In the last few years a lively discussion on information packaging has arisen, where traditional dichotomies Theme/Rheme, Topic/Comment and Focus/Background have been taken up again and partly reinterpreted. The discussion is mainly being held in syntax, but also in the fields of semantics and pragmatics. Some remarkable progress has been made especially in Focus phonology. Even if the role of information conveying and information packaging in the Indoeuropean languages was hinted at as early as in the classical studies of the Neogrammarians, this field has remained neglected in today's historical linguistics. This volume tries to partly cover this lack with a sample of papers which offer a various range of new empirical data analyzed from the point of view of information structure. The novelty of the papers consists in the modern theoretical perspective from which the data are analyzed and in the various phenomena considered, which range from the rise of clitic elements to word order change and verb movement. Editorial board Dr. habil. Kai Alter (Newcastle University Medical School) Prof. Dr. Ulrike Demske (Universitat des Saarlandes) Prof. Dr. Ewald Lang (Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin) Prof. Dr. Rosemarie Luhr (Friedrich-Schiller-Universitat Jena) Prof. Dr. Thomas Pechmann (Universitat Leipzig) Prof. em. Dr. Anita Steube (Universitat Leipzig)

Die Verknupfung von einfachen Satzen zu komplexen Einheiten ist ein elementares Verfahren, das alle Sprachen nutzen, um die Brucke zwischen der Struktur des einfachen Satzes und der von Texten zu schlagen. Der Band versammelt Beitrage, die sich diesem Thema aus verschiedenen Perspektiven nahern: systembezogen, sprachgeschichtlich, sprachvergleichend, diskursbezogen, korpuslinguistisch.

This volume presents the first comprehensive generative account of the historical syntax of German. Leading scholars in the field survey a range of topics and offer new insights into central aspects of clause structure and word order, outlining the different stages of their historical development. Each chapter combines a solid empirical basis with descriptive generalizations, supported by a detailed discussion of theoretical analyses couched in the generative framework. Reference is also made throughout to the more traditional descriptive model of the German clause. The volume is divided into three parts that correspond to the main parts of the clause. Part I explores the left periphery, looking at verb placement (verb second and competing orders), the prefield, and adverbial connectives, while Part II discusses the middle field, including pronominal syntax, the order of full NPs, and the history of negation. The final part examines the right periphery with chapters covering basic word order (OV/VO), prosodic and information-structural factors, and the verbal complex. The book will be a valuable resource for researchers and students in historical syntax and the Germanic languages, and for both descriptive and theoretical linguists alike.

In den letzten Jahren hat sich die generative Grammatik in Form des Prinzipien-Parameter-Modells verstarkt auch mit den diachronen Aspekten der Syntax einzelner Sprachen befasst. Das neu erwachte Interesse an der Diachronie beruht zum Teil darauf, dass das P&P-Modell relativ starke Vorhersagen daruber macht, wie und in welchem Umfang syntaktischer Wandel uberhaupt moglich ist.Ein Phanomen, das nicht nur in der diachronischen Betrachtung der germanischen und romanischen Sprachen eine zentrale Stellung einnimmt, ist das des sogenannten V/2. Dieser Thematik widmen sich alleine vier Beitrage aus verschiedenen theoretischen Perspektiven. Ein anderer Schwerpunkt ist die Genitivrektion im Alt- und Mittelhochdeutschen, die von den Autoren mit Faktoren wie Aspekt, Definitheit und Referenzeigenschaften in Verbindung gebracht wird. Andere Beitrage behandeln die morphologische Reduktion von Kasusendungen, die wiederum zu Anderungen in der Wortstellungen fuhrt.
In recent years, generative grammar has paid increasing attention to diachronic aspects of syntax, also because the Principles and Parameters approach makes rather strong predictions with respect to language change and possible variation. The V/2 phenomenon found in Germanic and in (old) Romance languages is discussed in several articles from various perspectives. Other contributions cover, among other things, the genitive in Old and Middle High German and morphological Case reduction and its consequences for word order."