Analysing case in spoken language: A corpus study on East Franconian dialects

Analysing case in spoken language: A corpus study on East Franconian dialects

Blog Article

Due to phonological and morphological processes, there has been an excessive reduction of case forms in the development of the German case system.Thus, syncretism is frequently found in Standard German and even more so in German dialects, where the process of case levelling is more advanced.In this sense, analysing dialects permits a diachronic perspective on German case systems since they show a more princess polly dresses long sleeve innovative behaviour compared to Standard German.Nevertheless, little research has been done on German dialectal case systems to date.

This paper presents the method and initial results of discount greenery a usage-based corpus study of case marking systems in East Franconian dialects, their interaction with animacy and their involvement in argument marking.One of the main issues of the study is the frequency of syncretic patterns which builds a basis for a comparative measurement of similarity between dialectal systems.This paper discusses a method of quantifying case distinctivity by relating it to a canonical system of case distinctions.The initial results of the study as well as the influence of syncretic case marking on argument marking will be discussed.