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Damaris Nübling und Mirjam Schmuck: Die Entstehung des s-Plurals bei Eigennamen als Reanalyse vom Kasus- zum Numerusmarker. Evidenzen aus der deutschen und niederländischen Dialektologie

This article considers the origin of the ‑s plural in German, starting out from the assumption that it cannot have been borrowed from English (or Dutch) in personal names (die Schmidts, Laras, Freiburgs), onomatopes (die Uhus, Achs), acronyms (die Abis, Studis), or nominalizations (die Wenns und Abers). A case is made for a native emergence of the ‑s plural from a reanalysis of the onomastic genitive singular inflectional affix, and it is argued that the plural form arose directly out of the context in which the latter is most used, namely in personal names (more precisely, surnames), thanks to their inherently conservative nature.

In this context, ‑s has evolved from the genitive singular inflection of collective forms like des Meiers(Familie/Leute/Jungen) [gen.sg.] ® die Meiers[nom.pl.]). The clearest evidence for this is provided by relict dialectal (productive) constructions like alem. ’s Müllers sin do ‘(the) Müllers are here’, lit.: ‘the Müller’s are here’, still today showing a prefixed genitive singular article (’s < des) in conjunction with a plural verb. Further evidence for such a reanalysis is also drawn from Dutch dialectology, which reveals a remarkable congruence between the dialectal areas with ‑s vs. ‑en plurals and those with ‑s- vs. ‑en genitive singular patronymic surnames.