Abstract
The present article deals with clauses which have an anaphoric d-pronoun (der/dic/das) in the Vorfeld (front field) and whose finite verb is - in contrast to relative clauses - in second position (d-V2-clauses), as in: Ich habe einen Bekannten, der fährt einen Porsche. Clauses of this type are analysed in three historical periods. The corpus consists of texts from Early New High German, from the 19th century and from present-day German. In all three periods, d-V2-clauses occur in the data. They are examined according to various syntactic criteria and compared to relative clauses. Finally, conditions are formulated that allow for the substitution of relative clauses by d-V2-clauses.
Translated title of the contribution | The German d-V2 clauses: Synchronic and diachronic considerations |
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Original language | German |
Pages (from-to) | 239-249 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Deutsche Sprache |
Volume | 35 |
Issue number | 3 |
Publication status | Published - 2007 |