This article investigates the placement of subjects and objects in American heritage Norwegian (AmNo). While previous studies of argument placement in AmNo (Anderssen & Westergaard 2020) have only included present-day heritage and homeland speakers, we make use of new corpus resources and compare present-day heritage speakers to an older generation of heritage speakers, emigrant speakers, and homeland dialect speakers born around the time of mass emigration. The study includes three positions in the clause: the initial position (Spec-CP) in main clauses, and placement before and after negation (i.e., subject shift and object shift). The results show that while the structure of the C-domain appears to be intact, there is an increasing preference for SV order in the heritage language (see also Westergaard & Lohndal 2019, Westergaard et al. 2021). We argue that this has consequences for the distribution of subjects and objects further down in the clause; however, apart from this, the principles for subject shift and object shift remain remarkably stable over time. To a large extent, variation in subject shift and object shift observed in the baseline is transmitted across generations in American Norwegian; a clear difference is only observed in the limited context of tag questions (see also Anderssen & Westergaard 2020). We suggest that the increase in SV order in American Norwegian is a consequence of pressure to ease processing (see, e.g., Polinsky 2018), although cross-linguistic influence might also be involved. There is little (or no) evidence of change of the underlying syntax of American Norwegian.

Infinitival constructions (ICs) have received considerable attention from syntacticians and typologists, but less so from variationist linguistics. Based on new data from a comprehensive dialect survey, this study investigates the variation and change of ICs in Austrian dialects. The results reveal clear geographical patterns for different IC variants in Austria. Regarding linguistic factors, several constraints are identified, most importantly with respect to the IC’s syntactical function and governing element (e.g., phase verbs). Moreover, an apparent-time analysis shows that one variant (zum + infinitive) has been grammaticalized and spread at the expense of all other variants, presumably due to both dialect leveling and dialect-standard advergence.

Aspectual verbs with infinitival complements are often considered ambiguous when it comes to the question of whether they should be classified as raising or control verbs. In present-day German, argument structure properties seem to favor a raising analysis, but arguments for a control analysis cannot be dismissed. Word order properties do not provide conclusive evidence either and seem to support the ambiguity of aspectual verbs in present-day German. However, new diachronic evidence on word order properties of infinitival complements in uncontested raising and control constructions shows that well-established word order differences between raising and control constructions are a fairly recent development in the history of infinitival constructions (De Cesare 2021): Until about the mid eighteenth century, infinitival complements of both raising and control verbs tend to precede the finite verb in final position, with the preference of control verbs for extraposition developing only later. In present-day German, the extraposition of infinitival complements is considered a strong criterion for the sentential nature of the postposed infinitive and thus of the biclausal structure of the infinitival pattern, at least since the influential work of Bech (1983). In the present article, we look into the word order properties of ingressive aspectualizers over time and evaluate them against the emergence of a systematic distinction of raising and control verbs in the recent history of German, aiming at a deeper understanding of the syntactic behavior of aspectual verbs in present-day German.

The topic of impersonalization has received a lot of attention in the literature, but the focus has mostly been on a limited number of strategies, such as the use of personal and indefinite pronouns and passive constructions. Impersonal strategies have thus far been examined using: (i) grammars, (ii) corpora, and (iii) language-based questionnaires. These methods suffer from several shortcomings if one wants to study the range of impersonal strategies. The present article aims to argue for a new way of investigating impersonal strategies that complements the other approaches, by reporting on the results of a visual questionnaire. More precisely, it discusses a visual questionnaire completed by speakers of Dutch and Afrikaans to determine whether this method is a satisfactory way of studying impersonal strategies and to also examine and compare the impersonal strategies of the two languages.*

This article discusses the variation between masculine and neuter anaphoric pronouns in Afrikaans, especially in reference to inanimate entities such as objects, abstracts, collectives, and masses. The fact that books, governments, and wine can be referred to as both hy ‘he’ and dit ‘it’ is well known, but it is surprising given what is known about pronominal gender systems. Such systems are usually organized according to clear semantic principles, yielding predictable choices. The article summarizes the available literature, provides new data from the NWU-Kommentaarkorpus, and presents an approach that helps to make sense of the synchronic variation and, to some extent, the diachronic developments.

This article discusses pronominal gender agreement in Dutch. Based on a sentence completion task filled out by about 10,000 speakers, we provide evidence for the claim that there is an ongoing shift from lexical to semantic agreement in Dutch, even in a formal register. Results of correspondence and cluster analyses indicate that nouns with the same degree of individuation group together. Furthermore, the analyses reveal an age effect, with three distinct speaker groups that follow a specific gender agreement pattern. Younger speakers are more semantically oriented than older speakers, who are more lexically oriented, which points to apparent-time language change.

This study revisits the V3 linearization AdvP>Subject>finite verb in Kiezdeutsch, comparing it to resumptive verb-third Left Dislocation and Hanging Topic Left Dislocation. Using corpus data, preverbal object DPs are shown to almost never occur across verb-third distributions, yet preverbal nominative subjects and spatio-temporal elements are unproblematic. This behavior is argued to involve a low C-domain position encoding a Subject of Predication requirement (see Cardinaletti 2004) tied to aboutness and nominative Case-assigning features, but not a strict D-related subject EPP. Based on comparison with other corpora and analysis of metadata, speakers from non-German-speaking homes, namely successive bilinguals, are argued to have innovated this property. A novel account is suggested for the emergence of V3 based on claims that it results from a natural informational order (Wiese et al. 2020), which is formalized as a Minimal Default Grammar (Roeper 1999) available to children before they fully acquire CP and TP. Children acquiring a V2 language must either reject V3 or incorporate it into a V2 syntax. Lacking adequate counterevidence in their input, Kiezdeutsch speakers do the latter.*

The development of a sound change can be influenced by linguistic and social factors, both within the language community and from cases of language contact. The present study is an examination of the internally generated ongoing tonogenesis process in Afrikaans, specifically analyzing production and perception of word-initial plosives among different age and gender groups. Results show that female speakers are devoicing significantly more often than male speakers, and the perception of female voices is influenced more by f0 levels than the perception of male voices. This study finds that gender is a larger predictor overall of tonogenetic patterns than age.*

In Modern Standard German both bare infinitives and those formed with the particle zu are used as independent main clause predicates, where they each have illocutionary force. While the former can be associated with a range of functions, the latter specifically encodes indignation towards a state of affairs on the part of the speaker. Taking a constructionist approach, I argue that the exclamative zu-infinitive has emerged as a schematic construction, which is best described as a conventionalized form–function relation between the structure [X + zu + Inf] and an attitudinal semantic feature that represents speaker indignation. I provide diachronic data as well as a cross-linguistic comparison to support this constructionalization process.

The doubling of auxiliaries ‘have’ and ‘be’ in perfect tense constructions is a European areal phenomenon. It is present in languages of different filiations that have been in contact for a long time. In Dutch its distribution is largely restricted to the southeastern part of Dutch-speaking Belgium and some communities of North Brabant in the Netherlands. Double perfects are attested in contemporary Afrikaans, which is contrary to what we should expect, given that its metropolitan dialectal base is Hollandic, not southern Netherlandic. The Cape Dutch and Afrikaans evidence, sparse as it is, suggests that the range of this feature was significantly broader in vernacular Early Modern Dutch than one might infer from contemporary metropolitan norms.*

Afrikaans is spoken by a wide range of ethnic groups in Namibia, both as an L1 and an L2. Stell (2021) showed that, in its phonetic variation, Namibian Afrikaans forms a continuum between Whites and Blacks with Coloureds1 located in between. This article aims to find out whether a continuum can likewise be observed in the grammatical patterns of Namibian Afrikaans varieties. The dataset is based on a translation task, administered to L1 Afrikaans-speaking Whites and Coloureds and to L2 Afrikaans-speaking Damaras and Ovambos, whose respective L1s are Khoekhoegowab and Oshiwambo. The article finds a contrast between L1 and L2 speakers as the Damara and Ovambo Afrikaans varieties show evidence of L1 transfers. However, it also finds evidence of a continuum linking the Whites, Coloureds, and Damaras in the form of commonly shared Orange River Afrikaans features. The fact that Ovambo Afrikaans does not quite fit into this continuum, the article argues, has to do with the historically late exposure of Oshiwambo speakers to L1 Afrikaans varieties. Finally, the article attempts to match evidence of Khoekhoegowab influence on Damara Afrikaans with Den Besten’s (2001) and Roberge’s (1994a) reflections on historical contact between Khoekhoe and Cape Dutch.

This article examines Afrikaans V1-constructions with the verb laat ‘let’ and compares them with similar constructions in Dutch. I refer to these as pseudo-let imperatives (or PLI-constructions). Although PLI-constructions have the same form as some let-imperatives in both languages, they no longer function as commands and lack the directive force typically associated with imperatives. Instead, PLI-constructions are used to express the speaker’s perspective on a certain event or action. Drawing on grammaticalization criteria used by Van Craenenbroeck & Van Koppen (2015, 2017) in their work on perception and causative verbs in imperative(-like) constructions in Dutch, this article argues that PLI-laat/laten has undergone grammaticalization in both Afrikaans and Dutch. Additionally, I demonstrate that the Afrikaans PLI-laat has grammaticalized further than its Dutch counterpart. I propose that Afrikaans’ contact with a variety of other languages throughout its history may have accelerated the grammaticalization of laat relative to its Dutch counterpart, resulting in the observed differences in the grammaticalization of PLI-laat/laten constructions.

This article concerns the so-called Infinitivus Pro Participio (IPP) effect – in terms of which what appears to be an infinitive surfaces where a selected past participle is expected – as it manifests in modern Afrikaans. Prior research has highlighted the apparent optionality of this effect, leading to conflicting conclusions regarding the continued existence of a productive IPP-effect in contemporary Afrikaans. Here we draw on recent corpus- and questionnaire-based investigations to consider the optionality of the IPP-effect in Afrikaans in more empirical detail, with the objective of establishing (i) the status of the IPP in Afrikaans and (ii) how it differs from the IPP in Dutch. The article’s second objective is to consider the role of language contact in shaping the IPP-effect as it is currently attested in (varieties of) Afrikaans.*