Volume 32, Issue 3 - On the semantic motivation of syntactic verb movement to C in German

Introduction Like Bierwisch 1980, Altmann 1987, Grewendorf and Zaefferer 1991, Wechsler 1991, Brandt, Reis, Rosengren and Zimmermann 1992, Lohnstein 2000, Gunlogson 2001, Zaefferer 2001 and much related work, the present paper contributes to sorting out the relation of syntactic properties of clauses (syntactic sentence types) to the ways in which the clauses can be used (illocutionary force, speech acts). The focus of this paper is on the role of movement of the finite verb to C ( V-to-C ).

1. Truckenbrodt's challenge Hubert Truckenbrodt issues a substantive challenge near the start of his contribution: The variation we observe in the connection between syntactic sentence types and their possibilities of use, while showing some flexibility, is not arbitrary or unrestricted. Narrow restrictions on this relation exist, which cannot plausibly stem from general purpose pragmatic mechanisms. This is a bold statement. The field is only just now beginning to understand what general pragmatic mechanisms are like once we dig deeper than intuitive statements. One wonders: to what extent could a precise set of pragmatic mechanisms (maxims), interacting with semantic denotations, produce the “narrow restrictions” that Truckenbrodt carefully documents?

Introduction In his contribution to the present volume, Hubert Truckenbrodt presents a novel and elegant account of the connection between the syntactic structure of an utterance and the illocutionary force signalled by it. In this short note we cannot do justice to the entire approach with its intricate architecture, which is why we decided to confine ourselves to a few scattered remarks relating to the analysis of interrogatives — partly fore-shadowed in Truckenbrodt's (2004) earlier work, to which we will occasionally refer.

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.

1. Overview Sections 3–4 of Truckenbrodt's paper concern V2 in embedded clauses, and his analysis of such clauses takes as its central intuition the idea that there is a mechanism of discourse interpretation that affects all V2 clauses. With simple root sentences, the mechanism of discourse interpretation links the sentence to the context in which it is uttered; this is one of the main concerns of section 2. With embedded V2 clauses, the mechanism of discourse interpretation links the clause not to the real context, but to a ‘dependent context’ derived from the embedding head (he also uses the term ‘derived context’). In this commentary, I would like to explore this notion of dependent context.

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.

1. Introduction Usually, the Germanic languages are classified syntactically as V2-languages (see König and van der Auwera 1994). This is clearly due to the fact that they coincide wrt predominance of V-in-C clauses in root positions. Given this V-in-C/root correlation, it is highly plausible that a proper linguistic account of the exact distribution of Germanic V-in-C should at some level of analysis make appeal to the one characteristic property of root clauses, i.e. illocutionary force potential. Such an intuition has repeatedly guided research on V2, work inspired by Hooper & Thompson (1973) such as Andersson (1975) being among the early examples. However, this kind of work remained on a rather informal level, so Hubert Truckenbrodt (henceforth HT) deserves full credit for having put forth an explicit and non-trivial proposal for the analysis of German V-in-C that integrates syntax, discourse semantics, and pragmatics. Integration is guaranteed by so-called “context indices” and formulated as follows (cf. HT's (17)).

I would like to thank all commentators for commenting on my work in thoughtful contributions to the issues that occupy us all. In thinking about the comments, my ideas about these issues have considerably progressed. It seems to me fitting that I should include these improvements in this volume as well. I outline them in brief form below, sometimes alternating with my more direct responses to the comments.

1. Introduction Blevins's Evolutionary Phonology attempts to derive most if not all synchronic phonological patterns from diachronic changes: “[R]ecurrent synchronic sound patterns are a direct reflection of their diachronic origins, and, more specifically … regular phonetically based sound change is the common source of recurrent sound patterns. Evolutionary Phonology … investigates this hypothesis and explores its consequences for phonological theory” (Blevins 2006: 120). Evolutionary Phonology suggests that, to avoid duplication in linguistic theory, diachronic explanations must take priority over synchronic explanations whenever possible: “[P]rincipled diachronic explanations for sound patterns replace, rather than complement, synchronic explanations, unless independent evidence demonstrates, beyond reasonable doubt, that a separate synchronic account is warranted” (Blevins 2004a: 5).