Topics in Zurich German syntax
The primary aim of this thesis is to present a range of hitherto undiscussed data illustrating syntactic phenomena of Zurich German, with a view to establishing the structure of the Zurich German clause. Zurich German is an Alemannic dialect of German spoken in Switzerland. Like other Swiss dialects of German, it is almost exclusively a spoken language and has no written standard. Its syntax is therefore not subject to normative rules and provides a valuable object of study against the background of standardised German, Dutch, English and other Germanic languages. The syntactic theory underlying this investigation is Government and Binding Theory. Chapter one presents a brief introduction to the language and previous literature, as well as a discussion of methodological and theoretical aspects. The focus of chapter two is on the word order freedom in the middle field (<I>Mittelfeld</I>) and on the question of an obligatory subject position. It is argued that there is no strong evidence for functional heads other than COMP and that the middle field is best described in terms of a verb projection only. Chapter three discusses the distribution of clitic pronouns and concludes that subject clitics are lexical
Cooper, Kathrin E.
Topics in Zurich German syntax. The primary aim of this thesis is to present a range of hitherto undiscussed data illustrating syntactic phenomena of Zurich German, with a view to establishing the structure of the Zurich German clause. Zurich German is an Alemannic dialect of German spoken in Switzerland. Like other Swiss dialects of German, it is almost exclusively a spoken language and has no written standard. Its syntax is therefore not subject to normative rules and provides a valuable object of study against the background of standardised German, Dutch, English and other Germanic languages. The syntactic theory underlying this investigation is Government and Binding Theory. Chapter one presents a brief introduction to the language and previous literature, as well as a discussion of methodological and theoretical aspects. The focus of chapter two is on the word order freedom in the middle field (<I>Mittelfeld</I>) and on the question of an obligatory subject position. It is argued that there is no strong evidence for functional heads other than COMP and that the middle field is best described in terms of a verb projection only. Chapter three discusses the distribution of clitic pronouns and concludes that subject clitics are lexical
topics german syntax primary_aim present range hitherto data illustrate syntactic_phenomenon german view establish structure german clause german dialect german spoken switzerland like swiss dialects german almost_exclusively spoken_language write standard syntax therefore subject normative rule provide_valuable object study background standardised german dutch english germanic languages syntactic theory underlie investigation government_binding theory present_brief introduction language previous_literature well discussion methodological_theoretical aspect focus_two word_order freedom middle field question obligatory subject_position argue_strong evidence functional_head comp middle field best described term verb projection only three_discus distribution clitic_pronoun concludes subject clitics lexical