Is German V-to-C Movement Really Semantically Motivated? Some Empirical Problems
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Marga Reis
Abstract
1. The central issue for a linguistic theory of sentence types is to what extent their meanings (‘sentence moods’) can be compositionally derived from their form. T[ruckenbrodt]'s paper is a valiant, and altogether fascinating attempt to identify a specific contribution of the central formal feature of German sentence types – verb position viz. finite verb movement to C (V-to-C ) – to these meanings. His central claim is that V-to-C is triggered by a context index in C containing crucial sentence mood elements that must be checked in order to yield the appropriate illocutionary interpretations of V-in-C root clauses. In short, according to T, German V-toC has a purely semantic viz. illocutionary motivation. It is this central claim that I will take issue with in the following.
© 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
