The nominal group, possessive agreement, and nominal sentences in the Transeurasian languages

This chapter deals with some of the most salient syntactic features of nominal groups and nominal sentences in Transeurasian languages; e.g. agreement in person and number between the heads and the modifiers expressed by adjectives, numerals, and demonstrative pronouns within nominal groups; formal and semantic properties of the “possessive noun + noun” adnominal possession construction; the morphology and syntax of reflexive possessive constructions. Special attention is paid to the inalienable/alienable possession split, observed in the existence of specialized possessive morphology, or of the double nominative and double accusative constructions of “external possession” in individual Transeurasian subbranches or languages. The chapter also describes the main types of Transeurasian nominal sentences, correlation of their formal and semantic types, and agreement between their subjects and predicates.

Passivization possibilities in double-accusative constructions

Based on a diachronic corpus search, this paper proposes that dative rather than accusative-marking on the first object of German double-accusative verbs like lehren 'teach' (as also discussed in Lang 2007) and the corresponding passivization possibilities stem from the first object being interpreted as Recipient (sympathy-invoking co-participant, see Lehmann et al. 2004) rather than animate Patient and the second object being interpreted as inanimate Patient rather than adverbial accusative. In addition, a formal case-based account of German active and passive (di)transitive constructions is offered, making a three-way distinction between (i) structural, (ii) predictable inherent, and (iii) idiosyncratic lexical case (in line with Woolford 2006).

On the interplay of object animacy and verb type during sentence comprehension in German: ERP evidence from the processing of transitive dative and accusative constructions

Comprehension of transitive sentences relies on different kinds of information, like word order, case marking, and animacy contrasts between arguments. When no formal cues like case marking or number congruency are available, a contrast in animacy helps the parser to decide which argument is the grammatical subject and which the object. Processing costs are enhanced when neither formal cues nor animacy contrasts are available in a transitive sentence. We present an ERP study on the comprehension of grammatical transitive German sentences, manipulating animacy contrasts between subjects and objects as well as the verbal case marking pattern. Our study shows strong object animacy effects even in the absence of violations, and in addition suggests that this effect of object animacy is modulated by the verbal case marking pattern.