Stauffenburg Linguistik
Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Part of a Book (42)
- Book (3)
Keywords
- Deutsch (22)
- Konversationsanalyse (9)
- Konstruktionsgrammatik (8)
- Korpus <Linguistik> (7)
- Argumentstruktur (6)
- Bedeutung (6)
- Gespräch (6)
- Verstehen (6)
- Interaktion (5)
- Argumentation (4)
Publicationstate
- Veröffentlichungsversion (18)
- Zweitveröffentlichung (13)
- Postprint (3)
Reviewstate
- (Verlags)-Lektorat (28)
Publisher
- Stauffenburg (45)
109
This article investigates the transitive-oblique alternation in German that involves the preposition an ‘at, on’, e.g. ein Buch schreiben ‘write a book’ vs. an einem Buch schreiben ‘work on / write a book’ (lit. write at a book). The crucial semantic difference between the two structures is the obligatory atelic interpretation of the prepositional an-variant. Based on a corpus study for twenty verbs that were discussed in the previous work, I revisit the assumptions that were made by Filip (1999). First, the incremental theme verbs like bauen ‘build’ or essen ‘eat’ appear only seldom with an. This questions the central role of incrementality as the semantic explanation for the acceptability of the an-variant. Second, selectional preferences of verbs differ in the two argument structures. This observation challenges the assumption that the an-phrase and the direct object are alternative syntactic realizations of the same verbal argument. Overall, this first corpus-based study of the an-construction reveals complex interactions between the semantics of individual verbs, verb classes and the meaning of the preposition an.
90
In German there are about twenty-five elements (like gemäß, nahe, voll) that seem to be used as a preposition along with their use as an adjective. In former approaches the preposition is interpreted as the product of grammaticalizing (and/or reanalyzing) the adjective. It is argued that the two criteria these approaches rely on, namely change of linear position and change of case government, are insufficient. In this paper, seven criteria for distinguishing adjectives form prepositions in German are put forward. What is most important is that these criteria have to be evaluated on the token level as well as on the level of type and word class/syntactic category. It can be shown that the individual ‘adjective-prepositions' as types possess a specific mixture of adjective-like and preposition-like features. On the token level, occurring as part of a postnominal restrictive attribute is indicative for preposition-like status in German. The comparison of German with English and Italian adjective-prepositions (like near, far, due and vicino, lontano) reveals a lot of differences, which counts as evidence for the language-specific nature of word classes. Nevertheless, Lehmanns functional-typological approach uncovers a fundamental functional similarity between complement governing adjectives and prepositions: the primary function of the phrases, i.e., adjective/preposition + complement, is to modify a nominal or a verbal concept, respectively. This insight explains why adjective-prepositions can be found cross-linguistically. The question whether we should propose one type or two types for gemäß and its cognates is of minor importance only.
90
This paper discusses the categorial status of nominalized adjectives, which share formal properties with both adjectives and nouns, in present-day German. Based on a corpus study conducted in the Deutsches Referenzkorpus (DeReKo), it is shown that different types of deadjectival nouns do not behave uniformly with respect to pronoun choice in attributive relative clauses. While nominalized positives (in the neuter gender) preferably combine with the regular relative pronoun das ‘that’, superlatives strongly favor relativization by means of the corresponding wh-form was ‘what’. The contrasts are taken to reflect structural differences in the internal make-up of the respective categories that give rise to different degrees of ‘nouniness’.
58
Den Wald vor lauter Bäumen sehen - und andersherum: zum Verhältnis von 'Mustern' und 'Regeln'
(2011)
Die Konstruktionsgrammatik setzt dem Begriff der konstruktiven Regel den des komplexen Musters entgegen, das in syntaktischen Generalisierungsprozessen analogisch erweitert wird. Der vorliegende Beitrag präsentiert eine solche musterbasierte Analyse von deutschen Konstruktionen mit lokativem Subjekt (Wiesen und Wälder wuchern vor Blumen und Kräutern) als Extension einer Reihe verwandter Konstruktionen mit kausaler und intensivierender Funktion, aus denen die lokative Variante mutmaßlich hervorgegangen ist. Die Analyse argumentiert, dass der umgebenden ,Ökologie‘ der Zielkonstruktion im sprachlichen Wissen der Sprecher eine zentrale Rolle für die Erklärung der attestierten Varianten zukommt, die in regelbasierten Zugängen als unmotivierte ,Ausnahmen‘ von allgemeinen Linkingprinzipien gelten müssen.
55
Connectives are conjunctions, prepositions, adverbs and other particles which share the function of encoding semantic relations between sentences, or rather, between semantic objects some of which can be meanings of sentences. The relata linked by any such relation will fall into one of four distinct categories: they will be physical objects, states of affairs, propositions, or pragmatic options (the atoms of human interaction). Physical objects constitute the conceptual domain of space, states of affairs the domain of time, propositions the epistemic domain, and pragmatic options the deontic domain. The relations encodable in any of these domains can be divided into four basic types: similarity relations, situating relations, conditional relations, and causal relations. Conceptual domains and types of relations define the universe of possible connections between semantic objects.
Connectives differ as to the interpretations they permit in terms of conceptual domains and types of relations. Very few connectives are specialized on relata of one certain category and relations of one certain type. Possible examples in German are später (‘later on’) and zwischenzeitlich (‘in the meantime’), which encode situating relations between states of affairs. Other connectives are specialized on relata of one certain category, but are underspecified with respect to the type of relation. An example is German sobald (‘as soon as’), which can only connect states of affairs, but accepts situating, conditional and causal readings. Connectives of a third group are specialized on relations of a certain type, but are underspecified with respect to the category of the relata. Examples of this kind are German weil (‘because’) and trotzdem (‘nevertheless’), which encode causal relations, but accept states of affairs, propositions and pragmatic options as their relata. Connectives of a fourth group are underspecified both for the category of relata and the type of relation. An example is German da (‘there’), which accepts relata of any category and allows for situating, conditional and causal readings. Connectives like und (‘and’) and oder (‘or’) exhibit an even higher degree of under specification, in that they allow for all kinds of relations and relata.