CSLI Publications logo
new books
catalog
series
knuth books
contact
for authors
order
search
CSLI Publications
Facebook CSLI Publications RSS feed
CSLI Publications Newsletter Signup Button
 
Word Order and Constituent Structure in German  cover

Word Order and Constituent Structure in German

Hans Uszkoreit

This book applies the highly constrained grammatical framework of Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar of the syntax of German, focusing on the complex interaction of word order phenomena and constituent structure. Uszkoreit modifies and extends this framework to permit the adequate treatment of partially free word order as it occurs in German and probably to some degree in all natural languages. Through Uszkoreit's redefined notion of linear precedence rules, it has become possible for the first time to present a formalized analysis of the interaction of the competing syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and stylistic principles that determine the order of arguments and adjuncts.

Most of the book is dedicated to the proof that a phrase-structure-grammar model can offer an adequate description of a language with much freer word order than English and at the same time provide new insights in the structure of this language. A highly concentrated and elegant grammar fragment is given, which offers intuitive analyses for such notoriously problematic phenomena as (1) word order differences between main clauses and subordinate clauses, (2) the second position of the finite verb in assertion main clauses, (3) the order among main, auxiliary, and modal verbs, (4) the derivation and distribution of separable prefix verbs, and (5) the partially free order among verb complements and adjuncts.

Hans Uszkoreit is Professor of Computational Linguistics and Phonetics of Saarland University at Saarbrücken. He is also the Scientific Director at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and Head of the DFKI Language and Technology Lab.

Contents

  • Introduction
    • 1 Issues and Results
    • 2 Some Theoretical Premises
    • 3 Theoretical Context
    • 4 The Structure of the Book

  • 1 Basic Facts About German Word Order
    • 1 Introduction
    • 2 The Position of the Finite Verb
      • 2.1 Three Clause Types
      • 2.2 Verb-Second Clauses
      • 2.3 Verb-Initial Clauses
      • 2.4 Verb-Final Clauses
      • 2.5 Summary of the Three Clause Types
    • 3 The Order Within the Verb Group
    • 4 The Order Within the Field of Verbal Arguments and Free Adjuncts
    • 5 The First-Position in Verb-Second Clause
    • 6 Constituents Outside the Clause Core

  • 2 The Framework of GPSG
    • 1 Introduction
    • 2 Basic Outline of the Theory
    • 3 The Object of Grammar
    • 4 The Metagrammar
    • 5 The Semantics of GPSG
    • 6 Notes on the Generative Power of GPSG
    • 7 GPSG and Word Order Freedom

  • 3 The Order of Main and Auxiliary Verbs
    • 1 Introduction
    • 2 The Position of the Main Verb
      • 2.1 Basic VP Rules and Flat Clauses
      • 2.2 Apparent Subject-Object Asymmetries
      • 2.3 Features and Rules
      • 2.4 Notes on the Semantics of VP and Clause Rules
    • 3 Auxiliaries and Modals
      • 3.1 Auxiliary VP and Clause Rules
      • 3.2 Some Consequences and Results of the Auxiliary Rule
      • 3.3 Main Verb Analysis Versus Flat AUX Node
      • 3.4 Some Notes on the Semantics of the Auxiliary System
    • 4 Verb-Second Clauses

  • 4 Separable Prefixes
    • 1 Introduction
    • 2 The Rules
    • 3 Alternative Proposals
    • 4 Separable Prefixes and Topicalization
    • 5 Conclusion

  • 5 The Order of Verbal Complements and Adjuncts
    • 1 Introduction
    • 2 The Modified Framework
    • 3 Discussions and Analysis
      • 3.1 Discussion of the General Approach

  • 6 Evaluation and Expendability of the Grammar
    • 1 Introduction
    • 2 Properties of the Grammar
      • 2.1 Basic Theoretical Properties of GFG
      • 2.2 Generative Capacity and Implementability
    • 3 Expandability
      • 3.1 Additional Verb Subcategorization Frames
        • 3.1.1 The Specification of the Unmarked Order
        • 3.1.2 Subjectless Verbs
      • 3.2 Adverbial Phrases
      • 3.3 Expletive es
      • 3.4 Focus Raising
      • 3.5 Additional Types of Topicalization

  • 7 Conclusion
    • 1 A Selective Summary
    • 2 Directions for Further Research

  • A Rules of GFG
    • A.1 Basic Rules
    • A.2 Metarules
    • A.3 Feature Cooccurrence Restrictions
    • A.4 Linear Precedence Rules

  • Bibliography
  • Author Index
  • Subject Index

5/1/88

ISBN (Paperback): 9780937073100 (0937073105)
ISBN (Electronic): 9781575868578 (1575868571)
Subject: Linguistics; German Language–Syntax

Add to Cart
View Cart

Check Out

Distributed by the
University of
Chicago Press

pubs @ csli.stanford.edu