Zugl.: Giessen, Univ., Diss., 2008 u.d.T.: Strübe, Thorsten: Untersuchungen zum Erwerb der Getrennt- und Zusammenschreibung im Schriftspracherwerb des Deutschen

This thesis explores the usage of the new spelling rules in the complex area of separate and compound spelling. This area was a main topic in the reform of German orthography 1996/98. The old rules can be characterized as a complex and incoherent system. The primary ambition in defining new rules for separate and compound spelling was to simplify the writing process in order to facilitate an easier usage of written language for the German speaking community. <br ><br /> The basic concept of the new rules is the declaration of separate spelling as the default, making compound spelling the exception. As a consequence, most words of the German vocabulary, which were spelled as compounds before, are now to be spelled separately. The publication of the new rules for this orthographic area in the year 1996 caused a lot of criticism amongst linguists, the main point of criticism being that words, which grew together on the basis of grammatical processes, had been robbed of their status as words. They are now word-groups in which the two parts do not belong together and have their own individual status and meaning in the sentence. These rules are in opposition to the productive tendency of ?Univerbierung? in the German written language. This means a process whereby words, which stand next to each other in a written text, grow together under special conditions. <br ><br /> This thesis has two main aims: The first aim is to define the system of separate and compound spelling as a combination of grammatical and orthographic aspects. It will be shown how grammatical categories are influencing the orthography of these words. Additionally, it will be shown how the new rules produce spellings which are grammatically incorrect. The second is to verify the prognosis that the new rules were not accepted by the German language community. This thesis presents the results of a corpus analysis drawn from the text corpora of contemporary German language which is available on the website of the <em>Institut f??r deutsche Sprache</em>. Articles from six different newspapers were analyzed to see if and how the new rules for the groups verb and verb, adjective and verb and noun and verb were used in these texts. The results of this research have been compiled for the period of time from August 1999 to December 2000 (Corpus 1) and August 1999 to June 2003 (Corpus 2). It was uncovered that for more than half of the analyzed verbs the new rules were not used consistently. The divergence from the spelling norms ranged from 10 to 50 percent. In particular the group adjective and verb showed a high deviation from the new rules for compound and separate spelling. These results can be explained both with semantic and syntactic reasoning.

This thesis explores the usage of the new spelling rules in the complex area of separate and compound spelling. This area was a main topic in the reform of German orthography 1996/98. The old rules can be characterized as a complex and incoherent system. The primary ambition in defining new rules for separate and compound spelling was to simplify the writing process in order to facilitate an easier usage of written language for the German speaking community. <br ><br /> The basic concept of the new rules is the declaration of separate spelling as the default, making compound spelling the exception. As a consequence, most words of the German vocabulary, which were spelled as compounds before, are now to be spelled separately. The publication of the new rules for this orthographic area in the year 1996 caused a lot of criticism amongst linguists, the main point of criticism being that words, which grew together on the basis of grammatical processes, had been robbed of their status as words. They are now word-groups in which the two parts do not belong together and have their own individual status and meaning in the sentence. These rules are in opposition to the productive tendency of ?Univerbierung? in the German written language. This means a process whereby words, which stand next to each other in a written text, grow together under special conditions. <br ><br /> This thesis has two main aims: The first aim is to define the system of separate and compound spelling as a combination of grammatical and orthographic aspects. It will be shown how grammatical categories are influencing the orthography of these words. Additionally, it will be shown how the new rules produce spellings which are grammatically incorrect. The second is to verify the prognosis that the new rules were not accepted by the German language community. This thesis presents the results of a corpus analysis drawn from the text corpora of contemporary German language which is available on the website of the <em>Institut für deutsche Sprache</em>. Articles from six different newspapers were analyzed to see if and how the new rules for the groups verb and verb, adjective and verb and noun and verb were used in these texts. The results of this research have been compiled for the period of time from August 1999 to December 2000 (Corpus 1) and August 1999 to June 2003 (Corpus 2). It was uncovered that for more than half of the analyzed verbs the new rules were not used consistently. The divergence from the spelling norms ranged from 10 to 50 percent. In particular the group adjective and verb showed a high deviation from the new rules for compound and separate spelling. These results can be explained both with semantic and syntactic reasoning.

This thesis investigates the changes in whether compound nouns were closed (written as one word), open (written as separate words) or hyphenated in Early New High German between 1550 and 1710. Due to the fact that there were no orthographic norms in the German of this time, graphematic phenomena in this period of the German language are very fruitful to examine. The study is based on a corpus of 249 sermons in 90 different postils. Since this thesis aims to show a diachronic development, the corpus texts originate from six time windows centred around the years 1550, 1570, 1600, 1620, 1660 and 1710. The results of the study show a general development from 1550, when around 80% of the occurrences of compound nouns were written as one word, to 1620, when this way of writing dominated almost entirely. In the texts from the last two time windows, the hyphenation spreads, and by 1710, nearly two thirds of the instances of compound nouns were written with a hyphen. The present study also shows that the geographical origin of a text is of lesser importance for the writing of compound nouns as one word, separate words or with a hyphen. However, the distinction between genuine compound nouns (a compound noun with the modifier in an unmarked case) and artificial ones (a compound noun with the modifier in an oblique case) seems to be of greater relevance. The artificial compound nouns are closed to a lesser extent in the period between 1550 and 1620 and hyphenated to a higher extent from 1660 onwards than the genuine compound nouns. In a second part of the study, the compound nouns of the different time windows are examined from a lexical point of view, showing that many compound noun lexemes were almost consistently written in the same way (either as one word, as separate words, or with a hyphen) in all occurrences within each time window.