Constructional template or competitor? Revisiting the relation between German werden + Infinitive and werden + Present Participle based on new datasets

The German future construction werden + Infinitive has been subject to considerable research efforts and controversial debates. In particular, it is a matter of debate which other constructions can be considered potential predecessors (in the sense of constructional "templates") and/or competitors. The recent release of reference corpora of Middle and Early New High German offers the possibility of assessing its development based on balanced, systematically compiled datasets. In this paper, we present the results of an in-depth corpus-based analysis that sheds new light on some long-standing debates on the development of werden + Infinitive as well as its potential predecessors or competitors