Morphologisierung und der Wandel des Deutschen zu einer rezipientenorientierten Sprache

Abstract Since the Old High German Period, German has undergone a profound typological change. It has increasingly developed boundary-marking structures that make it more listener- and reader-friendly. This paper has two aims. First, it reviews previous research to show how this change occurs at the syntactic, phonological, inflectional and graphemic levels. Second, it demonstrates that this recipient-oriented shift also affects the level of word formation. As compounding patterns became highly productive during the Early New High German period, the need to distinguish between compounds and phrases grew. Through the process of morphologization, compounds have come to display features that mark them as complex words. As a result, they are easily recognizable as information units, aligning with the broader trend of boundary marking in German.