Prefixless Past Participles in West Central German: Phonology or Perfective Aspect?

Abstract

The following paper presents an analysis of the use of ge -Prefix in dialects of German for the formation of the past participle. In order to address the issue of prefixation in West Central German, I have compared two sources of dialect data. First, I have consulted Wenker surveys from the late 19th century and secondly, I have consulted the “Mittelrheinischer Sprachatlas”, which collected a variety of dialect data from around 1980. The pattern of prefixation that emerges from these data shows that West Central German prefixation has preserved the historical German system of not using a prefix in the past participial forms of inherently “perfective” verbs such as finden, kommen, treffen, werden and bringen , though the numbers differ for individual verbs into the 19th century. In the 20th century in these varieties, the pattern appears to be moving away from the “perfective” system towards a new system of prefixation, whereby all past participles get a prefix, except velar-initial verbal roots. Thus, forms such as the participle of geben are majority prefixless, but the participle of bringen is majority prefixed. Furthermore, these prefixation patterns can be seen to define differences between Ripuarian, which mostly retains the old prefixless past participles without much addition, Moselle Franconian, which adds more velar-initial roots to the prefixless group and Rhine Franconian, which generally removes the category of prefixless past participles from the language.