Wo in Relativsätzen : eine korpusbasierte Untersuchung

The paper investigates the functions relative wo (,where' ) can fulfill within German relative clauses. The data base consists of over 460 clauses taken from newspaper articles, belletristic literature and the Pfeffer corpus of spoken language. In the majority of cases, wo is a local adverb, both in written and spoken language. It quite often occurs as a temporal adverb in spoken language, but much less in written language. The use of wo as a relative particle in place of a subject, object or adverb of other kinds is restricted to spoken language, its use in place of a subject or direct object occurs only in southern varieties. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]