36.2280, Reviews: Bewertung und Variation der Präpositionalkasus im Deutschen: Annika Vieregge (2025)

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Subject: 36.2280, Reviews: Bewertung und Variation der Präpositionalkasus im Deutschen: Annika Vieregge (2025)

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Date: 29-Jul-2025
From: Victoria Beatrix Fendel [vbmf2 at cantab.ac.uk]
Subject: Morphology, Syntax: Annika Vieregge (2025)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/36-847

Title: Bewertung und Variation der Präpositionalkasus im Deutschen
Subtitle: Der Einfluss metapragmatischer Urteile auf die Rektion von
Präpositionen
Series Title: Open Germanic Linguistics
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: Language Science Press
           http://langsci-press.org
Book URL: https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/475

Author(s): Annika Vieregge

Reviewer: Victoria Beatrix Fendel

Vieregge, Annika. Bewertung und Variation der Präpositionalkasus im
Deutschen: Der Einfluss metapragmatischer Urteile auf die Rektion von
Präpositionen. Open Germanic Linguistics, 10. Berlin: Language
Science Press. ISBN 978-3-98554-126-3. 45€.
SUMMARY
Vieregge’s Bewertung und Variation der Präpositionalkasus im
Deutschen (“Evaluation and variation of cases governed by prepositions
in German”) consists of seven chapters, of which the final one is a
brief outlook chapter, a researcher index, and a list of references.
The book sets itself the goal to prove two hypotheses, firstly that
the choice of the genitive and dative with prepositions is tied to
social values, and secondly that language users use the two case
options differently depending on the communicative contexts (p. 4).
The study succeeds in proving both.
Chapter 1 sets the hypotheses to be tested against past research,
especially in the areas of grammaticalisation and prototyping (pp.
2–3). In order to test these hypotheses, a questionnaire-based study
design is selected and the test cases are wegen ‘because of’, während
‘during’ (both originally governing the genitive case), dank ‘thanks
to’, gegenüber ‘opposite, to(wards)’ (both originally governing the
dative case), and seit ‘since, for’ (originally governing the dative
case) (p. 4). Finally, the chapter provides a brief overview of the
chapters of the book.
Chapter 2 is the theoretical toolbox of the book. It introduces the
reader to metapragmatic comments made by language users, i.e. comments
that show awareness of and reflexion on their own language use, with a
thorough literature review (Section 2.1). It further familiarises the
reader with the competing disciplines of Spracheinstellungsforschung
(“research into attitudes towards language”), which focusses on the
individual language user’s cognition and evaluation, and
Sprachideologieforschung (“research into language-related
ideologies”), which considers social phenomena related to language
including the indexicality of variants (esp. p. 43) and the concept of
a persona (p. 49) (Section 2.2). Many studies related to the former
align with the first wave of sociolinguistics, whereas many studies of
the latter align with the third wave of sociolinguistics (p. 46 n.
25). In the same section, the methodological implications for the
design of the questionnaire are discussed (pp. 49–56). The chapter
finally ties together metapragmatic awareness and comments with
synchronic variation and diachronic change of language and pays
specific attention to the standard language ideology, which is
pervasive for German (Section 2.3).
Chapter 3 introduces the reader to the test-case prepositions within
the wider framework of prepositions and the cases which they govern in
German. The chapter critically assesses where to draw the line around
the part-of-speech preposition in German and introduces the reader to
the distinction between primary (e.g. seit ‘since, for’), secondary
(e.g. wegen ‘because of’), and tertiary (e.g. im Hinblick of ‘with a
view to’) prepositions (Section 3.1). The chapter further explains the
grammaticalisation process of prepositions in German, along the
continuum from tertiary to primary preposition (esp. p. 83), and the
prototyping process (esp. p. 89) (Section 3.2). Finally, the chapter
provides an overview of the concepts of social indexicality and
register-related variation, including how Sick’s well-known Der Dativ
ist dem Genitiv sein Tod (“the dative is the genitive’s death
sentence”) fits into all of this (esp. p. 105) (Section 3.3).
Chapter 4 describes the design and process of the experimental setup,
an online questionnaire administered to 397 language users across
Germany. It is the methodology chapter. The questionnaire is designed
with a mixed-methods approach in mind, and three pre-tests using the
think-aloud method along with a pilot study, in which 46 participants
were polled, were carried out to perfect the design, i.e. consider
when participants become aware of the object of interest and what
distractors have to be removed (Section 4.1). The questionnaire (1)
asks about language awareness, confidence in one’s language ability,
and levels of tolerance towards variation by means of Likert scales,
(2) asks participants to complete two gap-fill exercises modelled onto
a text message and a cover letter respectively, and (3) asks for
associations regarding a sentence pair containing one of the four
prepositions in combination with each case (both in form of a
free-text question and in form of Likert scales), (4) asks for
acceptability ratings relating to the acceptability of the
historically “new” option in formal vs. informal settings, and (5)
asks for a range of metadata (Section 4.2). The questionnaire was live
for 42 days in January/February 2017, i.e. before the Covid pandemic
which has acted as a catalyst in many areas of language development
(e.g. Charteris-Black 2021), and was distributed via networks
accessible to the author (esp. pp. 127–128) (Section 4.3). The
qualitative analysis of the free-text responses was done inductively
by means of MAXQDA (for categorisation) and inter-annotator-agreement
scores (for the annotation) (Section 4.4).
Chapter 5 examines in detail the results of each section of the
questionnaire. It is the analysis chapter. The chapter starts with an
overview of the group of participants as regards their age, gender,
location within Germany, educational background, profession
(especially considering whether their everyday work requires them to
work with texts and to what extent), language awareness, confidence in
their language ability, and levels of tolerance towards variation
(Section 5.1). The chapter moves on to the association-based part of
the questionnaire. The genitive appears to be associated with
education and competency (in combination with wegen ‘because of’,
während ‘during’, and dank ‘thanks to’--note specifically that dank
originally combines with the dative whereas the other two originally
combine with the genitive (!)). Yet the genitive can, depending on
setting, be seen as a sign of arrogance and seems to be indexing
formality and distance (as in written discourse).  The dative appears
to be indexing informality and familiarity (as in spoken discourse)
and can, depending on setting, be seen as a sign of laziness (Section
5.2). The chapter turns next to the acceptability tests, in which only
the historically speaking newer variant was tested. The most
influential variable was statistically calculated by means of
conditional inference trees and the random forest method (pp.
212–223). It appears that the genitive is generally more acceptable
than the dative, especially in formal settings. In informal settings,
the acceptability and correctness ratings differ more considerably
(pp. 189–190). The most important factors influencing the
acceptability scores seem to be the setting (formal vs. informal) with
the location of the participant within Germany as a close second
overall (p. 232) (Section 5.3). The chapter moves on to the production
experiment part of the questionnaire next. Instances where the
genitive was chosen by far outnumber those where the dative was
selected for wegen ‘because of’, während ‘during’, and dank ‘thanks
to’. This may partially be tied to the test setting (p. 237).
Noticeably, for dank ‘thanks to’ in combination with the genitive,
older participants seem to conceptualise this as the younger variant
due to its indexicality (p. 243). In the younger participants,
sensitivity to register variation seems to be more pronounced (p.
244). Generally speaking, the most important factors influencing the
case choice seem to be the setting and the location of participants
withing Germany based on the calculation of conditional inference
trees and random forest (Section 5.4).
Chapter 6 summarises results and offers conclusions. The results from
the association and acceptability tests in the questionnaire show that
case choice is indexically marked, in the form of indexical fields,
i.e. different social meanings can be activated by means of choosing a
case in combination with a preposition (Section 6.1). The
dative-preposition dank ‘thanks to’ has clearly shifted to governing
the genitive case as the production experiment has shown –
de-prototyping as it were – and the genitive case can be used at times
with the primary preposition seit ‘since, for’ (which governs the
dative) – de-grammaticalising as it were (pp. 281). Instead of relying
on prototyping and grammaticalisation as drivers of this change, the
study has shown that the social indexing of variants has much to
contribute in situations where grammaticalisation has resulted in case
variation and language users have to choose. Furthermore, it has been
shown that choices vary considerably in relation to the register and
the location of the language user within Germany.
Chapter 7 is a brief outlook section outlining further work that could
be done with the data that has been collected, e.g. using the
demographic information collected from the participants or looking at
one participant throughout the questionnaire in order to identify
participant profiles. It also reflects upon further work for which
data collection would have to proceed differently, e.g. in order to
assess situational settings and their influence, including spoken
settings as well as in order to assess the contrast between secondary
and primary prepositions and between nominal phrases of the type
definite article plus noun in the singular and other types of nominal
phrases governed by prepositions.
EVALUATION
The book reads overall rather like a PhD thesis. In the
Acknowledgements, the author indeed mentions that the book was written
as a PhD thesis at the universities of Hamburg and Bamberg. It is
entirely natural that a PhD thesis has an extensive toolbox chapter
(esp. Chapter 2 here) and a minutely descriptive analysis chapter
(Chapter 5 here) before venturing into any interpretation. However, in
a monographic study, it would help the reader simply to have
visualisations in Chapter 5, for example, instead of tables, or even
just markings in the tables such that the reader’s gaze is directed.
The information proffered in Chapter 2 becomes relevant when designing
the questionnaire as well as analysing and interpreting the data and
its validity; yet this is difficult to perceive for the reader, at
least when reading in a linear manner. Something very positively
retained from the writing style of a PhD thesis is the density of
examples, especially when discussing the free-text answers
participants provided. This helps the reader gain a good understanding
of the categories and sub-categories that are subsequently applied to
these in order to group them.
The monograph is written in German but judging by the list of
references, the author engaged extensively with non-German research
literature, which is fantastic. It however seems to have resulted in
the import of unestablished loans such as “Setting”, where for
instance German “Umstände” or “Situation” would have been entirely
possible. Noticeably, one participant commented on a similar use of
language in the questionnaire: “Im Test war ich bei der Aufgabe mit
der Bewerbung teilweise mit dem englischen Fachjargon überfordert,
bzw. ich kannte dort einige Begriffe nicht.” (p. 238, “In the test
(sc. questionnaire), I was sometimes overwhelmed by the English
technical jargon, or rather did not know some terms”). While the
relevant items all seem imported as technical jargon, possibly to
avoid transposing them into German and thus risking the loss of a
nuance or link to the original research tradition, it may have been
beneficial to establish German terms at the start of the book, at
least for terms where obvious equivalents exist in order to aid
readability.
The experimental setup seems to limit the interpretability of the data
which is regularly mentioned throughout. The study design is an online
experiment with a convenience sample (p. 111). All the networks
accessed are either directly related to the university and student
life or linked to higher education levels apart from the additional
data points from post-sampling (esp. pp. 127–128). Moreover,
participants seem to have experienced the questionnaire akin to a test
and seem to have been aware of the observer (p. 281), in the sense of
the observer’s paradox, and thus positioned themselves to an extent.
Especially with regard to the interest in a dialectal vs. a standard
German variety the participants operate in, it may even have been that
they moved along Grosjean’s (2024) language mode continuum, as it
might be applied to varieties.  Grosjean distinguishes between the
monolingual mode when the variety that is not used in active
production is deactivated, the bilingual mode when both varieties are
activated, and an intermediate mode (Grosjean 2024: 28). Language
users well-versed in several varieties shift easily towards the
bilingual end of the mode continuum when they know that, e.g. the
interviewer is bilingual or when they notice the setting being
favourable towards bilingualism, but may equally shift towards the
monolingual end when no such indication is given. The author seems
aware of this limitation to the results gained. Finally, participants
were randomly sampled into four groups for the association part of the
questionnaire (p. 120) as well as the acceptability test (p. 123) in
order to keep the length of the questionnaire manageable. The issue
that arises in the analysis (and interpretation) sections of the book
as a consequence of this is that several sub-samples are too small to
give an indication of results. It may have been worthwhile to test out
the length of the questionnaire in the pre-testing and piloting stages
so as to use the maximum number of questions that participants still
find manageable and are willing to engage with.
As a sidenote, the insecurity data published in Vieregge (2019) is
mentioned several times throughout the book but only in the conclusion
chapter are details given (p. 276). It is explained that this data is
relevant, for instance, to understand the discrepancy between
acceptability and correctness ratings and the statements as to whether
participants would use a variant themselves.
The study focuses on four secondary prepositions as test cases.
Secondary prepositions (including gegenüber ‘against, to(wards)’) are
said to be distinguished from tertiary prepositions by the fact that
the latter “have to combine with a primary preposition due to their
peripheral status as prepositions” (p. 78; original: “die aufgrund
ihres peripheren Status als Präpositionen in Verbindung mit einer
Primärpräposition stehen müssen”). Secondary prepositions are
morphologically transparent (p. 80), they can precede, follow, or
enclose the phrase they govern, and they cannot introduce
prepositional objects or combine into pronominal adverbs like dabei
‘with it’ (p. 81). Primary, secondary, and tertiary prepositions fall
onto a continuum (p. 78), rather than there being clear dividing
lines. Prepositions are considered grammatical items (p. 84) rather
than lexical ones. This is interesting from a multi-word-expressions
perspective with regard to secondary and tertiary prepositions. While
something like mithilfe (+genitive) ‘with the help (of), aided (by)’
is likely transparent to the contemporary language user, as Hilfe
‘help, aid’ is not a cranberry item, i.e. an item that is confined to
a specific setting and not used outside of it, the same would not
necessarily be true for anstatt ‘instead of’ (co-incidentally, the
same is true of stead in English), although note literary variants.
Furthermore, the alternant mithilfe von (+dative) ‘with the help of,
aided by’ would by this definition fall into the category of tertiary
prepositions. Thus, adding to thoughts for further work in Chapter 7
and specifically adding to the idea of drawing on spoken data, one
question to ask would be whether tertiary prepositions in particular
become prosodic units before they become morphosyntactic units (see
comparatively on historical data, Fendel (2024)) and to what extent
this influences language users’ choices of the case following the
preposition; another question to ask would be how alternants such as
mithilfe von/mithilfe distribute and what they can tell us about the
development of the case system as a whole.
As a final note on format, while the publication venue ensures that
the book is published in Open Access, such that there is no immediate
need for a subject index, as every reader can use the in-built search
function of the PDF viewer, the absence of a subject index limits the
usefulness of the hard copy version. The absence of the subject index
also limits the author in pinpointing exactly where they would suggest
that the reader look up information on specific phenomena, instead the
reader will have to filter all search hits.
REFERENCES
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2021. Metaphors of Coronavirus Invisible
Enemy or Zombie Apocalypse? Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fendel, Victoria. 2024. Multi-word expressions in the early imperial
inscriptions of the I.Sicily corpus - still a pain in the neck?
Project. Crossreads Text, materiality and multiculturalism at the
crossroads of the ancient Mediterranean.
https://crossreads.web.ox.ac.uk/article/multi-word-expressions.
Grosjean, François (ed.). 2024. On Bilinguals and Bilingualism.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vieregge, Annika. 2019. Speakers’ doubts about prepositional case
govern- ment in German. In Eleonore Schmitt, Renata Szczepaniak &
Annika Vieregge (eds.), Zweifelsfälle: Definition, Erforschung,
Implementierung, 70–96. Hildesheim: Olms.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Victoria B. Fendel (D.Phil. Oxford, 2018) is a research associate at
the University of Oxford, one of the editors of the Classics section
of the Literary Encyclopedia, and language leader for Ancient Greek in
the PARSEME/UniDive COST initiative. Her research focuses on language
contact (Oxford University Press, 2022) and multi-word expressions (De
Gruyter Brill, 2025) in literary, epigraphic, and papyrological
sources with a specific focus on sociolinguistic approaches.



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