Project C06
Grammatical processing and syntactic change
PI(s): Prof. Dr. Ulrike Demske & PD Dr. Claudia Felser
This project seeks to explore the dimensions of syntactic variability from a diachronic perspective, starting from the hypothesis that structures that are easier to process tend to prevail in syntactic change. During the second phase of the CRC, we will examine the extent to which the principle of dependency length minimization can account for variability and syntactic change in the history of German. Focusing on the placement of subordinate clauses in German, psycholinguistic data from present-day speakers will be compared to data from diachronic corpora to test the hypothesis that the distance between dependent constituents has decreased significantly over time.
Members
PD Dr. Claudia Felser (+49) 331 977-2832 claudia.felser@uni-potsdam.de Universität ResearchGate ORCID
Laura Verena Gosemann laura.verena.gosemann@uni-potsdam.de
Papers
| Author(s) | Title | Year | Published in | Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Demske, U. | Zur Grammatikalisierung von 'gehen' im Deutschen. | 2020 | Forum Japanisch-Germanistischer Sprachforschung, 2, 9-42. DOI: 10.11282/jggls.2.0_9 | |
| Demske, U. | Variation across newspapers in Early Modern German: Degrees of syntactic complexity. | 2022 | F. Dietz, M. van Koppen, C. van de Poppe, M. Schraagen & J. Wall (Eds.), Cross-disciplinary approaches to linguistic variation in Early Modern West Germanic. Special issue of Journal of Historical Syntax, Vol. 6 (No. 13-18, pp. 1-36). DOI: 10.18148/hs/2022.v6i13-18.136 | |
| Bosch, S., De Cesare, I., Demske, U., & Felser, C. | Word-order variation and coherence in German infinitival complementation. | 2023 | The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics, 26(1), 1. DOI: 10.1007/s10828-023-09140-8 | |
| Felser, C., & Bosch, S. | Processing Factors Constrain Word-Order Variation in German: The Trouble with Third Constructions. | 2024 | Journal of Germanic Linguistics, 36, 47-75 DOI: 10.1017/S1470542723000107 | |
| De Cesare, I., Bosch, S., Felser, C., & Demske, U. | Word order change in German infinitival complementation: the role of processing-related factors. | 2024 | Diachronica: Online-First Articles DOI: 10.1075/dia.22037.dec | |
| Bosch, S., De Cesare, I., Felser, C., & Demske, U. | A multi-methodological approach to word order variation in German infinitival complementation. | 2022 | Featherston, S., Hörnig, R., Konietzko, A. & von Wietersheim, S. (eds.), Linguistic Evidence 2020 Proceedings - Linguistic Theory Enriched by Experimental Data (pp. 281-298) . Tübingen: University of Tübingen. | |
| Demske, U., Fodor, I., Paraskevopulos, E., Partikel, L., & Reetz, M. | Potsdamer Zeitungskorpus - diachron [Data set]. | 2025 | TALAR - Tübingen Archive of Language Resources DOI: 10.57754/FDAT.crpb9-vpr31 |
Talks
| Author(s) | Title | Year | Published in | Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| De Cesare, I. | Grammatical processing and syntactic change: infinitival complements in German. | 2018 | Paper presented at the 3rd Summer School in Historical Syntax (SUM-UP 2018): Variation and its limits from a diachronic perspective, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany. 27 - 30 June. | |
| Demske, U. | Zwischen Kohärenz und Inkohärenz: Wortstellung von Infinitivkomplementen. | 2018 | Invited talk at the Japanische Gesellschaft für Germanistik, Tokyo, Japan. 27 August. | |
| Demske, U., & De Cesare, I. | Grammatical processing and syntactic change: infinitival complements in German. | 2018 | Invited talk at the Lecture Series ''Linguistic Circle'', University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK. 21 - 23 March. | |
| Bosch, S., & Felser, C. | The role of processing contraints on word order variation in German infinitival complementation. | 2019 | Paper presented at the 4th Conference on Experimental Approaches to Perception and Production of Language Variation (ExApp 2019), Münster, Germany. 26-28 September. | |
| De Cesare, I. | Textsorteneffekte auf die Stellung infiniter Komplemente im Frühneuhochdeutschen. | 2019 | Paper presented at the Workshop ''Syntax der frühen Neuzeit'', University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany. 10 - 12 October. | |
| De Cesare, I. | Word order variability and change in German infinitival complements. | 2019 | Paper presented at the 24th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL 24), The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. 01 - 05 July. | |
| De Cesare, I., & Bosch, S. | Word order variation in German infinitival complements: Evidence from copus and experimental data. | 2019 | Paper presented at the Workshop ''Multimethodological approaches to synchronic and diachronic variation'', University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany. 25 - 26 October. | |
| Bosch, S., De Cesare, I., Felser, C., & Demske, U. | A multi-methodological approach to word order variation in German infinitival complementation. | 2020 | Paper presented at the Linguistic Evidence 2020. Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany. 13 - 15 February. | |
| Bosch, S., & Felser, C. | The role of L1 influence on L2 word order behaviour in German infinitival complementation. | 2022 | Paper presented at the GLAC 28, University of Georgia, Athens, USA, 31 March – 2 April. | |
| Bosch, S., & Felser, C. | Word-order variation in L2 German infinitival complementation. | 2022 | Paper presented at the EuroSLA 31, University of Fribourg, Switzerland, 24 - 27 August. | |
| De Cesare, I., & Demske, U. | Ambiguity avoidance as an efficiency strategy driving word order change. | 2022 | Paper presented at the 25th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL25), University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. 01 - 05 August. | |
| Gosemann, L., & De Cesare, I. | Factors influencing non-canonical word order in German: a corpus study. | 2023 | Paper presented at the AG16: Creativity and routine in sentence production, 45. Annual Conference of the German Linguistic Soeciety (DGfS), 09.03.23, Universität zu Köln, Cologne, Germany. | |
| Felser, C. | Structural ambiguity in language comprehension and production. | 2023 | Talk presented at the ICHL 26, University of Heidelberg, 5 September. | |
| Gosemann, L. | Syntactic change and DLM in German: a corpus study. | 2023 | Paper presented at the 26th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany. 04-08 September. | |
| Cortés Rodríguez, Á., Bosch, S., & Felser, C. | Dependency length minimization in German relative clause extraposition: Evidence from speeded acceptability judgments and production choices. | 2024 | Paper presented at the 6th Variation and Language Processing Conference (VALP6), University of Vigo, Spain. 26 - 28 June. | |
| Gosemann, L. | The placement of relative clauses in German newspapers: processing constraints from a diachronic perspective. | 2024 | Poster presented at the 12th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 12), University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria. 08 - 11 July. | |
| Gosemann, L. | Wortstellungsvariation von Relativsätzen: zum Einfluss der gesprochenen Sprache auf die geschriebene Sprache im Zeitungsmedium. | 2024 | Paper presented at the Grammatik im Diasystem, University of Uppsala, Uppsala, Sweden. 26-28 September. |
