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Just like most varieties of West Germanic, virtually all varieties of German use a construction in which a cognate of the English verb 'do' (standard German 'tun') functions as an auxiliary and selects another verb in the bare infinitive, a construction known as 'do'-periphrasis or 'do'-support. The present paper provides an Optimality Theoretic (OT) analysis of this phenomenon. It builds on a previous analysis by Bader and Schmid (An OT-analysis of 'do'-support in Modern German, 2006) but (i) extends it from root clauses to subordinate clauses and (ii) aims to capture all of the major distributional patterns found across (mostly non-standard) varieties of German. In so doing, the data are used as a testing ground for different models of German clause structure. At first sight, the occurrence of 'do' in subordinate clauses, as found in many varieties, appears to support the standard CP-IP-VP analysis of German. In actual fact, however, the full range of data turn out to challenge, rather than support, this model. Instead, I propose an analysis within the IP-less model by Haider (Deutsche Syntax - generativ. Vorstudien zur Theorie einer projektiven Grammatik, Narr, Tübingen, 1993 et seq.). In sum, the 'do'-support data will be shown to have implications not only for the analysis of clause structure but also for the OT constraints commonly assumed to govern the distribution of 'do', for the theory of non-projecting words (Toivonen in Non-projecting words, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 2003) as well as research on grammaticalization.
This paper examines four German transportation verbs with the prefix weg-, concentrating on their syntax and their semantic and pragmatic interpretations. The empirical data investigated are from a cross-linguistic corpus of German and Brazilian Portuguese as foreign languages. The analysis is based on the concept of focus, which is defined as a point on the path along which the patient of the process moves. The focus must be either mentioned or contextually evident. Each transportation verb will be able to establish a typical focus. German prefix-verbs with weg- are characterized by a focus-conflict that can be resolved through different interpretation strategies.
The paper discusses particular logical consistency conditions satisfied by German proposition-embedding predicates which determine the question type (external and internal whether-form as well as exhaustive and non-exhaustive wh-form), the correlate type (es- or da-correlate) as well as the impact of the correlate on the respective consistency condition. It will turn out that some consistency conditions also determine the embedding of verb second and subject-control.
Der Aufsatz diskutiert die Syntax und Semantik von Konstruktionen im Deutschen mit es- und präpositionalen Korrelaten wie "Leo bedauert es, dass Mia krank ist" oder "Leo freut sich darüber, dass Mia gesund ist". Er argumentiert gegen Breindls (1989), Sudhoffs (2003, i.Vorb.), und Freys (2011) Homonymiehypothese, nach der es-Korrelate und präpositionale Korrelate sich jeweils in unterschiedliche syntaktische Kategorien aufsplitten. Es wird eine uniforme Analyse präsentiert, die generell ein Korrelat als eine Proform ansieht, die auf ein abstraktes Objekt referiert. Letzteres ist entweder eine Aussage σ, auf die ein eingebetteter Deklarativsatz oder das Radikal eines eingebetteten wenn- oder ob-Satzes referiert, oder es handelt sich bei ihm um eine kontextgegebene Aussage μ, die eine Antwort auf die eingebettete w-Frage darstellt. Die uniforme Analyse offeriert syntaktische und semantische Erklärungen für die Beobachtungen, die zu der Homonymiehypothese geführt haben.
I’ve got a construction looks funny – representing and recovering non-standard constructions in UD
(2020)
The UD framework defines guidelines for a crosslingual syntactic analysis in the framework of dependency grammar, with the aim of providing a consistent treatment across languages that not only supports multilingual NLP applications but also facilitates typological studies. Until now, the UD framework has mostly focussed on bilexical grammatical relations. In the paper, we propose to add a constructional perspective and discuss several examples of spoken-language constructions that occur in multiple languages and challenge the current use of basic and enhanced UD relations. The examples include cases where the surface relations are deceptive, and syntactic amalgams that either involve unconnected subtrees or structures with multiply-headed dependents. We argue that a unified treatment of constructions across languages will increase the consistency of the UD annotations and thus the quality of the treebanks for linguistic analysis.
An important role in the coherence of texts is played by the distribution of information in the sentence. The present paper especially examines the beginning of sentences (topics). Which syntactic elements are most adequate to initiate a sentence, and which of their characteristics can be considered responsible for this? After a short review of the pertinent literature, we shall present grammatical, semantic and pragmatic factors that organize topicalization. The point of departure are the patterns of basic serialization as defined by the grammar. Deviations of these patterns can particularly be a result of the principle of known information. In addition to this constitutive principle, we can distinguish five regulative principles that lead to non-marked topicalizations (situation, empathy, iconicity, lengthening terms, text connection). In the closing sections, the positioning of phrasal accents and some special types of topics will be discussed. All the examples given are from modem German.
Cet article propose un bref aperçu de l’état de l’art en syntaxe de l’allemand. Pour illustrer les évolutions théoriques et méthodologiques majeures, en rupture avec les approches traditionnelles, l’étude a sélectionné cinq points particuliers : la structure du groupe nominal, la syntaxe du verbe en lien avec la valence et les fonctions syntaxiques, les diathèses, les constructions infinitives et la structure de la phrase sous l’angle de la position du verbe et de ses implications syntaxiques.
This paper analyses the variation we find in the realization of finite clausal complements in the position of prepositional objects in a set of Germanic languages. The Germanic languages differ with respect to whether prepositions can directly select a clause (North Germanic) or not and instead need a prepositional proform (Continental West Germanic). Within the Continental West Germanic languages, we find further differences with respect to the constituent structures. We propose that German strong vs. weak prepositional proforms (e.g. drauf vs. darauf) differ with respect to their syntax, while this is not the case for the Dutch forms (ervan vs. daarvan). What the Germanic languages under consideration share is that the prepositional element can be covert, except in English. English shows only limited evidence for the presence of P with finite clauses in the position of prepositional objects generally, but only with a selected set of verbs. This investigation is a first step towards a broader study of the nature of clauses in prepositional object positions and the implications for the syntax of clausal complementation.