The use of the conjunction weil among German-speaking Canadian immigrants

Abstract

In standard, written German, causal clauses introduced by the conjunction weil (because) display subordinate, verb-final word order. In spoken German, however, verb-second (V2) or main clause order has been increasingly found to follow weil. Early discussion of weil explored the possible loss of subordinate word order, the influence of English on German word order, and weil V2 as specific to a region or dialect. The present study addresses these and other arguments using a corpus of over 800 weil clauses. Spontaneous, spoken data from two groups of native German speakers who immigrated to Canada before 1970 and after 1985 were analyzed and coded for word order. The data showed an increase in the use of the conjunction weil, and weil V2 among younger native speakers. Earlier hypotheses regarding speaker origin, the influence of English and the loss of subordinate word order were either confirmed or refuted by the data.