Issues in formal German(ic) typology

Author(s)

• Abraham, Werner
• Zwart, C. Jan-Wouter

Bibliographic Information

Issues in formal German(ic) typology

edited by Werner Abraham, C. Jan-Wouter Zwart

（Linguistik aktuell, v. 45）

J. Benjamins Pub., c2002

• : Eur. : hb

Other Title

Issues in formal Germanic typology

Note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

This book takes up a variety of general syntactic topics, which either yield different solutions in German, in particular, or which lead to different conclusions for theory formation. One of the main topics is the fact that languages that allow for extensive scrambling between the two verbal poles, V-2 and V-last, need to integrate discourse functions like thema and rhema into the grammatical description. This is attempted, in terms of Minimalism, thus extending the functional domain. Special attention is given to the asymmetrical scrambling behavior of indefinites vs. definites and their semantic interpretation. Related topics are: Transitive expletive sentences, types of existential sentences with either BE or HAVE, the that-trace phenomenon and its semantics, negative polarity items, ellipsis and gapping, passivization, double negation - all of which have extensive effects both on distributional behavior and semantic disambiguation, reaching far beyond effects observable in English with its rigid, 'un-scrambable' word order.

Table of Contents

• 1. Contributors' addresses
• 2. Introduction (by Abraham, Werner)
• 3. German clause structure under discourse functional weight: Focus and antifocus (by Abraham, Werner)
• 4. On the co-occurrence of expletives and definite subjects in Germanic (by Boeckx, Cedric)
• 5. Reconsidering identificational focus (by Cohan, Jocelyn)
• 6. Decomposing existence: Evidence from Germanic (by Czinglar, Christine)
• 7. Polarity items in English and Danish (by Jensen, Britta)
• 8. The argument-time structure of recipient constructions in German (by Klein, Wolfgang)
• 9. Scrambling and reference in German (by Lenerz, Juergen)
• 10. Attributive adjectives in Germanic and Romance (by Mallen, Enrique)
• 11. Die Negationsklammer im Afrikaans: Mehrfachnegation aus formaler und funktionaler Sicht (by Molnarfi, Laszlo)
• 12. On the syntax and semantics of verb-complement constructions that involve 'creation': A comparative study in Greek and German (by Sioupi, Athina)
• 13. Wh-expletives and partial wh -movement: Two non-existing concepts? (by Sternefeld, Wolfgang)
• 14. Phases in the derivation of elliptical coordinate constructions in Germanic (by Velde, John R. te)
• 15. Index

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

• NCID: BA57010063
• ISBN:
  • 9027227667
• LCCN: 2001052579
• Country Code: ne
• Title Language Code: eng
• Text Language Code: engger
• Place of Publication: Amsterdam
• Pages/Volumes: xvii, 334 p.
• Size: 23 cm
• Classification:
  • LCC : PD101.I84
  • DC21 : 430/.045
• Subject Headings:
  • LCSH : Germanic languages -- Grammar
• Parent Bibliography ID:
  • BA00524923