Live Fast, Die Young –
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Live fast, die young – the short life of Early Modern German auxiliary ellipsis Published by LOT Phone: +31 30 253 6006 Trans 10 fax: +31 30 253 6000 3512 JK Utrecht e-mail: [email protected] the Netherlands http://wwwlot.let.uu.nl/ Cover illustration: Illustration from Fortunatus (1507) ISBN 90-76864-82-9 NUR 632 Coyright c 2005 Anne Breitbarth. All rights reserved. Live fast, die young – the short life of Early Modern German auxiliary ellipsis Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit van Tilburg, op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof. dr. F.A. van der Duyn Schouten, in het openbaar te verdedigen ten overstaan van een door het college voor promoties aangewezen commissie in de aula van de universiteit op woensdag 2 november 2005 om 10:15 uur door Anne Breitbarth geboren op 24 juni 1976 te M¨uhlhausen/Th¨ur., Duitsland Promotor: Prof. dr. H.C. van Riemsdijk, Universiteit van Tilburg Contents Acknowledgements vii 1. Preliminaries 1 1.1.Thetopic.................................. 1 1.2.Theempiricaldomain........................... 2 1.2.1.Theafiniteconstruction...................... 2 1.2.2. Other types of auxiliary ellipsis in EMG . ......... 4 1.2.3.Summaryandoutlook....................... 6 1.3.Embeddingtheproblem.......................... 6 1.4.Thecorpusanalysis:remarksonthemethods.............. 13 1.5.Generaltheoreticalassumptions...................... 16 1.5.1.Thestructureofperiphrasticconstructions........... 17 1.5.2.Parametricvariation–synchronicanddiachronic........ 39 1.5.3.Summaryofthetheoreticalassumptions............. 42 1.6.Researchquestions............................. 42 1.7.Overview.................................. 43 2. The state of the art 45 2.1.Introduction................................. 45 2.2.Theviewofthecontemporarygrammarians............... 45 2.3. Latin influence and chancery style .................... 48 2.4. Factors influencing the emergence . .................... 51 2.4.1.Reanalysisoffiniteverbforms.................. 51 2.4.2. Excursus I: the grammaticalisation of periphrastic verb forms . 54 2.4.3. The role of auxiliary drop in coordinations . ......... 56 2.4.4. Haplology at clause boundaries . ................ 63 2.4.5.Analogytomainclauses...................... 66 2.4.6.Summary.............................. 67 2.5. Ellipsis or not . ............................... 68 2.5.1. Schr¨oder (1985) ........................... 68 2.5.2. Excursus II: free participles and infinitives . ......... 69 2.5.3.Summary.............................. 71 2.6.Reasonsforthedisappearance....................... 71 2.7.Conclusion................................. 73 3. The diachrony of the afinite construction 75 3.1.Introduction................................. 75 3.2.Corpusanalysis............................... 75 3.3.Theriseandspread............................ 80 3.3.1. Mechanisms of linguistic change and the development of the afiniteconstruction......................... 80 3.3.2. The loss of subjunctive mood and the visibility of assertional force................................. 85 3.3.3.Changesintheinventoryofsubordinators............ 90 3.3.4.Verbplacement........................... 98 3.3.5.Theafiniteconstructionasareflexofthechanges....... 103 3.4.Thedeclineoftheafiniteconstruction.................. 105 3.4.1.Reversinglanguagechangeprocessesintheliterature...... 105 3.4.2.Whatisplausible?......................... 106 3.4.3.Anaccountofthedecline..................... 107 3.5.Conclusion................................. 110 4. Licensing conditions and occurrence restrictions 113 4.1.Introduction................................. 113 4.2.Syntacticlicensingconditions....................... 114 4.2.1. Previous approaches to the licensing of Germanic auxiliary drop 114 4.2.2. Licensing EMG auxiliary drop . ................ 121 4.2.3.Summary.............................. 126 4.3. EMG auxiliary drop and the syntax-pragmatics interface . ..... 127 4.3.1.Assertion.............................. 128 4.3.2.Subordination............................ 129 4.3.3. Auxiliary drop as marking non-assertiveness . ......... 136 4.3.4.Summary.............................. 148 4.4.Conclusion................................. 149 5. Concluding summary 151 A. Sources 155 B. Corpus results 159 B.1.Backgroundassumptions.......................... 159 B.2.Numbers................................... 160 B.2.1.Clausetypes............................ 160 B.2.2.Frequencydifferencesbetweenclausetypes........... 163 B.2.3. Auxiliary types ........................... 165 B.2.4.Frequencydifferencesbetweentheperiods............ 167 B.2.5.Coordinationtypes......................... 168 B.3.Extraposition................................ 170 B.4.Textcomplexity............................... 171 B.5. The position of auxiliary-less clauses . ................ 172 Bibliography 179 Samenvatting in het Nederlands 193 Acknowledgements Probably the first thing every linguist does when opening a dissertation is read the acknowledgements. Writing acknowledgements almost seems to have become a literary genre and is pursued with great fervour. I cannot hope to contribute a specimen of any degree of originality to this high art and will therefore not even attempt to. But like everyone else, I certainly have to express my gratitude to a num- ber of people. Most importantly of course, my thesis supervisor and promotor Henk van Riemsdijk for his encouragement and respect, and the courage to supervise a diachronic project. I also owe Prof. Karin Donhauser of the Hum- boldt Universit¨at Berlin for inviting me for one very important and instructive semester in 2003/2004 without which this thesis would be nowhere near where it is now. I am glad that Prof. Ulrike Demske and Prof. Ans van Kemenade agreed to join my thesis committee, besides Ad Backus, Hans Broekhuis, and Craig Thiersch. A scientific carreer is always the result of many years of training, and very much contingent on which people cross your path and guide you for a part of the way. I am very much indebted to five professors, and in five different ways so. First, Martin-Dietrich Gleßgen for having brought Pinker’s Language Instinct to my attention in my first semester at the FSU Jena and by this having triggered my fascination for linguistics. Second and third, Prof. Jan Koster and especially Jan-Wouter Zwart who made my exchange year 1998- 1999 at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen such an exciting year full of learning and gave me so much I am still benefitting from. But above all, I have to thank my FSU supervisors Josef Bayer and Peter Suchsland, who very early on began to put a lot of trust in me, provided me with assistent positions and an office thus helping me pursue my studies very comfortably, and who most helpfully paved my way into the grown-up world of academia. It is impossible to thank everyone who has ever taken the time to discuss some aspect of linguistics with me or even my small contribution to it. Everyone who feels addressed by this be thanked warmly, especially my (PhD-)colleagues in Tilburg and the rest of the Netherlands, the participants of the two EGG- schools, four LOT-schools and all the conferences I attended, and everyone else viii who put my name into their acknowledgements. Special thanks to Harold Miesen for invaluable last-minute help with SPSS, to Ms Jacqueline A. Suos-Wayers for unbureaucratic assistence in the very last minute, and to dell computers for confirming Murphy’s law once more (last-minute as well, of course). For making Tilburg an acceptable place despite everything, I have to thank Jorge Andrade da Silva, Rossella Bargiacchi, Riccardo Calcagno, Yann Gi- rard, Jutta Hartmann, Sandra R. Hechler, Cate Heeney, Vera Heged˝us, Riny Huijbregts, Sander de Jong, Michaela Krause, Krzysztof Migdalski, Nataˇsa Mili´cevi´c, Ielka van der Sluis, Frank Spronk and Hanneke, Craig Thiersch, Johannes Voget and Kathi Wick. Jorge, thank you for every small moment, although this sounds completely inappropriate. I would never have survived the first three years without my ‘home-base’ in Berlin. Thanks to Bj¨orn Andresen for a lot of things, especially for putting up with my whims for so long. And thanks to some long time companions further away for our occasional long phone calls and/or your visits to this god- forsaken place – Claudia Breitbarth, Ingo Bursee, Winni G¨obel, Franz ‘Socke’ Hammer, Eckart Hilliger, Agnes J¨ager, Jos´e Magalh˜aes, Claudia Rothe, J¨org ‘Yosh’ Schaarschmidt and Igor Schnakenburg. Thanks to my parents Hanne and Fritz and my strong brother Martin (‘Breit’) for never failing to believe in me. I dedicate this book to the memory of Rose- marie Haase, who I am sure would have liked it, and who could have been a fine linguist herself. chapter 1 Preliminaries With an eye on formalist works on historical German, Schr¨oder (1985) notes in the preface to his study of the auxiliary ellipses in Geiler von Kaysersberg’s and Luther’s texts that “F¨ur die grassierenden linguistischen Selbstbefriedigungen war und ist das Fr¨uhneuhochdeutsche ein ungeeignetes Feld und Luthers Sprache ein untaugliches Objekt.”1 (Schr¨oder 1985:5) Despite this verdict, it is the goal of this thesis not only to describe the aux- iliary ellipses that are used so abundantly in Early Modern German, but also to attempt a theoretical account of them. This includes an analysis of their diachronic development, their licensing conditions and their function. 1.1. The topic This thesis is concerned with the ellipsis of finite auxiliaries in the history of German. The type that interests us here emerges