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Petra M. Vogel: „Ich hab da nen kleines Problem!“ Zur neuen Kurzform des indefiniten Artikels im Deutschen

The present article investigates how the new extended short form of the indefinite article ein, nen, which competes with the “normal” short form n, has arisen in supraregional colloquial German. After various possible explanations based on the internal linguistic structure of German have been examined and rejected, it is suggested that we are concerned with a purely phonetic “amplification” of the short form nwhich guarantees that the paradigm of the short form of the indefinite article consists of a monosyllabic word in which initial n- is generalized.