Der verlust der Verb-Zweit-Regel und die Entwicklung der Clitic Phrase in der Geschichte des Zimbrischen. Empirische daten und theoretische analysen

The investigation presented here has the following title: "The Loss of the Verb-Second-Rule and the Development of the Clitic Phrase in the History of Cymbrian. Empirical Data and Theoretical Analysis." The first part of the title describes the primary theme of the work. It treats on the one hand the progressively complete loss of the syntactic characteristic of the Verb-Second-Rule (= V2) in the history of Cymbrian, that is characteristic for Germanic languages with the exception of English. On the other hand it treats the change in the projection of the Clitic Phrase as a counterpart to the loss of V2. The second part of the title is directed toward the structure of this study which is also divided into two parts. The first is devoted to the empirical-descriptive presentation of the data for Cymbrian syntax and its diachronic reconstruction. The second part presents an analysis which theoretically-appropriate clarifies the reconstruction of the diachrony. The empirical presentation of Cymbrian data is based on the classically instrument for the description of German’s syntax, i.e. "field analysis" (cf. WÖLLSTEIN- LEISTEN; HEILMANN & STEPAN 1997 and TOMASELLI 2004, as well as the literature listed there). The analytical portion of the study is carried out using the framework of the generative linguistic theory as it was discussed and developed in the second half of the 1990s. Obviously the two major sections are related to one another, but each can stand alone. The primary formulation of the question for this study can thus be formulated as follows: "Which syntactic changes represent crucial turning points along the path of the historical development of that Germanic variety in Romance surroundings, which caused this language to shift even more clearly from Germanic to Romance?"