André Meinunger

Grammatiken sind (metaphorisch gesprochen) Anweisungen zum richtigen Gebrauch einer Sprache. Interessanterweise zeigen Grammatiken offenbar Lücken, die dadurch entstehen, dass für bestimmte Bereiche Regeln (bzw. Formen) ganz fehlen oder dass [...]

The aim of the present article is twofold. Firstly I want to illustrate that German shows grammatical phenomena that remind one of split ergativity. Thus I want to present case marking patterns in (Modern High) German that help to understand a phenomenon that is supposed to be very exotic and difficult to grasp for a German native speaker. The second contribution is the proposal of a case linking mechanism that is different from the preponderant proposals on the market by Wunderlich (1994/1997), Primus (1999b) and Haider (1993). Although this linking device is still to be developed further and has been formulated mainly for German, it is offered here to apply quite generally.