Alan Scott

Contact

• workRoom B2b The Orchards
  University Park
  Nottingham
  NG7 2RD
  UK
• work0115 823 2521
• alan.scott@nottingham.ac.uk
• http://www/german/staff/alan.scott

Research Summary

The title of my current research project, which is funded by a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, is The Genitive Case in Dutch and German. I am interested in the historical development and the… read more

Recent Publications

• SCOTT, ALAN K., 2011. The position of the genitive in present-day Dutch Word Structure. 4(1), 104-135
• SCOTT, ALAN K., 2011. Everyday Language in the Spotlight: The Decline of the Genitive Case German as a Foreign Language. 2011(1), 53-70
• SCOTT, ALAN K., 2010. Accounting for the semantic extension of derived action nouns Journal of Linguistics. 46(3), 711-734
• DENISON, DAVID, SCOTT, ALAN K. and BÖRJARS, KERSTI, 2010. The real distribution of the English "group genitive" Studies in Language. 34(3), 532-564

• View all publications

Current Research

The title of my current research project, which is funded by a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, is The Genitive Case in Dutch and German. I am interested in the historical development and the present-day status of the genitive in Dutch and German. From a similar starting point, both languages' genitives (and case systems as a whole) developed along different paths: Dutch lost its case system but retains isolated and (modestly) productive remnants of its old genitive to this day: part of my research focuses on how this situation arose and how the present productivity should be described. In German, meanwhile, the case system was simplified in the dialects but retained in the standard language. However, the genitive case has been perceived as a case in decline for some time: my investigation addresses the position of the genitive (alongside its competitors) in present-day German on the basis of usage data.

Past Research

Some of the topics into which I have carried out research include:

• Productive nominal derivational morphology in Early New High German: my MA thesis concerned the productive means of deriving nouns during the Early New High German period (1350-1650). I used a corpus of the polemical writings of Martin Luther (1483-1545) as the basis of my investigation, in which I also compared the ENHG morphological system with that of Middle High German (1050-1350) and New High German (1650-present day).
• Productive nominal derivation in New High German: building on my MA thesis, my PhD research concerned the productive means of nominal derivational available to speakers of present-day German. I investigated the topic on the basis of the Tiger corpus of texts from the Frankfurter Rundschau and a corpus, which I compiled specifically for my research, containing texts from the Spiegel Online.
• The expression of possession in the Germanic languages: this research, which I carried out with Professor Kersti Börjars and Professor David Denison at the University of Manchester, focuses on the use of the possessive 's and of constructions as means of marking possession in English and Swedish. Further details of the research, as well as the database constructed as part of the project, can be accessed at www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/research/projects/germanic-possessive-s/.

• SCOTT, ALAN K., 2011. The position of the genitive in present-day Dutch Word Structure. 4(1), 104-135
• SCOTT, ALAN K., 2011. Everyday Language in the Spotlight: The Decline of the Genitive Case German as a Foreign Language. 2011(1), 53-70
• SCOTT, ALAN K., 2010. Accounting for the semantic extension of derived action nouns Journal of Linguistics. 46(3), 711-734
• DENISON, DAVID, SCOTT, ALAN K. and BÖRJARS, KERSTI, 2010. The real distribution of the English "group genitive" Studies in Language. 34(3), 532-564
• SCOTT, ALAN K., 2009. Feminine gender marking using female-marking suffixes in Standard Dutch. In: CORNIPS, LEONIE, DE VOGELAER, GUNTHER, ed., Perspectieven op het genus in het Nederlands (Taal en Tongval Themanummer 22) 165-187
• SCOTT, ALAN K., 2009. Denominales -er: Ein Suffix lebt (wieder) auf Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik. 37(2), 221-235
• SCOTT, ALAN K., 2009. The marking of gender agreement using derivational affixes in German and Dutch Journal of Germanic Linguistics. 21(1), 37-89
• SCOTT, ALAN K., 2007. Englische Wortfamilien im Deutschen Deutsche Sprache. 35(2), 119-137
• SCOTT, ALAN K., ed., 2006. Proceedings of the 15th Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics, 3rd March 2006 School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, University of Manchester.
• SCOTT, ALAN K., 2006. Land der DichterInnen und DenkerInnen? A linguistic analysis of the controversial suffix -In German as a Foreign Language. 2006(2), 63-80
• SCOTT, ALAN K., 2006. Das Suffix -In: Eine Ergänzung zum deutschen Wortbildungssystem Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik. 73(2), 161-175