippert, Jost/Lühr, Rosemarie (2022): Deutsch Diachron Digital. Referenzkorpus Altdeutsch. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Homepage: http://www.deutschdiachrondigital.de/rea/. DOI https://doi.org/10.34644/laudatio-dev-MiXVDnMB7CArCQ9CABmW. (last retrieved: November 21st, 2023)

 

This project is done by Bastian Führer and is supervised by Prof. Dr. Mechthild Habermann and Prof. Dr. Ludwig Fesenmeier.