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Wie bekannt, besitzt neben der literarischen Übersetzung auch die fachsprachliche Übertragung einen wichtigen Platz in der übersetzungswissenschaftlichen Forschung. In Rahmen des Themas Übersetzung und Bearbeitung soll in diesem Beitrag festgestellt werden, welche satzstrukturelle Abwandlungen das neue Strafgesetzbuch der Türkei (YTCK) vollzogen hat.
Predication at the interface
(2001)
We try to show that predication plays a greater role in syntax than commonly assumed. Specifically, we wil argue that predication to a large extent determines both the phrase structure of clauses and trigger syntactic processes that take place in clauses. If we are on the right path, this implies that syntax is basically semantically driven, given that predication is semantically construed.
The present investigation is concerned with German participles II (past participles) as lexical heads of adjuncts.
Within a minimalist framework of sound-meaning correlation, the analysis presupposes a lexicalist conception of morphology and the differentiation of Semantic Form and Conceptual Structure. It is argued that participles II have the same argument structure as the underlying verbs and can undergo passivization, perfectivization and conversion to adjectives. As for the potential of participles to function as modifiers, it is shown that attributive and adverbial participle constructions involve further operations of conversion. Participle constructions are considered as reduced sentences. They do not have a syntactic position for the subject, for an operator (comparable to the relative pronoun in relative clauses) or for an adverbial relator (as in adverbial clauses). The pertinent components are present only in the semantic structure.
Two templates serve the composition of modifiers - including participle constructions - with the modificandum. It is necessary to differentiate between modification which unifies two predicates relating to participants or to situations and frame setting modification where the modifier is given the status of a propositional operator.
The proposed analysis shows that the high degree of semantic underspecification and interpretative flexibility of German participle II constructions resides in the indeterminacy of participles II with respect to voice and perfect, in the absence of certain constituents in the syntactic structure and in the presence of corresponding parameters in the Semantic Form of the participle phrases.
This contribution concerns the interaction of morphology, syntax and semantics. It treats German past participles and concentrates on their function as heads in attributive and adverbial modifier phrases. It is argued that participles have the same argument structure as the underlying verbs and can undergo passivization, perfectivization and conversion to adjectives. Since these three operations involve changes in the morphosyntactic categorization they are considered as zero affixation. Two affixless templates – without any categorical changes – convert participle constructions to modifiers relating to participants or to situations. These phrases do not have a syntactic position for the grammatical subject, an operator or an adverbial relator. The pertinent components are present only in the semantic structure. Two further templates serve the composition of participle constructions as modifiers with the modificandum. It is necessary to differentiate between modifiers which function as predicates and those which have the status of a propositional operator. In syntax, these different semantic functions correspond to different adjunct positions of the respective participle phrases.
This paper investigates syntactic properties of verbless constructions in Chinese. Verbless constructions differ from constructions with overt verbs in three major respects. First, there is a VP-internal nominal raising in Chinese, which is optional if an overt verb shows up, and obligatory if there is no overt verb. Second, while an overt verb can select various kinds of argument, the internal argument of a verbless construction cannot be indefinite. Third, there are two types of object depictive secondary predication constructions, and only one of them allows for a null verb.
This paper argues for non-primary c- and s-selectional restrictions of verbs in computing nonprimary predicatives such as resultatives, depictives, and manners. Our discussion is based both on the selection violations in the presence of nonprimary predicates and on the cross-linguistic and language-internal variations of categorial and semantic constraints on nonprimary predicates. We claim that all types of thematic predication are represented by an extended projection, and that the merger of lexical heads with another element, regardless of the type of the element, consistently has c- and s-selectional restrictions.
In this paper I firstly argue that secondary predicates are complement of v, and v is overtly realized by Merge or Move in secondary predication in Chinese. The former option derives the de-construction, whereas the latter option derives the V-V construction. Secondly, I argue that resultatives are hosted by complement vPs, whereas depictives are hosted by adjunct vPs. This complement-adjunct asymmetry accounts for a series of syntactic properties of secondary predication in Chinese: the position of a secondary predicate with respect to the verb of the primary predicate, the co-occurrence patterns of secondary predicates, the hierarchy of depictives, the control and ECM properties of resultative constructions, and the locality constraint on the integration of secondary predicates into the structure of primary predication. Thirdly, I argue that the surface position of de is derived by a PF operation which attaches de to the right of the leftmost verbal lexical head of the construction. Finally, I argue that in the V-V resultative construction, the assumed successive head-raising may account for the possible subject-oriented reading of the resultative predicate, and that the head raising out of the lower vP accounts for the possible non-specific reading of the subject of the resultative predicate.
This paper investigates how syntax and focus interact in deriving the phonological phrasing of utterances in Xhosa, a Bantu language spoken in South Africa. Although the influence of syntax on phrasing is uncontroversial, a purely syntactic analysis cannot account for all the data reported for Xhosa by Jokweni (1995). Focus influences the phrasing in that it inserts a phonological phrase-boundary after the focused constituent. This generalization can account for the variation found in the phrasing of adverbials.
The findings are dealt with in an OT-based framework following Truckenbrodt's work on Chichewa (1995, 1999) which is extended to the phrasing of adjuncts.
Questions in Northern Sotho
(2006)
This article gives an overview of the marking of polar and constituent questions in Northern Sotho, a Bantu language of South Africa. It thereby provides a contribution to the typological investigation of sentence types in the world’s languages. As will be shown, Northern Sotho follows cross-linguistic tendencies in marking interrogative sentences: It uses intonation as main indicator in polar questions and question words as main indicator in constituent questions. Nevertheless, it also shows interesting language-specific variation, e.g. with respect to the location of raised intonation in polar questions, the presence of two pragmatically distinct question particles in polar questions, or a split in the formation of constituent questions based on the grammatical function of the questioned constituent.
Exclamative clauses exhibit a structural diversity which raises the question of whether they form a clause type in the sense of Sadock & Zwicky (1985). Based on data from English, Italian, and Paduan, we argue that the class of exclamatives is syntactically characterizable in terms of a pair of abstract syntactic properties. Moreover, we propose that these properties encode two components of meaning which uniquely define the semantics and pragmatics of exclarnatives. Overall, our paper is a contribution to the study of the syntaxlsemantics interface and offers a new perspective on the notion of clause type.
This article aims to recast the properties of topic-prominent languages and their differences from subject-prominent languages as documented in the functionalist literature into the framework of the Principle-and-Parameter approach. It provides a configurational definition of the topic construction called Topic Phrase (TP), with the topic marker as its head. The availablity of TP enables topic prominent languages to develop various topic structures with properties such as morphological marking; cross-categorial realization of topics and comments; and mutiple application of topicalization. The article elaborates the notion of topic prominence. A topic prominent language is characterized as one that tends to activate the TP and to make full use of the configuration. Typically, it has a larger number and variety of highly grammaticalized topic markers in the Lexicon and permits a variety of syntactic categories to occur in the specifier position and the complement position of TP.
Marie Wrona präsentiert in ihrem Beitrag "Ist das ein Komma oder kann das weg? - Topologische Felder und Kommasetzung. Erste empirische Befunde" ein Experiment zur Kommadidaktik. Sie untersucht, inwiefern sich die Kommasetzungskompetenz von SchülerInnen verbessert, wenn diese mithilfe des topologischen Feldermodells vermittelt wird, das auf der Verbklammer im Deutschen aufbaut, anstatt wie bei traditionellen Ansätzen mithilfe von Signalwörtern wie Subjunktionen. Die SchülerInnen lernten, das finite Verb zu bestimmen und so zu entscheiden, ob ein Komma gesetzt werden muss oder nicht. Nach der Unterrichtseinheit setzten die SchülerInnen v.a. deutlich weniger falsche Kommata
Ein zentrales Thema in den Arbeiten Klaus Welkes ist die Analyse formal bestimmter Relationen, die semantisch interpretierbar sind (vgl. etwa WELKE 1988, 1992, 1994, 2001, 22005). Wichtige Fragestellungen sind hier insbesondere: Wie ist die Hierarchie logisch-pragmatischer Rollen, wie die syntaktischer Funktionen? Wie hängen die beiden Bereiche zusammen? Wie können wir dies mit Hilfe von Argumentstrukturen erfassen? Der vorliegende Beitrag wird sich mit dem hierfür zentralen Aspekt der Verknüpfung syntaktischer und semantischer Relationen aus einer evolutionären Perspektive befassen. In Übereinstimmung mit WELKE (22005) gehe ich davon aus, „daß es neben einer Syntax formaler Strukturen auch eine Syntax semantischer Strukturen gibt“ (WELKE 22005, 4) und untersuche vor diesem Hintergrund, wie eine Entstehung dieser beiden Domänen und die Verknüpfung der betreffenden Strukturen im Rahmen der Evolution menschlicher Sprache aussehen könnte.
The Bantu language Makhuwa makes a distinction between cojoint and disjoint verb forms. Two hypotheses are made from generalisations on the distribution of the conjoint and disjoint verb forms in Makhuwa. 1) The verb appears in its conjoint form when a focal element occupies the Immediate After Verb (IAV) position; 2) the verb appears in its disjoint form when the IAV position is empty. A syntactic analysis is provided that accounts for these hypotheses if the IAV position is defined in terms of structural rather than linear adjacency between two heads in a direct c-command relation.
In the syntactic analysis two focus projections are proposed: one under TP (Ndayiragije 1999) hosting the disjoint morpheme and one under vP, to whose specifier focal elements move. Non-focal elements remain in-situ. This analysis accounts both for the strong adjacency requirement of a cojoint verb form and its focal object and for the empty IAV position that requires a verb to appear in its disjoint form.
This paper reports the results of a corpus investigation on case conflicts in German argument free relative constructions. We investigate how corpus frequencies reflect the relative markedness of free relative and correlative constructions, the relative markedness of different case conflict configurations, and the relative markedness of different conflict resolution strategies. Section 1 introduces the conception of markedness as used in Optimality Theory. Section 2 introduces the facts about German free relative clauses, and section 3 presents the results of the corpus study. By and large, markedness and frequency go hand in hand. However, configurations at the highest end of the markedness scale rarely show up in corpus data, and for the configuration at the lowest end we found an unexpected outcome: the more marked structure is preferred.
German dialects vary in which of the possible orders of the verbs in a 3-verb cluster they allow. In a still ongoing empirical investigation that I am undertaking together with Tanja Schmid, University of Stuttgart (Schmid and Vogel (2004)) we already found that each of the six logically possible permutations of the 3-verb cluster in (1) can be found in German dialects.
In this paper I argue that the syntax of Eastern Bantu does not make reference to the notion 'syntactic object'. That is, there is no linguistic category of objects that is the target of syntactic rules in Eastern Bantu languages. Instead I propose that syntactic rules broadly distinguish complements and adjuncts as well as category type of complement or adjunct. I argue that Bantu languages are typologically special in that (a) the verb complement structure can be expanded by the valency increasing applicative suffix; and (b) that the class of adjuncts can be expanded through verb concord licensing. Because of these properties, Bantu languages have a much-expanded notion of 'complement' and 'adjunct'. Namely, complements consist of (a) inherent complements (subcategorised by the lexical verb), and (b) derived complements (licensed by the applicative suffix). Adjuncts consist of (a) non-subcategorised modifying constituents in the usual sense and (b) phrases that are licensed by verb concord (i.e. Topics in Bresnan and Mchombo (1987)). I propose that most the differences in the licensing of objects in Bantu are due to two causes: (a) the unusual split in the composition of complements and adjuncts and (b) a set of typological parameter settings.
[I]n der folgenden Skizze [soll] argumentiert werden, dass eine Rückführung unterschiedlicher Lesarten auf unterschiedliche syntaktische Verhältnisse […] unangemessen ist. Vielmehr sol1 aufgezeigt werden, dass es sich um eine ausschließlich semantische Frage handelt, die syntaktische Struktur in jeder Hinsicht aber die immerselbe ist. […] Unser Gegenstandsbereich fasst somit Fälle zusammen, die unter anderen Gesichtspunkten differenziert werden. [...] Diese Gesichtspunkte, nach denen die Differenzierung erfolgt, sind semantischer Natur. Für unsere syntaktische Analyse nehmen wir in Anspruch, dass sie auf alle Adverbialstrukturen zutrifft, mit Ausnahme von Satzadverbialen und (den diesen strukturell gleichen) Adverbialsätzen. Gezeigt wird dies jedoch nur an Fallen wie oben, an Adjektiven in modaladverbialer Funktion. Diese Adjektive fassen wir im übrigen kategorial als das auf, was sie ihrer Form nach sind, nämlich unflektierte Adjektive.
Case and event structure
(2001)
I argue in this paper for a novel analysis of case in Icelandic, with implications for case theory in general. I argue that structural case is the manifestation on the noun phrase of features which are semantically interpretable only on verbal projections; thus, Icelandic case does not encode features of noun phrase interpretation, but it is not uninterpretable either; case is properly seen as reflecting (interpretable) tense and aspect features. Accusative case in Icelandic is available when the two subevents introduced in a transitive verb phrase are identified with each other, and dative case is available when the two parts are distinct (thus Icelandic case manifests aktionsart or inner aspect, in partial contrast to Finnish). This analysis bears directly on the theory of feature checking in the Minimalist Program; specifically, it paves the way for a restrictive theory of feature checking in which no features are strictly uninterpretable: all formal features come in interpretable-uninterpretable pairs, and feature checking is the matching of such pairs, driven by legibility conditions at Spell-Out.
Wenn man die syntaktischen Eigenschaften des Hildebrandliedes betrachtet, so zeigen sich einerseits Eigenschaften, die auch für die Syntax des Nhd. charakteristisch sind: von Komplementierern eingeleitete Nebensätze, Deklarativsätze im Verb-Zweit-Format, Argumentstrukturen von Verben und Adjektiven, Attributions- bzw. Modifikationsverfahren. Andererseits werden Eigenschaften sichtbar, die im Nhd. verlorengegangen oder ausgedünnt worden sind: Deklarativsätze im Verb-End-Format, Pro-drop-Phänomene (in finiten Sätzen), nicht präpositional regierte Adverbiale (in Gestalt von NP mit reinen Kasus), artikellose Nominalphrasen (insbesondere solche mit definiter Interpretation). Die Betrachtung lehrt, dass auch über einen zeitlichen Abstand von mindestens zwölfhundert Jahren und trotz verschiedener Wandlungen, die zu syntaktischer Diskontinuität führen, syntaktische Kontinuität erkennbar bleibt, und zwar in einem Maße, das man angesichts der ungeheuer verfremdenden phonologischen, morphologischen und lexikalischen Veränderungen, die einem heutigen, sprachhistorisch nicht geschulten Muttersprachler das Hildebrandlied als einen Text von einem anderen Stern erscheinen lassen, nicht erwarten mag, in einem Maße, das allerdings denjenigen Linguisten nicht so sehr überraschen wird, dessen Blick durch universalgrammatische Einsichten der letzten Jahrzehnte geschärft worden ist für Invarianzen und Kontinuitäten.
The paper investigates a recent proposal to resultativity by G. Jäger and R. Blutner (J&B). J&B say that the representation of result states of accomplishments by means of CAUSE and BECOME is not correct and should not be done in the syntax in terms of decomposition. They develop an axiomatic approach where each accomplishment/achievement is related to its result by a particular axiom. Modification of the result by "again" makes use of these axioms and the restitutive/resultative ambiguity is a matter of lexical ambiguity or polysemy. They argue that the classical decomposition theory cannot treat the restitutive reading of "A Delaware settled in New Jersey again" (there had been Delawares in New Jersey but not this particular one; and those earlier Delawares never moved to New Jersey but were borne there). I discuss (and dispute) these data and compare the two theories. J&B's contains an OT-part dealing with the disambiguating role of stress. While the decomposition theory cannot deal with the data mentioned, it can integrate the OT-part of J&B's theory.
In this study, I investigate the positions and interpretations available to 'manner' adverbs in English. My central claim, contra Wyner (1994, 1998), is that an association does exist between 'manner' adverb positions and interpretations, which is best characterized in terms of Peterson's (1997) distinction between 'restrictive' and 'non-restrictive' modification. I also claim, however, that the association in question is not as general as commonly claimed; and, in particular, does not apply directly to 'manner' adverbs in 'fronted' and 'parenthetical' positions, which require special syntactic description.
Sluicing phenomena
(2001)
The paper shows that in various sluicing types, the wh-phrase in the sluicing sentence as well as its relatum in the antecedent clause must be F-marked, and it explains this observation with Schwarzschild's (1999) and Merchant's (1999) focus theory. According to the semantics of the wh-phrase, it will argue that the relatum of the wh-phrase is an indefinite expression that must allow a specific interpretation. Following Heusinger (1997, 2000), specificity will be defined as an anchoring relation between the discourse referent introduced by the indefinite expression and a discourse given item. Because specific indefinite expressions are always novel, contexts like the scope of definite DPs, the scope of thematic matrix predicates, and the scope of downward-monotonic quantifiers which all exhibit non-novel indefinites do not allow sluicing.
Irene Heim in unpublished work proposed a new syntax-semantics interface for propositional attitude reports based on an ontology without transworld individuals, but counterpart functions instead. We show that the approach can capture the 'de re'/'de dicto' distinction, but makes different predictions from accounts with transworld individuals. Specifically, the account uses a non-invertible counterpart functions: a single individual in an alternative world can be the counterpart of many individuals of the real world. The directionality of counterpart functions predicts that a 'de dicto' interpreted DP cannot be an argument of a 'de re' interpreted predicate. We show that the predicted restriction is corroborated by existing work on restrictions on 'de re' interpretation. The derivation of constraints on 'de re' interpretation argues empirically for the counterpart ontology and Heim’s implementation thereof.
What are incremental themes?
(2001)
In this paper I examine the approach to incremental themes developed in Krifka 1992,1998, Dowty 1991 and others, which argues that the extent of a telic event is determined by the extent of its incrementally affected theme. This approach identifies the defining property of an accomplishment event as being the fact that the theme relation is a homomorphism from parts of the event to parts of the (incremental) theme. I show that there are a large number of accomplishments, both lexical and derived via resultative predication, which cannot be characterised in this way. I then show that it is more insightful to characterise accomplishments in terms of their internally complex structure: an accomplishment event consists of a non-incremental activity event and an incrementally structured 'BECOME' event, which are related by a contextually available one-one function in such a way that the incremental structure of the latter is imposed on the activity.
Rethinking the adjunct
(2000)
The purpose of the present paper is twofold: first, to show that, when defining the adjunct, it is necessary to distinguish in a strict modular way between the syntactic level and the lexico-semantic level. Thus, the adjunct is a syntactic category on a par with the specifier and the complement, whereas the argument belongs to the same set as does (among others) the modifier. The consequence of this distinction is that there is no direct one-to-one opposition between adjuncts and arguments. Nor is there any direct one-to one relation between adjuncts and modifiers.
The second and main purpose of the paper is to account for the well-known difference between the position of a specific set of modifiers (cause, time, place etc.) in, on the one hand, English and Swedish, on the other, German. In English and Swedish the default position of these modifiers is postverbal, whereas in German it is preverbal. Further, in English and Swedish, these modifiers occur in a mirror order compared with their German counterparts, an order which, from a semantic point of view, is not the expected one. I shall demonstrate that this difference is due to the different settings of the verbal head parameter, the former languages being VO-languages and the latter being OV -languages. I shall further argue that in English and Swedish these modifiers are base generated as adjuncts to an empty VP, which is a complement of the main verb of what I shall call the minimal VP (MVP), whereas in German they are adjuncts on top of the MVP. Finally, I shall argue that the postverbal modifiers move at the latest at LF to the top of the MVP, in order to take scope over it, the restriction being 'Shortest move'. The movement results in the correct scope order of the postverbal modifiers.
The proposed structure also accounts for the binding data, in particular for the binding of a specific Swedish possessive anaphor 'sin'. This pronoun, which may occur within the MVP, must not occur within the postverbal modifiers in the empty VP. This supports the assumption that there is a strict borderline between the MVP and the assumed empty VP. The account is also in accordance with the focus data, the specific set of modifiers being potential focus exponents in a wide focus reading in English and Swedish, but not in German.
In this paper I show that the different case marking possibilities on predicate adjectives in depictive secondary predicates in Russian constitute the uninterpretable counterpart of the interpretable tense and aspect features of the adjective. Case agreement entails that the predicate adjective is non-eventive, i.e., it occurs when the event time of the secondary predicate is identical to the event time of the primary predicate. The instrumental case, however, entails that the secondary predicate is eventive: some change of state or transition occurred prior to or during the event time of the primary predicate. I claim that case agreement occurs in conjoined tense phrases in Russian, while the instrumental case occurs in adjoined aspectual phrases. In English, secondary predication is sensitive both to the structural location of its antecedent and to the event structure of the primary predicate. I suggest that depictives with subject antecedents in English are true adjunction structures, while those with direct object antecedents occur in a conjoined aspectual phrase. This hypothesis finds support in the different movement and semantic constraints in conjunction versus adjunction phrases in both English and Russian.
In this paper I put forward and justify a syntactic configuration that I call Complex Small Clause-structure. I show that this single syntactic structure can explain both the semantic value and the syntactic behavior of a range of constructions that up to now have been explored separately and, hence, proposed divergent analyses among them.
As part of a major project on the syntactic organisation of written discourse in the recent history of the English language, this paper tackles the distribution of sentences comprising left-dislocated constituents in a corpus of texts from late Middle English onwards. Once the phenomenon of left dislocation has been properly defined, this investigation will concentrate on the analysis of the corpus in the following directions: (i) statistical evolution of left dislocation in the recent history of the English language; (ii) the influence of orality and genre on left dislocation; (iii) information conveyed by the left-dislocated material, that is, the discourse-based referentiality potential of the left-dislocated constituents in terms of recoverability, and its association with end-focus; and (iv) grammatical complexity of the left-dislocated material and its association with end-weight.
In this paper I would like to show that the principles which have been proposed so far to account for the relationship between the informational level and the syntactic level in a Chinese utterance are unable to predict some interesting and regular facts of that language.
To my mind, the form and the position of the question operator in an interrogative utterance provide two distributional tests which univocally indicate where the new information lies. Hence, the pairing of affirmative and interrogative sentences might be a better approach to locate where the new information lies in a Chinese utterance.
In what follows, we will first put forward the claim that syntactic ergativity results from morphological ergativity by examining relativization and pea-coordination in Tongan (Section 2). In Sections 3 and 4, we compare 'O-constructions with pea-constructions to conclude a) that unlike pea, 'O should be regarded as a complementizer rather than a conjunction; and b) that the gap in 'O-clauses is not an outcome of deletion, but a null anaphor. We will then discuss a Minimalist approach to binding proposed by Reuland (2001) and see how it accounts for the distribution and behavior of proSE in Tongan. Some implications of the current proposal are discussed in Section 6, with section 7 in conclusion.
Die deutsche Präposition-Artikel-Enklise bietet wie kaum eine andere Grammatikalisierung Einblicke in den Mikrobereich von Grammatikalisierungsprozessen: Klare, "zielorientierte" Verhältnisse sind hier nicht zu beschreiben, was der Grund für ihre bisher so geringe Beachtung durch die Grammatikalisierungsforschung sein dürfte. Es wurde deutlich, dass bezüglich der hier als zentral bewerteten Morphologisierung des Artikels das gesamte Spektrum von Nichtverschmelzbarkeit bis hin zu (kurz vor Flexiven stehenden) obligatorisch verschmelzenden speziellen Klitika abgedeckt ist. Diachron hat sich zwar insgesamt eine deutliche Rechtsdrift auf der Grammatikalisierungsskala vollzogen; bezüglich des Genitivartikels hat jedoch eine Degrammatikalisierung in Form von sog. retraction (gemäß Hapelmath 2004) stattgefunden, die hier in einer Demorphologisierung (Resyntaktisierung) eines Klitikons besteht. Dabei findet keine "Relexikalisierung" im Sinne einer lexikalischen Anreicherung eines bereits grammatikalisierten Elements statt (siehe hierzu Haspelmath 1999). Mittel- und frühneuhochdeutsche Verschriftungen deuten auf reichere Inventare an Verschmelzungs formen hin, doch sind hierzu diachrone Untersuchungen erforderlich. Ebenso ist der Übergangsbereich zwIschen einfachen und speziellen Klitika in sich abgestuft und weitaus komplexer gestaltet als hier dargestellt. Auch dazu besteht Bedarf an Detailanalysen unter der Fragestellung, welche der unter Abschnitt 2.2 aufgeführten Artikelfunkttonen am ehesten eine Präposition-Artikel-Verschmelzung erfordern. Einiges deutet auf den am stärksten desemantisierten (expletiven) Artikel z.B. vor Eigennamen hin. Um den Einfluss von Schriftlichkeit und Standardisierung auf Grammatikalisierungsprozesse ermitteln zu können, wurden zwei Dialekte in den Blick genommen: das Ruhrdeutsche, das die Erwartung nach deutlich fortgeschritteneren Verhältnissen erfüllt, und das Alemannische, das andere Phänomene ausgebildet hat wie etwa die Proklise des Artikels an das Substantiv, die Nullrealisierung klitischer Artikelformen und den kategorialen Umbau der vier Nominalkategorien am Artikel. Die Einbeziehung weiterer Dialekte und vor allem auch der gesprochenen "Umgangssprache" könnte weiteren Aufschluss über die Ratio dieser Grammatikalisierung liefern. Sollten flektierende Präpositionen Ziel dieses Wandels sein, so hätte dies tiefgreifende Konsequenzen für die Grammatikschreibung.
Es handelt sich fast um einen sprachhistorischen Topos, wenn davon die Rede ist, dass sich das Deutsche von einer synthetischen zu einer analytischen Sprache entwickelt habe, oder zumindest zu einer analytischeren - oft hat man das Englische im Blick, das den isolierenden Sprachen nahestehen soll. Die Darstellungen zur deutschen Sprachgeschichte sind voll von diesem Topos, und anscheinend ist dieses Konzept intuitiv so eingängig, dass kaum hinterfragt wird, was man denn genau unter synthetischen bzw. analytischen Strukturen zu verstehen habe.
In keinem anderen deutschen Dialektraum, nicht einmal in irgend einer anderen germanischen Sprache ist das Präteritum mit einer solchen Ausnahmslosigkeit geschwunden wie im Oberdeutschen und hier insbesondere im Alemannischen. Zwar haben (wie das Alemannische auch) alle diese Sprachen und Dialekte ein analytisches Perfekt ausgebildet; in einigen Sprachen (wie dem Englischen und Schwedischen) treten Präteritum und Perfekt in eine aspektuelle Opposition zueinander.
Die hochdeutschen Dialekte sind gemeinhin dafür bekannt, beim Ausdruck grammatischer Kategorien analytischer zu verfahren als die Hochsprache. Dafür spricht die Ersetzung des synthetischen Präteritums durch das zusammengesetzte Perfekt und der Abbau der Genitivflexion. In diesem Aufsatz soll gezeigt werden, daß diesen Analysetendenzen ganz deutliche Synthesetendenzen gegenüberstehen, die bisher viel zu wenig beachtet wurden: Das Alemannische weist eine beträchtliche Anzahl an Klitika auf. Nach einer kurzen Bestimmung der Termini Pro- und Enklise (1) wenden wir uns der Klitisierung von Artikel und Personalpronomen im Berndeutschen zu (2). Abschließend soll nach den sprachtypologischen Konsequenzen dieser Entwicklung gefragt werden (3).
This paper discusses critically a number of developments at the heart of current syntactic theory. These include the postulation of a rich sequence of projections at the left periphery of the sentence; the idea that movement is tied to the need to eliminate uninterpretable features; and the conception put forward by Chomsky and others that advances in the past decade have made it reasonable to raise the question about whether language might be in some sense ‘perfect’. However, I will argue that there is little motivation for a highly-articulated left-periphery, that there is no connection between movement and uninterpretable features, and that there is no support for the idea that language might be perfect.
In this work we examine several sentential particles, occurring in imperatives, main exclamative and interrogative sentences, which display a uniform syntactic behaviour. We analyse them as heads of high CP projections which require their specifier to be filled either by the wh-item (in sentences where there is one) or by the whole clause, yielding the sentence final position of the particle. The hypothesis that they are C°-heads accounts for their sensitivity to sentence type and for their occurrence only in matrix contexts. We also provide a first sketch of their semantic contribution, showing that they select ‘non standard’ contexts and interact with tense and modality of the verb when the whole CP has moved to their specifier.
Nen and Nyokon are unique among the Bantu languages in allowing full nominal objects between the tense/aspect marker and the verb. Despite the fact that the two languages are neighbours and related they make different use of this positional option. In Nen the position is the default one for objects and the post-verbal position renders an object discrete and suitable for quantified objects and for contrast. In Nyokon the position before the verb is functionally equivalent to the one after the verb. The difference is related to the fact that Nyokon allows the preverbal object only in certain tenses whereas in Nen it is not restricted. But contrasted objects in Nyokon too appear after the verb. There is a construction in which both positions are filled with a constituent. This construction is modelled on a secondary predication construction.
Agreement is traditionally viewed as a cross-referencing device for core arguments such as subjects and (primary) objects.1 In this paper, I discuss data from Bantu languages that lead to a radical departure from this generally accepted position: agreement in a subset of Bantu languages cross-references a (sentential) topic rather than the subject. The crucial evidence for topic agreement comes from a construction known as subject-object (S-O) reversal, where the fronted patient agrees with what has uniformly been taken to be a `subject marker'. The correct analysis of S-O reversal as a topic construction with `topic agreement' explains a range of known facts in the languages in question. Furthermore, synchronic variation across Bantu in the presence/absence of S-O reversal and in the properties of the (topic/subject) agreement marker suggests a diachronic path from topic to subject marking. The systematic variation and covariation in the syntax of Bantu languages and the historical picture that it offers would be missed altogether if we continue to reject the idea that the notion of topic can be deeply grammaticized in the form of agreement.
Chicheŵa, a Bantu language of East Central Africa, displays mixed properties of configurationality such as the existence of VP, on the one hand, and discontinuous constituents (DCs), on the other. In the present work we examine the discourse and syntactic properties of DCs, and show that DCs in Chicheŵa arise naturally from the discourse-configurational nature of the language. We argue that the fronted DCs in Chicheŵa are contrastive topics that appear in a leftdislocated external topic position, with the remnant part of the split NP in the right-dislocated topic position. Once the precise discourse functions of DCs are properly integrated into the syntactic analysis, all the facts and restrictions observed in Chicheŵa DCs can be explained in a straightforward fashion.
This paper focuses on restrictions on the ordering of internal constituents of noun phrases in Chichewa, especially when those constituents are discontinuous. The motivation for discontinuity of the NP constituents will be given, together with discussion of constructions that can be subsumed under this rubric but that do not really involve discontinuity in the canonical sense. These are constructions where a topic NP in a left periphery position is either linked anaphorically with a modifier "remnant" or semantically with its hyponym in post-verbal position. According to Guthrie's classification of Bantu languages, Chichewa is placed in zone N unit N31. It is regarded as a dialect of Nyanja, classified as belonging to unit N30 (Guthrie 1967-71).
This paper reports results from a series of experiments that investigated whether semantic and/or syntactic complexity influences young Dutch children’s production of past tense forms. The constructions used in the three experiments were (i) simple sentences (the Simple Sentence Experiment), (ii) complex sentences with CP complements (the Complement Clause Experiment) and (iii) complex sentences with relative clauses (the Relative Clause Experiment). The stimuli involved both atelic and telic predicates. The goal of this paper is to address the following questions.
Q1. Does semantic complexity regarding temporal anchoring influence the types of errors that children make in the experiments? For example, do children make certain types of errors when a past tense has to be anchored to the Utterance Time (UT), as compared to when it has to be anchored to the matrix topic time (TT)?
Q2. Do different syntactic positions influence children’s performance on past-tense production? Do children perform better in the Simple Sentence Experiment compared to complex sentences involving two finite clauses (the Complement Clause Experiment and the Relative Clause Experiment)? In complex sentence trials, do children perform differently when the CPs are complements vs. when the CPs are adjunct clauses? (Lebeaux 1990, 2000)
Q3. Do Dutch children make more errors with certain types of predicate (such as atelic predicates)? Alternatively, do children produce a certain type of error with a certain type of predicates (such as producing a perfect aspect with punctual predicates)? Bronckart and Sinclair (1973), for example, found that until the age of 6, French children showed a tendency to use passé composé with perfective events and simple present with imperfective events; we will investigate whether or not the equivalent of this is observed in Dutch.
The aim of this paper is to investigate Rizzi's (2001) recent claim that in combien constructions full movement correlates with a specific or D-linking interpretation of the nominal (see also Obenauer, 1994) while the in-situ option corresponds to focus of the noun. On the one hand, it is argued that the notion of specificity or D-linking for the raised nominal is too strong while on the other hand it is shown that the stranded nominal is not a focus, but a topic, albeit of a special kind. It is also argued that there is a dedicated postverbal position for this kind of topic and that the nominal has all the properties of an incorporated nominal: it is interpreted as an asserted background topic. In the final part of the article, some time is spent discussing the pragmatics and the modality involved in discontinous structures, and showing that the stranded nominal is interpreted inside the VP/below the event variable.
The main purpose of this paper is to show that argument structure constructions like complex telic path of motion constructions (John walked to the store) or complex resultative constructions (The dog barked the chickens awake) are not to be regarded as "theoretical entities" (Jackendoff (1997b); Goldberg (1995)). As an alternative to these semanticocentric accounts, I argue that their epiphenomenal status can be shown iff we take into account some important insights from three syntactically-oriented works: (i) Hoekstra's (1988, 1992) analysis of S<mall>C<lause> R<esults>, (ii) Hale & Keyser's (1993f.) configurational theory of argument structure, and (iii) Mateu & Rigau’s (1999; i.p.) syntactic account of Talmy's (1991) typological distinction between 'satellite framed languages' (e.g., English, German, Dutch, etc.) and 'verb-framed languages' (e.g., Catalan, Spanish, French, etc.). In particular, it is argued that the formation of the abovementioned constructions involves a conflation process of two different syntactic argument structures, this process being carried out via a 'generalized transformation'. Accordingly, the so-called 'lexical subordination process' (Levin & Rapoport (1988)) is argued to involve a syntactic operation, rather than a semantic one. Due to our assuming that the parametric variation involved in the constructions under study cannot be explained in purely semantic terms (Mateu & Rigau (1999)), Talmy's (1991) typological distinction is argued to be better stated in lexical syntactic terms.
This paper deals with German 'wobei'-clauses and their Italian counterparts. Based on a corpus study of administrative texts, we identify the type and frequency of the Italian constructions that correspond to 'wobei'-clauses. In particular, we will assess to what extent the Italian converb construction gerundio correlates with 'wobei'-clauses. More specifically, we will focus on the thesis put forward by Haspelmath (1995) and Breindl (2014), according to which comitativity is expressed by converb constructions when it applies to state of affairs.
Inversion constructions in Bantu have been discussed from a variety of perspectives over the last decades. Well-known construction types include locative inversion and subject-object reversal, while more recently semantic locative inversion and instrument inversion have been described. Theoretical studies of Bantu inversion constructions have focused on different aspects of the construction, including the licensing and grammatical function, information structure properties and the formal characteristics of pre- and postverbal NPs. With respect to the status of preverbal NPs in inversion constructions, different analyses have probed the status of the NP as subject or topic, or, more recently, as the subject of a Predication relation. The present paper summarises and compares different analyses of the preverbal domain in inversion constructions and brings out empirical and conceptual similarities and differences. In addition, different analyses are related to comparative studies of Bantu inversion constructions, so as to probe how attested variation across Bantu relates to findings of different formal accounts. The paper aims to summarise current research on the preverbal domain in inversion constructions and to indicate directions for future work.
The complexity of human languages has always inspired research for some human faculty that makes language learning possible. The system that generates the complexity of human languages, ideally, is simple and effective. Recent developments of the generative grammatical theory explore deeper into the issue of simplicity or economy. The Minimalist Program developed in Chomsky (1991, 1993, 1995) tries to provide contents to such notions. What does it mean to be more economic or least effort? An important instantiation of such notions is the proposal that movement is the last resort assuming that movement is more costly than non-movement. Processes occur only because they are necessary. The definition of necessity generally is cast in morphological terms. Moreover, the notion of "economy" or "least effort" is deterministic of the appropriate derivations for sentences: a shorter derivation is better than a longer one. In this work, we show that the notion of "least effort," - do minimally if possible - is manifested not only in derivations but also in other aspects of the grammar. We take Chinese as an example and show that this language exhibits the properties manifesting some "least effort" guidelines in the area of movement and reconstruction, and in the projection of syntactic positions: when there is a choice, non-application of moyement/reconstruction and non-projection of a position are adopted. These phenomena essentially are attested in topic structures. The question arises as to why topic structures exhibit such minimal effort effects. We suggest that this is due to the fact that topic structures can be derived by movement or base-generation. When there are morpho-syntactic clues that reconstruction is necessary, the structure is a movement structure. Otherwise, the less costly non-movement structure is assumed. Moreover, because of the possibility of assuming a topic NP to be base-generated, bearing a predication (or aboutness) relation with the comment clause, the argument position which otherwise would be related to the topic (conveniently termed the trace position) is not projected when there is a choice of projecting or not projecting it.
Although the linear order of arguments (and adverbials) in German is relatively free, it underlies certain restrictions; these don’t apply to the so-called unmarked order for arguments (Lenerz 1977) and adverbials (Frey/Pittner 1998). It is a common assumption to take the unmarked order as basic and derive all other orders from it by scrambling, whatever its specific characteristics may be (cf., amongst others, Haider/Rosengren 1998). The observable restrictions obtaining for some linear ordering may then be considered as constraints on a movement operation (scrambling). [...] In the following, I will try to present the outlines of a possible explanation for the restriction, based on a proposal governing the proper referential interpretation of indefinite NPs.