Programm 79. StuTS

German distinguishes between two conjugation classes. While strong verbs like "lesen" 'to read' typically show a root vowel change (ablaut) in the synthetic past tense and no overt suffixal realizations of past tense and agreement for the first/third person singular ("er/sie las"), the past tense forms of weak verbs like "lernen" 'to learn' surface with the suffix -t for past tense and -e for first/third person singular agreement ("er/sie lernte") (Wöllstein, 2022).

In Early New High German (Dammel, 2011; Wegera, 2023) as well as in child speech of children acquiring German (Petrova, 2016), forms are attested that mix properties of both conjugation classes: Past tense forms like "nahme" or "fande" surface with a root vowel change and no past tense suffix like strong verbs but with the overt agreement exponent -e of weak verbs.

This talk discusses implications for morphological theory within the framework of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz, 1993; Embick, 2015; Alexiadou et al., to appear) that come from these forms. The analysis is based on the concept of secondary feature negligence by children from the analysis of Hein et al. (2024; 2025) on English past tense "errors". Children's representations of secondary features are unstable and they occasionally fail to consider them during Vocabulary Insertion. This concept can be carried over to diachronic change and can - together with assumptions about the directionality of change - account for the attested forms and rule out unattested combinations of properties of strong and weak verbs in one form. Further implications for the modeling of root vowel changes and conjugation classes within Distributed Morphology will be discussed.

Info

Tag: 14.05.2026
Anfangszeit: 15:15
Dauer: 01:00
Raum: HDH Halle 199 (4)
Track: Morphology
Sprache: en

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Dateien

• Abstract 79. StuTS (Nele Arnold)