Jürg Fleischer: Zur Herkunft des flektierten prädikativen Adjektivs im Höchstalemannischen

The inflection of predicative adjectives in Highest Alemannic is usually attributed to the retention of Old High German structure or contact with Romance languages. Based on a detailed comparison of predicate adjective inflection in Highest Alemannic, Old High German and Romance languages, this article concludes that neither a broad-ranging persistence of Old High German structures nor recent contact-related causes can be responsible – the distribution of inflected Highest Alemannic predicative adjectives is highly idiosyncratic and is not sufficiently congruent with either Old High German or the neighbouring Romance varieties. It seems more likely that the phenomenon has an early origin in which Romance language contact and possibly, at a later stage, internal tendencies which are no longer extant played a role. The Highest Alemannic idiosyncrasies can be explained as more recent exaptations.

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