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Institute
The Korean Light Verb Construction (LVC) contains a Sino-Korean main predicate (tayhwa-lul), a Light Verb (ha-ta), and semantic arguments of the main predicate (John-i, Tom-kwa):
John-i Tom-kwa tayhwa-lul ha-yess-ta.
John-Nom Tom-with talk-Acc do-Pst-Dc
'John talked with Tom.'
We defend a three-part analysis: (i) The subject of the main predicate is thematically controlled by the LV's subject. Evidence: Korean verbs assigning Accusative take an external argument (Wechsler/Lee 1996; Burzio's Generalization). Since the main predicate is Accusative, ha-ta must theta-mark its subject. Moreover ha-ta selects a non-stative Verbal Noun (VN) (cp. *kyumson-ul ha-ta 'humble-Acc do-Dc'); non-stative theta-structures typically take an external argument (Kang 1986). This control arises through complex predicate formation. (ii) Oblique arguments (PPs) are optionally transferred (cp. Grimshaw/Mester 1988) — but Accusative NPs are not. Evidence comes from relativization and pronoun replacement. (iii) Accusative is assigned by a mixed category Verbal Noun. This can be supported by adverbial clauses with VN's assigning Accusative without LV's. We review cross-linguistic evidence for both argument transfer (German; Hinrichs & Nakazawa; i.a.) and mixed categories (many languages, Malouf; i.a.) and show that Korean LVCs provide the right environment for both to occur.
I present a treatment of the Dutch R-pronouns in HPSG drawing on Linearization Theory as developed in Reape (1996) and Kathol (1995,2000). R-pronouns in Dutch are a set of locatives which also serve as pronominal arguments of prepositions, and as such may form non-local dependencies. Linearization and techniques of domain union, compaction and partial compaction allow for a straightforward analysis of these dependencies. I focus my analysis on the light R-pronoun er, and its iteration with two homophonous items, the quantitative and expletive ers.
Using the sign/construction distinction developed in Donohue and Sag (1999) and Sag (2001), I implement Kathol's notion of partial compaction in constraints on constructions of type prepositional-phrase, noun-phrase, etc. This places the phonological content of the R-pronoun or quantitative er in the DOMAIN list as a free agent, able to appear in the clause disconnected from the original selector. This use of linearization also permits a haplology rule to capture the idiosyncratic co-occurrence behavior that occurs when multiple functions of er appear together within a clause.
This paper proposes an HPSG account of the French tense and aspect system, focussing on the analysis of the passé simple (simple past) and imparfait (imperfective) tenses and their interaction with aspectually sensitive adjuncts. Starting from de Swart's (1998) analysis of the semantics of tense and aspect, I show that while the proposed semantic representations are appropriate, the analysis of implicit aspectual operators as coercion operators is inadequate.
The proposed HPSG analysis relies on Minimal Recursion Semantics to relate standard syntactic structures with de Swart-style semantic representations. The analysis has two crucial features: first, it assumes that the semantic contribution of tense originates in the verb's semantic representation, despite the fact that tense can get wide scope over other semantic elements. Second, it allows the occurrence of implicit aspectual operators to be controlled by the verb's inflectional class, which accounts for their peculiar distribution.
Glue semantics for HPSG
(2002)
The glue approach to semantic interpretation has been developed principally for Lexical Functional Grammar. Recent work has shown how glue can be used with a variety of syntactic theories and this paper outlines how it can be applied to HPSG. As well as providing an alternative form of semantics for HPSG, we believe that the benefits of HPSG glue include the following: (1) simplification of the Semantics Principle; (2) a simple and elegant treatment of modifier scope, including empirical phenomena like quantifier scope ambiguity, the interaction of scope with raising, and recursive modification; (3) an analysis of control that handles agreement between controlled subjects and their coarguments while allowing for a property denotation for the controlled clause; (4) re-use of highly efficient techniques for semantic derivation already implemented for LFG, and which target problems of ambiguity management also addressed by Minimal Recursion Semantics.
In this paper, I argue (i) that Japanese has constructions that are almost the exact mirror images of the right-node raising constructions in English, and (ii) that the properties of those constructions, which I refer to as left-node raising constructions, can be captured straightforwardly if and only if the CONTENT values of domain objects, not those of signs, are assumed to be the principal locus of meaning assembly. In the theory proposed, it is claimed that semantic composition (including "quantifier retrieval") takes place not when some signs are syntactically combined to produce a new, larger sign but when some domain objects (which are essentially prosodic constituents) are merged (by the total or partial compaction operation) to produce a new domain object (i.e. a new, larger prosodic constituent).
Since the introduction of the X-bar principles it is commonly assumed that prepositions are heads of PPs, in the same way as nouns and pronouns are heads of NPs. However, while this is well motivated for a large majority of the pronouns and the prepositions in many languages, there are also exceptions. More specifically, Van Eynde (1999) argues that the reduced or minor pronouns of Dutch — as opposed to their full or tonic counterparts — cannot head an NP, and the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that there are also prepositions which cannot head a PP. The first section introduces the distinction between major and minor categories. The second shows how it can be applied to the prepositions and presents a way of treating minor prepositions in HPSG. The third singles out the Dutch te(to) as a plausible candidate for a minor preposition treatment, and the fourth provides criteria for the identification of other minor prepositions. The concluding section points out the wider significance of these findings.
One kind of relative clause in Modern Hebrew is formed with a gap, as in (1a). However, in certain situations, the gap can be replaced by a resumptive pronoun, as in (1b):
(1a) ha-yeled she ra'iti
the-boy that saw-1.SG
(b) ha-yeled she ra'iti 'oto;
the-boy that saw-1.SG him;
the boy that I saw
Some previous approaches, such as (Borer 1984) and (Sells 1984), have treated gaps and resumptives with different mechanisms. This paper examines several properties that Hebrew resumptive pronouns share with gaps, motivating a more unified treatment in HPSG using non-local feature propagation for both. This machinery is then used in the analysis a variety of Hebrew relative clause phenomena, including in situ resumptive pronouns, fronted resumptive pronouns, relative clauses lacking a complementizer, bare gap relatives, and subject-verb inversion.
References
Borer, Hagit (1984). "Restrictive relative clauses in Modern Hebrew." Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 2:219-260.
Sells, Peter (1984). Syntax and Semantics of Resumptive Pronouns. Ph.D. Thesis, UMass Amherst.
This paper presents a dynamic semantic approach to the licensing of Polarity Sensitive Items (PSIs) and n-words of Negative Concord. We propose that PSIs are unified by the semantic scale property, which is responsible for their sensitivity to the context; we develop a semantic licensing analysis based on Fauconnier's (1975) scales and Ladusaw's (1979) notion of entailment. The first part of the paper concludes with a formalization of semantic licensing in the sense of Ladusaw (1979) within HPSG (see, e.g., Pollard & Sag (1994)) which allows for a uniform treatment of the licensing of PSIs and n-words of Negative Concord and accounts for the disambiguating nature of PSIs in scopally ambiguous sentences.
The second part of the paper is concerned with the limitations of semantic licensing, which, we claim, needs to be sensitive to the context. We present the discussions of, e.g., Heim (1984) and Israel (1996) with respect to the importance of the context in particular licensing constellations, and then turn to linearity constraints on licensing. We present data from German which may not be accounted for by linearity constraints and sketch an analysis for this data which supports the necessity of context-sensitive semantic licensing.
One of the major controversies in present-day HPSG is whether the information about a word's argument structure should also be available on this word's phrasal projections. Some works assume that ARG-ST is present on words only; this is the claim of, e.g., Pollard and Sag 1994, Miller and Sag 1997, Abeillé, Godard and Sag 1998, and Bouma, Malouf and Sag (to appear). The reason for this assumption is that it leads to more restrictive grammars: with this restriction, words cannot select their arguments on the basis of the argument structure of these arguments' heads (e.g., there seems to be no language in which a verb selects exactly VPs with an NP[dat] argument). On the other hand, various other works assume the presence of the complete information about a word's argument structure on this word's phrasal projections. This is the stance of, e.g., Grover 1995 (to formulate a fully nonconfigurational binding theory), Frank 1994 (to deal with verb second in German), Frank and Reyle 1995 (to account for the interactions between scope and word order in German), Calcagno and Pollard 1997 and Abeillé and Godard 2000 (to analyze French causatives), Baxter 1999 (in an account of purpose infinitives in English), and Meurers 1999 (to deal with case assignment in German verb clusters).
In this paper, I endeavor to make two kinds of linguistic contribution.
On the theory-internal side, I argue that the issue whether ARG-ST or any such attribute should be present at the level of possibly saturated phrases, in addition to its presence on words, is not an "all or nothing" issue. Although I show that there are some environments in Polish which do seem to require the presence of ARG-ST on phrases, I also link this presence to the common feature of such environments, namely, to their semantic vacuity (understood in the sense of Pollard and Yoo 1998). Although no formal proof can be given that this is the only possible analysis, I try to proceed carefully by examining a variety of possible alternatives and showing that all of them fail in one way or another.
Since semantically vacuous environments are extremely rare, the resulting grammar is not less restrictive than, say, a grammar which allows a verb to subcategorize for a lexical argument (and, hence, have access to this argument's ARG-ST), a possibility often taken advantage of in HPSG analyses of complex predicates in various languages.
On the empirical side, I look at two rarely considered and ill-understood constructions in Polish, namely, at "long raising" across a preposition, and at case agreement with predicative phrases. Neither of these constructions has been successfully analyzed so far. Although the analyses proposed in this paper may be perceived as less than satisfactory on the aesthetical side, they constitute the first formal and uniform account of these phenomena.
In this paper I show that object to subject raising approaches as suggested by Pollard (1994) and Müller (1999) are problematic since they cannot account for adjective formation in a satisfying way. The approach by Heinz and Matiasek (1994), which is a formalization of Haider's (1986) ideas, cannot account for modal infinitives and control.
I develop a lexical rule based approach and it will be shown that this approach also extends to tricky cases of remote passive.
Directional Serial Verb Constructions (Directional SVCs), which are a subset of Serial Verb Constructions (SVCs) in Thai and involve motion-related verbs, are studied in this paper. According to two syntactic tests, two phrase structural schemata are involved in Thai Directional SVCs, including a recursive VP-over-VP structure and a complementation structure. Thai Directional SVCs also exhibit a dissociation between constituent structure and linear order. With this distinctive syntactic structure, Thai Directional SVCs are not reduceable to previously described SVCs. Nevertheless, within Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, the rich featural specifications of heads and the mechanisms available for the percolation of specific head properties in a default interpretation of the Head Feature Principle allow for a straightforward model of Thai Directional SVCs.
The complement structure of tough constructions containing VP complements with gap sites linked to the tough predicate subject has been subject to considerable discussion in the syntactic literature, with an apparent consensus that in "John is easy for us to please, for us" is a PP constituent which controls the subject specification of the following infinitival constituent. I reexamine the classical arguments for this position, including Bresnan's seminal 1971 paper which first argued for this control structure analysis, and argue that none of these arguments are empirically tenable. In all cases, data exist which convincingly undermine central claims or assumptions, and hence there turns out to be no convincing reason to prefer the control structure over the clausal analysis, introduced in Postal's 1971 monograph on crossover and defended in the Gazdar et al. monograph on generalized phrase structure grammar, in which for us to please is a clausal complement to easy. I then offer a number of arguments for the superiority of the clausal analysis, appealing to data from comparatives, parasitic gap constructions and extraposition. My claim that tough complementation of the kind alluded to is clausal must, if sound, be compatible with standardly assumed semantics for these constructions, in which the subject of the complement clause must also serve as an argument of the tough predicate — a conclusion seemingly at odds with a clausal complement syntax. The difficulty is that a constituent whose denotation is one of the terms in the relation denoted by the tough predicate must be retrieved from with a clause, where it is presumably inaccessible under normal Montegovian compositional assumptions. I offer further cross-linguistic evidence based on Guyanese Creole that such an apparent conflict between syntax and semantics is unavoidable, and then offer a syntactic solution, based on work by Detmar Meurers which posits a HEAD feature for verbs structure-shared with their SUBJspecification. This device, which also can be argued for in English on the basis of the Richard construction and several other phenomena, offers a way for information about the subject to be accessible to specifications of the selecting head in a way which compromises locality to the minimal extent possible.
This paper focuses on the semantic properties and the syntactic behaviour of Modern Greek (hence MG) Experiencer-Subject Psych Verb Constructions (hence ESPVCs).
MG ESPVCs include verbs like miso (hate), agapo (love), or latrevo (adore), which feature a nominative experiencer in agreement with the verb and an accusative theme (see examples (1)-(3)). MG ESPVCs include also predicates like fovame (fear), which feature an experiencer-subject in agreement with the verb and either an accusative theme (example (4)), or a theme as the object of a prepositional phrase (example (5)). We should underline here that examples (4) and (5) below convey the same meaning. That is, they do NOT differ semantically.
O Gianis misi to sholio.
the Gianis.N hate.3S the school.A
"John hates school."
O Gianis agapa tin Maria.
the Gianis.N loves.3S the Maria.A
"John loves Mary."
O Gianis latrevi tin musiki.
the Gianis.N adore.3S the music.A
"John adores music."
I Maria fovate tis kategides.
the Maria.N fear.3S the storms.A
"Maria is afraid of the storms."
I Maria fovate me tis kategides.
the Maria.N fear.3S with the storms.A
"Maria is afraid of the storms."
The challenge that constructions like the ones in (4) and (5) pose lies on the split syntactic realization of the "experienced" (hence EXPD) semantic role (i.e., the theme), which in constructions like (4) is syntactically realized as the object of the sentence, while in constructions like (5) it is syntactically realized as the object of a prepositional phrase.
Our aim is to propose a unified linking account of the MG ESPVCs. This unified account
1) is based on the assumption that the individual denoted by the object NP (or PP) of the MG ESPVCs is entailed to be semantically underspecified, and
2) makes use of Wechsler's (1995) Notion Rule, Davis and Koenig's (2000) linking theory, as well as Markantonatou and Sadler's (1996) proposal for the linking of indirect arguments.
References
Davis, A.R. and J.-P. Koenig (2000). Linking as constraints on word classes in a hierarchical lexicon. Language 76, 56-91.
Markantonatou, S. and L. Sadler (1996). Linking Indirect Arguments. Essex Research Reports in Linguistics 9, 24-63.
Wechsler, S. (1995). The Semantic Basis of Argument Structure. Stanford: CSLI Publications. Series: Dissertations in Linguistics, Joan Bresnan, Sharon Inkelas, William J. Poser, and Peter Sells (eds.).
This paper discusses the behavior of picture NP reflexives in German and English. Taking the analysis of Pollard/Sag (1994) as a starting point, we show that their main conclusion for English, viz. that picture NP reflexives are exempt from Principle A, does not apply to German. As a first step, we present an alternative formulation of Principle A for German. But the principles proposed for German and English do not offer any explanation for the universal behavior of anaphors if they cannot be related to each other. We thusn propose a more general Principle A to hold universally. Individual, language-specific instantiations of this Principle A are derived from determining certain parameter settings.
The so-called 'double' or 'multiple' nominative constructions (henceforth DNC or MNC) have been one of the puzzling phenomena in topic-prominent languages like Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. One intriguing property of the MNCs is that there is no conceptual limit to the number of nominative nominals as long as the two consecutive nominatives are in a certain semantic relation. This paper provides a 'head-driven' and 'constraint' based analysis in the sense that the lexical head and the tight interaction among declarative constraints play a crucial role in the formation of puzzling DNCs/MNCs. This analysis captures the gramamtical/functional properties of each nominative phrase in these constructions in a precise way, while describing the close specifier-head relation between the two consecutive nominatives without violating the locality principle. The analysis eventually allows us an explicit grammar for generating DNCs/MNCs in Korean. This is achieved through the familiar mechanism of argument composition and constraints on the lexical heads such as noun and verb.
The so-called was-w-construction in German has received a fair amount of attention in recent syntactic theorizing. Most of the discussion has focused on the properties of was.
One line of research maintains that was is a scope marker that indicates the semantic scope of the wh-phrase in the embedded interrogative clause. The alternative view, usually referred to as the indirect analysis, was first developed with respect to Hindi (Dayal 1994) and then generalized to German (Dayal 1996). It holds that the was of the was-w-construction is associated not with the embedded wh-phrase, but rather with the embedded clause as a whole.
Hinrichs and Nakazawa present some novel evidence in favor of an indirect analysis of the was-w construction. However, the main focus of their research is on two questions that by comparison have received little attention, namely:
1. what is the set of matrix predicates that can enter into this construction, and
2. how can one account for the curious fact that predicates that ordinarily do not license wh-complements allow such complements in the was-w-construction?
On the basis of Ginzburg and Sag's verb classification (Ginzburg and Sag, in preparation) Hinrichs and Nakazawa identify a natural class of predicates that license this construction and utilize the notion of type coercion to account for the apparent mismatch between the syntactic form of the embedded interrogative and its semantic function.
This presentation is essentially a "guided tour of interesting sites" of the Norwegian language: passive, presentational constructions, anaphora and V2 patterns. The data is related to issues concerning Argument Structure and whether the analysis of root clauses in Norwegian should include a node "C" hosting the finite verb. The paper points to areas of Norwegian grammar which constitutes possible challenges to central proposals made in the HPSG literature, but, in addition, it sketches possible analyses within the HPSG framework.
This paper examines the distribution of English self-pronouns (himself, herself, etc.) in contrast with personal pronouns. We confirm that there are factors affecting the acceptability of self-pronouns at the syntactic, semantic, and discourse levels, and devise a Principle A with three distinct clauses to account for all of them. Each clause is crucially ordered with respect to the others, with syntax taking precedence over semantics, which in turn takes precedence over discourse constraints.
We discuss evidence in Halkomelem, a Coast Salish language of British Columbia, which supports the hypothesis put forward by Manning and Sag (1999) that a universal passive argument structure (ARG-ST) is complex and has two a-subjects. We argue that morphological and syntactic control phenomena in Halkomelem are best described by saying that an a-subject is accessible, where an a-subject is the first argument on an argument structure list.
ARG-ST <bi <a, Proi, ...>>
The Halkomelem passive data show that two notions of subject are essential for capturing control phenomena. One set of constructions-motion auxiliaries, desideratives, and reflexive causatives-involve linking to the internal a-subject. One construction-the control construction–links to either the highest a-subject or the internal a-subject. Similar conclusions have been drawn for data from Russian (Perlmutter 1984), Philippine languages (Schachter 1984), and other languages of the world. As Manning and Sag (1998) point out, one does not have to draw the conclusion that passive must be given a multilevel syntactic analysis from such data. Rather, their analysis of passive, which posits a complex argument structure, easily accounts for Halkomelem. Control facts in Halkomelem, with examples drawn from both morphological and syntactic constructions, can be added to the catalog of phenomenon that support this view of the passive.
A number of the languages of Polynesia, including Tongan and Samoan, display a process whereby a pronominal argument of the main predicate of a clause appears to be realized as a preverbal 'second position' (2P) pronoun. All other arguments, if overt, are realized postverbally, the languages being rigidly predicate-initial. This paper examines the characteristics of these pronouns in Tongan arguing that in most cases they are best treated as distinct words in their own right (though often phonologically deficient) while in a handful of cases they are affixal material composed morphologically with a preceding preverbal Tense/Aspect Marker (TAM). Despite the fact that Tongan preverbal pronouns clearly do not appear in a typical argument position, standard approaches to 2P pronominal elements (e.g. 'clitic climbing' and 'prosodic inversion') do not seem naturally applicable to the Tongan data. The relation-based analysis provided here exploits a natural consequence of various potential definitions of 'subjecthood' within HPSG, treating the preverbal pronouns as the (unique) instantation of the valence feature SUBJ and correctly blocking the possibility of the pronoun appearing in true second position above the TAM when a clause-initial conjunction is present, except in particular specified circumstances. Thus the Tongan pronouns are not strict '2P' elements despite the fact that they most often appear in second position in a clause.
In this paper, we present a surface-based analysis of a specific type of French parenthetical adjunct clauses introduced by the adverb comme (similar to as in English). The construction we focus on belongs to the domain of reported speech, and we call it reportive-comme clause (RCC). The set of data we consider exhibits a large amount of notable properties that can only be fully explained under the assumption of constructional constraints. Therefore, following Sag (1997) and Abeillé et al. (1998), we base our approach on the central notion of "construction". We claim that RCCs are adverbial extraction contexts. We integrate them in a cross-classified typed hierarchy as a subtype of relative clauses, and a subtype of head-adjunct and head-filler phrases. Semantic specifications of RCCs are expressed with constraints on different levels. We draw a general distinction between head-modifier adjuncts and parenthetical adjuncts in order to account for the fact that parenthetical adjuncts do not contribute the referential content of the head phrase they selected for. We posit two subtypes of RCCs determined by a Direct speech (and quotative) vs. Indirect speech distribution of properties. The two sets of defining constraints allow to characterize the restricted classes of verbs possible in the different RCCs, the syntactic realization (gap or pronominal affix) of their object argument and its anaphoric semantics. This treatment constitutes a more general proposal for direct speech or quoted argument selection, which is known as a puzzling problem of the syntax-semantic interface. It innovates in presenting a formalized account of reported speech phenomena and present a typed-based classification of the semantic relations of reported speech predicates.
Formalized as a systematic interaction between a tier of co-arguments and a tier of co-dependents, the concept of diathesis offers a considerable theoretical advantage in stating linguistic generalizations. Based on Slavic data, this paper argues for the general notion of dependents in HPSG, in addition to arguments and subcategorized elements (valence). It attempts to provide a systematic inventory of ARG-ST / DEPS mappings which results in a diathetic paradigm. The approach offers an insightful cross-linguistic and cross-constructional perspective.
In French, Italian, and Romanian, forms inherited from the Latin paradigm 'esse' are used for the copula, the passive auxiliary and tense or perfective auxiliaries. We show that the copula and the passive auxiliary should be identified, while the tense or perfective auxiliaries are different lexemes. Moreover, the copula has the same description across all the Romance languages. While they all are argument inheritance verbs, the copula and the tense or perfective auxiliaries differ with respect to their complement structure: (i) the second only have one complement structure (the complement participle is complement unsaturated), the copula has two complement structures (the predicate is either complement saturated or unsaturated); (ii) French and Italian tense auxiliaries are the head of a flat VP, where the participle is sister to its subcategorized complements, the Romanian perfective auxiliary is the head of a verbal complex; (iii) when the complement predicate is unsaturated, the Romance copula is the head of a flat VP.
Two consequences of the analysis are worth mentioning. First, the copula (and the passive auxiliary) should not be taken into account when stating the environments for auxiliary selection in French and Italian. Second, argument inheritance and complement structure are different phenomena, and argue in favor of theories which systematically distinguish between valence features and constituent structures.
The relation between word-formation and syntax and whether they form distinct domains of grammar or not has been discussed controversially in different theoretical frameworks. The answer to this question is closely connected to the languages under discussion, among other things, because languages seem to differ considerably in this regard. The discussion in this paper focuses on nominal compounds and phrases. On the basis of a great variety of data from a total of 14 European languages, it is argued that the relation between compounds and phrases, and, more generally, between word formation and syntax, should be characterized not in terms of a categorical but instead in terms of a gradient distinction.
In the paper, German disintegrated verb-final 'obwohl' (‘although’) and 'weil' (‘because’) clauses are compared with constructions in which 'obwohl' and 'weil' precedes clauses with main clause word order. The former constructions constitute independent, yet subsidiary speech acts. Thus, the subordinating connectors and the positioning of the verb do not indicate syntactic but textual dependency. The latter constructions are of a very different kind. Here, 'obwohl' and 'weil' do not form a constituent with the following clause. Instead, they appear as syntactically independent discourse markers connecting two discourse units. As discourse markers, 'obwohl' and 'weil' obtain their special syntactic and semantic properties as elements of the derived, but independent module of Thetic Grammar.
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.
'Je-desto'-Sätze scheinen in struktureller Hinsicht Einzelgänger zu sein. Das Ungewöhnliche ist, dass sie wie eine obligatorische Verb-dritt-Konstruktion daherkommen: An erster Stelle steht scheinbar der durch je eingeleitete Nebensatz im linken Außenfeld bzw. Vor-vor-Feld, dann folgt die desto-Konstituente, die das Vorfeld einnimmt, und dann an dritter Stelle das finite Verb des Matrixsatzes. Angesichts der Semantik der involvierten Konstituenten ist diese Strukturbeschreibung ungewöhnlich und widerspricht plausiblen Erwartungen. Der Aufsatz bietet eine Analyse, nach der der 'je'-Satz und die 'desto'-Konstituente zusammen eine komplexe Konstituente bilden, die eine einzige, ganz reguläre Einheit konstituiert, was bedeutet, dass der Gesamtsatz eine ziemlich reguläre Verb-zweit-Struktur ist.
Im Mittelpunkt Deutsch
(2018)
Mit Hilfe der Sprache verstehen wir einander, kommunizieren wir mit den Menschen um uns herum, denken wir über Dinge und Vorgänge nach; die Sprache hilft uns die Welt und die Menschen um uns zu erfassen. Die Sprachen, die sich gleichzeitig mit den menschlichen Gemeinschaften entwickeln, eignen wir uns nicht nur an und benutzen sie, sondern wir erforschen sie auch. Die Erforschung der Sprachen hat auf allgemeiner Ebene weltweit eine sehr lange Tradition. Auf ihre Entwicklung haben einen bedeutenden Einfluss nicht nur die „traditionellen“ Wissenschaftsdisziplinen wie zum Beispiel die Linguistik, die Literaturwissenschaft, die Pädagogik oder die Geschichtswissenschaften, sondern auch sich stetig etablierende neuere Wissenschaften, zu denen etwa die Soziolinguistik, die Psycholinguistik, die Kontakt- oder Areallinguistik oder die Fremdsprachendidaktik gehören. Wie zum Teil bereits durch einige soeben genannte wissenschaftliche Disziplinen angedeutet, wird die Erforschung der Sprachen durch die gesellschaftspolitische Entwicklung eines konkreten soziokulturellen und regional eingeschränkten Umfelds während einer bestimmten zeitlich begrenzten Epoche beeinflusst. Eine der wichtigsten Herausforderungen für die heutige Gesellschaft ist neben der Entwicklung einer funktionellen Mehrsprachigkeit des Einzelnen auch die Respektierung sprachlicher wie kultureller Vielfalt, die Wahrnehmung der Sprache als identitätsbestimmendes und identitätsentwickelndes Phänomen sowie als wichtiger Bestandteil unseres gemeinsamen kulturellen Erbes.
In diesem Verständnis wurde die Konferenz Deutsch ohne Grenzen zum Anlass für eine internationale wissenschaftliche Diskussion über die aktuelle Entwicklung im Bereich der multidimensional und transnational aufgefassten germanistischen Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft, ausgewählter Gesellschaftswissenschaften sowie der Didaktik im Fach Deutsch als Fremdsprache im europäischen Kontext.
Der vierteilige Sammelband beinhaltet den Großteil der im Verlauf dieser Konferenz präsentierten theoretischen und empirischen Beiträge, die im September 2014 an der Pädagogischen und an der Philosophischen Fakultät der Südböhmischen Universität in České Budějovice stattgefunden hat. Ihr Hauptorganisator war der Germanistenverband der Tschechischen Republik. An der Konferenz nahmen 142 Fachleute aus elf Ländern teil. [...]
Der vorliegende Teil des Sammelbandes stellt die linguistische Sektion dar, in der das Phänomen Grenze als eines der Zentralthemen der gegenwärtigen linguistischen Forschung thematisiert wurde. Die einzelnen Beiträge konzentrierten sich auf die Frage, ob die Sprache als Kommunikationsmittel wirklich ohne Grenzen ist. Hinsichtlich der Komplexität der natürlichen Sprachen ist die Frage völlig berechtigt, ob gewisse Grenzen wirklich bestimmt werden können, sollen oder sogar müssen, wenn diese komplexen symbolischen Systeme verstanden bzw. auf metasprachlicher Ebene beschrieben werden sollen. Dank der Vertretung von Vortragenden aus mehreren Ländern konnte die Problematik im Kontext der tschechischen wie auch der internationalen germanistischen Forschung untersucht werden. Außer anderem kann auch diese Grenzüberschreitung und die damit verbundene Konfrontation von diversen Perspektiven der Erforschung des Gegenwartsdeutschen für einen bedeutenden Beitrag dieser Konferenz gehalten werden. Dem Wort Grenze wird auch der gesamte erste Aufsatz dieses Sammelbandes gewidmet, in dem dieses Wort vom lexikalischen und stilistischen Gesichtspunkt aus sehr ausführlich untersucht wird.
Die einzelnen Studien spiegeln die aktuelle empirische und theoretische Erforschung der deutschen Sprache wider, wobei sie diverse Schwerpunkte akzentuieren. In den ersten Beiträgen steht die Diachronik im Fokus. Sie widmen sich unter anderem der Beschreibung von mittelalterlichen medizinischen Texten, den sog. Zaubersprüchen, Segen und Beschwörungen, und ihrer sprachlichen Charakterisierung, der historischen Semantik und Möglichkeiten deren Erforschung am Beispiel von historiographischen Texten, der frühen Kodifizierung der deutschen Zeichensetzung, der Problematik der geschriebenen Sprache in der Zeit des Humanismus an der böhmisch-sächsischen Grenze, der Distribution und Funktion von Phraseologismen in journalistischen Texten der 2. Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, den deutschen Dialekten in Mähren und der Rolle der Sprache, die sie als Kommunikationsmittel einer bestimmten Nation hinsichtlich der historischen Soziolinguistik erfüllt.
Podravski kajkavski dijalekt
(2011)
U radu se analiziraju definicije vrsta riječi u gramatici hrvatskoga kajkavskog književnog jezika Josipa Đurkovečkoga (Jezičnica horvatsko-slavinska, Pešta, 1826.). Razmatra se koje se vrste riječi opisuju u gramatici, koje hrvatske nazive autor upotrebljava pri njihovu imenovanju te se propituju načini opisa definicija vrsta riječi s posebnim obzirom na to temelje li se definicije na leksičko-semantičkome, morfološkome ili sintaktičkome planu. Analizom opisa vrsta riječi u gramatici J. Đurkovečkoga pokazuje se način promišljanja o jezičnim spoznajama i obilježja gramatičkoga diskursa u okviru povijesti hrvatske gramatikografije, posebice u domeni gramatika hrvatskoga kajkavskog književnog jezika.
The claim of this paper is that embedded definites can, despite the appearances, be accounted for on the uniqueness approach. Far from being a surprise, we argue that the behavior of embedded definites is actually expected once two independent facts are taken into account: the ability of noun phrases to take scope, i.e., to be interpreted in a different place from their syntactic position, and the interaction of presuppositions and scope-taking elements. Specifically, we analyze embedded definites as a case of inverse linking (Gabbay and Moravscik, 1974; May, 1977): the embedded definite takes scope over the embedding one. The presupposition of the embedded definite is weakened as a result of the independently motivated process of intermediate accommodation (Kratzer, 1989; Berman, 1991). In our case, this process transfers the presupposition of the embedding definite into the restrictor of the embedded one.
Like other scope-taking processes, inverse linking is generally taken to be subject to locality constraints: if a syntactic island, such as a finite clause boundary, intervenes in the path of a scope-taking element, then the resulting reading is unavailable or degraded (Rodman, 1976). Since our account views embedded definites as cases of inverse linking, we predict that inserting an island into an embedded definite, all else being equal, should lead to a similar degradation. We report results from an online survey with 800 participants that confirm this prediction.
Proportional determiner quantifiers in German allow interpretations that violate the conservativity universal of Keenan and Stavi (1986). I argue for an analysis that distinguishes between surface syntax and the logical form of sentences. I show that in surface syntax, German non-conservative quantifiers are determiners that form a constituent with a noun phrase and share case and agreement properties with the noun phrase. But I propose that at logical form the non-conservative determiners undergo an adverbialization movement and are interpreted by a mechanism that generalizes focus-a ected quantification of Herburger (2000). This result refines the understanding of conservativity as a constraint on interpretation.
The late physicist Carl Sagan, whom I quote in the first part of my title, skillfully phrased the common sense view on evidence in the mature sciences. In linguistics, however, evidence has become a controversial issue, especially so when it comes to the investigation of less well studied languages. In this paper, I argue that Sagan's principle should be applied to linguistics. The growing accessibility of a wide array of experimental techniques and computational tools to analyze such data makes it feasible to back up extraordinary claims with evidence from a variety of sources. At the same time, it is in many cases possible to agree on what constitutes an ordinary claim and focus the extra effort on extraordinary claims. For non-controversial claims no more than the minimum effort to establish the claim and properly document the evidence is necessary.
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.
In at least three environments—de se binding, distributive binding, and focus quantification—some presuppositions exhibit unexpectedly weak projection behavior. This holds for the presuppositions of bound pronouns, but also several other cases of presupposition. In this paper, I first describe a general approach to capture the interaction of presuppositions with quantificational operators within a multi-tiered evaluation procedure. Secondly I discuss data from Condition A, in particular non-bound occurrences of reflexives, that motivate a presuppositional account of Condition A and confirm the general approach.
The existence of complex clauses in the Amazonian language Pirahã has been controversially debated. We present a novel analysis of field data demonstrating the existence of complex clauses in Pirahã. The data concern the tone of the morpheme 'sai' and stem from a field experiment where a second language speaker of Pirahã presented sentences and Pirahã speakers were asked to correct them saying the correct sentence alound. The experimental items contained the morpheme 'sai' in two different clausal environments: a nominalizer and a conditional environment according to Everett's 1986 description. Our phonetic analysis shows an effect clausal clausal environment on the pitch of 'sai'. The native Pirahã speakers pronounced conditional 'sai' with lower pitch than nominalizer 'sai'. We show furthermore that the experimenters pitch on 'sai' shows the opposite pattern from that of the native Pirahã speakers and hence the Pirahã's pitch could not just have been copied. The effect of the clausal environment on the tone of 'sai' can be explained by a complex clause analysis of Pirahã, while existing alternative proposals do not explain the difference.
This paper corroborates the interpretability proposal of Chomsky (1995) with evidence from scrambling in Japanese and German. First it is shown that scrambling in Japanese is semantically vacuous, whereas scrambling in German is semantically contentful. Chomsky’s proposal then predicts that the feature driving Japanese scrambling is erased after checking, while the corresponding feature in German remains visible, specifically for the Shortest Attract condition. Looking at patterns of movement that result in overlapping paths, this prediction is seen to be correct.
The interpretation of traces
(2004)
This paper argues that parts of the lexical content of an A-bar moved phrase must be interpreted in the base position of movement. The argument is based on a study of deletion of a phrase that contains the base position of movement. I show that deletion licensing is sensitive to the content of the moved phrase. In this way, I corroborate and extend conclusions based on Condition C reconstruction by N. Chomsky and D. Fox. My result provides semantic evidence for the existence of traces and gives semantic content to the A/A-bar distinction.
A contrast to a trace
(2001)
For movement, such as quantifier raising, the three different structures illustrated in (1) are discussed in the recent literature.
(1) A girl danced with every boy
a. [every boy]x a girl danced with x (copy + replace)
b. [every boy]x a girl danced with [every boy] (copy)
c. [every boy]x a girl danced with [thex boy] (copy + modify)
In this paper, I'll call the proposal illustrated by (1a) the copy+replace theory since the movement is analyzed as first copying the moving phrase followed by replacing the moving phrase with a trace in the base position of movement. Chomsky (1993) and Fox (1999) argue against the copy+replace theory (1a) on the basis of Condition C data that show that moved material can behave as if it occupied the base position of movement. This behavior would, for example, be expected on the copy theory of movement illustrated by (1b), which also seems conceptually simpler than the copy+replace theory since it involves only copying without replacement. This conceptual advantage, however, is probably only apparent since a theory of the interpretation of structures like (1b) would probably be more complicated than for (1a). Standard assumptions about interpretation, at least, don't predict the right meaning when applied to (1b). For this reason, Chomsky and Fox propose what I'll call the copy+modify-theory illustrated in (1c). This proposes that copying is followed by a trace modification operation that replaces the determiner of the moved DP with something else. I assume that this is an indexed definite determiner, the interpretation of which is to be clarified below.
Why variables?
(1999)
This paper addresses the question of how sentence-internal semantic dependencies are computed? The kind of semantic dependency I am looking at is that between a so called "bound (variable) pronoun" and its binder illustrated in (1), where the dependency is indicated by a connecting line. With all the literature on the topic (see for example Partee 1973, Percus 1998), I assume that this case is the prototype of all semantic dependencies, and therefore any result for this case generalizes to all types of sentence-internal semantic dependencies.
This paper addresses the syntax and semantics plurals, and then applies it to reciprocal expressions. In the course of this investigation, I address two problems for the conventional view that a reciprocal makes essentially the same semantic contribution to the sentence as other noun phrases, but has an interesting internal structure. I will show that both problems are properties of plurality in general, and can be successfully explained along these lines. As a result, the paper is more about plurality in general than reciprocals though the goal of the paper is to account for the two problems relating to reciprocals.
Early features
(1995)
This paper discusses the typology of focus structure types (variation of information structuring in the clause) and how information structure can be used to explain all of the word order patterns in Chinese without reference to grammatical relations.
Im Folgenden soll kurz geklärt werden, was Genus ist (Kap. 2) und – auch wenn diese Frage nicht mit unserem derzeitigen Wissen beantwortbar ist – woher Genus kommen könnte (Kap. 3). Hauptsächlich stellt sich jedoch die Frage: Was tun mit Genus, das heute das Endstadium einer langen Grammatikalisierung darstellt (Kap. 4)? Hier wird die wichtigste Antwort lauten: Genus hat eine neue, eine syntaktische Nutzung erfahren, indem es maßgeblich daran beteiligt ist, unsere berühmten Nominalklammern zu bauen (4.1). Außerdem gibt es weitere "Recyclingmöglichkeiten" von Genus, nämlich: a) Objekte, die Namen tragen, zu klassifizieren (die Kaiser Wilhelm), b) Beziehungen zwischen namentragenden und namenverwendenden Personen zu qualifizieren (der Peterle, das Anna) oder sogar c) Personen zu degradieren (das Merkel). Mit Punkt a) begebe ich mich in die Onomastik, mit Punkt b) in die Dialektologie, und mit Punkt c) werde ich mit der Genderlinguistik enden.
Contemporary German abounds in doubtful cases where linking elements alternate with zero elements, such as Seminar(+s?+)arbeit 'term paper', Respekt(+s?+)person 'person who commands respect'. This variation indicates a profound language change in the course of which the linking +s+ has spread continuously since Early New High German and is replacing the zero element more and more often. Today, +s+ is the most productive, progressive and most frequently occurring linking element. In this paper, we provide an explanation for the doubtful cases. Most often, the linking +s+ depends directly on the phonological quality of the first part of the compound: the worse its phonological structure, the more likely the occurrence of the linking +s+. It occurs most regularly after first parts of compounds containing a suffix or an unstressed prefix (Verkáuf+s+gespräch 'sales conversation'), while words with an ideal phonological structure (monosyllabic or trochaic words) rarely attract the linking +s+. The variation concentrates on compounds whose first parts feature a stressed prefix (Éinkauf(+s?+)führer 'shopping guide'). There is, however, a further factor which leads to fluctuation in the occurrence of the linking +s+. In cases where the second part of synthetic compounds such as Auftrag(+s?+)geber 'client' contain a high degree of verbality, the linking +s+ blurs the syntactic relation between the immediate constituents, strengthening the morphological character of the compound.
"Je suis Charlie" was used over 619.000 times in the two days that have followed the attack of the editorial team of Charlie Hebdo (Le Progrès, The Huffington Post) and has regularly been taken up in both written and spoken form since. In this paper, we argue that the structure of this sentence actually clashes with its meaning. More specifically, whereas its word order and default rightmost sentence stress are compatible either with an all-focus reading or a narrow focusing of Charlie, the context of use of this sentence as well as the solidarity/empathy message it intends to communicate suggest that its subject is narrowly focused. We will propose that two strategies have emerged to solve this conflict: (i) various alternative forms have appeared that allow proper subject focusing and (ii) speakers have reinterpreted the structure so as to pragmatically retrieve the (additive) focused nature of the subject.