Abstract
Just like most varieties of West Germanic, virtually all varieties of German use a construction in which a cognate of the English verb do (standard German tun) functions as an auxiliary and selects another verb in the bare infinitive, a construction known as do-periphrasis or do-support. The present paper provides an Optimality Theoretic (OT) analysis of this phenomenon. It builds on a previous analysis by Bader and Schmid (An OT-analysis of do-support in Modern German, 2006) but (i) extends it from root clauses to subordinate clauses and (ii) aims to capture all of the major distributional patterns found across (mostly non-standard) varieties of German. In so doing, the data are used as a testing ground for different models of German clause structure. At first sight, the occurrence of do in subordinate clauses, as found in many varieties, appears to support the standard CP-IP-VP analysis of German. In actual fact, however, the full range of data turn out to challenge, rather than support, this model. Instead, I propose an analysis within the IP-less model by Haider (Deutsche Syntax - generativ. Vorstudien zur Theorie einer projektiven Grammatik, Narr, Tübingen, 1993 et seq.). In sum, the do-support data will be shown to have implications not only for the analysis of clause structure but also for the OT constraints commonly assumed to govern the distribution of do, for the theory of non-projecting words (Toivonen in Non-projecting words, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 2003) as well as research on grammaticalization.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abraham, Werner, and Annette Fischer. 1998. Das grammatische Optimalisierungsszenario von ‘tun’ als Hilfsverb. In Deutsche Grammatik - Thema in Variationen. Festschrift für Werner Eroms zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Karin Donhauser, and Ludwig Eichinger, 35–47. Heidelberg: Winter.
Ackema, Peter, and Ad Neeleman. 2001. Competition between syntax and morphology. In Optimality-theoretic syntax, ed. Geraldine Legendre, Jane Grimshaw, and Sten Vikner, 29–60. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Anttila, Arto. 2002. Variation and phonological theory. In The handbook of language variation and change, ed. Jack K. Chambers, Peter Trudgill, and Natalie Schilling-Estes, 206–243. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Bader, Markus and Tanja Schmid. 2006. An OT-analysis of do-support in Modern German. Manuscript University of Konstanz. Rutgers Optimality Archive 837-0606.
Bech, Gunnar. 1955. Studien über das deutsche verbum infinitum. Kopenhagen: Munksgaard.
Benincà, Paola, and Cecilia Poletto. 2004. A case of ‘do’-support in Romance. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 22: 51–94.
Berman, Judith. 2003. Clausal syntax of German. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Bernhardt, Johannes. 1903. Zur Syntax der gesprochenen Sprache. Jahrbuch des Vereins für niederdeutsche Sprachforschung 29: 1–25.
Boersma, Paul. 1997. How we learn variation, optionality, and probability. Proceedings of the Institute of Phonetic Sciences of the University of Amsterdam 21: 43–58.
Borsley, Robert D., and Peter Suchsland. 1997. Syntax-Theorie. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Bresnan, Joan and Ashwini Deo. 2001. Grammatical constraints on variation: ‘Be’ in the Survey of English Dialects and Stochastic Optimality Theory. Ms. Stanford University.
Broekhuis, Hans, and Ellen Woolford. 2013. Minimalism and Optimality Theory. In The Cambridge handbook of generative syntax, ed. Marcel den Dikken, 122–161. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Broekhuis, Hans, and Ralf Vogel (eds.). 2013. Derivation and filtering. London: Equinox Publishing.
Cardinaletti, Anna, and Michael Starke. 1999. A typology of structural deficiency: A case study of three classes of pronouns. In Clitics in the languages of Europe, ed. Henk van Riemsdijk, 33–82. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic structures. Den Haag: Mouton.
Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on governement and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.
Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Barriers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Chomsky, Noam. 1991. Some notes on economy of derivation and representation. In Principles and parameters in comparative grammar, ed. Robert Freidin, 417–454. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Chomsky, Noam. 1995. Some notes on economy of derivation and representation. In The Minimalist program, ed. Noam Chomsky, 129–166. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Cornips, Leonie. 1998. Habitual doen in Heerlen Dutch. In ‘Do’ in English, Dutch and German. History and present-day variation, ed. Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Marijke van der Wal, and Arjan van Leuvenstijn, 83–101. Münster: Nodus.
Cornips, Leonie. 2009. Empirical syntax: Idiolectal variability in two- and three-verb clusters in regional standard Dutch and Dutch dialects. In Describing and modeling variation in grammar, ed. Andreas Dufter, Jürg Fleischer, and Guido Seiler, 203–224. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
den Besten, Hans. 1983. On the interaction of root transformations and lexical deletive rules. In On the formal syntax of the Westgermania. Papers from the “3rd Groningen Grammar Talks”, ed. Werner Abraham, 47–131. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
den Besten, Hans, and Jerold A. Edmondson. 1983. The verbal complex in Continental West Germanic. In On the formal syntax of the Westgermania. Papers from the “3rd Groningen Grammar Talks”, ed. Werner Abraham, 154–216. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Duden. 1997. Richtiges und gutes Deutsch: Wörterbuch der sprachlichen Zweifelsfälle. Mannheim: Dudenverlag.
Dubenion-Smith, Shannon A. 2010. Verbal complex phenomena in West Central German. Empirical domain and multi-causal account. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 22: 99–191.
Dubenion-Smith, Shannon A. 2011. Der Verbalkomplex im Schlesischen. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 78 (3): 281–320.
Erb, Marie Christine. 2001. Finite auxiliaries in German. Ph.D. thesis, Tilburg.
Eroms, Hans-Werner. 1984. Indikativische periphrastische Formen mit ‘doa’ im Bairischen als Beispiel für latente und virulente syntaktische Regeln. In Beiträge zur bairischen und ostfränkischen Dialektologie. Ergebnisse der Zweiten Bayerisch-Österreichischen Dialektologentagung Wien, 27.–30. September, ed. Peter Wiesinger, 123–136. GÖppingen: Kümmerle.
Eroms, Hans-Werner. 1998. Periphrastic ‘tun’ in present-day Bavarian and other German dialects. In ‘Do’ in English, Dutch and German. History and present-day variation, ed. Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Marijke van der Wal, and Arjan van Leuvenstijn, 139–157. Münster: Nodus.
Fleischer, Jürg. 2008. Zur topikalisierenden Infinitivverdoppelung in deutschen Dialekten: Trinken trinkt er nich, aber rauchen raucht er (mit einem Exkurs zum Jiddischen). In Dialektgeographie der Zukunft: Akten des 2. Kongresses der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Dialektologie des Deutschen (IGDD) am Institut für Germanistik der Universität Wien, 20. bis 23. September 2006, ed. Peter Ernst, and Franz Patocka, 243–268. Stuttgart: Steiner.
Frey, Werner. 2004a. A medial topic position for German. Linguistische Berichte 198: 153–190.
Frey, Werner. 2004b. The grammar-pragmatics interface and the German prefield. Sprache & Pragmatik 52: 1–39.
Grewendorf, Günther. 1988. Aspekte der deutschen Syntax. Tübingen: Narr.
Grewendorf, Günther. 2002. Minimalistische Syntax. Tübingen: Francke.
Grimshaw, Jane. 1997. Projections, heads and optimality. Linguistic Inquiry 28: 373–422.
Grimshaw, Jane. 2013. Last resorts: A typology of do-support. In Derivation and filtering, ed. Hans Broekhuis, and Ralf Vogel, 267–295. London: Equinox Publishing.
Haddican, Bill. 2007. The structural deficiency of verbal proforms. Linguistic Inquiry 38 (3): 539–547.
Haegeman, Liliane. 1991. Introduction to government and binding theory. Oxford: Blackwell.
Haegeman, Liliane, and Henk van Riemsdijk. 1986. Verb projection raising, scope, and the typology of rules affecting verbs. Linguistic Inquiry 17 (3): 417–466.
Haegeman, Liliane, and Jacqueline Guéron. 1999. English grammar. A Generative perspective. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Haider, Hubert. 1993. Deutsche Syntax - generativ. Vorstudien zur Theorie einer projektiven Grammatik. Tübingen: Narr.
Haider, Hubert. 2003. V-clustering and clause union—Causes and effects. In Verb constructions in German and Dutch, ed. Peter Seuren, and Gerard Kempen, 91–126. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Haider, Hubert. 2010. The syntax of German. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Harte, Günter. 1950. Die Umschreibung mit ,,doon‘‘im Niederdeutschen. In über niederdeutsche Sprache und Dichtung. Herrn Prof. Dr. Walther Niekerken zum 50. Geburtstag von seinen 37–42. Hamburg: Schülern.
Heck, Fabian, Gereon Müller, Ralf Vogel, Silke Fischer, Sten Vikner, and Tanja Schmid. 2002. On the nature of the input in optimality theory. The Linguistic Review 19: 345–376.
Hill, Eugen. 2010. A case study in grammaticalized inflectional morphology. Origin and development of the Germanic weak preterite. Diachronica 27 (3): 411–458.
Höhle, Tilman N. 1991. Projektionsstufen bei V-Projektionen. Manuscript. Universität Tübingen.
Hooge, David. 1973. Das Verb in der Parataxe und Hypotaxe statistisch gesehen. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 26: 328–341.
Hooge, David. 1975. Nachtrag zum Artikel: Das Verb in der Parataxe und Hypotaxe statistisch gesehen. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikations-forschung 28: 610–612.
Hopper, Paul, and Elizabeth Traugott. 2003. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Horn, Lawrence R. 1984. Toward a new taxonomy for pragmatic inference: Q-based and R-based implicature. In Meaning, form and use in context, ed. Deborah Schiffrin, 11–42. Washington: Georgetown University Press.
Kager, René. 1999. Optimality theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Keseling, Gisbert. 1968. Periphrastische Verbformen im Niederdeutschen. Jahrbuch des Vereins für niederdeutsche Sprachforschung 91: 139–151.
Kiparsky, Paul. 2009. The Germanic weak preterite. In On inflection, ed. Patrick O. Steinkrüger, and Manfred Krifka, 107–127. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Kölligan, Daniel. 2004. Zur präteritalen ‘tun’-Periphrase im Ripuarischen. In Morphologie und Syntax deutscher Dialekte und Historische Dialektologie des Deutschen. Beiträge zum 1. Kongress der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Dialektologie des Deutschen, Marburg/Lahn, 5.-8. März 2003, ed. Franz Patocka, and Peter Wiesinger, 429–452. Vienna: Präsens.
Kortmann, Bernd. 2004. Do as a tense and aspect marker in varieties of English. In Dialectology meets typology: Dialect grammar from a cross-linguistic perspective, ed. Bernd Kortmann, 245–275. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information structure and sentence form. Topic, focus and the mental representation of discourse referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Langer, Nils. 2001. Linguistic Purism in Action. How auxiliary ‘tun’ was stgmatized in Early New High German. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Legendre, Géraldine. 1996. Clitics, Verb (non-)movement, and optimality in Bulgarian. Technical report JHU-CogSci-96-5, Department of Cognitive Science, John Hopkins University.
Löhken, Sylvia C. 1997. Deutsche Wortprosodie. Abschwächungs- und Tilgungsvorgänge. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.
Lötscher, Andreas. 1978. Zur Verbstellung im Zürichdeutschen und in anderen Varianten des Deutschen. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 45 (1): 1–29.
Molnár, Valéria. 1991. Das Topik im Deutschen und im Ungarischen. Stockholm: Almquist und Wiksell.
Müller, Gereon. 2000. Elemente der optimalitätstheoretischen Syntax. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.
Niedersächsisches Wörterbuch (1993), ed. Dieter Stellmacher, Institut für Historische Landesforschung at the University of Göttingen. Volume 3. Neumünster: Wachholtz.
Nieuweboer, Rogier. 1998. The Altai dialect of Plautdiitsch. West Siberian Mennonite Low German. München: LINCOM.
Öhl, Peter. 2010. Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality. In Comparative and contrastive studies of information structure, ed. Carsten Breul, and Edward GÖbbel, 231–275. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Platzack, Christer, and Anders Holmberg. 1989. The role of AGR and finiteness. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 44: 101–117.
Pollock, Jean Yves. 1989. Verb movement, Universal Grammar, and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20: 365–424.
Prince, Alan und Paul Smolensky. 1993. Optimality theory. Constraint interaction in generative grammar. RuCCS Technical Report 2 (published as Prince and Smolensky 2004).
Prince, Alan, and Paul Smolensky. 2002. Optimality: From neural networks to Universal Grammar. In Cognitive modelling, ed. Thad A. Polk, and Colleen M. Seifert, 317–334. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Prince, Alan, and Paul Smolensky. 2004. Optimality theory. Constraint interaction in generative grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Radford, Andrew. 2004. Minimalist syntax. Exploring the structure of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rohdenburg, Günter. 1986. Phonologisch und morphologisch bedingte Variation in der Verbalsyntax des Nordniederdeutschen. Jahrbuch des Vereins für niederdeutsche Sprachforschung 109: 86–117.
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2002. Die Umschreibung finiter Verbformen mit ‘doon’ ‘tun’ und die Frikativierung stammauslautender Plosive in nordniederdeutschen Mundarten. NOWELE 40: 85–104.
Sabel, Joachim. 2000. Das Verbstellungsproblem im Deutschen: Synchronie und Diachronie. Deutsche Sprache 28: 1–24.
Salzmann, Martin. 2013. New arguments for verb cluster formation at PF and a right-branching VP: Evidence from verb doubling and cluster penetrability. Linguistic Variation 13 (1): 81–132.
Schallert, Oliver. 2014. Zur Syntax der Ersatzinfinitivkonstruktion. Typologie und Variation. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.
Schönenberger, Manuela, and Zvi Penner. 1995. Probing Swiss German clause structure by means of the replacement of verbal expletives: ‘Tun’ ‘do’ insertion and verb doubling. In Topics in Swiss German syntax, ed. Zvi Penner, 291–330. Bern: Lang.
Schwarz, Christian. 2004. Die ‘tun’-Periphrase im Deutschen. M.A.thesis, University of Munich.
Seiler, Guido. 2003. Präpositionale Dativmarkierung im Oberdeutschen. Stuttgart: Steiner.
Seiler, Guido. 2004. On three types of dialect variation, and their implications for linguistic theory: Evidence from verb clusters in Swiss German dialects. In Dialectology meets typology: Dialect grammar from a cross-linguistic perspective, ed. Bernd Kortmann, 367–399. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Slade, Benjamin. 2003. How to rank constraints: Constraint conflict, grammatical competition, and the rise of periphrastic ‘do’. In Optimality theory and language change, ed. Eric D. Holt, 337–385. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Sternefeld, Wolfgang. 2006. Syntax - Eine morphologisch motivierte generative Beschreibung des Deutschen. Tübingen: Stauffenberg.
Toivonen, Ida. 2003. Non-projecting words. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Travis, Lisa. 1984. Parameters and effects of word order variation. Ph.D. thesis, MIT.
Van Dale, 1992. Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal, 12th ed. Utrecht, Antwerpen: Van Dale Lexicografie.
Vikner, Sten. 2005. Immobile complex verbs in Germanic. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 8: 83–115.
Vogel, Ralf. 2013. The simple generator. In Derivation and filtering, ed. Hans Broekhuis, and Ralf Vogel, 99–136. London: Equinox Publishing.
Weber, Thilo. 2017. Die ‘TUN’-Periphrase im Niederdeutschen. Funktionale und formale Aspekte. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.
Wurmbrand, Susi. 2006. Verb clusters, verb raising, and restructuring. In The Blackwell companion to syntax, ed. Martin Everaert, and Henk van Riemsdijk, 229–343. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wurmbrand, Susi. 2007. How complex are complex predicates? Syntax 10 (3): 243–288.
Zwart, Jan-Wouter. 2011. The syntax of Dutch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Weber, T. An OT analysis of do-support across varieties of German. J Comp German Linguistics 21, 75–129 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-018-9095-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-018-9095-7