Aspekt und Genitivobjekt. Eine kontrastiv-typologische Untersuchung zweier Phänomene der historischen germanischen Syntax. By Olga Heindl. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag, 2017. Pp 266. Paperback. €49,80.

Abstract

It is a long-standing debate whether or not old Germanic languages, such as Old High German, Gothic or Old English, had a category of grammatical aspect. The position that the old Germanic languages possessed grammatical means of expressing perfective aspect as in the (contemporary) Slavic languages has been defended and criticized by various authors. Defenders of this view usually propose that verbal prefixes, especially gain Gothic and giin Old High German, were markers of perfective aspect. Olga Heindl takes up this issue in arguing that the Old High German prefix gidid indeed have an aspectual function. A second issue in the analysis of Old High German and Middle High German grammar is the genitive case marking of object arguments. Under certain conditions, object arguments either have to receive the genitive rather than the accusative case marker or the two cases can alternate. An interrelationship between grammatical aspect and case is known in various languages (for an overview on this topic, see Richardson 2012). In some Slavic languages, for example, Polish, Russian, and Czech, an alternation between accusative and genitive case marking of object arguments is well attested. An example from Polish is given in 1. As the contrast between 1a and 1b shows, the case alternation is restricted to perfective verbs. Thus, the case alternation is aspectually constrained.