Monografie

The book provides a surface-oriented generative analysis of all areas of the German sentence, covering basic semantic/pragmatic aspects. Key new findings include a division of labour between discourse and sentence syntax in the treatment of the external fields; the order of the elements in the external fields; the derivation of the interpretative effects of different fillings of the prefield, covering Drach's distinction between the place of expression ('Ausdrucksstelle') and the place of continuity ('Anschlussstelle'); the target area of A-bar movement extends into the 'classical' middle field up to the area of sentence topics; the members of a well-defined class of XPs are pseudo-incorporated into the verbal complex; (apparently) multiple fillings of the prefield are grounded in this very pseudo-incorporation; the base generation of arguments appearing in the postfield; a correspondence between the base positions of different types of complement and adverbial clauses and their internal syntax, reflecting basic semantic features; parentheses undergo a form of syntactic licensing. The book is aimed at readers interested in a comprehensible, precise syntax of the whole German sentence. It is suitable as a basis for advanced courses.