Nominalization and argument structure in Early New High German

Nominalization in German

This paper deals with nominalizations in German. The first part summarizes the facts about German nominalizations. There are many different types of nominalizations in German. We discuss three kinds of nominalizations in particular: infinitival nominals like das Laufen (walking), so-called “stem”-derived nominals like Fahrt (trip, ride), and, prominently, -ung nominals like Verschwendung (waste...

Argument Structure and Case Assignment in German

Nominalization in English: Semantic restrictions on argument realization

The Information Structure of Subject Extraposition in Early New High German

This paper investigates the information-structural characteristics of extraposed subjects in Early New High German (ENHG). Based on new quantitative data from a parsed corpus of ENHG, I will argue that unlike objects, subjects in ENHG have two motivations for extraposing. First, subjects may extrapose in order to receive narrow focus, which is the pattern Bies (1996) has shown for object extrap...

The argument - time structure of recipient constructions in German

It is generally assumed that verbs have an ‘argument structure’, which imposes various constraints on the noun phrases that can or must go with the verb, and an ‘event structure’, which characterises the particular temporal characteristics of the ‘event’ which the verb relates to: this event may be a state, a process, an activity, an ‘event in the narrow sense’, and others. In this paper, it is...