A Diachronic Perspective on Evaluative Adverbs in German: The Case of leider
Abstract
This article presents a corpus-based study of the syntactic and semantic development of the German evaluative adverb leider ‘unfortunately’. The analysis identifies syntactic and interpretative ambiguity as key factors in the reanalysis of leider as a sentence adverb, providing further empirical support for existing accounts of the development of such elements. In addition, the paper proposes a general developmental path for evaluative adverbs in German, highlighting the interplay between syntactic reanalysis and subjectification in their development.
Submitted: May 4, 2025 | Accepted: July 13, 2025 | Published Oct. 14, 2025 | Language: en
Keywords Subjectification • Metonymic shift • Syntactic reanalysis • Sentence adverbs • Evaluative adverbs
Copyright © 2025 Elena Ongaro. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/AnnOc/2499-1562/2025/14/004