Vortrag: Does contrast affect the use of the personal pronoun er and the pronominal demonstratives der and dieser in German?

Two of the most frequently used German demonstratives are der and dieser, which can be used adnominally (like determiners) and pronominally (like pronouns). Although there is some recent work on the pronominal use (Patil et al. 2020, Fuchs & Schumacher 2020), it remains unclear which linguistic factors influence a speaker’s preference to use der or dieser. One of these factors might be contrast, which has been discussed theoretically but not empirically tested. In this presentation, I report the results of two forced-choice experiments in which I empirically investigated the question whether the linguistic factor contrast affects people's choice to use the German personal pronoun er or the pronominally used demonstratives der and dieser. Bisle-Müller (1991) and Ahrenholz (2007) assume that only dieser and not der is able to express a contrast between several referents and therefore should be preferred in those contexts. Contrary to that, Bosch & Hinterwimmer (2016) argue that der is able to express contrast, which might be a difference between der and the personal pronoun er. The statistical analysis of the results of the two experiments shows that der and dieser seem to be equally able to express a contrast between their referent and other referents, while they are used more often in such contrastive contexts than in contexts without contrast. In contrast to that, the personal pronoun er is used more often in contexts without contrast than in conditions with a contrast between its antecedent and other referents. Therefore, the results do not support the hypothesis of Bisle-Müller (1991) and Ahrenholz (2007). Instead, they are more in a line with the hypothesis of Bosch & Hinterimmer (2016).