Marco Coniglio

The V1-order in declarative clauses is well attested in Old High German. However, during the Middle High German period, V1 declarative clauses decrease or disappear completely from the language. Traditionally, they are assumed to suddenly reappear during Early New High German and then continue up to the present day. Nevertheless, rare cases of V1-clauses are attested in Middle High German manuscripts. In this paper, it will be argued that, even if the V1-pattern drastically decreases during the late Old High German period, it has been available throughout the history of the language. In particular, it will be argued that the syntactic and pragmatic properties of the V1-pattern have not varied during the centuries. Furthermore, the paper deals with possible syntactic explanations for the decrease of this pattern during the Middle High German period.

In Old High German, relative clauses may be either introduced by d-pronouns or by relative particles (or by a combination of both). In this paper, it is argued that, despite their optionality, only relative particles can be considered to be real relative markers, whilst d-pronouns occupy the first position of relative clauses for information-structural reasons. A corpus-based pilot study reveals the properties of relative particles and explains their distribution. The results of this survey are then extended to other stages of the language and a diachronic scenario is sketched in order to account for the origin, development and eventual loss of relative particles, as well as for the emergence of inherent relative pronouns in German.

Dorian Roehrs & Christopher Sapp (2016): Quantifying expressions in the history of German syntactic reanalysis and morphological change. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing.