Linguistic Purism in Action: How Auxiliary Tun was Stigmatized in Early New High GermanThe auxiliary do (tun) is one of the most-discussed constructions in West Germanic. In German, there is a striking opposition between modern standard German, where the construction is virtually ungrammatical and considered to be "sub-standard" by most speakers, whilst, as this book shows, the construction is attested in all modern dialects as well as historic stages since 1350. In answering why auxiliary tun is ungrammatical in modern standard German, it is shown that the stigmatization of tun was caused by prescriptive grammarians in the 16th-18th century. Furthermore it is shown that the stigmatization of tun as "bad" German occurred in clearly discernible stages, from bad poetry (1550-1680), to bad written German (1680-1740) and finally to "bad" German in general (after 1740), thus providing evidence that the history of the standardization of German needs to take into account direct metalinguistic comments from prescriptive grammarians. The effectiveness of linguistic purism is also shown by evidence from two other constructions, namely polynegation and double perfect. |
Contents
The Distribution of Auxiliary Tun | 12 |
The Stigmatization of Auxiliary Tun | 99 |
Conclusion | 219 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
ander appears aspect attested auxiliary tun causative century cited claims common construction Corpus dialects discussion distribution doen double perfect durative 15 Dutch early element English ENHG evidence examples exist express fact Fischer frequent function given grammar grammarians grammatica important infinitive influence instances language Latin leben lexical verb linguistic lit/did literature machen marked marker meaning negative nicht occurs origin particular period periphrastic Polenz polynegation position prescriptive present reading reason reference regard regional restricted result rule sagen Schottel semantics sentence seventeenth century shown shows sich sixteenth speakers specific Sprache stages standard German status stigmatization subjunctive suggests Takada tense Teutsche Teutschen text type texts theo thet thun thut tuon variety Weiss whilst written
References to this book
Standardization: Studies from the Germanic Languages Andrew Robert Linn,Nicola McLelland No preview available - 2002 |