Słowoslěd w pódwjacornej Picańskej warietetnosći dolnoserbskeje rěcy
Word Order in the Western Peitz Variety of Lower Sorbian

Summary/Abstract: The first part of this publication gives a chronological overview of the approaches to research into sentence-topological phenomena in Sorbian. Most of the studies published up to date, however, deal exclusively with word order issues in Upper Sorbian. As a result, the focus of this study is on the discussion of word order issues in Lower Sorbian dialects, spoken in particular in the west of Peitz / Picnjo (often referred to as the “western Peitz variety of Sorbian”). For the sake of compari-son, the author has analysed six recordings of native speakers of this dialect evaluating the position of the main verb or, in the case of predicative nouns, the position of the predicative expression. The results contradict common assumptions as to the word order in Lower Sorbian main and subordinate clauses. Contrary to what has so far been said, the word order in main and subordinate clauses does deviate in Lower Sorbian dialects, although frame structures do occur in both, but even they seem to vary. Furthermore, Breu/Scholze’s hypothesis (2006) about the origin of the frame structures in general is discussed in regard to Lower Sorbian. Here, the author gives an alternative explanation, giving more importance to the topic-comment structure. It is maintained that the use of differing frame structures in Lower Sorbian may partly depend on the varying degree of language contact with German.

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