Word Order Variation and Gapping in German

Word Order Variation and Gapping in German
Senior Thesis
Presented to
The Faculty of the School of Arts and Sciences
Brandeis University
Undergraduate Program in Language and Linguistics
Lotus Goldberg, Advisor
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts
by
Tamar Forman-Gejrot
May 2016
Copyright by
Tamar Forman-Gejrot
ABSTRACT
This thesis brings German data to bear on the question of what types of parallelism in linear order
and syntactic structure are needed between the antecedent and target conjuncts of Gapping
sentences, looking at a range of possible word order variations in each of the conjuncts. As a
language with pervasive use of Scrambling, Topicalization, and verb-second ordering – which, in
turn, is a significant factor responsible for its relatively free word order – German allows the
investigation of a range of alternative word orders and syntactic positions in the antecedent and
remaindered material of Gapping, and so is an ideal language in which to investigate these issues.
I will present a set of empirical syntactic generalizations at work in the data, including most
notably a requirement that an argument that is scrambled in the antecedent conjunct must be the
counterpart of an overt remnant in the target conjunct, as well as a number of limitations for the
possible positions of a remnant whose antecedent counterpart is topicalized. However, it appears to
be the case that such syntactic restrictions may be overridden by linear parallelism traits such as
matching linear order between the arguments of the antecedent and target conjuncts or a canonical
ordering of target conjunct remnants. The mechanism by which linear order seems to improve on
otherwise ungrammatical utterances is most likely due to separate processing issues. Independently
of the syntactic and linear order generalizations, this thesis presents a (to my knowledge) new and
mostly unstudied, body of data, which can be used in future research regarding issues of prosody
and information structure, processing, and naturally, continued work on Gapping and word order
variation, particularly Scrambling.
ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, I would like to thank my thesis advisor Lotus Goldberg, who introduced
me to the field of theoretical linguistics, thereby giving a home to my curiosity about language, and
who sparked my interest in research. Thank you for providing your knowledge, time, and patience
throughout this process, and for the rich and detailed comments, feedback, and questions that have
pushed me to think critically, and that have enabled me to bring the work to this point.
Additionally, my gratitude goes out to my second and third readers Sophia Malamud and
James Pustejovsky who took the time to read my work and share their ideas with me. Thank you
also to the Program of Language and Linguistics at Brandeis University in general, and especially to
the professors from whom I have learned so much over these four years, including those already
mentioned as well as Keith Plaster and Nianwen Bert Xue. In addition to the linguistics faculty, I
would like to thank Antonella DiLillo and Pamela Wolfe who have taken a particular interest in my
personal and professional development.
I would also like to thank all of the native German speakers whose time spent on providing
judgments for such complex sentences was invaluable for this investigation. I truly appreciate all of
your efforts with the data and the dizzying chaos it must have caused in your heads for the
remainder of the day.
Furthermore, I would not have been able to keep up my energy and motivation for this
project without the support of my friends and family in Germany, Sweden, and the US, as well on
the Brandeis University campus.
iii TABLE OF CONTENTS
1
Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1
1.1 The goal of this thesis ...............................................................................................................1
1.2 The basics of Gapping ..............................................................................................................2
1.3 The basics of German syntax...................................................................................................11
1.4 Major research questions ..........................................................................................................18
1.5 Initial details of the methodology............................................................................................19
1.6 Findings .......................................................................................................................................20
2 Syntactic assumptions and Gapping hypotheses ...................................................... 21
2.1 Theoretical assumptions and the syntactic basics of German derivations .......................21
2.1.1 The basics of derivations in Minimalism for English .............................................22
2.1.2 Minimalist derivations in German .............................................................................27
2.2 The Basic Hypothesis ................................................................................................................34
2.3 Eliminating the CP-domain for Gapping...............................................................................49
2.4 Introducing constituent deletion .............................................................................................51
3 Examined data ........................................................................................................... 56
3.1 Transitive verbs ..........................................................................................................................57
3.2 Ditransitive verbs with two-remnant target conjuncts and matching linear order ..........63
3.3 Ditransitive verbs with two-remnant target conjuncts and non-matching linear order .71
3.4 Ditransitive verbs with three-remnant target conjuncts ......................................................77
4 Empirical generalizations and steps towards an analysis ......................................... 90
4.1 Syntactic generalizations ...........................................................................................................92
4.1.1 Constraint A – a possible contrastive function of Scrambling .............................93
4.1.1 Constraint B – Topicalization and c-command domain .......................................96
4.1.2 Constraint C – Topicalization and expectations .....................................................103
4.1.3 Constraint D – multiple Scrambling and markedness ............................................109
4.1.4 Summary of syntactic generalizations and exceptions............................................111
4.2 Linear order generalizations .....................................................................................................114
4.2.1 Countermeasure I – quasi across-the-board movement ........................................115
4.2.2 Countermeasure II – linear canonical order ............................................................116
4.2.3 Countermeasure III – matching linear order ...........................................................117
4.2.4 Explaining linear order ................................................................................................118
4.3 Final remarks on generalizations .............................................................................................120
5 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 122
Appendix A ...................................................................................................................... 125
Appendix B ...................................................................................................................... 130
Appendix C ...................................................................................................................... 134
Appendix D ...................................................................................................................... 147
References........................................................................................................................ 149
iv 1
Introduction
What we say is often as important as what we do not (say). As linguists, we are interested in
peeling off the layers of language in order to discover what fundamentally underlies our competency
for interpreting and producing language. Over the past decades, the study of null anaphora,
including Gapping, VP-Ellipsis, Sluicing, and other processes, has preoccupied many linguists.
1.1 The goal of this thesis
Gapping, originally identified by Ross (1968), has been studied to quite an extent and in a
variety of languages (see e.g. Ross 1968, Hankamer 1979, Johnson 2014, Repp 2009). A prototypical
example is seen in (1) below, where material that is not overt is understood to be present in the
second conjunct.
(1)
I like apples and you (like) bananas.
While there is a fairly clear picture of the basic empirical traits of Gapping, there continues
to be considerable debate in the generative syntactic literature as to the construction’s syntactic
derivation. My aim is to use characteristics of German word order to gain a deeper understanding of
parallelism between the two conjuncts in a Gapping structure.
The combination of head-final and head-initial phrases as well as pervasive use of
Scrambling and verb-second traits, which, in turn, is a significant factor responsible for its relatively
free word order, make the German language particularly interesting to study with regards to how
elements surface when interacting in movement and deletion processes. It thus allows the
investigation of a range of possible word orders within the antecedent and remaindered material of
Gapping, and so is an ideal language in which to investigate the degree of ordering parallelism
between the two conjuncts in the construction. Furthermore, case marking on full DPs allows
1 grammatical function to be separated from syntactic position, unlike English, where syntactic
position is necessary to identify grammatical relationships in a sentence.
My goal is thus to present a new body of data involving word order variation in German
Gapping sentences, as well as to provide an empirical overview of generalizations and possible steps
towards a syntactic analysis of the construction. This will be focused especially on the word order
variation that arises due to German traits, including Scrambling, Topicalization, and V2 effects, and
how these affect parallelism between the first and second conjunct.
1.2 The basics of Gapping
Gapping is a type of null anaphora that involves coordinated clauses where the highest
positioned verb – matrix or auxiliary – in the second conjunct is phonetically null. Potentially,
additional content within the second conjunct may also go missing, although it seems necessary that
at least two constituents in this conjunct remain overt, as described in greater detail below. A
common type of example has a missing main verb, along with an overt subject and direct object, as
shown in (1) above and its German counterpart (2):
(2)
Ich
mag
I.NOM like
Äpfel und
apples and
du
you.NOM
Bananen.
bananas.
‘I like apples and you (like) bananas.’
Throughout my work, I will refer to the first clause (here, Ich mag Äpfel ‘I like apples’) as the
‘antecedent conjunct’ and the second clause (here, du Bananen ‘you bananas’) as the ‘target conjunct.’
Furthermore, the second mag ‘like’ is phonologically null, forming the ‘gapped material,’ while du
‘you’ and Bananen ‘bananas’ are the ‘remnants’ in the target conjunct. The gapped material will be
included in English translations of examples as struck out material, but will be left out of German
sentences and morpheme glosses. One of the characteristics of Gapping is that each of the remnants
also requires a ‘counterpart’ in the antecedent conjunct, which is identified by being the constituent
2 with the same case and grammatical function; in (2), the counterpart of du ‘you’ is ich ‘I’ and the
counterpart of Bananen ‘bananas’ is Äpfel ‘apples.’ I will additionally refer to the sentences without
gapped material as the ‘ungapped’ equivalents of the gapped sentences, to the extent that it is clear
what this would be for a given example. In doing so, however, I am not positing a derivational
claim, but instead am providing empirical assertions of the (semantic) contents of utterances.
Sentence (2), for instance, is synonymous with its ungapped equivalent – the version where magst
‘like.2Sg’ is left overt in the target conjunct – so that Gapping raises the question of where the target
conjunct receives its interpreted meaning.
Kyle Johnson’s (2014) survey paper on Gapping examines the core empirical traits of
Gapping, and gives helpful diagnostics for distinguishing this construction from other similar ones. I
will thus begin by summarizing the major constraints on grammatical instances of Gapping that
Johnson’s work lays out. The first is a constraint barring either conjunct from being embedded
unless the entire coordinated structure is embedded as a whole. While not a self-evident
consequence, Johnson states this constraint as requiring that the highest verb in the antecedent must
also be identical to the highest verb in the target clause, and that this latter verb must minimally elide
in Gapping.
In terms of what specific type of identity is required, it is initially clear that inflectional
morphology does not seem to play a role (compare mag ‘like.1Sg’ and magst ‘like.2Sg’ in example (2)).1
Furthermore, by virtue of elision, it seems quite reasonable to assume that other traits of the elided
lexical item must be identical in core ways to the overt antecedent counterpart, i.e. that something
like the root morpheme and derivational morphology must be the same although the specific
inflectional morphology may vary. Thus, consistent with much null anaphora literature, I will use
In my examples, I have excluded inflectional morphological glosses on verbs as they will not be crucially at issue in the
present investigation.
1
3 syntactic identity between gapped arguments or remnants and their counterparts to mean that the
two contain identical lexical items.
This constraint on identity of highest verbs has the consequence that neither the antecedent
conjunct nor the target conjunct may be embedded if the other is not. This is to say that (3) is
grammatical because the entire coordinated structure is embedded. However, (4) and (5) are
ungrammatical because only one of the conjuncts is embedded. Johnson’s formulation also has the
intended effect of prohibiting one of the conjuncts (or both separately) from being in an embedded
clause because if the highest verb in the antecedent clause is not identical to the highest verb in the
target conjunct, then it must be the case that either the antecedent conjunct is an embedded clause
whereas the target conjunct is not (5) or that the target conjunct is an embedded clause and the
antecedent is not (4).
(3)
Anna glaubt, dass
Anna thinks that
ich
Äpfel mag
I.NOM apples like
und
and
du
you.NOM
Bananen.
bananas.
du
you.NOM
Bananen.
bananas.
[du
you.NOM
Bananen].
bananas.
‘Anna thinks that I like apples and you (like) bananas.’
(4)
*Ich mag
I.NOM like
Äpfel und
apples and
Anna glaubt, dass
Anna thinks that
‘I like apples and Anna thinks that you (like) bananas.’
(5)
*[Anna glaubt, dass
Anna thinks that
ich
Äpfel mag], und
I.NOM apples like
and
‘Anna knows that I like apples and you (like) bananas.’ (Intended meaning: It is a fact
that you like bananas, but only Anna’s belief that I like apples.)
In (4), the antecedent conjunct is a finite simple clause with no embedding. This clause is
conjoined with a matrix clause whose highest verb glaubt ‘thinks’ is not identical to the antecedent’s
highest verb mag ‘likes’ and has not elided, but where the embedded clause instead contains the
elision. The opposite is true of sentence (5). Consequently, the empirical generalization applies,
causing these sentences to be ungrammatical.
4 The particular way in which Johnson implements this constraint not only excludes
ungrammatical cases involving embedding, but, interestingly, also explains other ill-formed cases of
Gapping without embedding that are less obviously related, as highlighted below.2
(6)
*Ich
I.NOM
SAH
saw
die
the.ACC
Schokolade
chocolate
und
and
er
he.NOM
VERPUTZTE.
devoured
‘I saw the chocolate and he devoured (the chocolate).’
(7)
*ICH sah
I.NOM saw
die
the.ACC
Schokolade
chocolate
und
and
ER
he.NOM
sah
saw
(auch).
too
‘I saw the chocolate and he saw (the chocolate), (too).’
(8)
Der
the.NOM
Apfel versuchte
apple tried
aus
dem
out.of the.DAT
springen
jump
und
and
Pfannkuchen aus
der
pancake
out.of the.DAT
der
the.NOM
Ofen zu
oven to
Pfanne.
pan
‘The apple tried to jump out of the oven and the pancake (tried to jump) out of the
pan.’
In addition to preventing embedded antecedent or target conjuncts, the constraint can
explain why (6) and (7) are ungrammatical, since the highest verb in the target conjunct is left overt.
This holds regardless of whether the highest counterpart verbs (sah/verputzte ‘saw/devoured’ in (6);
sah/sah ‘saw/saw’ in (7)) in the conjuncts are identical or not. Thus, in (6), where the main verb in
the target conjunct is different from that in the antecedent conjunct, the direct object in the target
conjunct cannot be implied despite intended identity with the overt direct object in the antecedent.
This sentence’s ungrammaticality, however, cannot simply be due to its non-identical verbs, because
in (7), the implied meaning can still not be achieved despite identity between the main verbs in the
conjuncts.
2
All-caps notation indicates phonological stress.
5 On the other hand, in (8), the remnants appear to be the subject der Pfannkuchen ‘the pancake’
and the prepositional phrase in the ungapped embedded clause aus der Pfanne zu springen ‘to jump out
of the pan.’ Thus, despite the fact that there is gapped material in an embedded clause, Johnson’s
formulation correctly predicts the sentence to be grammatical, since its highest verb versuchte ‘tried’ is
not left overt as a remnant in the target conjunct, whether identical to its antecedent conjunct
counterpart or not.3
The second constraint that Johnson (2014) discusses involves a restriction on remnants,
specifying that it is not possible to gap non-constituent subparts of constituents without eliding (or
leaving overt in some instances, which will be discussed later) the entire constituent. This means that
it is not possible for part of a remnant constituent to be null in the target conjunct, even under
identity with the content of a parallel constituent in the antecedent conjunct. For instance, trying to
omit just the head from the prepositional phrase remnant in the target conjunct in (9) leads to
ungrammaticality:
(9)
*Der
the.NOM
Apfel versuchte
apple tried
aus
dem
out.of the.DAT
springen
jump
und
and
Pfannkuchen der
pancake
the.DAT
der
the.NOM
Ofen zu
oven to
Pfanne.
pan
‘The apple tried to jump out of the oven and the pancake (tried to jump out of) the
pan.’
The third constraint discussed by Johnson (2014) brings forth an important characteristic of
Gapping, which is that the remnants must provide new information, a constraint proposed in Kuno
(1976). I take the distinction between old and new information used in Kuno’s (1976) analysis to be
presence or lack of an entity in previous context. This can explain, for instance, why example (10)
The subject control nature of the example raises further possible research questions about the subject der Pfannkuchen
‘the pancake,’ which surfaces in the target conjunct and PRO, which is a subject in the embedded clause, where the
antecedent conjunct has PRO in subject position of the embedded clause PRO aus dem Ofen zu springen ‘PRO to jump out
of the oven.’ A detailed discussion of this would be interesting, but is beyond the scope of the types of sentences I will
look at in this thesis.
3
6 below is ungrammatical.4
(10)
*I like apples and you apples.
However, given particular restrictions, it is nonetheless possible in certain situations for old
information to surface as a remnant in Gapping. Consider the example reprinted from Kuno (1976)
below, where Bill represents old information, but nonetheless can become a remnant in the target
conjunct.
(11)
Q: With what did John and Bill hit Mary?
A: JOHN hit Mary with a STICK and BILL (hit Mary) with a BELT.
(Kuno 1976, (34): 308)
While perhaps somewhat simplifying (see Footnote 4), it does indeed seem to be the case
that a remnant must represent new information with respect to its counterpart. This brings us to the
realm of parallelism, as it begins to involve certain needed relationships between remnants and their
counterparts. Johnson, for instance, discusses the fact that the scope of quantifiers must be parallel
between the two conjuncts.5 Another important factor is intonation, which must be taken into
consideration in order to achieve accurate grammaticality judgments. Several very illuminating
papers exist, including Féry and Hartmann (2005) and Konietzko and Winkler (2010). These
analyses lay out some of the needs of parallelism for Gapping, for instance the topic and focus
accents that allow for contrastive interpretation and consequently for Gapping to occur in German.
Although the complexity of sentences become increasingly great, such that an analysis of
intonation for sentences with a large number of overt arguments would have required considerable
investigation beyond the scope of this thesis, the crucial aspect with respect to intonation that was
While this condition holds for the typical examples of Gapping, there appear to be certain limitations that will be
examined in Section 2.2.
5 One of Johnson’s examples is given below to illustrate this:
(i)
Some girl read every book and some boy every pamphlet.
The ungapped version of this sentence is ambiguous because it could imply that there exists a single girl that has read
every book (and a single boy that has read every pamphlet) or it could mean that for every book, some girl has read it
(and for every pamphlet, some boy has read it) and even that the scope varies between the conjuncts. In the gapped
version, only the first interpretation is grammatical.
4
7 involved in the new data gathered here was the overall set of findings on what needs to and may be
stressed.6 This is the case because although intonation is sometimes neglected when providing
syntactic grammaticality judgments, it can be a deciding factor in determining whether an utterance
is good or not. Consider the question and answer pair below:
(12)
Q: Where did Jordan and Rebecca go?
A: Jordan went to Ireland and Rebecca to Spain.
Intuitively, we consider this to be grammatical. However, as readers, we are most likely providing the
sentence with the necessary intonation. Now examine the following answer to the question in (12).
As before, I will use all-caps to represent phonologically stressed words. All lowercase words do not
receive phonological stress.
(13)
?JORDAN went to Ireland and REBECCA to Spain.
In (13), it is ungrammatical not to stress the country names, as they are new information that answer
the question posed. Therefore, they should receive contrastive focus stress according to Féry and
Hartmann (2005).
While it is possible to construct different possible intonational patterns in terms of what is
Given in the discourse context, which is often not stressed, and what is new and therefore must be
focused and behave contrastively in a given example of Gapping, I will limit my sentences to
examples where all remnants and their counterparts are phonologically stressed, unless otherwise
noted. Clearly, the specific intonational effects of Gapping need future study involving more precise
mechanisms for measurement, and some literature has begun to do this (see e.g. Féry and Hartmann
2005, Konietzko and Winkler 2010), but for the purposes of the current analysis, examining
examples with contrastive focal stress on all remnants and their counterparts, except where detailed
See the surveys in Appendix A and B for a precise overview of the stress patterns used in gathered data. Section 3
details some more specific restrictions on intonation.
6
8 otherwise, will be sufficient to provide a foundational investigation of the parallelism needs of
German Gapping.
Thus, what remains to be analyzed and what will form the central part of this thesis is the
need for parallelism between remnants and their counterparts as well as between gapped elements
and their counterparts. First of all, remnants and their counterparts must have the same grammatical
function. In fact, this is how we determine the correct assignment of counterparts. Case is one
indicator of grammatical function and, for the data presented in this thesis, will be sufficient for
finding counterparts. Interestingly, this also seems to align with semantic roles, since it is impossible
to vary argument structure between the antecedent and target conjuncts, given that the highest verb
is gapped. For instance, it is not possible to create an instance of Gapping in which the antecedent
conjunct has a passive voice, whereas the target conjunct is active. Consider the following example.
(14)
*The suspect was interviewed by the policeman and the detective the accuser.
In example (14), the interviewer in the antecedent conjunct is the policeman and the
interviewee is the suspect, while in the target conjunct, the interviewer is the detective and the interviewee
is the accuser. The ungapped equivalent of the target conjunct is the detective interviewed the accuser, where
the highest verb is not identical to the highest verb (which is also that introducing a passive
construction) in the antecedent conjunct.
What distinguishes remnants and their counterparts, however, is semantic denotation. For
instance, example (15) is ungrammatical, since the remnant sie ‘she’ and its counterpart meine Mutter
‘my mother’ pick out the same entity.
(15)
*Meine
my.NOM
Mutteri mag
mother likes
Schokolade
chocolate
und
and
siei
she.NOM
Eis.
ice.cream
‘My mother likes chocolate and she (likes) ice cream.’
In contrast to the situation for remnants, however, for gapped elements, it is precisely
semantic identity that appears to be required for deletion as shown in the example below, adapted
9 from Féry and Hartmann’s (2005) example (18b), where deletion is required due to the semantic
similarity of the verbs. While the authors use an instance of Right Node Raising, the same in fact
holds for Gapping:7
(16)
*Jonas hat
Jonas has
einen Brief
a.ACC letter
geschickt
sent
und
and
Claus eine Postkarte
Claus a.ACC postcard
verschickt.
posted
‘Jonas has sent a letter and Claus (has) sent a postcard.’
Despite the mismatch of geschickt and verschickt in their broadness of use, the main V in the target
conjunct must be allowed to be null even if it is not syntactically identical to its antecedent
counterpart.
In German, unlike e.g. English, linear order and syntactic position do not necessarily
correlate with grammatical function. Thus, it is possible that remnants in the target conjunct and
their counterparts in the antecedent conjunct could turn out to need to share traits in relation to
some of these characteristics, in a way not testable in every language. The main issues that this thesis
will therefore deal with are:
a)
To what extent if at all must the linear order of arguments in the antecedent
conjunct match the linear order of remnants in the target conjunct?
Furthermore, are the answers to this question the same for transitive verbs
that take two total arguments as for ditransitive verbs taking three
arguments?
b)
To what extent if at all must the syntactic positions of arguments in the
antecedent conjunct match the linear order of remnants in the target
conjunct? Taking into account word order phenomena in German such as
Scrambling and V2, to what extent is it even possible for arguments to match
In (16), the difference between the main verbs is that the antecedent conjunct uses the simpler schicken ‘send’ and the
target conjunct uses verschicken ‘posted.’ Both of these words have the same root and could be translated to ‘send’ in
English. The distinction is that verschicken can only be used transitively as in the example provided with a nominative
subject and an accusative object, where the accusative object cannot be a person, which is why this is used in contexts of
sending packages, etc.. The verb schicken, however, can be used both transitively as in example (16) or ditransitively with
a dative object and both the accusative object, i.e. the object being sent, and the dative object, i.e. the receiver, may be
animate.
7
10 in syntactic position given the hypotheses about Gapping laid out in Section
2?
1.3 The basics of German syntax
In order to further motivate this work, this section will describe the most basic traits of
German syntax just alluded to. It is easily observable that German has relatively free word order. For
instance, the sentences given below are synonymous and unambiguous.
(17)
a.
Mein
my.NOM
Freund mag
friend likes
b.
Schokolade
chocolate
mag
likes
Schokolade.
chocolate
mein
my.NOM
Freund.
friend
‘My friend likes chocolate.’
Notice that in (17b), despite the non-standard word order, it is clear that mein Freund ‘my friend’ is
the subject of the clause due to its nominative case marking. The English parallel Chocolate likes my
friend has an entirely different meaning. German uses four cases, nominative, accusative, dative, and
genitive, which are overtly marked on determiners of full DPs, and on pronouns. Names are not
overtly case-marked and have therefore been avoided in examples. While case is usually sufficient to
distinguish grammatical function as in (17), it can cause ambiguity as in the example below, where
das is a definite determiner used for both nominative and accusative case.8 In such ambiguous
sentences, context and intonation (and real-world knowledge) help to determine the correct syntactic
roles.
(18)
Das
the (NOM or ACC)
Haus baut das
house builds the (NOM or ACC)
Mädchen.
girl
‘The girl builds the house.’ OR ‘The house builds the girl.’
The same ambiguity arises for nouns that instead take the definite determiner die, which surfaces as die in both
nominative and accusative case. Furthermore, the indefinite determiners for these nouns as well as for those taking das
display ambiguity, too.
8
11 While case (at least when marked unambiguously) thus allows grammatical function to be
seen regardless of word order, this freedom is restricted in a number of ways. One limitation on
German free word order is the V2 (verb-second) characteristic of all finite matrix clauses. It allows
for nearly complete variability in terms of the type of constituent that appears in what is traditionally
called the Vorfeld (literally ‘prefield or front field’), the German grammar term for the singleconstituent position immediately preceding the finite verb in a matrix clause. Although in unmarked
German word order, the Vorfeld contains the subject of the matrix clause, it is possible for any
constituent, even an entire clause, to occupy the position, thereby allowing the subject to surface
lower than the finite verb.
Example (19) below serves as an introduction to some of the concepts and terms that are
important for continuation of the investigation.
(19)
Ich
mag
I.NOM like
Äpfel.
apples
‘I like apples.’
Looking at example (19), the word order of German initially looks the same as the SVO order of
English. However, this is an outcome of the V2 word order in German finite matrix clauses. Unlike
English, German is generally considered an SOV language, which can be seen in embedded clauses,
among others, since these lack the V2 requirement. For instance, in the embedded clause of example
(20) below, the subject appears first, and the direct object Äpfel ‘apples’ then precedes the main verb
mag ‘like.’
(20)
Anna weiß, dass
Anna knows that
ich
Äpfel mag.
I.NOM apples like
‘Anna knows that I like apples.’
The SOV order visible in embedded clauses is standardly accounted for by assuming that
verb phrasal projections in German (including VP, vP, and TP) are right-headed. In contrast to the
underlying order that is observable outside V2 clauses, we saw above that the English and German
12 word orders for sentence (19) are superficially the same, both being SVO. However, in contrast to
English, the consensus in the syntactic literature (see e.g. Haider 2005, 2010) is that SVO order is
not basic in German. Analytically, the standard proposal is that this order arises in finite matrix
clauses with a trigger forcing the main verb to raise to C˚ position, with the triggering clause-initial
constituent obligatorily occupying Spec-CP (see e.g. Adger 2003: 329-331). A schematic breakdown
of this mechanism is shown in (21), although a detailed demonstration of these concepts is provided
in Section 2.1.2.9
(21)
The most common triggering phrase in Spec-CP is the subject of the clause, as mentioned,
while all other elements remain in their base positions. However, nearly any phrase can move to
occupy Spec-CP by a process of Topicalization, resulting in a more marked construction. Thus, (22)
shows that each of the PP in der Schule ‘at school’ and the DP Französisch ‘French’ can be topicalized.
For convenience and to simplify the appearance of trees where the analytic details of the head movement of verbs are
not crucially at issue, I will use the simplified notation of C˚/T˚/v˚/V˚ to indicate that this verb originated in V˚,
adjoined to v˚, and so on through each successively dominating head. This head movement will be explained in greater
detail in Section 2.
9
13 (22)
a.
In
in
der
the.DAT
Schule lernen Großstadtkinder
school learn city.kids
b.
Französchisch lernen Großstadtkinder
French
learn city.kids
in
in
Französisch.
French
der
the.DAT
Schule.
school ‘City kids learn French at school.’
A second major trait of German that results in word order variation is Scrambling. The
existing literature on Scrambling is somewhat less cohesive and settled in its conclusions than that
on Gapping and Topicalization, including that finding clear diagnostics for the construction is more
difficult. However, a thorough and comprehensive empirical and partially analytic layout is given in
Haider’s (2010) The Syntax of German. Haider (2010) provides a plethora of empirical evidence that
leads to the conclusion that the most likely analysis of Scrambling should be movement by
adjunction to any maximal projection in the Mittelfeld. Another traditional term of German grammar,
the Mittelfeld refers to the positions following the raised verb, if present, down to the edge of the VP.
In other words, the Mittelfeld includes everything following the element in C˚ and preceding V˚,
where the VP projection is, as mentioned above, right-headed. Most prominently then, Scrambling
will take place by adjunction to TP, vP, or VP, although any additional projections one might posit
within this domain would be predicted to be possible targets for scrambled elements as well.
In V2 clauses, the Vorfeld and Mittelfeld are separated by the raised overt verb, but the two
domains are still considered to be present in non-V2 clauses (i.e. non-matrix clauses), where the verb
remains lower.10 In the following example sentences (24)-(25), elements within the embedded clause
appear displaced from what may be taken to be their canonical, unmarked form shown in (23).
Embedded clauses lack V2, since the finite verb remains in its low position, rather than raising to
Spec-CP. Thus, the subject der Dieb ‘the thief,’ the indirect object der Frau ‘the woman,’ and the
Any element occupying C˚, for instance an overt complementizer such as dass ‘that,’ will also separate the two domains
if present.
10
14 direct object die Äpfel ‘the apples’ are all located within the Mittelfeld. The variability in word order is
therefore standardly considered to be an outcome of Scrambling (see e.g. Haider 2010).
(23)
Ich
will,
I.NOM want
dass
that
der
the.NOM
Dieb
thief
der
the.DAT
Frau die
woman the.ACC
dass
that
der
the.NOM
Dieb
thief
die
the.ACC
Äpfel der
apples the.DAT
dass
that
der
the.DAT
Frau der
woman the.NOM
Äpfel gibt.
apples gives
(24)
Ich
will,
I.NOM want
Frau gibt.
woman gives
(25)
Ich
will,
I.NOM want
Dieb
thief
die
the.ACC
Äpfel gibt.
apples gives
‘I want the thief to give the apples to the woman.’
As I will follow Haider in considering Scrambling to involve movement by adjunction to projections
in the Mittelfeld, the syntactic tree for (25) would be the following.
15 (26)
Movement by Topicalization and movement by Scrambling initially appear to have the same
types of unrestricted characteristics with respect to the elements that may move. I will therefore on
occasion use the term ‘variable constituent fronting’ to refer to movement that could be by
Topicalization or Scrambling, where certain traits appear to apply to both mechanisms. However,
there are a few distinctions that differentiate the two constructions. One of these can be seen in
16 binding effects, for instance, in which Topicalization is interpreted in its base position, while the
relevant position for Scrambling is the surface position of a Scrambled element (Haider 2010).
(27)
Ihren
her.ACC
Hund hat
dog
has
Lisa
Lisa
gestern
yesterday
ausgeführt.
walked
Hund Lisa
dog
Lisa
ausgeführt.
walked
‘Yesterday, Lisa walked her dog.’
(28)
*Gestern
yesterday
hat
has
ihren
her.ACC
‘Yesterday, Lisa walked her dog.’
In (27), the accusative object ihren Hund ‘her dog’ has been topicalized, and thus is in a
position c-commanding the binder Lisa. Since this is grammatical, we can deduce that the topicalized
element is interpreted in its base position, as it would otherwise violate binding conditions A and B,
given that possessive pronouns must be bound locally or non-locally, i.e. the binder Lisa must ccommand the DP containing the possessive (here ihren Hund ‘her dog’). The idea that topicalized
elements reconstruct, whereas scrambled ones do not is commonly held in the literature on German
syntax (Haider 2005, 2010). Reconstruction, for these purposes, is an operation at LF that returns a
moved element (e.g. after wh-movement) to its base position. Reconstruction, however, does not
apply to Scrambling. In (28), the accusative object has scrambled, presumably adjoining to TP, but
this is ungrammatical, making evident that scrambled elements are interpreted in their surface
position. If the Scrambled DP ihren Hund ‘her dog’ was reconstructed in (28), then the binder Lisa
would c-command that DP and we would expect the sentence to be grammatical. Therefore, we can
suppose that the Scrambled DP does not reconstruct. One of the elements of this study will thus be
to determine whether topicalized and Scrambled elements behave differently when acting as
remnants in the target conjunct of a Gapping construction. For a full and concrete layout, a more
precise initial syntactic analysis for these German word order phenomena just discussed will be given
in Section 2 below.
17 1.4 Major research questions
While analytical work in Gapping has been done in a number of languages, including
German to some extent (see e.g. Ross 1968, Repp 2009), I believe that there remains more data to
add to the literature from German that can shed new light on both the language and the Gapping
construction. Throughout this thesis, I will therefore begin to build up a systematic analysis of
Gapping. In order to achieve a complete picture and progression, I present here the facts involving
predicates with different valencies and how they affect word order and Gapping judgments. In order
to limit the scope of this work, the study will be confined to nominal DP arguments (dative,
accusative, and nominative) acting as remnants in the target conjunct. As shown in Haider (2005),
there are a number of possible base orders given two or three-argument verbs. My research,
however, will be limited to those verbs that take a nominative subject, and further, for ditransitive
verbs, the more common kind where the dative precedes the accusative in the base order. While this
may not result in a fully comprehensive listing, non-nominative subjects almost definitely involve
independent issues that would be beyond the scope of this work. My aim, then, is to focus on the
most basic argument structure types in order to establish a first foundation that may then serve as a
starting point for continued investigation.
Within this structure, it seems reasonable to begin with transitive verbs that take two total
arguments. For such verbs, the cases that must be considered are the grammaticality when the
remnants in the target conjunct appear in the same linear order as their counterparts in the
antecedent conjunct, and the grammaticality when the linear order of arguments does not match
between conjuncts. Once this has been empirically laid out for transitive verbs, a similar structural
examination can be undertaken for ditransitive verbs. Due to the nature of Gapping – there must be
at least two remnants – ditransitive verbs in Gapping constructions offer a wider spectrum of
18 possibilities, not only given the number of permutations arising from the three total arguments
present, but also from the possibility of gapping one of the three arguments in the target conjunct.
1.5 Initial details of the methodology
All German examples presented below that are not presented with a citation were gathered
in my own empirical investigation. Along with my personal judgments due to my competency as a
native speaker of German raised in Berlin before leaving to attend Brandeis, the data reflect the
judgments of work with roughly 10 subjects each, who were asked during in-person or online
interviews about the acceptability of each sentence, written out in questionnaires (see Appendix A
and Appendix B for a list of all sentences in the questionnaires). All subjects were native German
speakers with varying levels of exposure to other languages. During the interviews, subjects were
asked to provide judgments on a scale from 1 to 4, with 1 indicating full grammaticality, and 4
indicating full ungrammaticality. Due to the complex nature of the sentences, judgments varied to a
great extent. Throughout my work, I have indicated full ungrammaticality corresponding roughly to
a judgment determined as 4 with ‘*,’ considerable ungrammaticality (corresponding to 3) with ‘???,’
and grammaticality with some uncertainty (corresponding to 2) with ‘?.’ ‘%’ will indicate significant
disagreement among subjects. In such cases, where possible, more weight will be given to those
subjects that seemed to present the most reliability and consistency across all the data that they
evaluated, indicated by ‘%/?’ for more positive and ‘%/???’ for more negative. Where not possible,
judgments of ‘%’ should be further tested, but for the present work have been treated as potentially
ungrammatical or grammatical.
19 1.6 Findings
As will be very clear to the reader once presented with the data in Section 3, the layered
nature of the issues at work, ranging from matching linear order, matching syntactic position,
prosodic structure as well as information structure including previous discourse, cause even the
gathering process and presentation to be non-trivial. Thus, the question alone of organizing data and
defining a small list of generalizations that produce these examples is far from straightforward and
requires its own in-depth treatment. Therefore, one of the findings of my research is precisely the
vastness of possibilities for sentences involving the matters at hand.
Nonetheless, the research presented also lays forth some initial generalizations, specifically
regarding syntactic restrictions and linear order parallelism between conjuncts. For instance, a
number of syntactic restrictions appear to apply to remnants in the target conjunct whose
counterparts are either topicalized or scrambled, appearing to cause certain sentences to be
ungrammatical. Interestingly, however, linear order seems to contribute to grammaticality even after
a derivation is predicted to crash. This is likely due to processing issues that must be analyzed
separately. The syntactic and linear order generalizations should therefore be taken as a starting
point for continued research not only in syntax but also in semantics and pragmatics.
Before turning toward the presentation of the new data and of some of the generalizations
that can be deduced from it, Section 2 will be concerned with laying out a set of assumptions within
the Minimalist Program regarding the syntactic structure of German and the specific constructions
involved later. Section 3 presents the empirical data, followed by a set of empirical generalizations
and steps toward a syntactic (or potentially broader linguistic) analysis in Section 4.
20 2
Syntactic assumptions and Gapping hypotheses
Before delving into an analysis of the new data I will present, it will be useful to first lay out
some initial theoretical assumptions regarding basic syntactic derivations in Minimalism and other
syntactic preliminaries on German, including case, V2 movement, Topicalization, and Scrambling, as
well as a basic formal view of how the Gapping construction is derived. Section 2.1 of this section
will deal with the derivation of a German sentence within the Minimalist system of syntax. Section
2.2 will then spell out what might initially seem to be the most obvious analysis of Gapping and
show why such an analysis is not sufficient to capture a host of facts about Gapping. This
conclusion will aid in understanding why less intuitive mechanisms, presented in 2.3 and 2.4 of the
section, have been adopted in the literature and will provide the starting point for the analysis
proposed in this thesis.
2.1 Theoretical assumptions and the syntactic basics of German derivations
This thesis is written within the formal framework of the Minimalist Program (e.g. Chomsky
1995, 2000, 2001), as it is the standard approach for current work in Chomskyan generative syntax.
Furthermore, I will concretely assume and use the implementation laid out in Adger (2003). While
my personal research has been done from the starting point of the specific selected sources of
background literature that I have cited (specifically on Gapping and Scrambling), my approach in
this thesis will be to propose and motivate all steps from there. This includes that I will develop a
basic analysis in this section from which my discussion can proceed, especially for areas where the
literature cited lacks specific research claims or a clear consensus.
21 2.1.1
The basics of derivations in Minimalism for English
Given English as a unifying language for readers of this thesis, it will be helpful to first
provide a simple derivation within the Minimalist Program, which will in turn produce a starting
point from which the more complex syntactic investigation that I will develop later on throughout
my work can proceed. Minimalism as fleshed out in Adger (2003) is based on the idea that sentences
are derived in a bottom-up fashion following a basic hierarchy of projections, namely
CP>TP>vP>VP. The most fundamental notions that drive a derivation are features and the
operation Merge. Features are properties of words or word classes that show how certain words are
related by agreement. There are two types of features – uninterpretable ones, which must be
checked, i.e. deleted, over the course of the derivation and will be shown with a ‘u’ appended to the
front of the feature (e.g. [uN] is an uninterpretable noun feature) and interpretable ones (e.g. [N] is a
noun feature). An uninterpretable feature may be checked locally under sisterhood with an element
bearing the same interpretable feature or in an Agree relation, where an uninterpretable feature on a
syntactic element A can be checked by an element B bearing that interpretable feature and where B
c-commands A. Features may be strong, indicated by ‘*,’ in which case the uninterpretable feature
must be checked locally, often triggering movement. The Merge operation is triggered by the need
for certain uninterpretable features to check. To demonstrate how these principles are used in the
derivation of a basic example, consider the following sentence: (29)
Pippi likes pancakes.
Like is a transitive verb and therefore is taken to bear an uninterpretable noun feature [uN],
so that it formally requires a complement noun phrase, in this case satisfied by pancakes. The Merge
operation takes two syntactic elements and combines them at their root nodes (the highest node) to
form a new constituent. Its first application – i.e. the first merger – will therefore create a binary
structure containing like and pancakes. The head verb will project, which means that its category label
22 V also forms the label for the newly created structure. This thus forms the complete VP as shown in
(30).
(30)
For a number of reasons described in greater detail in Adger (2003) (particularly relating to
causative constructions), it seems reasonable to propose another verbal projection immediately
above VP, the vP, whose head bears an uninterpretable tense feature [uInfl :]. The notation ‘:’ on the
feature indicates that it must be valued, in this case by a tense feature on T. The main verb in V˚
raises adjoining to v˚, so that the tense feature will then be spelled out on the main verb. This
movement is also necessary as the order of constituents in ditransitive constructions would
otherwise be incorrect.11 Furthermore, the subject Pippi originates in the specifier position of this vP
projection, as v˚ bears an uninterpretable noun feature [uN], which must be checked, as well.
Consequently, after the subject merges with the first projection of v, we derive the following
structure. Notice that features project upward from the head of a phrase to higher projections. To
make the sisterhood relation between the subject Pippi and the projection of v clearer, I have
therefore indicated the uninterpretable noun feature on v on the higher v’ projection.
As will be shown later, for ditransitives, the first object will lie in Spec-VP, i.e. a position preceding V˚, and the second
object will be a sister to V˚ following V˚. The correct linear order, where both objects follow the main verb (i) thus can
only be derived if V˚ raises to v˚ and thus precedes both objects.
(i)
I gave a book to Mary.
11
23 (31)
Case is an important feature on DPs that will aid the formulation of Gapping hypotheses, so
understanding how case is handled throughout this work is helpful. Following the implementation
of Adger (2003), nominative case, seen on subjects of a sentence, is marked by T˚. That is, T˚ carries
an uninterpretable nominative case feature [ucase: nom]. It may value a [case] feature on a DP it ccommands and check this feature by an Agree operation. This explains why the subject of the
sentence, which is the highest nominal argument following T˚, will receive nominative case.
English also follows the Extended Projection Principle (EPP), a principle proposed by
Chomsky (1982) that holds for languages such as English and German in which there is an
obligatory subject, i.e. an obligatory element occupying Spec-TP, even if such an element is not
required by the theta role assignment of the verb. This requirement is captured formally by positing
a strong [uN*] feature on T˚, which imposes a purely syntactic requirement that it merge with a
nominal element. One might initially believe that the nominative case feature alone is enough to
make the subject surface in Spec-TP if it were made to be strong. However, it is not case that forces
the movement of the subject to Spec-TP), since it is possible to insert expletives, which are not part
of the verb’s theta role assignment and therefore do not originate in Spec-vP, into this position.
(32)
It is raining.
24 As (32) shows, the EPP requirement may be satisfied by an expletive, but it can also trigger
movement of the subject to Spec-TP, which is the case in example (29).
Similar to the mechanism by which the subject is valued as [NOM], v˚ bears an
uninterpretable accusative case feature [ucase: acc] that values the direct object’s [case] feature.
Locality of Matching (see Adger 2003: p. 218) ensures that the case features on T˚ and v˚ are correctly
matched with the subject and direct object, respectively, so that the accusative object does not raise
to Spec-TP. Thus, the following tree shows the derivation after a Merge operation of the raised
subject and the T projection takes place.
(33)
Finally, the TP merges with the CP, which remains empty in English, resulting in the
following complete derivation. C˚ in the given sentence bears a [Decl] feature, indicating that the
25 sentence is declarative. T˚ thus bears an uninterpretable [uDecl] feature that projects to TP and
triggers a merge operation with C˚.
(34)
In addition to the Merge operation, Adger proposes an Adjoin operation. Adjoin is
syntactically optional and consequently is not feature-driven. Adjoin creates a layer outside of a
phrasal projection, i.e. higher than complement and specifier and is relatively free as to its
directionality. For instance, an Adjoin operation may add the PP in the morning to the above sentence,
resulting in the derivation below.
26 (35)
2.1.2
Minimalist derivations in German
While English is a strongly head-initial language, German uses a mixture of head-initial and
head-final phrases. Specifically, German verb phrases, attributive adjective phrases, vPs, and TPs are
head-final with all other phrases being head-initial. This explains why the adjective erfolgreiche
‘successful’ in (36) follows its PP complement within the AP and why in (37) the main verb gegessen
‘eaten’ and the auxiliary hat ‘has’ are the final elements in their respective phrases.
(36)
Der
the.NOM
[AP in
in
seineri Arbeit erfolgreiche]
his
work successful
‘The cook, who is successful at work, …’
27 Kochi…
cook…
(37)
Ich
weiß, dass
I.NOM know that
gegesseni]
eaten.v˚
der
the.NOM
Hamster
hamster
[TP [vP [VP den
the.ACC
Käse ti]
cheese
hat].
has.T˚
‘I know that the hamster has eaten the cheese.’ The head-final characteristic of verb phrases, combined with specifiers being on the left,
leads to a basic SOV word order in German. However, as was mentioned earlier and as will be
demonstrated below, German matrix clauses often surface with SVO orders, similar to those found
in English.
Before looking at the precise movement mechanisms that lead to this SOV-SVO split, it may
be helpful to transfer our understanding of case given above to German. Subjects will still be valued
by T˚, and as in English, expletives show that this is not a strong feature, since the Spec-TP position
does not necessarily trigger movement of an agentive vP-internal subject.
(38)
Ich
weiß, dass
I.NOM know that
es
it
regnet.
rains
‘I know that it is raining.’
Furthermore, German also follows the EPP, so that the subject or an expletive will lie in or raise to
Spec-TP. Thus, in sentence (39), the [case] feature on ich ‘I’ is valued as [NOM] when the vP merges
with T˚. In order to satisfy the EPP, implemented in Adger (2003) by the [uN*] feature on T˚, the
subject then raises to Spec-TP.
(39)
Ich
gebe
I.NOM give
dem
the.DAT
Mann das
man the.ACC
Buch.
book
‘I give the man the book.’
In German, case is somewhat more complicated, as there are a number of base orders to
account for. Since this thesis is only concerned with base orders where the subject is nominative, I
will not attempt to revise this licensing mechanism. Nonetheless, it should be possible for a dative
object to surface rather than an accusative object and even for both objects to appear at once. I will
28 therefore propose that v˚ bears the ordered features that the main verb subcategorizes for. For
instance, the feature(s) on v˚ for the verb mögen ‘like’ is [ucase: acc], for the verb helfen ‘help’ is [ucase:
dat], and for the verb geben ‘give’ are [ucase: acc, ucase: dat]. As these are ordered, the accusative
feature for geben ‘give’ will be checked first. The dative feature can then be checked with a higher
object. This results in a base order for geben where the dative object lies in Spec-VP and the
accusative object is a sister to V˚.
To account for the word orders found in German matrix and embedded clauses, it is
necessary to flesh out the chain of head movements that occurs for the main verb. As in English,
German verbs undergo V˚-to-v˚ movement. While there is no explicit evidence for V˚-to-v˚
movement, if there is a vP-shell, then it must be the case that there is V˚-to-v˚ movement since there
is evidence of the main verb surfacing in T˚ and it is generally assumed that there is a Head
Movement Constraint (see Travis 1984) specifying that head movement proceeds successively
through each intervening projection. That is, an element in V˚ cannot raise to v˚ if v˚ is occupied
and an element in V˚ cannot raise to T˚ unless it first raises to v˚. This movement to T˚ is
accomplished by a strong uninterpretable tense feature on v˚ causing the main verb to undergo v˚to-T˚ movement as well, so that the tense feature can be checked by the tense value on T˚, unless
there is a higher auxiliary. 12 Primary evidence for this is that the main verb in matrix clauses
subsequently raises to C˚, as explained next, which would not be possible without first moving to T˚.
Below is a tree demonstrating the workings of case and verb raising once the subject raises
to Spec-TP.
In Adger (2003), the auxiliary would then be a head of its own projection (e.g PastP) and this auxiliary would show
tense and undergo head movement to T˚, thereby prohibiting the main verb from raising to a position higher than v˚.
12
29 (40)
In addition to case, the verb-second phenomenon is an important element of German
syntax. This phenomenon causes the finite verb in matrix clauses to undergo T˚-to-C˚ movement.
Analytically, I will follow Adger (2003) in taking this to be achieved with a declarative [Decl] feature
on C˚, which values the strong uninterpretable clause-type feature on T˚ in German declarative
matrix clauses as [uclause-type: Decl*]. This causes T˚ to raise to C˚, so that the uninterpretable
feature on T˚ can be checked and valued. As mentioned earlier, for convenience, this chain of head
movements will be simplified as C˚/T˚/v˚/V˚ to indicate that the main verb has moved through
each successively dominating head.
Furthermore, the verb-second phenomenon in finite matrix clauses requires an element to
surface in Spec-CP. The element in Spec-CP is said to be topicalized. To this end, Adger (2003)
30 proposes a strong uninterpretable feature [utop*] on C˚. Any constituent in the sentence can have a
[top] feature, so that this constituent will land in Spec-CP, in order to check the uninterpretable
feature on C˚. Thus, when the TP above merges with C˚ and a constituent topicalizes, we achieve
the derivation below.
(41)
31 V2 can explain why the following sentences show the distribution of verbs attested.
(42)
Karlsson
Karlsson
isst
eats
Currywurst.
curry.sausage
‘Karlsson eats curry sausage.’
(43)
Karlsson
Karlsson
hat
has
Currywurst
gegessen.
curry.sausage eaten
‘Karlsson has eaten curry sausage.’
(44)
Ich
sehe,
I.NOM see
dass
that
Karlsson
Karlsson
Currywurst
gegessen
curry.sausage eaten
hat.
has
‘I see that Karlsson has eaten curry sausage.’ Example (42) is a matrix clause with no auxiliaries. Therefore, the main verb raises to C˚ and,
as is the case in the unmarked order for matrix clauses, the subject raises to Spec-CP. This creates
the observed SVO word order that is the same as that found in the English translation. However, as
soon as an auxiliary surfaces, one can see the effects of German head-final projections. In (43), the
auxiliary raises to C˚ and thus appears in second position, while the main verb is the final element in
the vP.13 This is why the participle surfaces immediately following the auxiliary in English, but is
separated from the auxiliary by the elements that lie within the Mittelfeld in German. Example (44)
shows an embedded clause headed by the complementizer dass, which is not a V2-triggering clause
in German. The effect is thus that the auxiliary is the outermost element of that TP, with the main
verb immediately preceding it, and the verb’s complement, in turn, preceding the main V. This is
precisely the opposite of the English VO order.
Finally, in order to proceed, it will be necessary to formalize the mechanism of Scrambling.
Given the extensive analysis of alternatives in Haider (2010), I will take Scrambling, an operation
that is optional, to involve adjunction to one of the phrasal projections in the Mittelfeld (i.e. within
It cannot be in T˚, as T˚ is occupied by the trace of the finite auxiliary. However, the verb could in principle be either
in V˚ or have raised string-vacuously to v˚. It seems reasonable cross-linguistically to propose that the main verb raises
to v˚, although it seems to make no difference for the present analysis.
13
32 the hierarchy of projection assumed here, to TP, vP, or VP). To achieve this result, I will propose
that Scrambling makes use of the Adjoin operation proposed and assumed in Adger (2003).
Specifically, if, for instance, the scrambled element adjoins to TP, this will extend the TP projection
upward, merging the existing TP with the scrambled element and thereby leaving a trace in the
scrambled element’s base position. This adjunction mechanism has the desired effect that multiple
constituents can adjoin to the same phrase, consistent with the facts of German Scrambling.
Furthermore, Adjoin is optional, which again works well for Scrambling in this language. However,
Adjoin predicts that it is possible to scramble to any phrase, not just those within the Mittelfeld. While
future research on Scrambling should continue to analyze the precise mechanisms of the
construction, I will assume that the limitations can somehow be captured in order to proceed with
my analysis, and so for now will have to maintain this as just a stipulation. One possible example
involving Scrambling can be seen below. This sentence shows the direct object having scrambled to
the left of the dative, given that the base ordering in German (unlike in English) shows the dative
preceding the accusative.
(45)
Ich
gebe
I.NOM give
das
the.ACC
Buch dem
book the.DAT
‘I give the man the book.’
33 Mann.
man
(46)
2.2 The Basic Hypothesis
Most would probably agree that our first intuition about Gapping is that both conjuncts
essentially feel like full clauses, but that there are a number of restrictions on the target conjunct. To
capture this instinct, the Basic Hypothesis, as I will call it, will merge two CPs into a coordinate
34 structure and will then employ a checking and deletion mechanism to ensure that the target conjunct
follows the restrictions of Gapping.
To begin with, then, both conjuncts are derived according to the syntactic machinery
described above for the syntax of German. A derivation for each of the two conjuncts is given
separately for sentence (47) below.
(47)
Ich
mag
I.NOM like
Äpfel und
apples and
du
you.NOM
Bananen.
bananas
‘I like apples and you (like) bananas.’
(48)
(49)
In a final merger of (47), we thus derive the full CP. While I acknowledge that a non-binary
coordinated structure may not ultimately be the best analysis of coordination (see e.g. work by Alan
Munn 1992, 1993, 2001), this more basic ternary conception of coordination, notably used in much
current work on Gapping, including e.g. Johnson (2014), Toosarvandani (2013), will be sufficient for
the purposes of this thesis, since the hierarchical relationship between the first and second conjunct
will not crucially be at issue.
35 (50)
Following this final merger, I will introduce a ‘deletion operation.’ This operation will pass
over the target conjunct and must capture the facts that both du ‘you’ and Bananen ‘bananas’ are
obligatory remnants, while magst ‘like’ may be gapped.14 What distinguishes these elements? Due to
the simplicity of (47), it may first seem that the difference is status as a head (which would delete)
versus a phrase (which would remain overt) or, that e.g. all DPs would remain overt. But this is not
correct, as Gapping may also target other phrases for deletion, as in (51) and (52).
(51)
Ich
lese
I.NOM read
in
in
der
the.DAT
Schule Bücher und
school books and
du
you.NOM
Comics.
comics
‘I read books at school and you (read) comics (at school).’
Since both the gapped and ungapped versions are grammatical, it may be possible to make deletion optional.
Moreover, it seems, as will be shown later, that deletion may be optional for certain constituents, whereas Gapping
requires this for other material.
14
36 (52)
In
in
der
the.DAT
Schulhof
schoolyard
Schule lese
school read
ich
Bücher und
I.NOM books and
auf
on
dem
the.DAT
Comics.
comics
‘At school, I read books and in the schoolyard, (I read) comics.’
In (51), the locative PP in der Schule ‘at school’ has been gapped in the target conjunct, and in
(52), the same has been done with the subject DP. In both cases, the interpretation is still present,
i.e. the gapped material is understood as part of the target conjunct’s meaning.
How can we then create a filter to eliminate the correct material? Perhaps, simply deleting
repeated material will solve the problem. This repeated material must, nonetheless, follow certain
constraints, and discovering these constraints will lead to an introduction of various added
mechanisms. As is visible in (47), the gapped verb would require a different inflectional form from
that in the antecedent conjunct. If identity of the exact lexical form of each gapped element is
required, then this could be captured by taking Gapping to take place prior to subject-verb
agreement. These features are generally understood to be checked in the TP-domain, so that it
would be preferable to leave the gapped verb vP-internal. Furthermore, if the verb never reaches the
TP-domain, it certainly will not surface in the CP-domain, where it is required to ultimately lie in
German matrix clauses. However, within research on identity for ellipsis, it is standardly assumed
that the requirement is semantic by a need for mutual entailment, so that the mismatch in inflection
does not cause a problem to deletion. In order for elements to be compared for mutual entailment,
existential type shifting (see e.g. Schwarzschild 1999) must take place to lift an element that is not of
type t to a proposition of type t. That is, all unfilled elements must be existentially bound. In the case
of the verb mögen ‘like,’ we raise the verb up to a proposition by existentially binding the subject and
the direct object: ∃y∃x[mag(x,y)]. Mutual entailment, then, holds on the gapped elements, if their ∃type shifted propositions entail each other.
37 Another seeming convenience of the Basic Hypothesis is that it captures the fact that remnants
may not be gapped if they have different case from a constituent with the same lexical material in
the antecedent conjunct as in (53). However, this approach is not sufficient if semantic identity is
used to license deletion, given that DPs with differing case still have the same denotation. If, on the
other hand, argument structure, i.e. grammatical function, is somehow encoded in the type-shifted
expression used to calculate entailment, this could capture the different cases in the desired fashion.
(53)
Ich
mag
I.NOM like
dich
you.ACC
und
and
du
you.NOM
mich.
me.ACC
‘I like you and you (like) me.’
(54)
As was shown above, T˚ bears an uninterpretable nominative feature. Therefore, if the
subject’s case feature is to be valued, this feature must also be checked. This requires a merger of the
vP with T˚. In addition to the nominative feature, T˚ has a strong uninterpretable feature to satisfy
38 the EPP. The strong characteristic will require moving the subject to Spec-TP. The basic hypothesis
allows for all arguments to receive case, as the full CP derivation takes place. Since German has
variable word order, the surface position of elements cannot necessarily distinguish their semantic
roles within the clause. A mechanism for determining identity within the deletion mechanism would
therefore either need to consider only the lowest copies of arguments for determining counterpart
identity, which would cause a problem as case features would still be unvalued, or could use case as a
distinguishing factor. If there is indeed an operation that allows for deletion of repeated material
modulo ∃-type shifting, then it is important that this operation distinguish between dich ‘you.ACC’ in
the antecedent conjunct and du ‘you.NOM’ in the target conjunct, as the lexical identity should not
license deletion. In the basic hypothesis, the case features, which align with grammatical function,
are valued and may thus allow for type shifting to occur taking into account the DP’s semantic
role.15
Another issue with regards to Gapping is ensuring that each constituent in the antecedent
conjunct has a counterpart (gapped or ungapped) in the target conjunct and anything overt in the
target conjunct equally has a counterpart in the antecedent conjunct. Consider (55):
(55)
*Ich mag
I.NOM like
Äpfel und
apples and
du
you.NOM
in
in
der
the.DAT
Schule
school
Bananen.
bananas
‘I like apples and at school, you (like) bananas.’
In (55), the target conjunct contains an overt PP that does not have a counterpart in the
antecedent conjunct. Therefore, it is not sufficient to delete semantically identical material. The filter
must then also be able to verify that each remnant has a counterpart. The scope for finding such a
Evidently, it is necessary to formalize such an operation, but as I will not ultimately take this deletion mechanism to be
a good analysis, I will not attempt to fully account for this specific type-shifting operation.
15
39 counterpart should be limited to the maximal projections of phrases, usually in the highest CP in the
antecedent conjunct16, although there may be certain exceptions, as example (56) shows.
(56)
I want to try to begin to write a novel, and Mary a play.
(Kuno 1976, (3b): 300)
In (56), the target conjunct is understood as Mary wants to try to begin to write a novel, where the remnant
Mary has the counterpart I in the highest clause of the antecedent conjunct and the remnant a play
has the counterpart a novel in a nested embedded clause in the antecedent conjunct. For additional
examples that demonstrate some of the scope possibilities for determining counterparts, the reader
may refer for instance to Kuno (1976) and Johnson (2014). In terms of the deletion operation for
the Basic Hypothesis, once the CP conjuncts have merged, for each remnant, the antecedent conjunct
must be “combed” through. Once a suitable counterpart is detected, both the remnant and its
counterpart need to be marked in some way as being checked off. Since any analysis of Gapping will
need to encompass a mechanism for finding a suitable counterpart, developing such a mechanism is
important for future work on Gapping, but doing so will not form a central part of this thesis,
although some of the findings may help towards an analysis of determining counterparts.
Furthermore, Gapping in English is often limited to two target conjunct remnants, whereas German
more readily allows for three-remnant target conjuncts, so that a mechanism for determining
counterparts needs to take the number of remnants into account.
In addition to the identity of gapped elements, there are a number of other problems that
arise. For instance, in German, Spec-CP can be filled by an expletive es ‘it’ to fulfill the V2
requirement as in (57).
(57)
Es
it
liest der
reads the.NOM
Mann Bücher.
man books
‘The man reads books.’
Notice that this is still the case, even if the antecedent and target conjunct form an embedded CP, since the antecedent
conjunct will not include the material forming the clause it is embedded in.
16
40 In (57), es does not fulfill a semantic role, but rather is inserted to account for a syntactic
need, similar to ‘it’ in It is raining. In the Basic Hypothesis, it should be possible to derive a target
conjunct with such a construction. Regardless of whether such an element has a counterpart or not,
this is ungrammatical, as shown in (58)-(60).
(58)
*Die
the.NOM
Frau liest Hefte
woman reads notebooks
und
and
es
it
der
the.NOM
Mann
man
Bücher.
books
‘The woman reads notebooks and the man (reads) books.’
(59)
*Es
it
liest die
reads the.NOM
Frau Hefte
woman notebooks
und
and
es
it
der
the.NOM
Mann Bücher.
man books
‘The woman reads notebooks and the man (reads) books.’
(60)
Es
it
liest die
reads the.NOM
Frau Hefte
woman notebooks
und
and
der
the.NOM
Mann
man
Bücher.
books
‘The woman reads notebooks and the man (reads) books.’
In (58), the target conjunct contains an expletive es in Spec-CP, while the antecedent
conjunct’s subject raises to Spec-CP to fulfill the V2 requirement of a topicalized element. The
ungrammaticality can thus be explained by the lack of a counterpart for the expletive in the
antecedent conjunct. If this account is sufficient to explain the ungrammaticality, the Basic Hypothesis
predicts that remnants that are not semantically contentful must also have counterparts. In (59), the
expletive of the target conjunct has such a counterpart in the antecedent conjunct, but this is still
ungrammatical. One explanation for this is the fact that the lexical items are identical and therefore,
the expletive in the target conjunct must be deleted (as in (60)). However, this complicates the
41 deletion mechanism, as it requires deletion even when elements have no meaning. That is, the ∃-type
shifting operation must apply to elements that appear only to have a syntactic motivation, lifting
these elements to a type t proposition. This seems implausible, since identity seems to be semantic in
nature in order to license deletion in the first place, as explained above, and, as can be seen even
more clearly in (16), reprinted below:
(61)
*Jonas hat
Jonas has
einen Brief
a.ACC letter
geschickt
sent
und
and
Claus eine Postkarte
Claus a.ACC postcard
verschickt
posted.
‘Jonas has sent a letter and Claus (has) sent a postcard.’
Geschickt and verschickt are too similar in meaning to be contrastive. This shows that exact
syntactic identity is not necessary to require deletion. Thus, the ungrammaticality of example (59)
may not just be due to necessary deletion – which is hard to account for given the lack of semantic
content – but instead may be due to lack of material being able to surface in the CP-domain in this
target conjunct. Furthermore, the derivation for (60) is ambiguous. If it is accounted for by Gapping
using a deletion operation, then the target conjunct could have either of the forms shown below:
(62)
(63)
42 In the first version, the subject der Mann ‘the man’ occupies Spec-CP and there is no need for
an expletive. This creates a syntactic imbalance between the antecedent and target conjuncts, but
maintains an information-structural balance given that all thematically relevant items in the
antecedent conjunct have a counterpart in the target conjunct. In the second version, the expletive
and the main verb will be gapped under identity and this deletion is obligatory, although it raises the
issues highlighted for (59) above regarding the difficulties of gapping an element with no semantic
content. However, (60) can also be accounted for without Gapping, and instead using across-theboard movement and TP-coordination, seen in the derivation below.
(64)
Ultimately, while it is possible to account for certain traits of the expletive with the Basic
Hypothesis, particularly example (59), where one cannot sufficiently account for the expletive being
deleted, brings up difficulties that might be suggestive of coordination below the CP, since lack of
43 material in the CP domain would account for all the attested grammaticalities (i.e. it seems to be
ungrammatical for an expletive to surface in the target conjunct of a Gapping construction).
With regards to embedded Gapping sentences, we can observe a similar problem. The
following sentences serve as a base to demonstrate this.
(65)
Ich
weiß, dass
I.NOM know that
der
the.NOM
die
the.NOM
Frau Hefte
woman notebooks
liest und
reads and
Mann Bücher.
man books
‘I know that the woman reads notebooks and the man (reads) books.’
(66)
*Ich weiß, dass
I.NOM know that
die
the.NOM
dass
that
Mann Bücher.
man books
der
the.NOM
Frau Hefte
woman notebooks
liest und,
reads and
‘I know that the woman reads notebooks and that the man (reads) books.’
(67)
Ich
weiß, dass
I.NOM know that
die
the.NOM
dass
that
Mann Bücher liest.
man books reads
der
the.NOM
Frau Hefte
woman notebooks
liest und,
reads and
‘I know that the woman reads notebooks and that the man reads books.’
(68)
*Ich weiß, dass
I.NOM know that
der
the.NOM
die
the.NOM
Frau Hefte
woman notebooks
liest und
reads and
Mann liest Bücher.
man reads books
‘I know that the woman reads notebooks and the man reads books.’
In example (65), Gapping occurs in an embedded coordination. Preceding the antecedent
conjunct is the complementizer dass ‘that,’ but this complementizer is not a counterpart to an
element in the target conjunct. Unlike this configuration, as (66) demonstrates, including the
complementizer in the target conjunct is ungrammatical. In examples (67) and (68), no Gapping has
44 taken place and we observe the opposite facts. The second conjunct must have an overt
complementizer as in (67) or else it is ungrammatical as in (68).
If the conjuncts of Gapping are indeed CPs, then why is it not possible to have overt
complementizers in the target conjunct? Perhaps it is the case that the target conjunct uses V2 unlike
the antecedent conjunct. If this was the case, the antecedent conjunct would have a complementizer
in C˚ and the subject would lie in Spec-TP to satisfy the EPP, but since this is an embedded clause
where there is no V2 requirement triggering an element to topicalize, Spec-CP remains empty. If the
target conjunct, however, does have a V2 requirement, the subject (or potentially other element)
raises to Spec-CP and instead of a complementizer, the finite verb lies in C˚ after a successive chain
of head movement. This possible structure for (65) is outlined below.
(69)
Structure of (65) using syntactically unbalanced conjuncts
[CP Ich weiß [CP [CP dass [TP die FrauNOM1 [vP tNOM1 [VP Hefte tverb1] liestverb1]]] und
[CP der MannNOM2 liestverb2 [TP tNOM2 [vP tNOM2 [VP Bücher tverb2] tverb2] tverb2]]]].
However, it seems odd to make the assumption that the coordination combines a V2 clause and a
non-V2 clause, especially knowing that coordination of two ungapped embedded clauses in (67) is
grammatical (syntactic structure shown below), whereas coordination of an ungapped non-V2
embedded clause and an ungapped V2 clause is not (68).
(70)
Structure of (67)
[CP Ich weiß [CP [CP dass [TP die FrauNOM1 [vP tNOM1 [VP Hefte tverb1] liestverb1]]] und
[CP dass [TP der MannNOM2 [vP tNOM2 [VP Bücher tverb2] liestverb2]]]]].
The ungrammaticality of (66) with no overt complementizer in the target conjunct could perhaps
also be the result of the deletion operation if we decide that this operation must delete all identical
elements, regardless of their syntactic status. This would require deleting the head of a phrase rather
than a maximal projection, as seems to be the case in the attested Gapping constructions where
more than the verb elides. The complementizer would then pattern seemingly arbitrarily with verbs.
45 Furthermore, as with expletives, deletion of the complementizer would mean that a counterpart
needs to be determined even though the element carries no semantic content.
The ungrammaticality of expletives and complementizers in target conjuncts can be
explained if overt material present in both conjuncts must be deleted in the target conjunct. Since
these elements cannot surface in the target conjunct, deletion appears obligatory. However, such a
simple correlation would be oversimplifying, as deletion is not always required. The following
situations demonstrate this.
(71)
Bill
Bill
fragte, WELCHE
asked which.ACC
SCHÜLER
student
gab
gave
und
and
Bücher die
books the.NOM
WELCHE
which.ACC
Frau dem
woman the.DAT
Bücher dem
books the.DAT
POLIZISTEN.
policeman.
‘Bill asked which books the woman gave the student and which books (she gave) the
policeman.’
(72)
Der
the.NOM
MANN
man
ist
is
jeden morgen
every morning
die
the.NOM
FRAU (jeden morgen)
woman every morning
GLÜCKLICH und
happy
and
TRAURIG.
sad
‘The man is happy every morning and the woman (is) sad (every morning).’
(73)
MARY liest in
Mary reads in
der
the.DAT
der
the.DAT
Schule BÜCHER
school books
und
and
TOM (in
Tom in
Schule) HEFTE.
school notebooks
‘Mary reads books at school and Tom (reads) notebooks (at school).’
(74)
???MARY
Mary
liest BÜCHER
reads books
in
in
HEFTE
notebooks
in
in
Schule.
school
der
the.DAT
der
the.DAT
Schule und
school and
‘Mary reads books at school and Tom (reads) notebooks at school.’
46 TOM
Tom
(75)
*Ich kaufe für
I.NOM buy
for
die
the.ACC
die
the.ACC
Katze SCHOKOLADE
cat
chocolate
und
and
für
for
Katze MILCH.
cat
milk
‘I buy chocolate for the cat and (I buy) milk for the cat.’
(76)
ICH kaufe für
I.NOM buy
for
die
the.ACC
Katze SCHOKOLADE
cat
chocolate
DU
you.NOM
die
the.ACC
Katze MILCH.
cat
milk
für
for
und
and
‘I buy chocolate for the cat and you (buy) milk for the cat.’
In (71), the wh-phrase welche Bücher ‘which books’ appears in both the antecedent and the
target conjunct, which, if overt lexical identity licenses deletion, is predicted to be ungrammatical.
There is a fairly simple solution in this case – a solution that is furthermore reflected by the
intonational restrictions on the sentence. Here, the stress must go on the wh-word itself rather than
on the head noun (the default stress). This is revealing, as it highlights that the conjuncts may refer
to a different set of books. Additionally, with the lack of stress on Bücher ‘books,’ it is possible to
leave out the head noun entirely in the target conjunct resulting in a target conjunct WELCHE dem
POLIZISTEN ‘which (books) the policeman.’ This is another place where we can tell that lexical
identity itself does not license deletion. In (72), (73), and (76) it is not obligatory to delete the
repeated DP jeden morgen ‘every morning,’ the repeated PP in der Schule ‘in the school,’ or the repeated
PP für die Katze ‘for the cat,’ respectively. These remnants are all left-adjoined to VP, vP, or TP, so it
may be the case that deletion is not obligatory for adjuncts.17 However, in (74), the adjunct is rightadjoined and here deletion of the PP in der Schule ‘in the school’ seems to be obligatory. However,
the directionality of adjunction is not fully explanatory because in (75), where the PP für die Katze ‘for
Since Scrambling will be analyzed as adjunction, this theoretically makes the prediction that scrambled elements can be
elided in Gapping. However, as will turn out to be the case, precisely the opposite is true. This provides some evidence
that Scrambling differs from other types of adjunction. However, more work is required to fully lay out the facts for
adjunction in Gapping constructions, which is not part of the present study.
17
47 the cat’ is left-adjoined, the subject of the target conjunct is gapped and again, deletion is necessary.
Interestingly, in all grammatical instances, the subject varies between the conjuncts. This could
explain why (75) with no overt subject is ungrammatical, but cannot explain the ungrammaticality of
(74). A different approach therefore is to note that, if considering the linear order of arguments, the
DP jeden morgen ‘every morning’ in (72), the PP in der Schule ‘in the school’ in (73), as well as the PP für
die Katze ‘for the cat’ in (76), are all surrounded by contentful contrasting remnants with counterparts
in the antecedent clause. Furthermore, the grammaticality of (72), (73), and (76) require that the
repeated remnant not bear stress. This indicates that repeated material is not obligatorily deleted
when between two focused contrasting remnants. Since expletives and complementizers never
occupy such a position, they would need to be deleted. However, the fact that deletion does seem to
be intimately linked to semantic identity rather than lexical identity remains a problem that could be
solved if it was simply the case that the expletives and complementizers are unable to surface in
target conjuncts because coordination occurs below the level of the CP.
To summarize, the Basic Hypothesis consists of the following mechanisms and raises the
subsequent questions:
The Basic Hypothesis
• Each conjunct is derived as a full CP.
• Once the conjuncts have merged, a deletion operation checks whether all
major constituents have a counterpart and allows deletion of mutually
entailing (by ∃-type shifting to propositions) major constituents.18 Deletion is
obligatory unless a constituent is preceded and followed by contrastive
remnants.
Problems for consideration
• In general, how does the checking mechanism ensuring that each remnant in
the target conjunct has a counterpart work?
• How does the deletion mechanism prevent remnants with the same lexical
content but with different case from arguments in the antecedent conjunct
A major constituent here is thus a phrase or a head attached to the “spine” – the extended projection of the verb – of
the tree.
18
48 •
from being deleted? Is it possible to encode grammatical function on the
type-shifted expression?19
How do we block the construction of target conjuncts with a
complementizer in C˚ or an expletive es fulfilling the V2 requirement?
o While the deletion operation deletes elements under mutual
entailment with counterparts modulo ∃-type shifting in the
antecedent conjunct, complementizers and expletives are different
given that they lack content semantically (i.e. they only fulfill syntactic
requirements). Therefore, finding a mutually entailing element in the
antecedent conjunct for these elements requires a somewhat alternate
method than that used for determining repeated verbs or other
phrases, where it is not necessarily the surface form that must be
identical. While this is not a necessary conclusion, this may be
indicative of the lack of presence of material in the CP-domain more
generally.
2.3 Eliminating the CP-domain for Gapping
Exploring the behavior of the Basic Hypothesis has shown that perhaps Gapping is not as
intuitive as it may initially appear. One of the observed problems arose with regards to the CPdomain. For instance, the inability of expletive es and the complementizer dass to surface in the
target conjunct of Gapping suggests that the construction may not actually be a coordination of full
CPs.
In addition to the features highlighted in Section 1.2, Johnson (2014) points out facts
involving scope that he then uses to argue for vP-coordination for Gapping. He notes that in (77)
below, the subject in the target conjunct is understood to be no dog. vP-coordination can account for
this, as the subject of the antecedent would then c-command the entire target conjunct.
(77)
No cat should eat Puppy Chow or dog, Whiskas.
(Johnson 2014, (102a): 30)
However, for reasons discussed in greater detail below, I do not believe that vP-coordination alone
can capture the largest variety of data. Nevertheless, Johnson’s argument for scope could in principle
These first two problems may be used as starting points for continued research if continuing to pursue a CPcoordination analysis, but will not be further addressed in this thesis.
19
49 also support TP-coordination. For English, this would require quantifier raising as the subject
normally lies in Spec-TP, but would need to raise to Spec-CP for this argument. In that case, at LF,
the subject of the antecedent clause would move to Spec-CP, c-commanding both conjuncts.
(78)
Structure of (77) using quantifier raising and TP-coordination
[CP No catNOM1 [TP [TP tNOM1 [vP tNOM1 should eat Puppy Chow]] or [TP dogNOM2
[vP tNOM2 Whiskas]]]]
Similarly, in (79), the quantifier of the subject in the antecedent conjunct is understood as
also being the quantifier of the subject in the target conjunct. This could also indicate that the SpecCP position of the antecedent c-commands the target conjunct. Since German V2 clauses use
Topicalization to Spec-CP, quantifier raising is not necessary to provide the scope reading in (79).20
(79)
VIELE
many.NOM
Männer
men
sind
are
GLÜCKLICH und
happy
and
Frauen TRAURIG.
women sad
‘Many men are happy and many women (are) sad.’
(80)
[CP Viele Männer sind [TP [TP [vP glücklich]] und [TP Frauen sind [vP traurig]]]]
TP-coordination in Gapping would allow for the subject of the target conjunct to receive
case and for the element in Spec-CP in the antecedent conjunct to scope over the target conjunct,
while providing a natural solution for the missing material in the CP-domain of the target conjunct.
If the deletion mechanism is not revised (i.e. deletion simply eliminates repeated major constituents
that follow the mutual entailment restrictions described above, unless they also follow the licensing
The interpretation of the quantifier could also have to do with coordination independently. If a binary structure, as
argued for by Munn (1992, 1993, 2001), is adopted instead and the antecedent conjunct is a CP higher than the target
conjunct, the scope may also be provided. This formation is shown below.
20
However, if that is the case, it is unclear why the quantifier is not interpreted in such a way in (i) below, where the
second conjunct is the ungapped equivalent of the target conjunct in (79).
(i)
*Viele
Männer sind
glücklich und
Frauen sind
traurig.
many.NOM
men
are
happy and
women are
sad
‘Many men are happy and many women are sad.’
50 rule for optional deletion between focused constituents), the derivation for sentence (47) would then
resemble the tree below:21
(81)
2.4 Introducing constituent deletion
One widely held view in the literature (e.g. Johnson 2014) is an analysis in which the vP
whose head surfaces as null has been elided after the remnant constituents have moved to positions
outside this vP. One of the main reasons for such an approach is that it allows for a deleted
Notice that a potential problem given the TP-coordination approach is that the target conjunct may not be considered
to be V2, which is a likely assumption if the antecedent conjunct is a matrix clause. That is, both T˚s in the antecedent
and target conjuncts bear uninterpretable [uclause-type: *] features. This feature can be valued on both heads by the
[Decl] feature on C˚. However, the uninterpretable clause-type feature on T˚ is strong in matrix clauses (the formal
mechanism for capturing V2). If we allow the topicalized element in Spec-CP to account for the checking of strong
features in both conjuncts, this predicts that there may be information-structural effects having to do with the
topicalized element, which should be the subject of future research. Furthermore, it is necessary to limit the possible
topicalized elements to elements within the antecedent conjunct, since it is not possible for target conjunct remnants to
surface in this position:
(i)
*Du
mag
ich
Äpfel und
Bananen.
you.NOM
like
I.NOM apples and
bananas
21
‘I like apples and you bananas.’
51 constituent, rather than deletion of individual elements that do not form a constituent. On this view,
uninflected mag- ‘like’ in the tree below would remain in the v˚ position, since that will cause it to
delete when the maximal projection containing it is deleted.
(82)
In order for what deletes to be a constituent, we would need to extend the deletion
minimally to the full vP, since the main V that needs to be gapped is taken to lie in v˚. However,
since the direct object (here Bananen ‘bananas’) is normally considered to lie as a complement to V˚
inside this vP at the end of the derivation, one could try to solve this by eliding the non-constituent
mag ‘like,’ in a deletion mechanism such as the one described for the Basic Hypothesis. What the
explanation using vP-deletion must resolve, then, is the fact that the target conjunct vP in question
in fact includes the direct object remnant (Bananen ‘bananas’ in (47)). The vP deletion hypothesis
solves this by moving the remnants by A’-movement from their base positions so that they adjoin to
the vP, thus creating a lower vP which no longer contains the remnant and so may be elided, as
shown in the simplified tree below. Gapping would then pattern with other forms of ellipsis such as
52 VP-Ellipsis or Sluicing (and would essentially be viewed as an instance of VP-Ellipsis) as well as
general movement constraints, which target full constituents (vPs in VP-Ellipsis, TPs in Sluicing,
and other constituents such as DPs and PPs in movements such as wh-movement).
(83)
Interestingly, in the context of this thesis and its focus on German, Johnson (2014) terms the
movement of remnants as ‘scrambling.’ While it is somewhat surprising to see this term used in
reference to English, which does not use Scrambling outside of Gapping, this mechanism for
English does seem to have certain resemblances with Scrambling in German, and it will be an aim of
this work to continue fleshing out whether such an analysis is plausible.22 Scrambling, as outlined
above, is adjunction to any of the phrasal projections in the Mittelfeld. If the vP is to be deleted, the
options for the landing site of movement become limited to vP and TP, within the hierarchy of
projections that I assume here (originally from Adger 2003). An initial syntactic sketch of how the
Gapping sentence in (47) would be derived on this approach is thus illustrated below:
The difficulty for English is that the remnants in the target conjunct always appear in the linear order that they would
have appeared in in the ungapped version of the sentence, where Scrambling is not possible.
22
53 (84)
While the TP-coordination plus vP-deletion approach captures much of the data on
Gapping, it is not sufficient to account for target conjuncts where there is no overt subject.
(85)
Der
the.NOM
Mann hat
man has
gegeben
given
und
and
der
the.DAT
dem
the.DAT
Frau das
woman the.ACC
Buch
book
Sohn einen Kuss.
son
a.ACC kiss
‘The man has given the woman the book and (he has given) the son a kiss.’
In this sentence, the remnants in the target conjunct are a dative object and an accusative
object. Under a TP-coordination analysis, sentences such as (85) cause a significant problem because
they do not fulfill the EPP. That is, in the target conjunct, the subject must remain in-situ inside the
vP, with Spec-TP remaining empty, if the subject is to be gapped and therefore surface as null when
the vP is deleted. If these sentences are nonetheless caused by deletion of some kind, it is necessary
to modify our assumptions of Gapping. One possibility could be to make the EPP optional in the
target conjunct. This seems quite arbitrary, however, especially since TP-coordination was proposed
54 in significant part due to case marking of subjects, which requires a TP-domain, thereby adding the
EPP requirement. On the other hand, if in these instances without an overt subject, Gapping uses
coordination of vPs as proposed by Johnson (2014), this eliminates the violation of the EPP, since
the EPP feature will not be present in the target conjunct due to the lack of a TP-layer.
(86)
While there may be other plausible ways to derive Gapping, I will use the TP-coordination
and vP-coordination approach with vP-deletion as the starting point for the syntactic observations
regarding the new data including variable word order. TP-coordination will be chosen whenever
there is an overt nominative subject remnant in the target conjunct and vP-coordination will be used
otherwise.23
It is important to note that any account for Gapping that uses coordinated phrases lower than CPs will ultimately
most likely incur a violation of the Coordinate Structure Constraint because there is material in the antecedent conjunct
that must fulfill certain syntactic requirements of the clause, for instance, in German, the subject must raise to Spec-TP
to satisfy the EPP and an argument must raise to Spec-CP due to V2 Topicalization.
23
55 3
Examined data
As discussed in Section 1.2, it has yet to be determined whether and how linear order and
syntactic position affect grammaticality in German Gapping, and what patterns emerge given the
possible variations in the antecedent and target conjuncts. Therefore, it will be the aim in the
following sections to lay out my findings on what the empirical generalizations are with respect to
these two specific dimensions of what I will refer to as antecedent-target conjunct parallelism. In
Section 4, I will show that the grammaticality judgments attested in Section 3 give evidence relating
to issues of both syntactic and linear order nature. I will use the term ‘parallelism’ as just a
descriptive term here, taking it to involve the various ways in which the antecedent and target
conjuncts of Gapping might need to be alike or identical.
Throughout the discussion, because this is, to my knowledge, the first exploration of these
issues for German Gapping, I will restrict the new data to examples whose argument structure is as
unmarked as possible. I will therefore look only at transitive and ditransitive verbs, leaving other
possibilities for future research. Furthermore, examples will be limited to verbs whose subjects take
nominative case and express semantic agents. Complements of the verbs involved will be either just
accusative, just dative, or both. While this is a restricted set of examples, it represents the most basic
instances involving Gapping and German word order phenomena, so that the work presented here
can lay the foundation for future work on more marked sentences involving Gapping. It should also
be noted that the examples and respective judgments provided here are representative to the extent
that I have been able to test, of a broader set of data involving the same argument structure and
order but using different lexical items. Therefore, case, as a unifying trait that holds across these
sentences, will be used to describe the structures presented. For instance, the canonical order
NOM[top]-ACC was tested using the verbs sehen ‘see’ and schreiben ‘write,’ where both verbs take a
nominative subject and an accusative direct object.
56 For the data presented, I will only include Gapping examples where the antecedent conjunct
has an order that is grammatical, independently of Gapping. Given the initial hypothesis that the
antecedent and target conjuncts differ in syntactic structure (e.g. minimally regarding the level of
coordination in the sense that the target conjunct is just a TP or vP rather than a full CP), the data
will include target conjuncts for which the ungapped version is ungrammatical. For instance, in
matrix clauses, the argument ordering DAT[top]-ACC[scr]-NOM, where the dative object is
topicalized and the accusative object has scrambled to a position preceding the nominative subject
(presumably left-adjoined to TP), is generally considered to be quite bad and therefore, instances of
Gapping with such an order in the antecedent conjunct have been excluded from the new data I
present here.24 Nonetheless, including this linear order as a potential order for target conjuncts
appears to be a correct approach, as there is evidence of grammatical orderings where the target
conjunct follows the linear order of an ungrammatical antecedent conjunct, furthermore supporting
the idea of coordination below the CP domain.
3.1 Transitive verbs
In sentences with transitive verbs, the presence of complete parallelism between the
antecedent and target conjuncts in linear order and syntactic position would mean that the order of
remnants in the target conjunct should match the order of arguments in the antecedent conjunct and
that the syntactic position of each remnant-counterpart pair should also be identical. Given the
I can note that the Gapping examples that had such an order in the antecedent conjunct were, as we would expect, all
considered to be ungrammatical. However, due to the independent order in the antecedent conjunct being bad, it is not
possible to attribute the ungrammaticality of the Gapping sentences to the structure of Gapping. While this ordering is
impossible in matrix (V2) clauses, it appears to be grammatical in subordinate clauses. In the latter, it arises by
scrambling both complements to left-adjoin to TP (since the dative object can no longer topicalize, as Spec-CP remains
empty in non-V2 clauses). Interestingly, due to the lack of a CP domain in target conjuncts, the derivation of the word
order DAT-ACC-NOM in target conjuncts would proceed in the same way as described for subordinate clauses, that is,
by Scrambling of both the dative and accusative to TP. It therefore seems reasonable to include this linear order as a
possible target conjunct. An in-depth consideration of subordinate clauses is beyond the work presented currently, but
would provide for interesting future research, especially with regards to further differences between Topicalization and
Scrambling.
24
57 analysis presented in Section 2, it is difficult to imagine precisely what parallelism in syntactic
positions would mean, since arguments in the target conjunct are required to raise out of the vP,
which would be different from counterparts that may, and under the simplest hypothesis, do remain
vP-internal in the antecedent conjunct. Furthermore, analyzing Gapping as coordination of TPs
means that no argument will be topicalized, in the traditional sense for German grammar, in the
target conjunct, as there in no Spec-CP position. However, while I am proposing coordination
below the CP, I do not wish to make the claim that an argument lying in Spec-CP in the antecedent
conjunct cannot be the counterpart of an argument in the target conjunct.
Thus, I will focus on the simpler criterion of linear order when laying out the data examined.
Specifically, I will begin by looking at cases where, for each remnant in the target conjunct, its
ordering with respect to the other constituents in the target conjunct matches the relative position of
its counterpart in the antecedent in relation to that conjunct’s other arguments. Therefore, in
sentences where a non-nominative argument scrambles to TP and thus precedes the subject in the
target conjunct, its counterpart should be topicalized and thus clause-initial in the antecedent
conjunct. Similarly, with a subject preceding the remaining arguments in the target conjunct, this also
requires the same ordering in the antecedent conjunct, i.e. the unmarked order where a nominative
subject is topicalized.
I will begin by looking at transitive verbs, and at sentences where the relative position of
arguments in the antecedent and target conjuncts matches. As examples (87) and (88) show, such
parallelism in linear order is indeed grammatical for sentences with a nominative subject and an
accusative object.
58 Matching linear order
(87)
Antec.: NOM[top]-ACC (canonical); Targ.: NOM-ACC[scr] (canonical)
Q: (What do the children eat?)
A: Der
JUNGE
the.NOM
boy
das
the.NOM
isst
eats
den
the.ACC
MÄDCHEN die
girl
the.ACC
APFEL
apple
und
and
BANANE.
banana
‘The boy eats the apple and the girl (eats) the banana.’
(88)
Antec.: ACC[top]-NOM (non-canonical); Targ.: ACC[scr]-NOM
(non-canonical)
Q: (Who eats the apple and who eats the banana?)
A: Den
Apfel isst
der
JUNGE
the.ACC
apple eats
the.NOM
boy
Banane das
banana the.NOM
und
and
die
the.ACC
MÄDCHEN.
girl
‘The boy eats the apple and the girl (eats) the banana.’
Givenness is known to be weakly associated with Topicalization (Haider 2010, p. 174). For the
present purposes, I take the definition of Givenness proposed in Schwarzschild (1999) as the main
method for calculating stress patterns. That is, “[a]n utterance U counts as GIVEN iff it has a salient
antecedent A and modulo ∃-type shifting, A entails the result of replacing F-marked parts of U with
existentially bound variables” (Schwarzschild 1999, p. 149). F-marking, here, follows the rules
discussed in Selkirk (1996), where accenting licenses F-marking and from there, an F-marked head
projects to F-marking of the phrase, and an F-marked complement leads to F-marking of the head
of that phrase. By lifting elements to propositions of type t by the type-shifting procedure described
earlier, the definition of Givenness has the result that Given material is not pronounced with stress.
Since Topicalization appears to be somewhat related to Givenness, this can explain why the speakers
I consulted reported that comprehension in (88), where a non-canonical argument is topicalized, was
improved when Apfel ‘apple’ and Banane ‘banana’ were treated as Given material, and thus did not
receive phonological stress. In opposition to the lack of stress in (88), in (87), the subjects in both
59 conjuncts are stressed. This was done to mirror the results of research on German Gapping
conducted by Féry and Hartmann (2005), which found that these subjects can be said to bear a topic
accent as opposed to a focus accent. As will be discussed in greater detail in Section 4.1, contrastive
topics licensing topic accents as used in Féry and Hartmann (2005) are related to sets of alternative
questions about that topic. In the case of (87), these would be What does the boy eat?, What does the girl
eat?, and so on, to which each of the conjuncts is just one possible answer. In (88), however, the
answers in the conjuncts are fully exhaustive of the set of alternatives presented by the question.
As can be seen in (89) and (90), the same full grammaticality seen for NOM-ACC sentences
also hold when the sentence has a nominative subject and a dative complement.
(89)
Antec.: NOM[top]-DAT (canonical); Targ.: NOM-DAT[scr] (canonical)
Q: (Who do the children help?)
A: Der
JUNGE
the.NOM
boy
das
the.NOM
hilft dem
helps the.DAT
MÄDCHEN dem
girl
the.DAT
SCHÜLER
student
und
and
LEHRER.
teacher
‘The boy helps the student and the girl (helps) the teacher.’
(90)
Antec.: DAT[top]-NOM (non-canonical); Targ.: DAT[scr]-NOM
(non-canonical)
Q: (Who helps the student and who helps the teacher?)
A: Dem
Schüler hilft der
JUNGE
the.DAT
student helps the.NOM
boy
Lehrer das
teacher the.NOM
und
and
dem
the.DAT
MÄDCHEN.
girl
‘The boy helps the student and the girl (helps) the teacher.’
However, it is interesting that matching linear order is not a necessary requirement for
Gapping in German. Konietzko and Winkler (2010) observe that contrastive highlighting – which
for present purposes can be construed as prosodic stress on non-semantically-Given elements that
are therefore new to the discourse – can facilitate comprehension of the target conjunct when the
order of constituents is marked (i.e. does not follow what is expected in German Gapping examples,
60 and sentences in general, where the subject is the first argument). Therefore, for transitive verbs,
sentences with non-matching linear order of conjuncts were also tested using a question preceding
the utterance in order to provide a context for calculating Given and non-Given material according
to Schwarzschild (1999) as described above. An application of this contrastive highlighting can be
seen in examples (91)-(94), which is likely relevant in the resulting grammaticality despite a linear
ordering mismatch between remnants and their counterparts. As an example, the question in (91)
makes reference to the boy and to the fruit cake. Thus, if neither of these constituents is accented in the
answer and instead the remaining DPs den Apfel ‘the apple’ and das Mädchen ‘the girl’ are pronounced
with stress, this gives the Gapping construction the best chance at grammaticality, according to
Konietzko and Winkler (2010).
(91)
?Antec.: NOM[top]-ACC (canonical); Targ.: ACC[scr]-NOM
(non-canonical)
Q: (Is the boy eating the fruit cake?)
A: ?Der
Junge isst
den
the.NOM
boy
eats
the.ACC
Früchtekuchen
fruit.cake
das
the.NOM
APFEL
apple
und
and
den
the.ACC
MÄDCHEN.
girl
‘The boy eats the apple and the girl (eats) the fruit cake.’
(92)
Antec.: ACC[top]-NOM (non-canonical); Targ.: NOM-ACC[scr]
(canonical)
Q: (Is the girl eating the apple?)
A: Den
Apfel isst
the.ACC
apple eats
Mädchen
girl
die
the.ACC
der
the.NOM
JUNGE
boy
BANANE.
banana
‘The boy eats the apple and the girl (eats) the banana.’
61 und
and
das
the.NOM
(93)
?Antec.: NOM[top]-DAT (canonical); Targ.: DAT[scr]-NOM
(non-canonical)
Q: (Is the boy helping the teacher?)
A: ?Der
Junge hilft dem
the.NOM
boy
helps the.DAT
dem
the.DAT
Lehrer das
teacher the.NOM
SCHÜLER
student
und
and
MÄDCHEN.
girl
‘The boy helps the student and the girl (helps) the teacher.’
(94)
Antec.: DAT[top]-NOM (non-canonical); Targ.: NOM-DAT[scr]
(canonical)
Q: (Is the girl helping the student?)
A: Dem
Schüler hilft der
the.DAT
student helps the.NOM
Mädchen
girl
dem
the.DAT
JUNGE
boy
und
and
das
the.NOM
LEHRER.
teacher
‘The boy helps the student and the girl (helps) the teacher.’
While all sentences were grammatical to all subjects, (91) and (93) were often considered to
be somewhat degraded. In (91) and (93), the antecedent conjunct has the canonical word order, with
the nominative subject raising to Spec-CP and the object remaining VP-internal. In contrast, the
target conjunct shows the non-canonical ordering, with the internal argument preceding the subject.
On the other hand, (92) and (94) contain the non-canonical object-subject ordering in the
antecedent conjunct, and canonical ordering in the target conjunct, which was generally considered
grammatical.25 Thus, a non-canonical word order in the antecedent conjunct seems to permit a wider
range of possible word orders in the target conjunct.26, 27
Most subjects found this ordering to be grammatical, but not quite as good as the sentences with linear order
matching in both conjuncts. However, this judgment was consistently more positive than for sentences with canonical
ordering in the antecedent and non-canonical ordering in the target conjunct.
26 The degradation found in (91) and (93) seems to be related to Topicalization because the same effect was not
perceived (at least to such an extent) when the coordination with a Gapped target conjunct was an embedded clause.
25
62 (95)
Antecedent
conjunct
Antecedent
conjunct
Target conjunct
NOMSpec-TP-ACCscr-vP
(canonical)
NOMtop-ACC
(canonical)
ACCtop-NOMSpec-TP
ACCscr-TP-NOMSpec-TP
✓ (87)
? (91)
✓ (92)
✓ (88)
Target conjunct
NOMSpec-TP-DATscr-vP
(canonical)
NOMtop-DAT
(canonical)
DATtop-NOMSpec-TP
DATscr-TP-NOMSpec-TP
✓ (89)
? (93)
✓ (94)
✓ (90)
3.2 Ditransitive verbs with two-remnant target conjuncts and matching linear order
Increasing the number of arguments present for the predicate tested in these sentences
allows us to gain a more expanded understanding of how Scrambling and Topicalization contribute
to the ordering possibilities between the antecedent and target conjuncts. This section will thus lay
out the empirical observations from the data I gathered for ditransitive verbs with nominative
subjects and where the dative argument precedes the accusative argument in the canonical word
(i)
Antec.: NOM-ACC (canonical); Targ.: ACC[scr]-NOM (non-canonical)
Q:
A:
(Is the boy eating the fruit cake?)
Ich
weiß,
dass
der
I.NOM know that
the.NOM
Junge
boy
den
Früchtekuchen
the.ACC fruit.cake
MÄDCHEN.
girl
das
the.NOM
den
APFEL isst
the.ACC apple
eats
und
and
‘I know that the boy eats the apple and the girl eats the fruit cake.’
Since the embedded clauses do not have V2 ordering, the ordering in the antecedent conjunct arises by raising the
subject to Spec-TP rather than by Topicalization of the subject.
27 In the summarizing tables, shaded cells indicate constructions where the linear order of arguments in the antecedent
conjunct matches the linear order of arguments in the target conjunct. The number with each judgment refers back to
the example where this judgment can be seen. Furthermore, for the antecedent and target conjunct orders, I have
indicated syntactic position with the following subscript labels: [top] = topicalized, [Spec-TP] = in Spec-TP, [scr-vP] =
left-adjoined to vP, and [scr-TP] = left-adjoined to TP. [scr] indicates that the element has scrambled, but that it is not
clear which phrase (i.e. VP, vP, or TP) it has left-adjoined to. No label means that the element is in its base position.
63 order. Under the syntactic assumptions laid out in Section 2, this canonical ordering would
correspond to the following syntactic structure in an ordinary matrix clause:
(96)
In (96) the nominative subject raises to Spec-CP due to Topicalization in V2 clauses after
moving to Spec-TP to fulfill the EPP. As this is the simplest derivation, thus excluding possible
auxiliary verbs, the main verb has raised through v˚ and T˚ to C˚ because this is a matrix clause and
the strong declarative feature [Decl] must value the [uclause-type: Decl*] feature on T˚, which
triggers T-to-C movement. The dative object and the accusative object occupy their base positions
inside the VP.
A matrix clause with a ditransitive verb can potentially involve 6 different possible argument
orderings. Thus, it is possible to imagine that when such a verb is used in a Gapping example and all
3 arguments are counterparts to overt remnants in the target conjunct, there would be 36 possible
permutations of the sentence expressing the same semantic content. However, it turns out that not
all 36 sentences are grammatical, and that a, for the time being partial, systematic prediction can be
made regarding this grammaticality. I will return to a more exact discussion of these possibilities
64 below, and I will begin my discussion using sentences with only two target conjunct remnants for
each ditransitive verb, where each remnant is furthermore given contrastive focal stress.28 Therefore,
in all following examples involving ditransitive verbs, each remnant in the target conjunct and its
antecedent conjunct counterpart was stressed. Due to grouping of sentences, stress is not shown in
the antecedent conjunct, but can be determined based on the overt remnants, which will be
presented including stress, i.e. by presenting both remnants in all-caps.29 Target conjuncts with only
two remnants force one of the three arguments to be gapped along with the main verb in the target
conjunct. Notably, the reason behind any ungrammaticality observed for a given possible ordering
could therefore involve a restriction on either the relationship between the remnants and their
counterparts, or on the material that can be gapped, or both.
To begin a presentation of cases, it seems simplest to observe the cases where the antecedent
conjunct follows the canonical word order, i.e. follows the derivation shown in (96).
(97)
Antecedent: NOM[top]-DAT-ACC (canonical)
Die
the.NOM
Prinzessin
princess
verleiht dem
awards the.DAT
Ritter einen Orden
knight a.ACC medal
und
and
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and…’
While I acknowledge the lack of precision by not involving tests including different possible intonations and by not
providing additional context for utterances, such work would have resulted in a body of data beyond the scope of this
thesis.
29 For instance, the stress assignment tested for example (97a) is shown below:
(i)
Die
PRINZESSIN
verleiht dem
Ritter einen
ORDEN
und
the.NOM
princess
awards the.DAT knight a.ACC medal
and
28
der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR
professor
einen
a.ACC
PREIS.
prize
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
65 a.
*Target: NOM-ACC[scr]
*…der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
professor
a.ACC prize
‘…the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
b.
Target: NOM-DAT[scr]
…der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR dem
professor
the.DAT
PRINZEN.
prince
‘…the professor (awards a medal) to the prince.’
c.
Target: DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]
…dem
the.DAT
PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
professor
a.ACC prize
‘…(the princess awards) a prize to the professor.’
As these representative examples show, when the antecedent conjunct involves the
nominative subject lying in Spec-CP and the dative object preceding the accusative object as is the
canonical order for the verb verleihen ‘award,’ the resulting Gapping example is fully grammatical
unless, as in (97a), the dative object is gapped in the target conjunct. This is interesting, as it shows
that the dative and accusative objects behave differently in the target conjunct.
Furthermore, one might have initially thought that minimally the subject would need to be
overt, especially since it occupies a position different from the other objects that, by the hypothesis
spelled out in Section 2, can only move out of the vP by scrambling to an adjunct position.
Interestingly, however, an overt subject in the target conjunct is not necessary, as shown by (97c).
This demonstrates the necessity of allowing Gapping to occur in vP-coordination.
Scrambling and Topicalization offer the possibility of varying the linear order of arguments
in the antecedent conjunct. In the following sentences, Scrambling in the antecedent conjunct has
caused the dative object to follow rather than precede the accusative object. The subject continues
to appear in its topicalized default position. These sentences therefore allow us to isolate the effect
66 of Scrambling on grammaticality, since topicalizing the subject provides a neutral information
structure with respect to Topicalization.
(98)
Antecedent: NOM[top]-ACC[scr]-DAT
Die
the.NOM
Prinzessin
princess
verleiht einen Orden dem
awards a.ACC medal the.DAT
Ritter und
knight and
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and…’
a.
*Target: NOM-ACC[scr]
*…der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
professor
a.ACC prize
‘…the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
b.
???Target: NOM-DAT[scr]
???…der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR dem
professor
the.DAT
PRINZEN.
prince
‘…the professor (awards a medal) to the prince.’
c.
?Target: ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
?…einen
a.ACC
PREIS dem
prize the.DAT
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…(the princess awards) the professor with a prize.’
In (97), the only case of ungrammaticality arose when the dative argument was gapped in the
target conjunct. In (98a), we can observe that it is also ungrammatical to gap the dative argument.
Additionally, however, it is also ungrammatical to gap the accusative argument, as (98b) shows.
Thus, when there is a nominative subject in the antecedent but the antecedent conjunct does not
follow canonical order, the only grammatical two-remnant target conjunct with matching linear
order is a target conjunct not containing a nominative subject, i.e. the subject remains the same for
both conjuncts. Since the linear order of arguments in the target conjunct was the same in (97b) and
(98b) but (97b) was grammatical, the judgments cannot be solely determined by the order and
identity of the overt remnants in the target conjunct, but must to an extent be affected by the
interaction of these with the traits of the antecedent conjunct.
67 Until now, all examples involved the subject of the antecedent conjunct occupying Spec-CP
– the unmarked topic position. However, since German allows for Topicalization of a non-subject
as well, which in turn has information-structural effects, it is interesting to see how such a word
order influences the possibilities for variability in the target conjunct. To begin with, I will isolate the
phenomenon of Topicalization by excluding Scrambling in the antecedent conjunct. This means that
the relative ordering of the remaining non-topicalized arguments will have the nominative subject
raising to Spec-TP, followed by either the accusative or dative object, which is left in its base
position inside the VP.
(99)
Antecedent: DAT[top]-NOM-ACC
Dem
the.DAT
Ritter verleiht die
knight awards the.NOM
Prinzessin
princess
einen Orden und
a.ACC medal and
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and…’
a.
?Target: NOM-ACC[scr]
?…der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
professor
a.ACC prize
‘…the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
b.
Target: DAT[scr]-NOM
…dem
the.DAT
PRINZEN
prince
der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR
professor
‘…the professor (awards a medal) to the prince.’
c.
Target: DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]
…dem
the.DAT
PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
professor
a.ACC prize
‘…(the princess awards) a prize to the professor.’
68 (100)
Antecedent: ACC[top]-NOM-DAT
Einen Orden verleiht die
a.ACC medal awards the.NOM
Prinzessin
princess
dem
the.DAT
Ritter und
knight and
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and…’
a.
Target: ACC[scr]-NOM
…einen
a.ACC
PREIS der
prize the.NOM
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
b.
?Target: NOM-DAT[scr]
?…der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR dem
professor
the.DAT
PRINZEN.
prince
‘…the professor (awards a medal) to the prince.’
c.
?Target: ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
?…einen
a.ACC
PREIS dem
prize the.DAT
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…(the princess awards) a prize to the professor.’
Intriguingly, Topicalization of a non-canonical argument in the antecedent conjunct seems
to allow all variations. While native speakers found some sentences to be somewhat degraded, they
generally did not find any of the sentences in (99) or (100) fully ungrammatical.30 What is interesting
about the grammaticality of (99)-(100) is that it aligns to some extent with the observation for
transitive verbs, where the only slightly degraded sentence arose from a canonical word order in the
antecedent conjunct where the nominative subject lies in Spec-CP.
Finally, combining Topicalization and Scrambling, there are those permutations with a
topicalized dative or accusative object, and where the remaining non-subject argument has
scrambled to a position preceding the subject – presumably left-adjoined to TP, assuming the
subject to lie in Spec-TP. As was noted earlier, the order of DAT[top]-ACC[scr]-NOM is
The degradation found for ditransitive verbs can certainly be attributed in part to the increased complexity of
sentences compared to those using transitive verbs. In particular, judgments for ditransitive verbs varied far more than
judgments for sentences using transitive verbs, although generally, subjects were more hesitant to attribute full
grammaticality to sentences with ditransitive verbs.
30
69 independently (even in non-Gapping examples) considered worse than the other permutations of
the antecedent conjunct, so that it is not possible to see the effects of Gapping in a construction
with such an antecedent conjunct.
(101)
Antecedent: ACC[top]-DAT[scr]-NOM
Einen Orden verleiht dem
a.ACC medal awards the.DAT
Ritter die
knight the.NOM
Prinzessin
princess
und
and
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and…’
a.
???Target: ACC[scr]-NOM
???…einen
a.ACC
PREIS der
prize the.NOM
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
b.
Target: DAT[scr]-NOM
…dem
the.DAT
PRINZEN
prince
der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…the professor (awards a medal) to the prince.’
c.
*Target: ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
*…einen
a.ACC
PREIS dem
prize the.DAT
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…(the princess awards) a prize to the professor.’
Whereas Topicalization of a non-canonical subject as the only non-canonical trait did not
appear to have a significant impact on the grammaticality of sentences, the addition of scrambling an
additional argument does indeed cause considerable difficulties. When the accusative argument is
topicalized and the dative argument scrambles to the left of TP in the antecedent conjunct, this is
ungrammatical when the nominative subject or the dative object is gapped in the target conjunct.
This means that, at least for the time being, it is only the accusative object, whose counterpart is the
topicalized argument in the antecedent conjunct, that may be gapped as in (101b).
70 The table in (102) below shows a summary of the judgments for sentences with ditransitive
verbs, where the target conjunct consists of two remnants that match the linear order of arguments
relative to each other in the antecedent conjunct.
(102)
Antecedent conjunct
NOMtop-DAT-ACC
(canonical)
NOMtop-ACCscrDAT
DATtop-NOMSpec-TPACC
ACCtop-NOMSpec-TPDAT
ACCtop-DATscr-TPNOMSpec-TP
NOMSpec-TP- ACCscr-TPACCscr-vP
NOMSpec-TP
*
(97a)
*
(98a)
?
(99a)
✓
(100a)
???
(101a)
Target conjunct
NOMSpec-TP- DATscr-TPDATscr-vP
NOMSpec-TP
✓
(97b)
???
(98b)
✓
(99b)
?
(100b)
DATscr- ACCscrACCscr DATscr
✓
(97c)
?
(98c)
✓
(99c)
?
(100c)
✓
(101b)
*
(101c)
3.3 Ditransitive verbs with two-remnant target conjuncts and non-matching linear order
As is evident, the table shown in (102) still contains a good deal of missing values. This
section will fill in those gaps by providing an overview of judgments for those sentences.
Specifically, the data in question targets sentences with ditransitive verbs, where the target conjunct
consists of two remnants whose relative ordering does not match that found in the antecedent
conjunct.
A possible prediction that could be made is that grammaticality is based on which
constituents surface in the target conjunct based on the traits of the antecedent conjunct. One may
then expect to find that the ordering of remnants in the target conjunct has no bearing on the
grammaticality, and that the same remnants, even with non-matching linear order, display the same
(un)grammaticalities. However, if linear matching or more complex syntactic structure is involved,
71 the judgments are likely to differ. Again, the layout of cases will begin with those sentences where
the antecedent conjunct follows the canonical order NOM[top]-DAT-ACC.
(103)
Antecedent: NOM[top]-DAT-ACC (canonical)
Die
the.NOM
Prinzessin
princess
verleiht dem
awards the.DAT
Ritter einen Orden und
knight a.ACC medal and
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and…’
a.
%Target: ACC[scr]-NOM
%…einen
a.ACC
PREIS der
prize the.NOM
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
b.
???Target: DAT[scr]-NOM
???…dem
the.DAT
PRINZEN
prince
der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…the professor (awards a medal) to the prince.’
c.
Target: ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
…einen
a.ACC
PREIS dem
prize the.DAT
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…(the princess awards) a prize to the professor.’
When linear ordering matched, it was only ungrammatical to gap the dative object, i.e. (97a).
In (103a), however, not all subjects agreed that this was ungrammatical. While some people found a
target conjunct with the accusative object preceding the nominative subject to be bad, others did not
object strongly to it. Furthermore, while gapping the accusative object in (97b), such that the overt
remnants are a nominative subject in Spec-TP and a dative object left-adjoined to vP, was fine, it is
ungrammatical to gap the dative object when it precedes the nominative subject and presumably leftadjoins to TP. Regardless of ordering, gapping the nominative subject, so that the remnants are both
scrambled objects is grammatical.
As in Section 3.2, it seems reasonable to begin by isolating the phenomena of Topicalization
and Scrambling as best as possible, that is, by first looking at antecedent conjuncts where Scrambling
72 is involved but the nominative subject lies in Spec-CP resulting in unmarked Topicalization, and
next laying out antecedent conjuncts where a non-canonical argument is topicalized but no
Scrambling has taken place.
With matching target conjunct ordering in (98) above, when the antecedent conjunct
involves Scrambling, but has an unmarked topicalized nominative subject, a two-remnant target
conjunct was only grammatical when the remnants involved were a dative and an accusative object.
Notably, this appears to be the same when the linear order in the target conjunct does not match
that in the antecedent conjunct. That is, while (104c) is grammatical, both (104a) and (104b), where
the nominative subject follows an object that has presumably scrambled to TP, are ungrammatical.
(104)
Antecedent: NOM[top]-ACC[scr]-DAT
Die
the.NOM
Prinzessin
princess
verleiht einen Orden dem
awards a.ACC medal the.DAT
Ritter und
knight and
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and…’
a.
*Target: ACC[scr]-NOM
*…einen
a.ACC
PREIS der
prize the.NOM
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
b.
???Target: DAT[scr]-NOM
???…dem
the.DAT
PRINZEN
prince
der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…the professor (awards a medal) to the prince.’
c.
?Target: DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]
?…dem
the.DAT
PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
professor
a.ACC prize
‘…(the princess awards) the professor with a prize.’
When the antecedent involved marked Topicalization (i.e. Topicalization of a non-subject)
but no Scrambling and the remnants in the target conjunct matched their antecedent conjunct
counterparts in linear order in (99)-(100) above, it was intriguing to find that all sentences were
73 grammatical. However, as (105)-(106) show, this is no longer the case with remnants in nonmatching linear order.
(105)
Antecedent: DAT[top]-NOM-ACC
Dem
the.DAT
Ritter verleiht die
knight awards the.NOM
Prinzessin
princess
einen Orden und
a.ACC medal and
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and…’
a.
???Target: ACC[scr]-NOM
???…einen
a.ACC
PREIS der
prize the.NOM
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
b.
%Target: NOM-DAT[scr]
%…der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR dem
professor
the.DAT
PRINZEN.
prince
‘…the professor (awards a medal) to the prince.’
c.
?Target: ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
?…einen
a.ACC
PREIS dem
prize the.DAT
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…(the princess awards) a prize to the professor.’
(106)
Antecedent: ACC[top]-NOM-DAT
Einen Orden verleiht die
a.ACC medal awards the.NOM
Prinzessin
princess
dem
the.DAT
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and…’
a.
???Target: NOM-ACC[scr]
???…der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
professor
a.ACC prize
‘…the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
b.
?Target: DAT[scr]-NOM
?…dem
the.DAT
PRINZEN
prince
der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…the professor (awards a medal) to the prince.’
74 Ritter und
knight and
c.
?Target: DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]
?…dem
the.DAT
PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
professor
a.ACC prize
‘…(the princess awards) a prize to the professor.’
What we see here involves several trends. First, when the dative object was topicalized, it
was ungrammatical to gap the dative object in the target conjunct in (105b), leaving overt a
nominative subject in Spec-TP and an accusative object that has scrambled left-adjoining to TP.
Furthermore, some people found it ungrammatical to gap the accusative argument as in (105b),
where the nominative subject remnant lies in Spec-TP and the dative remnant has left-adjoined to
vP. It was still the case that a target conjunct containing only an accusative and a dative object was
grammatical in (105c). When the accusative object was topicalized instead and the dative object
remained VP-internal in the antecedent conjunct, the only ungrammatical target conjunct arose from
gapping the dative object in (106a), where the target conjunct consisted of a nominative subject in
Spec-TP followed by an accusative object, whose counterpart is topicalized in the antecedent
conjunct, scrambled to vP.
Finally, with both non-canonical Topicalization and Scrambling involved in the antecedent
conjunct (and as before omitting DAT[top]-ACC[scr]-NOM ordering as an antecedent conjunct,
since this is ungrammatical independently of Gapping), we observe the judgments shown in (107).
(107)
Antecedent: ACC[top]-DAT[scr]-NOM
Einen Orden verleiht dem
a.ACC medal awards the.DAT
Ritter die
knight the.NOM
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and…’
a.
*Target: NOM-ACC[scr]
*…der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
professor
a.ACC prize
‘…the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
75 Prinzessin
princess
und
and
b.
?Target: NOM-DAT[scr]
?…der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR dem
professor
the.DAT
PRINZEN.
prince
‘…the professor (awards a medal) to the prince.’
c.
???Target: DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]
???…dem
the.DAT
PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
professor
a.ACC prize
‘…(the princess awards) a prize to the professor.’
To recall, for the antecedent sequence ACC[top]-DAT[scr]-NOM, when the linear order of
the remnants in the target conjunct matched that in the antecedent conjunct, as we saw in (101),
sentences with an overt accusative remnant were ungrammatical. Interestingly, the same observation
holds with non-matching linear order. That is, (107c), with the target conjunct consisting of a
scrambled dative object followed by a scrambled accusative object, as well as (107a), with a
nominative subject in Spec-TP followed by an accusative object that has scrambled to vP were
considered ungrammatical. Again, the only grammatical instance arose from gapping the accusative
object, whose counterpart in the antecedent conjunct was topicalized in (107b). In other words, with
this antecedent conjunct, regardless of linear order matching, it seems that it is obligatory to gap the
argument in the target conjunct whose antecedent counterpart is topicalized.
In conclusion, it is interesting that the matching and non-matching orders of remnants
sometimes displayed the same judgments. However, this was not true in all cases, so that to some
extent, syntactic and/or linear parallelism must be at issue. (108) now shows the chart from (102),
completed with the additional data just presented.
76 (108)
Antecedent conjunct
NOMtop-DAT-ACC
(canonical)
NOMtop-ACCscrDAT
DATtop-NOMSpec-TPACC
NOMSpec-TP- ACCscr-TPACCscr-vP
NOMSpec-TP
*
%
(97a)
(103a)
*
*
(98a)
(104a)
?
???
(99a)
(105a)
ACCtop-NOMSpec-TPDAT
???
(106a)
ACCtop-DATscr-TPNOMSpec-TP
*
(107a)
✓
(100a)
???
(101a)
Target conjunct
NOMSpec-TP- DATscr-TPDATscr-vP
NOMSpec-TP
???
✓
(103b)
(97b)
???
???
(98b)
(104b)
%
✓
(105b)
(99b)
?
?
(100b)
(106b)
?
(107b)
✓
(101b)
DATscr- ACCscrACCscr DATscr
✓
✓
(97c)
(103c)
?
?
(104c)
(98c)
?
✓
(105c)
(99c)
?
?
(106c) (100c)
???
(107c)
*
(101c)
3.4 Ditransitive verbs with three-remnant target conjuncts
Looking at two-remnant target conjuncts is interesting, as it allows us to determine
restrictions on remnants as well as on gapped material. Nonetheless, as mentioned earlier, German
appears to be somewhat special in that it allows three-remnant target conjuncts more readily than
other languages, including English. Thus, in addition to target conjuncts with two remnants, for a
complete picture, it is necessary to look at the full range of three-remnant target conjuncts as well.
As for the earlier examples, I will omit sentences with the independently ungrammatical antecedent
conjunct DAT[top]-ACC[scr]-NOM. Furthermore, it should be noted that stress marking was
deliberately omitted for these sentences because determining the intonational needs and possible
discourse backgrounds, taking into account elements that are topicalized or scrambled, is sufficiently
complex to merit its own full investigation. The results shown here are thus somewhat preliminary
and adding independent findings regarding stress would be a clearly required next step for
continuing research. To allow for organization, and just as was done for the two-remnant examples,
77 the layout of cases will begin with three-remnant target conjuncts within which the linear order
matches that of the counterpart arguments in the antecedent conjunct.
(109)
Antecedent: NOM[top]-DAT-ACC (canonical)
Meine
my.NOM
Mutter liest meinem
mother reads my.DAT
Bruder ein
Buch vor
und
brother a.ACC book PTCL and
Target: NOM-DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]
…mein
my.NOM
Vater meiner
father my.DAT
Schwester
sister
eine Zeitung.
a.ACC newspaper
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and my father (reads) a newspaper to my
sister.’
(110)
Antecedent: NOM[top]-ACC[scr]-DAT
Meine
my.NOM
Mutter liest ein
Buch meinem
mother reads a.ACC book my.DAT
Bruder vor
und
brother PTCL and
Target: NOM-ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
…mein
my.NOM
Vater eine Zeitung
father a.ACC newspaper
meiner
my.DAT
Schwester.
sister
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and my father (reads) a newspaper to my
sister.’
(111)
?Antecedent: DAT[top]-NOM-ACC
?Meinem
my.DAT
Bruder liest meine
brother reads my.NOM
Mutter ein
Buch vor
und
mother a.ACC book PTCL and
Target: DAT[scr]-NOM-ACC[scr]
…meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
mein
my.NOM
Vater eine Zeitung.
father a.ACC newspaper
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and my father (reads) a newspaper to my
sister.’
78 (112)
?Antecedent: ACC[top]-NOM-DAT
?Ein Buch liest meine
a.ACC book reads my.NOM
Mutter meinem
mother my.DAT
Bruder vor
und
brother PTCL and
Vater meiner
father my.DAT
Schwester.
sister
Target: ACC[scr]-NOM-DAT[scr]
…eine Zeitung
a.ACC newspaper
mein
my.NOM
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and my father (reads) a newspaper to my
sister.’
(113)
%Antecedent: ACC[top]-DAT[scr]-NOM
%Ein Buch liest meinem
a.ACC book reads my.DAT
Bruder meine
brother my.NOM
Mutter vor
und
mother PTCL and
Target: ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]-NOM
…eine Zeitung
a.ACC newspaper
meiner Schwester
my.DAT
sister
mein
my.NOM
Vater.
father
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and my father (reads) a newspaper to my
sister.’
Matching linear order for three-remnant target conjuncts appears to be grammatical in
almost all instances, with the exception of the linear order ACC-DAT-NOM, which some people
considered to be grammatical while others did not. In contrast, when the nominative subject was
topicalized in the antecedent conjunct in (109) and (110), this seems to be fully grammatical. And,
finally, when one of the non-canonical arguments was topicalized instead, but no Scrambling took
place as in (111) and (112), the judgments were slightly degraded, although they should still be
considered grammatical.
From these judgments regarding matching linear order we can see that, as would probably be
expected, a canonical order in the antecedent conjunct as well as the target conjunct is grammatical.
It is thus interesting to see what happens in other instances where the antecedent conjunct follows a
canonical order, but the target conjunct ordering differs.
79 (114)
Antecedent: NOM[top]-DAT-ACC (canonical)
Meine
my.NOM
Mutter liest meinem
mother reads my.DAT
Bruder ein
Buch vor
und
brother a.ACC book PTCL and
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and…’
a.
?Target: NOM-ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
?…mein
my.NOM
Vater eine Zeitung
father a.ACC newspaper
meiner
my.DAT
Schwester.
sister
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
b.
???Target: DAT[scr]-NOM-ACC[scr]
???…meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
mein
my.NOM
Vater eine Zeitung.
father a.ACC newspaper
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
c.
*Target: DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]-NOM
*…meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
eine Zeitung
a.ACC newspaper
mein
my.NOM
Vater.
father
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
d.
%Target: ACC[scr]-NOM-DAT[scr]
%…eine
a.ACC
Zeitung
newspaper
mein
my.NOM
Vater meiner
father my.DAT
Schwester.
sister
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
e.
???Target: ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]-NOM
???…eine
a.ACC
Zeitung
newspaper
meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
mein
my.NOM
Vater.
father
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
As is evident from examples (114a)-(114e), not all sentences with a canonical antecedent
conjunct are grammatical. While it seems to be grammatical to have a nominative subject also be the
highest element in the target conjunct, i.e. the subject lies in Spec-TP with the remaining arguments
80 scrambling to a left-adjoined position to vP as in (114a) and (109), it is ungrammatical for the dative
to become the highest argument in the target conjunct by scrambling to TP and thus preceding the
subject ((114b) and (114c)). When the accusative scrambles to TP and is the highest argument in the
target conjunct, this is ungrammatical when the dative argument also scrambles to TP and both
objects precede the nominative subject in (114e) and grammatical only for some people when the
nominative is lower than the accusative but still c-commands the dative object in (114d).
Initially, it seems then that the topicalized element in the antecedent conjunct has a
preference for surfacing as the highest element in the target conjunct. If this is indeed the case, then
we expect to have roughly the same judgments for an antecedent conjunct in which the topicalized
element is nominative, but the accusative object scrambles out of the VP. These sentences are tested
next.
(115)
Antecedent: NOM[top]-ACC[scr]-DAT
Meine
my.NOM
Mutter liest ein
Buch meinem
mother reads a.ACC book my.DAT
Bruder vor
und
brother PTCL and
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and…’
a.
Target: NOM-DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]
…mein
my.NOM
Vater meiner
father my.DAT
Schwester
sister
eine Zeitung.
a.ACC newspaper
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
b.
%Target: DAT[scr]-NOM-ACC[scr]
%…meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
mein
my.NOM
Vater eine Zeitung.
father a.ACC newspaper
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
c.
*Target: DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]-NOM
*…meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
eine Zeitung
a.ACC newspaper
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
81 mein
my.NOM
Vater.
father
d.
???Target: ACC[scr]-NOM-DAT[scr]
???…eine
a.ACC
Zeitung
newspaper
mein
my.NOM
Vater meiner
father my.DAT
Schwester.
sister
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
e.
*Target: ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]-NOM
*…eineZeitung
a.ACC newspaper
meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
mein
my.NOM
Vater.
father
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
As the sentences in (115a)-(115e) show, when the nominative subject is topicalized, but the
accusative object scrambles to raise higher than the dative object in the antecedent conjunct, we
interestingly find a very similar list of judgments as for the canonical antecedent conjunct examples
in (114). As before, target conjuncts where the nominative subject is the highest-lying element and
occupies Spec-TP with the remaining arguments scrambling to vP are grammatical ((110) and
(115a)). However, the data presented above also demonstrates specifically that when the target
conjunct’s linear order of arguments has the canonical order for the verb lesen ‘read,’ this is
grammatical ((115a)). Furthermore, if either the dative object or the accusative object is the highestlying argument in the target conjunct (i.e. is the highest element adjoined to TP), this is
ungrammatical, with the exception of the order in (115a), where the dative meiner Schwester ‘my sister’
is the highest argument, followed by the nominative subject mein Vater ‘my father.’ This subject
presumably lies in Spec-TP, which c-commands the accusative object eine Zeitung ‘a newspaper,’
which only scrambles as high as vP. While some also found this to be ungrammatical, others found
this to be an acceptable order of arguments.
For topicalized nominative subjects in the antecedent conjunct, then, it seems that, with a
few potential exceptions in (114c) and (115b), only target conjuncts where the nominative subject
was also the highest argument were grammatical. Since the nominative has a somewhat special
82 position, given that it is by default topicalized, and that, unlike other remnants in the target conjunct,
it alone lies in Spec-TP, so that it does not become a remnant by Scrambling, it is interesting to see
what happens when the antecedent conjunct’s nominative subject is no longer topicalized. I will
begin this discussion by looking at an antecedent conjunct where the dative object is topicalized.
(116)
Antecedent: DAT[top]-NOM-ACC
Meinem
my.DAT
Bruder liest meine
brother reads my.NOM
Mutter ein
Buch vor
und
mother a.ACC book PTCL and
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and…’
a.
Target: NOM-DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]
…mein
my.NOM
Vater meiner
father my.DAT
Schwester
sister
eine Zeitung.
a.ACC newspaper
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
b.
%/???Target: NOM-ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
%/???…mein Vater eine Zeitung
my.NOM
father a.ACC newspaper
meiner
my.DAT
Schwester.
sister
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
c.
???Target: DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]-NOM
???…meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
eine Zeitung
a.ACC newspaper
mein
my.NOM
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
d.
%/???Target: ACC[scr]-NOM-DAT[scr]
%/???…eine
a.ACC
Zeitung
newspaper
mein
my.NOM
Vater meiner
father my.DAT
Schwester.
sister
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
83 Vater.
father
e.
???Target: ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]-NOM
???…eine
a.ACC
Zeitung
newspaper
meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
mein
my.NOM
Vater.
father
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
As can be seen from the overview of (109), (110), (114), and (115), it seemed fairly simple to
generalize over the observations regarding antecedent conjuncts with a topicalized nominative
subject. In opposition to these sketches, the judgments for sentences where the antecedent
contained a topicalized dative object are less satisfying. One first comment that can be made is that
the sentence in (116a) where the target conjunct follows the canonical linear order NOM-DAT[scr]ACC[scr] is grammatical. Furthermore, when the linear order matches the antecedent conjunct’s
linear order, as presented earlier in (111), this is also grammatical. Other than these sentences,
however, most speakers found constructions with this antecedent conjunct to be ungrammatical. It
should be noted, however, that while (116c) and (116e) received consistent negative judgments,
some speakers found (116b) and (116d) to be somewhat better, although no one judged these
sentences to be fully grammatical. Note that I use the notation ‘%/???’ in (116b) and (116d) to
indicate that there was considerable disagreement but that the examples should probably be counted
as ungrammatical. In (116c) and (116e), both the dative object meiner Schwester ‘my sister’ and the
accusative object eine Zeitung ‘a newspaper’ have scrambled to TP and therefore precede the
nominative subject mein Vater ‘my father.’ This is not the case in the other sentences, where no
arguments ((116b)) or only one argument ((116d)) precede(s) the nominative, which received
marginally more positive judgments.
In all of (116), the antecedent conjunct had a dative topicalized argument in the antecedent
conjunct, but no Scrambling was involved. We might thus expect to find a similar set of judgments
for sentences where the accusative object is topicalized in the antecedent, but the dative argument
84 remains VP-internal and thus not scrambled. As can be seen next, however, these facts in (117)
deviate from what was previously attested.
(117)
Antecedent: ACC[top]-NOM-DAT
Ein
Buch liest meine
a.ACC book reads my.NOM
Mutter meinem
mother my.DAT
Bruder vor
und
brother PTCL and
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and…’
a.
%/???Target: NOM-DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]
%/???…mein Vater meiner
my.NOM
father my.DAT
Schwester
sister
eine Zeitung.
a.ACC newspaper
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
b.
?Target: NOM-ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
?…mein
my.NOM
Vater eine Zeitung
father a.ACC newspaper
meiner
my.DAT
Schwester.
sister
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
c.
???Target: DAT[scr]-NOM-ACC[scr]
???…meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
mein
my.NOM
Vater eine Zeitung.
father a.ACC newspaper
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
d.
?Target: DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]-NOM
?…meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
eine Zeitung
a.ACC newspaper
mein
my.NOM
Vater.
father
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
e.
???Target: ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]-NOM
???…eine
a.ACC
Zeitung
newspaper
meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
mein
my.NOM
Vater.
father
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
The sentences in (117a)-(117e), with a topicalized accusative object and no Scrambling in the
antecedent conjunct bring up some interesting and puzzling observations. To begin with, for
instance, this is the first example of a canonical linear order target conjunct being ungrammatical for
85 many people, as occurs in (117a). Notice that, as above for (116), the symbol ‘%/???’ is used to
indicate disagreement with a tendency towards ungrammatical judgments. However, not all subjects
agreed that (117a) was bad. Despite the fact that this ordering, where the highest argument is
nominative, was usually considered bad, subjects found for (117b) that it was grammatical for the
highest argument to be the nominative subject, if the accusative eine Zeitung ‘a newspaper’ was
scrambled up to vP after the dative object meiner Schwester ‘my sister’ becomes a remnant by
scrambling to vP as well. This results in a target conjunct ordering where the accusative object
follows the subject, but precedes the dative object.
Another intriguing observation serves as a contrast to what we saw above for the antecedent
conjunct DAT[top]-NOM-ACC of the sentences in (116). With this antecedent conjunct containing
a topicalized dative object, it was better for the dative object to become the highest argument in the
target conjunct by scrambling to TP if the accusative remained the lowest argument, i.e. only
scrambled to vP, which is the matching linear order shown in (111), than for both non-subject
arguments to precede and c-command the nominative subject in the target conjunct ordering
DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]-NOM of (116c). However, the opposite is true in (117), where it is grammatical
for the accusative and the dative object to scramble to TP with the dative object c-commanding
both the accusative and the nominative argument ((117d)), while it is ungrammatical for only the
dative object to scramble to TP ((117c)). Although this differs from the observations for the same
target conjuncts in (116), the judgments for (111) and (116c) actually align with those for (112) and
(117e), where the accusative is the highest argument in the target conjunct. That is, in (116c) and
(117e), both the dative and accusative arguments c-command the subject in the target conjunct, with
the highest argument being the remnant whose counterpart is topicalized in the antecedent conjunct.
This was in both cases ungrammatical. However, it was grammatical for the target conjunct’s highest
remnant to be the remnant whose counterpart is topicalized in the antecedent conjunct in (111) and
86 (112), where only that remnant scrambles to TP and the other non-subject remnant follows the
nominative subject, i.e. scrambles to vP. Notably, (111) and (112) also have linear order matching
between the antecedent and the target conjunct.
Finally, the last observations regard those sentences where the antecedent conjunct involves
both a non-canonical topicalized argument as well as a Scrambled argument, i.e. when the linear
order of the antecedent conjunct is ACC[top]-DAT[scr]-NOM, since the antecedent order
DAT[top]-ACC[scr]-NOM is being disregarded due to its independent ungrammaticality.31
(118)
Antecedent: ACC[top]-DAT[scr]-NOM
Ein
Buch liest meinem
a.ACC book reads my.DAT
Bruder meine
brother my.NOM
Mutter vor
und
mother PTCL and
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and…’
a.
%/?Target: NOM-DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]
%/?…mein
my.NOM
Vater meiner
father my.DAT
Schwester
sister
eine Zeitung.
a.ACC newspaper
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
b.
%Target: NOM-ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
%…mein
my.NOM
Vater eine Zeitung
father a.ACC newspaper
meiner
my.DAT
Schwester.
sister
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
c.
???Target: DAT[scr]-NOM-ACC[scr]
???…meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
mein
my.NOM
Vater eine Zeitung.
father a.ACC newspaper
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
Note that in (118a), the notation ‘%/?’ is used. Similar to the cases above where judgments were valued as ‘%/???,’ I
use the symbol ‘%/?’ to indicate that there was disagreement among subjects, but that the sentence should most likely be
considered grammatical as there were indeed subjects who found the sentence completely grammatical, whereas no
subjects judged the sentence to be fully ungrammatical (i.e. no subject assigned a 4, but some assigned a 3 according to
the methodology described in Section 1.5).
31
87 d.
*Target: DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]-NOM
*…meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
eine Zeitung
a.ACC newspaper
mein
my.NOM
Vater.
father
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
e.
%Target: ACC[scr]-NOM-DAT[scr]
%…eine
a.ACC
Zeitung
newspaper
mein
my.NOM
Vater meiner
father my.DAT
Schwester.
sister
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
As is evident from the increased number of disagreeing judgments indicated by ‘%,’ subjects
seemed far less certain when evaluating these sentences on the whole. However, speakers agreed
that target conjuncts where the highest argument was a dative object ((118c) and (118d)) were
ungrammatical. Target conjuncts where the highest argument was accusative instead received very
mixed judgments. This was true both here, in (118e), where the target conjunct has an accusative
object scrambled to TP and a dative object scrambled to vP, as well as when the linear order of
arguments in the target conjunct matched that of the antecedent conjunct as shown previously in
(113), where both the dative and the accusative object in the target conjunct scramble left-adjoining
to TP. In contrast, sentences like (118a), where the target conjunct remnants followed the canonical
linear order, were usually considered to be grammatical, though even here there was some
disagreement.
To sum up, in examples (109)-(118), for ditransitive verbs with three-remnant target
conjuncts, it is clear that speakers felt far more insecure about their judgments than for previous
data. This is most likely linked to the complexity of the data, at least to some extent, especially since
three-remnant target conjuncts are cross-linguistically less accepted. Specifically, what seemed most
to lead to disagreement was the fact that all arguments in the target conjunct became overt
remnants, allowing speakers to assign all necessary grammatical functions within the target conjunct,
88 without taking into account any arguments in the antecedent conjunct. Thus, while processing the
content may have been facilitated by a complete set of arguments in the target conjunct, this made it
difficult to distinguish between ungrammaticality and awkwardness. Although it is beyond the scope
of the present work, it would certainly be beneficial to analyze what processing issues are involved in
conjunctions of such complexity, along with a full investigation of the intonational needs for
stressing remnants and their counterparts.
Before moving on to a more in-depth discussion of the generalizations (other than the few
comments already made in this section) in Section 4, it is helpful to have an overview of the
observations noted throughout Section 3.4. Note also that a copy of the summarizing tables can be
found in Appendix D.
(119)
Antecedent conjunct
Target conjunct
NOMSpec-TP- NOMSpec-TP- DATscr-TPDATscr-TPDATscr-vPACCscr-vPNOMSpec-TP- ACCscr-TPACCscr-vP
DATscr-vP
ACCscr-vP
NOMSpec-TP
(canonical)
NOMtopDAT-ACC
(canonical)
NOMtopACCscrDAT
DATtopNOMSpec-TPACC
ACCtopNOMSpec-TPDAT
ACCtopDATscr-TPNOMSpec-TP
ACCscr-TPACCscr-TPNOMSpec-TP- DATscr-TPDATscr-vP
NOMSpec-TP
✓
(109)
?
(114a)
???
(114b)
*
(114c)
%
(114d)
???
(114e)
✓
(115a)
✓
(110)
%
(115b)
*
(115c)
???
(115d)
*
(115e)
✓
(116a)
%/???
(116b)
?
(111)
???
(116c)
%/???
(116d)
???
(116e)
%/???
(117a)
?
(117b)
???
(117c)
?
(117d)
?
(112)
???
(117e)
%/?
(118a)
%
(118b)
???
(118c)
*
(118d)
%
(118e)
%
(113)
89 4
Empirical generalizations and steps towards an analysis
In this section, I will expand on the idea of ‘parallelism,’ using the term descriptively to
present the various ways in which the antecedent and target conjuncts of Gapping might need to be
alike or identical. There are a number of potential restrictions that could fall under the realm of
parallelism. As discussed in Section 1.2, it has yet to be determined whether and how linear order
and syntactic position affect grammaticality in German Gapping, and what patterns emerge given
the possible variations in the antecedent and target conjuncts. Therefore, it will be the aim in this
present section to lay out my findings on what some empirical generalizations are with respect to
these two specific dimensions of antecedent-target conjunct parallelism.
The presence of complete parallelism between the antecedent and target conjuncts in linear
order and syntactic position would mean that the order of remnants in the target conjunct should
match the order of arguments in the antecedent conjunct, and that the syntactic position of each
remnant-counterpart pair is also identical. Given the analysis of Gapping that I argued for in
Sections 2.3 and 2.4, it is difficult to imagine precisely what parallelism in syntactic positions would
mean. Thus, for instance, if there is an overt nominative subject remnant in the target conjunct, this
remnant will always lie in Spec-TP, since I am proposing coordination below the CP, whereas in the
antecedent conjunct, the subject may lie in Spec-TP or in Spec-CP. Furthermore, since dative and
accusative arguments in the target conjunct are required to scramble out of the VP, left-adjoining to
vP or TP, this will mean that oftentimes a remnant will not occupy a syntactic position mirroring the
position of its counterpart in the antecedent conjunct. That is, in the antecedent conjunct, the dative
and accusative objects may have topicalized to Spec-CP, remain VP-internal, or scramble to a
projection within the Mittelfeld. However, if these internal arguments are counterparts to overt
remnants, then the respective remnants will always be scrambled to vP or TP in the target conjunct,
depending on their position in relation to the nominative subject. Given these problems, focusing
90 on the simpler measure of linear order provided a way for structuring the layout of data so that
some overriding generalizations began to emerge. Thus, for each remnant in the target conjunct, its
ordering with respect to the other constituents in the target conjunct might be expected to match
the relative position of its counterpart in the antecedent with respect to the other arguments.
Therefore, in sentences where a non-nominative argument precedes an overt subject remnant and
appears clause-initially in the target conjunct, its counterpart should be topicalized in the antecedent
conjunct. Similarly, with a subject preceding the remaining arguments in the target conjunct, this also
requires the same ordering in the antecedent conjunct, i.e. the unmarked Topicalization of the
subject.
In this section, I offer a relatively in-depth exploration of what is and what is not
grammatical for the complex data presented in Section 3. It is likely that it is impossible to fully
account for all facts in a single paper, as different strands are involved, including syntax and
information structure, and their interaction with processing effects and prosody. Thus, in Section
4.1, I will show that there are certain syntactic generalizations that appear to govern what is and
what is not grammatical in Gapping. Specifically, we will see that scrambled arguments seem to have
a contrastive function and that topicalized arguments in the antecedent conjunct, if behaving
contrastively, give rise to a limited range of possible placements for the remnants for which they act
as counterparts. Some of these syntactic relationships and limitations may not have the appearance
of being related to parallelism, but in a broad sense, they do indeed have implications of that nature.
I have used the term ‘constraint’ to describe these generalizations, but I am using the term
informally to capture observations where a certain empirical trait seems often to result in
ungrammaticality. Section 4.2 will then provide an overview of a few linear order generalizations,
some of which appear to be more intuitively related to constraints on parallelism. In particular,
complete matching linear order as well as canonically ordered target conjuncts give rise to
91 improvements of otherwise ungrammatical sentences. The section will conclude with an overview of
the small range of data that the generalizations presented here do not capture.
4.1 Syntactic generalizations
As mentioned above, I will begin by presenting a set of empirical generalizations of a
syntactic nature to capture why certain sentences were judged to be ungrammatical. Consequently, in
Section 4.1.1, I will show that Scrambled arguments in the antecedent conjunct must be counterparts
to overt remnants. In Sections 4.1.2 and 4.1.3, I will then demonstrate that there are hierarchicallybased constraints (i.e. constraints involving c-command) on remnants whose counterparts are
scrambled or topicalized. Finally, in Section 4.1.4, I will show that there appears to be a restriction
on the degree of Scrambling possible inside a single clause. While I do not wish to claim that the
syntactic restrictions provided below are a complete formal analysis of the data presented in Section
3, I hope that the interpretive work that I have done may spark subsequent research into potential
explanations involving a full formal analysis within syntax and other domains. Where possible,
various analytic alternatives are given in addition to the empirical generalization.
I now turn to an account of the facts discovered in Section 3, as summarized on the charts in
(95), (108), and (119), given in Section 3 and Appendix D. Note also that for sentences that received
mixed judgments (i.e. ‘%’), I have chosen to try to account for both the grammatical and the
ungrammatical assessments. That is, I will try to capture why they are predicted to be
ungrammatical, but also why they may be considered grammatical by some. However, I acknowledge
that it is in principle possible that continued investigation, particularly involving context, could lead
the judgment to go in a more positive or negative direction.
92 4.1.1
Constraint A – a possible contrastive function of Scrambling
In this section, I present one interesting observation from the new data, namely that a
scrambled argument in the antecedent conjunct must be the counterpart of an overt remnant in the
target conjunct. Given the limited data set, this applies only to sentences with ditransitive verbs
where an argument is gapped in the target conjunct. That is to say, in two-remnant target conjuncts
for ditransitive verbs, if there is a scrambled element in the antecedent conjunct, the element with
the same case marking must be overt in the target conjunct. This constraint is presented below.
Constraint A
Scrambled antecedent arguments must be counterparts to overt remnants in
the target conjunct.
In sentences where the antecedent conjunct has the form NOM[top]-ACC[scr]-DAT, the
accusative object has scrambled to a position left-adjoined to VP, vP, or TP (these options are all
possible as there are no elements in between the nominative subject in Spec-CP and the dative
object in Spec-VP). The constraint tells us that target conjuncts for this antecedent conjunct must
have an accusative remnant or else they will be ungrammatical. This captures the ungrammaticality
of examples (98b) and (104b), which are the only sentences where there is a scrambled accusative
object in the antecedent conjunct and where there is no overt accusative remnant in the target
conjunct. The other antecedent ordering that can give rise to sentences that fall under the scope of
this constraint is ACC[top]-DAT[scr]-NOM, where the dative object in the antecedent conjunct
must have scrambled to TP, which is the only position given the fact that the accusative lies in SpecCP whereas the nominative lies in Spec-TP. When examining the data, we find that both sentences
with target conjuncts where the dative argument was gapped, namely (101a) and (107a), are
ungrammatical.
While scrambled arguments thus seem to require overt remnants, the same generalization is
not true of topicalized arguments. For instance, when looking at sentences where the antecedent
93 conjunct has the ordering DAT[top]-NOM-ACC, it is true that it was ungrammatical to gap the
dative object in (105a) where the target conjunct has the form ACC[scr]-NOM, but it was
grammatical to gap the dative object in (99a) where the accusative and nominative arguments are
reversed. Therefore, the generalization that an overt remnant is required does not hold for
arguments that are topicalized in the antecedent conjunct.
This generalization is interesting, as it may be telling with regards to the function of
scrambled elements. Perhaps Scrambling in the antecedent conjunct causes the scrambled argument
to receive a contrastive interpretation. However, this in turn forces there to be an argument in the
target conjunct to contrast with it. In order to determine whether such a principle truly holds, it
would be necessary to analyze a broader set of sentences involving Scrambling. In particular, when
coordination cannot provide a domain for contrast (see e.g. Féry and Hartmann 2005 for insight
into how coordination itself may license certain prosodic patterns), it is essential to build a discourse
context for utterances. Furthermore, to continue this investigation, previous literature on the
pragmatic effects of Scrambling must be critically reviewed. If Scrambling were to demonstrate
contrastive traits more generally, how does this play out with regards to prosody and focus? Another
interesting question pertains to how these effects differ from those observed for contrastive topics,
summarized in Büring (2014).
If this topic were to be investigated further, it is crucial that data be constructed taking into
account a number of possible contrastive hypotheses. For instance, one may begin by looking at
utterances such as (120) below and conclude that Scrambling has no contrastive effect.
(120)
Q:
Hat
has
der
the.NOM
Lehrer das
teacher the.ACC
gegeben?
given
‘Did the teacher give the book to the student?’
94 Buch dem
book the.DAT
Schüler
student
A1:
Nein, der
no
the.NOM
Lehrer hat
teacher has
den
the.ACC
STIFT dem
pen
the.DAT
Schüler gegeben.
student given
‘No, the teacher gave the pen to the student.’
A2:
Nein, der
no
the.NOM
Lehrer hat
teacher has
dem
the.DAT
Schüler den
student the.ACC
STIFT gegeben.
pen
given
‘No, the teacher gave the pen to the student.’
A3:
Nein, den
no
the.ACC
STIFT hat
pen
has
der
the.NOM
Lehrer dem
teacher the.DAT
Schüler gegeben.
student given
‘No, the teacher gave the pen to the student.’
A4:
Nein, der
no
the.NOM
WÄCHTER
guard
Lehrer hat
teacher has
das
the.ACC
Buch dem
book the.DAT
gegeben.
given
‘No, the teacher gave the pen to the guard.’
In example (120), the question providing a context for the subsequent response contains a
scrambled accusative argument. One might therefore expect that, given – for the simplest scenario –
neutral intonation, this question is eliciting information about what the teacher gave to the student.
This would result in responses A1, A2, and A3, where den Stift ‘the pen’ is stressed to highlight that
this is contrary to information previously presented. However, as is evident, this new information
may be scrambled (A1), in-situ (A2), or topicalized (A3). Furthermore, although das Buch ‘the book’
has scrambled in the question, the response does not need to provide information about a
counterpart to this constituent, as shown in response A4, where instead the dative object dem Wächter
‘the guard’ is focused. While the idea that Scrambling has a contrastive function may be dismissed
95 based on examples such as (120), I believe that it is necessary to examine these types of data in a
more nuanced manner, particularly in the realm of added context.
Consequently, I have shown that Constraint A captures the data presented in this thesis, but
requires more empirical evidence to discover further restrictions that apply regarding the nature of
the contrastiveness of Scrambling. In the next sections, I will examine constraints on remnants
whose antecedent counterparts are instead topicalized.
4.1.2
Constraint B – Topicalization and c-command domain
In this section, I will present a complex constraint regarding the position of arguments in the
target conjunct whose counterpart is topicalized. This constraint states that for a given remnant in
the target conjunct whose counterpart in the antecedent is topicalized, this remnant must ccommand at least the same set of overt elements that it would c-command in a canonical ordering of
arguments.32,33 Concretely, if the topicalized argument in the antecedent conjunct is a nominative
subject, then a nominative remnant in the target conjunct must c-command all other overt remnants,
given that there is an overt nominative subject in the target conjunct. Overt dative remnants whose
counterpart is topicalized must c-command at least the accusative remnant, if such a remnant is
present in the target conjunct. Furthermore, accusative arguments are always the lowest arguments
in the canonical order. Therefore, the generalization does not target any of the instances of Gapping
where an accusative object is topicalized in the antecedent conjunct.
Notice that the canonical ordering of arguments results in the same linear order found when the arguments are all in
their base positions.
33 An alternative formulation of this constraint is that it is ungrammatical for an argument in the target conjunct to cross
the trace of an element whose counterpart is topicalized in the antecedent conjunct. With respect to the data presented
here, both formulations predict the same results, although a deeper analysis of the implications of each wording may
show that one of the alternatives is more accurate.
Furthermore, c-command makes the same prediction as linear precedence, so that it could also turn out that this
generalization is due to a constraint of linear order nature.
32
96 Constraint B
A remnant whose antecedent counterpart is topicalized must minimally ccommand the set of overt arguments that it c-commands in a canonical
ordering.
It is important for the constraint only to apply to overt remnants as it would otherwise make
incorrect predictions. The presentation of examples will help to demonstrate how Constraint B will
work, but it may be helpful to consider first which sentences are predicted to be ungrammatical.
This is shown below.
Transitive verbs
Ditransitive verbs with
two-remnant conjuncts
Ditransitive verbs with
three-remnant conjuncts
(91), (93)
(103a), (103b), (104a), (104b), (105e)
(114b), (114c), (114d), (114e), (115b), (115c), (115d),
(115e), (116b), (116d), (116e)
For ditransitive verbs where the nominative subject is topicalized in the antecedent conjunct,
the constraint captures why examples (103b), (104a), and (104b) are ungrammatical, because in these
sentences with two remnant target conjuncts, there is a dative or an accusative object c-commanding
the overt nominative subject in the target conjunct. The constraint furthermore explains why, for
sentences with three-remnant target conjuncts, examples (114b), (114c), and (114e) and (115c) and
(115e) were not accepted. Examples (103a), (114d), and (115b) were given a judgment of ‘%.’
Constraint B would predict that these sentences should in fact be considered ungrammatical. For
present purposes, for lack of counterevidence, I will therefore treat these as ungrammatical.
However, it may in the future – given additional research – be the case that such sentences appear to
be judged more positively, in which case a revision of Constraint B or another explanation is
necessary. Additionally, for sentences with a topicalized dative object in the antecedent conjunct,
Constraint B predicts any target conjuncts where there is an overt dative remnant that is preceded by
an accusative to be ungrammatical. This correctly captures the ungrammaticality of sentences (116b),
(116d), and (116e). To see how this constraint works precisely, it is helpful to look at a concrete
97 derivation. For instance, ungrammaticality of the order of arguments in (103b) can be explained
when looking at the tree in (121).
(121)
In order to achieve the target conjunct order, the nominative subject first must raise to SpecTP, fulfilling the EPP. Then the dative object scrambles out of the VP, using the Adjoin operation
to left-adjoin to TP. This results in an ordering in the target conjunct where the dative object ccommands the nominative subject. Since the antecedent conjunct has a nominative topicalized
element, this movement is ungrammatical.
It is also important that the set of c-commanded elements only be calculated for overt
remnants because otherwise examples such as (99a) would be considered ungrammatical. In (99a),
the dative object is topicalized in the antecedent conjunct. However, the dative argument remains
VP-internal in the target conjunct so that it can subsequently be deleted by Gapping. Before
deletion, there is thus a configuration where the accusative object c-commands the dative despite the
98 fact that the dative is topicalized in the antecedent conjunct. This shows that Constraint B must only
apply to overt remnants.34
For ditransitive verbs, there is one exception where this generalization does not seem to
hold, namely example (105c), where the antecedent conjunct has the ordering DAT[top]-NOMACC. According to Constraint B, since the dative is topicalized in the antecedent conjunct, an
accusative object should not be able to c-command a dative remnant in the target conjunct.
However, most people did not feel that this caused the sentence to be ungrammatical. As was
covered in Section 2.4, since there is no nominative subject in the target conjunct, this example is
better captured by vP-coordination than by TP-coordination, so that the generalization may not
have the same effect in this configuration.
(122)
Another interesting outcome of the fact that the constraint only applies to overt remnants is that this may contribute
to the, already considerable, body of literature on null topics. A detailed analysis of this work and how it may play out in
the German data presented here is, however, beyond the possible scope currently.
34
99 In (122), the dative object, which is topicalized in the antecedent conjunct, is the counterpart
of an overt dative remnant that is c-commanded by an accusative argument. It remains for the
moment unexplained why it does not seem ungrammatical for the accusative object to c-command
the dative object in the target conjunct.
With regards to transitive verbs, we see further contradictions. Constraint B predicts that
sentences with a canonical antecedent conjunct ordering but a non-canonical ordering in the target
conjunct should be ungrammatical, since nothing should be able to c-command the nominative
subject if it has a topicalized antecedent counterpart. That is, sentences (91) and (93) should be
ungrammatical by Constraint B. However, in general, most people found all instances of Gapping
for transitive verbs to be grammatical, including (91) and (93). Nonetheless, it should be noted that
judgments for transitive verbs were overall more confident, such that perhaps the slight degradation
of (91) and (93) could be more telling than when such a degradation was found in the increasingly
complicated sentences with ditransitive verbs. If we take this degradation to be an outcome of
Constraint B that does not manifest itself in ungrammaticality, but rather in degradation, this could
indicate that this constraint on the c-command domain of an argument that has a topicalized
counterpart is related to processing issues. As mentioned earlier, the means used for this study do
not allow for a true investigation of processing and thus, if processing is related, this can only be a
speculation presently.
However, there is additional evidence that complexity of comprehension may be an
appropriate analysis for the reason behind Constraint B, and why it appears to have a stronger
impact in sentences with ditransitive verbs. While most of the sentences with transitive verbs that
had an ordering in which Constraint B should apply were only considered slightly degraded and this
should probably be the generalized judgment, it is interesting to observe a specific subset of tested
sentences below. 100 (123)
?Die
the.NOM
Prinzessin
princess
schreibt
writes
Postkarte
post.card
der
the.NOM
PRINZ.
prince
einen BRIEF und
a.ACC letter and
eine
a.ACC
‘The princess writes a letter and the prince (writes) a post card.’
(124)
Die
the.NOM
SÄNGERIN sieht
singer
sees
der
the.NOM
MALER
painter
den
the.ACC
den
the.ACC
SCHAUSPIELER
actor
und
and
KLEMPNER.
plumber
‘The singer sees the actor and the painter (sees) the plumber.’
(125)
???Die
the.NOM
Sängerin
singer
sieht
sees
den
the.ACC
den
the.ACC
Klempner
plumber
der
the.NOM
SCHAUSPIELER
actor
und
and
MALER.
painter
‘The singer sees the actor and the painter (sees) the plumber.’
(126)
Den
the.ACC
Schauspieler
actor
sieht
sees
die
the.NOM
den
the.ACC
Klempner
plumber
der
the.NOM
SÄNGERIN und
singer
und
MALER.
painter
‘The singer sees the actor and the painter (sees) the plumber.’
(127)
?Den
the.ACC
Schauspieler
actor
sieht
sees
der
the.NOM
Maler den
painter the.ACC
die
the.NOM
SÄNGERIN und
singer
und
KLEMPNER.
plumber
‘The singer sees the actor and the painter (sees) the plumber.’
Interestingly, while sentences such as (123) with the structure in question were only
degraded, (125) was found to be considerably worse. Both sentences were considered worse with
respect to all other permutations of arguments for the respective sentence. The particularity that
makes (125) worse than for instance (123) may have to do with the length or animacy of noun
phrases or similar issues that have an effect on processing complexity. In (123), the direct object is
101 inanimate while the subject is animate, so it may be easier for native speakers to distinguish the
grammatical function of arguments than in (125), where both arguments are animate, so both
arguments (were it not for overt case marking) could logically be both the agent and receiver of the
seeing action. The sentence below, which did not form part of the data set but whose judgment is in
my opinion quite clear, is far worse than all the other instances for sentences with ditransitive verbs.
Constraint B captures the ungrammaticality of (129), since the accusative argument in the target
conjunct c-commands the nominative whose counterpart is topicalized in the antecedent conjunct.
(128)
?Der
the.NOM
Junge auf
boy
on
und
and
das
the.NOM
hier
here
war.
was
der
the.ACC
Mädchen
girl
Bank sah
bench saw
den
the.ACC
seine
his.ACC
Mann, der
man who
Mutter
mother
gestern
yesterday
‘The boy on the bench saw his mother and the girl (saw) the man who was here
yesterday.’
(129)
*Der
the.NOM
und
and
Junge auf
boy
on
den
the.ACC
der
the.ACC
Mann, der
man who
Bank sah
bench saw
gestern
yesterday
hier
here
seine
his.ACC
war,
was
Mutter
mother
das
the.NOM
Mädchen.
girl
‘The boy on the bench saw his mother and the girl (saw) the man who was here
yesterday.’
Sentence (129) involves a construction targeted by Constraint B, while (128) does not. Some
of the noun phrases here are quite complex and in particular, the length of DPs and their complexity
does not match between remnants and their counterparts. This appears to be much better when the
linear order between conjuncts matches.
102 The discussion presented above suggests that a remnant in the target conjunct whose
counterpart in the antecedent is topicalized, and which does not c-command at least the same set of
overt elements that it would c-command in a canonical ordering of arguments results in difficulties
regarding processing. Studies using more precise measurements of processing are required to
confirm this analysis, so that Constraint B can, for the time being, only be taken as a hypothesis
explaining the observed facts.35
4.1.3
Constraint C – Topicalization and expectations
In the previous section, it was suggested that overt remnants that have a topicalized
counterpart in the antecedent conjunct cause difficulties in comprehension if the remnant does not
c-command the arguments it normally c-commands in its position for canonical ordering. I will
present in this section another constraint that specifies that a remnant whose antecedent counterpart
is topicalized must scramble to a position c-commanding the nominative subject of the target
conjunct. Evidently, given that the constraint is defined in relation to the subject, Constraint C
cannot target sentences with an antecedent conjunct where the nominative subject is topicalized (i.e.
the default Topicalization).
Until now, the target position to which a given remnant can scramble within the Mittelfeld has
appeared to be fairly arbitrary. However, it seems that, with a few exceptions, we can capture a
considerable number of ungrammatical judgments with Constraint C:
It is interesting to note that the constraint applied here to remnants whose antecedent counterpart is topicalized
produces a thought-provoking subset of data if applied to remnants whose antecedent counterpart is instead scrambled.
However, the data is not sufficiently powerful to propose a constraint. This is in part due to the fact that the only
sentences this applies to are those sentences with an antecedent conjunct of ACC[top]-DAT[scr]-NOM, as the only
other antecedent conjunct with a scrambled element is NOM-ACC[scr]-DAT, where the accusative, for which the base
position does not c-command any other arguments, scrambles. The constraint would apply to examples (101c), (118b),
(118d), and (118e), where (101c) was considered to be ungrammatical, but the remainder received mixed judgments
(‘%’). Given that the data was grammatical for some people, there is not enough evidence to claim that there should be a
separate constraint stating that remnants whose antecedent counterpart is scrambled must minimally c-command the set
of overt arguments that they c-command in a canonical ordering (i.e. the analogue of Constraint B applied to remnants
with scrambled antecedent counterparts).
35
103 Constraint C
A remnant whose counterpart in the antecedent conjunct is topicalized must
become a remnant by scrambling to a position c-commanding the nominative
subject.
I will begin by demonstrating the merits of this constraint, showing the set of ungrammatical
judgments it can account for. After this, I will discuss the exceptions in the data that escape the
constraint. While it may at first seem that these predictions make Constraint C unfeasible, I will
present in Section 4.2.2 a rule involving linear order that can account for why these sentences, which
Constraint C predicts to be ungrammatical, are improved. Finally, I will provide an initial analytic
hypothesis to extend beyond the data at hand. This is to be investigated in greater detail in future
research.
Before giving an overview of the data captured by Constraint C, it is important to lay out
some precise specifications, which, if not taken into account, will make incorrect predictions. First
of all, the constraint applies only to overt remnants with topicalized antecedent counterparts. That
is, if an argument whose antecedent counterpart is topicalized is gapped, Constraint C does not
apply. Furthermore, Constraint C not only applies to target conjuncts with overt nominative
subjects, but also has a bearing on sentences where the nominative subject is gapped in a target
conjunct. This is the case for sentences with ditransitive verbs where Gapping takes place in a
structure of coordinated vPs. Therefore, Constraint C does not imply that the remnant must always
c-command the nominative subject by scrambling to a left-adjoined position to TP, but is also
satisfied when the remnant whose counterpart is topicalized only scrambles to vP, if the nominative
subject remains in-situ (which for the current data set means that it will be gapped). Given these
specifications, the table below shows the sentences that are predicted to be ungrammatical under
Constraint C.
104 Transitive verbs
Ditransitive verbs with
two-remnant conjuncts
Ditransitive verbs with
three-remnant conjuncts
(92), (94)
(105b), (106a), (107a)
(116a), (116b), (116d), (117a), (117b), (117c), (118a),
(118b), (118c)
For ditransitive verbs where the antecedent conjunct has the form DAT[top]-NOM-ACC,
Constraint C captures the ungrammaticality (for some people) of examples (116b) and (116d). In
these examples, the antecedent conjunct has a topicalized dative argument, but this dative is a
counterpart to a remnant that does not c-command the subject of the target conjunct. When the
antecedent conjunct has the linear order ACC[top]-NOM-DAT or ACC[top]-DAT[scr]-NOM,
Constraint C predicts that it is ungrammatical for an accusative remnant not to c-command the
nominative subject in the target conjunct. This can capture why (106a), (107a), (117a), (117c), and
(118c) are ungrammatical or bad. Note that (105b) and (118b) were not considered ungrammatical
by all subjects. If there were to emerge additional evidence that these should be counted as
grammatical, these sentences would form further exceptions to Constraint C and thereby would
markedly weaken the argumentation for Constraint C, such that it may be necessary to revise or
eliminate this generalization. Additionally, the status of (116b), (116d) and (117a) (‘%/???’) currently
leans toward the correct prediction made by Constraint C, but should be investigated more closely
as well.
While the constraint is able to account for a good amount of data in addition to the
uncertain judgments, it also has a number of exceptions, most of which, can be explained by
overriding judgments of linear order. These improvements can explain why not all people found
(117a) (‘%/???’) and (118a) (‘%’) to be ungrammatical, but do not apply to (105b) (‘%’) and (118b)
(‘%’), so that these sentences should be ungrammatical by Constraint C. Finding additional empirical
evidence to support the ungrammaticality of (105b) and (118b) may be difficult, given that it is hard
to think of a situation outside of Gapping where Constraint C could apply, so that I will, for present
105 purposes, assume that these sentences would prove to be ungrammatical for a majority of subjects if
further native speakers were to be asked about them.
Constraint C, as it currently functions, also makes some more incorrect predictions. It
predicts that when a dative remnant has a topicalized counterpart in the antecedent conjunct, this
remnant must c-command the nominative subject of the target conjunct, and therefore predicts
example (116a) to be ungrammatical. Additionally, when an accusative object is topicalized in the
antecedent conjunct, then an accusative remnant in the target conjunct, if present, must c-command
the nominative subject in that conjunct. Therefore, sentences (117b) and (118a) should be
ungrammatical. However, subjects found (116a), (117b), and (118a) to be grammatical (although
sometimes degraded), forming exceptions to Constraint C. As will be shown later, the
ungrammaticality of (116a) and (118a) is overridden or improved by constraints on linear order.
However, the ungrammaticality of (117b) will remain for the moment unexplained.
For transitive verbs, sentences where the non-canonical argument was topicalized in the
antecedent, but followed the subject in the target conjunct ((92) and (94)) were generally not
considered ungrammatical, forming another exception to the constraint.
In (92), the topicalized argument in the antecedent conjunct is the accusative object.
However, in the target conjunct, the accusative object does not c-command the nominative subject.
In (94), we observe the same pattern, except that the verb takes a dative complement instead of an
accusative one. Although the fine-tuned scalar judgments are unable to capture this, both were
considered somewhat worse than the sentences where the linear order of the arguments matched
between the antecedent and target conjuncts.36 Similarly to the exceptions found for ditransitive
verbs, the exception for transitive verbs will be remedied by an explanation later in this section.
36
While not part of the present study, it is interesting to note the following slight variation in judgments:
106 I propose that Constraint C is related to a problem caused by the contrastive topic that most
speakers expect for sentences with a non-canonically topicalized argument. Büring (2014) argues that
contrastive topics relate to a set of alternative questions rather than propositions. Since sentences for
ditransitive verbs were provided to subjects without surrounding discourse, it is likely that a noncanonically topicalized argument draws attention and therefore is interpreted as contrastive in a
sentence with coordinated clauses. Take for instance example (116b) repeated below:
(116b) %/???Antecedent: DAT[top]-NOM-ACC; Target: NOM-ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
%/???Meinem Bruder liest meine
my.DAT
brother reads my.NOM
Mutter ein
Buch vor
und
mother a.ACC book PTCL and
mein
my.NOM
meiner
my.DAT
Vater eine Zeitung
father a.ACC newspaper
Schwester.
sister
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and my father (reads) a newspaper to my
sister.’
In the antecedent conjunct, meinem Bruder ‘my brother’ is topicalized. When a speaker hears
the antecedent conjunct in isolation, it is intuitive to take this sentence to be a response to the
question: Who reads what to y?, where meinem Bruder ‘my brother’ is an instance of y in the antecedent
conjunct. This raises a set of alternative propositions about meinem Bruder ‘my brother.’ On the other
hand, the ungapped equivalent of the target conjunct (NOM[top]-ACC[scr]-DAT) has a canonically
(i)
Der
Anklage
the.DAT accusation
widerspricht
refutes
der
the.NOM
Mann
man
und
and
die
the.NOM
Frau
dem
Argument.
woman the.DAT argument
‘The man refutes the accusation and the woman (refutes) the argument.’
(ii)
?Den
Schauspieler
the.ACC actor
sieht
sees
die
the.NOM
Sängerin und
singer und
der
the.NOM
Maler
painter
den
Klempner.
the.ACC plumber
‘The singer sees the actor and the painter (sees) the plumber.’
One likely explanation for why (i) was considered better is that the subjects of both conjuncts is animate while the object
is inanimate, whereas in (ii) both the subject and object are animate, so that the relationship is not as intuitively
determined.
107 topicalized nominative subject. It seems that the nominative subject has a weakening effect on
contrastiveness, such that the ungrammaticality of (116b) arises from the fact that a hearer expects a
second alternative y for the question for the target conjunct, but instead gets a conjunct where this
expected constituent is not at issue.
Interestingly, this seems not only to be the case for sentences involving Gapping, but holds
more widely.
(130)
#Meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
geschenkt
given
und
and
Auto
car
hat
has
meine
my.NOM
mein
my.NOM
Vater ein
Buch
father a.ACC book
Mutter hat
mother has
meinem
my.DAT
Bruder ein
brother a.ACC
geschenkt.
given
‘My father gave a book to my sister and my mother gave a car to my brother.’
In the coordinated clauses of (130), we can observe a similar pattern to that seen for (116b)
above. The dative object is topicalized in the first clause, but the dative argument in the second
clause does not c-command the subject in that clause. One can think of this sentence as stating: With
respect to my sister, my father gave her a book. However, this highlighting of the dative object raises
expectations that the next clause continue by doing one of the following: (a) continue discussing the
situation (She did not enjoy reading it) or (b) provide an alternative answer to the implicit question (With
respect to my brother,…). Neither of these expectations is followed in (130), so that the sentence seems
semantically odd if not ungrammatical.
Unfortunately, providing a continued in-depth analysis for this hypothesis is beyond the
scope of possibilities in this thesis. Consequently, much more work is necessary to investigate how
such a hypothesis can explain Constraint C – that a remnant whose antecedent counterpart is
topicalized must c-command the subject of the target conjunct. Additionally, it is quite likely that
added discourse may alter judgments if the previous discourse did not set up a situation that lends
108 itself to a contrastive reading of a topicalized argument. Evidently, not only context, but also
intonation is a key issue here, as it is indicative of semantic functions, such as contrastive topics (see
e.g. Büring 2014).
I have demonstrated in this section a constraint on the position, hierarchically, that an
argument whose counterpart in the antecedent is topicalized may take. Thus, both Constraints B and
C are restrictions on such remnants – namely that an overt argument in the target conjunct whose
antecedent counterpart is topicalized must c-command minimally the same set of overt arguments
that it would c-command in the canonical order, and that this argument must also c-command the
nominative subject. Constraint C brings up interesting questions about the contrastive nature of
topicalized arguments and perhaps a set of expectations that such topichood gives rise to.
4.1.4
Constraint D – multiple Scrambling and markedness
While the constraint in 4.1.3 suggested one type of restriction on the position targeted by a
remnant with a topicalized counterpart – specifically that an overt remnant with a topicalized
counterpart must also c-command the nominative subject in the target conjunct – this section will
discuss a different restriction of similar nature, namely that it is usually not grammatical for more
than one argument to scramble to TP. I will call this Constraint D and discuss its effects in the
present section.
Constraint D
It is ill-formed for multiple arguments to scramble left-adjoining to TP in the
target conjunct of a Gapping construction.
Constraint D predicts all sentences that have target conjuncts of the form DAT[scr]ACC[scr]-NOM or ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]-NOM to be ungrammatical because in these examples both
the dative object and the accusative object have scrambled to TP. This list is shown below.
109 Ditransitive verbs with (114c), (114e), (115c), (115e), (116c), (116e), (117d),
three-remnant conjuncts (117e), (118d), (113)
This generalization correctly predicts that (114c), (114e), (115c), (115e), (116c), (116e),
(117e), and (118d) are ungrammatical. This covers nearly all of these cases, with the exceptions of
(117d), which was considered grammatical, and (113), which some subjects found ungrammatical,
whereas others did not. As in previous sections, it should be noted that an explanation for the
potential ungrammaticality of (113) will be provided later.
The question that arises given this constraint is why it is not ungrammatical in other types of
sentences for multiple arguments to scramble to TP. It was noted earlier for instance that the
antecedent conjunct ordering DAT-ACC-NOM is ungrammatical in matrix clauses, but does not
seem to be equally bad in embedded clauses. In embedded clauses, such an ordering arises when the
nominative subject raises to Spec-TP and both internal arguments scramble left-adjoining to TP.
Thus, example (131) may be considered somewhat odd, but if provided with reasonable context is
not considered ungrammatical.37
(131)
Er
he.NOM
bemerkte,
noticed
Currywurst
der
curry.sausage the.NOM
dass
that
dem
the.DAT
Polizist
policeman
Gefangenen
prisoner
die
the.ACC
gab.
gave
‘He noticed that the policeman gave the curry sausage to the prisoner.’
While such a simple embedded clause is not ungrammatical, it seems that other instances of
embedding are indeed ungrammatical when multiple arguments have scrambled to TP.
(132)
*Der
the.NOM
hilfreiche
helpful
Mann erkundigte
man inquired
dem
the.DAT
Mädchen
girl
der
the.NOM
sich, wo
einen Ring
REFL where a.ACC ring
Junge kaufen könnte.
boy
buy
could
‘The helpful man asked where the boy could buy a ring for the girl.’
37
Note that judgments here require additional support from native speakers.
110 In (132), there is an embedded wh-question, so that the wh-phrase wo ‘where’ lies in SpecCP. Thus, the nominative subject raises to Spec-TP to satisfy the EPP and remains there. This
means that einen Ring ‘a ring’ and dem Mädchen ‘the girl’ have left-adjoined to TP. As with the Gapping
sentences, this is ungrammatical.
It is possible that Constraint D arises from a more general constraint on scrambling multiple
arguments to TP. However, in order to confirm such a restriction, it is necessary to take into
account a larger set of empirical data in which such options for Scrambling are observable. Such data
would likely have to contain a number of quite marked constructions, so that this investigation
would potentially prove to be very difficult.
Given the nuanced and convoluted nature of the data, it is possible that Constraint D is in
actuality an outcome of the high degree of markedness in sentences where there are multiple
observably scrambled arguments in the target conjunct,38 potential other non-canonically positioned
arguments in the antecedent conjunct, as well as elided material as the outcome of Gapping.
4.1.5
Summary of syntactic generalizations and exceptions
In Sections 4.1.1-4.1.4, I have laid out and explored a few syntactic generalizations that may
explain some of the observed ungrammaticalities in the new data presented in Section 3.
Furthermore, I have presented possible next steps for future research investigating the broader
nature of these restrictions. While the informal constraints are able to capture a majority of
judgments, they cannot account for all of them. Furthermore, there were exceptions to some of the
constraints. In the next section, I aim to remedy some of these exceptions by traits of linear order.
However, before doing so, it is helpful to see an overview of the generalizations as well as of the
judgments captured and not captured by Constraints A-D. Note that in the tables provided, I have
I use the term observably scrambled here meaning that even in an ungapped version of the target conjunct, none of these
arguments would lie in a canonical position.
38
111 removed the shading that previously indicated that there was matching linear order between the
antecedent and target conjunct. The shading provided here instead is used to show exceptions (dark
shading) or potential exceptions (light shading) to constraints. The constraints that capture or
contradict data are presented in the cell for each judgment.
Constraint A
Constraint B
Constraint C
Constraint D
Scrambled antecedent arguments must be counterparts to
overt remnants in the target conjunct.
A remnant whose antecedent counterpart is topicalized must
minimally c-command the set of overt arguments that it ccommands in a canonical ordering.
A remnant whose counterpart in the antecedent conjunct is
topicalized must become a remnant by scrambling to a
position c-commanding the nominative subject.
It is ill-formed for multiple arguments to scramble leftadjoining to TP in the target conjunct of a Gapping
construction.
Target conjunct
NOMSpec-TP-ACCscr-vP
(canonical)
Antecedent
conjunct
NOMtop-ACC
(canonical)
ACCtop-NOMSpec-TP
✓ (87)
? (91)
B
✓ (92)
C
✓ (88)
Target conjunct
NOMSpec-TP-DATscr-vP
(canonical)
Antecedent
conjunct
NOMtop-DAT
(canonical)
DATtop-NOMSpec-TP
112 ACCscr-TP-NOMSpec-TP
DATscr-TP-NOMSpec-TP
✓ (89)
? (93)
B
✓ (94)
C
✓ (90)
Antecedent conjunct
NOMtop-DAT-ACC
(canonical)
NOMtop-ACCscrDAT
DATtop-NOMSpec-TPACC
ACCtop-NOMSpec-TPDAT
Antecedent conjunct
ACCtop-DATscr-TPNOMSpec-TP
NOMtopDAT-ACC
(canonical)
NOMtopACCscrDAT
DATtopNOMSpec-TPACC
ACCtopNOMSpec-TPDAT
ACCtopDATscr-TPNOMSpec-TP
NOMSpec-TP- ACCscr-TPACCscr-vP
NOMSpec-TP
%
*
(103a)
(97a)
B
*
*
(104a)
(98a)
B
Target conjunct
NOMSpec-TP- DATscr-TPDATscr-vP
NOMSpec-TP
???
✓
(103b)
(97b)
B
???
???
(98b)
(104b)
A
A, B
%
✓
(105b)
(99b)
C
DATscr- ACCscrACCscr DATscr
✓
(97c)
✓
(103c)
?
(104c)
?
(98c)
✓
(99c)
?
(105c)
B
?
(99a)
???
(105a)
???
(106a)
C
*
(107a)
A, C
✓
(100a)
?
(100b)
?
(106b)
?
(106c)
?
(100c)
???
(101a)
A
?
(107b)
✓
(101b)
???
(107c)
*
(101c)
Target conjunct
NOMSpec-TP- NOMSpec-TP- DATscr-TPDATscr-TPDATscr-vPACCscr-vPNOMSpec-TP- ACCscr-TPACCscr-vP
DATscr-vP
ACCscr-vP
NOMSpec-TP
(canonical)
???
*
?
✓
(114b)
(114c)
(114a)
(109)
B
B, D
%
*
✓
✓
(115b)
(115c)
(115a)
(110)
B
B, D
%/???
???
✓
?
(116b)
(116c)
(116a)
(111)
B, C
D
C
%/???
?
???
?
(117a)
(117b)
(117c)
(117d)
C
C
C
D
%/?
%
???
*
(118a)
(118b)
(118c)
(118d)
C
C
C
D
ACCscr-TPACCscr-TPNOMSpec-TP- DATscr-TPDATscr-vP
NOMSpec-TP
%
(114d)
B
???
(115d)
B
%/???
(116d)
B, C
?
(112)
%
(118e)
???
(114e)
B, D
*
(115e)
B, D
???
(116e)
B, D
???
(117e)
D
%
(113)
D
These constraints on syntactic movement, hierarchy, and position cover nearly the full extent
of judgments. However, there are a few sentences that were considered ungrammatical that none of
the constraints capture. These are the sentences given in (97a), (98a), (105a), and (107c), which were
113 judged ungrammatical, but none of the constraints captures, and (118e), which some people
considered ungrammatical.
One interesting observation about sentences (97a), (98a), and (105a) is that the target
conjunct always consists of a nominative subject and an accusative object. However, it is not the
case that this is generally ungrammatical, since (99a) and (100a) were generally accepted.
We are faced by a greater problem, however, regarding sentences that should, according to
Constraints A-D, be ungrammatical, but that are not. Thus, Constraint B predicts that (91), (93), and
(105c) should be bad, Constraint C predicts that (92), (94), (116a), (117b), and (118a) should be bad,
and Constraint D does so for (117d). Furthermore, sentences (103a), (105b), (114d), (115b), (118b),
and (113) are predicted ungrammatical by some constraint, but some native speakers nonetheless
found them grammatical. I will now turn to a discussion of a possible way to explain some of these
incorrect predictions. This will primarily involve the fact that the nature of the data is sufficiently
complex to result in processing issues, which – although they have not been measured in the present
study – are likely to play a role in such a complicated set of sentences.
4.2 Linear order generalizations
The previous section was concerned with determining syntactic limitations on the various
movement possibilities of constituents in Gapping constructions. In this section, I will present a few
generalizations regarding linear order parallelism between the conjuncts of Gapping that explain why
some exceptions to the syntactic conditions exist. Importantly, I propose that these generalizations
must in their implementation take into account that linear order matters.
In Section 4.2.1, I will show that matching linear order between a target conjunct and the last
two arguments of the antecedent conjunct is grammatical. Then, in Section 4.2.2, I furthermore
demonstrate that sentences where the target conjunct follows a canonical ordering where all
114 arguments are overt are always grammatical. Finally, in Section 4.2.3, I will show that the same is
true for sentences where all antecedent arguments are counterparts to overt remnants and where the
order of arguments matches between conjuncts.
4.2.1
Countermeasure I – quasi across-the-board movement
In all of the data, two-remnant target conjuncts for ditransitive verbs are grammatical when
the linear order of the arguments in the target conjunct matches the linear order of the second and
third arguments in the antecedent conjunct. This generalization is presented as Countermeasure I.
Countermeasure I
Two-remnant target conjuncts for ditransitive verbs are grammatical when
the linear order of arguments in the target conjunct matches the linear order
of the last two arguments in the antecedent conjunct.
An easy way of picturing this measure is by comparing it to a structure created by across-theboard movement, where an argument raises out of and thus ranges over both coordinates. This
portrayal serves as an image to capture the data rather than as a syntactic analysis. In actuality, such
an analysis is impossible to capture all of the data, and it is therefore only a linear order
generalization. The image below serves as a representation of the across-the-board visualization.
(133)
In (133), CASE: 1 represents the case of the topicalized argument in the antecedent conjunct.
CASE: 2 and CASE: 3 are the overt remnants of the target conjunct and their counterparts. For
instance, when the antecedent conjunct follows the canonical ordering NOM[top]-DAT-ACC, (97c)
115 shows that it is grammatical for the target conjunct to take the form DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]. The
across-the-board configuration also captures that (98c), (99a), (100b), and (101b) are considered
grammatical.
While this generalization is interesting, it does not actually improve any judgments and
therefore predicts sentences that would by default pass a derivation to be grammatical. However, as
more data is added, it may be good to keep in mind that this generalization holds (although
vacuously until now).
4.2.2
Countermeasure II – linear canonical order
In the previous section, I introduced a measure that applies to sentences of Gapping with
ditransitive verbs, where the target conjunct consists of two remnants. Here, I present a second
linear order generalization that holds for sentences where all antecedent arguments are counterparts
to overt remnants. This measure states that sentences become improved when the target conjunct
follows the linear canonical form for the verb.
Countermeasure II
Sentences where the target conjunct has the linear canonical form for the
verb, with all arguments overt, are improved.
For transitive verbs, this causes sentences that might be considered ungrammatical because
they violate Constraint C – the syntactic constraint on scrambling to a position c-commanding the
subject of a target conjunct when the antecedent has a topicalized non-canonical argument (see
Section 4.1.3) – to be considered good. That is, it remedies the exceptions in examples (92) and (94).
Sentence (92) was predicted to be ungrammatical because the accusative object is topicalized in the
antecedent conjunct, but the remnant whose counterpart is that topicalized argument does not also
c-command the nominative subject. In (94), we observe the same situation, but a dative object is
topicalized instead, and since the dative in the target conjunct does not c-command the subject,
116 Constraint C predicts ungrammaticality. However, these sentences have canonically ordered target
conjuncts (NOM-ACC[scr] in (92) and NOM-DAT[scr] in (94)), which improves, and in fact
appears to remedy entirely, this predicted ungrammaticality.
For ditransitive verbs, the generalization explains why (116a) and (118a) are grammatical,
where, independent of the antecedent conjunct, the target conjunct has the linear canonical order of
arguments. Examples (116a) and (118a) were predicted to be ungrammatical by Constraint C
because the topicalized argument in the antecedent (here, the dative object in (116a) and the
accusative object in (118a)) does not c-command the nominative subject in the target conjunct.
However, the linear order of the target conjunct overrides this judgment or at least amends it.
The attentive reader will have realized that example (117a), where the target conjunct has the
linear canonical order and the antecedent is ACC[top]-NOM-DAT, currently forms an exception to
this generalization. This ordering is predicted to be ungrammatical by Constraint C and, among
interviewed subjects, this sentence received an overall all mixed assessment leaning towards
ungrammaticality (‘%/???’). Thus, if linear order is a mechanism that facilitates processing, this could
explain why certain people nonetheless found this sentence to be grammatical. It is likely that if
additional native speaker are consulted, there will be more such judgments, particularly if future
studies incorporate an analysis of previous context.
4.2.3
Countermeasure III – matching linear order
In addition to the linear order generalizations presented above, another generalization that
can be made is that sentences where the linear order of arguments in the antecedent conjunct
matches the linear order of arguments in the target conjunct, where all arguments are overt in both
conjuncts, are grammatical or improved.
117 Countermeasure III
Sentences where the linear order of arguments in the antecedent conjunct
matches the linear order of arguments in the target conjunct, with all
remnants being overt, are improved.
This holds trivially for all of the transitive verbs ((87), (88), (89), and (91)), which no other
syntactic constraints rule out. However, for ditransitive verbs, this generalization can explain why
some people found example (113) to be grammatical, when Constraint D predicts the opposite. In
(113), the target conjunct has the form ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]-NOM, which was ungrammatical in all
cases, except where the antecedent conjunct also had the linear order ACC[top]-DAT[scr]-NOM.
4.2.4
Explaining linear order
In this section, I have shown that linear order appears to play a role for grammatical
judgments, and specifically provides a way to remedy or improve otherwise ungrammatical
sentences. If processing is an issue, which is likely given the complexity of the data, it is not
surprising that intuitive devices such as linear order may help in providing an anchor for making
sense cognitively of a large number of arguments. One interesting implementation for these repair
structures is to attribute the improved grammaticality to grammatical illusions, as proposed in multiple
recent studies conducted by Phillips (see e.g. Phillips et al. 2011).
Phillips (2011) suggests that humans compute grammatical relations of language in two
different ways. On the one hand, they may check incoming information concurrently, resulting in a
structural search that can capture constraints, for example relating to c-command, instantly. On the
other hand, humans may store information for later. Accessing this information requires searching
through memory and matching features, thereby leading to a processing delay. According to Phillips
(2011), this delay may result in grammatical illusions, where hearers falsely attribute grammaticality to
118 sentences that violate syntactic constraints. Some examples of attested illusions are incorrect subjectverb agreement and case marking, as shown in (134) and (135), respectively.39
(134)
(*)The key to the cabinets are on the table.
(Phillips et al. 2011, (16): 9)
(135)
(*)...dass
that
die
the.NOM
Mutter das
mother the.ACC
Buch geschickt
book sent
wurde
was
‘…that the mother was sent the book’
(Phillips et al. 2011, (20b): 11)
In (134), the verb are should agree in number with the singular subject key, but instead agrees
with the plural noun cabinets, which is inside a PP modifying the head noun. Phillips raises issues
showing that this is not strictly a perceived grammaticality based on the local proximity of the noun
cabinets and the verb are, although the structural proximity does seem to play a role, i.e. the PP
modifier is not, for instance, also embedded in a relative clause. The German sentence (135)
contains incorrect case marking, given that the passive voice of the construction requires a dative
subject. It is particularly interesting to note that Phillips et al. (2011) states: “Case illusions arise
following ‘unmarked’ nominative subjects, just as agreement illusions are most common following
unmarked singular subjects” (Phillips et al. 11).
While further research is needed to analyze whether the perceived grammaticalities of
Gapping resulting from linear order can be attributed to such grammatical illusions, this does not
seem as an initially implausible idea. That is, some generalizations covered in Section 4.1 display
certain similarities with Phillips’ (2011) phenomena. For instance, as was noted with regards to
Constraint C, it seems that the expectations resulting from a non-canonical topicalized argument are
violated when the remnant whose counterpart is topicalized follows (i.e. does not c-command) the
nominative subject. If, as predicted by Phillips (2011), grammatical illusions are prone to occurring
39
‘(*)’ indicates ungrammaticality but perceived grammaticality.
119 in positions following unmarked constituents, this can explain why the linear canonical order can
serve as a ‘remedy’ for otherwise ungrammatical utterances.
Countermeasures I and III may not be as readily attributed to illusions because they do not
present the same ‘unmarked’ traits that Countermeasure II targets. However, I believe that their
intuitive nature and the obvious parallelism they create between conjuncts could likely be a catalyst
for creating the impression of grammaticality. Thus, I propose that parallelism (particularly linear
order parallelism) should be investigated as a possible trigger for grammatical illusions.40
4.3 Final remarks on generalizations
In this section, I have discussed a number of syntactic generalizations governing which
sentences involving Gapping discussed in Section 3 are and are not grammatical. I have also
provided a list of countermeasures that appear to improve sentences where linear order shows
certain parallel traits. However, there remain a few unresolved instances of sentences that are
predicted to be ungrammatical, but are not, or of sentences that are ungrammatical but not targeted
by any of the constraints. The table below is an updated version of that shown at the end of Section
4.1.5, where shading has been removed for the contradictory sentences that can be remedied by one
of the countermeasures, and the countermeasure is indicated in the respective cell.
It is interesting to note that Phillips (2011) brings up illusions in comparative constructions such as the sentence
shown below.
(i)
More people have been to Russia than I have.
(Phillips et al. 2011, (33): 16)
The authors note that the phenomenon has been subject to little concrete study. However, if parallelism licenses
grammatical illusions, this may provide a starting point for explaining why comparatives and potentially Gapping
structures lend themselves to misjudgment.
40
120 Target conjunct
NOMSpec-TP-ACCscr-vP
(canonical)
Antecedent
conjunct
NOMtop-ACC
(canonical)
ACCtop-NOMSpec-TP
✓ (87)
? (91)
B
✓ (92)
C, II
✓ (88)
Target conjunct
NOMSpec-TP-DATscr-vP
(canonical)
Antecedent
conjunct
Antecedent conjunct
NOMtop-DAT-ACC
(canonical)
NOMtop-ACCscrDAT
DATtop-NOMSpec-TPACC
ACCtop-NOMSpec-TPDAT
ACCtop-DATscr-TPNOMSpec-TP
NOMtop-DAT
(canonical)
DATtop-NOMSpec-TP
NOMSpec-TP- ACCscr-TPACCscr-vP
NOMSpec-TP
%
*
(103a)
(97a)
B
*
*
(104a)
(98a)
B
ACCscr-TP-NOMSpec-TP
DATscr-TP-NOMSpec-TP
✓ (89)
? (93)
B
✓ (94)
C, II
✓ (90)
Target conjunct
NOMSpec-TP- DATscr-TPDATscr-vP
NOMSpec-TP
???
✓
(103b)
(97b)
B
???
???
(98b)
(104b)
A
A, B
%
✓
(105b)
(99b)
C
DATscr- ACCscrACCscr DATscr
✓
(97c)
✓
(103c)
?
(104c)
?
(98c)
✓
(99c)
?
(105c)
B
?
(99a)
???
(105a)
???
(106a)
C
*
(107a)
A, C
✓
(100a)
?
(100b)
?
(106b)
?
(106c)
?
(100c)
???
(101a)
A
?
(107b)
✓
(101b)
???
(107c)
*
(101c)
121 Antecedent conjunct
NOMtopDAT-ACC
(canonical)
NOMtopACCscrDAT
DATtopNOMSpec-TPACC
ACCtopNOMSpec-TPDAT
ACCtopDATscr-TPNOMSpec-TP
Target conjunct
NOMSpec-TP- NOMSpec-TP- DATscr-TPDATscr-TPDATscr-vPACCscr-vPNOMSpec-TP- ACCscr-TPACCscr-vP
DATscr-vP
ACCscr-vP
NOMSpec-TP
(canonical)
???
*
?
✓
(114b)
(114c)
(114a)
(109)
B
B, D
%
*
✓
✓
(115b)
(115c)
(115a)
(110)
B
B, D
%/???
???
✓
?
(116b)
(116c)
(116a)
(111)
B, C
D
C, II
%/???
?
???
?
(117a)
(117b)
(117c)
(117d)
C
C
C
D
%/?
%
???
*
(118a)
(118b)
(118c)
(118d)
C, II
C
C
D
ACCscr-TPACCscr-TPNOMSpec-TP- DATscr-TPDATscr-vP
NOMSpec-TP
%
(114d)
B
???
(115d)
B
%/???
(116d)
B, C
?
(112)
%
(118e)
???
(114e)
B, D
*
(115e)
B, D
???
(116e)
B, D
???
(117e)
D
%
(113)
D, III
As is evident from the final tables, the ideas proposed in this section are not sufficient to
explain all of the given judgments and therefore, this data should provide a foundation for future
work on Gapping and its issues relating to markedness, processing, discourse context, and possible
other influences.
5
Conclusion
Within the field of linguistics, the study of null anaphora has given rise to research in many
domains, including syntax, semantics, prosody, and information structure. Gapping, in particular,
crosses many such interfaces due to its specific parallelism requirements between its two
coordinated clauses. In this thesis, I investigated some of the syntactic traits of this parallelism. In
doing so, aspects of German word order variation, most notably Topicalization in the language's
verb-second root CPs and Scrambling, provided advantageous possibilities of testing constructions
122 that cannot be studied so readily in languages such as English where grammatical function and
syntactic position are much more closely correlated.
Section 1 of this thesis presented background on the empirical traits of Gapping, as well as
on the basic word order patterns of German clauses. In Section 2, these features were analyzed
syntactically using Minimalism, and an initial hypothesis regarding the syntactic derivation of
Gapping was introduced. This view of Gapping follows some aspects of Johnson (2014) in taking
the construction to involve the coordination of phrases within the extended projection of the verb –
specifically coordinated TPs and coordinated vPs – with subsequent vP-deletion. This deletion of a
vP, proposed for Gapping in general, raises some interesting questions for German (but not, for
instance, for English), given that it does not have VP-Ellipsis independently of Gapping. In contrast,
the mechanism proposed for raising the remnants of Gapping out of the vP under this analysis,
namely by Scrambling, raises other cross-linguistic issues for languages like English and other headinitial languages that do not seem to allow Scrambling outside of Gapping. In view of these crosslinguistic discrepancies, the plausibility of the vP-deletion and Scrambling mechanisms for Gapping
should continue to be a focus of study.
One of the main contributions of this thesis is the presentation of a significant new body of
data, which appeared in Section 3. This set of examples involves the most unmarked versions of
German transitive and ditransitive verbs, in terms of their argument structure, laying the foundation
for future research, which might investigate less canonical argument structure varieties. Not
surprisingly given the diverse range of word orders possible in this language, it turned out that even
limiting the scope of examination to these verbs still led to a considerably sized number of
permutations of arguments in the antecedent and target conjuncts. Furthermore, the sentences were
equally far from straightforward in terms of non-syntactic issues, including in their prosodic traits, in
the constraints they place on the information-structural traits of the previous discourse, as well as in
123 processing difficulties that can arise. Future in-depth treatment of these individual topics is thus
required.
In terms of possible explanations for the range of new facts presented here, Section 4
proposed a series of complex empirical observations, built up from the foundational theoretical
syntactic assumptions adopted in Section 2, which involve potential syntactic as well as linear order
restrictions over the two conjuncts of a Gapping construction. Among the syntactic findings, in
particular, are restrictions on remnants in the target conjunct whose counterparts in the antecedent
conjunct have been scrambled or topicalized. These conditions may turn out to have implications
beyond the data captured here, for instance pertaining to a potential contrastive trait of Scrambling
as well as potentially contributing an interesting insight into possible restrictions on topics in non-V2
clauses of German. In addition to the syntactic generalizations at work, there appear also to be
overriding consequences of linear order, most notably that Gapping constructions with matching
linear order in both conjuncts or with a canonical ordering of the target conjunct remnants have
markedly improved grammaticality even for structures predicted ungrammatical by syntactic
generalizations. I have suggested that processing complexity could be relevant here, and it will be
interesting to see the results of future work on this, should it be taken up. Furthermore, within
syntax, it will be interesting and important to investigate whether the claims made here continue to
hold for non-V2 clauses, by examining data on Gapping when both conjuncts are embedded, as well
as using verbs whose argument structure is less canonical.
Thus, it is my hope that this thesis will lay a foundation for continued research into a variety
of areas, based on the new data involving word order traits in German Gapping that I have
presented and discussed. Such research could help to untangle and to unify some of the proposals
made for Gapping in different languages and may ultimately have implications beyond Gapping and
for null anaphora more generally.
124 APPENDIX A
Tamar Forman-Gejrot
Bachelorarbeit – Studie vom Gapping und Scrambling im Deutschen
Umfrage Januar 2016
1. Was ist/sind Ihre Muttersprache(n) (d.h. Sprachen, mit denen Sie aufgewachsen sind)?
________________________________________________________
2. Haben Sie größere Bezüge zu anderen Sprachen als Deutsch (zum Beispiel durch mehrjähriges
Wohnen in einem Land, in dem dies die dominante Sprache war oder aufgrund der Sprache eines
Elternteiles)? Wenn ja, welche?
________________________________________________________
3. Sprechen Sie einen Dialekt? Wenn ja, welchen?
________________________________________________________
Für jeden dieser Sätze, würden Sie erwarten, dass dies von einem Muttersprachler geäußert wird?
Geben Sie Ihre Wertung auf einer Skala von 1 bis 4 an, wobei 1 „ja, das ist vollständig akzeptabel“
und 4 „nein, das ist nicht grammatikalisch“ bedeutet.
1. Der FRAU gibt der Polizist einen APFEL und dem MANN eine BANANE.
Dem RITTER verleiht die Prinzessin einen ORDEN und dem PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
1
2
3
4
2. Der Frau gibt der POLIZIST einen APFEL und der MANN eine BANANE.
Dem Ritter verleiht die PRINZESSIN einen ORDEN und der PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
1
2
3
4
3. Der POLIZIST gibt einen APFEL der Frau und der MANN eine BANANE.
Die PRINZESSIN verleiht einen ORDEN dem Ritter und der PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
1
2
3
4
4. Der Polizist gibt einen APFEL der FRAU und eine BANANE dem MANN.
Die Prinzessin verleiht einen ORDEN dem RITTER und einen PREIS dem PROFESSOR.
1
2
3
4
5. Einen APFEL gibt der Frau der POLIZIST und eine BANANE der MANN.
Einen ORDEN verleiht dem Ritter die PRINZESSIN und einen PREIS der PROFESSOR.
1
2
3
4
6. Einen APFEL gibt der FRAU der Polizist und eine BANANE dem MANN.
Einen ORDEN verleiht dem RITTER die Prinzessin und einen PREIS dem PROFESSOR.
1
2
3
4
7. Der Frau gibt einen APFEL der POLIZIST und eine BANANE der MANN.
Dem Ritter verleiht einen ORDEN die PRINZESSIN und einen PREIS der PROFESSOR.
1
2
3
4
125 8. Der FRAU gibt einen APFEL der Polizist und dem MANN eine BANANE.
Dem RITTER verleiht einen ORDEN die Prinzessin und dem PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
1
2
3
4
9. Bill fragte, welche BÜCHER die Frau dem SCHÜLER gab und welche PLATTEN dem
POLIZISTEN.
1
2
3
4
10. Bill fragte, WELCHE Bücher die Frau dem SCHÜLER gab und WELCHE Bücher dem
POLIZISTEN. (andere Betonungen nicht möglich?)
1
2
3
4
11. Bill fragte, WELCHE Bücher die FRAU dem SCHÜLER gab und WELCHE Bücher der
MANN dem POLIZISTEN.
1
2
3
4
12. Bill fragte, welche Bücher die FRAU dem SCHÜLER gab und der MANN dem
POLIZISTEN.
1
2
3
4
13. Bill fragte, WELCHE Bücher die FRAU dem Schüler gab und der MANN WELCHE
Bücher.
1
2
3
4
14. Mein VATER isst ÄPFEL und mein VATER BANANEN.
1
2
3
4
15. Bill fragte, welche BÜCHER die Frau dem Schüler gab und welche PLATTEN dem Schüler.
1
2
3
4
16. Der MANN ist jeden morgen GLÜCKLICH und die FRAU TRAURIG.
1
2
3
4
17. Der MANN ist jeden morgen GLÜCKLICH und die FRAU jeden morgen TRAURIG.
1
2
3
4
18. Ich kaufe SCHOKOLADE für die Katze und MILCH für die Katze.
1
2
3
4
19. MARY liest BÜCHER in der Schule und TOM HEFTE in der Schule.
1
2
3
4
20. Ich kaufe für die Katze SCHOKOLADE und für die Katze MILCH.
1
2
3
4
21. ICH kaufe für die Katze SCHOKOLADE und DU für die Katze MILCH.
1
2
3
4
22. MARY liest in der Schule BÜCHER und TOM in der Schule HEFTE.
1
2
3
4
23. Der MANN ist GLÜCKLICH und die FRAU TRAURIG.
1
2
3
4
24. GLÜCKLICH ist der MANN und TRAURIG die FRAU.
1
2
3
4
25. Der MANN ist GLÜCKLICH und die Kinder TRAURIG.
1
2
3
4
26. VIELE Männer sind GLÜCKLICH und Frauen TRAURIG. (Viele Frauen)
1
2
3
4
27. VIELE Männer sind GLÜCKLICH und TRAURIG Frauen. (Viele Frauen)
1
2
3
4
28. Der MANN ist GLÜCKLICH und TRAURIG die FRAU.
1
2
3
4
126 29. Der MANN ist immer GLÜCKLICH und die FRAU TRAURIG. (Die Frau ist immer
traurig. – vielleicht besser mit nie)
1
2
3
4
30. Der MANN ist am Samstag GLÜCKLICH und die FRAU TRAURIG. (Die Frau ist am
Samstag traurig.)
1
2
3
4
31. Am Samstag ist der MANN GLÜCKLICH und die FRAU TRAURIG. (Die Frau ist am
Samstag traurig.)
1
2
3
4
32. Sehr GLÜCKLICH ist der MANN und TRAURIG die FRAU. (Die Frau ist sehr traurig.)
1
2
3
4
33. GLÜCKLICH sind viele Männer und TRAURIG Frauen. (Viele Frauen)
1
2
3
4
34. GLÜCKLICH ist immer der MANN und TRAURIG die FRAU. (Die Frau ist immer
traurig.)
1
2
3
4
35. GLÜCKLICH ist der MANN immer und TRAURIG die FRAU. (Die Frau ist immer
traurig.)
1
2
3
4
36. GLÜCKLICH ist (nie) der MANN (nie) und TRAURIG die FRAU. (Die Frau ist nie
traurig.)
nie vor Mann 1 2 3 4
nie nach Mann 1 2 3 4
37. GEKOCHT hat der MANN Bohnen und GEGESSEN der JUNGE. (Der Junge hat
Bohnen gekocht.)
1
2
3
4
38. GLÜCKLICH ist der MANN gewesen und TRAURIG die FRAU.
1
2
3
4
39. Bill fragte, welche Bücher die FRAU dem SCHÜLER und der MANN dem POLIZISTEN
gab.
1
2
3
4
40. Bill fragte, WELCHE Bücher die FRAU dem SCHÜLER gab und WIEVIELE der MANN
dem POLIZISTEN.
1
2
3
4
41. Bill fragte, WANN die FRAU dem SCHÜLER welche Bücher gab und WIE der MANN
dem POLIZISTEN.
1
2
3
4
42. Bill fragte, WANN die FRAU dem SCHÜLER WELCHE Bücher gab und WIE der MANN
dem POLIZISTEN WELCHE Bücher.
1
2
3
4
43. Bill fragte, welche Bücher die FRAU dem SCHÜLER gegeben hat und der MANN dem
POLIZISTEN.
1
2
3
4
44. Von MOZART habe ich die ersten SYMPHONIEN gestern gehört und von CHOPIN die
ersten SONATEN.
1
2
3
4
45. Von MOZART habe ich gestern die ersten SYMPHONIEN gehört und von CHOPIN die
ersten SONATEN.
1
2
3
4
127 46. Ich habe von Mozart die ersten Symphonien gestern gehört.
1
2
3
4
47. GRÜN ist mein HUT gestern gewesen und ROT mein MANTEL.
1
2
3
4
48. Mein HUT ist GRÜN gestern gewesen und mein MANTEL ROT.
1
2
3
4
49. GESUNGEN hat mein VATER gestern und GETANZT meine MUTTER.
1
2
3
4
50. Mein VATER hat GESUNGEN gestern und meine MUTTER GETANZT.
1
2
3
4
51. Wer hat dem Kind welchen Kuchen geschenkt?
1
2
3
4
52. Wer hat welchen Kuchen dem Kind geschenkt?
1
2
3
4
53. Ich habe Tom seinen Bart abrasiert. (seinen Bart = Toms Bart)
1
2
3
4
54. Ich habe seinen Bart Tom abrasiert. (seinen Bart = Toms Bart)
1
2
3
4
55. Gestern hat ihren Hund Lisa ausgeführt. (ihren Hund = Lisas Hund)
1
2
3
4
56. Bill fragte, welche BÜCHER die FRAU dem SCHÜLER gab und der MANN dem
POLIZISTEN welche PLATTEN.
1
2
3
4
57. Bill fragte, welche BÜCHER die FRAU dem SCHÜLER gab und der MANN welche
PLATTEN dem POLIZISTEN.
1
2
3
4
58. GRÜN ist mein HUT gestern gewesen und mein MANTEL ROT.
1
2
3
4
59. Mein HUT ist gestern GRÜN gewesen und ROT mein MANTEL.
1
2
3
4
60. GESUNGEN hat mein VATER gestern und meine MUTTER GETANZT.
1
2
3
4
61. Mein VATER hat gestern GESUNGEN und GETANZT meine MUTTER.
1
2
3
4
62. Gestern hat LISA ihren HUND ausgeführt und seinen MAULWURF TOM.
1
2
3
4
63. Ihren HUND hat LISA gestern ausgeführt und TOM seinen MAULWURF.
1
2
3
4
64. Meine Mutter liest meinem BRUDER das BUCH vor und meiner SCHWESTER die
ZEITUNG.
1
2
3
4
65. Meine Mutter liest meinem BRUDER das BUCH vor und die ZEITUNG meiner
SCHWESTER.
1
2
3
4
66. Meine Mutter liest das BUCH meinem BRUDER vor und die ZEITUNG meiner
SCHWESTER.
1
2
3
4
128 67. Meine Mutter liest das BUCH meinem BRUDER vor und meiner SCHWESTER die
ZEITUNG.
1
2
3
4
68. Meine MUTTER liest meinem BRUDER das BUCH vor und mein VATER meiner
SCHWESTER die ZEITUNG.
1
2
3
4
69. Meine MUTTER liest meinem BRUDER das BUCH vor und meiner SCHWESTER die
ZEITUNG mein VATER.
1
2
3
4
70. Meine MUTTER liest meinem BRUDER das BUCH vor und meiner SCHWESTER mein
VATER die ZEITUNG.
1
2
3
4
71. Meine MUTTER liest meinem BRUDER das BUCH vor und die ZEITUNG mein VATER
meiner SCHWESTER.
1
2
3
4
72. (Wem liest deine Mutter das Buch vor?)
Meinem Bruder liest meine Mutter das Buch vor.
1
2
3
4
73. (Was liest deine Mutter deinem Bruder vor?)
Meinem Bruder liest das Buch meine Mutter vor.
1
2
3
4
74. Dem Hund gibt das LECKERLI der MANN und den KNOCHEN die FRAU.
1
2
3
4
75. Dem HUND gibt der MANN das LECKERLI und der KATZE die FRAU den FISCH.
1
2
3
4
76. Dem HUND gibt der MANN das LECKERLI und den FISCH die FRAU der KATZE.
1
2
3
4
77. (Was essen die Kinder?)
Der JUNGE isst den APFEL und das MÄDCHEN die BANANE.
1
2
3
4
78. (Isst der Junge den Früchtekuchen?)
Der Junge isst den APFEL und den Früchtekuchen das MÄDCHEN.
1
2
3
4
79. (Wer isst den Apfel und wer die Banane?)
Den Apfel isst der JUNGE und die Banane das MÄDCHEN.
1
2
3
4
80. (Isst das Mädchen den Apfel?)
Den Apfel isst der JUNGE und das Mädchen die BANANE.
1
2
3
4
129 APPENDIX B
Tamar Forman-Gejrot
Bachelorarbeit – Studie vom Gapping und Scrambling im Deutschen
Umfrage März 2016 Teil II
1. Was ist/sind Ihre Muttersprache(n) (d.h. Sprachen, mit denen Sie aufgewachsen sind)?
________________________________________________________
2. Haben Sie größere Bezüge zu anderen Sprachen als Deutsch (zum Beispiel durch mehrjähriges
Wohnen in einem Land, in dem dies die dominante Sprache war oder aufgrund der Sprache eines
Elternteiles)? Wenn ja, welche?
________________________________________________________
3. Sprechen Sie einen Dialekt? Wenn ja, welchen?
________________________________________________________
Für jeden dieser Sätze, würden Sie erwarten, dass dies von einem Muttersprachler geäußert wird?
Geben Sie Ihre Wertung auf einer Skala von 1 bis 4 an, wobei 1 „ja, das ist vollständig akzeptabel“
und 4 „nein, das ist nicht grammatikalisch“ bedeutet.
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)
(9)
(10)
Der JUNGE hilft dem SCHÜLER und das MÄDCHEN dem LEHRER.
1
2
3
4
Der Junge hilft dem SCHÜLER und dem Lehrer das MÄDCHEN.
1
2
3
4
Dem Schüler hilft der JUNGE und dem Lehrer das MÄDCHEN.
1
2
3
4
Dem Schüler hilft der JUNGE und das Mädchen dem LEHRER.
1
2
3
4
Die SÄNGERIN sieht den SCHAUSPIELER und der MALER den KLEMPNER.
1
2
3
4
Die Sängerin sieht den SCHAUSPIELER und den Klempner der MALER.
1
2
3
4
Den Schauspieler sieht die SÄNGERIN und den Klempner der MALER.
1
2
3
4
Den Schauspieler sieht die SÄNGERIN und der Maler den KLEMPNER.
1
2
3
4
Die PRINZESSIN schreibt einen BRIEF und der PRINZ eine POSTKARTE.
1
2
3
4
Die Prinzessin schreibt einen BRIEF und eine Postkarte der PRINZ.
1
2
3
4
130 (11)
(12)
(13)
(14)
(15)
(16)
(17)
(18)
(19)
(20)
(21)
(22)
(23)
(24)
(25)
(26)
(27)
(28)
(29)
(30)
Einen Brief schreibt die PRINZESSIN und eine Postkarte der PRINZ.
1
2
3
4
Einen Brief schreibt die PRINZESSIN und der Prinz eine POSTKARTE.
1
2
3
4
Der MANN widerspricht der ANKLAGE und die FRAU dem ARGUMENT.
1
2
3
4
Der Mann widerspricht der ANKLAGE und dem Argument die FRAU.
1
2
3
4
Der Anklage widerspricht der MANN und dem Argument die FRAU.
1
2
3
4
Der Anklage widerspricht der MANN und die Frau dem ARGUMENT.
1
2
3
4
Die SÄNGERIN dankt dem SCHAUSPIELER und der MALER dem KLEMPNER.
1
2
3
4
Die Sängerin dankt dem SCHAUSPIELER und dem Klempner der MALER.
1
2
3
4
Dem Schauspieler dankt die SÄNGERIN und dem Klempner der MALER.
1
2
3
4
Dem Schauspieler dankt die SÄNGERIN und der Maler dem KLEMPNER.
1
2
3
4
Ich weiß, dass der JUNGE den APFEL isst und das MÄDCHEN den
FRÜCHTEKUCHEN.
1
2
3
4
Ich weiß, dass der Junge den APFEL isst und den Früchtekuchen das MÄDCHEN.
1
2
3
4
Die PRINZESSIN verleiht dem Ritter einen ORDEN und der PROFESSOR einen
PREIS.
1
2
3
4
Die PRINZESSIN verleiht dem Ritter einen ORDEN und dem PROFESSOR einen
PREIS.
1
2
3
4
Die PRINZESSIN verleiht dem RITTER einen Oden und der PROFESSOR dem
PRINZEN.
1
2
3
4
Die PRINZESSIN verleiht einen Orden dem RITTER und der PROFESSOR dem
PRINZEN.
1
2
3
4
Dem RITTER verleiht die PRINZESSIN einen Orden und dem PRINZEN der
PROFESSOR.
1
2
3
4
Einen ORDEN verleiht die Prinzessin dem RITTER und einen PREIS dem PROFESSOR.
1
2
3
4
Einen ORDEN verleiht die PRINZESSIN dem Ritter und einen PREIS der PROFESSOR.
1
2
3
4
Einen Orden verleiht die PRINZESSIN dem RITTER und der PROFESSOR dem
PRINZEN.
1
2
3
4
131 (31)
(32)
(33)
(34)
(35)
(36)
(37)
(38)
(39)
(40)
(41)
(42)
(43)
(44)
(45)
(46)
(47)
(48)
(49)
(50)
(51)
(52)
(53)
Dem Ritter verleiht einen Orden die Prinzessin.
1
2
3
4
Der Frau gibt den Hammer der Mann.
1
2
3
4
Dem Verdächtigen zeigt das Foto ein Polizist.
1
2
3
4
Dem RITTER verleiht einen Orden die PRINZESSIN und dem PRINZEN der
PROFESSOR.
1
2
3
4
Einen Orden verleiht dem RITTER die PRINZESSIN und dem PRINZEN der
PROFESSOR.
1
2
3
4
Ein POLIZIST zeigt dem Verdächtigen das FOTO und ein DETEKTIV das MESSER.
1
2
3
4
Ein POLIZIST zeigt dem VERDÄCHTIGEN das Foto und ein DETEKTIV der WITWE.
1
2
3
4
Ein Polizist zeigt dem VERDÄCHTIGEN das FOTO und der WITWE das MESSER.
1
2
3
4
Ein POLIZIST zeigt das FOTO dem Verdächtigen und ein DETEKTIV das MESSER.
1
2
3
4
Ein POLIZIST zeigt das Foto dem VERDÄCHTIGEN und ein DETEKTIV der WITWE.
1
2
3
4
Ein Polizist zeigt das FOTO dem VERDÄCHTIGEN und das MESSER der WITWE.
1
2
3
4
Dem Verdächtigen zeigt ein POLIZIST das FOTO und ein DETEKTIV das MESSER.
1
2
3
4
Dem VERDÄCHTIGEN zeigt ein POLIZIST das Foto und der WITWE ein DETEKTIV.
1
2
3
4
Dem VERDÄCHTIGEN zeigt ein Polizist das FOTO und der WITWE das MESSER.
1
2
3
4
Das FOTO zeigt ein POLIZIST dem Verdächtigen und das MESSER ein DETEKTIV.
1
2
3
4
Das Foto zeigt ein POLIZIST dem VERDÄCHTIGEN und ein DETEKTIV der WITWE.
1
2
3
4
Das FOTO zeigt ein Polizist dem VERDÄCHTIGEN und das MESSER der WITWE.
1
2
3
4
Das Foto zeigt dem VERDÄCHTIGEN ein POLIZIST und der WITWE ein DETEKTIV.
1
2
3
4
Das FOTO zeigt dem Verdächtigen ein POLIZIST und das MESSER ein DETEKTIV.
1
2
3
4
Das FOTO zeigt dem VERDÄCHTIGEN ein Polizist und das MESSER der WITWE.
1
2
3
4
Die PRINZESSIN verleiht dem Ritter einen ORDEN und einen Preis der Professor.
1
2
3
4
Die PRINZESSIN verleiht dem RITTER einen Orden und dem Prinzen der Professor.
1
2
3
4
Die Prinzessin verleiht dem RITTER einen ORDEN und einen Preis dem Professor.
1
2
3
4
132 (54)
(55)
(56)
(57)
(58)
(59)
(60)
(61)
(62)
(63)
(64)
(65)
(66)
(67)
(68)
(69)
(70)
Die PRINZESSIN verleiht einen ORDEN dem Ritter und einen Preis der Professor.
1
2
3
4
Die Prinzessin verleiht einen ORDEN dem RITTER und dem Professor einen Preis.
1
2
3
4
Die PRINZESSIN verleiht einen Orden dem RITTER und dem Prinzen der Professor.
1
2
3
4
Einen ORDEN verleiht dem Ritter die PRINZESSIN und der Professor einen Preis.
1
2
3
4
Einen ORDEN verleiht dem RITTER die Prinzessin und dem Professor einen Preis.
1
2
3
4
Einen Orden verleiht dem RITTER die PRINZESSIN und der Professor dem Prinzen.
1
2
3
4
Einen ORDEN verleiht die PRINZESSIN dem Ritter und der Professor einen Preis.
1
2
3
4
Einen ORDEN verleiht die Prinzessin dem RITTER und dem Professor einen Preis.
1
2
3
4
Einen Orden verleiht die PRINZESSIN dem RITTER und dem Prinzen der Professor.
1
2
3
4
Dem RITTER verleiht die Prinzessin einen ORDEN und einen Preis dem Professor.
1
2
3
4
Dem Ritter verleiht die PRINZESSIN einen ORDEN und einen Preis der Professor.
1
2
3
4
Dem RITTER verleiht die PRINZESSIN einen Orden und der Professor dem Prinzen.
1
2
3
4
Dem RITTER verleiht einen ORDEN die Prinzessin und einen Preis dem Professor.
1
2
3
4
Dem Ritter verleiht einen ORDEN die PRINZESSIN und der Professor einen Preis.
1
2
3
4
Dem RITTER verleiht einen Orden die PRINZESSIN und der Professor dem Prinzen.
1
2
3
4
Ich weiß, dass der Junge den APFEL isst und den Früchtekuchen das MÄDCHEN.
1
2
3
4
Ich weiß, dass dem Schüler der JUNGE hilft und das Mädchen dem LEHRER.
1
2
3
4
133 APPENDIX C
Transitive Verbs:
Matching linear order:
(87)
Antec.: NOM[top]-ACC (canonical); Targ.: NOM-ACC[scr] (canonical)
Q: (What do the children eat?)
A: Der
JUNGE
the.NOM
boy
das
the.NOM
isst
eats
den
the.ACC
MÄDCHEN die
girl
the.ACC
APFEL
apple
und
and
BANANE.
banana
‘The boy eats the apple and the girl (eats) the banana.’
(88)
Antec.: ACC[top]-NOM (non-canonical); Targ.: ACC[scr]-NOM
(non-canonical)
Q: (Who eats the apple and who eats the banana?)
A: Den
Apfel isst
der
JUNGE
the.ACC
apple eats
the.NOM
boy
Banane das
banana the.NOM
und
and
die
the.ACC
MÄDCHEN.
girl
‘The boy eats the apple and the girl (eats) the banana.’
(89)
Antec.: NOM[top]-DAT (canonical); Targ.: NOM-DAT[scr] (canonical)
Q: (Who do the children help?)
A: Der
JUNGE
the.NOM
boy
das
the.NOM
hilft dem
helps the.DAT
MÄDCHEN dem
girl
the.DAT
SCHÜLER
student
und
and
LEHRER.
teacher
‘The boy helps the student and the girl (helps) the teacher.’
(90)
Antec.: DAT[top]-NOM (non-canonical); Targ.: DAT[scr]-NOM
(non-canonical)
Q: (Who helps the student and who helps the teacher?)
A: Dem
Schüler hilft der
JUNGE
the.DAT
student helps the.NOM
boy
Lehrer das
teacher the.NOM
MÄDCHEN.
girl
‘The boy helps the student and the girl (helps) the teacher.’
134 und
and
dem
the.DAT
Non-matching linear order:
(91)
?Antec.: NOM[top]-ACC (canonical); Targ.: ACC[scr]-NOM
(non-canonical)
Q: (Is the boy eating the fruit cake?)
A: ?Der
Junge isst
den
the.NOM
boy
eats
the.ACC
Früchtekuchen
fruit.cake
das
the.NOM
APFEL
apple
und
and
den
the.ACC
MÄDCHEN.
girl
‘The boy eats the apple and the girl (eats) the fruit cake.’
(92)
Antec.: ACC[top]-NOM (non-canonical); Targ.: NOM-ACC[scr]
(canonical)
Q: (Is the girl eating the apple?)
A: Den
Apfel isst
the.ACC
apple eats
Mädchen
girl
die
the.ACC
der
the.NOM
JUNGE
boy
und
and
das
the.NOM
BANANE.
banana
‘The boy eats the apple and the girl (eats) the banana.’
(93)
?Antec.: NOM[top]-DAT (canonical); Targ.: DAT[scr]-NOM
(non-canonical)
Q: (Is the boy helping the teacher?)
A: ?Der
Junge hilft dem
the.NOM
boy
helps the.DAT
Lehrer das
teacher the.NOM
SCHÜLER
student
und
and
dem
the.DAT
MÄDCHEN.
girl
‘The boy helps the student and the girl (helps) the teacher.’
(94)
Antec.: DAT[top]-NOM (non-canonical); Targ.: NOM-DAT[scr]
(canonical)
Q: (Is the girl helping the student?)
A: Dem
Schüler
hilft der
the.DAT
student helps the.NOM
das
the.NOM
Mädchen
girl
dem
the.DAT
boy
JUNGE
and
LEHRER.
teacher
‘The boy helps the student and the girl (helps) the teacher.’
135 und
Ditransitive verbs – two remnants:
Matching linear order:
(97)
Antecedent: NOM[top]-DAT-ACC (canonical)
Die
the.NOM
Prinzessin
princess
verleiht dem
awards the.DAT
Ritter einen Orden und
knight a.ACC medal and
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and…’
a.
*Target: NOM-ACC[scr]
*…der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
professor
a.ACC prize
‘…the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
b.
Target: NOM-DAT[scr]
…der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR dem
professor
the.DAT
PRINZEN.
prince
‘…the professor (awards a medal) to the prince.’
c.
Target: DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]
…dem
the.DAT
PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
professor
a.ACC prize
‘…(the princess awards) a prize to the professor.’
(98)
Antecedent: NOM[top]-ACC[scr]-DAT
Die
the.NOM
Prinzessin
princess
verleiht einen Orden dem
awards a.ACC medal the.DAT
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and…’
a.
*Target: NOM-ACC[scr]
*…der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
professor
a.ACC prize
‘…the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
b.
???Target: NOM-DAT[scr]
???…der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR dem
professor
the.DAT
PRINZEN.
prince
‘…the professor (awards a medal) to the prince.’
136 Ritter und
knight and
c.
?Target: ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
?…einen
a.ACC
PREIS dem
prize the.DAT
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…(the princess awards) the professor with a prize.’
(99)
Antecedent: DAT[top]-NOM-ACC
Dem
the.DAT
Ritter verleiht die
knight awards the.NOM
Prinzessin
princess
einen Orden und
a.ACC medal and
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and…’
a.
?Target: NOM-ACC[scr]
?…der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
professor
a.ACC prize
‘…the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
b.
Target: DAT[scr]-NOM
…dem
the.DAT
PRINZEN
prince
der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR
professor
‘…the professor (awards a medal) to the prince.’
c.
Target: DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]
…dem
the.DAT
PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
professor
a.ACC prize
‘…(the princess awards) a prize to the professor.’
(100)
Antecedent: ACC[top]-NOM-DAT
Einen Orden verleiht die
a.ACC medal awards the.NOM
Prinzessin
princess
dem
the.DAT
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and…’
a.
Target: ACC[scr]-NOM
…einen
a.ACC
PREIS der
prize the.NOM
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
b.
?Target: NOM-DAT[scr]
?…der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR dem
professor
the.DAT
PRINZEN.
prince
‘…the professor (awards a medal) to the prince.’
137 Ritter und
knight and
c.
?Target: ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
?…einen
a.ACC
PREIS dem
prize the.DAT
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…(the princess awards) a prize to the professor.’
(101)
Antecedent: ACC[top]-DAT[scr]-NOM
Einen Orden verleiht dem
a.ACC medal awards the.DAT
Ritter die
knight the.NOM
Prinzessin
princess
und
and
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and…’
a.
???Target: ACC[scr]-NOM
???…einen
a.ACC
PREIS der
prize the.NOM
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
b.
Target: DAT[scr]-NOM
…dem
the.DAT
PRINZEN
prince
der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…the professor (awards a medal) to the prince.’
c.
*Target: ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
*…einen
a.ACC
PREIS dem
prize the.DAT
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…(the princess awards) a prize to the professor.’
Non-matching linear order:
(103)
Antecedent: NOM[top]-DAT-ACC (canonical)
Die
the.NOM
Prinzessin
princess
verleiht dem
awards the.DAT
Ritter einen Orden und
knight a.ACC medal and
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and…’
a.
%Target: ACC[scr]-NOM
%…einen
a.ACC
PREIS der
prize the.NOM
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
138 b.
???Target: DAT[scr]-NOM
???…dem
the.DAT
PRINZEN
prince
der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…the professor (awards a medal) to the prince.’
c.
Target: ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
…einen
a.ACC
PREIS dem
prize the.DAT
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…(the princess awards) a prize to the professor.’
(104)
Antecedent: NOM[top]-ACC[scr]-DAT
Die
the.NOM
Prinzessin
princess
verleiht einen Orden dem
awards a.ACC medal the.DAT
Ritter und
knight and
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and…’
a.
*Target: ACC[scr]-NOM
*…einen
a.ACC
PREIS der
prize the.NOM
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
b.
???Target: DAT[scr]-NOM
???…dem
the.DAT
PRINZEN
prince
der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…the professor (awards a medal) to the prince.’
c.
?Target: DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]
?…dem
the.DAT
PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
professor
a.ACC prize
‘…(the princess awards) the professor with a prize.’
(105)
Antecedent: DAT[top]-NOM-ACC
Dem
the.DAT
Ritter verleiht die
knight awards the.NOM
Prinzessin
princess
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and…’
a.
???Target: ACC[scr]-NOM
???…einen
a.ACC
PREIS der
prize the.NOM
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
139 einen Orden und
a.ACC medal and
b.
%Target: NOM-DAT[scr]
%…der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR dem
professor
the.DAT
PRINZEN.
prince
‘…the professor (awards a medal) to the prince.’
c.
?Target: ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
?…einen
a.ACC
PREIS dem
prize the.DAT
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…(the princess awards) a prize to the professor.’
(106)
Antecedent: ACC[top]-NOM-DAT
Einen Orden verleiht die
a.ACC medal awards the.NOM
Prinzessin
princess
dem
the.DAT
Ritter und
knight and
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and…’
a.
???Target: NOM-ACC[scr]
???…der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
professor
a.ACC prize
‘…the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
b.
?Target: DAT[scr]-NOM
?…dem
the.DAT
PRINZEN
prince
der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR.
professor
‘…the professor (awards a medal) to the prince.’
c.
?Target: DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]
?…dem
the.DAT
PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
professor
a.ACC prize
‘…(the princess awards) a prize to the professor.’
(107)
Antecedent: ACC[top]-DAT[scr]-NOM
Einen Orden verleiht dem
a.ACC medal awards the.DAT
Ritter die
knight the.NOM
‘The princess awards a medal to the knight and…’
a.
*Target: NOM-ACC[scr]
*…der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
professor
a.ACC prize
‘…the professor (awards) a prize (to the knight).’
140 Prinzessin
princess
und
and
b.
?Target: NOM-DAT[scr]
?…der
the.NOM
PROFESSOR dem
professor
the.DAT
PRINZEN.
prince
‘…the professor (awards a medal) to the prince.’
c.
???Target: DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]
???…dem
the.DAT
PROFESSOR einen PREIS.
professor
a.ACC prize
‘…(the princess awards) a prize to the professor.’
Ditransitive verbs – three remnants:
Matching linear order:
(109)
Antecedent: NOM[top]-DAT-ACC (canonical)
Meine
my.NOM
Mutter liest meinem
mother reads my.DAT
Bruder ein
Buch vor
und
brother a.ACC book PTCL and
Target: NOM-DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]
…mein
my.NOM
Vater meiner
father my.DAT
Schwester
sister
eine Zeitung.
a.ACC newspaper
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and my father (reads) a newspaper to my
sister.’
(110)
Antecedent: NOM[top]-ACC[scr]-DAT
Meine
Mutter liest ein
Buch meinem
my.NOM
mother reads a.ACC book my.DAT
Target: NOM-ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
Bruder vor
und
brother PTCL and
…mein
my.NOM
Schwester.
sister
Vater eine Zeitung
father a.ACC newspaper
meiner
my.DAT
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and my father (reads) a newspaper to my
sister.’
141 (111)
?Antecedent: DAT[top]-NOM-ACC
?Meinem
my.DAT
Bruder liest meine
brother reads my.NOM
Mutter ein
Buch vor
und
mother a.ACC book PTCL and
Target: DAT[scr]-NOM-ACC[scr]
…meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
mein
my.NOM
Vater eine Zeitung.
father a.ACC newspaper
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and my father (reads) a newspaper to my
sister.’
(112)
?Antecedent: ACC[top]-NOM-DAT
?Ein Buch liest meine
a.ACC book reads my.NOM
Mutter meinem
mother my.DAT
Bruder vor
und
brother PTCL and
Vater meiner
father my.DAT
Schwester.
sister
Target: ACC[scr]-NOM-DAT[scr]
…eine Zeitung
a.ACC newspaper
mein
my.NOM
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and my father (reads) a newspaper to my
sister.’
(113)
%Antecedent: ACC[top]-DAT[scr]-NOM
%Ein Buch liest meinem
a.ACC book reads my.DAT
Bruder meine
brother my.NOM
Mutter vor
und
mother PTCL and
Target: ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]-NOM
…eine Zeitung
a.ACC newspaper
meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
mein
my.NOM
Vater.
father
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and my father (reads) a newspaper to my
sister.’
Non-matching linear order:
(114)
Antecedent: NOM[top]-DAT-ACC (canonical)
Meine
my.NOM
Mutter liest meinem
mother reads my.DAT
Bruder ein
Buch vor
und
brother a.ACC book PTCL and
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and…’
a.
?Target: NOM-ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
?…mein
my.NOM
Vater eine Zeitung
father a.ACC newspaper
meiner
my.DAT
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
142 Schwester.
sister
b.
???Target: DAT[scr]-NOM-ACC[scr]
???…meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
mein
my.NOM
Vater eine Zeitung.
father a.ACC newspaper
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
c.
*Target: DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]-NOM
*…meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
eine Zeitung
a.ACC newspaper
mein
my.NOM
Vater.
father
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
d.
%Target: ACC[scr]-NOM-DAT[scr]
%…eine
a.ACC
Zeitung
newspaper
mein
my.NOM
Vater meiner
father my.DAT
Schwester.
sister
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
e.
???Target: ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]-NOM
???…eine
a.ACC
Zeitung
newspaper
meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
mein
my.NOM
Vater.
father
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
(115)
Antecedent: NOM[top]-ACC[scr]-DAT
Meine
my.NOM
Mutter liest ein
Buch meinem
mother reads a.ACC book my.DAT
Bruder vor
und
brother PTCL and
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and…’
a.
Target: NOM-DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]
…mein
my.NOM
Vater meiner
father my.DAT
Schwester
sister
eine Zeitung.
a.ACC newspaper
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
b.
%Target: DAT[scr]-NOM-ACC[scr]
%…meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
mein
my.NOM
Vater eine Zeitung.
father a.ACC newspaper
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
143 c.
*Target: DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]-NOM
*…meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
eine Zeitung
a.ACC newspaper
mein
my.NOM
Vater.
father
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
d.
???Target: ACC[scr]-NOM-DAT[scr]
???…eine
a.ACC
Zeitung
newspaper
mein
my.NOM
Vater meiner
father my.DAT
Schwester.
sister
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
e.
*Target: ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]-NOM
*…eineZeitung
a.ACC newspaper
meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
mein
my.NOM
Vater.
father
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
(116)
Antecedent: DAT[top]-NOM-ACC
Meinem
my.DAT
Bruder liest meine
brother reads my.NOM
Mutter ein
Buch vor
und
mother a.ACC book PTCL and
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and…’
a.
Target: NOM-DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]
…mein
my.NOM
Vater meiner
father my.DAT
Schwester
sister
eine Zeitung.
a.ACC newspaper
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
b.
%/???Target: NOM-ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
%/???…mein Vater eine Zeitung
my.NOM
father a.ACC newspaper
meiner
my.DAT
Schwester.
sister
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
c.
???Target: DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]-NOM
???…meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
eine Zeitung
a.ACC newspaper
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
144 mein
my.NOM
Vater.
father
d.
%/???Target: ACC[scr]-NOM-DAT[scr]
%/???…eine
a.ACC
Zeitung
newspaper
mein
my.NOM
Vater meiner
father my.DAT
Schwester.
sister
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
e.
???Target: ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]-NOM
???…eine
a.ACC
Zeitung
newspaper
meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
mein
my.NOM
Vater.
father
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
(117)
Antecedent: ACC[top]-NOM-DAT
Ein
Buch liest meine
a.ACC book reads my.NOM
Mutter meinem
mother my.DAT
Bruder vor
und
brother PTCL and
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and…’
a.
%/???Target: NOM-DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]
%/???…mein Vater meiner
my.NOM
father my.DAT
Schwester
sister
eine Zeitung.
a.ACC newspaper
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
b.
?Target: NOM-ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
?…mein
my.NOM
Vater eine Zeitung
father a.ACC newspaper
meiner
my.DAT
Schwester.
sister
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
c.
???Target: DAT[scr]-NOM-ACC[scr]
???…meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
mein
my.NOM
Vater eine Zeitung.
father a.ACC newspaper
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
d.
?Target: DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]-NOM
?…meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
eine Zeitung
a.ACC newspaper
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
145 mein
my.NOM
Vater.
father
e.
???Target: ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]-NOM
???…eine
a.ACC
Zeitung
newspaper
meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
mein
my.NOM
Vater.
father
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
(118)
Antecedent: ACC[top]-DAT[scr]-NOM
Ein
Buch liest meinem
a.ACC book reads my.DAT
Bruder meine
brother my.NOM
Mutter vor
und
mother PTCL and
‘My mother reads a book to my brother and…’
a.
%/?Target: NOM-DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]
%/?…mein
my.NOM
Vater meiner
father my.DAT
Schwester
sister
eine Zeitung.
a.ACC newspaper
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
b.
%Target: NOM-ACC[scr]-DAT[scr]
%…mein
my.NOM
Vater eine Zeitung
father a.ACC newspaper
meiner
my.DAT
Schwester.
sister
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
c.
???Target: DAT[scr]-NOM-ACC[scr]
???…meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
mein
my.NOM
Vater eine Zeitung.
father a.ACC newspaper
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
d.
*Target: DAT[scr]-ACC[scr]-NOM
*…meiner
my.DAT
Schwester
sister
eine Zeitung
a.ACC newspaper
mein
my.NOM
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
e.
%Target: ACC[scr]-NOM-DAT[scr]
%…eine
a.ACC
Zeitung
newspaper
mein
my.NOM
Vater meiner
father my.DAT
Schwester.
sister
‘…my father (reads) a newspaper to my sister.’
146 Vater.
father
APPENDIX D
(95)
Antecedent
conjunct
Antecedent
conjunct
Target conjunct
NOMSpec-TP-ACCscr-vP
(canonical)
NOMtop-ACC
(canonical)
ACCtop-NOMSpec-TP
✓ (87)
? (91)
✓ (92)
✓ (88)
Target conjunct
NOMSpec-TP-DATscr-vP
(canonical)
NOMtop-DAT
(canonical)
DATtop-NOMSpec-TP
ACCscr-TP-NOMSpec-TP
DATscr-TP-NOMSpec-TP
✓ (89)
? (93)
✓ (94)
✓ (90)
(108)
Antecedent conjunct
NOMtop-DAT-ACC
(canonical)
NOMtop-ACCscrDAT
DATtop-NOMSpec-TPACC
NOMSpec-TP- ACCscr-TPACCscr-vP
NOMSpec-TP
*
%
(97a)
(103a)
*
*
(98a)
(104a)
?
???
(99a)
(105a)
ACCtop-NOMSpec-TPDAT
???
(106a)
ACCtop-DATscr-TPNOMSpec-TP
*
(107a)
✓
(100a)
???
(101a)
147 Target conjunct
NOMSpec-TP- DATscr-TPDATscr-vP
NOMSpec-TP
???
✓
(103b)
(97b)
???
???
(98b)
(104b)
%
✓
(105b)
(99b)
?
?
(100b)
(106b)
?
(107b)
✓
(101b)
DATscr- ACCscrACCscr DATscr
✓
✓
(97c)
(103c)
?
?
(104c)
(98c)
?
✓
(105c)
(99c)
?
?
(106c) (100c)
???
(107c)
*
(101c)
(119)
Antecedent conjunct
Target conjunct
NOMSpec-TP- NOMSpec-TP- DATscr-TPDATscr-TPDATscr-vPACCscr-vPNOMSpec-TP- ACCscr-TPACCscr-vP
DATscr-vP
ACCscr-vP
NOMSpec-TP
(canonical)
NOMtopDAT-ACC
(canonical)
NOMtopACCscrDAT
DATtopNOMSpec-TPACC
ACCtopNOMSpec-TPDAT
ACCtopDATscr-TPNOMSpec-TP
ACCscr-TPACCscr-TPNOMSpec-TP- DATscr-TPDATscr-vP
NOMSpec-TP
✓
(109)
?
(114a)
???
(114b)
*
(114c)
%
(114d)
???
(114e)
✓
(115a)
✓
(110)
%
(115b)
*
(115c)
???
(115d)
*
(115e)
✓
(116a)
%/???
(116b)
?
(111)
???
(116c)
%/???
(116d)
???
(116e)
%/???
(117a)
?
(117b)
???
(117c)
?
(117d)
?
(112)
???
(117e)
%/?
(118a)
%
(118b)
???
(118c)
*
(118d)
%
(118e)
%
(113)
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149