The Prosody of Pronouns, Prepositions, and Prefixes in West Germanic Languages (B03)

• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages ; Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 551281144

This project investigates the prosodic status of three types of “weak” functional elements: pronouns, prepositions, and prefixes. Of particular interest are apparent mismatches between morphosyntactic constituency (or wordhood) and prosodic attachment. We examine such mismatches in historical corpora of early Germanic—where spacing and punctuation provide often-neglected clues to prosodic status—and in experimental studies of present-day Germanic varieties. Preliminary analyses suggest that what was sometimes thought to be random noise might actually be a non-categorical signal at the prosody-syntax interface.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1760: SiNoSi: Silence, Noise and Signal in Language
• Applicant Institution: Universität Konstanz
• Project Heads: Dr. Tina Bögel; Professor Dr. George Walkden