Open Access

Eva Büthe-Scheider

• A typical characteristic of Central German dialects, especially of the Ripuarian dialect, is that it has collective nouns with ge- + -ze (cf. gesteinze) besides those with ge- + -e (cf. gesteine) corresponding to Dutch gesteente and gestene. A relationship between ge- + -ze and ge- + -te has been assumed for a long time. A corpus-based comparison is given in order to explain the genesis of these different formation types (ge- + -e, ge- + -ze, ge- + -te) and their relations. It seems likely that earlier Dutch formations influenced their Ripuarian counterparts. Rarely, the circumfix ge- + -te also occurs in Ripuarian texts and may be autochthone. One main result is that the suffic -ze in Ripuarian restores the collective formation in the circumfix ge- + -e when it was destroyed by the e-apokope. This is a rare instance where an element of word formation is replaced by another one in order to neutralize the isolation effect of sound change.