Semantic constraints on case assignment in secondary adjectival predicates in russian

Adjectival secondary predicates can enter into two Case frames in Russian, the agreeing form and the Instrumental. The paper argues that these Case frames go together with two syntactic positions in the clause which are correlated with two different interpretations, the true depictive and the temporally restricted reading, respectively. The availability of the two readings depends on the houndedness of the secondary predicate. Only bounded predicates can enter into both Case frames and only partially non-bounded predicates can appear in the Instrumental. The paper therefore argues that the pertinent two-way SL/IL-contrast is to he replaced by a three-way distinction in terms of boundedness. The paper outlines the syntax and semantics of the true depictive and the temporally restricted interpretation and discusses how adjectival secondary predicates whose salient properties involve a cotemporary interpretation with the matrix predicate and a control relation of an individual argument, differ from temporal adjuncts as well as from non-finite clauses

Complementizer Agreement and the Licensing of DPs: An Account in terms of Referential Anchoring

In this paper, I argue that the phenomenon of complementizer agreement in West Germanic and the distribution of DPs in German can be given a common explanation in terms of an approach in which context values are not freely assigned via an interpretive function operation, as is assumed in standard accounts of formal semantics, but rather, they become accessible in a specific function-al head in the C-domain. Keywords: complementizer agreement; clitic movement; scrambling; weak and strong definite determiners; anchoring to the discourse; context value

Giving Content to Expletive es in German

The present paper proposes an alternative analysis of so-called expletive es in German. It is argued that es has semantic content that serves to anchor the utterance in the context. In particular, I argue that es constitutes a weak demonstrative element binding a situation argument. The account gets rid of the assumption that the relevant head in the clause is endowed with an EPP-feature and restores the original principle underlying it, namely the requirement that every predicate needs a contentful subject argument it can be predicated of. The account also explains in more depth the obligatory and optional occurrences of es and proposes that there are essentially two occurrences of es to distinguish in terms of their syntactic properties. Key words: Expletives, EPP-feature, weak and strong definite expressions, anchoring to the context, categorial and thetic judgements

On the historical development of pronouns referring to situations: The rise of pre-finite 'expletives' in German.

At least since Milsark (1974) expletives have been a major research topic in generative linguistics. However, since most relevant work has focused on the present-day languages, many aspects of the historical development of expletives are still unsettled. This applies in particular to the emergence of CP related pre-finite expletives in the history of the Germanic V2 languages. Focusing on German, this paper seeks to shed new light on the diachrony of CP expletive es ‘it’ by combining new empirical evidence gathered from a range of corpus studies with a novel theoretical perspective on the syntax and pragmatic functions of so-called ‘expletive’ elements. Paying special attention to the contexts in which pre-finite expletive es first appeared, we provide new data on linguistic and extralinguistic factors (such as text type and dialect area) that shaped its development. We show that es came to be used as a prefield filler earlier than previously thought, with the first clear cases dating to the 12th century. In addition, we will investigate the role of light frame adverbials such as thô/dô ‘then’ as potential precursors of expletive es and address the question of why the latter replaced the former in the history of German. The discussion of the historical data is embedded in a new proposal concerning the discourse function of CP-related expletives. In particular, we argue that ‘expletive’ es is not a semantically vacuous element, but rather a demonstrative element with a weak definite reading that is compatible with introducing a new situation (identified with an argument of Tense, cf. Hinterhölzl 2019) but also with continuing an established reference situation, explaining the success of es as a versatile element that anchors the utterance to the context

On the syntax of object pronouns in Old English and Early Middle English

The paper investigates the conditions that determine the distribution of object pronouns in the period before the latter become fixed to the post-verbal position. In the transition between Old English and Early Middle English (henceforth OE and EME), object pronouns surface to the left of T, to the left of V and to the right of V. It will be shown that the distribution in the pre-T and post-V positions in OE is due to information structural and prosodic interface conditions, whereas the position at the left of V is analysed as unmarked. In EME, the pre-T position continues to be linked to topicalization, whereas the pre-V position shows a progressively less frequent distribution. The post-verbal mapping of object pronouns can still be linked to prosodic1 and information structural (IS) mapping conditions, but the data show that the post-verbal position was on the way to being reanalysed as the unmarked position. The change will be attributed to two factors: a) the new option of de-accentuation in situ, leading pronouns to choose the non-finite verb as their phonological host, and b) the grammaticalization of the definite determiner that renders light (non-branching and left-branching) objects into right-branching, heavy objects at the end of the OE period. We will provide evidence that it is the latter factor that leads to the new option of de-accenting pronouns in situ (cf. Hinterhölzl 2017)

Prominence, Accent and Information Structure

The paper discusses the tenets of the complex interaction between syntax, prosody and information structure in German. A prominence-based approach to the interface is proposed in an account that crucially extends the object of syntax from the sentence level to the discourse level. The latter move allows to reconcile formal approaches and functional approaches to grammar and solves an old problem posed by the parallel impact of information structural categories on the phonological and semantic interpretation of the clause in generative grammar

Decomposing V2

The paper outlines a new approach to the phenomenon of Verb Second (V2) in West Germanic that does better justice to the historical facts and also accounts for the variation between V2 and V3 orders in modern varieties like Kiezdeutsch and West Flemish. The account proposes a decomposition of the V2 rule, the core of which consists of (i) the Phase Condition, a lexicalization requirement on the phase head, and (ii) an interface condition that fixes the phase head in languages that allow for a flexible phase edge

Word order change, architecture and interfaces: Evidence from the development of V to C movement in the history of English

We present a novel analysis of the development of one type of Verb Second (V2) word order over the Middle English period and its loss over the early Modern English period. The analysis is based on a fine-grained and novel corpus study, which shows that multiple factors play a role in this development, and that it involves interaction between syntax, information structure/pragmatics and prosody. We focus on subject-finite inversion of pronominal subjects, following an adverb (þa, þonne in Old English, extending to other adverbs over the Middle English periods), isolating those contexts for which it is generally accepted that they involve finite verb movement to the highest functional head in the C-domain (ForceP) of the main clause. Middle English first sees the extension of this type of V2 to inversion following other short originally English adverbs that are discourse-linking: here, there, yet and thus. This extension primarily involves short finite verbs such as auxiliaries and monosyllabic lexical verbs. V2 following adverbs is lost over the early Modern period. We present novel data and arguments to show that this loss largely coincides with the grammaticalization of modals and other auxiliaries, and that it is triggered by metrical changes in the definition of the English prosodic word: as long as the mostly unstressed adverb could co-occur with a stressed monosyllabic finite verb and the postverbal subject pronoun could be integrated into the prosodic word of the auxiliary, inversion was fine. Primary stress on the auxiliary was lost in the final stages of the auxiliation process, yielding an unheaded foot, violating prosodic requirements. In contrast, this type of V2 could be maintained in questions and focal initial negatives such as Never would I do such a thing! because the initial constituent carries primary stress in these contexts, heading the metrical foot

On the question of subordination or coordination in V2-relatives in German

In recent years, relative clauses with Verb Second (V2) have received a lot of attention. This is due to their peculiar syntactic and semantic properties. On the one hand, the content of the relative clause is asserted, indicating – given certain theoretical assumptions further addressed below – its non-subordinated status, on the other hand, they allow for a restrictive interpretation, indicating its subordinated status, since the restrictive reading under standard assumptions requires that the relative clause is interpreted within the DP heading it. Moreover, V2 has been argued to be a root phenomenon and clauses containing V2 should thus display root-like properties. One important property of root clauses is that they – contrary to regular embedded clauses – can represent different types of speech acts: assertions, questions, commands and so on. It thus comes as little surprise that the best analysis of V2- relatives on the market, namely that by Gärtner (2001, 2002), posits an analysis in which two (main) clauses are coordinated, explaining the presence of V2 in the relative clause and relating it to the proto-assertional force of the relative. This syntactic analysis renders the semantic interpretation of V2-relatives a rather complex issue, since the content of the relative clause must be integrated into the interpretation of the DP heading it during the computation of the matrix clause to derive the correct restrictive interpretation. We propose an alternative account that assumes that V2-relatives are regular subordinated relative clauses that due to the specific property of embedded V2 need to be extraposed and are interpreted in a high-adjoined position in the matrix clause. The restrictive interpretation of the relative clause will be argued to be derived from a matching analysis of relative clauses in which (weak) quantifiers contained in the head NP are interpreted in the embedded clause whose interpretational properties follow from the information structural properties of the main clause and the specific contribution of V2 in the relative clause

The interaction between syntax, information structure, and prosody in word order change.

The primary concern of this chapter is to explore the role of information structure, syntax and prosody in explaining word order variation and change in the history of English. An important feature of this approach is that it embeds changes in English in a wider picture of parallel or diverging development in Germanic. Given that Old English and Old High German show similar word order variations, but later diverge in different directions, the major word order changes in English, namely the loss of OV-orders and the loss of V2 in (non-negative) declarative clauses will be compared to and contrasted with the generalization of V2 and the loss of VO-orders in the history of German