prepositional adjuncts

[Stefan Mueller]

Hi,

Carl Pollard wrote:
>
> Isn't the marker analysis the the most straightforward one for `semantically
> vacuous' prepositions? The only reason I know of to treat them as heads
> is if the language in question permits preposition stranding.
>
> Carl

In addition to that I decided not to treat them as markers in my grammar
of German since there are differences between NPs and PPs as far as
extraposition is concerned. NP extraposition is more marked than PP
extraposition. If semantically vacous prepositions are (marked) NPs they
should be linearized as NPs but they aren't. Of course one could
distinguish between marked and unmarked NPs but then one had three
classes instead of two.

I don't have any instance of the head marker construction in my German
grammar, since I follow Kiss (1993) in not treating German that-clauses
as head-marker structures. Head Marker Structures might be needed though
to get some bizar verbal complexes (Oberfeldumstellung) right (Meurers,
2000).

Greetings

	Stefan

@TechReport{Kiss93,
  author      =	{Tibor Kiss},
  title	      =	{{Infinite Komplementation -- Neue Studien zum deutschen
Verbum infinitum}},
  institution =	{Bergische Uni\-ver\-si\-t{\"a}t Gesamthochschule
Wuppertal},
  type	      =	{Arbeiten des Sonderforschungsbereiches 282},
  number      =	{42},
  year	      =	1993
}

@TechReport{Meurers2000b,
  author      =	{Walt Detmar Meurers},
  title	      =	{Lexical Generalizations in the Syntax of {German}
Non-Finite Constructions},
  type	      =	"Arbeitspapiere des SFB 340",
  number      =	{145},
  institution =	{Eberhard-Karls-Universit{\"a}t},
  address     =	{T\"ubingen},
  note        = {Dissertation},
  year	      =	2000
}


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