stuf 2014; 67(4): 613 – 625 Michael T. Putnam* and Lara Schwarz How interrogative pronouns can become relative pronouns: the case of was in Misionero German Abstract: Misionero German (MG), a variety of heritage German spoken in the Misiones Province of Argentina, allows the interrogative pronoun was ‘what’ to function as a relative pronoun in similar and analogous contexts to those found in Brazilian Portuguese. We argue that this shif in the grammar is the result of replica grammaticalization, likely due to extreme contact with Brazilian Portu- guese over the course of the last century. Keywords: Misionero German, complementizers, relative pronouns, grammati- calization, feature reassembly, reanalysis DOI 10.1515/stuf-2014-0031 1 Introduction Complementizers and relative pronouns in German-language dialects through- out the world have been the focus of a number of recent studies, most notably Cimbrian German (see e.g. Bidese 2008, 2011; Padovan 2011; Bidese et al. 2012). In this squib, we take a closer look at the function of wo ‘where, generic rela- tive pronoun’ and was ‘what’ as a complementizer and relative pronoun re- spectively in a variety of heritage German spoken in the Misiones Province of Northeastern Argentina that we call Misionero German (MG). Although an ex- pansive study of the linguistic heritage of MG has not yet been carried out, most dialect features strongly resemble Eastern Palatinate and Southern Hessian *Corresponding author: Michael T. Putnam: The Pennsylvania State University, Department of Germanic & Slavic Languages & Literatures, Burrowes 427, University Park, PA 16802, USA. E-mail: mike.putnam@psu.edu Lara Schwarz: The Pennsylvania State University, Department of Germanic & Slavic Languages & Literatures, Burrowes 427, University Park, PA 16802, USA. E-mail: lara.schwarz@psu.edu Brought to you by | Rice University Authenticated Download Date | 5/21/15 11:07 AM