Mathilde Hennig

The article deals with the latest edition of the Duden volume 9 dictionary for cases of linguistic doubt. Since 2007, the Duden volume 9 dictionary has been adapted and edited by various linguists. Consequently, the dictionary has been changed from a prescriptive, normative guide book which tells language users which linguistic variants are correct to a guide book which uses modern linguistic insights and principles to help the users decide themselves which linguistic variants are most suitable for what they want to express. Thus, the 9th edition of Duden volume 9 (2021) for the first time integrates corpus data into the dictionary in the field of prepositions with variants in the government of genitive or dative case. The article explains this new form of dealing with linguistic variants within the dictionary. Furthermore, the article shows and discusses results of a survey on how this way of presenting linguistic variants is being received by the users of the dictionary. Finally, the question is being raised whether this descriptive approach leads to a new concept of codification. mehr