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This article analyses the German discourse particle wohl 'I suppose', 'presumably' as a syntactic and semantic modifier of the sentence types declarative and interrogative. It is shown that wohl does not contribute to the propositional, i.e. descriptive content of an utterance. Nor does it trigger an implicature. The proposed analysis captures the semantic behaviour of wohl by assuming that it moves to SpecForceP at LF, from where it can modify the sentence type operators in Force0 in compositional fashion. Semantically, a modification with wohl results in a weaker commitment to the proposition expressed in declaratives and in a request for a weaker commitment concerning the questioned proposition in interrogatives. Cross-linguistic evidence for a left-peripheral position of wohl (at LF) comes from languages in which the counterpart of wohl occurs in the clausal periphery overtly. Overall, the analysis sheds more light on the semantic properties of the left periphery, in particular of the functional projection ForceP.
Sentence mood in German is a complex category that is determined by various components of the grammatical system. In particular, verbal mood, the position of the finite verb and the wh-characteristics of the so called 'Vorfeld'-phrase are responsible for the constitution of sentence mood in German. This article proposes a theory of sentence mood constitution in German and investigates the interaction between the pronominal binding of indefinite noun phrases which are semantically analyzed as choice functions. It is shown that the semantic objects determined by sentence mood define different kinds of domains which have to be uniquely accessible as the range of the choice function. The various properties of the pronominal binding of indefinites can be derived by the interplay of the proposed theoretical notions.
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.
It is well known that English children between the age of 4 and 6 display a so-called Delay of Principle B Effect (DPBE) in that they allow pronouns to refer to a local c-commanding antecedent. Their guessing pattern with pronouns contrasts with their adult-like interpretation of reflexives. The DPBE has been explained as resulting from a lack of pragmatic knowledge or insufficient cognitive resources. However, such extra-grammatical accounts cannot explain why the DPBE only shows up in particular languages and in particular syntactic environments. Moreover, such accounts fail to explain why the DPBE only emerges in comprehension and not in production. This paper hypothesizes that the presence or absence of the DPBE can be explained from the properties of the grammar. Fischer's (2004) optimality-theoretic analysis of binding, explaining cross-linguistic variation, and Hendriks and Spenader's (2005/6) optimality-theoretic account of the acquisition of pronouns and reflexives are combined into a single model. This model yields testable predictions with respect to the presence or absence of the DPBE in particular languages, in particular syntactic environments, and in comprehension and/or production.
Wortformen wie Berliner und Potsdamer treten in pränominaler attributiver Funktion auf: eine Position, in der sowohl Adjektive als auch Substantive stehen können. Substantive kommen in der Position vor als sächsische Genitive (Leos Auto), als vorangestellte Genitivattribute (des Vaters Pflicht) oder als Bestandteile einer engen Apposition (Bundeskanzler Schröder). Adjektive stehen an dieser Stelle als adjektivische Attribute (rotes Auto). Gegen jede dieser Interpretationen von Berliner sprechen jeweils formale Argumente, die im wesentlichen darauf hinauslaufen, daß Berliner in Berliner Ballen niemals flektiert wird - weder wie ein Substantiv noch wie ein Adjektiv.
Welcher Wortart sind Wortformen wie Berliner in Berliner Ballen also zuzuordnen? Zur Beantwortung dieser Frage folgen zunächst einige (kommentierte) Literaturstellen, anschließend werde ich die Bezeichnung 'Stadtadjektive' einführen, ich nehme also zum Zwecke der Benennung eine Entscheidung vorweg. Darauf folgt die Untersuchung: das Verhalten der Stadtadjektive in Bezug auf Flexion, Derivation, Komposition und Syntax.
In this paper, a class of sentences in German is discussed that are often called whexclamatives. […]
So called wh-exclamatives can be roughly characterized as wh-clauses that are embedded under exclamative predicates like erstaunt sein/to be amazed at [...] or that are used as the basis for an exclamation [...].
One can ask if wh-exclamatives are a clause-type of their own, in particular, whether they are different from wh-clauses in question environments, that is under question predicates like to ask or to wonder or used as questions. It is often assumed that wh-clauses in exclamative contexts, both embedded and unembedded, are indeed different from wh-clauses in interrogative or question environments [...], at least regarding their semantical type, see for example Elliot (1971, 1974), Grimshaw (1979, 1981), Zaefferer (1983, 1984), Altmann (1 987, 1993). […]
I assume with Grimshaw (1979) that so called wh-exclamatives and wh-interrogatives are alike with respect to their syntactical properties. In addition, I think that they are also alike semantically. So, what I like to do here is to evaluate the following hypothesis:
So-called wh-exclamatives are of the same semantical type as wh-interrogatives.
This paper discusses a variant of German V2 declaratives sharing properties with both subordinate relative clauses and main clauses. I argue that modal subordination failure helps decide between two rivaling accounts for this construction. Thus, a hypotactic analysis involving syntactic variable sharing must be preferred over parataxis plus anaphora resolution. The scopal behavior of the construction will be derived from its 'proto-assertional force,' which it shares with similar 'embedded root' constructions.
The study examines the hypotheses that the acquisition of the finite verb is an indispensable and linking constituent of the development of SVO utterances. Four apparently separate or at least separable processes are analysed over 6 months in one Russian and one German child: a) the emergence of verbs in the child’s utterances, b) the occurrence of correctly inflected (finite) verb forms, c) the development of multi-component utterances containing a verb, and c) the emergence of (potential) subjects and objects. Russian and German exhibit rich verb morphology, and in both languages finiteness is strongly correlated with inflectional categories like person, number and tense. With both children we find a correlation in the temporal order of these four processes and – what is more relevant for our study – a dependency of a certain development on the utterance level on the emergence of finite verbs. Further, our investigation shows that language-specific development comes in to play already when children start to acquire verb inflection and becomes more contrastive when we observe the onset of the production of the SVO utterances.
In this paper, we deal with the semantic interaction between ung-nominalizations of different event types and temporal prepositions like wiihrend 'during', vor 'before', nach 'after', bis 'until' and seit 'since'. According to the two-level-approach to selnantics (Bierwisch 1983, Bierwisch / Lang 1989), we will argue that the meaning of ten~poral prepositions is determined on the level of semantic form (SF). When combined with an event nominal, the period in time required by the preposition has to be inferred on the level of conceptual structure (CS). Very often, the exact nature of the period in time is determined by pragmatic factors. There are, however, some important restrictions to this inference procedure which rely on the event noun's Aktionsart. In Ehrich/Rapp (2000), it was claimed that eventive ungnominals inherit the Aktionsart of their base verb. This assumption receives strong support by the data presented in this paper.
Two main types of sentences are traditionally distinguished in the context of semantic theories of questions and answers: declarative sentences, corresponding to statements, and interrogative sentences, corresponding to questions. The interrogative forms can be further subdivided into dialectical ones (yes-no-questions) and non-dialectical ones (constituent questions). These distinctions are made for both root and embedded sentences. The predicates that select sentential complements fall into three classes: predicates that license only declaratives, those that allow only for interrogatives, and those that embed both types of sentences. In this connection, verbs of doubt are interesting in that they allow for declaratives as well as dialectical interrogatives, while non-dialectical interrogatives do not seem to be appropriate complements.
In what follows, our main concern will be with the German verb of doubt zweifeln and its possible sentential complements. Speaker intuitions as to which constructions are grammatical or acceptable vary, particularily with respect to rare expressions like zweifeln. Therefore, interviews and corpus analysis were applied as a means to acquire reliable linguistic data. These as well as data from historical sources and from some languages other than German (esp. English and Italian) are presented and analysed. In the last section, based on the notion of ‘subjective probability’, an attempt is made at explaining the observations.
The present study examines a particular kind of rule blockage – referred to below as an 'antistructure-preservation effect'. An anti-structure-preservation effect occurs if some language has a process which is preempted from going into effect if some sequence of sounds [XY] would occur on the surface, even though other words in the language have [XY] sequences (which are underlyingly /XY/). It will be argued below that anti-structure-preservation effects can be captured in Optimality Theory in terms of a general ranking involving FAITH and MARKEDNESS constraints and that individual languages invoke a specific instantiation of this ranking. A significant point made below is that while anti-structure-preservation effects can be handled straightforwardly in terms of constraint rankings they typically require ad hoc rule-specific conditions in rule-based approaches.
In what follows, I first briefly review Perlmutter (1968, 1970), in which it is argued that aspectual verbs are ambiguous between control and raising. I suggest that while the argument for the raising analysis is solid, the arguments supporting the control analysis of aspectual verbs are less so. As an alternative hypothesis to consider, I introduce the structural ambiguity hypothesis. In Section 3, I review three recent analyses of control and raising. Although there are important differences among them, they all share the basic assumption that the control/raising distinction is due to differences in selectional restrictions that the lexical items impose. Under such an assumption, the lexical ambiguity hypothesis is the only available option. In Section 4, I present evidence for the structural ambiguity hypothesis from studies concerning aspectual verbs in languages from four distinct families, German (Wurmbrand 2001), Japanese (Fukuda 2006), Romance languages (Cinque 2003), and Basque (Arregi Molina-Azaola 2004). These data strongly suggest that across languages aspectual verbs can appear in two different syntactic positions, either below or above vP, or the projection with which an external argument is introduced (Kratzer 1994, 1996, Chomsky 1995). Given these findings, I argue that it is the aspectual verbs' position with respect to vP which creates the control/raising ambiguity. When an aspectual verb appears in a position that is lower than vP, an external argument takes scope over the aspectual verb. Thus, it is interpreted as control. When an aspectual verb appears in a position that is higher than vP, on the other hand, it is the aspectual verb that takes scope over an entire vP, including the external argument. Thus, it is interpreted as raising. In section 5, I extend the scope of this study to include a discussion of want-type verbs in Indonesian, as analyzed in Polinsky & Potsdam (2006). Polinsky & Potsdam argue that the Indonesian want-type verbs must be raising in at least certain cases where they allow a rather peculiar interpretation. Although they assume that there are also control counterparts of the want-type verbs, I argue that applying the proposed analysis to the want-type verbs does away with the need for stipulating two distinct lexical entries for these verbs. Section 6 concludes the paper.
How the left-periphery of a wh-relative clause determines its syntactic and semantic relationships
(2004)
This paper discusses a certain class of German relative clauses which are characterized by a wh-expression overtly realized at the left periphery of the clause. While investigating empirical and theoretical issues regarding this class of relatives, it argues that a wh-relative clause relates syntactically to a functionally complete sentential projection and semantically to entities of various kinds that are abstracted from the matrix clause. What is shown is that this grammatical behaviour clearly can be attributed to the properties of the elements positioned at the left of a wh-relative clause. Finally, a lexically-based analysis couched in the framework of HPSG is given that accounts for the data presented.
Das Partizip 1 im Deutschen
(2000)
It is controversial in the literature whether the First Participle in German ('Present Participle'; henceforth: Part I) is an adjective or a verbal form. Syntactically, it occurs exclusively in adjectival positions but it does not behave like an adjective in other respects. This paper provides an analysis of Part I starting from a diachronic perspective and arriving at a synchronic interpretation of its position in the field of 'finite verb + nonfinite verb constructions' in New High German. Against such positions as Paul's (1920), which regard Part I as an adjective only, it will be argued that, for an adequate description of its structural properties, its verbal character must be taken into account both diachronically and synchronically. It will be shown that Part I fits into and completes a paradigmatic structure together with other nonfinite verbal forms.
Koreferenzielle Pro-Formen im Deutschen und Italienischen : Analyse von Korpora gesprochener Sprache
(2011)
Gegenstand dieses Beitrags ist die vergleichende Untersuchung von deutschen und italienischen verweisenden Pronomen. Für das Deutsche wird die Alternanz zwischen der/die/ das (im Folgenden d-Pronomen; vgl. Ahrenholz 2007 und Wiltschko 1998) und Personalpronomen betrachtet. Für das Italienische werden Demonstrativ- und Personalpronomen (freie und klitische) untersucht. In vorherigen Forschungsarbeiten wurde auf semantische, syntaktische und pragmatische Bedingungen hingewiesen, die das Vorkommen von d-Pronomen anstatt anderer Pronominalformen wie z.B. den Personalpronomen im Deutschen stark begünstigen (vgl. dazu Ravetto 2009). Ziel dieser Arbeit ist, zu überprüfen, ob in den zwei Vergleichssprachen ähnliche Tendenzen bzw. Bedingungen zu beobachten sind, die mit der Wahl der jeweiligen verweisenden Form verknüpft sind.