Postmodifying verb-second clauses in spoken German

• Autores: Regina Weinert
• Localización: Functions of language, ISSN 0929-998X, Vol. 19, Nº 2, 2012, págs. 235-264
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This usage-based and corpus-based study examines the use of verb-second clauses as restrictive postmodifiers of noun phrases in spoken German (ich kenn leute die haben immer pech �I know people they are always unlucky�) in relation to verb-final relative clauses. Previous accounts largely work with de-contextualised and constructed data and stop short of accounting for the discourse function of verb-second postmodifying structures. The ratio of verb-final relative clauses to postmodifying verb-second clauses does not indicate a shift towards main clause syntax. Rather, the verb-second clauses form part of a set of existential or presentational and ascriptive copular constructions which serve to highlight properties of entities and/or introduce discourse topics. Relative clauses can be used for such functions, but this is not as common. The syntactic and semantic features associated with postmodifying verb-second clauses can be seen as a direct result of their discourse function, which only a corpus analysis could reveal. The paper also comments on the wider related aspects of verb position, clause combining and pronoun use in spoken German from the perspective of a usage-based language model.