Linguistische Berichte Heft 218

Minuscules of the Latin alphabet can be divided into letters with length (for example ) and letters without length (for example ). This observation leads to the concept of a graphematic syllable. While plosives, which correspond to graphemes with length, occur at the syllable edge, vowels, corresponding to graphemes without length, occur in the syllable core. In this paper, we develop a (so-called) length hierarchy in analogy to the phonological sonority hierarchy. Since so far, the feature 'length' has been binary, we present a scalar feature of length required by the hierarchy. Every letter is divided into a head and a coda (s. Primus 2006), the form of the head representing the position in the hierarchy. Our length hierarchy operates with graphematic properties exclusively, thus avoiding phonological ones. Based on the length hierarchy, a graphematic principle of syllable structure can be formulated (analogous to a phonological principle of syllable structure, known as the sonority sequencing principle). Although this idea is developed for German, we show how we can deal with the problematic , which represents a potential syllable core with length in English.

This paper investigates the factors governing the distribution of ge- in the German past participle (ge-bildet, unter-ge-gangen). The claim is that ge- belongs to the morphophonological class of inseparable verbal prefixes and that all distributional facts of ge- follow from this fact. The distinctive properties of this class are the following. First, only the last potentially free stem is prefixed. Second, an adjacent stressed syllable is obligatory. Third, at most one element of this class is allowed in a word. The diachronic development of ge- plays an important role in the analysis. It is shown that prefixed verbs lack ge- due to semantic and diachronic reasons. The stress criterion that is always mentioned in accounts of the distribution of ge- gets a new assessment in light of comparative data from Dutch, Afrikaans, New and Middle High German. Data from German dialects are also discussed. The analysis is carried out in the framework of Optimality Theory and defended against Neef (1996) and Geilfuß-Wolfgang (1998).

In this paper, I provide a formal account of the diachronic development of the IPP-effect and investigate its relation to what Höhle (2006) calls 3V-phenomena. I will argue that the IPP-effect is the result of a repair operation in the syntax that involves the copying of formal/semantic features of affixes that get displaced due to the particular structure shared by verb formation and verb cluster formation and discuss the implications of this account for the syntax-morphology interface.