German MIT first summary

[Silvia Luraghi]

In Italian I found:
quale/che artista muore con me! 232
quale/che artista muore in me! 4
and indeed I would have given only the first 
translation, 'in' doesn't sound appropriate here. 
There seems to be a different distribution of 
'in' and 'con' in Italian: for example one can 
say "d'Alfredo il padre in me vedete" (from the 
libretto of La Traviata, "You are looking at 
Alfredo's father" lit.: "in me you see Alfredo's 
father"), but you couldn't say the same using 'con'.
Silvia



At 20.59 17/12/2009, Paul Hopper wrote:
>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/ в нем мы потеряли
> > друга/) 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 verließ 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 – 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 tyüpes): 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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> >
> >
> > /
> >
> >
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> >
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> >
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> >
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> >
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> > /Second
> > contact:
> > /
> >
> >
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> >
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> >
> >
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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

Silvia Luraghi
Dipartimento di Linguistica Teorica e Applicata
Università di Pavia
Strada Nuova 65
I-27100 Pavia
telef.: +39-0382-984685
fax: +39-0382-984487