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Case in German – Towards an HPSG-Analysis

Author: Stefan Müller

Subject Areas: German Syntax, HPSG

Title: Case in German - Towards an HPSG-Analysis

In Tibor Kiss and Detmar Meurers (Eds): Constraint-based Approaches to Germanic Syntax, Studies in Constraint-Based Lexicalism, No. 7. Stanford: CSLI-Publications, pages 217–255.

The case theory that is developed in the paper builds on work done by Heinz and Matiasek (1994). Their approach is improved in such a way that case assignent in coherent constructions like (1) works properly. 

(1) Er sieht den Mann  den Wagen reparieren.
    he sees  the manacc the caracc repair
    `He sees the man repairing the car.'
With the type hierarchy of Heinz and Matiasek it is impossible to describe the phenomenon Kongruenzkasus. Sentences like (2) and (3) cannot be analyzed. 
(2) a. Sie nannte ihn   einen Lügner.
       She called himacc a     liaracc
    b. Er   wurde ein Lügner  genannt.
       henom was   a   liarnom  called
       `He was called a liar.'

(3) a. Ich sehe ihn   als meinen Freund   an.
       I   see  himacc as  my     friendacc PRFX
       `I regard him as my friend.'
    b. Er wird als mein Freund angesehen.
In the paper, I propose a more structured case feature and appropriate lexical entries to analyze these sentences.

Apart from that it is explained how the case assignment in adjectival and participal environments works and the case assignment to non-realized subjects as in (4) will be explaind. 

(4) Ich habe den Männern erlaubt, einer nach dem anderen wegzulaufen.


The paper also appeared in Proceedings of the Workshop Current topics in constraint-based theories of Germanic Syntax, pages 113–132, Saarbrücken, 1998.

CSLI paper:

ESSLLI98 (20 pages):