Tibor Kiss - SYNTAX - THEORY & ANALYSIS HSK 42.3

Syntax Theory and Analysis
HSK 42.3

Handbooks of Linguistics
and Communication Science

Manuels de linguistique et
des sciences de communication

Mitbegrndet von Gerold Ungeheuer
Mitherausgegeben (19852001) von Hugo Steger

Herausgegeben von / Edited by / Edits par
Herbert Ernst Wiegand

Band 42.3

De Gruyter Mouton

ISBN 978-3-11-036298-5
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-036368-5
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-039315-6
ISSN 1861-5090

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de .

2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

www.degruyter.com

This handbook is dedicated to the memory of our dear friend
Ursula Kleinhenz (19652010).

The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

This paper provides an overview of the most important grammatical properties of German. A large part of the paper is concerend with the basic clause types of German. I start with the Topological Fields Model, which is very useful as a descriptive tool, but as will be shown not sufficient for a thorough account of German clausal structure. I therefore explain additional theoretical assumptions that were made in order to assign structure to the observable linear sequences. After a sketch of an analysis of the basic sentence patterns in the .

).

Since all examples in this text are in German, the language tag [German] is omitted in the remainder of the text.

The complementizer in ().

Predicative adjectives in copula constructions and resultative constructions pattern with particles and should be assigned to the rechte Satzklammer too () the rechte Satzklammer then consists of the adjective treu faithful and the copula and the resultative predicate ( leer empty) and the matrix verb, respectively:

Additional fields can be identified to the left of the linke Satzklammer and to the right of the rechte Satzklammer . In () the relative clause that modifies Eis ice cream is extraposed. It is located in the Nachfeld post field.

In addition to the fields already discussed, Hhle suggested a clause-initial field for conjunctions like ( und and, oder or, aber but) and a field between this initial field and the Vorfeld for left dislocated elements as for instance der Montag the monday in ( on left dislocation.

Hhle calls the latter field K L . It is sometimes also called the Vorvorfeld pre pre field.

The examples above show that not all fields have to be filled in a German clause. For instance, in ().

In imperatives the finite verb is serialized in the linke Satzklammer and the Vorfeld may remain empty. In (), there is only a finite verb, that is, only the linke Satzklammer is filled. All other fields are empty.

Sometimes the fact that fields may be unfilled leads to situations in which the assignment to topological fields is not obvious. For instance the rechte Satzklammer is not filled by a verb or verb particle in (). So in principle it could be to the left or to the rechte Satzklammer . The relative clause could be considered as part of the Nachfeld or part of the Mittelfeld , depending on the decision made with respect to the location of the bracket.

Fortunately, there is a test that helps to determine the position of the rechte Satzklammer . The test is called Rangprobe embedding test and was developed by ) shows that the non-finite verb has to be placed before the relative clause. Placing it after the relative clause results in ungrammaticality:

As was pointed out by ) contains the non-finite verb gewusst in the rechte Satzklammer and the clause dass du kommst in the Nachfeld .

There is no obvious way to relate the clause type (declarative, imperative, interrogative) to the topological fields model. The reason for this is that irrespective of the clause type, all fields can remain empty (Mller 20014a). The Vorfeld is usually filled in declarative main clauses, but it may be empty as in instances of Vorfeldellipse topic drop, see :

On the other hand there are examples in which more than one constituent seems to be located in the Vorfeld . These will be discussed in .

Similarly, yes/no questions are usually verb-first utterances, as in the second reading of (). But with a question intonation V2 is possible as well:

Conversely, V1 sentences are not necessarily questions:

() is an imperative.

Imperatives are not necessarily V1, as (: 1023):

: 13, 41) noted, there is a variant of the copula that is semantically empty and hence it may be omitted if information about tense corresponds to the default value present.

().