Kristian Berg

Complex nuclei (e.g. ) can be explained rather straightforwardly in German, while English is considered more or less arbitrary in this respect. Based on the insight gained by research on German, the system behind this kind of cluster is described for English. The methods that are developed and employed will finally be applied to German, leading to new insights. Both writing systems have in common the existence of prototypical first and second parts and the great influence of the relative second parts on the correspondence of the diphthong. The English system shows more combinations than the German system, but it is by far not as random as generally assumed.

There is a peculiar comma in German texts, the prefield comma (Vorfeldkomma). It appears before the finite verb form (German is a verb-second-language). If the prefield is not a sentence and if it is not sentence-like by itself, the orthographic norm does not license a comma. However, it is found frequently in non-standardized texts. In this paper, we investigate nearly 1,000 prefield commas from a non-standardized corpus. These comma prefields are compared with prefields without commas, and the conditions are formulated under which commas become probable. The probability for a prefield comma is high if the prefield is a prepositional phrase, if it functions as an adverbial modifier, if it is long (five or more words) and if it is semantically textconnective. A prototypical example might be Neben Diskussionen über die aktuelle politische Situation, finden Erhaltungsarbeiten auf dem Gelände der KZ-Gedenkstätte statt (‚Apart from discussions about the current political situation, maintenance works are taking place on the site of the KZ memorial place‘).