Haben-Constructions in German: One auxiliary meets three different argument structure constructions (original) (raw)
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The properties of perfect(ive) and (eventive) passive participles: An identity approach
Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 2019
This paper sheds light on the properties of perfect(ive) and (eventive) passive participles on the basis of a discussion of the issue of past participial (non-)identity. In fact, as there is no evidence for the substantial non-identity of the two forms, a principled case is made for the identity of past participles in passive and perfect periphrases based on diachronic as well as synchronic considerations. While the historical predecessors of past participles boil down to deverbal adjectives that combine argument structural effects (the absence of an external argument) as well as aspectual properties (resultativity), synchronic data indicates that the contribution of the reanalysed eventive past participles is still twofold: (i) the (syntactic) suppression of an external argument (if present), and (ii) aspectual properties that render a given situation perfective iff the underlying predicate denotes a simple change of state. This accounts for the interpretations of past participles when combined with semantically vacuous auxiliaries (be and become): passive properties arise if (i) applies and (ii) thus cannot impose perfectivity (the eventive passive), and perfect properties ensue if (ii) applies but (i) does not (the be-perfect in languages showing auxiliary alternation). The perfect auxiliary have, on the other hand, may overtly license an argument that would otherwise remain suppressed and contributes relevant perfect properties (posteriority) so that combinations with have elicit active perfect interpretations (where perfectivity may but need not come about via implication).
Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, 2021
The present paper argues that all kinds of verbal and adjectival instantiations of past participles have a common core: a participial head associated with an argument structural effect, on the one hand, and an aspectual contribution, on the other. The former amounts to the suppression of an external argument (if present), which existentially binds the semantic role associated with this argument, and the latter renders simple event structures with change-of-state semantics (and only those) perfective. Based on these ingredients (and the contribution of the auxiliary have, if present), it is not just possible to account for how past participles elicit periphrastic passive as well as perfect configurations, but crucially also for their bare (i. e. auxiliaryless) occurrences in a range of distributions: stative passives, stative perfects, absolute clauses, pre- and postnominal occurrences, and adverbial clauses. These, in turn, differ in their properties on the basis of (a) the presence...
The auxiliation of the verbum substantivum in German (plu)perfect constructions
The chapter addresses instances of 'war gewesen' (i.e. BE-PRET + BE-PARTII) in the colloquial register of Modern High German which display the form of a pluperfect but seem to be used in an absolute-deictic function of a general past tense. Based on an empirical analysis of the relationship between 'war gewesen' and the grammaticalization of (plu)perfect constructions, it is argued with respect to the auxiliation of 'sein' (BE) that the participle 'gewesen' functions as an extension mechanism such as described analogously for double perfect forms (DPF) and denotes the EXISTENCE of a state of being.
Object-To-Subject-Raising and Lexical Rule. An Analysis of the German Passive
Proceedings of the HPSG-2003 Conference, Michigan …, 2003
It is a much-debated issue whether one should assume separate lexical entries for participles used in passive and perfect constructions or whether there is just one lexical entry that is used in different ways depending on whether a passive or perfect auxiliary is present in the clause.
Double auxiliaries, anteriority and terminativity
The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics, 2009
In this work I analyze a construction containing an additional past participle auxiliary in Romance and German dialects and show that, although apparently similar, the semantic value of the additional auxiliary is different in the two sets of dialects: in German it is an index of terminativity, in Romance of anteriority. However, an implicational scale ruling the distribution of the additional auxiliary which goes from unergative to passive verbs (going through unaccusative verbs) is valid across all dialects shows that there is a strict relation between the two auxiliaries have and be which can be captured in terms of incorporation of a preposition/determiner as proposed by Kayne.
Auxiliary Selection in the Present Perfect by L2 Students of German
Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, 2008
Page 1. Auxiliary Selection in the Present Perfect by L2 Students of German Carlee Arett Susannah Martin University of California/Davis Previous research in the field of auxiliary verb selection in the present perfect tense has focused primarily on the Romance languages (cf. ...
(2019c) The syntax and semantics of past participle agreement in Alemannic
Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 4(1), 105., 2019
This paper investigates agreement on past participles in Highest Alemannic dialects of German. We will first show that participle agreement only occurs in contexts where the participle is adjectival, viz., in stative passives and in resultative perfects, but not in eventive perfects. The participles thus pattern with predicative adjectives, which also display agreement in these varieties. In the main part of the paper, we address double compound perfects and eventive passives, which also display agreement on the lexical participle. Even though it is initially not obvious that the participle is adjectival in these cases, we will provide syntactic evidence for their adjectival status. Furthermore, we will pursue the hypothesis that the adjectival head of all agreeing participles is a stativizer, even in the double compound perfect and the eventive passive. At the same time, both the double compound perfect and the eventive passive also clearly have an eventive component. We will model their behavior by treating the participles as mixed categories, viz., as adjectival heads that take a large amount of verbal structure as their complement (VoiceP/AspP). While recent work on German stative passives has argued that even those should be analyzed as containing a substantial amount of verbal structure, the behavior of participles in the double perfect and the eventive passive in the varieties under consideration is clearly different. They thus contribute to the typology of adjectival passives in German and beyond and show that the familiar distinction between 'adjectival' and 'verbal' participles needs to be further refined.