10.17192/regiolingua.2025.2.1.8788 Hoppe, Johanna Johanna Hoppe Splitting of pronominal adverbs as a stereotype of Low German Stigmatization from above or below? RegioLingua. Zeitschrift für regionale Sprache und Literatur : Vol 2 No 1 (2025) Philipps-Universität Marburg 2025 Vertikalisierung Low German indexicalization verticalization splitting construction Indexikalisierung Spaltungskonstruktion Niederdeutsch 2025-12-03 2025-12-03 de JournalArticle https://journals.uni-marburg.de/0010/2025/352/8788 urn:nbn:de:hebis:04-0010-2025-352-87885 https://doi.org/10.17192/regiolingua.2025.2.1 https://journals.uni-marburg.de/0010/2025/352/8788/8788.png 2944-2133 application/pdf https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 A controversial question in German linguistics concerns the role of grammarians in the verticalization process of German: To what extent do they shape the choice of variants for a standard supra-regional German variety? The article focuses on the splitting of pronominal adverbs (e. g. da weiß ich nichts von) as a structure that is addressed and stigmatized in 17th and 18th century grammars. This variant has not become established in standard German, while it has been preserved in some dialects and regional colloquial languages. Its stigmatization in meta-linguistic works is examined in relation to an indexi-calization of the splitting construction as a stereotype of Low German in literary dialect adaptations of the 16th to 18th centuries. The extent to which a stigmatization of linguistic features takes place from above – in the sense of usage-independent prescriptions that grammarians develop of their own accord and enforce contrary to common usage – or from below – in the sense of tendencies and stereotypes already established in the linguistic community, which grammarians merely codify and disseminate retrospectively – is discussed. In the case of the splitting construction, the results of the study speak in favour of stigmatization from below. 2944-2133 RegioLingua. Zeitschrift für regionale Sprache und Literatur Vol 2 No 1 (2025)