Merkmale und Relationen: Diachrone Studien zur Nominalphrase des Deutschen (review)

This monograph looks at various changes within the German noun phrase (NP) from Old High German (OHG) to Modern German. In particular, the author discusses changes concerning adjectival inflection, possessive pronouns, the definite article, attributive genitives, and genitive compounds. The major finding of this study is that all these developments are reflections of one single underlying change, i.e. a change in the nature of the relation between determiner and NP.

Several theoretical accounts of the German NP (X-Bar and DP-hypothesis) are discussed in Ch. 1 and shown to be not capable of capturing all synchronic facts. Chs. 2–4 present diachronic data to cast new light on the problems in synchronic analysis. Ch. 2 demonstrates how the strong/weak adjectival inflection changes from being semantically controlled (by definiteness) in OHG to being morphologically licensed by the (in)/definite article in Modern German, with Early New High German (ENHG) representing the crucial transition period. This development is shown to be mirrored in the changing use of the definite article. Both changes are taken to be reflexes of the reanalysis of the relation between determiner and NP.

In Chs. 3 and 4, the author takes a look at possessive constructions, arguing that the emergence of a possessive article (Ch. 3) and genitive compounds as well as the increasing shift of attributive genitives from prenominal to postnominal position (Ch. 4) in ENHG follow naturally from the changing relation between determiner and NP. Throughout Chs. 2–4 the diachronic changes within the German NP are compared to the corresponding structural developments in other Germanic languages, i.e. Scandinavian languages and English. A structural analysis within the framework of head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG) is proposed to model both the diachronic change within the German NP as well as the synchronic (typological) variation in the structure of the NP of the various Germanic languages, capturing the basic finding of this study, namely that the relation between determiner and NP must be parametrizable.

The monograph concludes with a brief discussion of models of diachronic and synchronic variation in Ch. 5, with the author clearly advocating a structural perspective, viewing language change as reanalysis during the process of language acquisition and primarily determined by the respective structural makeup of the grammar.

This monograph is innovative in at least two ways. First, it is a fine demonstration of how—at first sight unrelated—developments within one structural domain (i.e. the German NP) are intricately interwoven. Second, it is a highly welcome attempt to bridge the gap between theoretical and historical linguistics. Not only does it capture the observed change(s) well, but it also—by including a diachronic perspective—helps to settle some synchronic problems in German nominal morphosyntax which hitherto have either not been understood at all, or not well enough.

All the more it is to be regretted that this monograph will only be accessible to a linguistic audience fluent in German. Somewhat more than the usual number of typos blur the otherwise fine editing of the book.