Rhetorische Funktion von Projektorkonstruktionen mit deshalb und deswegen

This paper focuses on so called syntactic projection phenomena in the German language. This term from the German Gesprächsforschung is used to define the fact that an utterance or part of it foreshadows another one. This paper aims at pointing out how such projection phenomena are consciously exploited for rhethorical purposes. This will be observed on the basis of excerpts from the Stuttgart 21 mediation talks. The linguistic analysis carried out in this paper will focus on syntactic projection phenomena involving the use of causal adverbial connectives deshalb and deswegen.

Developments in Hellenistic-Roman times and the Nonveridicality projection (third century BC to fourth century AD)

This chapter examines sentential negation during the Hellenistic Koine stage of Greek based on non-atticizing texts mainly from the first century BC to the second century AD. Structural developments of the language are presented that support a treatment for nonveridicality as encoded in a syntactic projection, independent from morphological mood and independent from complementizer position. A treatment of the licensing of polarity items is proposed—among which is the Greek NEG2—in terms of syntactic agreement. Nonveridical operators are taken to introduce the Nonveridicality Phrase (NONVERP) in syntax, encoding the observation that nonveridical environments tend to be morphologically marked in ways that can be distinct from mood marking. Furthermore, in the Koine Greek stage, NEG2 gets more specialized in its lexical negation function at the expense of NEG1, while Negative Concord structures get significantly reduced, a change that was linked to Greek word-order particulars.

Introduction

The introductory chapter provides the basic facts on the diachrony of negation in Greek, the renewal of NEG1 and persistence of NEG2 in its core functions. A periodization of the Greek language is given along with details on the methodological approach and text selection. A brief historical overview on the matter of negator selection in Greek is provided starting from the Classical scholars of the 18th to early 20th century until more recent studies within generative grammar. The general reasoning of the argumentation and analysis is condensed regarding the positing of a Nonveridicality syntactic projection, discussed in relation to the notion of markedness, for which pragmatic grounding is posited: the Gricean maxim of quality.

Expanding the causative alternation

The causative-inchoative alternation has been a subject of much debate. It might also be a case where variation patterns that escape existing typological descriptions provide a new perspective on the problem. We analyze the variability and systematicity of alternative argument structure realizations, together with corresponding aspectual/event properties, by considering three different ways in which change-of-state verbs can be semantically and syntactically construed in Romance. Under the general assumption that the syntactic projection of arguments correlates non-trivially with event structure, we apply a novel theoretical approach to the semantics and syntax of the causative-inchoative alternation. We argue that different verbal heads can be independently combined to yield contrasting verbal configurations, with corresponding event/argument structure properties quite freely. Alongside standard cases such as causative and inchoative frames, we discuss what we call ‘stative-causative constructions’ [SCC], where the initiator appears as the sole argument. The general properties of this additional (third) variant suggest the availability of a null causative (external-argument-selecting) v0 producing original monoargumental structures with corresponding (simpler) event structure. These little-known Spanish data challenge current argument structure theories assuming that the causative v0 necessarily implicates the eventive (BECOME) component, or that the latter figures in the verb’s permanent lexical entry. SCCs provide empirical evidence suggesting that what is commonly described as a basic unaccusative/transitive verb may have unergative uses.