Präteritumschwund

Abstract

Past tense fading

The German language is constantly changing. Examples of language change in New High German include the decline of the subjunctive II in favour of the paraphrase of dignity, the reduction of unstressed endings and the simultaneous construction of new endings on prepositions. An older language change can still be traced in its effects on German today, the so-called Upper German preterit decline. This denotes the omission of the past tense in Early New High German in southern Germany. A phenomenon that continues to spread northward to this day. The present paper aims at studying the German tense system focusing on the fading of the past tense and the reasons behind the phenomenon. The decline in the past tense is one of the most obvious morphological developments in Alemannic (or Upper German). The consequence of giving up this synthetic way of working was the transfer of the past category to syntax. This has led to a strong typological drift of Alemannic in the course of an analytical and additionally bracketed language type. The disappearance of the past tense contrasts in a peculiar way with the preservation, even the secondary expansion, of synthetic subjunctive.