Spoken German shows a characteristic degradation of preterit forms. This study provides a comprehensive documentation of this disappearance of the preterit in time and space. It describes the loss of the preterit as a principled process of displacement and develops a new integrated picture to resolve the contradictory state of the theoretical research from the past 130 years.

Hanna Fischer, Forschungszentrum Deutscher Sprachatlas/University of Marburg, Germany.