Volume 29, Issue 1

In spoken varieties of German, causal adverbial clauses introduced by weil are frequently used with V2 order. Interestingly, weil -V2 clauses are not simply a colloquial variant of standard verb-final clauses, but have also many specific syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties. On the one hand, weil -V2 clauses differ systematically from their verb-final counterparts. While V2 clauses yield causal interpretations not available for the corresponding verb-final clauses, verb-final clauses show a higher degree of syntactic integration and syntactic flexibility than V2 clauses. On the other hand, weil -V2 clauses share crucial formal and functional properties with other kinds of embedded V2 clauses such as V2-complement clauses and V2-relative clauses. Weil -V2 clauses can therefore be subsumed under the notion of ‘embedded root phenomena’. In this paper, we develop an analysis that derives all syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties of weil -V2 clauses at the interfaces between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics from their paratactic syntactic structure and the assertional force potential triggered by V-to-C movement. The results of a questionnaire study provide independent empirical evidence for our analysis.

The argumental status of verbal participants in event nominalizations is still under debate. Investigating syntactic and semantic properties of referentially interpreted genitive noun phrases related to German nominalized infinitives (= NI), cf. das Stören der Mannschaft (‘the disturbing the team- gen ’), I will argue in favor of different interpretative mechanisms at stake: whereas themes retain their argumental status in the nominal domain, agents are not lambda-bound in the argument structure of NI. Instead, the corresponding participant is a modifier whose agentive interpretation is motivated merely conceptually. Evidence for the proposed asymmetric analysis comes from two sources: it will be shown that the alleged agentive genitive contributes a possessive relation not identical to the verbal agentive interpretation. The conceptual preference for an identification with the verbal agent will be accounted for by abductive reasoning thereby explaining the modifier's argument-like behavior. In addition, as data on NI from different sources reveal, the genitive interpretation is mainly conditioned by lexical properties of the base verb. In particular, it will be shown that a postnominal agentive interpretation is bound to configurations where the theme is independently predicted optional. These findings follow from the proposed asymmetry.

The paper deals with the iconic and indexical relations of lexical signs in German Sign Language (DGS). It is argued that the theory of signs as established by Charles S. Peirce is particular fruitful with respect to the description and classification of signs in the visual-gestural modality, but also needs some additional discussion on the nature of the relation between sign and reference object. As will be demonstrated, motivated signs in German Sign Language are more complex with respect to indexicality and iconicity as is recognized in contemporary research. Accordingly, the paper discusses the necessity to modify the typology of linguistic signs with respect to sign languages. It will be demonstrated that there has to be established a class of schematic signs within the group of hypoicons. Secondly, it is argued that DGS has a class of motivated but non-iconic signs, which show a designative-indexical relation which relates to the spoken or written form of a word of the oral contact language German. In sum, a modified typology of lexical signs is established which not only includes the sign types symbol, index and (image)icon but also the new types schematic icon and indicator (‘Hinweis’).

Standardly, verb-first (V1) conditionals are considered to be mere variants of wenn -conditionals; accordingly, left-peripheral V1-clauses are analyzed as embedded into the prefields of declarative apodosis clauses, just like their V-end counterparts. We challenge this view, proposing instead that dependent V1-clauses are syntactically unembedded/unintegrated, and, consequently, that postposed declarative apodosis clauses are either V2-declaratives with prefield ellipsis or V1-declaratives. We argue our case by presenting evidence that (i) wenn -clauses differ considerably from V1-clauses in semantic distribution, (ii) unlike wenn -clauses, V1-clauses do not meet the criteria for syntactic embedding, (iii) the alternatives entailed by (ii) for the structural analysis of a postposed apodosis both have empirical support. As for a syntactic analysis of V1-structures suited to these findings, we argue that a CP adjunction analysis is currently the best option available. We also point out connections between the semantic restrictions on V1-conditionals and the semantics of V1-interrogatives that are suggestive of a common semantic core, which raises hope that our background vision (ultimately, all dependent V-to-C clauses are semantically licensed substitutes for genuine subordinates) may also be true for V1-clauses.