Pronominale Partitivität: Arealität und Mikrovariation einer morphosyntaktischen Variable in den Varietäten des Deutschen

This thesis investigates the morphosyntax of pronominal partitive anaphors in Continental West Germanic, particularly in varieties of German (especially Hessian). It concentrates on the geolinguistic distribution, morphosyntactic variation and structural analysis of pronominal devices expressing an indefinite subset. Traditional dialectological issues (regarding, for example, the spatial structure of syntactic variables and the location and nature of syntactic isoglosses) are combined with questions of (theoretically informed) syntactic research. Furthermore, the study aims at comparing various systems of pronominal partitivity for the first time in a truly crosslinguistic manner: This is carried out predominantly within (West) Germanic varieties, but also by including (Central) Romance languages, in order to comprehend both differences and common features on a micro- and mesovariational level. The method used, however, is not only contrastive, but also geolinguistically grounded in the sense that morphological forms and syntactic variation are projected into language space, not least because this allows us to confirm or discover interesting correlations and anti-correlations in the data. After a thorough definition of the morphosyntactic variable and its variants (inventory and types of forms) plus the different dimensions of variation concerned (areal-horizontal, social-vertical, morphological, syntactic, historical, idiolectal etc.), the DFG-funded project „Syntax of Hessian Dialects“ (SyHD) is presented, since it provides the bulk of the empirical data for the present investigation. In this context, I discuss general and specific questions of data collection (multidimensional approach with indirect and direct elements of elicitation) as well as data analysis and interpretation (e.g. by using linguistic cartography as a tool). The core part of the dissertation addresses the diatopic, diachronic and distributional-syntactic variation of the systems of pronominal partitivity. The main strategies of partitive-anaphoric reference within the German-speaking language area comprise an older system as well as three innovative systems: (i) archaic, fossilized pronominal genitive forms such as „(d)(e)r(e)“, „s(e)n“, „es“ ‘of them/it’ (living on primarily in a strip from West Central German to East Franconian, but also in southern peripheral areas, i.e. in High/Highest Alemannic and Southern Bavarian), remnants of a former, more comprehensive system of partitivity based on genitive case, (ii) the typologically salient indefinite-partitive pronoun „welch-“/„we(l)k-“ ‘some’ of Standard and Low/Northern German, (iii) the southwestern (Alemannic) strategy of null anaphora, and (iv) the southeastern (Bavarian) generalized indefinite pronoun „ein-“ ‘one’, extended to mass nouns and plural entities. This areal distribution is basically confirmed on a smaller scale for Hesse, a dialect area located centrally and thus being under the influence of virtually all strategies, except for the almost absent „ein“-system. Nonetheless, there are some surprising results such as a categorial difference for number and to some extent also gender when it comes to the vitality of the partitive genitive pronouns. Diachronically, one can identify two types of changes in the system of genitive anaphors: internal alterations (by the loss of features or forms) and external processes of replacement (due to the expansion of the innovative means of expression, leading to competing or mixed systems within one dialect or individual). Moreover, as to the course of change, cyclic sequences of weakening and reinforcement can be discerned, which are often reported for language change processes. Concerning the syntactic distribution, especially the genitive pronouns are tested for their compatibility with nominal modifiers such as numerals/(weak) quantifiers, “inflected” cardinal numbers (schwa), adjectives, different types of prepositional phrases and relative versus complement clauses. For this purpose, the dialectal German genitive particles are also functionally and formally compared to the equivalent Dutch partitive/quantitative pronoun „er“ and to the Romance “partitive” clitics Fr. „en“/It. „ne“, the latter of which are integrated in a more sophisticated system of partitive expressions. With respect to the German partitive anaphors, there turns out to be evidence for two distinct syntactic levels of pronominalization. Eventually, the phenomenon is embedded into the more general discussion of nominal ellipsis (elision and pronominalization strategies). As a result of evaluating the licensing approaches discussed in the literature on the basis of new dialectal and typological data, I argue for an analysis in terms of inflection/agreement or morphosyntactic features (i.e. adjectival morphology or, more generally speaking, different inflectional systems as in German vs. English).