Positions and Interpretations: German Adverbial Adjectives at the Syntax-Semantics Interface (Trends in Linguistics)

Hardcover, xv + 236 pages, NOT ex-library. Book is clean and bright throughout with unmarked text, free of inscriptions and stamps, firmly bound. Boards show short creases and small indentations to corners and spine ends. Issued without a dust jacket. -- The structural and semantic properties of adverbials represent a still poorly understood area of sentential syntax and semantics in Germanic languages. In particular, it is an open question which different adverbial usages need to be distinguished, which usages are tied to which syntactic positions, and how these different usage can be formally analyzed. Focussing on adverbial adjectives in German, this study provides detailed answers to these questions. By distinguishing between verb-related adverbials and event-related adverbials, the author provides a new analysis of the large class of adverbials traditionally labelled as manner adverbials. It is shown that the two different classes are linked to different syntactic positions, and formal analyses and derivations for the two different usages are developed. The book is therefore of interest not only to anyone working on the linguistics of German but also to all linguists working on the syntax-semantics interface and the formal analysis of adverbials. -- Contents: 1 Introduction: -- Scope & aim; On adverbials & adjectives [Defining adverbials (Adverbial: vs. subject & vs. object & vs. predicative & vs. particle); Adverbial adjectives]; Basic distinctions [Class properties of adverbial adjectives; Set-theoretic classifications; Sentence & non-sentence adverbials; Other important semantic properties (Opacity; Veridicality)]; Structure of the book; 2 Readings of sentence adverbials: -- Subject-oriented adverbials; Speaker-oriented adverbials [Speech-act & Epistemic & Evaluative adverbials]; Domain adverbials; Semantic constraints on possible sentence adverbials; 3 Readings of Verb-Related Adverbials: -- Manner adverbials; Degree adverbials [Contexts & constraints for degree modification; Degree-manner ambiguities]; Method-oriented adverbials; Verb-related adverbials & secondary predication [Resultatives; Ambiguities & blends; Depictives]; Adverbial adjectives & verb-adverbial combinatorics [Statives that allow manner modification; Mannerless statives]; Verb-related adverbials & negation; 4 Event-Related Adverbials: -- Mental-attitude adverbials; Event-external adverbials [Inchoative readings of schnell and langsam; Holistic usages]; Wobei-paraphrase; 5 Syntactic position of manner adverbials: -- Establishing syntactic positions; Adverbial modification and information structure; Eckardt's account: Scrambled indefinite direct objects [Restricted combinations: Implicit resultatives & verbs of creation; Readings of indefinites and topicality; In-group readings; Problems for Eckardt's account]; Frey and Pittner: Object integration; An alternative account: It's the adverbial's reading that is decisive [Adverbials out of the blue (Thetic sentences); Re-interpreting the controversial examples; Theme-rheme condition]; More evidence and some subtleties [Clear minimal pairs; Lexical semantics & verb-adverbial combinatorics; Scrambling]; 6 Adverbials in formal semantics: The classical analysis: -- Operator approach [Thomason & Stalnaker; Operator approach & scope; Operator approach as a general analysis of modification structures; Criticism of the operator approach]; Argument approach: McConnell-Ginet; Predicate approach: Event-based semantics [Event-based semantics & intuitive plausibility; Scope of the event-based approach; Neo-Davidsonian approaches]; Possible combinations: Events & predicate-modifier approach; 7 Semantic analysis of verb-related adverbials: -- Manners in the ontology; Manners in the representation; Benefits of the analysis; 8 Summary and outlook; Notes; References; Index.…