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Der Ausgangspunkt ist die These, daß die verschiedenen Adverbialklassen im Deutschen unterschiedliche Basispositionen aufweisen und daß sich diese durch unterschiedliche strukturelle Anforderungen an die Klassen ergeben. Es soll gezeigt werden, daß sich die plausible Vermutung, daß die Adverbialklassen in Sprachen wie dem Deutschen und dem Englischen entsprechenden strukturellen Bedingungen unterliegen, bestätigt. Unterschiede im Verhalten der Adverbiale in den beiden Sprachen werden demnach nicht durch unterschiedliche Eigenschaften der Adverbiale erfaßt, sondern diese ergeben sich durch die unterschiedlichen Satzstrukturen und die unterschiedlichen Weisen der Argumentverwaltung. Dies wird illustriert anhand von Adverbialen der Art und Weise, Lokal- und Temporaladverbialen, Adverbialen der Subjekthaltung und Satzadverbialen.
Für Romanisten ist Interkomprehension seit der Begründung ihrer Disziplin ein Anliegen, für romanischsprachige Menschen ist sie meist ein persönliches Erlebnis der partiellen Entdeckung, vor 1500 Jahren war sie alltägliche Realität. Es geht um die Fähigkeit, in einer Gruppe von Sprachen, die einen gemeinsamen Ursprung haben, kommunizieren zu können.
Läßt man die Problematik der bei dieser Aussage verwendeten Ausdrücke außer Betracht und schränkt den Blickwinkel auf die Gruppe der romanischen Sprachen ein, so lassen sich eine Reihe von Aussagen über Interkomprehension machen.
Daß zwischen dem sechsten und achten Jahrhundert, also während der protoromanischen Phase, Interkomprehension zwischen entfernten Gegenden des niedergegangen Imperium Romanum möglich war, ist unstrittig, freilich gab es keine außersprachlichen Gründe, die das Faktum Interkomprehension in den Vordergrund hätten rücken können. Die einzig übriggebliebene Zentralmacht Kirche benutzte ihr eigenes Latein. ...
The present study offers an analysis of the Russian copular constructions with predicate nominals. In such copular sentences two cases may mark the predicate: the nominative and the instrumental as in 'Anna byla medsestra/medsestroj' - 'Anna was-3sg.fem.a nursenom/instr'. In the present tense the copula has a null-form and the predicate nominal can only be in the nominative. I argue that the case alternation corresponds to the distinction of Stage Level and Individual Level Predicates in the sense of Kratzer (1994) and Diesing (1992), but with some objections. The copula with Instrumental forms S-Predicates, which are analyzed as predicates applying to situations referring to time. The copula with nominative forms I-Predicates, which attribute properties to individuals without referring to time. I-Predicates have no situation argument. Data that show the (in-)compatibility of copular sentences with certain spatial or temporal modifiers provide a reason to assume a situation argument in byt' + Instr but not in byt' + Nom.
Byt' behaves differently in different grammatical contexts: in contexts of sentence negation, yes/no-questions and under focus byt' + Instr behaves like a lexical category, while byt' + Nom behaves like a functional category. As a functional category byt' + Nom is non-overt in the present and is always finite. The semantic distinction between nominative and instrumental predicate NPs is pegged to an opposition between a structure with a functional copula as the only tense and agreement marker with base position in TP and a lexical copula in VP (Franks 1995, Bailyn&Rubin 1991). To explain phenomena of the copula in Russian I propose an integrated syntactic model for two copulas. The two copulas may be conceived as distinct realizations of one verbal lexical entry which will be specified as a lexical or as functional category in the course of lexical insertion. The Model of Parallel Morphology might be used to explain this phenomenon.
The copula "sein" "be" in German, together with its complements, refers to a stative situation. Besides offering argument positions in its Semantic Form SF, it has no other function. Stative verbs are not specified with respect to the beginning or the end of a described situation or with respect to the state before or after. I will take the verb "werden" "become, get" to be a copular verb as well. The only difference to "sein" is that "werden" refers to a nonstative or changing situation. I argue that "werden" is underspecified in two respects. Like motion verbs and successive patient verbs (SUK verbs in Krifka (1989)) "werden" switches between an unlimited and a limited process (accomplishment) dependent on its complement (cf. "älter werden" "get older" / "vorwärts gehen" "go forward" / "Tee trinken" "drink tea" vs. "alt werden" "get old" / "in das Zimmer gehen" "go into the room"/ "eine Tasse Tee trinken" "drink a cup of tea"). But "werden" is even more underspecified than these verbs; it is the only verb which covers all nonstative situations, not only processes and accomplishments but also punctual transitions (achievements), cf. "schwanger werden" "get pregnant". "Werden" is anything but stative. Whether there is a target state implied or not, or whether the transition to this target state is extensible or atomic, is the result of the composition of the meaning of "werden" and its intimal argument added by special meaning postulates. Hierarchically marked subtypes of situational arguments result as a side effect.
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.
Im vorliegenden Beitrag plädiere ich für ein Vorgehen, bei dem Kopulasätze generell als Beschreibungen von Situationen behandelt werden. Genauer nehme ich an, daß Sätze mit der Kopula 'sein' semantische Repräsentationen haben, die über eine darin vorkommende existenzquantifizierte Variable auf eine noch näher zu spezifizierende Situation referieren. Drei grundlegende Klassen von Fällen werden unterschieden: Erstens kann es sich bei der fraglichen Situation um einen durch das Prädikativ charakterisierten Zustand handeln, in dem sich das mit dem Subjektausdruck erfaßte Objekt befindet. Zweitens kann die Situation ein mit dem Subjektausdruck erfaßter Zustand sein, der über das Prädikativ eine zusätzliche Charakterisierung erhält. Und drittens kann die Situation auch ein Ereignis (im weiteren Sinne) sein, das nun entsprechend mit dem betreffenden Subjektausdruck erfaßt und durch das Prädikativ näher charakterisiert wird.
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.
The paper addresses the longstanding question of whether the copular verb "werden" ('become') is a transitional, i.e. telic, or a nontransitional, i.e. atelic, verb, or verb that is unspecified with regard to telicity. By means of standard tests and historical considerations, it is argued that the verb is telic and refers to accomplishment situations. Nevertheless, there are two types of copular "werden"-clauses with regard to which this view may seem questionable at first sight. First, some "werden"-clauses appear to refer to achievements. This, however, is not a matter concerning the semantics of werden. Rather, the crucial cases are accidentally instantaneous because their predicative complements are absolute predicates. Hence, they do not allow for extended transitions from one state to another. Second, some other "werden"-clauses, expecially those with comparative complements, sometimes appear to refer to processes. However "werden" combined with a comparatival adjective can be shown to be able to refer to clear accomplishment situations. The process-effect is due to a common phenomenon of reinterpretation that leads to iterative transitions between degrees.
In contradistinction to main verbs copula verbs like 'sein', 'werden' or 'bleiben' ('be', 'become' or 'remain') can, though with some restrictions, take projections of all lexical categories as complements. Semantically 'werden' and 'bleiben' are considered to be dual operators, related to each other by inner and outer (= dual) negation. But there are contexts where 'bleiben' seems to assume the meaning of its dual 'werden'. What at first glance appears to be an idiosyncracy of German turns out to hold for Swedish, Brazil-Portuguese and other unrelated languages as well.
'Werden' is more restricted than 'sein' and 'bleiben', it cannot have a locative complement. 'Bleiben' has the widest distribution, it can also take infinitives of verbs of position as complement. But in this case 'stehen bleiben' is ambiguous between a "remain" -reading and a "become" -reading.
In 15th century the Swedish verb 'bliva' - a borrowing from German - has undergone a change from the "remain"-reading to the "become"-reading. The "become"-reading of 'bliva' (later form 'bli') is only blocked (as is the German verb 'werden') in the case of a locative complement, where the "remain"-reading has survived. The two readings of 'bli' do not produce any ambiguity, except when taking a verb of position as complement - much the same as in German.
The paper attempts to pinpoint the conditions that lead to this surprising shift of meaning between duals.
Einführung
(1999)
[...] Was macht Kopula-Prädikativ-Konstruktionen unter dem Blickwinkel ihrer grammatischen Schnittstellen so attraktiv? Die kurze Einführung will darauf eine partielle Antwort geben, aber nicht indem sie versucht, unter Beachtung ausgewogener Erwähnungsfrequenz die einzelnen Aufsätze zusammenzufassen (was sich durch die jeweils vorangestellten Abstracts eh erübrigt), sondern indem sie – a field is defined by certain questions ! – die aus Titeln und Abstracts nicht sofort ersichtlichen theoretischen Koordinaten des hier gewählten Ausschnitts der Kopula-Forschungslandschaft skizziert, um darin einige in den Beiträgen vorgeschlagene Antworten zu orten. So kommen die Relativität des Erreichten, aber auch das Potential, das in z.T. kontrovers geführten Argumentationen und konkurrierenden Analysen steckt, gleichermaßen zur Geltung.