Types, Moods, and Force Potentials: Towards a Comprehensive Account of German Sentence Mood Meanings
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Dietmar Zaefferer
Abstract
1. Introduction
I have agreed to comment on Truckenbrodt's paper mainly because I am sympathetic with the overall approach which aims at figuring out the non-syntactic correlates of the syntactic distinction between verb-initial and verb-final constructions in German sentences, both root and embedded clauses. Figuring out the non-syntactic correlates, however, is not exactly the same as examining the semantic motivation of some syntactic phenomenon. Semantic motivation for Truckenbrodt (henceforth HT) is the connection with illocutionary force. But other kinds of motivation are possible as well. I think in fact that one of the major shortcomings of HT's approach is his exclusive occupation with illocutionary semantics and his neglect of pragmatics in the sense of information structure.
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- On the semantic motivation of syntactic verb movement to C in German
- How far can pragmatic mechanisms take us?
- On Truckenbrodt on Interrogatives
- Types, Moods, and Force Potentials: Towards a Comprehensive Account of German Sentence Mood Meanings
- Dependent Contexts in Grammar and in Discourse: German Verb Movement from the Perspective of the Theory of Mood Selection
- Is German V-to-C Movement Really Semantically Motivated? Some Empirical Problems
- Germanic V-in-C: Some Riddles
- Replies to the comments by Gärtner, Plunze and Zimmermann, Portner, Potts, Reis, and Zaefferer
- Mimetic gemination in Japanese: A challenge for Evolutionary Phonology
Articles in the same Issue
- On the semantic motivation of syntactic verb movement to C in German
- How far can pragmatic mechanisms take us?
- On Truckenbrodt on Interrogatives
- Types, Moods, and Force Potentials: Towards a Comprehensive Account of German Sentence Mood Meanings
- Dependent Contexts in Grammar and in Discourse: German Verb Movement from the Perspective of the Theory of Mood Selection
- Is German V-to-C Movement Really Semantically Motivated? Some Empirical Problems
- Germanic V-in-C: Some Riddles
- Replies to the comments by Gärtner, Plunze and Zimmermann, Portner, Potts, Reis, and Zaefferer
- Mimetic gemination in Japanese: A challenge for Evolutionary Phonology
