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An HPSG Analysis of German Depictive Secondary Predicates

Key Words: The paper appeared 2001 in Proceedings of Formal Grammar 2001 / MOL 7, Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science 53.

I will provide German data that shows that depicitve secondary predicates may refer to subjects, direct objects, indirect objects, and even more oblique complements. Reference to more oblique arguments is more marked. The markedness corresponds to the obliqueness hierarchy that was proposed by Keenan and Comrie (1977) and others. Based on these observations I will suggest analyzing depictive secondary predicates parallel to control constructions rather than raising constructions. Since depictives can refer to arguments that do not surface (see (1)), the analysis makes reference to the underlying syntactic-semantic representation: the argument-structure.

(1) a. Das Buch wurde nackt gelesen.
    b. Das Buch ist nackt zu lesen.

FG article (12 pages)

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• original publication

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