Prepositional Dative Marking in Upper German: A Case of Syntactic Microvariation

Guido Seiler
University of Zürich
Abstract:
In several Upper German dialects, a dative NP can optionally be introduced by a preposition-like morpheme (an or in):

er hat's an (or: in) der Mutter gesagt
he has it AN IN the:Dsf mother told

In my talk I will pursue the following questions:

  1. In which dialect areas prepositional dative marking (PDM) is attested?
  2. Under which conditions does PDM occur?
  3. What are possible explanations for the emergence of PDM?

I will show that the occurrence of PDM is influenced by morphological, syntactic, discourse functional and phonological factors, the relevance of which varies between the different dialect areas.

Back to the programme
Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects (SAND)