It is commonly agreed that the plural -s has become a part of Standard German inflection, yet in dialects such as Alemannic it is often seen as an intruder. We challenge this view based on data from a written survey amongst speakers of Swiss German dialects. Our analysis of pluralised loanwords (e. g. Mango) and abbreviations (e. g. WG ‘flat share’) shows a strong effect of both speakers’ age and grammatical gender that points towards a progressive integration of the plural -s into the dialectal system. While masculine and neuter nouns can express number syntagmatically (using articles that differ in singular and plural), feminine nouns rely heavily on suffixes (as the definite article is d’ in both cases). A comparison of the -s plural with traditional dialectal plurals shows clear advantages for -s plurals in both cue strength (output) and scope (input) of the plural schema. We argue that it is due to this that feminine nouns show a significantly higher percentage of -s plurals compared with masculine and neuter nouns in speakers aged 25 and above. The difference disappears for younger speakers while the overall number of -s plurals increases drastically. Combined, we have an apparent time scenario that shows how the -s plural is first borrowed with nouns that rely on overt plural markers, and later spreads to most loans and other words with non-native structure.

The present paper explores the change in distribution and potential function as well as the interplay of two phenomena that occur at the internal boundaries of nominal compounds, namely linking elements and hyphenation. About 40% of present-day German compounds contain a linking element, most prominently -s-(e.g. Geburt-s-ort 'birth place'). Numerous theories have been brought forward to explain its function, two of which are examined here: It will be shown that the linking-s tends to mark morphologically complex constituents while the assumption that it prefers marked phonological words cannot be corroborated.Linked compounds in present-day German use hyphenation, a strategy that is mostly employed with graphematically or phonologically marked constituents, at a much smaller rate than unlinked compounds. In Early New High German (ENHG, 1350-1650), when the linked type arose by reanalyzing prenominal genitive attributes as first constituents of compounds, the reverse held true: Linked compounds underwent a gradual graphematic integration from separate writing into directly connected words which was partly reversed by a Century of hyphenation . While hyphenation also occurred with unlinked compounds, the linked compounds show a striking preference with hyphenation rates reaching a peak at around 90%. It will be argued that ENHG hyphenation had the same function it has today, namely structuring constituents that are perceived as marked: The change in spelling between ENHG and today re-

Publikationsserver des Instituts für Deutsche Sprache URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-78970 separately in the beginning. Their gradual graphematic integration into directly connected words was reversed by a century of hyphenation . This is strikingly different from present-day spelling practice and shows that the linked pattern was still perceived as marked. resulted in structures identical to those of a pre-existing compounding type which made use of bare stems, as in (2b).2,3,4 (1) a. wegen [d-es Leib-s] because the-GEN.SG body.M-GEN.SG Erbe-n heir.M-GEN.SG > wegen d-es Leib-s-erbe-n because the-GEN.SG body-LE-heir.M-GEN.SG 'because of the heir of the body' b. [d-er Sonne-n] Schein the-GEN.SG sun.F-GEN.SG shine.M.NOM.SG 'the shine of the sun' > d-er Sonne-n-schein 2 Older stem-forming elements also lead to linking elements in compounds, e.g. OHG tag-a-lon 'day-wage', but they play a very marginal role in today's system. (For two different views of their importance in the genesis of some linking elements, see Wegener 2008 and Nubling & Szczepaniak 2013: 69-72.) They might, however, have helped the new linking elements along as speakers were used to the existence of additional phonological material in compounds. 3Abbreviations used in the glosses: case: n o m -nominative, g e ngenitive, DAT -dative; number: SG -singular, PL -plural; gender: F -feminine, M -masculine, N -neuter; LE -linking element. In case of syncretism, only the relevant case or number is marked. Gender is marked on the noun only, although expressed through agreement on the articles. 4The examples used show the presumed reanalysis while maintaining the same structure. Proof for reanalysis can then be found when the compounds are used in new contexts, e.g. mit dem Leibserben 'with the heir of the body', where dem 'the.DAT.SG' can refer to Erben 'heir.DAT.SG' only.

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