Table Of ContentNils Langer
Linguistic Purism in Action
W
DE
G
Studia Linguistica Germanica
Herausgegeben
von
Stefan Sonderegger
und
Oskar Reichmann
60
Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York
2001
Nils Langer
Linguistic Purism in Action
How auxiliary tun was stigmatized in
Early New High German
Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York
2001
Gedruckt mit Unterstützung der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft
D NW/U-1 (GB).
Printed and published with the assistance
of the Modern Humanities Research Association.
© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines
of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.
Die Deutsche Bibliothek — Catalogìng-in-Publicatìon Data
Langer, Nils:
Linguistic purism in action : how auxiliary tun was stigmatized in
early new high German / Nils Langer. — Berlin ; New York : de
Gruyter, 2001
(Studia linguistica Germanica ; 60)
Zugl.: Newcastle upon Tyne, Univ., Diss., 2000
ISBN 3-11-017024-8
© Copyright 2001 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin
All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without per-
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Printing & binding: Hubert & Co., Götdngen.
Cover design: Christopher Schneider, Berlin.
Printed in Germany.
für Mama
Wo aber jch geirret hab
bitt jch zu bessern.
die dz lesen,
oder abschreybent
Prosa-Tristant, as cited in Betten (1987: 116)
Table of Content
Acknowledgements IX
Abbreviations XI
1. Introduction 1
1.1 The Problem 1
1.2 Grammarians 4
1.3 Tun in Standard German 6
1.4 Thesis 8
1.5 Method 9
2. Part I : The Distribution of Auxiliary Tun 12
2.0 Auxiliary Tun in Other Languages 12
2.1 The Origin of Tun 12
2.2 Tun in Frisian 14
2.3 Tun in Dutch 14
2.3.1 Tun in Earlier Stages of Dutch 14
2.3.2 Tun in Modern Dutch 18
2.4 Tun in English 22
2.4.1 Tun in Earlier Stages of English 23
2.4.2 Tun in Contemporary English 28
2.5 Tun in Low German 30
2.5.1 Tun in Earlier Stages of Low German 31
2.5.2 Tun in Modern Low German 34
2.6 Tun in Older Stages of German 37
2.6.1 Lexical Tun 37
2.6.2 Causative Tun 38
2.6.3 Periphrastic Tun 41
2.7 Tun in Early New High German 44
2.7.1 Causative Tun 45
2.7.2 Regional Variation 46
2.7.3 Text Type Specific Variation 46
2.7.4 Functional Variation 47
2.8 Tun in Modern German Dialects 50
2.8.1 Regional Variation 50
2.8.2 Problems of Analysis 51
2.8.3 Optionality and Polyfunctionality 52
2.8.4 Major Functions of Tun 54
2.9 Tun in ENHG - a New Analysis 63
2.9.1 The Distribution of Tun 63
2.9.2 On the Functions of Tun 71
2.10 Conclusion of Part I 97
Vili Table of Contents
3. Part II: The Stigmatization of Auxiliary Tun 99
3.1 The Emergence of Standard German -
Early Approaches and Current Thinking 99
3.1.1 Early Approaches 99
3.1.2 The Standard Language up to 1600 102
3.1.3 The Standard Language up to 1800 105
3.2 The Emergence of Standard German and
the Influence of Grammarians 107
3.2.1 The Sixteenth Century 111
3.2.2 The Seventeenth Century 114
3.2.3 The Eighteenth Century 119
3.3 Polynegation and Double Perfect 123
3.2.1 Polynegation 124
3.2.2 Double Perfect 131
3.4 Syntactic Stigmatization by Prescriptive Grammarians 134
3.5 The Stigmatization of Polynegation and Double Perfect 150
3.5.1 Introduction and Overview 150
3.5.2 Polynegation 160
3.5.3 Double Perfect 172
3.6 Prescriptive Grammarians and the Stigmatization of Auxiliary Tun 176
3.6.1 Stage 1 (until 1640) 177
3.6.2 Stage 2 (until 1680) 188
3.6.3 Stage 3 (1680-1740) 195
3.6.4 Stage 4 (after 1740) 203
3.7 Conclusion of Part II 214
4. Conclusion 219
5. Appendix: Data and Bibliographies 224
5.1 Primary Data 225
5.1.1 Corpus 1 : Instances of Tun 225
5.1.2 Corpus 2 : Evidence from Modern Dialect Dictionaries 263
5.2 Bibliographies 276
5.2.1 Corpus 1 : The Primary Sources of Tun in ENHG 276
5.2.2 Corpus 2: The Primary Metalinguistic Sources 289
5.2.3 Corpus 3: The Dialect Dictionaries 299
5.2.4 Secondary Literature 301
Acknowledgements
This monograph was presented as a doctoral thesis to the University of
Newcastle upon Tyne in February 2000. Originally conceived of as a
generative account of Early New High German syntax, the research quickly
turned away from technical questions of grammar. In order to explain why
certain constructions, as discussed in this book, are ungrammatical in Standard
German, it was necessary to investigate the sociolinguistics of the Early
Modern period in Germany. I hope that the comparison of contemporary
language use with the views of seventeenth-century grammarians will
contribute to the discussion of how effective prescriptivists were in shaping a
prestige variety of German, or to put it in different words: why in Standard
German, sentences such as Susanne tut den Kuchen essen are ungrammatical.
This research was generously supported by several institutions in the UK,
Germany and Ireland. I wish to express my gratitude in particular to the Arts
and Humanities Research Board (AHRB, London), the Faculty of Arts and the
School of Modern Languages of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, the
Faculty of Arts at University College, Dublin and the Deutscher Akademischer
Austauschdienst (DAAD, London/Bonn) for funding me to conduct my
research and to travel to Germany to collect data. Thanks are also due to the
University of Heidelberg and the Herzog August-Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel for
granting me access to their facilities which proved vital for the successful
outcome of this project. In addition, I wish to acknowledge the very generous
support of the Arts Faculty Research Fund of the University of Bristol, the
Modern Humanities Research Association (London) and the Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft (Bonn) for their help in meeting the publication costs
of this book.
But it was not only institutions which helped and encouraged me to continue
with what often seemed an enterprise not worth pursuing.
Dr Jonathan West encouraged me at a very early stage to embark on
postgraduate study and convinced me that research into Early New High
German can be very interesting - I thank him for being such a great tutor,
supervisor and friend.
The data of Early New High German language use was collected from the
ENHG archive at the University of Newcastle on Tyne (Dr. Jonathan West),
which substantially draws on the Heidelberg Corpus (Professor Oskar
Reichmann) and the Bonn Corpus (Professor Werner Besch). I owe my thanks
to these researchers for allowing me to use these invaluable tools. Furthermore,
I wish to thank Professor William J. Jones (Royal Holloway, London),
Professor Oskar Reichmann (Heidelberg), Professor Hans-Werner Eroms
(Passau), Professor Dieter Stein (Düsseldorf), Dr Ingrid Tieken-Boon van
Ostade (Leiden), and Dr Annette Fischer (Humboldt-Universität, Berlin) for
providing very valuable comments and words of encouragement on "my"
auxiliary.
χ Acknowledgements
A substantial amount of progress was made during my stay in Germany in
1999 and in this context, my sincere gratitude goes out to Professor Oskar
Reichmann (Heidelberg), Dr Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann (IdS, Mannheim), Dr
Gillian Bepler (Wolfenbüttel), and Mr. Christian Hofgrefe (Wolfenbüttel) for
making me feel very welcome and for helping me find my feet when I most
needed them. The thesis was written up during my year in Dublin, and here I
must make special mention of Dr Siobhan Donovan, Dr Gillian Pye and Dr
Miriam Frendo at UCD for proofreading a large pile of paper containing rather
impenetrable English as well as Björn Norlin and Maria Rex (Umeâ
Universitet) for feeding me.
Und dann gilt es noch allen denjenigen zu danken, deren Hilfe und
Unterstützung für mich sich womöglich eher auf die Hoffnung gründete, dass
ein erfolgreicher Abschluss meiner Arbeit auch mit dem Ende meiner
Besessenheit für ein kleines und noch dazu ungrammatisches Hilfsverb
verbunden sein würde, so dass man am Kaffeetisch und anderen geselligen
Ereignissen nun auch wieder über etwas Anderes reden könne. Auch diesen
Personen deshalb hier ein herzliches Dankeschön:
Hans und Mama, Dirk, Jason, Josie, Rüdiger & Gila, Marc, Die Rentzows, Die
Neibigs, The Hayletts, Paddel and Shazza, Stefano, Enrico, Mietzi, Mr. Cat,
Dixie, Mark & Honey, Josie, Papa und Marianne, sowie den folgenden
Fußballmannschaften, die mich von meiner Arbeit nicht nur abgehalten haben:
Medical Physics, TSV 05 Neumünster, Dynamo Medicus, Germania II
Wolfenbüttel, HAB Soup and Football, Bank of Ireland, Arts Gradpad F.C.
Und dann natürlich noch: vielen Dank an meine Susi - sie weiß schon wofür.
Nils Langer
Bristol, April 2001
