Sunday, March 12, 2006
Auixiliary drop in Early Modern German
From Leiden Working Papers in Linguistics:
Anne Breitbarth (Tilburg University): Pragmatic aspects of Early Modern German auxiliary drop. Leiden Papers in Linguistics 3.1, 1-15.
Abstract: In this paper I argue that the ellipsis of finite auxiliaries, one of the more curious properties of Early Modern German, developed as a formal and pragmatic mark of the dependency of clauses. text
Martin Salzmann (Leiden University): Resumptive Pronouns and Matching Effects in Zurich German Relative Clauses as Distributed Deletion. Leiden Papers in Linguistics 3.1, 17-50.
Abstract: Zurich German (ZG) relative clauses are remarkable from a Germanic point of view in that grammatical relations are identified by means of resumptive pronouns instead of relative pronouns. Reconstruction effects and Strong Crossover violations show that movement is involved in the derivation of ZG relative clauses. Matching effects sensitive to case and preposition provide crucial evidence that the distribution of resumptives is determined by general licensing conditions on oblique case and prepositions. The matching/non-matching dichotomy is modeled as an instance of Distributed Deletion, which is claimed to be independently available in the language. Matching is furthermore sensitive to the actual surface form and thus favors a late insertion approach to morphology. text