Die Ausbildung der Artikelfunktion im Gotischen aus der Sicht der Theorien des kontaktbedingten Sprachwandels
The development of the article function in Gothic from the perspective of the theories of contact-induced language change

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with selected aspects of the influence of language contacts on language change in the area of grammatical categories in a written language. The author analyses the development of the category of definiteness in Gothic on the basis of a systemic comparison of original Greek and translated Gothic biblical texts. The claim is that internal tendencies in a grammatical change play a decisive part, whereas language contacts are only secondary triggers in this process. Against the so-called “anything goes”-hypothesis, it is shown that an externally-influenced grammatical change can take place only on condition that the inherent system of the language in contact licences it and, moreover, if the change corresponds to similar processes in the recipient language. Furthermore, the influence of a donor language never covers the totality of grammatical forms and their functions in the recipient language, thus the effects of the contact in question are always only partial. Language contacts can, thus, essentially accelerate genuine tendencies in the development of a new grammatical category, but their true origins are always located within the native grammatical system.

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