Date of Award

Spring 2023

Document Type

Thesis

Terms of Use

© 2023 Anna G. Karpowicz. All rights reserved. This work is freely available courtesy of the author. It may only be used for non-commercial, educational, and research purposes. For all other uses, including reproduction and distribution, please contact the copyright holder.

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Linguistics Department

First Advisor

Brook Danielle Lillehaugen

Second Advisor

Shizhe Huang

Abstract

German verbs of motion can use either the perfect auxiliary sein ‘to be’ or the perfect auxiliary haben ‘to have’. It has been posited that the auxiliary selection in these types of verbs is linked to the presence of a [locomotion] feature, sein ‘to be’ occurring with [+locomotion] and haben ‘to have’ occurring with [- locomotion]. Lewandowski (2018) uses empirical data from contemporary German to argue that there is further distinction than previously thought, namely that within the manner-of-motion verb category, non-directional motion verbs and directional motion verbs diverge in auxiliary selection when the [-locomotion] feature is present. I am testing Lewandowski’s (2018) explanation of auxiliary selection on a corpus of German folklore and fairytales from 1800-1850, to see if his arguments hold up when applied to an older form of New High German (Modern German). I found that overall, Lewandowski’s explanation applies, but there are some areas where my data differed.

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