Grammatik und Variation in Grammatikforschung und Grammatikbeschreibung

The paper provides a survey about grammatical variation in German and discusses the consequences for grammar books: How can they describe systematic differences between several varieties as well as the core system of German as an individual language? Proceeding from the differentiation between extra- and intralinguistic explanations for grammatical variation and from theoretic considerations on the notion of 'system' the paper discusses different possibilities of modeling the relationship between system and variation. It argues for a modular concept with a core system that provides the option of internal variation and modular systems that contain grammatical phenomena which are specific for certain varieties