Linguistic purism in action: How auxiliary tun was stigmatized in Early New High German. By Nils Langer. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2001. Pp. 312. Hardcover. $97.80
Erik Schleef
Nils Langer wrote this book with one major aim: to explore whether prescriptive grammarians influenced the formation of standard German. He does by comparing language use and metalinguistic comments in Early New High German period eliminating other factors, including “… system-internal reasons (as illustrated an analysis ENHG use), sociolinguistic identification distributional patterns use, e.g., regard text type)” (4), or random variation. aims establish that certain constructions disappeared from standard-language after grammarians' objections. not claim are “creators” German, but we must assume a degree influence for constructions, particular when it comes excluding features language. With aim mind, he investigates periphrastic tun lesser polynegation double perfect constructions.
Journal of Germanic Linguistics