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Middles in German DISSERTATION Middles in German zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades doctor philosophiae (dr. phil.) im Fach Deutsche Sprachwissenschaft eingereicht an der Philospohischen Fakultät II Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin von Markus Steinbach geboren am 24.03.1967 in Stuttgart Präsident der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin: Prof. Dr. Jürgen Mlynek Dekan der Philospohischen Fakultät II: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Hock Gutachter: 1. Prof. Dr. Manfred Bierwisch 2. Prof. Dr. Günther Grewendorf 3. Prof. Dr. Rainer Dietrich eingereicht: 9. Februar 1998 Datum der Promotion: 12. November 1998 Abstract Deutsch Transitive reflexive Sätze des Deutschen lassen sich unter den Begriff des Mediums fassen. Genauso wie entsprechende Konstruktionen in anderen indoeuropäischen Sprachen sind sie auch im Deutschen mehrdeutig und erlauben eine reflexive, mediale, antikausative und inher- ent reflexive Interpretation. Nach einem Überblick über die für die folgende Diskussion we- sentlichen syntaktischen und semantischen Eigenschaften transitiver reflexiver Sätze wird anhand der Medialkonstruktion gezeigt, daß weder lexikalische noch syntaktische Ansätze in der Lage sind, eine korrekte und einheitliche Analyse der Medialkonstruktion im speziellen und von transitiven reflexiven Sätzen im allgemeinen zu bieten. Deshalb wird für einen neuen, dritten Ansatz argumentiert: a) alle transitiven reflexiven Sätze sind syntaktisch ein- heitlich zu analysieren; b) vermeintliche syntaktische Unterschiede bzgl. Koordination, Fokus und Voranstellung des (Argument- und Nichtargument-) Reflexivums lassen sich semantisch ableiten; c) (schwache) Reflexivpronomen sind bzgl. ihrer morphosyntaktischen Merkmale maximal unterspezifiziert; d) im Deutschen muß zwischen strukturellen und obliquen Kasus- formen unterschieden werden. (c) und (d) erlauben eine einheitliche Analyse der Mehrdeutig- keit des Reflexivpronomens in transitiven reflexiven Sätzen im Rahmen einer entsprechend modifizierten Bindungstheorie. Die in dieser Arbeit entwickelte Theorie wird abschließend auf weitere Eigenschaften der sog. Medialkonstruktion angewandt. Kasustheory Bindungstheorie Reflexivität Medium Medialkonstruktion Argumentstruktur Abstract English Crosslinguistically, transitive reflexive sentences in German can be subsumed under the no- tion of middle voice. Like corresponding constructions in Indo-European languages they are also ambiguous in German and yield a reflexive, middle, anticausative, and inherent reflexive interpretation. First, we give a detailed survey of the syntactic and semantic properties of tran- sitive reflexive sentences that will be relevant in the following discussion. Second, we illus- trate by means of the middle construction that lexical and syntactic theories fail to formulate a correct and unified analysis of middle formation in particular and transitive reflexive sen- tences in general. Therefore, we develop a different and (so far new) approach: a) all kinds of transitive reflexive sentences do not differ in syntax; b) the differences concerning coordina- tion, focus, and fronting of the argument and non-argument reflexive are derived in semantics; c) the morphosyntactic features of (weak) reflexive pronouns are maximally underspecified d) German distinguishes between between structural and oblique case forms. (c) and (d) permit a uniform derivation of all four interpretations of the reflexive pronoun in transitive reflexive sentences. This analysis is based on a corresponding modification of the binding theory. Fi- nally, we apply the theory developed in this book to further propertiies of the so-called middle construction. Case Theory Binding Theory Reflexivity Middle Voice Middle Construction Argument Structure Contents 1 INTRODUCTION 1 2 MIDDLE CONSTRUCTIONS AND MIDDLE VOICE — WHAT DOES A MIDDLE LOOK LIKE? 11 2.1 The middle construction in German 14 2.1.1 Verbs in the middle construction 15 2.1.2 The subject of middle constructions 20 2.1.3 The reflexive pronoun 24 2.1.4 Adverbials, ‘genericity’, and the implicit argument 25 2.2 Anticausatives and inherent reflexives 29 2.3 The interpretation of weak reflexive pronouns in Indo-European languages 32 2.4 The middle voice marker in German 39 2.5 Conclusion 43 3 LEXICAL AND SYNTACTIC APPROACHES TO MIDDLE FORMATION 45 3.1 Syntactic theories 46 3.1.1 English and Dutch 47 3.1.2 Italian 55 3.1.3 German 60 3.1.4 Summary 65 3.2 Lexical theories 66 3.2.1 Lexical middle formation: Actor = ARB 66 3.2.2 The middle template analysis 75 3.2.3 Summary 81 3.3 Conclusion 81 4 THE SYNTAX OF TRANSITIVE REFLEXIVE SENTENCES: WORD ORDER, COORDINATION, FOCUS, AND FRONTING 82 4.1 Similarities between argument and non-argument reflexives 82 4.2 Focus, coordination, and fronting: explaining the difference 88 4.2.1 Coordination 91 4.2.2 Focus 96 4.2.3 Fronting 105 4.3 Conclusion 110 5 THE INTERPRETATION OF REFLEXIVE PRONOUNS IN GERMAN 111 5.1 Logophoric or exempt anaphors 112 5.2 Syntactic and semantic predicates and A-chains 116 5.3 Weak and strong reflexive pronouns and the [+/–R]-distinction 121 5.4 O-command and o-binding in German 126 5.5 The interpretation of accusative reflexive pronouns 133 5.6 Weak and strong pronouns 139 5.7 Conclusion 141 6 SUPPRESSED ARGUMENTS AND DATIVE OBJECTS 142 6.1 Middle constructions, anticausatives and unaccusatives 142 6.1.1 Argument saturation and argument reduction 142 6.1.2 Anticausatives and unaccusatives 145 6.2 Dative objects in German 147 6.2.1 Morphological differences between structural and oblique case 148 6.2.2 Syntactic differences between structural and oblique case 153 6.2.3 The syntax of dative objects 159 6.3 Conclusion 161 7 MIDDLE CONSTRUCTIONS REVISITED 162 7.1 Middle constructions and genericity 162 7.2 Adverbial modification in middle constructions 169 7.3 Adjunct middles 174 8 CONCLUDING REMARKS 179 1 Introduction This book investigates the syntax and semantics of middle and related constructions in Ger- man. We are mainly interested in the following four questions: (i) Why are middle construc- tions in German and many other languages reflexive? (ii) Can we derive the linking of argu- ments in middle and related constructions form general principles or do we need construction specific lexical and/or syntactic assumptions? (iii) Which universal and language-specific linking-principles determine the categorial realization of semantic arguments or, to put it the other way round, the semantic interpretation of syntactic arguments in middle and related con- structions? (iv) Does the analysis of middle and related constructions provide evidence in fa- vor of either a lexical, a syntactic or a (postsyntactic) semantic approach to argument linking? The middle construction in German is a particularly interesting case study for the correlation between semantic and categorial selection.1 First, middle constructions, like passives, are the output of a systematic operation that manipulates the s-selectional and c-selectional properties of underlying ‘simple’ predicates. Both constructions, the middle in (1) and the passive in (2), ‘demote’ the first semantic argument of the verb and ‘promote’ the second semantic argument, which is linked to the syntactic subject instead of its semantic co-argument.2 However, unlike passives, middle constructions do not change the morphological properties of the underlying predicate in German. The morphosyntactic form of the predicate in the middle construction in (1) does not differ from its ‘active’ counterpart in (3). In both sentences the verb is in the ac- tive form. (1) Dieses Buch liest sich leicht This book-NOM reads reflexive-pronoun-ACC easily ‘This book reads easily’ (2) Das Buch wurde gelesen The book-NOM was read ‘The book was read’ (3) Hans liest dieses Buch Hans-NOM reads this book-ACC ‘Hans is reading this book’ Besides, middle constructions show an interesting divergence in their c-selectional and s- selectional properties. On the one hand, there is an implicit semantic argument in middle con- structions like (1), which is not linked to a syntactic constituent. This implicit ‘logical sub- ject’, which is the first argument of the predicate, is realized as a NP with nominative case (i.e. as the syntactic subject) in the corresponding simple active sentence in (3). Instead of the 1 In this introductory chapter we use the terms ‘semantic selection’ (s-selection) and ‘categorial selection’ (c- selection) without any theoretical implications. It will become clear in the course of this study that we do not think that the c-selectional properties of a lexical item can entirely be determined in the lexicon. Apart from that, we use the more neutral term argument linking instead of theta-role assignment, because (i) we will argue that theta-roles are irrelevant for the linking of arguments in middle constructions and (ii) we follow Dowty (1991) in his criticism of the traditional concepts of thematic roles. We will deal with proto-roles and proto-role properties in Chapter 6. 2 Because of this functional similarity, it is no accident that in many languages the middle construction and the passive are morphosyntactically identical, cf. chapter 2. 2 Introduction verb’s first argument its second argument is linked to the subject position (i.e. to a NP as- signed nominative case) in middle constructions. This second argument is normally linked to a NP assigned accusative case (i.e. the direct object) in the active counterpart (3).3 On the other hand, middle constructions in German always c-select an additional accusative reflexive pronoun in the position of the direct
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