Article Europa im Weltbild des Mittelalters. Kartographische Konzepte, hg. von Ingrid Baumgärtner u. Hartmut Kugler was published on September 1, 2011 in the journal Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur (volume 133, issue 2).

In German, unlike in English or Swedish, there are two different perfect auxiliaries: the more frequently used haben and the auxiliary sein. The latter only occurs with a restricted group of verbs. Against the traditional view, it has recently been argued that both periphrases do not form a homogenous category, i. e. there was no grammaticalisation of sein + second participle at all. According to this view the periphrases do not only differ formally but also functionally. In contrast, this article claims that the periphrasis consisting of sein + second participle has been grammaticalised in German. Although the construction had a resultative function in the Old High German period, it nowadays also refers to past situations which can be relevant to the point of speech. Therefore, its function is equivalent to the haben perfect. The reanalysis of sein + second participle is reflected by the distribution of the auxiliaries which is not strictly conditioned by aktionsart anymore. Though a corpus-based investigation of verbs of movement shows there are still restrictions for the periphrasis with sein: It is not permitted in prototypically transitive sentences. Whereas agentivity of the subject doesn't influence the auxiliary choice, sentences with prototypical objects prohibit the perfect with sein. Those objects are usually individuated or referential. Hence, they can underlie a change of state or position. Obviously, sein perfect has broken the actional restrictions, but there are still limitations concerning the argument structure. This shows that the sein periphrasis is only weakly grammaticalized.

Article Nicodemus Frischlin: Sämtliche Werke, 3. Bd.: Dramen III, 2. Teil: Phasma, hg. u. übers. v. David H. Price. Deutsche Übersetzung unter Mitarbeit v. Volkhard Wels u. Walter D. Wetzels was published on April 1, 2011 in the journal Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur (volume 133, issue 1).

Modern German is a language with relatively ›free‹ word order, i. e.: the serialization of constituents is dependent not only on syntactic requirements, but determined also by information structural or cognitive factors. As the same is true for Proto-Indoeuropean, it is tempting to assume that German perpetuates the PIE word order freedom. A corpus study of the relative order of accusative and dative object, using several Early New High German texts from the time between 1350 and 1550, stemming from 4 different dialect areas, shows that this assumption is wrong: German underwent a period of strictly syntactically governed constituent order (dative object before accusative object) which began before the Old High German period and lasted into the 16th century. Information structural or cognitive factors do not play a role for serializastion in this period. The relative position of the objects must be separated from the question of ›scrambling‹ in the sense that material is moved to the left of the subject, as we find examples of constituent order dative object before subject early on.