Verbstellungsvariation in Weil-Sätzen: Lexikalische Differenzierung mit grammatischen Folgen

Abstract

This paper investigates the variation in the position of the finite verb in weil-sentences of colloquial German. I argue that the variation is a consequence of a difference in the lexical systems of causal conjunctions in colloquial and standard German: Where standard German has weil, denn and, colloquial German has (at least) two variants of weil. This polysemy of weil is analysed in a modular way, strictly separating syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties. Thereby, current assumptions on wetf-sentences in colloquial German are either refuted or made more precise. © 1998, Walter de Gruyter. All rights reserved.