- This article examines the genesis and use of the German subordinate conjunction trotzdem. We begin by investigating the perception of this grammatical phenomenon in contemporary grammars and popular language guides. Based on analyses of corpora, both ‘from below’ and ‘from above’ (Elspaß 2015), we attempt to answer the questions of how often trotzdem has appeared as a subordinate conjunction since the 19th century, whether it is a phenomenon of conceptual immediacy or distance, and what kind of regional distribution of usage can be observed. In the course of this analysis, we focus on both existing corpora and our newly compiled corpus of historical newspapers, which draws on digitized newspapers from GoogleBooks and ANNO – AustriaN Newspapers Online. The analyses show that trotzdem appears as a subordinate conjunction throughout the periods examined. It is a supra-regional phenomenon that is used quite commonly in German, predominantly in the northern and central eastern regions, andThis article examines the genesis and use of the German subordinate conjunction trotzdem. We begin by investigating the perception of this grammatical phenomenon in contemporary grammars and popular language guides. Based on analyses of corpora, both ‘from below’ and ‘from above’ (Elspaß 2015), we attempt to answer the questions of how often trotzdem has appeared as a subordinate conjunction since the 19th century, whether it is a phenomenon of conceptual immediacy or distance, and what kind of regional distribution of usage can be observed. In the course of this analysis, we focus on both existing corpora and our newly compiled corpus of historical newspapers, which draws on digitized newspapers from GoogleBooks and ANNO – AustriaN Newspapers Online. The analyses show that trotzdem appears as a subordinate conjunction throughout the periods examined. It is a supra-regional phenomenon that is used quite commonly in German, predominantly in the northern and central eastern regions, and both in the language of immediacy and distance. During the 19th century, a three-stage grammaticalization process occurred (trotz dem, daß > trotzdem/trotz daß > trotzdem), whereby compound spelling and the loss of daß emerged and spread; the speed of this process, however, varied in different German-speaking regions. Today, both trotzdem and trotzdem dass are in use, whereby – according to our preliminary observations – the first variant is prevalent in the language of distance and the second in the language of immediacy.…
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