Studies in Language Companion Series
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234
Recent years have seen a growing interest in grammatical variation, a core explanandum of grammatical theory. The present volume explores questions that are fundamental to this line of research: First, the question of whether variation can always and completely be explained by intra- or extra-linguistic predictors, or whether there is a certain amount of unpredictable – or ‘free’ – grammatical variation. Second, the question of what implications the (in-)existence of free variation would hold for our theoretical models and the empirical study of grammar. The volume provides the first dedicated book-length treatment of this long-standing topic. Following an introductory chapter by the editors, it contains ten case studies on potentially free variation in morphology and syntax drawn from Germanic, Romance, Uralic and Mayan.
193
Present-day German uses two formally different patterns of compounding in N+N compounds. The first combines bare stems (e.g. Tisch+decke ‘tablecloth’) while the second contains an intervening linking element (LE) as in Geburt-s-ort ‘birth-LE-place’. The linked compounding type developed in Early New High German (1350–1650) from phrasal constructions by reanalyzing genitive attributes as first constituents of compounds. The present paper uses corpus data to explore three key stages in this development: In the initial stage, it shows how prenominal non-specific genitive constructions lent themselves to reanalysis due to their functional overlap and formal similarity. Additionally, compounds seem to have replaced not only prenominal genitives, but also structurally different postnominal genitives. In the second stage, the new compounding pattern increases in productivity between 1500 and 1710, especially compared to the older pattern without linking elements. The last stage pertains to changes in spelling practice. It shows that linked compounds were written separately in the beginning. Their gradual graphematic integration into directly connected words was reversed by a century of hyphenation (1650–1750). This is strikingly different from present-day spelling practice and shows that the linked pattern was still perceived as marked.
1
On valence-binding grammars
(1978)
The valence of a verb determines the number, and the syntactic class, of those expressions that must co-occur with it in a sentence. Definitions of "valence-term" and "valence-boundness" are provided whereby the precise conditions are formulated that a valence-binding grammar must satisfy. These conditions are exemplified in the framework of a simple categorial grammar, in which various reductions of the general notions can be carried out.
98
This article discusses the question whether the distinction between subordination and coordination is parallel in syntax and discourse. Its main thesis is that subordination and coordination, as they are commonly understood in the linguistic literature, are genuinely syntactic concepts. The distinction between hierarchical and non-hierarchical connection in discourse structure, as far as it is defined clearly in the literature, is of a quite different nature. The syntax and semantics of connectives (as the most prominent morphosyntactic means by which subordination and coordination are encoded) offers little evidence to support the assumption of a structural parallelism between syntax and discourse. As a methodological consequence, sentence and discourse structure should not be mixed up in linguistic analysis.
86
This study investigates the question of whether the processing of complex anaphors require more cognitive effort than the processing of NP-anaphors. Complex anaphors refer to abstract objects which are not introduced as a noun phrase and bring about the creation of a new discourse referent. This creation is called “complexation process”. We describe ERP findings which provide converging support for the assumption that the cognitive cost of this complexation process is higher than the cognitive cost of processing NP-anaphors.
75
The paper gives an analysis of productively occurring dative constructions in German, attempting to unify what are known traditionally as Double Object and Experiencer Datives. The datives in question - cipients as we call them - are argued to be licensed under two conditions: One, predicates licensing cipients project a theme and a location argument internally; two, interpretation of the predication as a whole involves reference to two dissociated temporal intervals, or more generally, indexical truth intervals. It is argued that the location argument is needed because it provides the variable that is bound by the cipient argument - the variable in question ranges over superlocations of the location argument referent. Reference to two truth intervals is forced because interpreting the cipient structure involves evaluation of two propositional meanings that would contradict each other in a single context. The first propositional meaning is embedded in the predicate; it encodes that something is at a certain location (in quality space). The second propositional meaning is projected as a presupposition that corresponds just to the negation of the first one. The cipient, functioning as the logical subject of the construction, accommodates this second presuppositional meaning; this makes the construction as a whole interpretable. The analysis applies uniformly to what appear to be the two major contexts licensing cipients: ‘eventive’ and ‘foo-comparative’ predications, thereby accounting for some striking parallels between them.