26.5178, Review: Cog Sci; Morphology; Semantics; Syntax: Dewell (2015)

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Subject: 26.5178, Review: Cog Sci; Morphology; Semantics; Syntax: Dewell (2015)

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Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2015 10:07:29
From: Laura Anna Ciaccio [laura.ciaccio at uni-potsdam.de]
Subject: The Semantics of German Verb Prefixes

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-898.html

AUTHOR: Robert B.  Dewell
TITLE: The Semantics of German Verb Prefixes
SERIES TITLE: Human Cognitive Processing 49
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Laura Anna Ciaccio, Universität Potsdam

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

«The semantics of German Verb Prefixes» by Robert B. Dewell provides a
detailed analysis of the meaning of verb prefixes of German. Prefixed verbs
are treated as opposed to particle verbs (sometimes called ‘separable verbs’
in the morphology literature) and to simple (unprefixed) verbs. The author’s
first goal is to show that each German verb prefix has a consistent schematic
meaning, thus extending the results he had previously found for the route-path
prefixes «um-», «unter-», «über-», and «durch-» (Dewell 2011). The author’s
second goal is to provide evidence for his claim that all prefixed verbs
prompt perspectives on the action they describe that differ from those
prompted by particle and simple verbs. This then clearly distinguishes
prefixed verbs from the other two constructions and thus characterizes them as
an independent morphological category.

In Chapter 1 ‘Route-path prefixes and basic concepts’, Dewell describes his
previous findings about route-path prefixes and explains the basic concepts
underlying his analysis. His aim is to apply the same analysis to all German
verb prefixes, which, he claims, can all be described in terms of paths. These
paths can be dispersed or composed of a multiplex of different paths and do
not need to be physical movements, but can also be rather abstract. He calls
‘figure expression’ (FG) the primary object of attention of the paths, and
‘landmark’ (LM) the region of the setting where we locate the FG and its path.
Throughout the monograph, the schematic meanings of prefixes will be based on
(at least one of) these two basic concepts and their relationships with each
other. Another fundamental idea that the author introduces in this chapter is
that of ‘synoptic construal’ as opposed to  ‘sequential construal’. The former
is prompted by prefixed verbs, and it implies observing a moving FG with a
stable perspective from a long distance, focusing more on the relationship
between FG and LM than on the FG itself, with the attention distributed over
the whole area. By contrast, a sequential construal focuses on the FG with a
closer perspective that follows its movements and moves together with it, so
that the FG is always in the middle of the sight field. This construal is
prompted by particle verbs and unprefixed verbs. While using this model to
analyze the meaning of route-path prefixes can be fairly straightforward,
since these additionally exist as independent words in German, applying the
same model to all prefixes of German can be rather challenging. This is what
Dewell does in Chapters 2-6. For each prefix, the author underlines how the
prefix prompts a synoptic construal, specifies what kind of schematic meaning
it has, and shows how the prefixed construction differs from comparable
particle and unprefixed constructions.

Chapter 2 focuses on the prefix «be-». According to Dewell, this prefix
expresses a diffuse and temporally undefined path directed to the LM, whose
end is not specified and which is presented synoptically. The author
importantly underlines that the contribution of «be-» then goes far beyond the
syntactical role of transitivization that is often attributed to it.

Chapter 3 deals with the prefix «ent-». Its schematic meaning is argued to be
very consistent: there is a theme within the LM’s reach that is separated from
it. In all cases, this separation is presented synoptically. The prefix has
two main sub-meanings: it can suggest separation or privation. 

Chapter 4 analyses the prefix «er-». This prefix expresses the emergence of a
process indicated by the base verb, which is backgrounded until the process
reaches the goal space. This means that «er-» verbs then suggest an
achievement, whose process is constructed synoptically. There are two main
variants in the meaning of «er-», which are called by the author ‘emerging’
and ‘attaining’ variants.

The prefix «zer-», subject of Chapter 5, suggests a loss of structured order
of a - more or less concrete - object: the internal structure of the object
disintegrates until this becomes unrecognizable from its original form. The
action is presented synoptically.

As explained in Chapter 6, «ver-» is the most productive and complicated of
all German prefixes. Dewell points out that, although this prefix seems to
carry several different and inconsistent meanings, it is still possible to
find common semantic traits shared by all these variants. Hence, the claim by
other authors according to which «ver-» may only have a mere grammatical role
is here rejected. «ver-» verbs suggest a schematic meaning where a FG moves
away from a vaguely defined reference point. The movement consists in the FG
losing its status and being no longer recognizable as such, and the event is
observed with a synoptic construal. The author specifies the different
sub-meanings that this prefix can convey (§3), namely ‘be displaced’, ‘be
closed off from access’, ‘lose independence’, ‘become altered’, ‘be ruined’,
and ‘deviate from a course’.

Thr seventh and final chapter, ‘The system of prefixes’, compares the use of
the different prefixes to each other and shows how these have mutually
exclusive roles even when they seem to convey very similar meanings. The
author also presents frequency counts: according to the Duden «Grammatik»,
about 45% of the German prefixed verbs contain the prefix «ver-», which is
thus the most widespread prefix. This is followed by «be-» (25%), «ent-»
(15%), and «er-» (10%). However, this is a count on the number of verbs with a
certain prefix, and not of their frequency of occurrence, which gives
different results. Counting the occurrences of prefixed verbs in the
«zu»+infinitive form in the COSMAS database, Dewell finds that «be-» and
«ver-» actually yield very similar counts, closely followed by «er-» and then
followed by the others, which are much less common. The author then concludes
summarizing his claims and findings, repeating the features that are shared by
all German prefixes and those that make them clearly differ from particle and
unprefixed verbs.

EVALUATION

«The semantics of German Verb Prefixes» convincingly pursues the goal of
providing a complete and coherent analysis of the meaning of German verb
prefixes. Moreover, it remarkably also succeeds in providing a set of features
that are consistently shared by all German prefixes and distinguish them from
particle and simple verbs. The monograph is well structured and easy to
follow. It is suited for an audience who is interested in advanced topics in
German morphology, but, importantly, it also sheds light on the more general
area of the semantics of derivational morphology. The content of the monograph
can be of interest to researchers in theoretical linguistics as well as in
psycholinguistics, where the role played by semantics in morphological
processing is the subject of current debates. Given the clear and schematic
meaning assigned to each prefix, the monograph represents a step forward from
valuable traditional works on morphology such as Weinrich (1993) and Fleischer
(1971), which deal with prefix distributions and syntactical roles, only
sketching vague semantic traits. Furthermore, it also completes the framework
provided by monographs only focusing on specific prefixes (see e.g. Becker
1971, Günter 1974-1987 and Eroms 1980 for «be-»,  Bellavia 1996 for «über-»,
Wunderlich 1993 for «um-», Risch 1995 for «über-» and «unter»).

The sources of evidence used for the study (as reported in §4, Chapter 1) are
the COSMAS database of written German and the Internet. Together, they result
in a fairly large number of instances. However, the reliability of the
information found on the Internet can be questioned, since results from this
source are not filtered for correctness and may also come from non-native
speakers. The author states that he has done his best to eliminate evidence
from clearly non-native informants, but it is hard to imagine that this could
have been a hundred percent successful. On the other hand, though, the
Internet provides information on more casual speech, similar to the oral
language, which is not included in the COSMAS and has to be accounted for to
be able to generalize results.

What is specifically valuable about the monograph is the contrast provided in
each chapter between prefixed constructions versus unprefixed and particle
constructions. The many examples that are presented generally manage to be
convincing and to effectively support the schematic meaning of the prefix
suggested by the author and to show how different the construal prompted by
the other constructions is. However, sometimes the reader may have the feeling
that examples were purposely chosen in order to fit the author’s hypotheses,
and this is caused by the fact that the whole set of materials used for the
book is not available. While this is surely due to reasons of space, it would
be useful to at least provide a link to an online source accessible by readers
where all materials are listed.  

Despite minor shortcomings, the book convincingly meets the author’s goals and
fulfills the reader’s expectations, providing interesting hints for further
research in the area. Among the others, experimental morphologists and
semanticists may find it interesting to design a method to find empirical
evidence for the meanings suggested, but it would also be interesting for
typologists to search for similar tendencies in languages with a comparable
system of prefixation. Further research may also be done to apply the same
method to all prefixes of German, like noun prefixes.  The monograph thus
completely fits the current topics and debates in the semantics of morphology
and represents an inspiring starting point for further research.

REFERENCES

Becker, Donald A. 1971. Case grammar and German be. Glossa, 5, 125-145.

Bellavia, Elena. 1996. The German über. In M. Pütz & R. Dirven (Eds.). The
construal of space in language and thought (Cognitive Linguistics Research 8).
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 73-107.

COSMAS II_web. Version 1.6.3 (March 2011). Institut für deutsche Sprache
Mannheim. cosmas2.ids-mannheim.de/cosmas2-web/menu.home.do.

Dewell, Robert B. 2011. The Meaning of Particle/Prefix Constructions in German
(Human Cognitive Processing 34). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Duden. 2006. Die Grammatik (Duden Band 4). Mannheim, Leipzig, Wien, & Zürich:
Dudenverlag.

Eroms, Hans-Werner. 1980. be-Verb und Präpositionalphrase (Monographien zur
Sprachwissenschaft 9). Heidelberg: Winter.

Fleischer, Wolfgang. 1971. Wortbildung der deutschen Gegenwartssprache.
Tübingen: Niemeyer.

Günter, Harmut. 1974. Das System der Verben mit be- in der deutschen Sprache
der Gegenwart. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.

Günter, Harmut. 1987. Wortbildung, Syntax, be-Verben und das Lexikon. Beiträge
zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur (PBB), 109, 179-201.

Risch, Gabriela. 1995. Verbpräfigierung des Deutschen: Skalierungverben mit
über- und unter-, Ph.D. Dissertation, Stuttgart.

Weinrich, Harald. 1993. Textgrammatik der deutschen Sprache. Mannheim,
Leipzig, Wien & Zürich: Dudenverlag.

Wunderlich, Dieter. 1993. On German um: semantic and conceptual aspects.
Linguistics, 31(1), 111-134.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Laura Anna Ciaccio is a Ph.D. student in the International Programme for Experimental and Clinical Linguistics at the University of Potsdam. Her project ‘Rething prefixation: From derivation to compounding’ focuses on the similarities between prefixation and compounding. Her research interests lie in the area of derivational morphology, and her research methods include research on aphasia and neuroimaging techniques.




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