12 Sonderforschungs- und Transferbereiche
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Item Open Access Event denoting -er nominalizations in German(2008) Schäfer, FlorianAs in other Germanic or Romance languages, -er nominalizations in German typically denote the external argument of the verb they are derived from irrespectively of its specific thematic role. This type of -er nominalizations is totally productive across languages. As observed in the literature, -er nominalizations across languages sometimes denote what looks like the internal argument of the verb they are derived from and one can even find -er nominalizations derived from adjectives, prepositions or nouns. The latter types of -er nominalizations are, however, not fully productive but (to some extent) idiosyncratic. I will show that German has one further type of -er nominalizations which does not denote an entity but an event. It turns out that these event denoting –er nominalizations are restricted to one specific type of predicates, namely semelfactives. Within this class of semelfactives, the derivation of event denoting -er nominalizations turns out to be totally productive. I suggest that the restriction that event denoting –er nominalizations can only be derived from verbs expressing semelfactive events tells us something about the meaning or the selectional restrictions of the derivational morpheme -er.Item Open Access Bare and indefinite NPs in predicative position in French(2008) Mari, Alda; Martin, FabienneThis paper proposes a new analysis of the use of bare nouns vs. indefinite NPs in predicative position in French. We distinguish between predicational sentences (with the bare noun version) and equative sentences (with the indefinite version). We argue that bare nouns ascribe permanent properties to aspects of entities. As for the indefinites, we claim that they exhibit their specific reading and introduce an individual in a new situation, which is identified with the referent of the subject.Item Open Access The division of the causative eventive chain by means of -ment and -age(2008) Uth, MelanieIn this paper I will investigate process and result nominals in -age and –ment, which are derived from verbs participating in the causative/anti-causative-alternation (henceforth labelled “alternating verbs”). First of all, it will be empirically shown that –mentnominals have both the anti-causative reading and the resultant state reading, whereas process nominals in –age focus on the causing process and result nominals in –age only appear in applicative constructions. Ehrich & Rapp (2000) assume that the causative eventive chain consists of a causing process and a change-of-state event that takes the resultant state as its situational argument. Following that, I will conclude from the empirical evidence that –ment nominalizes the change-of-state event, while –age nominalizes the causing process. Furthermore, I will model the relevant –age- and –mentnominals in terms of Lieber’s (2004) conceptual structures and discuss the question whether we may assume that –ment and –age introduce different aspectual operators.Item Open Access The internal structure of the -or nominalization in Romanian(2008) Marchis, MihaelaIn this paper I argue that the –or affix embeds different morpho-syntactical contexts, triggering distinct semantic effects: the (+ event) nominalization vs. (- event) derivation. I illustrate that both (+ event) and (- event) nouns have a vP, basing my claim on the two arguments (see Alexiadou & Schäfer (2007)): the morphology of –or nouns and adjectival modification. However, vP is bound by different operators: episodic vs. dispositional. According to Alexiadou & Schäfer (2007) event nominals are episodic while non-event nominals are dispositional. I propose that these aspectual specifications are triggered by the participial stem -t present in –or formation. Following the classification of Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (2004, 2008), the structure of resultant participles is involved in the –or nominalization while –or derivation is built on the base of target participles. Like resultant participles (+event) nouns contain not only a vP but also the functional projections such as vP, AsP and VoiceP. (- event) derivates like target participles lack argument structure and therefore also VoiceP. To conclude, (+event) nominals involve nominalization since –or affix is base-generated as the Agent in the Specifier of VoiceP while the -or affix involved in derivation is base-generated in the head position where the verb moves up and cliticizes.Item Open Access Meaning transfer and the compositional semantics of nominalizations(2008) Brandtner, RegineDeverbal nominalizations derived with –ung in German display different sortal readings (e.g. event, result, object) depending on the context that they occur in. However, there are cases that show conflicting evidence and hence pose problems for the compositional process. This paper provides a new explanation for the constructions in which one nominalization is understood as expressing two different readings simultaneously in order to match different semantic restrictions by modifiers or governing predicates. As these cases cannot be explained sufficiently by conventional strategies of interpreting nominalizations in context, I apply Nunberg’s notion of predicate transfer to shift the context rather than the noun: It is claimed that the nominalization expresses just one reading that fits the semantic restriction of the first modifier or predicate, while the second modifier or predicate changes its meaning through meaning enrichment. This analysis allows for the preserving of compositionality and releases other theories of these special cases.Item Open Access External argument PPs in Romanian nominalizations(2008) Iordachioaia, GianinaIn this paper, I investigate the properties of Romanian complex event nominals (CENs, after Grimshaw 1990) with respect to the realization of the external argument. The goal of such an attempt is two-fold. On the one hand, in view of the claim in Grimshaw that the process of nominalization is similar to that of passivization – to the extent that both suppress the external argument – a comparison between the verbal and the nominal domain will provide us with a better understanding of the conditions under which external argument PPs are licensed. On the other hand, on the assumption that external arguments are licensed by a Voice projection (Kratzer 1994), we can establish whether CENs in Romanian do project Voice. From the behavior of the infinitive and that of the supine, the two most productive CENs in Romanian, I conclude that the latter obligatorily projects a VoiceP, which licenses the external argument PP. The behavior of the former is ambiguous, so the licensing conditions for the external argument PP are dependent on the nature of the verbal root within the nominalization.Item Open Access On the structure of the Scandinavian DP(2008) Lohrmann, SusanneAdjectives in definite Scandinavian DPs trigger an additional lexical determiner (‘double definiteness’). In a number of cases, one of the determiners is obsolete, and in some of these cases, different readings are obtained. The following questions arise: what is the function of this doubling pattern of determiners? Is there a semantic correlate? And what does this tell us about the structure of the DP? The presence or absence of weak adjectival inflection can also yield different readings, i.e. inflection interacts with interpretation. In the following I will show that multiple exponence in Scandinavian DPs contributes to interpretation. Furthermore I suggest that the notion of definiteness in Scandinavian DPs is made up of three aspects: discourse reference, specific reference, and identity. These aspects are expressed by three distinct morphemes: the preadjectival article, the suffixed article, and the adjectival inflection respectively.Item Open Access Differential object marking in Mongolian(2008) Guntsetseg, DolgorIn this paper, I will deal with the phenomenon of Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Mongolian. In this language some direct objects are overtly case marked and others not. In other languages that also exhibit this phenomenon different semantic and pragmatic factors have been identified which trigger it. In this paper I will try to give answers to the following two questions: (i) how relevant are these factors for DOM in Mongolian and (ii) do other factors play a role as well. The discussion is primarily based on my own native speaker intuition. Some results of an empirical survey, which was constructed to clarify some unclear cases, will also be discussed.Item Open Access Towards a uniform approach to postnominal PPs and genitives in German(2008) Solstad, TorgrimIn Distributed Morphology analyses of German, genitives occurring postnominally to deverbal event nominals such as in die Beschreibung der Bürgermeisterin (‘the description of the mayoress’) are argued to occur in different syntactic positions depending on their interpretation. Whenever they are interpreted in a parallel fashion to the internal argument of the underlying verb, they are assumed to occupy some complement position internal to the nominalisation. However, if they are interpreted as more loosely associated with the event, such as in an interpretation of die Beschreibung der B¨urgermeisterin as a particular event of a description of something which the mayoress attended, they are assumed to be adjoined to the noun phrase. I argue that for lack of hard syntactic evidence with regard to these positions, we should seek a surface-oriented uniform analysis of the two interpretations. The varying interpretation of genitives is accounted for by assuming them to be introduced via an underspecified semantic relation r. The analysis is held in the framework of Underspecified Discourse Representation Theory.Item Open Access The semantics of eventive suffixes in French(2008) Martin, FabienneThis paper examines the properties of three of the suffixes available to create eventive deverbal nouns in French, namely -age, -ment and -ion. The explored hypothesis is that these suffixes have an abstract semantical and aspectual value which contributes to explain why verbs select different suffixes in the operation of nominalisation, as well as the semantical differences between two nominalisations derived from the same verbal base with different suffixes.