On the discourse impact of subordinate clauses

The Syntax and Semantics of the Left Periphery

In this article the main focus is on German complex sentences where a subordinate clause appears in the shape of a matrix CP, i.e. showing verb second. Furthermore, a glance is thrown at related phenomena in other languages: so-called root transformations in English and the licensing of verbal mood in Romance. A formal treatment will be proposed: in case a subordinate clause is used by the speaker to trigger a discourse new reading, conveying information the speaker intends to assert, the sentence is raised to a position such that the initially hypotactic structure is transformed into a quasi-paratactic construction. This move, which can be conceived of as an instance of quantifier raising for CPs, puts subordinate sentences into a position directly in the scope of a speech act operator, which results in the desired reading. The technical devices that are used for this step are not different from proposals such as Stowell's relative clause attachment to achieve the independent tense construal, or Farkas' binding approach to account for the reading of indefinites. The idea is that a subordinate sentence with obvious main clause characteristics is interpreted twice: in the base and in the derived position, resulting in a double access reading.

Heidinger, Steffen. 2015. The information status and discourse anchorage of non-nominal constituents: A case study on Spanish secondary predicates. Journal of Pragmatics 81. 52–73., 2015

The information status of nominal constituents has been a recurring topic of research over recent decades. Little is known, however, about the information status of nonnominal constituents such as secondary predicates. In the present paper, we present a corpus based analysis of the information status (and also the discourse anchorage) of Spanish secondary predicates. We will show that secondary predicates are anchored both in the preceding and the following context, but to a much lesser extent than their subjects (i.e., the nominal basis of comparison in our study). The most frequent information status of secondary predicates is neither given nor new, but one where the state denoted by the secondary predicate is evoked by some element of the preceding context (e.g., to cry evokes the state sad). Evoked is an intermediate information status between given and new. While the lack of given secondary predicates is not surprising, the existing literature would suggest that secondary predicates express predominately new information. In this respect, our study shows not only that information status is a relevant category for non-nominal constituents, but also that its analysis requires a more elaborate inventory than a binary given-new distinction.

A recurrent claim in the literature on syntactic change is that subordinate clauses tend cross-linguistically to preserve older patterns. However, even though individual cases of unrelated and typologically distinct languages have been discussed, hardly any quantitative data have been used to support this claim. In addition, arguments have been presented which contradict the view that subordinate clauses are conservative. This study, which is still at an early stage, has two main aims: (a) to contribute to the ongoing discussion by providing an in-depth, corpus-based typology of syntactic change, and (b) to relate this typology to a cross-linguistically applicable definition of subordination. The (considerably) preliminary results suggest that, whereas subordinate clauses are indeed conservative concerning word order change in particular, they are innovative concerning cases of syntactic change that do not involve word order.

2006

L'objectif de cet article est d'interroger la relation que l'on peut poser entre les constructions verbales articulees par les morphemes dits "subordonnants". Au travers de l'etude descriptive des proprietes syntaxiques des constructions mettant en jeu bien que, quoique et puisque dans des corpus de francais parle contemporain, l'auteur montre qu'un meme morpheme peut etre associe a des relations syntaxiques differentes marquees par des proprietes discriminantes. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between verbal structures linked by so-called "subordinating" morphemes. A descriptive study of the syntactic features of constructions including bien que, quoique and puisque in spoken French corpora, shows that a given morpheme can be associated with different syntactic relations marked by distinctive features.

Freywald, Ulrike. 2016. Clause integration and verb position in German. In: Ingo Reich & Augustin Speyer (eds.). Co- and Subordination in German and other Languages. Hamburg: Buske (Linguistische Berichte, Sonderheft 21). 181-220, 2016

In this paper, I discuss the well-known phenomenon of German adverbial subordinators introducing clauses with main clause word order (such as obwohl 'although', wobei 'whereby', weil 'because', während 'whereas'). I argue that these connectors do not behave in a deviant or non-canonical way in these cases but that adverbial subordinators have paratactic homonyms which belong to a separate class within the inventory of clause linkers in German. Building on data from spontaneous speech production, evidence comes mainly from the distribution of structural main clause phenomena and illocutionary types, and from the role of embedded verb second. These findings have also implications concerning the structural richness of the left periphery of main vs subordinate clauses. I come to the conclusion that main and subordinate clauses differ with respect to their internal syntax, and that subtypes of subordinate clauses showing varying degrees of syntactic integration can be sufficiently distinguished by just their external syntax.

Studies in language companion series, 2023

This paper aims to discuss some distinguishing syntactic and interpretative properties of German causal weil-clauses, da-clauses and verb-first causal clauses. The paper argues that these different properties can be fruitfully analysed in Krifka's (2018, to appear) system of decomposition of a speech act into the levels of a proposition, of a judgement, of a commitment and of a speech act. These semantic levels are represented in syntax by TP, JP, ComP and ActP, respectively. Standardly, a weil-clause is just a TP (covered by a CP-shell). In contrast, a da-clause is of the more complex category JP (covered by a CP-shell), which is adjoined to the JP of its host, i.e., a da-clause is interconnected with a judgement. Related to this there are, for example, the findings that in contrast to the situation with a weil-clause, a da-clause cannot be narrowly focal, that the causal relation expressed by da is not at-issue and that there is no binding from the host into a da-clause. Furthermore, a da-clause may host a certain type of root phenomena. A verb-first causal clause is of the most complex category ActP and is licensed by an ActP. It cannot be syntactically embedded and it has illocutionary force, which, however, has a supporting function with regard to the illocutionary force of the preceding sentence. A verb-first causal clause may host all kinds of root phenomena. The paper also compares Krifka's layers of interpretation and Sweetser's (1990) three domains of interpretation (content, epistemic, speech act) and shows that these two classifications complement each other with correlations. Keywords: different types of causal clauses, degrees of integration, (different types of) root phenomena, judgements, speech acts, sizes of clauses * I would like to gratefully thank two anonymous reviewers for very helpful critical comments and Łukasz Jędrzejowski and Manfred Krifka for very enlightening conversations. 1 The constructions of spoken language in which weil precedes clauses with main clause word order, cf. Reis (2013) (often misleadingly called weil-verb-second clauses)-cf. the example in (i)-will deliberately not be discussed. There is evidence that here weil does not form a constituent with the following clause. Instead, it appears as a syntactically independent discourse marker connecting two discourse units (cf.,

dissertation, 2023

This dissertation explores non-standard uses of German discourse particles, especially 'ja' (roughly: ‘as we know / uncontroversially’). After discussing arguments for the focus sensitivity of discourse particles, ample structural evidence in favor of this assumption is presented by natural instances of 'ja' in syntactically integrated and semantically embedded structures like restrictive relative and central, i.e. proposition-modifying, adverbial clauses. The acceptability of 'ja' in such environments and e.g. the nominal domain, i.e. mainly in adjectival phrases, depends, first, on the fulfillment of the felicity conditions of the particle. Second, it depends on information-structural properties of the syntactic complement of the discourse particle, which must contain or at least comprise a focus, or, more precisely, an element for which alternatives are evoked, even if the latter is not the primary focus of the containing sentence. My analysis of the information structure of complex sentences is based on a theory of discourse structure in terms of questions under discussion. This allows for an account of ordering alternations between discourse particles and clausal constituents, which sheds a new light on scrambling and comparable adverbial movement in German. I show that qualified claims on the grammatical requirements of discourse particles, particularly in non-root structures, cannot be made without due regard to the discourse context. I distinguish between unmarked uses of 'ja' and uses that are only acceptable in the right context and infelicitous in isolation or the wrong context, but not unavailable, contrary to previous claims. Besides 'ja' and other exemplary German discourse particles, I consider comparable expressions in other languages and observe interaction with information structure as well as syntactic association with subsentential phrases. In German, debate of such small particle phrases is limited to focus and additive particles and discourse particles in wh-phrases. I argue that discourse particles behave more like focus and additive particles than hitherto acknowledged and show that e.g. 'ja' occurs with topical arguments and adverbial phrases in particle-final small particle phrases in the prefield of verb-second clauses. Consequently, small particle phrases in the middle field of clauses are a theoretical possibility, empirically supported by 'ja' in the background of wh-questions, occurrences of the same discourse particle in two positions in the middle field of one clause, open particle combinations, and combinations of discourse particles violating the otherwise rather strict order of discourse particles. Particles evidently associate with subparts of wider primary foci, too, i.e. nested foci that can consist of more than one constituent. 'ja' in any embedded position is interpreted differently from 'ja' at the level of the matrix clause (unless embedded 'ja' operates on an embedded narrow primary focus), i.e. matrix 'ja' relates the propositional at-issue meaning of the containing sentence to another utterance in the context, but embedded 'ja' generally relates an embedded proposition to the containing utterance. The same should hold—and be explored in more detail—for other discourse particles, assuming they are focus sensitive, if they occur in different positions in the same assertions and questions, as discussed. Further, I suggest that 'ja' can modify non-at-issue meaning. Besides occurring inside conventionally implicated structures like non-restrictive relative clauses or appositions, the particle occurs in small particle phrases with epistemic and evaluative adverbs and in rhetorical wh-questions, but only when followed by the discourse particle schon (which disambiguates toward a rhetorical reading of wh-questions) or sometimes auch (literally ‘too/also’). Beyond explaining why 'ja' appears in these structures, the assumption that 'ja' can modify non-at-issue meaning conveyed by non-at-issue expressions, besides meaning conveyed by conventionally implicated structures, can explain why 'ja' is consistently perceived as gaining acceptability in some non-standard uses when other particles and phrases are present: according to my approach, many structures are ambiguous, and ambiguity alleviates processing.

2015

The paper aims to test the view put forward in Matthiessen/Thompson 1988, Verhagen 2005 and Langacker 2008 (among others) that there is an important difference between adjunct and complement clauses – whereas the former provide additional pieces of information and can be viewed as satellite discourse fragments with respect to the main clauses (which provide the skeleton of the discourse, determining its overall structure), the latter, though viewed as syntactically subordinate, actually present the basic discourse content. The paper attempts to do so by analysing a group of (stylistically varied) texts, thereby especially focusing on the contribution of the two given types of clauses to discourse. In addition, the implications of such analysis are also discussed in terms of their pedagogical implications.

It is almost a commonplace that word order in the midfield of German clauses is flexible. Although statements to this effect do not claim that "anything goes", they suggest that word order variability in German clauses is considerably greater than, for example, in Dutch and English. Few systematic empirical studies of the actual amount of variation that go beyond the intuition of the individual linguist have been published as yet. In the present paper, we adduce empirical data drawn from a corpus study on the linear order of Subject (SB), Indirect Object (IO) and Direct Object (DO) in German subordinate clauses.

2015

This paper examines clause-level constituent order and a number of related morphological and syntactic phenomena in Cheke Holo, in terms of the discourse sensitivity of clausal arguments. Clause order varies in the language. Many clauses are verb initial, while some have an argument in preverbal

University of Pennsylvania …, 2008

2014

This thesis investigates the diachronic behaviour of relative clauses across a broad sample of constructions from genetically and geographically diverse languages. Previous studies of change in relative clause constructions have most frequently been restricted to individual languages or language families. By comparing such studies with each other and with the historical records of languages that have less commonly been the focus of diachronic syntactic works, I examine the strength of evidence for developments that are predicted by earlier literature to be "natural" or even "universal'' pathways of change (for example, various sources of relative clause markers, the development of hypotaxis out of parataxis, shift from prenominal to postnominal relative clause position). I also look for evidence of changes that synchronic typological studies of relative clause constructions might lead us to expect to find (i.e., diachronic variation in the same parameters by which relative clause types distinguish themselves synchronically). I conclude that the sources of relative clause markers and the results of the extensions of these markers into other constructions are more varied then has generally been thought to be the case, including, for example, such sources as classifiers and discourse markers. Changes in other features of relative clauses, however, such as verb forms, embeddedness, and the relative position of the relative clause and its head tend to be remarkably stable over long periods of time. The factor that appears to have the greatest influence on whether changes in these otherwise stable features do occur is language contact. Features of relative clauses, markers, and even entire constructions can be copied from other languages, competing with pre-existing constructions until in some cases one replaces the other, and in others the two are redistributed according to considerations such as restrictiveness, animacy, case role or similar. These results point to the importance of incorporating the effects of language contact into models of language change rather than viewing contact situations as exceptional. There are also implications for the definition of relative clauses, their syntactic structures, and the relationships between the different "subtypes'' of this construction.

2022

This dissertation deals with the syntactic phenomenon known as recomplementation, provisionally defined as the use of two or more interspersed complementizers seemingly related to the same embedded clause (e.g., Eng. "My hope is THAT by the time we meet THAT we’ll have made some progress," Spa. "Dicen QUE Paty QUE va a tener un bebé" ‘They say that Paty is going to have a baby’). After a review of the previous scholarship bearing on the subject, a new syntactic account of recomplementation is put forward defining the phenomenon as a form of constituent restarting. More precisely, it is proposed that recomplementation involves the generation of one or more incomplete complementizer phrases (CPs) lacking a (pivotal) embedded verb, followed by a full CP providing the missing propositional material. In order to explain the relation between CPs and governors, it is suggested that, when a governor is present, recomplementation results in two or more partially overlapping structures belonging to different syntactic planes. Contrary to what might be assumed, however, recomplementation structures need not be mere accidents of performance or grammatical anomalies, as restarts and the like may in principle be licensed by language-particular constructions, which are conventional by definition. This point is illustrated with the case of Old Romance, where recomplementation was widespread in a variety of written genres. The proposed syntactic account is put to the test with data from a sentence rating task and a sentence preference task with native Spanish speakers, manipulating indirect-question marking and word order. Participants’ responses to items in which indirect-question marking was manipulated suggest that que ‘that’ doubling in Spanish indirect questions results in a reset of clause modality, making it necessary to add an interrogative complementizer after the extra que even if one was already used after the first one, despite the fact that such repetitions are not common in Spanish. Moreover, participants’ responses to items featuring a word order manipulation suggest that que doubling only results in felicitous sentences when the (pivotal) embedded predicate occurs after the extra que, which can be appreciated most clearly when manipulating the position of adjuncts and indirect objects. Thus, the convergent experimental evidence supports the restart account of recomplementation, which is the only account offered to date that predicts both of these findings. Finally, taking advantage of the widespread presence of recomplementation in Old Romance, a quantitative corpus study was conducted examining the conditioning factors of que doubling in four 14th-century narrative Spanish texts. The analysis of the corpus data reveals que doubling to be a highly patterned phenomenon in the state of language under study, predicted by the class and length of the material following the initial complementizer as well as by the mood of the embedded verb. Such effects suggest that Old Spanish recomplementation was used as a delimitating device and as a way to facilitate processing in the face of working memory constraints, and that its occurrence was also triggered by chunking processes caused by repeated exposure to structures featuring a verb with subjunctive morphology next to, or close to, an overt complementizer. Overall, this dissertation contributes to a better appreciation of the possibilities of syntactic structure and grammar in the wider sense, moving away from preconceptions in the discipline and highlighting the importance of strictly discursive factors such as processing considerations and frequency effects. Additionally, by dealing with questions of abstract syntactic structure, convention, and domain-general cognitive mechanisms, this dissertation is intended to narrow the gap between so-called formalist and functionalist approaches in linguistics.