German MIT first summary

Thu Dec 17 19:59:01 UTC 2009

It would be difficult to test MIT vs IN (and WITH vs. IN) in a corpus, but
when I typed "qualis artifex pereo" (the last words of Nero, according to
Suetonius) into google.com, I found about equal numbers of "What an artist
perishes in me" and "what an artist perishes with me". Going to the German
google.com, I also found both prepositions, e.g.:

Qualis artifex pereo! Welch großer Künstler scheidet mit mir dahin!
Qualis artifex pereo! Welch ein Künstler geht in mir zugrunde!

I wonder how this famous sentence is translated in other languages?

- Paul

On Thu, December 17, 2009 06:51, Wolfgang Schulze wrote:
> Dear Friends,
> many thanks for all these extremely helpful and illuminating data and
> comments .... Let me quickly summarize what we have so far:
>
>
> 1. Semantically speaking, the construction at issue is present in:
>
>
> German:   Preposition /mit/
> French:     Preposition /avec/ (Denis Creissels)
> Dutch:      Preposition /met /(?, no example) (Pieter Muysken)
> Russian:    Preposotion /v /'in' (Anna Filippova, Ilja Serzants) ~ /v
> ego lice/ (Marina Tchoumakina) Italian:      Preposition /con ~ in /(Paolo
> Ramat, Raffaele Simone)
>
>
> Personally, I'm left with the impression that the two concepts addressed
> (WITH and IN) are based on somehow different patterns: "IN someone we
> see (a) friend" (the Russian model/ Ð² Ð½ÐµÐ¼ Ð¼Ñ‹ Ð¿Ð¾Ñ‚ÐµÑ€ÑÐ»Ð¸
> Ð´Ñ€ÑƒÐ³Ð°/) reads as
> if 'friend' is some kind of trajector related to the landmark 'he' (~
> 'his/her face/person etc..', to take up the second variant). The
> WITH-construction, however, seems to have a stronger notion of meronymy
> or 'equipment', as I hypothesized earlier. Maybe that all this also depends
> from the semantics of the verb, compare again German: /
> In ihm sehe ich einen guten Freund/. [lit.: in him see I a good friend]
> /Mit ihm schlage ich einen Freund/ [lit.: with him hit I a good friend"
>
>
> But
> /*In ihm schlage ich einen Freund/ [lit.: In him hit I a good friend]
> /*?mit ihm sehe ich einen Freund/ [lit.: with him see I a good friend]
>
>
> Maybe that all this has to do with areal [SAE?] patterns. But data are
> still too scant to think in more details about this....
>
> This brings me back to the two postings that concern German. Thomas
> Hanke wrote:
>
>> 1. For me, at least a direct postverbal position is ok, too.
>>
>>
>> Wir haben mit Eva eine wahre Freundin verloren.
>> Uns verlieÃŸ mit Paul ein guter Freund.
>>
> Yes, that's right! Obviously, the main point is that the /mit/-NP has to
> precede the 'target NP'. This is what Thomas argues for:
>> This may still be an issue of topic, of course. I agree that "mit"
>> following the regular NP doesn't work â€“ some kind of binding perhaps at
>> work? That fits with your idea about meronymy, too. I'll be glad to get
>> other native speakers' feedback, especially on the second sentence,
>> where "mit Paul" displaces the subject from its regular position next to
>> the inflected verb.
> As for the possible ergative constraint I referred to:
>
>> 2. I'm not sure about the ergative constraint you proposed, either,
>> looking at the 'Paul left us' example with an accusative object. Mit Paul
>> hat uns ein guter Freund verlassen.
> True, I did not think about a sentence like this!
>
>> "Verlassen" may not be "very ergative", but the following examples
>> sound fine, too.
>>
>> Mit Hans hat mich ein Weltmeister geschlagen.
>> 'With Hans, a world champion beat/hit me.' (awkward English of course)
>> Uns hat mit Robert ein Spitzenkoch eingeladen.
>> 'With Robert, a top cook invited us.' (awkward English of course)
>>
> Maybe that presence of pronominality is another point. At least in my
> German, these constructions sound odd in case only nominals are present,
> e.g. /
> Mit Robert hat der Mann einen Spitzenkoch eingeladen /(OK, if Robert =
> Spitzenkoch = O, not OK if Robert = der Mann = A ?).
> Mit Robert hat er einen Spitzenkoch eingeladen (OK, if Robert =
> Spitzenkoch = O)
> Mit Robert hat uns ein Spitzenkoch eingeladen (the example above; OK, if
> Robert = Spitzenkoch = A)
>
>
> AS for 8in)Definiteness:
>
>> Could this rather be an issue of (in)definiteness?
>> Your ungrammatical transitive example has definite "der Mann" as the A
>> subject.
> Well, I have several examples that show definiteness also with S and O,
> as in: /
> Mit Peter Paul Michalski geht der Polizei in Nordrhein-Westfalen jetzt
> auch der zweite Schwerverbrecher ins Netz. /[with P.P.M. went to the police
> in W now also THE second criminal into the net [literal]]
>
> /Mit Wolfsburg schlug Bayern den Deutsche Meister.
> /[with Wolfsburg [soccer club] hit Bayern [soccer club] THE German
> champion] (lit.)
>
> Johannes Reese adds:
>
>> I could say, too, only for the first sentence:
>>
>>
>> Wir haben in Eva eine wahre Freundin verloren.
>>
>>
>> I believe that the basis for these constructions is not one of topic,
>> but one of additional participants.
> But doesn't the obligatory (?) sequencing /mit/-NP + [target]NP argue
> for a topical construction?
>> Maybe it has got to do with that specialty of
>> some languages to be able to add a sheer unlimited number of additional
>> participants that Rapaport Hovav and Levin found in their 1998 paper.
>> That
>> would explain: 1) that some languages can't imitate it; 2) that it works
>>  somehow different with other languages -- and the fact that with
>> different "constructions" in the CG sense different prepositions have
>> to be used.
> I guess you refer to Rappaport Hovav, M. and B. Levin (1998) ``Building
> Verb Meanings'', in M. Butt and W. Geuder, eds., The Projection of
> Arguments: Lexical and Compositional Factors, CSLI Publications,
> Stanford, CA, 97-134. I haven't read this paper yet, but I will check it
> as soon as possible! Thanks for that! AS for the use of different
> prepositons (or otehr constructional tyÃ¼pes): See me comments on WITH and
> IN above...
>
>
> Very best wishes,
> and thanks again to you all! Wolfgang
>
>
>
> --
>
>
> *Prof. Dr. Wolfgang
> Schulze    *
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-- 
Prof. Dr. Paul J. Hopper
Senior Fellow
Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
Albertstr. 19
D-79104 Freiburg
and
Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of Humanities
Department of English
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213