Linguistic purism in action : how auxiliary tun was stigmatized in Early New High German
The 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
History
1 online resource (324 pages)
9783110881103, 3110881101
868970058
Table of Content
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
1. Introduction
1.1 The Problem
1.2 Grammarians
1.3 Tun in Standard German
1.4 Thesis
1.5 Method
2. Part I: The Distribution of Auxiliary Tun
2.0 Auxiliary Tun in Other Languages
2.1 The Origin of Tun
2.2 Tun in Frisian
2.3 Tun in Dutch
2.4 Tun in English
2.5 Tun in Low German
2.6 Tun in Older Stages of German
2.7 Tun in Early New High German
2.8 Tun in Modern German Dialects
2.9 Tun in ENHG
a New Analysis
2.10 Conclusion of Part I 3. Part II: The Stigmatization of Auxiliary Tun3.1 The Emergence of Standard German � Early Approaches and Current Thinking
3.2 The Emergence of Standard German and the Influence of Grammarians
3.3 Polynegation and Double Perfect
3.4 Syntactic Stigmatization by Prescriptive Grammarians
3.5 The Stigmatization of Polynegation and Double Perfect
3.6 Prescriptive Grammarians and the Stigmatization of Auxiliary Tun
3.7 Conclusion of Part II
4. Conclusion
5. Appendix: Data and Bibliographies
5.1 Primary Data
5.2 Bibliographies
Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2000
Electronic reproduction, [Place of publication not identified], HathiTrust Digital Library, 2010
In English