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Britannisch und der Verlust der Numerus- und Genuskongruenz in der Geschichte des Englischen

Widmer, Paul (2023). Britannisch und der Verlust der Numerus- und Genuskongruenz in der Geschichte des Englischen. In: Heinzle Marti, Mirjam; Thöny, Luzius. Swe gamelith is: Studien zur vergleichenden germanischen Sprachwissenschaft: Festschrift für Ludwig Rübekeil zum 65. Geburtstag. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 169-176.

Abstract

It is usually assumed that English lost its inherited system of number and gender agreement in nominal expressions due to the influence of Brittonic L2 speakers in intense contact. Previous research has sketched two possible linguistic scenarios for this loss: simplification of Old English agreement morphology by imperfect adult L2 learners or, alternatively, calquing of the agreementless Brittonic system onto L2 English. The evidence from two Brittonic varieties, Welsh and Breton, discussed here shows that throughout its history Brittonic never lacked agreement in nominal expressions. This leads us to assume that if the loss of agreement in English was driven by Brittonic L2 speakers it is probably the former scenario that best captures what happened.

Additional indexing

Item Type:Book Section, refereed, original work
Communities & Collections:06 Faculty of Arts > Department of Comparative Language Science
06 Faculty of Arts > Zurich Center for Linguistics
Dewey Decimal Classification:490 Other languages
890 Other literatures
410 Linguistics
Language:German
Date:2023
Deposited On:12 Jun 2023 13:55
Last Modified:03 Jan 2024 14:15
Publisher:Universitätsverlag Winter
Series Name:Germanistische Bibliothek
ISBN:978-3-8253-4980-6
OA Status:Closed

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