29.10, Diss: German; Syntax: Nicholas Catasso: ''V2-Einbettung im Spannungsfeld von Hypotaxe und Parataxe''

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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-10. Tue Jan 02 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.10, Diss: German; Syntax: Nicholas Catasso: ''V2-Einbettung im Spannungsfeld von Hypotaxe und Parataxe''

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Date: Tue, 02 Jan 2018 16:03:25
From: Nicholas Catasso [catasso at uni-wuppertal.de]
Subject: V2-Einbettung im Spannungsfeld von Hypotaxe und Parataxe

 
Institution: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München 
Program: Graduate School Language & Literature - Class of Language 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2016 

Author: Nicholas Catasso

Dissertation Title: V2-Einbettung im Spannungsfeld von Hypotaxe und Parataxe 

Linguistic Field(s): Syntax

Subject Language(s): German (deu)


Dissertation Director(s):
Elisabeth Leiss
Roland Hinterhölzl
Anna Cardinaletti

Dissertation Abstract:

The present dissertation purports to investigate the nature and the role of
Verb-Second in embedded clauses introduced by an overt complementizer (in
particular, causal 'weil' ('because'), concessive-additive 'obwohl'/'wobei'
('although'), adversative 'während' ('while') and argumental 'dass' ('that'))
or a relative d-pronoun in spoken German.
Given the complexity of this issue, which results from the interaction of a
‘visible’ syntactic component (the surface position of the finite verb) with
other modules of language (semantics and pragmatics), as well as the
considerable number of works devoted to establishing the function of this
grammatical pattern with respect to the generally assumed syntactic setup of
German, this study dwells on three main questions which are interrelated and
crucially contribute to the detection of the consequences of embedded verb
movement for the interpretation of utterances. First, the formal
categorization and representation of V2-embedded constructions within the
coordination-subordination continuum, i.e. the investigation of the structural
properties that are indicative of a paratactic or hypotactic classification of
this structure. Secondly, the problem of the (un)embeddability of speech acts,
which is generally associated with a specific taxonomy of subordination and
coordination. Finally, the controversial question of whether such
configurations can be regarded as the result of a paratactization process of
spoken interaction begun in the last decades.
The investigation of V2 embedded clauses has produced the following results:
(i) contrary to traditional analyses of this construction, V2 does not seem to
represent reliable evidence for a paratactic categorization of a COMP- or
REL-introduced clause, since such structures fail all the relevant
coordination tests (ellipsis, extraction, Backward Sharing, coordination of
non-clausal units, non-resumability of correlates realized in the main clause,
etc.) and may license specific root phenomena (assertive modal particles,
interjection-like expressions, some evaluative adverbs) that are also possible
in Verb-final (Vfin) constructions; (ii) V2-embedded clauses may be analyzed
as embedded structures conveying a speaker’s assertion, provided that the
appropriate semantic-pragmatic conditions hold, which can be subsumed under a
general requirement on the assertive character of the main clause. In this
sense, V2 constitutes one of the possible strategies disambiguating the
assertive status of an embedded clause. Building on these arguments, even
(some) embedded clauses with a 'central' reading (e.g. factual causal clauses
or restrictive relatives) may be argued to realize an independent speech act;
(iii) V2 embedding cannot, at least in general terms, be reduced to a
phenomenon of the last decades. It is attested since the earliest stages of
German, although each of the structures considered in this study displays a
different individual development: in particular, V2 dass-clauses seem to have
emerged in Middle High/Middle Low German (cf. the other existing studies on
this construct, e.g. Freywald 2014, Petrova 2015), V2 weil-clauses and
d-relatives arguably in Early New High German, while adversative
während-structures, as well as concessive-additive adverbial clauses may be
assumed to have developed following the model given by the other V2-embedded
constructions.




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