Rezente Grammatikalisierungsprozesse im Plain Deitsh

Plain Deitsh is one of the two main varieties of the Pennsylvania German language. It is acquired as a native/first language within religiously conservative Anabaptist groups in Northern America and used in a diglossic repertoire together with American English. Plain Deitsh has been found to be quite innovative with regard to language contact phenomena. At the same time, this variety is significantly less codified than the so-called Non-Plain variety: All comprehensive Deitsh dictionaries and grammars focus on the latter, which currently only survives as a relic language. As a result, many characteristics of Plain Deitsh are not or only sporadically depicted in lexicographical and grammatical works on Pennsylvania German. This asymmetrical language contact with the highly codified English is also reflected in many ways beyond the lexicon, as studies on various verbal constructions in the Plain variety have shown. This article analyses the form and function of prepositional infinitive constructions with am ‘at (the)’, fa ‘for’ und bei ‘by’ in a written Plain Deitsh corpus. Against the background of the linguistic-ecological macro- and micro-context and in comparison with older Plain and Non-Plain texts, the study reveals recent developments and examines them for possible influences of the contact language English, taking into account language contact and grammaticalisation research.