A Note on Misplaced or Wrongly Attached zu in German

Schallert, Oliver (2020): A Note on Misplaced or Wrongly Attached zu in German. In: Journal of Germanic Linguistics, Vol. 32, No. 1, PII S1470542719000138: pp. 43-82

Abstract

This paper deals with the misplacement of the infinitival marker zu 'to' in German. While this phenomenon only occurs in certain config-urations in the standard language, such as auxiliary fronting, it is common in dialects and shows quite a high degree of variability. I discuss the misplacement of zu in Standard German due to auxiliary fronting, as well as other types of zu-misplacement found in dialects. I propose two parsimonious options for the analysis of the standard language as well as dialect cases, namely, i) precedence rules and ii) a special kind of infixing operation that was first proposed in the framework of Categorial Morphology (Bach 1984, Hoeksema 1985). I show that even though the first approach has its merits, the second one is more advantageous.*

• Item Type: Journal article
• Faculties: Languages and Literatures > Department 1
• Subjects: 400 Language > 400 Language
• ISSN: 1470-5427
• Language: English