Zur Entwicklung der modalen verstehen-Konstruktion: Ein Konservierungseffekt im Zuge der Auxiliarisierung

Abstract The present paper deals with item- and feature-based changes of the modal semi-schematic construction with verstehen in written German during the 20th century. To understand this development, the century is divided into four equal periods. Applying a simple collexeme analysis for each time span, the study ascertains which lexical verbs appear as typical items in a schematic slot constituting its collostructional profile. Comparing the distributional behavior manually in a pairwise fashion, the analysis reveals that solely three verbs, namely machen, umgehen and meistern, stay constantly highly attracted within the top collexemes of the verstehen-construction during the 20th century. Using a dependency-based semantic space model, the study demonstrates that the collostructional profile of the fourth period differs considerably from the previous time span. Utilizing random forest of conditional inference trees, changes in terms of usage features of the modal construction are pinpointed. As a result, its grammaticality degree has not increased demonstrating solely minor changes in temporal functionality as well as in realization of subject forms.