Werner Abraham

• PhD
• Professor Emeritus at University of Groningen

ABRAHAM What do we mean when we say things like 'If only we knew what he was up to!' Clearly this is more than just a message, or a question to our addressee. We are expressing simultaneously that we don't know, and also that we wish to know. Several modes of encoding contribute to such modalities of expression: word order, subordinating subjunctio...

What are the guiding principles in the evolution of language: Paradigmatics or syntagmatics? Werner Abraham University of Wien & University of München The main designs of modern theories of syntax assume a process of syntag- matic organization. However, research on first language acquisition leaves no doubt that the structured combination of single...

Ich zeichne die Leistungen und Vorkommensbedingun gen der deutschen Modalpartikel anhand verschiedener Fragen vor, die im mer schon im Mittelpunkt analytischer Beschreibungen gestanden haben (vgl. Whitt 2015), die aber heute deutlicher formuliert werden können, vor allem unter Bezug auf die Com mongrounddimension, die zwischen Vorkontext und der ak...

1. Vorverständnis und implizite Widmung Die Zuweisung von Valenzkasus geschieht grammatiktheoretisch durch DP-Lizensierung. Die Bedingung für eine solche Lizenz nennt man syntaktische Kasusbedingung. Sie besteht, dies ist ebenso verständlich, eine Beziehung zu morphologischer Kasusmarkierung. Dazu gibt es drei Möglichkeiten (vgl. etwa McFadden 2004...

The present paper is about types of seeming subordination (i.e. subordina-tion by form), which in fact bears all distributional assets of insubordination. Yet, such insubordinate subordination is characterized by sentential autonomy in terms of il-locutive force (i.e., it is not only presupposed as subordinates usually are). It will be shown that a...

Zusammenfassung: Ich gehe der Frage nach, nach welchen Kriterien Zembs Begriff des Phemas einzuordnen ist. Da Zemb selbst das Phema explizit als Junktur zu Thema einerseits und Rhema andererseits sieht, sehe ich als beste Prüfdiagnose thetische Satzgefüge, in denen ja das Vorfeld, also die prototypische Position für thematisches Material fehlt. Daz...

Was die folgende Diskussion will Mirativitätskodierung geht in der Regel mit morphologischer Evidentialkodie-rung einher wie in indigenen Sprachen Südamerikas (vgl. Bruil 2014). Nun ha-ben zwar europanähere Sprachen Evidentialmorphologie (vertreten im sog. Evi-dentialgürtel im baltischen Raum über Georgien bis zum Türkischen), aber Mira-tivität wir...

The focus of this paper is about the copula+infinitive in Modern German, its older stages, and its dialectal and sociolectal varieties. In doing so, the paper comes to conclusions different from other discussion of this topic, mainly Demske 1994. The prepositional infinitive and the verbal substantive (gerund) in modern German are not only minimall...

The present paper is about types of seeming subordination (i.e. subordina-tion by form), which in fact bears all distributional assets of insubordination. Such insubordinate subordination is characterized by sentential autonomy in terms of illocu-tive force (i.e., it is not only presupposed). It will be shown that a reliable diagnostics is provided...

Es ist bekannt, dass neben weil als unterordnender Subjunktion (weil-Vletzt) weil ebenso in nebenordnender Koordination (weil-V2) erscheinen kann. Dies geschieht aufgrund normativen Drucks zwar bloß im mündlichen Ausdruck – und wird deshalb im Schulunterricht als grammatischer Fehler gebrandmarkt. Die jüngste Forschung hat aber gezeigt, dass weil-V...

Data regarding three claims concerning the syntax of modal particles will be presented. The first claim is that modal particles (MPs) are a category of particles that is different from other discourse markers, and that they are found only in German, a few Germanic languages and possibly in Russian, but not in Romance languages and in English. The s...

Zusammenfassung Im Deutschen gibt es mehrere Formen der Kopula+Infinitiv-Struktur, deren Bedeutungen sich zum Teil decken, zum anderen Teil jedoch trennen. Die vorliegende Diskussion geht zum einen der Frage nach, wie bei solchen Formen die Absentivbedeutung (de Groot 2000

In modem linguistic theories such as Construction Grammar and Cognitive Grammar, description and explanation utilise methodological approaches based on scalar family relations rather than those using an established inventory of discrete features. Passives have received particular attention in this context (Langacker, Welke, Diessel). The article di...

This paper investigates modality elements in German dependent clauses. We demonstrate that although modal adverbial elements can appear freely in matrix clauses, they have a limited distribution in dependent clauses – showing up, for example, in non-factive complement clauses, but not in factive complement clauses. More generally, the modality pote...

The present paper deals with the so-called ‘fate future’, a use of the German modal verb sollen in a specific epistemic usage. It will be shown that the fate future rests on the reportative reading of sollte and that other modals in the paradigm cannot replace sollte+infinitive in the specific reading of the fate future. Very generally, the positio...

The volume aims at a universal definition of modality or “illocutionary/speaker’s perspective force” that is strong enough to capture the entire range of different subtypes and varieties of modalities in different languages. The central idea is that modality is all-pervasive in language. This perspective on modality allows for the integration of co...

This volume in honor of Jan Terje Faarlund covers the areas in which he has contributed to linguistic theorizing, ranging from in-depth studies of Norwegian and Scandinavian grammar both synchronically and diachronically, to work on the Indian language Chiapas Zoque. The book is organized thematically with two chapters on each topic: The grammar of...

In today’s leading discussions on case and its licensing mechanics there is only one approach: the syntagmatic type of case assignment. In contrast, the present article describes patterns of paradigmatic case assignment. Paradigmatic case assignment means that two different m(orphological)‐cases fill one slot licensed for the same theta role, where...

This chapter deals with the diachronic development of the post-nominal definite article in Icelandic and relates the change inside the nominal structure to other changes in the information structure of the clause. It therefore addresses two crucial aspects related to the nature of functional heads: how functional heads in the nominal expression are...

Wackernagel's Law/WL is discussed with a close view on whether or not it covers also modern languages and processes of pronominal cliticization. While it will be disclosed that WL does not even completely cover what are clearly clitic positions in old stages of Indo-European languages as in Vedic and Latin, pronominal cliticization in German, Greek...

This chapter is devoted to microvariation in the use of morphological case and linear order of PPs in substandard varieties of German, where morphological case plays an important distinguishing role between semantic stativity and directionality of otherwise homonymic PPs. The gist of the chapter is that both prepositions and case need to be divided...

"Structure is at the rock-bottom of all explanatory sciences" (Jan Koster). Forty years ago, the hypothesis that underlying the bewildering variety of syntactic phenomena are general and unified structural patterns of unexpected beauty and simplicity gave rise to major advancements in the study of Dutch and Germanic syntax, with important implicati...

What happens when a canonically transitive form meets a canonically transitive meaning, and what happens when this doesn’t happen? How do dyadic forms relate to monadic ones, and what are the entailments of the operations that the grammar uses to relate one to the other? Collecting original expert work from acquisition, processing, typological and...

It will be claimed that given the highly situationally restricted context triggering the Absentive meaning under any of the available construals, the occurrence of the Ab-sentive is not a grammatical category. Nor is there a viable diachronic relation with the PP-Progressive in German and other languages such as English. Admittedly, this leaves una...

This article compares the concatenation techniques of narrative grammar in four languages on the basis of Camus' "L'étranger". Special attention is paid to the systematic grammatical and lexical means which the Romance languages have at their disposal in contrast with the Germanic languages. The German translation "Der Fremde" (by U. Aumüller) is c...

The main topics pursued in this volume are based on empirical insights derived from Germanic: logical and typological dispositions about aspect-modality links. These are probed in a variety of non-related languages. The logically establishable links are the following: Modal verbs are aspect sensitive in the selection of their infinitival complement...

The main topics pursued in this volume are based on empirical insights derived from Germanic: logical and typological dispositions about aspect-modality links. These are probed in a variety of non-related languages. The logically establishable links are the following: Modal verbs are aspect sensitive in the selection of their infinitival complement...

The following theoretical-empirical points on the DP are discussed: Article and its referential-anaphoric properties by Abraham (Determiners in Centering Theory); Bartra (On bare NPs in Old Spanish and Catalan); identification of all functional nominal categories by Stvan (Bare singular count nouns); Kupisch & Koops (Specificity and negation); Jäge...

The following theoretical-empirical points on the DP are discussed: Article and its referential-anaphoric properties by Abraham (Determiners in Centering Theory); Bartra (On bare NPs in Old Spanish and Catalan); identification of all functional nominal categories by Stvan (Bare singular count nouns); Kupisch & Koops (Specificity and negation); Jäge...

This paper discusses what is called the ‘impersonal passive’ (ImpPass) with the aim of isolating the criteria under which ImpPass is distinguished from the ‘personal passive’ (PersPass). It will be argued, first, that ImpPass is a misnomer given that it can be formed only from active subjects identified by personal agents. Secondly, we shall invest...

This volume interfaces three fields of linguistics rarely discussed in the same context. Its underlying theme is linguistic variation, and the ways in which historical linguists and dialectologists may learn from insights offered by typology, and vice versa . The aim of the contributions is to raise the awareness of these linguistic subdisciplines...

The three concepts of case , valency and transitivity belong to the most discussed topics of modern linguistics. On the one hand, they are crucially connected with morphological aspects of the clause, including case marking, person agreement and voice. On the other hand, they are related to several semantic issues such as the meaning of case, seman...

This volume provides a state-of-the-art account of research into datives and other morphological cases. The contributors, among them leading scholars in the field, present fresh insights into traditional issues such as the dichotomy between lexical and structural case, and open up fascinating new areas of research. A recurrent feature of the majori...

Is the passive a unified universal phenomenon? The claim derived from this volume is that the passive, if not universal, has become unified according to function. Language as a means of communication needs the passive, or passive-like constructions, and sooner or later develops them based on other voices (impersonal active, middle, reflexive), spec...

Is the passive a unified universal phenomenon? The claim derived from this volume is that the passive, if not universal, has become unified according to function. Language as a means of communication needs the passive, or passive-like constructions, and sooner or later develops them based on other voices (impersonal active, middle, reflexive), spec...

Is the passive a unified universal phenomenon? The claim derived from this volume is that the passive, if not universal, has become unified according to function. Language as a means of communication needs the passive, or passive-like constructions, and sooner or later develops them based on other voices (impersonal active, middle, reflexive), spec...

The ensuing paper is about the promiscuity of active and passive forms and their functions in Early Romance. Specifically, ever since the synthetic simple passive was gradually abandoned since Late Latin, new composite forms emerged involving several full verbs, among which fakere. The unusual novel use of facere+P(ast)P(articiple) in passive funct...

The observational point of departure in this paper is that infinitivals (in Dutch and German) have no tense. Apparent counterexamples to this claim can be shown to involve aspect/Aktionsarten rather than tense. There is consequently no reason to posit any of the functional shell structure associated with tense. Hence, the infinitival markers (zu, t...

The division of labour between different components within the theoretical linguistic frameworks, in particular that of clausal accent and its critical status for the unambiguous identification of the clausal parts such as subject and objects, has been a topic of much debate. Reinhart (1995, 2001), Zubizarreta (1995), Erteschik-Shir (1997), Horvath...

In the past 20 years, a new class of verbs has seen the light of existence: 'unaccusative' or 'ergative' verbs. These verbs are intransitive, but different from the traditional notion of intransitive to the extent that their subject valency behaves like a direct object distributionally. Ever since the introduction of this new grammatical notion in...

This book contributes to an area of study that is of interest to linguists of all backgrounds. Typological in nature this volume presents data analysis from the major language families of Africa as well as Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, Japanese, Indo-European, Siouan and Penutian. The 16 contributors to the volume share a commitment to examining the...

This book provides a broad overview of the issues relevant for the study of syntax of modals and their interaction with the verbal system. A large number of novel observations are offered from a variety of languages, including Dutch, (Modern and Middle) English, German, Lele, Macedonian, Middle Dutch and Slovene. The wealth of data, the critical ev...

Proceedings from the 15th workshop on Comparative Germanic Syntax

The category of personal pronouns are explicitly exbraciated from syntactic constraints in the framework of Chomskyan Universal Grammar. The binding rules target reflexives ('anaphors', in modern syntactic jargon), but not pronouns. The present article is an attempt to fill this gap. The framework that provides the necessary syntactic instruments i...

The category of personal pronouns are explicitly exbraciated from syntactic constraints in the framework of Chomskyan Universal Grammar. The binding rules target reflexives ('anaphors', in modern syntactic jargon), but not pronouns. The present article is an attempt to fill this gap. The framework that provides the necessary syntactic instruments i...

This book takes up a variety of general syntactic topics, which either yield different solutions in German, in particular, or which lead to different conclusions for theory formation. One of the main topics is the fact that languages that allow for extensive scrambling between the two verbal poles, V-2 and V-last, need to integrate discourse functi...

There is no preposition which governs either the dative or the accusative. In principle the part of speech preposition naturally governs the dative. The accusative on the other hand is governed by the secondary predicate hin-/her-, by the optional verb particle, or by a complex adverb of direction together with the verb of movement. Thus the distri...

The eleven selected contributions making up this volume deal with grammatical relations, their coding and behavioral properties, and the change that these properties have undergone in different languages. The focus of this collection is on the changing properties of subjects and objects, although the scope of the volume goes beyond the central prob...

1 Introduction Studies of left dislocation constructions in a number of languages seem to put a lot of emphasis on the evaluation of the nature of this phenomenon: movement or base-generation. With this paper I will undoubtedly add to these studies. By comparing two varieties of left dislocation in German, I propose a movement approach for one type...

L'article cherche a apporter des reponses claires, dans le cadre de la linguistique germanique moderne, sur la relation entre le participe passe (PP) allemand et l'expression du passif. Ceci amene l'A. a etudier plus largement la relation entre le parfait et le perfectif. Cette etude est menee a partir de l'observation de l'allemand et d'une compar...

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L'A. propose un article introductif a une partie thematique consacree aux proprietes caracteristiques des langues vernaculaires parlees, qui regroupe 5 communications presentees lors du colloque ayant eu lieu du 29 aout au 1 e r sept. 1998 a l'universite St. Andrews, en Ecosse. En considerant les langues vernaculaires comme des langues plus naturel...

The article discusses two distinct uses of the German auxiliary werden-as a future marker, as a passive marker-and the deep semantic link with deontic modality in German as well as the diachronic emergence of zu 'to' as an infinitival marker. There is reason to assume that one single feature controls all these distinct uses: that of local allativit...

This collection presents typological work on tense, aspect, and epistemic modality in a variety of languages and against the background of different schools of thinking, among which the St. Petersburg Typological School developed and so masterfully implemented by the Petersburg linguist, Vladimir Petrovich Nedjalkov. The volume honors this reputed...