From a focus particle to a conjunction

Diachronic and synchronic analysis of German zumal

Bibliographic Data

ID3014313
AuthorsIra Eberhardt (University of Tübingen, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume93
Issue2
Pagese66-e96
Publication date2017-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0097-8507 • E-ISSN: 1535-0665
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/lan.2017.0031
OpenAlexW2626165596
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited23

This article addresses the German conjunction zumal ‘the more so as’ from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. On the basis of historical corpus data, I trace the uses and meaning development of the lexical item zumal , from a temporal adverb to a conjunction. I argue that it acquired its current syntactic and interpretive features from the final step in this development: the focus particle zumal adopted some syntactic features and meaning components from the subordinate causal conjunctions da and weil , with which it frequently cooccurred in the historical data. In the current language it is thus best analyzed as a subordinate causal conjunction with focus-marking properties, similar to the combination besonders weil ‘especially since’

Adverb · Conjunction (astronomy) · Focus (optics) · German · Linguistics · Meaning (existential) · TRACE (psycholinguistics) · Lexicography and Language Studies · Linguistic research and analysis · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy · Psychology