Präsident der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin: Prof. Dr. Jürgen Mlynek
Transitive reflexive Sätze des Deutschen lassen sich unter den Begriff des Mediums fassen. Genauso wie entsprechende Konstruktionen in anderen indoeuropäischen Sprachen sind sie auch im Deutschen mehrdeutig und erlauben eine reflexive, mediale, antikausative und inherent reflexive Interpretation. Nach einem Überblick über die für die folgende Diskussion wesentlichen syntaktischen und semantischen Eigenschaften transitiver reflexiver Sätze wird anhand der Medialkonstruktion gezeigt, daß weder lexikalische noch syntaktische Ansätze in der Lage sind, eine korrekte und einheitliche Analyse der Medialkonstruktion im speziellen und von transitiven reflexiven Sätzen im allgemeinen zu bieten. Deshalb wird für einen neuen, dritten Ansatz argumentiert: a) alle transitiven reflexiven Sätze sind syntaktisch einheitlich zu analysieren; b) vermeintliche syntaktische Unterschiede bzgl. Koordination, Fokus und Voranstellung des (Argument- und Nichtargument-) Reflexivums lassen sich semantisch ableiten; c) (schwache) Reflexivpronomen sind bzgl. ihrer morphosyntaktischen Merkmale maximal unterspezifiziert; d) im Deutschen muß zwischen strukturellen und obliquen Kasusformen unterschieden werden. (c) und (d) erlauben eine einheitliche Analyse der Mehrdeutigkeit des Reflexivpronomens in transitiven reflexiven Sätzen im Rahmen einer entsprechend modifizierten Bindungstheorie. Die in dieser Arbeit entwickelte Theorie wird abschließend auf weitere Eigenschaften der sog. Medialkonstruktion angewandt.
Crosslinguistically, transitive reflexive sentences in German can be subsumed under the notion of middle voice. Like corresponding constructions in Indo-European languages they are also ambiguous in German and yield a reflexive, middle, anticausative, and inherent reflexive interpretation. First, we give a detailed survey of the syntactic and semantic properties of transitive reflexive sentences that will be relevant in the following discussion. Second, we illustrate by means of the middle construction that lexical and syntactic theories fail to formulate a correct and unified analysis of middle formation in particular and transitive reflexive sentences in general. Therefore, we develop a different and (so far new) approach: a) all kinds of transitive reflexive sentences do not differ in syntax; b) the differences concerning coordination, focus, and fronting of the argument and non-argument reflexive are derived in semantics; c) the morphosyntactic features of (weak) reflexive pronouns are maximally underspecified d) German distinguishes between between structural and oblique case forms. (c) and (d) permit a uniform derivation of all four interpretations of the reflexive pronoun in transitive reflexive sentences. This analysis is based on a corresponding modification of the binding theory. Finally, we apply the theory developed in this book to further propertiies of the so-called middle construction.
This book investigates the syntax and semantics of middle and related constructions in German. We are mainly interested in the following four questions: (i) Why are middle constructions in German and many other languages reflexive? (ii) Can we derive the linking of arguments in middle and related constructions form general principles or do we need construction specific lexical and/or syntactic assumptions? (iii) Which universal and language-specific linking-principles determine the categorial realization of semantic arguments or, to put it the other way round, the semantic interpretation of syntactic arguments in middle and related constructions? (iv) Does the analysis of middle and related constructions provide evidence in favor of either a lexical, a syntactic or a (postsyntactic) semantic approach to argument linking?
The middle construction in German is a particularly interesting case study for the correlation between semantic and categorial selection. In this introductory chapter we use the terms ‘semantic selection’ (s-selection) and ‘categorial selection’ (c-selection) without any theoretical implications. It will become clear in the course of this study that we do not think that the c-selectional properties of a lexical item can entirely be determined in the lexicon. Apart from that, we use the more neutral term argument linking instead of theta-role assignment, because (i) we will argue that theta-roles are irrelevant for the linking of arguments in middle constructions and (ii) we follow Dowty (1991) in his criticism of the traditional concepts of thematic roles. We will deal with proto-roles and proto-role properties in Chapter 6. Because of this functional similarity, it is no accident that in many languages the middle construction and the passive are morphosyntactically identical, cf. chapter 2.
Besides, middle constructions show an interesting divergence in their c-selectional and s-selectional properties. On the one hand, there is an implicit semantic argument in middle constructions like (1), which is not linked to a syntactic constituent. This implicit ‘logical subject’, which is the first argument of the predicate, is realized as a NP with nominative case (i.e. as the syntactic subject) in the corresponding simple active sentence in (3). Instead of the So-called adjunct middle constructions might be one exception. We deal with adjunct middles in chapter 2 and chapter 7.
Further interesting properties of middle constructions are adverbial modification, which seems to be required by most middle constructions, and the characteristic ‘generic’ interpretation of the implicit argument, which differs from the interpretation of implicit arguments in passives, which are usually interpreted existentially. Hence, we might wonder whether (predicates in) middle constructions idiosyncratically select some kind of adverbial and a ‘generic’ logical subject, which must not be linked to syntax, or whether these properties of middle constructions can be derived from independent principles of grammar. The next chapter will be concerned with the properties of middle constructions in greater detail.
Recall that arguments which are only s-selected but not c-selected, and vice versa, can also be found in other contexts. In passives the first semantic argument of a predicate can optionally be realized as a by-phrase (cf. 4.a). Furthermore, some semantic arguments of some predicates are only optionally c-selected. They can but need not be linked to a syntactic constituent, as can be seen in (4.b). The third argument of the verb verlesen (‘to read/call out’), i.e. the goal of the reading out, might be an example for an argument that must not project in syntax at all, cf. Höhle (1978). For an analysis of implicit arguments in German see Jacobs (1994) and Rapp (1999).
Middle constructions like (1) combine both an implicit semantic argument (i.e. the ‘logical subject’ or first argument of the verb) and an obligatorily c-selected constituent that is not linked to a (s-selected) semantic argument of the verb (i.e. the reflexive pronoun). Thus middle constructions include the suppression of a semantic argument as well as the addition of a
Hence, middle constructions have only one element that is both s-selected and c-selected but two elements that are not linked at all. We will see in chapter 2 that so-called impersonal middle constructions actually contain no linked element at all. The German middle construction has so far proved a good example for the study of non-trivial cases of argument linking. It will also turn out to be a good example for illustrating and discussing the differences between lexical, syntactic, and postsyntactic theories of argument-linking.
However, middle constructions become even more interesting as soon as we compare them with morphosyntactically identical constructions. We will see that deeper insight into this issue can be gained if the study of middle constructions is embedded in the more general context of transitive reflexive sentences. In German middle constructions are morphosyntactically common transitive sentences in the active with an accusative reflexive pronoun in the position of the direct object. But the middle interpretation is not the only possible interpretation for transitive reflexive sentences. In addition to the middle interpretation, transitive reflexive sentences can also get a reflexive, an anticausative and an inherent reflexive interpretation. Examples for these four interpretations are given in (6).
The reflexive interpretation in (6.a) differs from the other three interpretations in one respect. Only in (6.a) the reflexive pronoun is both c- and s-selected and therefore interpreted as a semantic argument of the verb, which is bound by and coreferent with the subject of the sentence. This means that both the subject and the direct object are linked to a semantic argument variable of the verb each. In (6.b), (6.c) and (6.d), on the other hand, the reflexive pronoun is only c-selected but not s-selected and therefore it is not interpreted as a semantic argument of the verb. The reflexive pronoun indicates valency reduction of the first semantic argument of the verb, its logical subject, which is not linked to syntax. Hence, the accusative reflexive pro Nothing depends on this terminology. We use it only to distinguish these two different interpretations of reflexive pronouns. The argument reflexive is also called ‘echt reflexiv’ or ‘anaphorical sich’ and the non-argument reflexive ‘unecht reflexiv’, ‘lexical sich’, and ‘Fügungs-sich’, cf. Haider (1982) and Reis (1981). Fagan (1992) calls the argument reflexive ‘referential’ and the non-argument reflexive ‘nonreferential’. This terminology is somewhat misleading, because reflexive pronouns are never referentially independent.
Beside this first ambiguity of the reflexive pronoun, another ambiguity is responsible for the interpretation of sentence (6.b) on the one hand and sentence (6.c) and (6.d) on the other. This second ambiguity is due to the interpretation of the suppressed semantic argument. We already saw that the first semantic argument of the verb is not linked to syntax if the non-argument interpretation is chosen. In this case it can either be saturated or reduced. The latter operation (argument reduction) completely removes the suppressed argument from the semantic representation. Argument reduction is the more restrictive operation and yields the anticausative and inherent reflexive interpretations. Anticausatives like (6.c) are one-place predicates that are systematically derived from underlying two-place predicates. Argument saturation, on the other hand, means that the implicit argument is bound by a semantic quantifier/operator. The resulting interpretation of argument saturation is the middle interpretation. Argument saturation is less restrictive than argument reduction. It can be applied to most verbs selecting at least one argument. Simplified semantic representations of all four sentences are given in (7). (‘x’ is the implicit argument in MCs, which is bound by a generic operator, cf. chapter 7, and ‘1’ stands for the deleted first argument in anticausatives and inherent reflexives).
The ambiguity of reflexive constructions is a widespread phenomenon that can be observed in many Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages. All four interpretations in (6) come under the notion of middle voice and have more or less identical counterparts in various other languages. Like many other languages, German uses a reflexive marker (the accusative reflexive pronoun) to encode a variety of related interpretations. Thus, German middle constructions are one possible interpretation of what we will call the middle voice.
This book deals with the ambiguity of the reflexive pronoun and the interpretation of implicit arguments in transitive reflexive sentences. As will be discussed at length in chapter 3, nearly all recent approaches to middle constructions and anticausatives derive their s-selectional and c-selectional properties in the lexicon and/or in the syntax. They are based on the assumption that the syntax of verbal arguments is completely determined by the selectional properties of a verb in co-operation with general linking-principles. Therefore, these analyses require some lexical and/or syntactic manipulation of the argument structure of the underlying verbs in (6.b), (6.c) and (6.d). They must somehow prevent the linking of the first semantic argument to the syntactic subject, promote the second semantic argument and add a reflexive pronoun, which does not correspond to a semantic argument of the verb. By contrast, we argue for a
We will argue in chapter 5 that (weak) reflexive pronouns are not lexically specified for the morphosyntactic feature [R], because their Φ-features are maximally underspecified. Elements that are not lexically specified for [R] can but need not be interpreted as semantic arguments. Therefore the linking of the syntactic subject can be mediated by a (weak) reflexive pronoun, if the former binds the latter. In this case, the syntactic subject is not linked to the first but to the second semantic argument of the verb. Roughly speaking, the reflexive pronouns in (6.b), (6.c), and (6.d) (i.e. the non-argument reflexives) function as a place-holder for the linking of the syntactic subject, which is thus linked to the second argument variable of the verb. Furthermore, we will argue in chapter 5 that in German, non-argument reflexives must be assigned structural case. Hence, only transitive reflexive sentences permit the syntactic subject to be linked to the second argument of the verb. The first assumption that (weak) reflexive pronouns are lexically underspecified for the feature [R] seems to be valid crosslinguistically, whereas the second assumption that non-argument reflexives must receive structural case is language-specific. We do not think that all languages draw similar distinctions between structural and oblique case. On the other hand, (weak) reflexive pronouns universally seem to be the less specified pronominal elements and various languages use (weak) reflexive pronouns to indicate valency reduction. It seems to be a universal property that the morphologically less specified elements need not be interpreted as semantic arguments. Note, however, that (weak) reflexive pronouns have quite different morphosyntactic properties crosslinguistically, cf. chapter 2. Thus our postsyntactic analysis we develop for German transitive reflexive sentences does not necessarily hold for the middle voice in other langages. We come back to this issue in the final chapter .
As a consequence of our analysis, syntactic arguments that are not specified for [R] need not be linked to a semantic argument of the verb themselves. Any other syntactic argument (i.e. personal pronouns, demonstratives, definite NPs, and indefinite NPs) corresponds to a semantic argument of the verb. We will see that every syntactic argument must be linked to a semantic argument, except for non-argument reflexives and impersonal subjects. This is in accordance with the first part of the theta-criterion (i.e. each argument bears one and only one theta-role). Note, however, that our account permits two strictly defined exceptions. Both exceptions are pronominal elements that serve a specific grammatical purpose. The second part of the theta-criterion, on the other hand, is no longer a valid linking-principle, as we will argue throughout this book. We will see that the s-selectional properties are not a wellformedness condition for syntactic representations or, more generally, for the computational system, although they are an essential part of the meaning of a lexical item determining the semantic interpretation of predicates. This shift towards the semantic interpretation of syntactic arguments allows for a uniform analysis of all four sentences in (6). Moreover, we can account for
This is, however, only part of the story. Consider the examples in (10) below. As soon as we add a negation or a dative object to the sentences in (8), the second example (8.b) with the V2 complement clause becomes ungrammatical. Hence, embedded V2-clauses cannot simply be c-selected in the lexicon by some verbs s-selecting a propositional argument. V2-clauses have, roughly speaking, specific semantic properties which restrict the contexts they can occur in. As opposed to complementizer-initial verb-final clauses, V2 complement clauses are always assertional (or [-presuppositional]). Therefore they cannot be interpreted immediately in the scope of the negation in (10.b) or the negative predicate bedauern (‘regret’) in (9.b). This would contradict their assertional character. Gärtner (1998) points out that V2 adverbial clauses and V2 relative clauses are subject to the same restriction. As opposed to the V-final adverbial clause in (i.b), the V2 adverbial clause in (i.a) cannot be interpreted in the scope of negation. Therefore, only sentence (i.b) is ambiguous. Sentence (i.a), on the other hand, can only mean that she did not go to Frankfurt and the reason for this is that she is ill. The same holds for V2 relative clauses, which are also ungrammatical in the scope of negation, cf. (ii.b).
(i) a. Sie fuhr nicht nach Frankfurt [ weil sie ist krank ] She went not to Frankfurt because she is ill ‘She didn't go to Frankfurt because she is ill’ b. Sie fuhr nicht nach Frankfurt [ weil sie krank ist ] (ii) a. Peter hat einen Freund, der ist krank Peter has a friend who is ill b. *Peter hat keinen Freund, der ist krank Peter has no friend who is ill
Note that dative objects do not always trigger presuppositions as can be seen in (i). This depends on the semantic interpretation of the dative object. In example (10.d) the dative object is the source of his belief. In contrast to this, the dative object in (i) is the goal of my speech (cf. Gärtner 1998).
In sum, our analysis of transitive reflexive sentences provides a good argument for a more liberal interaction between semantic and categorial selection in grammar. We hope that our analysis sheds new light on the understanding of the middle voice and more generally on the understanding of the principles of argument selection and argument-linking.
In the following chapters we will be concentrating mainly on German, but the discussion also includes data from English, Dutch, Italian, Modern Greek, and Russian to illustrate the fundamental pattern of the middle voice. Above all, we will be dealing with binding theory and linking theory. We will focus on the thematic interpretation of reflexive pronouns and other syntactic arguments in German. The (traditional) distinction between structural and oblique (or inherent) case and the morphosyntactic properties of reflexive pronouns will turn out to be another important issue. In this context we will also consider the distinction between weak and strong reflexive pronouns. In addition, we will address further syntactic and semantic properties of middle constructions, anticausatives and inherent reflexives and we will briefly turn to anticausatives. Last but not least, the following topics will also be relevant at several points of the discussion: fronting and word order in German, the syntax and semantics of coordination, focus theory, and genericity. The syntactic analysis of transitive reflexive sentences is mainly based on Government and Binding Theory (Chomsky 1981) and its recent developments (Chomsky 1993 and 1995). Our binding theory is a modified version of the binding theory of Reinhart and Reuland (1993) and Pollard and Sag (1994). With respect to the interpretation of syntactic representations we essentially follow the standard assumption of Montague Semantics and the focus theory developed in Rooth (1985 and 1992). We are mainly dealing with the (thematic) interpretation of sentences. Relevant theoretical notions and important modifications will be introduced in the course of the discussion.
Chapter 3 discusses various lexical and syntactic analyses of middle constructions in English, Dutch, Italian and German. We mainly focus on middle constructions because they are less restricted than anticausatives and inherent reflexives. Moreover, the middle construction is the most controversially debated kind of transitive reflexive sentences. While most linguists agree that anticausatives should be derived in the lexicon, it is less clear whether middle constructions are to be derived in the lexicon or in the syntax. We will see that neither of these analyses gives a satisfactory derivation of middle constructions. Especially so-called impersonal middle constructions turn out to be a serious problem. Moreover, neither lexical nor syntactic approaches offer a uniform analysis of transitive reflexive sentences. For this reason we will argue for a different and (as far as we can see) new kind of analysis, which allows a unified treatment of all four interpretations of transitive reflexive sentences. The ambiguity of transitive reflexive sentences is derived at the interface between syntax and semantics.
One consequence of this assumption is that all transitive reflexive sentences share the same syntactic structure. The syntax of transitive reflexive sentences is the topic of chapter 4. The first part of this chapter deals with word order in the German middle field. The reflexive pronoun always behaves the same way irrespective of its semantic interpretation. The second part deals with certain differences between the reflexive pronoun that is interpreted as an argument of the verb (argument reflexive) and the one that is not linked to an argument variable of the verb (non-argument reflexive). These differences concerning coordination, focus, and fronting have been taken as evidence for the assumption that the non-argument reflexive differs in syntax from the argument reflexive. We show, however, that these differences do not follow from an analysis which draws a distinction between two different kinds of reflexive pronouns in syntax (e.g. argument vs. adjunct). By contrast, these differences follow from the different semantics of the argument and non-argument reflexive. Only the argument reflexive introduces an argument variable on its own, which is a necessary condition on coordination, focus, and fronting of the accusative reflexive pronoun. Hence, there is no need to propose two different kinds of reflexive pronouns and two different kinds of transitive reflexive sentences in syntax.
In chapter 6 we turn to the difference between middle constructions and anticausatives and argument linking in unaccusatives and we give further evidence for the distinction between structural and oblique case. In subsection 6.1.1 we argue that the difference between middle constructions and anticausatives results from the interpretation of the implicit first argument (the logical subject) of the predicate: it can either be bound by a (generic) quantifier (middle construction) or deleted (anticausative). We call the former operation argument saturation and the latter argument reduction. In subsection 6.1.2 we deal with one-place verbs. We show that our analysis provides an indirect argument against a syntactic distinction between unergatives and unaccusatives. The distinction between structural and oblique (or inherent) case, which requires additional motivation, is the topic of section 6.2. We discuss accusative and dative objects in German and give several empirical arguments for a distinction between structural and oblique case. In German dative case is oblique. By contrast, nominative and accusative are structural cases. Following Vogel and Steinbach (1995 and 1998) we analyze dative objects as adjuncts in syntax. This analysis accounts for the empirical differences between accusative and dative objects and explains why dative reflexive pronouns are excluded from A-chain formation. As a consequence, dative objects cannot be promoted to subject in middle constructions and anticausatives.
In chapter 7 we turn to middle constructions again. Our analysis predicts that middle constructions are simple transitive reflexive sentences. Hence, middle constructions do not exist in the lexicon, nor is there a special middle-syntax. Therefore, the (semantic) properties of middle constructions should follow from their specific semantic interpretation. In the first part of chapter 7 we discuss the ‘generic’ interpretation of middle constructions. We argue that an implicit argument can either be bound by an existential quantifier or by a generic quantifier/operator. We will see that in middle constructions the implicit argument is bound by a generic quantifier. Existential quantification, on the other hand, yields the passive interpreta
Chapter 8 summarizes our analysis of transitive reflexive sentences in German and concludes with a short discussion of middle and related constructions in those languages which we already discussed in chapters 2 and 3. Finally we briefly illustrate how to apply our analysis to corresponding constructions in English.
Transitive reflexive sentences in German can be related to major topics like diathesis, genus verbi or grammatical voice, valency reduction, or argument structure alternations. Argument structure alternations systematically change the selectional properties of verbs. That is, they can change the categorial properties of arguments, they can add or delete syntactic and/or semantic arguments and they can add secondary predicates. Finally, they can also change the meaning of the underlying verb and the morhosyntactic form of verbs e.g. by adding an affix or a seperable verbal particle to the verbal stem. Middle constructions do not significantly change the underlying basic meaning of verb. In the middle construction like (1) the verb schneiden (‘cut’) still denotes a two-place relation between a cutting person (the implicit argument) and something (‘the bread’) that is cut (‘RP’ stands for reflexive pronoun). In the following presentation, most examples have glosses only. These examples are always interpreted like middle constructions in English and other languages. The morphosyntactic realization of the middle construction differs from language to language (cf. 2.3. below), but their semantics is homogeneous across the Indo-European languages. All middle constructions have the thematic interpretation outlined in the brief introduction of this chapter. Throughout this study we use the term reflexive pronoun (which is more specific) instead of anaphor, but nothing hinges on this.
However, the middle construction changes the selectional properties of the underlying verb. The syntactic subject in (1.a), the nominative NP das Brot, is not linked to the first (or external) but to the second (or internal) semantic argument of the verb schneiden – i.e. das Brot is the thing that is cut. The first (or external argument) of the verb, the cutter, is not linked to a syntactic argument. This semantic argument is only implicitly present in the semantic representation of the sentence. In German middle constructions the suppression of the first semantic argument is indicated by the accusative reflexive pronoun. Hence, the accusative reflexive pronoun in (1) can be analyzed as a morphosyntactic middle marker, i.e. an indicator of valency reduction. Note, however, that it is not a verbal affix or clitic but an independent word. In this respect, the German middle marker differs from middle markers in most Indo-European languages. We will discuss this issue in greater detail in section 2.3 below.
German has a second construction beside the middle that also involves suppression of the first semantic argument, the passive. Passives and middle constructions have one thing in common: in both the middle construction in (1) and the passive in (2) the first or external semantic argument of the verb is not linked to the subject.
The passive in (2) and the middle construction in (1) correspond to the active counterpart in (3), in which both semantic arguments of the two-place predicate are linked to syntactic argu In most languages the active voice is the morphologically or syntactically unmarked form (cf. Benveniste 1972, Kemmer 1993, Klaiman 1991, or Beekes 1995). Adjunct middles are the only exception to this correspondence between the subject of middle construction and the object of the active counterpart. Here the middle-subject corresponds to a DP included in a PP. We come back to these examples immediately. They are discussed in more detail in chapter 7. Note that middle constructions usually induce an additional modality effect, which will be discussed below.
By ‘active’ we mean the grammatical voice and not the morphological form of the verb. Both middle constructions and the corresponding sentence in active voice contain morphologically unmarked ‘active’ forms of the verb. Moreover, middle constructions, like the corresponding active sentence in (3), are syntactically transitive as opposed to passives. Passives must not have an accusative reflexive pronoun or some other accusative NP in German. The only exception might be passivized reflexive sentences like (i). In this case the reflexive pronoun cannot be promoted to subject because German does not have nominative reflexive pronouns, cf. chapter 5.
(i) Jetzt wird sich gewaschen Now is rp-acc washed ‘Everybody is going to wash him- and herself now’
The attentive reader may have noticed that example (4) is ambiguous between the (active) reflexive interpretation ‘Peter is washing himself quickly’ and a middle interpretation ‘Peter washes quickly’. Because both the middle interpretation and the reflexive interpretation are two possible readings of transitive sentences with an accusative reflexive pronoun in object position, such sentences are ambiguous if both interpretations make sense.
A third interpretation for transitive reflexive sentences like (1) and (4) has also been mentioned. The anticausative variant of verbs like öffnen (‘open’) is also reflexive. Hence, in German the accusative reflexive pronoun does not only indicate valency reduction in middle constructions but also in anticausatives like (5). But unlike middle constructions, anticausatives do not include an implicit semantic argument. Sentence (5) does not imply that someone or something is opening the door.
In this chapter we do not want to make any theoretical claims whether we prefer a lexical, syntactic, or (postsyntactic) semantic analysis of middle and related constructions. Nevertheless, every description of facts partly depends on underlying theoretical concepts and their specific terminology. The terminology is mainly influenced by lexical and syntactic theories of middle formation. Lexical theories postulate some lexical manipulation of the argument structure (i.e. a lexical rule of argument suppression or a middle template). Syntactic theories derive middle constructions like passives by case movement: a deep structure object is moved to subject position at surface structure. We discuss these theories and their shortcomings at length in chapter 3. For the time being we want to describe the properties of middle and related constructions as neutral as possible. We do not talk about direct and indirect objects because German distingushes objects on the basis of case. For example, the second argument of two-place verbs can be assigned either accusative, dative or genitive case (and it can also be linked to a prepositional phrase). There are good arguments that grammatical functions should not be an essential part of the grammar of German (cf. e.g. Reis 1986 and Sternefeld 1985).
Finally, a comment on grammaticality judgements seems to be necessary. We already saw that transitive sentences with a reflexive pronoun in the position of the accusative (or direct) object are multiply ambiguous between a middle, anticausative, inherent reflexive or reflexive inter
Semantic representations which do not require valency change seem to be the unmarked case. Hence, the preferred interpretation for a transitive reflexive sentence seems to be as follows: the verb is interpreted as a two-place predicate and both the syntactic subject and the syntactic object are linked to one of the verb’s semantic arguments. Especially with subjects that refer to animate entities, the reflexive interpretation is preferred, because they are very likely to be interpreted as proto-agents.
Semantic representations without implicit arguments are the unmarked case. According to (ii), the anticausative interpretation of transitive reflexive sentences is preferred over the middle interpretation.
Besides, reflexives and anticausatives, like passives, usually refer to specific events whereas the middle interpretation involves generic quantification. This might additionally hinder the discourse linking of middle construction. Hence, the middle interpretation is often the least preferred option for a transitive reflexive sentence. Sometimes it takes some time to grasp the middle reading. Furthermore, middle constructions usually require additional adverbial modification (but cf. section 2.1.4 and chapter 7). Therefore, especially middle constructions without any adverbial modification need an appropriate context to be licensed. Last but not least, middle constructions in German are semantically closely related to three further constructions. Lassen-middles like (6.a) and tough-movement construction llike (6.b) are semantically nearly identical to common middle constructions, cf. e.g. Fagan (1992: 210f.) for lassen middles. The ‘active’ sentence with the indefinite ‘generic’ subject man (‘one’) and the modal können (‘can’) in (6.c) is also a close paraphrase of the middle construction in (1). Note that (6.c) does not involve valency reduction.
Before we turn to the plot of the middle-story we must introduce the protagonists. Although a lot has been written about middle constructions in German and related languages (cf above all the detailed overview in Fragan 1992 and Abraham 1995b) See also Wagner (1977). Some data of the following presentation are from Fagan’s book on middle constructions. Most of the other examples are taken from German newspapers or books. It will become clear in chapter 3 that we disagree in several respects with Fagan’s description of the relevant properties of middle constructions in German. Furthermore, Fagan does not mention adjunct middles in German. Our disagreement with Fagan and other authors concerns among others the constraints on Aktionsarten, aspectuality, adverbial modification, the implicit subject, and the so-called ‘static’ interpretation middle constructions are supposed to have. We will discuss these shortcomings in detail in chapter 3 and 7.
(7) are further examples of typical ‘personal’ or ‘transitive’ middle constructions that correspond to transitive sentences in the active voice. All examples contain verbs that select two semantic arguments. In the following we mention the (in-) transitivity of the corresponding active sentences in parenthesis in each case (example (7.a) is taken from Bernhard Schlink, Der Vorleser, and (7.c) is from Harry Rowohlt, Pooh’s Corner). The valency of many verbs varies. Extrem examples are polyvalent verbs like e.g. rollen (‘roll’) or schlagen (‘hit’), cf. Vogel (1998). By two-place predicate, for instance, we mean that the respective verb is interpreted as a two-place predicate in this context. The same holds for many terms used in this chapter like ‘achievement’, ‘accomplishment’ or ‘activity’, cf. also footnote 18 below.
We already mentioned that middle constructions in German are syntactically transitive themselves, which will be discussed in great detail in chapter 4. Note that the middle construction does not change the morphological form of the verb. Middle constructions are gramamtical in present, past (Präteritum) or future tense and with perfect aspect (Perfekt and Plusquamperfekt). In addition to personal middle constructions, German has also so-called impersonal or ‘intransitive’ middle constructions (cf. Fagan 1992: 44). The term ‘intransitive’ middle construction is somewhat misleading, because middle constructions are always transitive. Impersonal or ‘intransitive’ middle constructions only correspond to intransitive active sentences. Abraham (1995b) mentions another kind of impersonal middle construction. In this case the verb agrees with impersonal subject es (third person singular), although the middle construction is derived from a two-place predicate. The second argument (the plural NP solche Beamte) is not linked to the syntactic subject of the sentence but receives accusative case. This construction equals the impersonal si-construction in Italian (cf. 3.1.2).
(i) a. ???…weil es sich solche Autos gut fährt … because it (sg.) rp such cars-acc (pl.) well drives (sg.) b. ???… weil es sich diese Bücher gut liest … because it rp these books-acc well reads c. ???…weil es sich einen solchen Beamten leicht besticht … because it rp such an official-acceasily bribes
Most native speakers we asked find these impersonal constructions hardly acceptable. Nevertheless, we share Abraham’s judgements and think that they are not ungrammatical. Note, however, that all three sentences in (i) sound old-fashioned and stilted, and they are very uncommon in Modern German. This kind of impersonal middle construction lies beyond the scope of all the analyses of middle constructions we discuss in chapter 3. Additional principles seem to be necessary in any case to explain this specific impersonal construction. We neglect it in the following discussion.
Besides unergative one-place predicates, unaccusative/ergative predicates are also grammatical in middle constructions. German has two classes of one-place verbs that differ in many respects: unergatives and unaccusatives/ergatives. Among other things, unaccusative/ergative verbs select the auxiliary sein (‘be’) German also has few two-place verbs that select sein (‘be’) instead of haben (‘have’).
(i) Ich bin die ganze Stadt abgelaufen I be the whole city down-walked
Van Riemsdijk (1978) argues that examples like (i) involve postposition-incorporation. The head of the postpositional phrase die ganze Stadt ab incorporates into the unaccusative/ergative verb laufen and behaves like a separable particle (cf. also Fagan 1992 and Ackema and Schoorlemmer 1995).
Further tests are –er-nominalization, VP-topicalization, impersonal passives and stress assignment. Note that these tests do not always give a clear classification and that they do not provide compelling evidence for a syntactic derivation. Besides, further aspects has to be taken into account as, for example, aspectuality in the context of auxiliary selection. We return to unaccusatives in chapter 6.
The examples in (i) illustrate the be/have selection with perfect tense in German. Unaccusative verbs like arrive (i.a) select be while unergative verbs like sleep (i.b) select have.
The analysis of ergativity is an interesting issue of its own, which lies beyond the scope of this study. However, we will argue in chapter 6 that our analysis of middle constructions provides an argument against a syntactic analysis of unaccusative/ergative verbs. From a lexical point of view, middle formation can be described as a function that takes as input a predicate with at least one argument and ‘demotes’ the first semantic argument of the verb. This argument need Perlmutter (1978), Burzio (1986), or Grimshaw (1990) among others argue that unaccusative verbs select an internal argument. The syntactic subject of a sentence with an unaccusative verb is linked to the internal argument of this verb. This linking-configuration can also be found in the causative-alternation. It is the the syntactic subject of the unaccusative verb break/zerbrechen in (i.a) and (ii.a) that is realized as object of the corresponding causative variant in (i.b) and (ii.b). In both examples, the NP the vase/die Vase is linked to the same semantic argument (cf. also Levin and Rappaport 1995).
(i) a. The vase broke b. His mother-in-law broke the vase (ii) a. Die Vase zerbricht b. Seine Schwiegermutter zerbricht die Vase
Most of these zero-place verbs can be also used with a semantic argument.
The middle construction itself is unergative. Personal and impersonal middle constructions select haben (‘have’) as their auxiliary and the past participle cannot attributively modify the subject. Instead, we have to use the present participle, cf. also Ackema and Schoorlemmer (1994:61f.) for Dutch.
(12) and (13) are further examples for personal middle constructions. (13.a) – (13.c) are middle constructions derived from three-place predicates. It is again the accusative object of the active counterpart that corresponds to the subject of the middle construction.
We conclude that all kinds of predicates that select at least one semantic argument (i.e one-place unergatives and unaccusatives, two-place and three-place predicates and resultatives) are generally perfectly grammatical in middle constructions and that middle constructions are not restricted to present tense. Apart from that, there is a second restriction on middle formation: individual-level predicates like wissen (‘know’), können (‘be able’, ‘know’), heißen (‘be called’) or abstammen (‘be descended’) cannot undergo middle formation at all. We will argue in chapter 7 that middle constructions involve generic quantification over the first semantic argument and the event (or situation) variable. Hence individual-level predicates that do not select an event/situation variable are excluded from middle formation.
Individual-level predicates can be subsumed under Vendler’s (1967) class of states (see Dowty 1979 and Fagan 1992:89f.). Note, however, that only individual-level predicates are excluded from middle formation. (15) would be an example of a middle construction with a stative verb provided that we classify a verb like sitzen (‘sit’) as a state (instead of an activity).
In sum, middle formation is only possible with stage-level predicates. We find all kind of stage-level predicates in middle constructions. The so-called aspectual properties of verbs (Aktionsarten) are not (necessarily) inherent lexical properties of single verbs but very often result from the interpretation of more complex structures including especially the verb and the direct or accusative object, cf. Dowty (1991) or Tenny (1994), among many others for further discussion of this issue.
Let us conclude that so far there are only two fundamental restrictions on the predicates that are grammatical in middle constructions: they must provide at least one semantic argument and they must not belong to the class of individual-level predicates.
Usually the syntactic subject of the middle construction corresponds to the accusative object of the active counterpart. Impersonal middle constructions are derived from one-place verbs and correspond to intransitive active sentences without an accusative object. They have an pleonastic or impersonal subject that is not linked to a semantic argument of the verb. In this resprect impersonal middle constructions differ from impersonal passives, which do not have a subject at all. In impersonal passives the third person neuter pronoun es is only grammatical in sentence-initial position of matrix-clauses. The pronoun in (17.a) is called Vorfeld-es (cf. Grewendorf 1988). The third person neuter pronoun es fulfills quite different functions: referential personal pronoun, place-holder for complement-clauses, impersonal subject, and Vorfeld-es. An example for the Vorfeld-es in a simple active sentence is given in (i):
(i) a. Es ging ein Mann durch denn Wald und … It went a man throuh the woods and … b. Durch den Wald ging (*es) ein Mann und … c. … weil (*es) ein Mann durch denn Wald ging und …
Like the reflexive pronoun in transitive reflexive sentences es can but need not be interpreted as an argument of the verb. It need not be referential. Therefore, the third person neuter pronoun, unlike other personal pronouns, can also be used for certain grammatical functions. For further differences between es and all the other personal pronouns see Cardinaletti and Starke (1994) and Gärtner and Steinbach (1996 and 2000).
So far, we saw that the syntactic subject in personal middle constructions corresponds to the accusative object of the active counterpart. There is, however, one exception to this correlation between the middle-subject and the accusative object of the active voice. Hoekstra and Roberts (1993) and Ackema and Schoorlemmer (1994) discuss another interesting kind of middle construction in Dutch which they call adjunct middles. The subject of the adjunct middle in (19.a), (20.a), and (21.a) corresponds to the PP-adjunct in the impersonal middle constructions in (19.b), (20.b), and (21.b) or in the active counterparts in (19.c), (20.c), and (21.c). Adjunct middles seem to be quite productive in Dutch. In German they seem to be more restricted. Miller (1993: 183) notes that middle formation from an underlying or corresponding PP is possible in English as well. In this case the preposition seems to incorporate into the verb:
(i) a. ?That tree climbs up quickly b. *That tree climbs quickly up (ii) That stove melts over quickly
Not every adjunct feeds middle formation. Adjunct middles formation is subject to additional constraints, that restrict the kind of adjuncts that can undergo middle formation. (22.a) and (22.b) are two examples for adjunct middles that are not acceptable in German.
Hence, for some adjuncts German has two alternative middle constructions, the adjunct middle or the impersonal middle construction. The subject NP of the adjunct middle is still contained in the adjunct-PP in the corresponding impersonal middle construction, the subject position of which is again occupied by the impersonal subject es. Note, however, that the meaning of the adjunct middles in (19.a), (20.a) and, (21.a) is not totally identical to the meaning of the corresponding impersonal middle construction in (19.b), (20.b) and, (21.b). We will discuss adjunct middles in greater detail in chapter 7.
German middle constructions are subject to another important restriction on their subject. The subject of the middle construction cannot correspond to dative objects in the active counterpart. Hence, dative objects must not be ‘promoted’ to subject in middle constructions. Middle formation with arguments that are linked to a dative object in the active voice is ungrammatical in general. On the one hand, sentence (23.b) is ungrammatical if the reflexive pronoun is assigned accusative case. On the other hand, (23.b) does not yield a middle interpretation if the reflexive pronoun bears dative case, because dative reflexive pronouns cannot indicate valency reduction in German. (23.b) can only receives a reflexive interpretation. A verb selecting a dative object can, however, occur in impersonal middle constructions, cf. (23.c). In impersonal middle constructions, the dative objects preserves its case and the accusative reflexive pronoun indicates again valency reduction. Hence, verbs selecting dative objects are not excluded from middle formation in principle. We conclude that dative reflexive pronouns cannot indicate valency reduction and dative objects cannot be promoted to subject in middle constructions. The same holds for the rare cases of genitive objects ((ii) is an impersonal middle construction):
(i) a. *Diese Gewohnheit enträt sich leicht This habit-GEN do-without RP easily b. Dieser Gewohnheit enträt es sich leicht This habit-NOM do-without it RP easily
The properties of the object for sale may influence the act of selling. A best-seller can be sold more easily than a shelfwarmer. A parallel situation is hard to imagine for buy. However, a person’s selling abilities or the availability of an entity can have a positive or negative effect on the act of buying. In this context sentence (24.a) gets much better. Sentence (25.b) is due to Manfred Bierwisch.
The significance of the promoted second semantic argument (i.e. the subject of the middle construction) for the event described by the verb affects the acceptability of middle constructions. Again, (primary) responsibility seems to be a property of the ‘subjects’ of active sentences. As opposed to subjects in middle constructions, subjects in passives are not subject to this restriction (cf. Lakoff 1977 and Greenspon 1996). Impersonal middle constructions usually contain another constituent (e.g. a prepositional phrase) that is ‘responsible’ for the event. This can be seen in example (26): the quality of a bed can be very important for the way we sleep. In section 7.1 we come back to this issue.
It has often been claimed that only verbs with ‘affected’ internal arguments may undergo middle formation (cf. Roberts 1987, Hale and Keyser 1987, Hoekstra and Roberts 1993, or Rapoport 1993). This restriction is, however, much too strong. Verbs without ‘affected’ internal arguments are also grammatical in middle constructions. This is illustrated by the following sentences (cf. also section 3.1.1 and 3.2.1). The first two examples are taken from Fagan (1992: 65). The corresponding German examples are also grammatical. Example (27.e) is from the Schwäbische Tagblatt, 27.11.1999.
Unlike middle constructions in English and Dutch, which must not have a reflexive pronoun in object position, personal and impersonal middle constructions in German are ungrammatical without the accusative reflexive pronoun. The reflexive pronoun is always bound in syntax by the subject of the sentence, cf. also Abraham (1995b:14f.) for examples similar to (28). In impersonal middle constructions it is the expletive subject es that binds the reflexive pronoun.
Table (29) illustrates that in the first and second person, reflexive pronouns cannot be distinguished from personal pronouns.
Furthermore, accusative and dative forms can only be distinguished in first and second person singular. Hence, we can tell accusative from dative pronouns in the first and second singular slots and reflexive pronouns from personal pronouns in the third person singular and plural slots. One might either assume that personal pronouns and reflexive pronouns in German are homonymous in the first and second person or that German does not distinguish reflexive pronouns from personal pronouns in the first and second person. The formal identity of first and second person might be due to the fact that the antecedent is always clearly identifiable in the discourse. Hence, it makes no difference whether the pronoun is locally bound (principle A) or locally free (principle B). Burzio (1989) argues that a personal pronoun can be locally bound if the paradigm has no reflexive pronoun (or anaphor) or, to put it the other way round, that it is always the least specified element in that paradigm that can be locally bound. Ac Note that the politeness form Sie of the second person is morphologically identical with the third person female singular and the third person plural personal pronoun sie. The politness form is totally regular. The corresponding reflexive pronoun is the third person reflexive pronoun sich:
(i) Können Sie *Sie/sich bitte hierhin setzen? Could you RP please here sit down
It has often been claimed that middle constructions in German and English require some additional adverbial modification, cf. Fagan (1992), Haider (1982), Hoekstra and Roberts (1983), or Bierwisch (1997). However, this seems to be an overgeneralization because we also find middle constructions without any adverbial modification, as can be seen in (30), cf. also Ackema and Schoorlemmer (1994) and Iwata (1999). Example (30.d) is from Fagan (1992: 43), example (30.f) from Theodor Fontane, Irrungen, Wirrungen, and example (30.g) from Der Spiegel 28/1999.
Typical adverbials in middle constructions are manner adverbials like gut (‘well’) or leicht (‘easily’) Sometimes we also find strange adverbial modifications. In example (i) the adverbials describe a property not of the reading event but of the subject itself (Die Zeit, 22.1.98).
(i) Seine Geschichten aus dem Bürgertum (Süd-) Europas lesen sich gebildet, lebens- und redegewandt, kosmopolitisch His stories situated in the middle class of (Southern) Europe reads RP educated, streetwise and articulated,
cosmopolitan
Furthermore, adverbial phrases like wie Butter (‘like Butter’) or comparative adverbials are also possible in middle constructions. Reference to the suppressed ‘logical’ subject is again ungrammatical.
A further common assumption is either that middle constructions are ‘generic sentences’ or that ‘middle-verbs’ are individual-level predicates. According to the first assumption middle constructions are characterizing sentences in the sense of Carlson and Pelletier (1995), which involve ‘generic’ quantification over the implicit argument and the event/situation variable. A related issue is modality. Middle constructions normally involve some modal interpretation including ability, possibility, and sometimes necessity, cf. Fagan (1992). The middle con
We will argue in chapter 3 and 7 that middle constructions, unlike passives, are characterizing sentences. The generic quantifier binds the implicit argument and the situation variable. Fagan (1992: 159) points out that middle constructions in French can be eventive, i.e. sometimes they can receive a passive interpretation. In this sense they resemble our German example in (35). French middle constructions (as well as Italian middle constructions, cf. section 2.3.2 and 3.1.2 below) can, however, refer more freely to particular events. Most of the French (and Italian) examples would be ungrammatical in German. This might be due to the morphosyntactic difference between the German and the French/Italian reflexive element: whereas the reflexive pronoun in German is an independent word in syntax, it is a verbal clitic in French/Italian. There seems to be a correlation between the passive interpretation of reflexive constructions and the degree of ‘grammaticalization’ of the reflexive element.
(i) La question s’est discutée hier dans la salle du conseil ‘The issue was discussed yesterday at the council hall’ (ii) Les vivres se distribueront tout à l’heure au premier étage ‘The food will be distributed in a while on the first floor’ (iii) Yesterday afternoon your new book was selling like hell
Furthermore, middle constructions in English can sometimes be used in progressive form to refer to a specific event:
Besides, Fagan (p. 59) observes that French middle constructions - in contrast to English and German middle constructions - are not necessarily associated with the notion of modality.
A third general assumption concerns the suppressed external argument. It is widely accepted that unlike in passives the suppressed argument cannot be realized in overt syntax in middle constructions. In passives the external argument can be syntactically expressed by a von- (‘by-’) phrase (36.a). By-phrases are ungrammatical in middle constructions, cf. (36.b).
The preposition von (‘by’) cannot be linked to the suppressed argument in middle constructions. But sometimes this job can be done by the preposition für (‘for’), cf. also Stroik (1992) for English and Condoravdi (1989) for Greek. In (37) the small children are the ones who can read these books well. Note, however, that linking of the implicit argument is highly restricted in middle constructions. This might be due to the generic quantification over the implicit argument. As opposed to middle constructions, passives do not involve generic quantification and their implicit argument can much more easily be linked to syntax (cf. the contrast in example (38) and chapter 7 for further discussion of this issue).
Our final remark concerns the thematic interpretation of the suppressed argument. We already saw that it need not be the external argument. Recall that unaccusative verbs form perfectly grammatical middle constructions. The subject of unaccusative verbs have typical patient properties, cf. Dowty (1991). Hence, the suppressed argument need not be the actor or agent of the verb/event. Other examples that confirm this observation are two-place verbs like verlieren (‘lose’), vergessen (‘forget’), or finden (‘find’). They do not assign the thematic role agent or actor to their external or first argument. Nevertheless, they form perfectly grammatical middle constructions (the second example (39.b) is from Stefan Zweig, Joseph Fouché, and the third example (39.c) from the Frankfurter Rundschau, 27.9.97).
The following figure summarizes the presentation of middle constructions in German. The syntactic elements that belong to a middle construction are given in the first column. The corresponding conditions discussed in this section are given in the second and third column.
Besides middle constructions, anticausatives also systematically use the accusative reflexive pronoun to indicate valency reduction. The anticausative variant (41.b) of verbs like biegen (‘bend’) that can undergo the causative-anticausative alternation must be formed with a reflexive pronoun similar to the middle construction. In (41.c) we list more verbs that behave the same way.
In addition to this class of ‘reflexive-anticausative’ verbs, German has yet another class of verbs the anticausative variant of which is formed without an accusative reflexive pronoun. They equal anticausatives in English. As opposed to the reflexive-anticausatives in (41) the non-reflexive-anticausatives in (42) are unaccusative (cf. section 2.1.1 above).
In (41) the reflexive pronoun indicates valency reduction again. The verbs of the first class are two-place predicates, which undergo valency reduction, i.e. the anticausative in (41.b) is derived from the underlying two-place verb in (41.a). As for the second class the situation appears to be the opposite. In this case one could argue that the one-place predicate (42.b) is the underlying form and the causative variant (42.a) is derived from this unaccusative one-place verb by adding a first or external argument, cf. Wunderlich (1993). Both middle formation and anticausative formation with class I verbs involve valency reduction indicated by an accusative reflexive pronoun.
There is, however, one crucial difference between anticausatives and middle constructions: the former, unlike the latter, have no implicit semantic argument at all. The first semantic argument is not only suppressed but also completely removed from the semantic representation. It is part of our knowledge about the world that there must be some cause for events (a human being, a physical force or natural force, ...), but in contrast to middle constructions, the causing entity (which corresponds to the first or external argument) is not implied in anticausatives, possibly because it cannot be observed in the event described by the verb. In sentence (43.a), for example, it is not implied that someone is rolling the ball. It simply describes a situation where a ball is rolling down the hill. The same holds for (43.b). Peter might be the person who opens the door, but this is again not implied. It might also be possible that the Sometimes middle constructions can be modified by von selbst. But these sentences do not literally mean that the described event takes place all by itself. Instead we observe some additional pragmatic effect. Sentence (i) means that it is obvious which representative team must be put together. (ii) means that the answer to this question is so obvious, that everybody must know it or that something happens that answers the question, and in (iii) we are talking about a best seller. A seller need not do very much for the sale of this book, cf. also Greenspon (1996) for similar examples in English.
(i) Die Auswahl, der Ribbeck seine Premiere als Teamchef anvertraut, The representative-team, to-which Ribbeck his premiere as choach entrust, hat sich fast von selbst aufgestellt (Berliner Zeitung) has RP nearly all by itself nominated (ii) Die Frage beantwortet sich von selbst (Alan Isler, Der Prinz der West End Avenue) This question answers RP all by itself (iii) Dieses Buch verkauft sich ganz von selbst This book sells RP all by itself
(45.a-c) are further examples that illustrate the deletion of the first or external argument of the causative counterpart in anticausatives. Of course, there are reasons for the global warming, the widening of the fjord, or the filling of the glass. But all three examples only describe a change of state without implying an implicit cause that is responsible for these events. Because no implicit first argument is present at all, only the syntactic subject, i.e. the only semantic argument of the anticausative, can control the pro subject of an infinitive clause. However, this would result in nonsense, as can be seen in (i). In contrast to this, the suppressed argument of the passive in (iii) and middle construction in (iv) can control the pro subject of the infinitive clause (cf. chapter 3 for further discussion of this issue):
(i) #Das Glas füllt sich [um Maria zu ärgern] (anticausative) The glass fills RP in order Maria to annoy The glass annoys Maria (ii) Peter füllt das Glas [um Maria zu ärgern] (active/causative) Peter fills the glass in order Maria to annoy Peter annoys Maria (iii) Das Glas wurde (von Peter) gefüllt [um Maria zu ärgern] (passive) The glass was (by Peter) filled in order Maria to annoy ‘Impl.arg.’/Peter annoys Maria (iv) Das Buch liest sich nur gut [um einzuschlafen] (middle construction) The book reads RP only well in order to fall asleep ‘Impl.arg.’ falls asleep
Finally, we want to mention a second class of verbs that is related to the issue under discussion. German has so-called inherent reflexive verbs (absolut or echt reflexive Verben) that are ungrammatical without an accusative reflexive pronoun in object position, although they do not correspond to a causative counterpart. The verb schämen (‘be ashamed’) is the prototypical example. German has a subclass of inherent reflexive verbs that can yield a reciprocal interpretation with plural subjects. They differ from the verbs under (46) in being relational, i.e. they establish a relation between two entities whereas verbs like schämen (‘be ashamed’) express a property of only one entity. One example is the verb verkrachen (‘fall out’) which is inherently reflexive:
(i) Peter hat sich mit Maria verkracht Peter has RP with Maria fall-out (ii) Wir haben uns gestern mit Maria verkracht We have RP yesterday with Maria fall-out (iii) Wir beide haben uns gestern verkracht We two have RP yesterday fall-out
The corresponding sentence with a plural subject can either mean that we fall out with someone else (ii) or that
we fall out with each other (iii):
Further examples are: anfreunden (‘become friends’), einigen (‘agree’), überwerfen (‘fall out’), verbrüdern (‘fraternise’).
Like middle constructions or anticausatives, inherent reflexives are transitive in syntax. Again the reflexive pronoun is not linked to a semantic argument of the verb. Inherent reflexive verbs seem to be class I anticausatives that have lost their underlying causative form, i.e. the corresponding two-place predicate. Note finally that inherent reflexives can be inserted into impersonal middle constructions.
So far we have seen that the accusative reflexive pronoun in the position of the direct object has various functions in German. It can either be linked to the internal or second argument of the verb or it is a morphosyntactic ‘marker’ for valency reduction. The second interpretation, which we called non-argument reflexive, is the one we discussed in this section. Non-argument reflexives can be found in middle constructions, anticausatives, and inherent reflexives. The correlation between reflexivity and valency reduction we observed in German is not unique and can be found crosslinguistically in many languages. In the next section we pre
In this section we confine ourselves to morpholosyntactically and semantically related constructions in other modern Indo-European languages. We will see that the ambiguity of the reflexive pronoun observed in German is a widespread phenomenon that can be found in many Indo-European (as well as non-Indo-European) languages. Crosslinguistically, the ambiguity of transitive reflexive sentences will turn out to be quite regular. We limit the following discussion to Indo-European languages, the family of languages German belongs to. For the middle voice in further (non-Indo-European) languages see Geniusiene (1987), Kemmer (1993), Miller (1993) and Klaiman (1991).
Benveniste (1972) argues that the threefold distinction between active, passive and middle voice can be attributed to the historically basic dichotomy of active voice and middle voice. The passive voice is a variety of and has developed diachronically from the middle voice. Bosch (1983: 52) states, that “reflexive pronouns, just like reciprocals, are relatively new features in Indo-European languages. Both reflexivity and reciprocity used to be expressed by the medium inflection in the finite verb. (reflexive pronoun forms only arise in classical Greek).” In some Indo-European languages middle voice and passive voice are morphosyntactically still indistinguishable. These forms are often called mediopassive in the literature. Russian, which we briefly discuss below, is one example. In Old Greek passive and middle voice are also almost identical. They differ only in future tense and aorist (Ars Graeca 1981, cf. also Klaiman 1991: 82f., or Beekes 1995). But a split in passive and middle voice was never carried out in Greek. Modern Greek equals the Russian ‘mediopassive’: middle and passive are formally indistinguishable. In Latin-Romance the weak reflexive pronoun takes over some of the major functions of the ‘old’ Latin middle morphology (a verbal affix). This process leads to a morphosyntactic differentiation of middle and passive voice (for the last two points cf. Miller 1993: 224f.).
Klaiman distinguishes three kinds of applications for the term grammatical voice: (i) alternations in the verb’s argument structure (ii) alternations in the subject’s participant status (iii) alternations in clause-level pragmatic salience (i) is the most general use of the term grammatical voice for all kinds of argument structure/linking alternations. (ii) corresponds to the way we use this term in the following presentation. Pragmatic voice in (iii) is a distinct type of voice which is relevant to languages where verbal morphemes signal a special pragmatic salience of some constituent. This type of voice will be irrelevant for the ongoing discussion of German and further Indo-European data. The middle voice in Classical Greek is semantically very complex and yields a variety of different interppretations. The following examples illustrate only a few interpretations. The examples are from Benveniste (1972) (m = middle voice, a = active voice).
causative: ορχεομαι (m) -ορχεω (a) 'I dance' I make someone else dance reflexive: νομουσ τιθεναι (a) -νομουσ τιθεσθαι(m) ‘lay down laws’ ‘lay down laws for oneself’ 'indirect reflexive’/possessive: λυειτονιππον (a) -λυεταιτονιππον (m) ‘untie the horse’ ‘untie the horse of one’s own‘ 'exchange': μισθουν (a) -μισθουσθαι (m) ‘let’ ‘rent’
Many languages distinguish weak from strong reflexive forms. Kemmer (1993) calls them two-form languages. In Russian, for example, the weak form is a verbal affix (i.e. -sja) and the strong form a pronominal NP (i.e. sebja). In Dutch both forms are pronominal NPs but the weak reflexive marker (i.e. zich) is a simple and the strong reflexive marker (i.e. zichzelf) a complex word. Another example is Modern Greek that has two additional strong forms of reflexive markers: apart from the weak reflexive form, i.e. the middle marker. Modern Greek has (a) a reflexive prefix afto- which can occur in addition to the middle marker (cf. Tsimpli 1989) and (b) a reflexive DP of the form ton eafto + possessive pronoun which can be translated as: ‘the self + possessive pronoun’ (‘the self mine’, ‘the self his/her/its’, ...). In Modern Greek, like in Classical Greek, the strong reflexive pronoun can occur together with the weak mediopassive affix (cf. Papakyriacou 1997):
(i) Peripiithike mono ton eafto tis care-PA-3s only the self her ‘she cares only for herself’
The strong form is usually used in coordination, with focus or modification (see chapter 4 for semantic restrictions on coordination of and focus on reflexive pronouns). Furthermore, in two-form languages the weak reflexive pronoun (i.e. the middle marker) yields a reflexive interpretation only in ‘body part reflexives’, i.e. verbs of personal grooming like comb, wash, anoint, dress,... These verbs describe actions that are very likely to be reflexive. In this case one could argue that the reflexive interpretation is salient. With other verbs (e.g. hear oneself, love oneself, kill oneself, ...) the strong form is obligatory to express reflexivity (cf. Kemmer 1993, Klaiman 1991:82f., and Miller 1993). One exception seems to be the reciprocal interpretation with an plural subject (like ‘they kiss/hear/embrace each other’). In this case the reciprocal interpretation can also be indicated by the weak form.
A similar difference can be found in English. Some verbs can express reflexivity without a reflexive pronoun. Other verbs must have an overt reflexive pronoun to yield a reflexive interpretation. The respective verbs are very similar to the corresponding verbs with either weak and strong reflexive forms in Greek and Russian. Therefore, one could argue that English is also a two form language. The strong form is the complex word him-/her-/itself and the weak form is morphologically empty. We come back to the English and German examples below.
TheIndo-European languages use quite different morphosyntactic strategies to indicate the diathesis of middle voice. Some languages have a special verbal inflection (Classical and Modern Greek) or a verbal affix (Russian), others use clitics as middle markers (Italian or French). German does not have a special verbal morphology for the middle voice but an independent word in a special syntactic position, i.e. the reflexive pronoun in the position of the accusative object, and English has no morphosyntactic middle marker at all, cf. Geniušiene (1987) and Abraham (1995b). Therefore, we use the term morphosyntactic middle marker in a very liberal way in the following presentation (cf. also Kemmer 1993). A middle marker can be a verbal affix, a verbal clitic, or an indepedent word. (48) summarizes the different kinds of middle markers and their possible interpretations to which the following discussion is limited.
In Modern Greek the middle marker is a verbal affix that indicates the reflexive, passive, middle and anticausative interpretation among others, as can be seen in (49). Causativity is another possible interpretation of the mediopassive affix:
(i) O Markos xirizete sto kurio tis gitonias tu The Markos shave-PA-3S at the hairdresser’s shop the residential quarter his ‘Markos has his hair cut at the hairdresser’s shop in his neighbourhood’
Thanks to Artemis Alexiadou and Androulla Papakyriacou.
Modern Greek has yet another way of middle and anticausative formation. Beside the mediopassive affix there exists an alternative option: some verbs form middle constructions and anticausatives in the active voice, i.e. without the middle marker (Tsimpli’s passive affix ‘PA’), cf. Condoravdi (1989). The verb anigo (‘open’) in (50) is one example for verbs that are morphologically marked active in middle constructions and anticausatives. The affiliation of a verb to one of these two classes seems to depend on the lexical meaning of the respective verbs. Concerning middle formation verbs like anigo (‘open’), girizo (‘turn’), ligizo (‘bend’) are class 1 verbs (active) and verbs like kovo (‘cut’), diashizo (‘cross’), gializo (‘polish, shine’) belong to class 2 (mediopassive).
Russian equals Modern Greek in the middle voice. Russian, like Modern Greek, uses a morphological middle marker, the verbal affix ‑sja
In the literature the morpheme -SJA has been analysed either as a pronominal clitic or as an affix. Both analysis involve some problems, which do not concern us here. For further discussions see Junghanns (1996) and Schoorlemmer (1996). The morpheme -SJA seems to be developed from the former accusative singular reflexive pronoun. Klaiman (1991) notes that some modern Indo-European languages have developed a ‘neo-middle construction’, which is derived from an originally reflexive marker (a pronoun or affix). In Russian the middle marker -SJA seems to result from the grammaticalization of a reflexive pronominal clitic that has been added to the verb in active voice. For similar processes in Old Norse see Miller (1993: 205f.). A similar process might take place in Romance languages like Italian and French, cf. below. The examples are from Junghanns (1996). Special thanks to Assinja Demjjanow for her help with the Russian data. Further interpretations are ‘antipassive’ (i.e. sentences with an implicit internal argument) and causative (like in Modern Greek).
(i) Otec rugaetsja or sobaka kusajetsja father scold-SJA (the father is scolding) dogs bite-SJA (ii) Ja strigus’ v parikmayerskoj I hair-cut-SJA at hairdresser
With the perfective aspect Russian has a second way of passive formation. This periphrastic form consists of the auxiliary ‘be’ and the passive participle (dver’ byla zakryta nami, ‘the door was closed by us’, cf. Miller 1993: 238).
We already noted in footnote 33 that Russian also has a second way of indicating reflexivity. In addition to the middle marker (i.e. the weak reflexive marker) there is a historically related strong reflexive marker, the reflexive pronoun sebja. Again, these two forms are not always interchangeable.
Italian and French share some properties with both Russian and German. On the one hand, the weak reflexive pronoun in Italian and French is a verbal clitic in syntax and equals the Russian -sja that has been analyzed either as verbal affix or as pronominal clitic. The French and Italian se-/si-construction seems to lie between the Russian -sja and the German sich-construction with respect to the degree of grammaticalization. There is diachronic evidence that a weak reflexive element that has become a verbal clitic can be further reduced to a verbal affix. Furthermore, there might be a principle ‘that it is simpler to have a unified derivation of a given formative’ (Miller 1993: 220), i.e. that a formative comes to encode a variety of parallel functions - in this case middle and passive (cf. Miller: 205f. on the process of reflexive incorporation in Scandinavian languages and in Russian). In this respect the French and Italian middle construction differs from the German middle construction. We already mentioned that German, unlike French and Italian, is a one-form language. Furthermore, there is no evidence that the accusative reflexive pronoun in German is a syntactic clitic. In syntax the reflexive pronoun is an independent pronominal object (cf. Fagan 1992, Gärtner and Steinbach 1997 and 2000, and chapter 4). Cinque notes, however, that middle constructions in Italian are possible only with the third person singular clitic si. This does neither hold for unaccusatives/ergatives or inherent reflexives nor for French middle constructions that are possible in the first and second person as well (cf. Grimshaw 1982 and Fagan 1992).
(i) Io mi avvicino (ergative) I RP am going near (ii) Io mi ammalo (inherent reflexive) I RP get ill (iii) *Io mi trasporto facilmente (middle construction) I RP transport easily
Cinque (1988) notes that middle constructions in Italian and French need not receive a ‘generic’ interpretation (cf. also footnote 25 above). Middle constructions can describe particular events and they can be modified by e.g. agentive adverbs. With this ‘eventive’ reading the interpretation of middle constructions in Italian and French is very similar to the interpretation of (periphrastic) passives. Fagan (1992: 58) points out that a by-phrase is possible in earlier stages of French with middle constructions describing a particular event and Cinque (1988, footnote 11) notes that ‘in more rhetorical styles of Italian, by-phrases are found to cooccur with si’. In some Italian dialects middle constructions can yield a generic reading only.
The examples are from Miller (1993). For a more detailed survey of French middle constructions see Grimshaw (1982), Fagan (1992), and Dobrovi-Sorin (1998). The corresponding strong forms are ‘elle même (herself), lui même (himself), ...’.
At first glance, a language like English has a quite different way of middle, passive and anticausative formation (note, however, that some verbs in Modern Greek make use of the ‘English’ way of middle and anticausative formation). English does not mark middle voice morphosyntactically. In contrast to their counterparts in other Indo-European languages, the sentences in (53.a and b) are morphologically active without an overt middle marker. Middle constructions and anticausatives in English do not contain a reflexive marker. Nevertheless we find the same semantic effects of the diathesis of middle voice outlined above. Furthermore, the reflexive interpretation can be expressed with and without a reflexive pronoun (53.c and d). German has only few corresponding examples: duschen (‘take a shower’) and baden (‘take a bath’) can be used with or without a reflexive pronoun. The unmarked interpretation of (i) without the reflexive pronoun is: I am taking a shower. The transitive sentence in (ii) means that I give someone (i.e. the dog) a shower. These verbs might be two-place predicates with an implicit secon argument.
(i) Ich dusche (mich) I take-a-shower (RP-ACC) (ii) Ich dusche den Hund I give-a-shower the dog-ACC
We mentioned above that in two-form languages the weak reflexive marker (i.e. the middle marker) yields the reflexive interpretation only with a limited class of verbs usually describing actions that are mainly reflexive (or reciprocal). These verbs are to some extent identical to the English verbs that can express reflexivity without a reflexive pronoun. Hence, English seems to be also a two-form language that distinguishes weak from strong reflexive forms.
Things are completely different in German. While the preferred interpretation for the intransitive English sentence in (iii) is the reflexive interpretation (i.e. coreference of the subject and the implicit object), the corresponding German sentence in (iv) cannot receive a reflexive interpretation. You might utter sentence (iv) without the reflexive pronoun if shaving is your profession.
However, unexpected differences in the interpretation of intransitive sentences can be found even within one language. Semantically related verbs like dress and cloth can differ with respect to reflexivity (cf. Jackendoff 1987):
Dutch resembles English as well as German. With respect to anticausative formation Dutch equals German. We mentioned above that German has two kinds of anticausatives. Most verbs that undergo in the causative-anticausative alternation belong to one and the same class. As opposed to this, Dutch has some verbs that can be found in both classes simultaneously (cf. Everaert 1986):
(i) De suiker lost op The sugar dissolves up (ii) De suiker lost zich op in het water The sugar dissolves rp up in the water
Cornips (1996) notes that some southern dialects of Dutch have reflexive middle constructions. Not surprisingly these dialects are spoken in an area close to the German border.
The following table summarizes the observations made so far. It gives a brief survey of the correlation between the middle marker and its (potential) interpretations and integrates the observations on German we made above into the larger context of further Indo-European languages. We confine ourselves to passive, middle, anticausative, and reflexive interpretation. Besides, this table is anything but complete. So far we considered only five Indo-European languages and we already mentioned that some of these languages permit exceptions or alternative forms for some of these interpretations, which sometimes depend on the lexical meaning of the verb and sometimes on additional semantic conditions. And last but not least, although the arrangement in table (54) looks quite systematic, we do not want to make any hypothesis about the synchronic and diachronic correlation between reflexivity and middle
Let us summarize the results of this section. First, we saw that the ambiguity of transitive reflexive sentences in German is not accidential and that it can be subsumed under the notion middle voice. Indo-Europpean languages use the middle voice for quite different (semantic) functions. Reflexivity and valency reduction are main functions, see Geniusiene (1987) for a detailed overview. Second, many Indo-European languages have different kinds of morphosyntactic middle markers, but there is always a strong correlation between weak reflexive markers and middle markers. Recall that some Indo-European languages like Russian, and Old Norse have developed ‘neo-middle construction’ from weak reflexive pronouns that have been reduced to verbal affixes. Third, German, unlike Modern Greek or Russian, has no verbal middle inflection. Verbs in middle constructions, reflexives, anticausatives and inherent reflexive verbs are always morphologically active. Nevertheless, German has also a morphosyntactic middle marker, the accusative reflexive pronoun in the position of the direct object. Fourth, German is a one-form language that does not distinguish weak from strong reflexive pronouns/forms. In this respect it differs from most Indo-European languages. We also saw that the passive voice must be distinguished from middle voice in many modern languages like e.g. Italian, French, English, Dutch, and German. Hence, German has a threefold distinction between active, passive and middle voice. And finally, we must also distinguish between reflexivity and middle voice. One possible interpretation for the middle marker is the reflexive interpretation. However, reflexivity cannot be reduced to middle voice as well as middle voice cannot be reduced to reflexivity or, to put it the other way round, not every reflexive marker is also a middle marker (at least in the languages listed in table (54)).
As opposed to the middle markers in Modern Greek, Russian, Italian and French the middle marker in German has some specific properties. It is not a verbal affix or a verbal clitic but an independent word, a reflexive pronoun in object position, i.e. a free lexical morpheme, cf. Abraham (1995a:5). Moreover, the reflexive pronoun in German can only be called a middle
Hence, only transitive reflexive sentences are systematically ambiguous in German. The crucial examples are repeated in (56), cf. chapter 1, example (6).
All four interpretations are indistinguishable in syntax as we will argue in chapter 4. A sentence of the form subject + verb + accusative reflexive pronoun is potentially four times ambiguous in German. The first ambiguity is due to the reflexive pronoun, which can either be interpreted as argument or as non-argument reflexive. The second ambiguity results from two different semantic operations on the implicit argument. The implicit argument can either be bound by a generic operator or deleted. The ambiguity of transitive reflexive sentences is systematically illustrated in figure (57).
As opposed to the reflexive pronoun in transitive reflexive sentences, the dative reflexive pronoun in (58.a) and the reflexive pronouns contained in PPs in (58.b) and (58.c) cannot indicate valency reduction. They only yield the reflexive interpretation and cannot be called a middle marker. Thus not every reflexive marker is automatically also a middle marker.
Middle High German provides further evidence for a distinction between reflexive markers and middle markers and for the very special status of the accusative reflexive pronoun. As opposed to the accusative reflexive pronoun, the dative reflexive pronoun has developed very late. It is not until the beginning of the 18th century that the modern usage of the dative re Many thanks to Marie-Christine Erb for making me aware of this point (cf. also Andersen 1993 and Hermodsson 1952).
Unlike the dative reflexive pronoun the use of an accusative reflexive pronoun is stated for very early stages of German. (60) and (62.a and b) are three example from Middle High German. Besides, sentence (60) illustrates that inherent reflexive verbs can already be found in Middle High German. Hence, non-argument reflexives are also stated for early stages.
Table (61) is taken from Paul (1988) to exemplify the difference between accusative and dative personal and reflexive pronouns in Middle High German. Old English, on the other hand, does not have reflexive pronouns at all. The personal pronouns (him, her, it, ...), like the dative pronouns in German, are used for principle A and B. The reflexive pronouns (himself, herself, itself, ...) in Modern English have developed from the personal pronouns and the adnominal focus particle -self. Therefore, English never had ‘pure’ reflexive pronouns that unambigiously mark the middle voice. See section 4.2.2 for more details and references.
Furthermore, early stages of German allow embedded accusative reflexive pronouns to be bound only by the syntactic subject of the clause, whereas in Modern German (MG) the reflexive pronoun can also be bound by the syntactic object. Embedded infinitives illustrate this difference in (62) and (63).
These observations (no dative reflexive pronouns and strict subject orientation in MHG) are in line with an analysis that treats only the accusative reflexive pronoun in the position of the direct object as a middle marker in German. Note finally that, as opposed to Italian and French, the reflexive pronoun in Modern German is an independent word/constituent in syntax. Gärtner and Steinbach (1996 and 2000) argue at length that German has no special or syntactic clitics. Besides, in most German dialect the reflexive pronoun cannot even be prosodically reduced, whereas personal pronouns can phonologically cliticize to an adjacent foot or syllable in phonology (e.g. ich habe ihn gesehen vs. ich hab’n gesehen, i.e. ‘I have him seen’), cf. Hall (1998:107) and also section 4.1.
So far we argued that the accusative reflexive pronoun in Modern German is not a pure middle marker and reflexivity cannot be reduced to middle voice. Nevertheless, we observe a strong correlation between reflexive markers (pronouns or verbal affixes) and middle markers or more general between reflexivity and middle voice. We call the accusative reflexive pronoun a middle marker if it is the accusative (or direct) object of the sentence. In this sense we follow Kemmer (1993) and conclude that German is a middle marking language. In contrast to Modern Greek or Russian, German does not use a verbal affix as middle marker but a syntactically independent word. Furthermore, the accusative reflexive pronoun can be used in further syntactic contexts as reflexive marker only. Dative reflexive pronouns can only be used as reflexive markers. These observations for German are summarized in the following figure.
This present investigation is limited to middle marker in German and its possible interpretations, i.e. the left column in figure (64). Nevertheless, we think that our results might also be relevant for the analysis of corresponding phenomena in other languages. English, for example, differs from German in having no morphosyntactic middle marker. The weak reflexive form is morphologically empty and the middle voice is morphosyntactically unmarked in
(65)Possible interpretations for intransitive and transitive-reflexive sentences in English and German
In this chapter we argued that German is a middle marking language. First, we gave a descriptive survey of transitive reflexive sentences in German that involve valency reduction. We started of with the middle construction and the restrictions for each of its individual parts: the verb, the syntactic subject and the reflexive pronoun, the second semantic argument, the implicit first argument, and the adverbial modification. In addition, we discussed further semantic restrictions. Second, we turned to related constructions in German: anticausatives and inherent reflexives. Finally, we argued on the basis of other Indo-European languages that transitive reflexive sentences in German belong to the diathesis of middle voice. We are aware of the fact that broader diachronic and synchronic studies are necessary. These studies lie, however, beyond the scope of this book. We refer the reader again to the detailed studies of Geniušiene (1987) Kemmer (1993), and Miller (1993).
This chapter is concerned with recent analyses of middle constructions and anticausatives. Almost all theories prefer a syntactic or lexical (presyntactic) solution: middle constructions are derived eiter in the lexicon or in the syntax. All syntactic or lexical analyses somehow manipulate the selectional properties of the verb or the linking of the verb’s arguments. Besides these two analyses, a conceivable third approach, which derives the thematic interpretation of middle constructions at the interface between syntax and semantic, has never been worked out in detail. This postsyntactic analysis takes the surface syntactic structure of middle constructions more serious and permits an unified analysis of the German middle voice we introduced in section 2.4 (i.e. of transitive sentences with an accusative reflexive pronoun). In a postsyntactic approach no manipulation of the argument structure and no additional linking-principles are necessary. According to this approach, the middle construction is only one possible interpretation of the middle voice in German. The semantic ambiguity of transitive reflexive sentences can be reduced to a semantic ambiguity of the accusative reflexive pronoun or, to be more specific, to the binding relation between the subject and the direct object. Besides, a postsyntactic analysis predicts that the middle constructions does not raise any theoretically important issues in terms of syntax or the lexicon. In the chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 we develop a postsyntactic analysis of the middle voice in German. In this chapter we first discuss the shortcomings of traditional lexical and syntactic approaches. The three possible analyses of middle constructions are illustrated in figure (1):
The first two analyses (i) and (ii) are related to the common perspective on the interface between the lexicon and the syntax. Every analysis that assumes a one-to-one relation between semantic and syntactic arguments of a verb (as is claimed e.g. in the theta-criterion) must manipulate the the selectional properties of a verb somehow to make them compatible with the ‘argument structure’ of the middle construction. Two possibilities immediately come to mind: we can derive middle constructions, like passives, in syntax by means of A-movement of a deep structure object to the subject position or we derive a compatible argument structure presyntactically in the lexicon by means of argument suppression. Discussions of English, Dutch, Italian, and German middle constructions illustrate these two ways of analysing middle formation. Ironically, analyses of reflexive middle constructions in many languages have been influenced by the analysis of their non-reflexive counterparts in English and Dutch. The analysis of Stroik (1992, 1995 and 1999) and Hoekstra and Roberts (1993), for example, are inspired by syntactic analyses of passives. They analyze middle formation as a syntactic process. All semantic arguments of a verb are obligatorily linked to syntax. The external theta-role is assigned to some empty pronominal element (or a for-PP) and the internal theta-role is regularly assigned to the deep structure object, which moves to the external subject position for case reasons. Syntactic derivations of middle constructions can mainly be found in the discussion of English and Dutch middle constructions. This is not surprising. We already saw in section 2.3 that English and Dutch middle constructions are morphosyntactically unmarked. In contrast to Italian and German, middle constructions in Dutch and English do not select an additional reflexive pronoun. Hence, middle formation in these two languages could, in principle, be analysed as a kind of morphosyntactically unmarked passive. Hale and Keyser (1987) or Ackema and Schoorlemmer (1994) and (1995), on the other hand, are advocates of a lexical
In the following subsections we discuss the shortcomings of lexical and syntactic analyses of middle constructions. This chapter is organized as follows. In the next section we criticize syntactic analyses of English, Dutch, Italian and German middle constructions. Section 3.2 deals with the shortcomings of lexical or presyntactic approaches to middle constructions in English, Dutch, French, and German. A greater part of the literature deals with English (and Dutch) middle constructions. Therefore, we always start off with a discussion of English and Dutch. Our criticism of these analyses is twofold. First, we discuss the conceptual and empirical shortcomings of analyses of English and Dutch middle constructions. Second, we check whether these analyses can be applied to German middle constructions. In a second step we discuss analyses of Italian si- and French se-constructions. In contrast to their English and Dutch counterparts, Romance middle constructions are reflexive and resemble the German middle construction, which we are mainly interested in. And finally, we turn to syntactic and lexical analyses that have been proposed for middle constructions and anticausatives in German. We will see that all lexical and syntactic analyses of middle formation make several empirical predictions that turn out to be incorrect at least for German. At best additional stipulations are necessary to explain the data in German. Furthermore, both lexical and syntactic theories cannot state any theoretically relevant generalization about middle constructions in German. Therefore, we argue for a alternative explanation of middle constructions in German, which is illustrated in (iii) in figure (1) above. So far Condoravdi (1989) and partly Zwart (1999) See footnote 8 below for a brief comment on Zwart’s analysis.
We begin with the discussion of the syntactic derivation of English and Dutch middle constructions (3.1.1), which has influenced the analysis of middle constructions in various languages. Advocates of a syntactic analysis emphasize the similarity between passives and middle constructions with respect to argument linking (cf. chapter 1 and 2). Furthermore, they tacitly start from the assumption that a syntactic analysis of passives is generally accepted. Therefore, their basic assumption is that the semantic interpretation of syntactic arguments in middle constructions can be derived in syntax by means of A-movement. The syntactic subject of a middle construction is base-generated in object position at deep structure (i.e. the complement position of V°). In this position it receives the theta-role of the internal or second argument (usually theme or patient). For case reasons the deep structure object moves into the subject-position (IP-Spec). Hence, A-movement creates a chain that receives nominative case and the internal theta-role. We discuss the shortcomings of syntactic analyses of English and Dutch middle constructions first. Secondly, we prove whether this idea would work in languages with reflexive middle constructions. We are mainly interested in the licensing of the
Stroik (1992, 1995 and 1998), Hoekstra and Roberts’s (1993) – henceforth H&R –, and Den Dikken (1997) analyses middle formation in English and Dutch as a syntactic process. The external theta-role is assigned in syntax to either pro in VP-Spec (H&R 1993/cf. 2.a) or PRO adjoined to VP (Stroik 1992/cf. 2.b). The subject of the middle construction receives the internal theta-role in the D-structure object position (ti in (2)) and moves to the IP-Spec position for reasons of case (cf. Ackema and Schoorlemmer 1995:174). Hence, both Stroik and H&R “assume that the lexicosemantic structure of a middle verb is the same as that of its active counterpart.” (Stroik 1999:120)
Ackema and Schoorlemmer (1995) criticize mainly three shortcomings of Stroik (1992) and H&R (1993), which we briefly discuss. See also Fagan (1992) for a criticism of Keyser and Roeper’s (1984) arguments in favor of a syntactic derivation of English middle constructions. Stroik claims that his derivation is not in conflict with the PRO-Theorem (cf. p. 135). But he must define dominance based on inclusion and on exclusion at the same time. In the first case INFL governs PRO and in the second case the verb (cf. also Ackema and Schoorlemmer 1995: 174).
Consider H&R’s analysis first. They argue that middle constructions in English and Dutch have a base-generated pro in the position of VP-Spec which receives the external theta-role of the verb. At the same time the D-structure object moves into the subject position at S-structure to receive nominative case. H&R claim that only ‘affected’ arguments can be moved in middle constructions. To prevent nonaffected arguments from movement, H&R stipulate a second kind of accusative case. This case-distinction, which is not morphosyntactically but semantically motivated, seems to be only necessary to derive the ‘affectedness constraint’ (AC) within their syntactic framework (cf. also the discussion in 3.1.3 below for a similar problem). Besides, we expect passive to be subject to the AC, too, though NP-movement in passives is not limited to ‘affected’ arguments (cf. H&R 1993: 204). Another point is that the AC seems to be the wrong generalization (cf. Ackema and Schoorlemmer 1994, Fagan 1992: 64f. and chapter 2). Verbs like to read or to photograph form perfectly fine middles yet their implicit arguments are not ‘affected’:
(i) This book reads easily (ii) She photographs well (Fagan 1992)
In chapter 2 we mentioned that German middles are not subject to the AC, either (for this issue see also the discussion of the lexical theories below).
H&R propose a special licensing condition for pro in middle constructions, which is not morphological licensed but only ‘arb licensed’ and, therefore, (by stipulation) syntactically inactive. H&R “introduce a syntactic element that does not manifest itself.” (Ackema and Schoorlemmer 1995:176). It seems to be impossible to find empirical evidence for a syntactic inactive nonovert element. A syntactically inactive pro can neither bind a reflexive pronoun nor control PRO in adjunct clauses. However, this contradicts Stroik’s analysis, who considers binding and control data to be clear empirical evidence for the presence of a (syntactically active) implicit external argument (cf. below). As opposed to what is claimed by H&R, anaphor-binding and PRO-control by the implicit first argument is not ungramamtical in middle constructions. Nevertheless, we will see shortly that neither binding nor control provide a compelling arguments for the presence of a pro/PRO in syntax.
Although definition (3) states that the ‘arb-index’ may be identified by a modifier, H&R assume that the ‘arb-index’ must be identified by some adverbial in middle constructions. According to H&R, adverbials like easily select an experiencer role, which ‘identifies’ pro in middle constructions via ‘theta-identification’ (cf. Higginbotham 1985). The adverb’s experiencer role is identified with the verb’s external theta-role and the resulting ‘complex’ theta-role is assigned to pro in VP-Spec to ‘identify’ pro somehow. The following illustration, which is taken from den Dikken (1997), illustrates this issue - i-subscripting marks binding, k-superscripting marks identification, cf. below. It remains also unclear what it means that V ‘assigns the index arb to pro’ and that ‘this index may be identified by a modifier’ (more concrete: by the experiencer role selected by an adverbial). Besides, H&R assume that the agent role is assigned to pro in syntax. Therefore, we expect subject-oriented adverbs to be possible in middle constructions. But they are ungrammatical in English and German, which is illustrated in (i): According to Roberts (1987), middle verbs are stative predicates. Under the assumption that adverbs like carefully are agent-oriented and eventive, these adverbs cannot occur in middle constructions. However, we argue below, that verbs in middle constructions are not stative predicates. They select an event argument, that is bound by a generic operator.
(i) *New cars clean carefully
(4) [VP pro [V’ [V’ V < Θk, Θ, Ei > NP] Adv < Θk, Θi >]]
As a consequence, all adverbs modifying middle constructions must select an experiencer role. This assumption is ad hoc and semantically unmotivated. H&R give the following LF-representation (‘G’ is a generic operator) for the middle construction: (i) G [e: V (x, NP, e)] (Adv (e, for x)) In the middle construction (ii) the adverb schnell (‘quickly’) for example modifies the whole event of grass-cutting. This sentence means that the grass-cutting does not take too much time in general. We are not aware of any independent criterion to decide whether or not schnell in (ii) selects an experiencer role. But we do not think that example (ii) can be paraphrased as follows (cf. H&R: 194): ‘In general, events in which some x cuts the grass are quick events for x’.
(ii) Der Rasen mäht sich schnell The grass cuts RP quickly (iii) ‘Erb’ schreibt sich wie ‘erbleichen’ ohne ‘Leichen’ ‘Erb’ writes RP like ‘erbleichen’ (i.e. to turn pale) without ‘Leichen’ (i.e. corpses) (iv) [Dieser Bericht] liest sich, als seien die Berliner Lehrer und Polizisten schlimme Fremdenfeinde, … This report reads RP as are the Berlin teachers and policemen bad racists ‘This report sounds as if all teachers and policemen in berlin are racists’ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 12.9.2000)
Furthermore, even whole adverbial phrases like wie ‘erbleichen’ ohne ‘Leichen’ and als seien … in example (iii) and (iv) must select an experiencer role. This assumption is again counterintuitive to us.
H&R assume that the free argument variables are bound by a generic quantifier. In chapter 7 we develop an analysis of the generic interpretation of middle constructions, which is also based on this assumption.
Stroik (1999) argues that adverbs like quickly can only cooccur with predicates that select an agent. He concludes that ‘middle verbs’ also select an agent because they can cooccur with these adverbs. Note, however, that these adverbs can also cooccur with anticausative and unaccusative verbs, which do not have an agent argument.
Thanks to Marcel den Dikken and to my Dutch informants in Berlin and Tilburg for helping me with the Dutch examples (cf. also the discussion of Ackema and Schoorlemmer’s analysis of middle constructions in English and Dutch in section 3.2.1).
Den Dikken (1997) proposes a modification of H&R’s analysis. He does not assume that the external theta-role is assigned in syntax but agrees with H&R that the event-role of the middle construction must be bound. According to Den Dikken, the event-role cannot only be bound by an adeverbial but also by an operator. Den Dikken argues that ‘base transitive’ verbs have a Note that Zwart (1999), unlike Den Dikken, argues that middle constructions project also vP in addition to the basic VP. Furthermore, Zwart does not assume A-movement of the subject in middle constructions. Instead, the subject is base generated in the specifier of vP. In this position the subject is interpreted as a ‘circumstantial agent’, and as such it is responsible for the predication expressed in the middle construction (cf. section 2.1.2). We think, that Zwart’s analysis is on the right track. However, his analysis also makes wrong predictions: (i) this analysis predicts that middle constructions are ungrammatical without an adverbial; (ii) middle constructions with an unaccusative verb as well as telic middle constructions (e.g. resultatives, achievements and accomplishments) are also predicted to be ungrammatical; (iii) ‘effected’ arguments should be excluded in vP-Spec; (iv) nonargument middles should be ungrammatical in German. Besides, (v) it remains unclear how the subject is linked to the internal argument of the verb (i.e. how it receives its correct thematic interpretation); An additional (lexical) operation seems to be necessary to derive a one-place middle predicate from corresponding ‘normal’ two-place predicate. We think that (at least for German) the existence of (rare cases of) nonargument (or adjunct) middles should not be taken as evidence for the claim that all middle constructions are nonargument middles (cf. Zwart 1999:18, for a similar claim for Dutch). Especially for German nonargument middles must be explained independently (because nonargument middles are expected to be ungrammatical in German according to Zwart’s analysis). Note finally that we share the opinion that the reflexive pronoun in German middle constructions is ‘generated in the VP’ and ‘as a consequence of the binding relation obtaining between the surface subject and the reflexive argument of the lexical root, an interpretation according to which the surface subject is an argument of the lexical root becomes inescapable’ (Zwart 1999:18). We deal with the interpretation of the surface subject in chapter 5 and 6.
Various operators can bind the event-role of middle constructions in syntax: negation, WH, or focus. We do not want to discuss the syntactic and semantic consequences of ‘parasitic’ event-binding in questions and sentences with negation. Instead, we confine ourselves to a few remarks on focus. First, recent theories of focus assume that focus is a syntactic feature assigned to a constituent that receives a specific semantic (and phonological) interpretation. Moreover, in semantics the focus is bound by some focus sensitive or illocutionary operator (cf. chapter 4 for more details). We are not clear about the syntactic status of the focus operator and about the syntax and semantics of parasitic focus binding. Second, a syntactic focus operator (or a focus projection/designated focus position) cannot be empirically motivated for languages like Dutch and German (cf. Gärtner and Steinbach 2000). Third, den Dikken assumes that only focus on the verb can bind its event-role because narrow focus on the subject would have no ‘access’ to the verb’s event-role. However, bare middle constructions with focus on the subject are as grammatical as middle constructions with narrow focus on the verb, cf. (7).
Anticausatives pose yet another problem. Den Dikken assumes that anticausatives, like middle constructions, only consist of one VP. The external argument which is introduced by v (in vP-Spec) is again not present in syntax (and in this case it is also not present in semantics, cf.
Let us turn to Stroik's (1992) analysis of middle constructions now. As opposed to H&R (1993), Stroik assumes that the external theta-role, which is assigned to PRO in syntax, is syntactically active. Stroik gives empirical motivation for the syntactic presence of PRO. He shows that the external argument is able to bind a reflexive pronoun and to control the PRO-subject of an embedded infinitival. Furthermore, it can be overtly realized as a for-PP. A detailed critisism of Stroik’s arguments can be found in Ackema and Schoorlemmer (1995). In the following we briefly summarize their main points and add some additional observations.
(8) [[Books about oneselfi ]j never read tj poorly] PROi ]
Pollard and Sag (1994) and Reinhart and Reuland (1993), however, argue that so-called picture-noun-phrases like books about oneself in (8) that contain a reflexive pronouns are best treated as logophors. According to Pollard and Sag (1994) and Reinhart and Reuland (1993) – henceforth R&R –, the application of the binding conditions should be restricted to co-arguments of the same predicate. Therefore, not all occurrences of reflexive pronouns are subject to the binding theory. R&R’s reformulation of the binding principles is given in (9). We give only the relevant conditions. In chapter 5 and 6 we come back to R&R’s and Pollard and Sag’s binding theories.
Reflexive pronouns that have no co-argument are exempt from binding condition A and B and are not bound in syntax. The binding conditions as defined in (9) do not say anything about logophors. Reflexive pronouns that are exempt form condition A are subject to non-syntactic binding constraints like e.g. point of view (cf. chapter 5 for more discussion). That logophors need not be bound at all in syntax is independently motivated by the examples in (10). The reflexive pronoun, which is embedded in the subject NP, has either no antecedent at all, as can be seen in (10.a and b), or its antecedent does not c-command the reflexive pronoun, cf. Chris Wilder p.c. pointed out that Kayne’s (1994) treatment of relative clauses would allow to establish a binding relation between the antecedent and the reflexive pronoun in (10.c) in syntax. This analysis cannot be applied to (10.a) and (10.b).
Besides, Stroik himself argues in his (1999) article that in middle constructions the external (agent) argument, which can optionally be linked to a for-PP, is bound by the syntactic subject and not vice versa. Hence, the reflexive pronoun in (8) cannot be bound by the implicit argument. We come back to this issue below.
Stroik’s second argument in favor of a nonovert pronominal subject in middle constructions is based on PRO-control in infinitives. It is the implicit PRO argument of the middle construction that controls the subject PRO of an embedded infinitive in sentences like (11).
(11) Potatoes usually peel easily PROk [after PROk boiling them]
Stroik himself remarks that not all cases of PRO-control can be explained syntactically. Ackema and Schoorlemmer (1994) cite Koster (1987), who distinguishes ‘anaphoric control’ from ‘nonanaphoric control’. Koster argues that only the former, i.e. anaphoric control is syntactic and relies on c-command. Nonanaphoric control, on the other hand, need not be syntactic. In many cases the controller of the embedded PRO must be inferred pragmatically, regardless of whether the matrix clause is a middle construction or not.
In (12.a) the adverbial clause containing the PRO-subject does not differ from the one in (11), but in this case the matrix clause does not contain an implicit argument to control the embedded PRO-subject. Nevertheless, these sentences are not ungrammatical. The PRO-subject in (12.a) is (pragmatically) controlled. (12.b and c) are two more examples that involve ‘nonanaphoric control’. In both examples “the controller is an implicit argument of plans (someone’s plans, our plans), the nature of which is again determined pragmatically.” (Koster 1987:116) Lasnik (1988) gives a further interesting example which shows that PRO need not be controlled by a (non-)overt syntactic element. Consider example (13.a) first. In this case the overtly realized agent the navy seems to be the (anaphoric) controller of the embedded PRO-subject. In (13.b), on the other hand, the agent-role is not overtly realized. One might argue that the implicit agent-role in passives is assigned to some nonovert element in syntax, which controls the PRO-subject of the embedded clause. So far this is in line with Stroik’s analysis of middle constructions. But now consider sentence (13.c). The external theta-role (in this case instrument) of the subject of the corresponding active sentence is assigned to the by-phrase by a torpedo. A pure syntactic theory of control predicts that the by-phrase controls the PRO-subject. But this is certainly not what sentence (13.c) means. Usually a torpedo does not
A third argument that is brought forward in Stroik (1992 and 1999) concerns the overt realization of the external agent-argument. Stroik argues that the prepositional phrase in (14) can be linked to PRO. Furthermore, he argues that binding data show that the prepositional phrase and the syntactic subject must be co-arguments (cf. (14.b), cf. Stroik (1999:127). Note that the examples in (14) only show that the first semantic argument of the verb can be linked to a syntactic constituent. However, they do not prove that the first semantic argument must always be linked. We do not see any reason for the assumption that optional arguments are always linked to some silent syntactic category. Otherwise we would have to introduce nonovert syntactic elements for nearly any kind of implicit argument: optional instrumental PPs, optional directional PPs, optional theme-arguments in locative inversion, optional direct objects, or optional datives in German to mention just a few. But this would lead to an unwarranted increase in nonovert syntactic elements. Besides, although the binding data are less clear in German, reflexive pronoun in (14.c) seems to be less grammatical than the personal pronoun. Note that in the active counterpart the reflexive pronoun must be used, cf. chapter 4 on the adnominal focus particel selbst.
(i) Der Enzensberger liest sich selbst/*ihn selbst The Enzensberger reads RP (him)self/him (him)self
Ackema and Schoorlemmer (1995) come to the same conclusion for English, but see Stroik (1999) for counterexamples.
So far we saw that neither of Stroik’s empirical arguments provides convincing evidence for the claim that in middle constructuions an implicit external argument is obligatorily present in syntax. The second shortcoming of all syntactic movement-analyses is that middle formation is not subject to the same restrictions as passive formation in many languages, cf. also footnote 4 above. Recall that in Modern Greek and Russian passives and middle constructions are morphosyntactically identical, cf. section 2.3. This does not hold for languages that have developed a periphrastic passive form. Nevertheless, in Modern Greek and Russian the middle interpretation is also subject to different restrictions than the passive interpretation. Passives and middle constructions seem to differ in another respect. Preposition stranding seems to be much better with passives than with middle constructions. We mentioned in chapter 2 that preposition stranding is possible in some middle constructions (cf. i). In many cases the middle construction is, however, more marked than the corresponding passive (cf. ii).
(i) ?That tree climbs up quickly (ii) a. ??John laughs at easily vs. b. John was laughed at
The situation in German is not that clear. Passivization is not always perfect with so-called A.c.I.-verbs. The best examples involve intransitive complements.
In Dutch and German some middle constructions do not have a corresponding passive. We already mentioned that German, like Dutch, has adjunct middles (cf. section 2.1.). However, German does not have adjunct passives as can be seen in (16.c).
A fourth difference between passivization and middle formation is that they are subject to different semantic constraints. As opposed to the subject of middle constructions, the subject
Further problems arise when we try to apply a syntactic movement analysis to middle constructions in German. Unlike middle coonstructions in English and Dutch, their German counterparts are transitive reflexive sentences. They optionally select a reflexive pronoun in the position of the direct object.
As they stand these movement analyses cannot account for the presence of an overt reflexive pronoun in German middle constructions. A-movement of the deep structure object (the complement of the verb) is motivated by the Case Filter (cf. Chomsky 1981). In German verbs in personal and impersonal middle constructions assign accusative case. Hence, there is no reason for the deep structure object to move into the subject position (cf. also Fagan 1992). A-movement of the internal argument (the D-structure object) and the appearance of the reflexive pronoun in the position of the direct object cannot be easily motivated under common syntactic assumptions. Besides, we already mentioned that impersonal passives must not have an impersonal (or pleonastic) subject (18.b), whereas impersonal middle constructions are ungrammatical without the impersonal subject es (18.a).
We conclude that a syntactic derivation of English and Dutch middle constructions is confronted with various empirical and conceptual shortcomings. Both A-movement and the syntactic presence of the suppressed external argument lack independent evidence. Moreover, the process of passivization, which is similar to middle formation, underlies different restrictions in English, Dutch and German. The application of this approach to German yields further problems. Middle constructions in German are transitive. There is no necessity for A-movement because the verb assign accusative case in middle constructions. Furthermore, a passive-like syntactic analysis of middle constructions cannot account for the presence of the accusative reflexive pronoun without additional assumptions. In the next subsection we turn to anlyses of reflexive middle constructions. We take a look at syntactic derivations of middle constructions in Italian and German and are mainly interested in the licensing conditions for the reflexive pronoun.
Like their German counterparts, middle constructions in Italian are reflexive. They are only grammatical with the verbal clitic si. Moreover, the (weak) reflexive pronoun, i.e. the middle Abraham (1995) judges the corresponding example in (i) to be grammatical in German as well.
(i) Es besticht sich solche Beamte leicht It bribes RP such officials easily
Because the si-construction in Italian is highly complex and the data are very subtle, we limit the following discussion to middle si-constructions. We are mainly interested in whether the analysis of the Italian middle construction can also be applied to German. We have little to say about the impersonal ‘subject’ si. The impersonal si is analysed as a nominative reflexive pronoun. The syntactic clitic must form a chain with (and is bound by) an implicit subject by which it receives nominative case (the operation form chain is subsumed under binding in Manzini’s approach). Note, however, that crosslinguistically nominative reflexive pronouns are extremely rare. Even other Romance languages have no nominative reflexive pronouns, cf. Dobrovie-Sorin (1998). Reflexive constructions in other Romance languages seem to be syntactically more closer to the German middle voice. As a consequence of Manzini’s and Cinques’s analysis, the Italian nominative clitic si would be a great exception. Anderson (1986) argues that reflexive pronouns in Icelandic can appear in embedded sentences in subject position only if the embedded sentence contains a verb with a non-nominative subject. Nominative reflexives seems to be excluded in principple (see also Everaert 1990). Thanks to Hans-Martin Gärtner for making me aware of this issue. We discuss this observation in chapter 5.
The first and the last two properties are crucial for her treatment of middle constructions. Si is a verbal clitic that must be bound in syntax. Furthermore, it belongs to the category N and is subject to the case filter. How is the middle si licensed in syntax? As opposed to impersonal and reflexive si, middle si is a ‘passivizer’. Si receives the external theta role of the verb. Therefore, the verb cannot assign case to its object (Burzio’s Generalization) and the D-structure object moves in syntax into the subject position. Manzini assumes that middle si is interpreted in the same way as impersonal si: it introduces a free variable into the semantic representation associated with the ‘subject theta-position’, i.e. it is linked to the external argument of the verb. Middle si cannot be bound to the grammatical subject of the sentence because it is neither referentially dependent on the subject nor does it form a chain with it. Therefore, one would have to assume an additional ‘deep structure subject’, which binds the clitic reflexive pronoun. However, we saw in 3.1.1 above that it is hard to find empirical evidence for the presence of a VP-internal PRO- or pro-subject in syntax. Moreover, the clitic cannot be licensed by such an additional deep structure PRO- or pro-subject because this implicit subject would not be in a case position. But this means that middle si violates the case filter. Note finally that the optional property ‘passivizer’ in (20) does not explain why the weak reflexive pronoun, the clitic si, like reflexive pronouns in many other languages, is ambiguous between a passive, a middle, a anticausative and a reflexive interpretation.
Cinque (1988) modifies the analysis proposed by Manzini. For various reasons, he distinguishes five different kinds of si-clitics in Italian. Si is a syntactic clitic to which nominative is assigned. It absorbs or suspends nominative, accusative or VP-internal accusative and dative case. As opposed to Manzini, Cinque assumes that si need not be an argument. He argues that Italian distinguishes two distinct nominative clitic reflexive pronouns, which are either specified as [+ argument] or [- argument]. This leads to the following picture: We do not want to discuss whether the treatment of the reflexive si is conclusive. Note, however, that Cinque proposes a passive-like derivation for weak reflexives: the reflexive clitic si is linked to the external argument (or logical subject) of the verb and is bound by the syntactic subject, which is linked to the internal argument. Focus seems to be one problem for Cinques treatment of reflexives. If one asks for the external argument (i.e. who washes himself), the syntactic subject, which corresponds to the internal argument in Cinques account, must be focused in the corresponding answer. But this would yield the wrong semantic representation of the focus-background structure. Furthermore, it seems to be implausible to link the strong reflexive pronoun se stessi also to the external argument. But this would result in two totally different syntactic and semantic representations for the weak and strong form of the reflexive pronoun. See also the discussion of Manzini (1986) above, who analyses the reflexive si as an accusative or dative verbal clitic.
A discussion of the empirical motivation of this complex lexical entry and its empirical and conceptual consequences would exceed the scope of this subsection. Cinque presents empirical motivation for the distinction between [+/- arg] impersonal si (22.1 and 2). But see Dobrovie-Sorin (1998:410f), who argues against Cinques [+/- arg]-distinction. She does not assume two types of nominative si. The [+ arg] si is analyzed as being a middle-passive accusative si. Dobrovie-Sorin’s analysis is closer to our own analysis we develop in chapter 5 to 7. [- agr] si always occurs in finite sentences without ‘object agreement’, i.e. the internal argument stays in situ and does not move into the syntactic subject position (cf. (19) above). This is predicted by Burzio’s Generalization (1986): [+ arg] si absorbs the external theta-role by definition, so that the verb cannot assign accusative case according to Burzio’s Generalization. The internal argument is left without case. Therefore, [- arg] si together with a pleonastic pro-subject must be used in si-constructions without ‘object-agreement’. In this case the external theta-role is assigned to pro in Spec of IP and the verb assigns accusative. Unergatives like (i) might be the only exception.
(i) Si lavora sempre troppo RP works always too much (i.e. One always works too much)
These verbs do not select an internal argument. Hence they are not in conflict with Burzio’s Generalization. Furthermore, it is impossible to verify ‘object-agreement’ in this case. But it seems to be plausible to assume [‑arg] si in this context as well to get a uniform analysis.
In section 2.3.2. we mentioned that middle constructions in Italian and French can be used to describe specific events, where they can be modified by agentive adverbs or the implicit logical subject can control the PRO-subject of a purpose clause (cf. Cinque 1988: 562). This seems to be impossible with the ‘generic’ interpretation of si-constructions. Cinque attributes this to the difference between [+/- arg] si. With [- arg] middle si the external theta-role becomes ‘invisible’ in syntax.
Both Manzini and Cinque derive middle formation in the syntax and anticausative formation in the lexicon. Arguments in favor of this distinction are (i) middle formation is more productive (ii) anticausative formation, unlike middle formation, is possible with and without reflexive pronoun, depending on the verb (cf. section 2.2). Property (i) might be due to the fact that anticausative formation is subject to additional semantic restrictions, so that only certain verbs can undergo anticausative formation. The second property (ii) might be either a lexical idiosyncrasy of certain verbs, that cannot be explained systematically, or it might be attributed to a systematic difference in the selectional properties of the underlying verbs. In chapter 5 and 6 we argue for a unified (syntactic) analysis of middle constructions and anticausatives.
(23) [IP [NP propleo][I’[I° (Agr) si[+ agr]] [VP ... gli spaghetti]]]
Note, however, that the internal argument gli spaghetti must also move to Spec of IP to get nominative case (recall Burzio’s Generalization: no external theta-role is assigned to IP-Spec, therefore, the verb cannot assign accusative to its internal argument). Hence, we have to elements that are assigned nominative case. Therefore, Cinque is forced to assume that nominative is assigned twice in (23): both CHAINs proi - sii and proi - gli spaghettii receive nominative case. Cinque refers to Chomsky (1986: 131f. and 184f., especially footnote 120). Chomsky assumes that both the reflexive clitic si and the VP-internal argument are parts of two different CHAINs which contain a different thematic role each but are assigned the same case.
What about [- arg] si in middle constructions? Unlike passive [+ arg] si in (22.b), middle [- arg] si in (22.a) can also be licensed in infinitival constructions (p. 560):
Not even the enemy has the property of killing rp without remorse
In this respect middle si also differes from impersonal [- arg] si in (22.2). For this reason Cinque assumes two different lexical entries for [- arg] si: (i) impersonal [- arg] that can be licensed only in finite clauses and ‘identifies’ an arb
pro, i.e. (22.2), and (ii) middle [- arg] that can also be licensed in infinitive constructions and ‘suspends’ the external theta-role and
Cinque’s distinction between [+ arg] and [- arg] can also be found in German. The (weak) reflexive pronoun in German and Italian can but need not be interpreted as an argument of the verb. However, we also find some decisive differences, besides this similarity. First, the reflexive pronoun in German middle constructions (i.e. the middle marker) does not receives nominative but accusative case. Second, Gärtner and Steinbach (1997 and 2000) argue that German does not have syntactic clitics, i.e. special clitics in the sense of Zwicky (1977). The accusative reflexive pronoun is syntactically an independent pronominal NP that need not be cliticized to the verb or to some functional head. We return to this issue in the next chapter. Third, we saw in section 2.1 that middle formation in German, unlike middle formation in Italian, is not limited to verbs that assign an external theta-role. In addition, we saw that the syntax of the Italian [- arg] middle si is still unresolved. The analysis of Italian reflexive constructions also do not offer a uniform explanation of the ambiguity of the (weak) reflexive pronoun. In sum, an application of the analysis of Italian to German would require greater modifications. The next subsection discusses two analyses of the German middle construction that are closely related to Cinque’s and Manzini’s analyses of Italian middle si.
Syntactic approaches to the middle construction in German also distinguish different types of reflexive pronouns. Haider, for example, analyses the accusative reflexive pronoun in middle constructions as some kind of A’-element. His proposal resembles Manzini’s or Cinque’s treatment of Italian middle si we discussed in the previous section. Haider argues that the reflexive pronoun in German middle constructions, like the reflexive clitic si in Italian, absorbs the external theta-role. Unlike its Italian counterpart, the reflexive pronoun in German is not a verbal clitic but an A’-element adjoined to VP that receives accusative case from the verb. According to Haider, the internal argument is directly linked to the (external) subject position of the sentence and binds the non-argument reflexive according to principle A of binding theory. Note that it does not make a difference for our discussion of syntactic analyses whether the internal object is base-generated in the complement position of V or directly linked to the This derivation resembles Everaert’s (1986) analysis of reflexive anticausatives in Dutch. For Everaert the Dutch reflexive pronoun zich is a VP-adjunct, too. He derives its occurence in this position from the ECP. The reflexive pronoun, which absorbs the accusative case, forms a chain with the syntactic subject and its trace in VP-internal position and mediates the antecedent-binding of the VP-internal trace.
In middle constructions and anticausatives Inherent reflexives equal anticausatives in Haider’s analysis. Therefore, we consider only anticausatives in the following discussion.
(26) [CP Hans [C° wäscht1 ] [VP sich t1 ]]]]
This distinction into two types of accusative reflexive pronouns is motivated by the observation that the reflexive pronoun cannot be focussed, coordinated, modified, fronted, or questioned in anticausatives and middle constructions as opposed to reflexives, as can be seen in (27).
Haider tries to derive these differences from the syntactic distinction between argument and adjunct reflexive pronouns. Our next chapter deals with this difference in great detail. We will show that the difference in (27) directly follows from a the semantic interpretation of the reflexive pronoun, i.e. from the semantic difference between the argument and non-argument reflexive. Haider’s stipulation that the reflexive pronoun can be either an A- or an A’-element is neither necessary nor conclusive for the explanation of the ungrammaticality of (27.a). ‘Non-referential’ A’-elements like adverbs, adjectives or verbs can be focussed, questioned, modified, or fronted in principle (just like ‘referential’ A-elements). Therefore the specific properties of reflexive pronouns in middle constructions and anticausatives cannot be reduced to this syntactic difference. Moreover, referentiality is a matter of semantics rather than syntax. Word order in German raise additional problems for Haider’s treatment of the reflexive pronoun. We show again in chapter 4 that both types of the accusative reflexive pronoun (the adjunct and the argument reflexive) have the same properties with respect to word order in the middle-field. However, both types of reflexive pronouns differ in the sentence-initial position. Only the argument reflexive can occupy the sentence-initial position. This follows again from the semantic ambiguity (interpretative difference) of the accusative reflexive pronoun (together with semantic restrictions on the sentence-initial position in German) as will be shown in chapter 4.
Haider assumes that the external theta-role can be assigned to or ‘absorbed’ by an A’-element. But this is in variance to the theta criterion according to which every theta-role is assigned to a syntactic argument (and vice versa). Note that Haider’s explanation relies on the theta criterion (cf. p. 245) According to Haider the external theta-role can be assigned either to the subject position (Spec of CP or IP) or alternatively to an A’-element (adjoined to VP). However, it does not become clear why dative reflexive pronouns or ‘referential’ NPs cannot receive or ‘absorb’ the external theta-role in VP-adjoined position. Traditionally reflexive pronouns are bound in syntax (feature-sharing) and semantics (coreference) by the same antecedent. The adjunct reflexive in middle constructions and anticausatives can, however, only be bound in syntax. Semantically the reflexive pronoun is interpreted as an unbound implicit ‘generic’ subject in middle constructions. In this respect Haider’s analysis resembles Manzini’s treatment of Italian middle si. The responsibility of the reflexive pronoun for the generic interpretation is neither empirically nor conceptually motivated. We come back to this issue in the chapters 4 and 5.
The theta-role of the external argument can be assigned only once. In the case of middle constructions, the external theta-role is assigned to the reflexive pronoun. Therefore, we expect no other constituent than the reflexive pronoun to receive the external theta-role in middle constructions. In section 2.3 and 3.1.1 we saw that the overt realization of the external argument is much more restricted in German than in English. Neverthelss, the external argument can be linked to a für-PP, as is illustrated in (28).
Besides, we mentioned in chapter 2 that middle formation is not limited to verbs selecting an external argument. Unaccusative verbs are grammatical in (unergative) middle constructions although they do not select a designated external argument. Auxiliary-selection poses a related problem. Remember that verbs in middle constructions always select the auxiliary haben (‘have’).
This contradicts the following observation: diachronically, anticausatives and inherent reflexive verbs are attested earlier than middle constructions. Moreover, not every middle construction can be lexicalized. We will see in chapter 5 that the difference between middle constructions and anticausatives is not due to lexicalization but to further semantic restrictions on anticausatives.
The internal argument Θ2 isthe only thematic argument of the verb in (30.b). Anticausative verbs, unlike ‘middle verbs’, have no implicit external argument at all (cf. 2.2). Haider claims that the reflexive pronoun represents the theta-role of the external argument. But we saw in section 2.2. that no external theta-role is implicitly present in the anticausative variant of causative verbs. This crucial difference distinguishes middle constructions from anticausatives.
Schachtl (1991) proposes a very similar solution that tries to avoid the problem of accusative case assignment. Following Fanselow (1987), she assumes that German has two different types of accusative case, an abstract and a morphological one. On the one hand, theta-roles must be assigned to NPs with abstract case and only abstract case is subject to Burzio’s Generalization. On the other hand, only morphological case is subject to the case filter. As opposed to Haider, Schachtl does not assume that the external theta-role is assigned in middle constructions. It follows from Burzio’s Generalization that the verb cannot assign abstract accusative case in middle constructions. The reflexive pronoun, which again adjoins to VP, ‘absorbs’ the morphological accusative case of the verb and the syntactic subject of the middle construction receives morphological nominative case in its VP-internal base position. Schachtl’s analysis is motivated by word order data. According to Schachtl, in the unmarked word order a subject NP marked with morphological nominative in VP-internal position must follow constituents that are adjoined to VP like dative NPs, adverbs (cf. also next footnote), or the reflexive pronoun in middle constructions. But there is no evidence that the nominative NP stays in situ in its VP-internal base-position in middle constructions (for example (iii) see Diesing 1988 and1992 and Jäger 1992):
(i) *...weil sich [VP gut ein Buch liest] vs. ...weil sich ein Buch [VP gut liest] (ii) ??...weil sich [VP immer ein Buch gut liest] vs. ...weil sich ein Buch [VP immer gut liest] (iii) ??...weil sich [I’ ja doch ein Buch gut liest] vs. ...weil sich ein Buch [I’ ja doch gut liest] because RP a book well read (‘immer’ always, ‘ja doch’ indeed) (iv) a. … weil sich ein Porsche einem Zuhälter gut verkauft … because RP a Porsche-NOM a pimp-DAT (i.e. to a pimp) well sells b. … weil sich einem Zuhälter ein Porsche gut verkauft
Moreover, unmarked word order in the German middle field is restricted not only by constraints on morphological and structural case but also by additional constraints: for example (i) a nominative NP precedes accusative NP, (ii) an agent precedes other constituents, (iii) topic precedes focus, (iv) pronouns precede full NPs, or (v) NPs that refer to animate entities precede NPs that refer to unanimate ones. Especially the unmarked position of dative objects varies. A dative NP can precede an accusative NP and a nonagentive nominative NP, provided that the dative NP refers to an animate entity (cf. chapter 4 for more details and references). In middle constructions the nominative NP cannot be an agent. Therefore, it is no surprise that dative NPs can precede the nominative NP in principle, especially if they refers to animate entities.
Word order restrictions in the German middle field do not provide any evidence foor the claim that the internal argument is case marked with morphological nominative in its VP-internal base-position. We come back to this issue in chapter 4 (cf. also Fagan 1992: 111 for a similar argumentation with respect to the accusative-dative order in passives).
Schachtl adjoins the adverb to V° in middle constructions, but manner adverbials do not only modify the verb but the whole VP in middle constructions. This can be illustrated with adverbials like schnell (‘quickly’) that can modify either the verb itself (cf. i.a) or the whole VP in (i.b). In middle constructions like (ii) the adverbial has only the second (VP-modifying) reading.
The stipulation of a second type of accusative case that is morphosyntactically indistinguishable does not explain the accusative reflexive pronoun in middle constructions and anticausatives. First of all this derivation is in conflict with Fanselow’s (1987) assumption that theta-roles must be connected with structural case. In (31) the internal theta-role is assigned to a NP with morphological nominative. Therefore, it should also be possible for the NP das Buch to receive morphological accusative in its base-position. But in this case we would need no reflexive pronoun to absorb the morphological accusative of the verb. Besides, nothing is said about structural nominative in (31). Second, it is anything but clear which case can or must be assigned under which condition. Schachtl must assume that every one-place predicate can assign morphological accusative in principle to account for one-place verbs in middle constructions. But then one is forced to stipulate that the same verb, that must obligatorily assign its morphological accusative in the middle construction in (32.a) must not assign accusative case in the active intransitive counterpart in (32.b).
This solution requires at best some lexical operation to derive a two-place ‘middle verb’ from an underlying one-place active verb. This lexical derivation of middle constructions will be discussed in the next section. And third, we expect that verbs can assign morphological and structural case to different constituents, yet the corresponding sentences are ungrammatical in German. German has only very few cases with two accusative objects. The Duden (1973) cites four verbs: lehren (‘teach’) , kosten (‘cost’), abfragen (‘test’), and abhören (‘test’). In the first two cases accusative + dative/PP is the preferred option for many speakers. Besides, German has some idioms like (i) with two accusatives. However, the same verb cannot assign two accusatives in nonidiomatic sentences (cf. ii):
(i) Eins bitt’ ich dich (Duden: 514) One-ACC ask I you-ACC (i.e. I ask you for one thing) (ii) Ich bitte dich *das Auto/um das Auto I ask you-ACC the car-ACC/for the car
According to Schachtl we would expect much more ‘double case’ constructions.
We summarize the outcome of the discussion in a shorthand:
A syntactic analysis of the middle constructions in English, Dutch, Italian and German is neither empirically nor conceptually motivated. Note that middle constructions and ‘middle verbs’ are morphosyntactically simple active forms.
All analyses discussed so far always need additional ad hoc assumptions.
Furthermore, they run into serious empirical and conceptual problems.
Syntactic analysis cannot account for the accusative reflexive pronoun in German.
Syntactic analysis do not offer a uniform explanation of the systematic ambiguity of reflexive constructions in many Indo-European languages.
So far, we do not find any relevant syntactic restriction on middle formation (however, we will see in chapter 6 that one generalization can be stated in syntax: the syntactic status of the reflexive pronoun is relevant for preventing dative objects from middle formation).
We conclude that a convincing syntactic explanation has not been found yet. German middle constructions can not be conclusively derived from the principles of generative syntactic theories. Therefore, many linguists prefer a presyntactic derivation of middle constructions. In the next section we discuss lexical explanations of the middle construction.
An alternative explanation of middle formation could be found in lexical (or more general presyntactic) theories. Ackema and Schoorlemmer (1994) argue that the term lexical is misleading. For them the lexicon is not part of the computational system but a “list mentioning all and only those properties of the elements of a language that are idiosyncratic” (p.60) – but see Ackerman and Webelhuth (1998) for a different point of view. In the following discussion we do not make a terminological distinction between the ‘productive’ and the ‘idiosyncratic’ part of the lexicon. For the ongoing discussion it is irrelevant whether middle formation itself and the respective output are part of the lexicon or of some additional presyntactic module. To simplify matters we call these approaches lexical.
Fagan (1992) and Ackema and Schoorlemmer (1994 and 1995) – henceforth A&S – argue for a rule of middle formation that operates on lexical representations of verbs. The central assumption of both explanations is a lexical rule of middle formation, cf. (33) for A&S’s rule of middle formation and (35.1) below for the very similar rule proposed by Fagan.
(33) MF (Middle Formation): Actor = ARB
Rule (33), together with the specific design of lexical entries, should enable the theory to derive the correct restrictions on MF. A&S’s theory is based on the framework of conceptual semantics developed by Jackendoff (1990). (34) is a list of additional constraints that are necessary to derive middle formation in Dutch and English. A&S postulate an additional rule of ‘adjunct incorporation’ for adjunct middles in Dutch. We discuss this issue in chapter 6. The feature [+ext] means that one argument must be external. It is an inherent property of the whole lcs and cannot be deleted in the course of a derivation. This restriction raises the following problem. Consider a verb like receive that might subcategorize for a patient argument that is the most prominent argument on the action tier and, in addition, for a second argument that is more prominent at the thematic tier than its co-argument, the patient. This verb, like double-object verbs in middle constructions, should be prevented from linking their arguments, cf. sentence (i), which can be represented as is illustrated in (ii):
(i) Sam received a book (ii) receive [GOPoss ([BOOK], [TO [SAM]])
In (ii) neither argument can be linked as the external argument of the verb because of condition (34.d) and we expect sentence (i) to be ungrammatical. One might, however, argue that receive does not select an external argument.
AFF+ ( ,[SAM]) ]
According to (33), MF marks the actor argument on the action tier of a verb’s lexical conceptual structure (lcs) as ARB. ARB cannot project into syntax and the next argument on the thematic hierarchy (34.c) is chosen for the external argument. A&S do not discuss German middle constructions. Nevertheless, we are interested in the consequences of this analysis because it is developed from Fagan’s analysis of middle constructions in English, German and French. Therefore we discuss both the empirical and conceptual shortcomings of this analysis and its possible application to middle constructions in German. With regard to the second point, it is easy to see that a presyntactic approach along these lines is forced to assume some extra rule or linking principle to handle the reflexive pronoun in object position in German. Fagan (1992) solves this problem by simply stating that middle constructions in German are transitive reflexive sentences (cf. the corresponding subcategorization frame in 35.4). Therefore Fagan’s rule of middle formation is more complex for German (and French) than for English: The relevant parts of Fagan’s definition of middle formation in English and French are as follows: (i) English: +[______AdvP]
Middle formation in English introduces only the adverbial (cf. i), whereas adverbials are not obligatory in French. On the other hand, French middle constructions select a reflexive clitic that is introduced by rule (ii) in French. Note that the reflexive clitic in French agrees in number and person with its subject. For this rule (ii) must be slightly modified. Grimshaw (1982) offers a similar lexical derivation of middle constructions. Moreover, she proposes two additional rules for anticausatives and reflexives. We give her middle rule in (iii) (Grimshaw 1982: 124):
(iii) (SUBJ)→Ø (OBJ)→((SUBJ) (↑REFL) =C +
(ii) French: [V X] → [V se + [V X]]
Roughly speaking, the last condition ‘(↑REFL) =C +’ means that an intrinsic clitic (i.e. a clitic that has ‘(↑REFL) = +’ in its lexical entry) has to be present in the syntactic clitic position CL. Following the general principles of clitic placement in French, it precedes the finite verb.
The rules and conditions in (35) are a description of the empirical facts. Fagan stipulates that the reflexivity of middle constructions is an idiosyncratic lexical property of this type of construction. “In essence, then, the presence of a reflexive in a middle must be stipulated” (Fagan 1992: 171). We argue in chapter 5 that the widespread use of reflexive pronouns to indicate valency-reduction is not accidental. As opposed to A&S, Fagan does not distinguish unergatives from unaccusatives. All intransitive verbs assign an external theta-role and that is why they can all undergo middle formation in German in principle. This point will be relevant in the discussion below. We do not want to discuss Fagan’s treatment of intransitive verbs here because it is not relevant for the analysis of German middles we will present in chapter 4 and 5. For further discussion see Grewendorf (1989), cf. also van Riemsdijk (1978) or A&S (1995) among others, who argued at length that there are differences between unergative and unaccusative verbs in German. Fagan, argues, ‘that the diagnostics for ergativity in German are generally unreliable’ (p. 120).
Both analyses are confronted with certain empirical and conceptual problems. We start off with a discussion of Fagan’s definition of middle formation. The subcategorization frame (35.4) Fagan gives is too restrictive. We saw in section 2.1. that middle formation in German and in English (cf. A&S) is also grammatical without an additional adverbial, provided that the middle construction is uttered in an appropriate context. We come back to this issue in section 3.2.2. and in chapter 7.
Condition (35.6: V is not an achievement or state) raises another problem. The so-called aspectual interpretation (Aktionsarten) is not always an inherent lexical property of the verb. It often results from the interpretation of more complex structures including especially the verb and the direct object. Moreover, verbs in middle constructions can receive an achievement interpretation. The verbs treffen (‘meet’), for example, is ambiguous between an activity and an achievement interpretation.
Treffen is a two-place predicate that can be inherent reflexive (i), reciprocal (ii), or non-reflexive (iii). The first two examples can describe activities and the last two examples can yield an achievement interpretation. Hence, Sentence (37.b) is ambiguous between a middle interpretation and a reciprocal interpretation. The middle constructions in (37) are derived from the achievement interpretation in (iii).
(i) Ich habe mich drei Stunden lang mit Helmut getroffen I have RP three hours long with Helmut met (i.e. for three hours) (ii) Wir haben uns gerade auf der Straße/zwei Stunden lang getroffen We have RP just in the street/two hours long met (iii) Ich habe gerade den Peter auf der Straße/??zwei Stunden lang getroffen I have just the Peter in the street/two hours long met
In section 2.1 we mentioned another example of a verb in a middle construction that yields an achievement interpretation, which is repeated in (38).
The third condition in (35.6: V is not ditransitive) is also too strong. In section 2.1 we already gave some examples for ditransitive verbs in middle constructions. Ditransitive sentences also pose a problem for A&S’ analysis. According to their analysis, we expect the third semantic argument on the thematic hierarchy (e.g. goal) to be linked to the direct object position in middle constructions. However, the third argument cannot be ‘promoted’ at all. It remains in the ‘third’ position on the thematic hierarchy and is linked to the dative (to-PP) position as can be seen in (39), for German see the next subsection. A&S are forced to assume that the categorial realization of these arguments is fixed in the lexicon or they have to add some further linking principle for goal arguments in order to prevent the third argument from being linked to the accusative position, if the patient/theme is linked into the external argument position. In both cases the validity of the linking principle (34.c) is weakened.
In German dative case differs syntactically and semantically from the so-called structural cases accusative and nominative in many respects. Below we argue for a distinction between structural and oblique case that excludes dative objects from middle formation. The syntactic and morphological properties of dative objects in German will be discussed in chapter 6. In chapter 2 we mentioned that Fagan observes a constrast between buy and sell. While sell forms acceptable middle constructions, buy sounds odd in middle constructions: (i) *These books buy well (from linguists) The properties of the object for sale may influence the act of selling. A parallel situation is hard to imagine for buy. Nevertheless, buy is possible in middle constructions in certain contexts as well (cf. section 2.1). The acceptability of middle constructions is affected by the ‘responsibility’ of the promoted second argument for the event described by the verb. Note that all theories have to assume additional conceptual constraints on middle formation. The difference between (i) and (ii) does not follow from A&S’s lexical-conceptual approach, for example. Both verbs should be equally acceptable in middle constructions because they both provide the correct input for MF.
(ii) These books sell well (to linguists)
A&S’s analysis for Dutch and English middle constructions predicts that only verbs with Actor-arguments and verbs whose lcs is marked for projecting an external argument (i.e. [+ext]) can participate in middle formation. This prediction is not correct for German and neither does it seem to be correct for Dutch. A&S (1994) note in footnote 15 on page 73 that in Dutch unaccusatives are marginal grammatical in middle constructions. In the previous subsection we gave two examples for middle constructions in Dutch that contain a unaccusative verbs. See chapter 2 for corresponding German examples. A&S subsume the so-called ‘affectedness constraint’ (AC – cf. section 3.1.1) under their rule of MF (cf. 33). They observe that even non-affected objects can undergo MF under the condition that the verb subcategorizes for an actor argument (cf. p. 76). On the one hand, their rule of MF is more liberal than the AC. On the other hand, it also covers all standard cases of the AC, i.e. two-place selecting an actor and a patient argument. The examples in (41), however, show that A&S’s rule of MF is also too restrictive. Besides, this analysis requires that concepts like actor, patient, agent, theme, action tier or thematic tier can be clearly defined. But up till now no clear definition has been proposed (cf. Dowty 1989 and 1991).
Besides, there is no morphological evidence for a lexical rule of middle formation. Note that ‘middle verbs’ do not differ from their corresponding active counterparts in their morphological form. Fagan and A&S take the semantics of middle constructions as evidence for their lexical rule of MF. The implicit ARB is responsible for the ‘generic’ interpretation of middle constructions. This argument cannot be appplied to middle constructions in French, which need not be ‘generic‘, although they are lexically derived, too.
Similarly, A&S (1994) claim that all predicates with either an ARB-Actor or an ARB-Patient are necesarily individual-level predicates, because they do not trigger an e-role. A&S claim that only verbs with a fully specified action tier (i.e. without ARB-arguments at the action tier) can have a syntactic e-role (cf. 34.e). Therefore, middle constructions do not trigger an e-role. An ARB-Actor induces a generic reading and an ARB-Patient a habitual reading.
Hence, both Fagan and A&S claim that ‘middle verbs’ are stative or individual-level predicates and that the first argument of these predicates is filled by ARB. We think that the second assumption is correct, although we do not believe that it follows from a lexical rule. Recall that sometimes the implicit argument of middle constructions can also be linked to a für/for-phrase. This contradicts A&S’s rule of middle formation MF = ARB (cf. chapter 2 and section 3.1.1 above). Note that Fagan (1992:78) herself describes middle constructions as actions. In contrast to English, German does not distinguish simple present from progressive form. The simple present form is ambiguous between a progressive and a ‘habitual’ interpretation.
A second objection concerns passives. A&S assume that in passsives a syntactically active implicit argument is present. The actor role is not assigned to the subject position but to the passive morphology.
Turning to middle constructions in German now. We already mentioned that middle constructions can also receive an episodic interpretation. Example (28) from section 2.1, repeated as (48), shows that middle constructions can be used to describe particular events. (48) does not mean that yesterday evening this piece by Bach exceptionally had the property that it can be played well. Instead this sentence reports a particular situation in which this piece of music was played well, although it might be a very difficult piece of music. In some contexts English middles can be used in progressive. (i) Yesterday afternoon this book was selling like hell
Fagan and A&S argue that ‘middle verbs’ are always individual-level predicates. But verbs in middle constructions differ from typical individual-level predicates in several respects. Middle constructions, like stage-level predicates, can be modified by temporal adverbials, as can be seen in (49.a’) and (49.a’’). As opposed to this, temporal modification is impossible in (49.a), because the individual-level predicate intelligent sein (‘be intelligent’) describes a permanent property of its subject. (49.b) illustrate a second difference. The prepositional phrase in diesem Laden (‘in this shop’) is only ambiguous in sentence in (49.b’) and (49.b’’) that include stage-level predicates. Sentence (49.a’), for example, has the following two readings: (i) the salespersons, that are working in this shop, usually wear green caps and they (also) wear their green caps outside the shop; (ii) the salespersons must wear green caps whenever they are working in the shop. The same ambiguity can be found in the middle construction (49.b’’): (i) the books that are sold in this shop are best sellers in every shop (ii) the books are best sellers (at least/only) in this shop. As opposed to (49.b’) and (49.b’’), the first sentence in (49.a) including the individual-level predicate is not ambiguous. The prepositional phrase can only modify the NP (i.e. all the salespersons that work in this shop are called Müller). The second interpretation (VP-modification) is impossible in this case.
Additionally, ‘middle verbs’, unlike individual-level predicates, can be modified by adverbs of quantification, as is illustrated in (50). Following Krifka et.al. (1995:7) these expressions typically mark a characterizing (or habitual) reading. They quantify over the event variable that is selected by the verb. Accordingly middle constructions are not individual-level predicates but characterizing sentences in the terminology of Krifka et.al.
Note finally that middle constructions usually require some adverbial modification, which typically modify the way in which an action is performed. Consider the adverbial schnell (‘quickly’) in (51). In the active sentence (51.a) schnell can either modify the verb, i.e. the way in which the event is carried out, or the whole VP, i.e. the duration of the event. In the corresponding middle construction in (51.b) only the second interpretation is available (i.e. the whole event of cutting the lawn usually does not take much time). Although schnell (‘quickly’) is not ambiguous in middle constructions, its interpretation clearly involves modification of events.
In chapter 7 we come back to the problem of the generic interpretation of middle constructions. We argue that both the implicit argument and the event variable are bound by a generic operator. Furthermore, we show that Fagan’s semantic condition (35.5) (‘be able to be Xed’) can be derived from this assumption. We conclude that Fagan’s and A&S’ analyses have various conceptual shortcomings and some of the empirical predictions turned out to be incorrect. Furthermore, the status of the implicit argument is not clear. We argued that there is no simple correlation between a uniform lexical representation of middle constructions and the ‘generic’ interpretation they typically receive. An implicit argument does not obligatorily trigger a generic interpretation. Moreover, ‘middle verbs’ or middle constructions are not individual-level predicates. Middle constructions clearly involve generalizations over events. And last but not least Fagan’s approach does not offer a conclusive explanation for the accusative reflexive pronoun in German middle constructions. In the following subsection we therefore look at an alternative lexical theory.
Bierwisch (1996) offers an explanation for the reflexive pronoun in anticausatives that can also applied to reflexive pronouns in middle constructions. In Bierwisch’s analysis a general grammatical principle accounts for the reflexive pronoun. In a sense the reflexive pronoun absorbs the accusative object case of the two-place verb, cf. also Abraham (1995a) for a similar idea. We believe that this approach is on the right track, although it is faced with various shortcomings. Let us take a closer look on Bierwisch’s analysis of anticausatives first. The feature [+ Refl] is itself part of the lexical entry of every reflexive pronoun. Bierwisch proposes the following lexical entry for sich (him-/her-/itself and themselves):
(i) /sich/ [+D, +Refl, +3Pers, +Obj] [xk] condition: xk is the variable of the argument position occupied by the antecedent
A non-genuine argument position does not bind a variable in the semantic form (SF) of the predicate, i.e. this is an example of vacuous quantification. The reflexive pronoun in anticausatives can be derived from principle (52). Consider the following lexical entry for the verb öffnen (‘open’).
(53) öffnen: λx λy λe [e INST [(y CAUSE) [BECOME [OPEN x]]]]
In the anticausative variant of öffnen the argument position λy does not bind a variable, because the one-place SF-predicate CAUSE together with its argument y is removed from the SF of the anticausative verb (indicated by parentheses). According to (52), the object position λx receives the feature [+Refl] and it is (referentially) bound by the argument position λy dominating λx. The reflexive pronoun results from a valency-reduction operation that only affects the SF of the verb. Öffnen still subcategorizes two (syntactic) argument positions in (54), although it has only one semantic argument. The lexical entry for the anticausative variant of öffnen is given in (54):
(54) öffnen: λx λy λe [e INST [BECOME [OPEN x]]] λx = [+ Refl]
Note that the argument structure of a predicate does not simply result from λ-abstraction over SF-variables but is partly independent of the semantic representation (SF) of a predicate. Although this analysis can easily be applied to personal middle constructions it cannot explain why impersonal middle constructions are also transitive reflexive sentences. The underlying lexical entry of impersonal middle constructions contains only one argument position as can be seen e.g. in (55).
(55) lachen: λx λe [e INST [LAUGH x]]
(55) does not contain a second argument position that is dominated by another non-genuine argument position. Therefore the reflexive pronoun in impersonal middle constructions cannot be derived from (55). In order to apply (52) to impersonal middle construuctions we first have to add an additional non-genuine argument position to the argument structure of one-place predicates. Bierwisch (1997) assumes two different middle templates, which are necessary to derive the core cases of middle construction in his approach. (56.a) is the relevant middle The operator PS is assumed to be responsible for the adverbial modification in middle constructions (and possibly for the ‘modal’ interpretation most middle constructions get, cf. 2.1.4). N stands for the generic interpretation of the implicit argument (N is an impicit argument that is ‘preferably generic’) and equals Fagan’s and A&S’ ARB. We do not discuss PS and N, because we already saw in the section that these issues are more complex.
These two templates enables us to derive both impersonal and personal middle constructions from underlying one- or two-place verbs. The derivation of personal middle constructions is illustrated in (57.a) and the derivation of impersonal middle constructions is given in (57.b).
The free argument variable N, that is substituted for the first or highest argument of the verb, is crucial for this analysis of middle formation. N is an intrinsic part of both MTs. This step of the derivation is illustrated in (58). It corresponds to Fagan’s externalization rule or A&S’s basic rule MF: Actor = ARB.
In a second step principle (52) can now be applied to personal and to impersonal ‘middle verbs’ and the output is a transitive reflexive sentence. (59) illustrates the derivation of the personal ‘middle verb’ schneiden (we use the simplified SF [x CUT y]).
Note that Bierwisch tacitly assumes an additional condition like (60):
(60) N must occupy the highest argument position of the verb
Three-place verbs pose yet another serious problem. We take (62.1) to be a possible representation of a three-place predicate. The following argumentation does not depend on this specific representation. The same problem arises for all lexical entries with three argument positions.
Even a third middle template MT3 for three-place verbs cannot derive the correct lexical representation for these verbs. Let us assume the following middle template MT3 for three-place verbs which contains three semantic argument variables.
(63) MT3:Three-place verbs: [+ M] λV λx λy λz [PS [V N y x ]]
After insertion of a three-place verb we derive the lexical representation in (64). This time the free ‘generic’ variable N is substituted for the correct argument variable (i.e. a).
Case assignment for (structural) dative, accusative and nominative can be defined in the following way - [+HR] means ‘there is a higher role’ and [+LR] means ‘there is a lower role’ (cf. Wunderlich 1992:21). Note that not all instances of dative are structural, cf. chapter 6.
accusative: [+HR] dative: [+HR, +LR] nominative: [-HR] or default case
A similar problem arises for two-place verbs that assign dative case to their second argument. We mentioned in section 2.1.1 that dative objects cannot undergo middle formation at all. They can only occur in impersonal middle constructions.
One could somehow restrict principle (52) to accusative objects only. But this restriction is again not sufficient to derive middle constructions with three-place verbs. In this case we cannot make use of principle (52) because it is always the dative object that is dominated by the empty (or nongenuine) argument position λz. As matters stand, the template analysis cannot derive MF with three-place verbs and it cannot exclude middle constructions derived from underlying two-place verbs that assign dative case to their object. We complete the discussion with some more basic remarks. We think that this analysis is basically on the right track. The reflexive pronoun in middle constructions and anticausatives is not an inherent property of these constructions but follows from some general grammatical principle. However, the template analysis is forced to assume (at least) two different lexical entries to offer a unified account of personal and impersonal middle constructions and anticausatives. Both lexical entries in (57) can be combined to the following unified entry: (i) λV λy λz [PS [V N (y)]] Note however that one-place basic predicates can only be inserted into one-place middle templates. The same holds for two-place basic predicates (cf. above). Otherwise, middle formation would add not only an argument position but also an argument variable. Hence, we need again an additional principle to account for this. The relevant restriction can be stated as follows: (ii) A [+M] verb must not select more argument variables than the corresponding [-M] verb Note that a middle verb can select more argument positions but not more arguments.
The corresponding SF-representations in (67.a’ and b’) show that the corresponding argument position λy binds a variable at SF in both examples. The template analysis does not distinguish two different interpretations of the reflexive pronoun. In both cases the reflexive pronoun is linked to an argument position (i.e. to a semantic variable). Following standard theories of focus we expect (narrow) focus to be grammatical in both cases (cf. next chapter for a detailed discussion of this issue).
Furthermore we expect ‘middle verbs’ to be input to further lexical rules like e.g. nominalization. We mentioned in section 2.1.1 that resultatives can undergo middle formation.
(i) Solche Schuhe laufen sich gewiß schnell kaputt Such shoes walk rp certainly quickly broken
(i) 1. V [+V, -N]: λb [WALK(b)] 2. V [+V, -N]: λP λa λb [WALK(b) & CAUSE [BECOME [P(a)]]] RF 3.[+M]: λV λy λz [PS [V N y]] 4.V [+V, -N, +M]: λP λy λz [PS [WALK(N) & CAUSE [BECOME P(y)]]] MF
As far as we can see middle constructions must be derived from resultatives and not the other way round. A resultative can be input to MT1 as is illustrated in (ii). RF means ‘resulative formation’ and MF ‘middle formation’. (ii.2) is a simplified lexical representation of the resultative construction corresponding to (i):
If we ‘medialize’ the verb laufen (‘walk’) first it seems impossible to derive the corresponding resultative construction. The output of this derivation is a three-place ‘middle verb’, which cannot be linked to (i).
Finally we briefly turn to adverbial modification. According to Bierwisch, middle constructions obligatorily select an adverbial (via the PS-operator). Note that the question whether or not adverbial modification is (more or less) obligatory in middle constructions does not necessarily depend on the approach we choose. H&R (1993), for example, try to reduce adverbial A similar example might be the verb wohnen (‘live’), cf. Höhle (1987). One could argue that wohnen also requires (context-dependent) adverbial modification because the intransitive sentence in (68.c) without an adverbial sounds odd. Sentence (i) shows, that wohnen selects either a manner adverbial or a locative PP.
(i) Ich wohne gut/in Hamburg I live (well) in Hamburg (i.e. I am living (well) in Hamburg) (ii) Ralf wohnt mit Hans-Martin zusammen Ralf lives with Hans-Martin together (iii) Sie wohnt gut She lives well (iv) %Er wohnt He lives (v) Ich wohne jetzt unter der Brücke/im Obdachlosenasyl I live now under the bridge/in-the shelter for the homeless
Usually, everybody has a place to live (zum Wohnen), at least in western cultures. The property wohnen can even be extended to cases like (v). Therefore, one might argue that sentence (iv) is not very informative, and it is very hard to imagine a situation in which this sentence can be uttered. We think that this sentence is grammatical. It is, however, not pragmatically licensed (cf. chapter 7 for further discussion).
Otherwise this must be done to explain only a few cases like wohnen or middle constructions.
We summarize the main results of the discussion again in a shorthand.
lexical theories do not offer a conclusive explanation for the reflexive pronoun in middle constructions.
personal and impersonal middle constructions cannot be derived in a uniform way.
middle constructions with three-place predicates cannot be derived at all.
so far, middle formation with dative objects cannot be excluded.
the correlation between the implicit argument ARB or N and the generic interpretation of middle constructions (or the change from stage-level to individual-level predicates) is unclear. No conclusive lexical explanation has been offered so far.
‘Middle verbs’ are not individual-level predicates.
lexical theories cannot explain why most middle constructions require some adverbial modification.
no relevant prediction follows from a lexical derivation of middle constructions.
there is no morphological evidence for a lexical rule of middle formation or a lexical middle template.
We saw that neither a syntactic nor a lexical approach offers a conclusive derivation of middle constructions in English, Dutch or Italian (and French) so far. An application of these analyses to German middle constructions raises additional problems. The analyses of German middle constructions that we discussed in 2.1.3 and 2.2 are not conclusive either. They need all additional ad hoc stipulations and cannot account for all kinds of middle constructions that can be found in German. In particular impersonal middle constructions, middle constructions with three-place verbs and impersonal middle constructions with an dative object still pose serious problems. Besides, they do not offer a uniform analysis of transitive reflexive sentences (i.e. of the semantic ambiguity of the accusative reflexive pronoun). We think that further investigation into the semantics of middle constructions can help to answer some of the questions raised above. Up to now a postsyntactic approach has generally been neglected. In the following we develop a postsyntactic analysis of middle constructions, anticausatives and reflexives. Above all, this analysis has to account for the ambiguity of the accusative reflexive pronoun. Furthermore, it must exclude dative objects from middle formation. In chapter 4 we show that all transitive sentences with a accusative reflexive pronoun in the position of the direct object do not differ in syntax no matter whether they are interpreted as reflexives, anticausatives or middles. In chapter 5 we deal with the semantic ambiguity of transitive reflexive sentences. We argue that all interpretations of transitive reflexive sentences can be derived from the same underlying syntactic representation. Chapter 6 deals with anticausatives and dative case. In chapter 7 we briefly turn to the problem of adverbial modification and genericity and we finally discuss adjunct-middle constructions.
In the previous chapter we criticized lexical and syntactic analysis of middle formation. We saw that they offer neither a conclusive explanation of the specific properties of middle constructions in German nor a unified account of the ambiguity of the reflexive pronoun in transitive reflexive sentences. Therefore we argue for a postsyntactic analysis of transitive reflexive sentences in the remainder of this book. Middle constructions and anticausatives are syntactically analysed as simple transitive clauses with an accusative reflexive pronoun in the position of the accusative (or direct) object. Hence, they do not differ from sentences like (1) that receive a reflexive interpretation. Of course, the crucial element for every syntactic analysis of transitive reflexive sentences is the reflexive pronoun in object position, which can either be linked to a semantic argument of the verb, as can be seen in (1), or it can be an indicator of valency reduction, cf. (2). Therefore, large part of this chapter deals with the syntactic properties of argument and non-argument reflexives.
The syntactic parallelism between the argument and non-argument reflexive is, however, not immediately obvious. On the one hand, both kinds of reflexive pronouns - the argument reflexive and the non-argument reflexive – turn out to be subject to the same constraints on word order in the middle-field. This is discussed in section 4.1. Furthermore, they are both bound by the subject. These are good arguments to treat them the same in syntax. On the other hand, there are some crucial differences between argument and non-argument reflexives which we discuss in section 4.2. These data seem to provide empirical evidence for the claim that non-argument reflexives differ in syntax from argument reflexives, thus supporting a syntactic analysis of middle formation (cf. chapter 3.1.3. and Haider 1982, Grewendorf 1984, and Pitz 1988 and Everaert 1986 for reflexive anticausatives in Dutch). However, all differences will turn out to be due to the semantic interpretation of non-argument reflexives. They should be explained by semantic theories of focus, coordination and fronting rather than by an (additional) ad hoc distinction between two different types of reflexive pronouns in syntax. This line of argumentation can already be found in Fagan (1992) and Erb and Steinbach (1997). In this chapter we show in detail how the distribution of argument and non-argument reflexives can be derived from recent theories on focus, coordination and fronting.
First we discuss word order phenomena that give direct evidence for an analysis that does not draw a distinction between argument and the non-argument reflexives in syntax. Both the argument and the non-argument reflexive are subject to the same restrictions on word order in
The examples in (5) show the same for embedded clauses. In (5.a-f) the subject is a definite DP, while it is a pronoun in (5.g-j).
The unmarked word order in the German middle-field is restricted by various ‘weak’ constraints. The relevant constraints on the positioning of reflexive pronouns are listed in (i) – (iv), for further discussion see Lenerz (1977), Uszkoreit (1987), Cooper (1994), Vogel and Steinbach (1997), Haider and Rosengren (1998), Müller (1998), and Gärtner and Steinbach (2000).
Thematic (or backgrounded) elements precede rhematic (or focused) ones. There are various ways to state this constraint. Another possibility would rely on Jäger’s (1995) definition of topics, i.e. the topic precedes the comment in the unmarked case.
pronominal elements precede full NPs. This constraint might be subsumed under the following more general one: “heavy” elements follow “light” ones.
Linearization of arguments directly mirrors the GF/case-hierarchy: nominative precedes accusative in the unmarked case.
The examples (5.a-d) can be described by constraint (ii) and (iii), which are equally ‘strong’. Constraint (ii) claims that sich is the first element of the middle-field, whereas constraint (iii) That these constraints are ‘weak’ can be demonstrated by the following example from an anecdote by Eckhart Henscheid: ”[...] Derjenige sollte Sieger und der beste Kritische Theoretiker sein, der das Reflexivum ‘sich’ am weitesten postponieren (nachstellen) konnte [...] Sieger wurde und sein Meisterstück machte nämlich Adorno mit dem seither geflügelten Satz: ‘Das unpersönliche Reflexivum erweist in der Tat noch zu Zeiten der Ohnmacht wie der Barbarei als Kulmination und integrales Kriterium Kritischer Theorie sich’” (Henscheid 1993: 56-57). Note that sich erweisen (‘prove to be’) is an inherently reflexive verb.
Two additional constraints are relevant for the linearization of dative objects in the middle-field. The same constraints are also relevant for the linearization of the arguments of verbs that do not select an agent like e.g. interessieren (‘to be interested in’).
The NP that refers to an agent precedes other constituents.
NPs that refer to animate entities precede NPs that refer to inanimate entities.
Constraint (v) is rather weak. Usually the subject of the middle construction (the nominative NP) is not an agent. Hence, we expect that dative NPs referring to animate entities can precede the subject in middle constructions. This can be seen in the following examples.
All these examples show that the non-argument reflexives do not differ from non-arguemtn reflexives with respect to unmarked word order in the middle-field. The non-argument reflexive is neither a clitic nor in some sense syntactically incorporated into the verb. In section 2.1.2 we already mentioned that German has no syntactic (or special) clitics. Even (phonologically) reduced pronouns are not syntactic but only phonological clitics, that must be adjoined to an adjacent foot, syllable or (under certain circumstances) prosodic word in phonology (for further discussion see Gärtner and Steinbach 1997 and 2000). Note that phonologic reduction is impossible for the third person reflexive pronoun in Standard German and in most Hessian and Saxonian seems to be exceptions that allows phonological reduction of the third person reflexive pronoun. Hall (1998:107) argues that a vowel preceding the [ç] cannot be reduced to schwa in German.
Reflexive pronouns also differ from elements that must be adjacent to the main verb in embedded V-final clauses. The examples in (5) above illustrate that reflexive pronouns need not be adjacent to the main verb, as opposed to verb-object-combinations like Ball spielen (‘play with a ball’) or the separable prefix in davonschleichen (‘sneak off/away’):
In chapter 2 we saw that both the argument reflexive and the non-argument reflexive are always bound by the subject NP in syntax. This is illustrated in (10) for middle constructions. We mentioned in section 3.1.1 that not all reflexive pronouns are bound in syntax. Reflexive pronouns that are used as logophors are not subject to the binding conditions. In chapter 5 we take a closer look at binding. This example is from Reis (1981) and also mentioned in Haider (1987).
So far, we did not find empirical evidence for two syntactically different types of reflexive pronouns in German. The following analysis of transitive reflexive sentences in German is based on Chomsky’s analysis of (structural) case checking (cf. Chomsky 1993 and 1995, chapter 3). The syntactic structure for transitive reflexive sentences with personal and impersonal subjects is given in (11.1) and (11.2) below. There is a long discussion in the literature how to analyze the relatively free constituent order of languages like German. Essentially, three approaches can be distinguished. (i) Word order is derived via movement (scrambling, extraposition and fronting) from an underlying structure. (ii) Word order is base generated (possibly in compliance with linearization principles). (iii) Word order is derived by an extra modul for linearization. For movement theories cf. Müller and Sternefeld (1993), Müller (1993) or Grewendorf and Sabel (1994) among others. Supporters of a base generation theory are Haider (1993), Cooper (1994), Fanselow (1995 & 1997) and Uszkoreit (1987) within the framework of GPSG-theory. Vogel and Steinbach (1997) argue for a mixed approach which assumes that accusative and nominative DPs are subject to A- and A’-movement, whereas dative DPs can be inserted directly. Advocates of a linearization grammar are Kathol (1995), Reape (1994) and (1995) or Richter (1997). Another long standing problem is verb-placement in V2-languages like Dutch and German. Discussions can be found in Vikner and Schwartz (1991), Zwart (1993) and (1998) and Gärtner and Steinbach (1994). Further theories on V2 by Bobaljik (1995) and Rohrbacher (1994) are discussed in Stanek (1995) - cf. also the references in the next footnote. In (11) we base generated the external argument in VP and split IP into AgrSP, TP, and AgrOP. Furthermore, we omit TP. For the discussion pro and contra the presence of IP in German see Grewendorf (1989a), Haider (1993) and Sabel (1995). A summary of the arguments is given in Erb (1995). See als Haider and Rosengren (1998).
Note that the reflexive pronoun overtly moves to AgrOP,Spec if we assume that the adverbial is adjoined to VP in middle constructions (cf. 11.2 below). In a second step it possibly adjoins to AgrSP. Scrambling of the reflexive pronoun is supported by the observation we discussed above that pronouns tend to be adjacent to C°, the Wackernagel position. Impersonal middle constructions can be analysed in the same way. The corresponding structure is given in (11.2) below. The examples in (12.a-c) show that the impersonal subject es has the same syntactic distribution like referential subjects. It can occur in sentence-initial position, after the finite verb in main clauses (cf. 12.a-b’), or after the complementizer in embedded clauses (cf. 12.c and c’). Besides, the reduced form of impersonal subject can cliticize to another constituent in phonology (cf. 12.d). Note finally that the impersonal subject, like non-argument reflexives, cannot be focused and coordinated. As opposed to non-argument reflexives, impersonal subjects can be fronted because subjects can occur in sentence-initial position in unmarked word order. The next section discusses focus, coordination and fronting.
Impersonal subjects need not check nominative case, as can be seen in (12). The embedded impersonal subject cannot check nominative case in so-called A.c.I.-constructions. Nevertheless, sentence (12.e) is ungrammatical without an impersonal subject. Note that German is no pro-drop language. Impersonal subjects may be licensed by either of the following three conditions: (i) German has strong a [EPP]-feature that must be checked in Spec IP. In this case, the impersonal subject in (12.e) is inserted in IP-Spec of the embedded infinitive to check the [EPP]-feature. After that it moves to AgrOP-Spec of the matrix clause to check accusative case. (ii) A VP obligatorily requires an [+R]-expression. We will argue in chapter 5 that personal pronouns are specified as [+R] as opposed to non-argument reflexives that are specified Recall from section 2.1.2 and 3.1.1 that impersonal passives do not have an impersonal subject at all.
We conclude this section with three general remarks on the syntax of transitive reflexive sentennces. Firstly, Gärtner and Steinbach (1994, 1997 and 2000) argue that there is no empirical and conceptual evidence for a so-called asymmetry analysis that assumes different sentence-initial positions for subjects on the one hand and fronted objects, fronted VPs, or fronted adverbials on the other. We uniformly analyze all main clauses as CPs, no matter which constituent occupies the sentence-initial position (this can either be the subject, an object, the VP, or an adverbial, cf. also 4.2.3 for more discussion). Wilder (1993), like Zwart (1993), wants to avoid vacuous movement in case of subject-initial clauses. He assumes a ‘mixed projection’ instead. Hence, the sentence-initial position is both CP and AgrSP. As opposed to Zwart’s analysis, Wilder’s analysis is no asymmetry-analysis in the strict sense because subject-initial sentences are hybrid CP/AgrSP-structures. Therefore, subject-initial sentences as well as object- or adverbial-initial sentences are always CPs. Besides, Wilder’s and Zwart’s analyses are motivated by the assumption that sentence-initial objects but not sentence-initial subjects are ‘topics’. We refer the reader again to Gärtner and Steinbach (1994 and 1997) who show in detail that this assumption cannot be maintained. So far no definition of the term (syntactic) topic and the corresponding topic-feature has been given that includes sentence-initial adverbials and accusative objects and excludes nominative subjects. See also section 4.2.3 for a discussion of the restrictions on the sentence-initial position in German.
We assume that structural (accusative and nominative) case is ‘assigned’ by morphological feature checking in syntax, cf. Chomsky (1995). Dative case might be an exception. In section 3.2.2 we saw that dative case poses a serious problem for a lexical analysis of middle constructions. Moreover, dative objects differ in syntax from accusative objects in many respects (cf. chapter 6 below). Besides, two-place verbs like helfen (‘help’) or folgen (‘follow’) can appear only with dative objects - cf. the minimal pair begegnen and treffen (both: ‘meet’) in (i). Hence, not all instances of dative case can be analysed as a structural case that is assigned to the third argument of the verb.
(i) a. Maria traf den Bundeskanzler Maria met the-acc chancellor b. Maria begegnete dem Bundeskanzler Maria met the-dat chancellor
Dative assignment might either be a lexical property - especially in the case of two-place verbs with dative objects - or it can be reduced to semantic differences between dative and accusative case. It is well known that dative case is semantically more specific than accusative (cf. e.g. Wegener 1985). But as it stands this issue is still an unsolved problem that requires further research. We come back to dative case in chapter 6.
Thirdly, we do not assume that all semantic arguments are obligatorily linked to syntax as is, for example, claimed in the theta-criterion. Implicit arguments need not project to syntax. On the other hand, all syntactic arguments are linked to a semantic argument except for non-argument reflexives and impersonal subjects. We will argue below that non-argument reflexives and impersonal subjects are two well defined exceptions. Their morphosyntactic specification enables them to fulfill specific grammatical functions. Hence, both elements are licensed by the grammatical functions they fulfill. Note that some lexical approaches also assume that non-argument reflexives and impersonal subjects must not be linked to (i.e. do not bind) a semantic argument variable (cf. e.g. Bierwisch 1997). Otherwise the occurence of these elements must simply be stipulated in the lexical entries of zero-place verbs, and personal and impersonal ‘middle verbs’.
So far we only told half of the story since we did not discuss the differences between argument and non-argument reflexives. Non-argument reflexives are in fact not completely identical to argument reflexives. Haider (1982) cites Reis (1981), who observes that only argument reflexives can be coordinated. In addition, only argument reflexives can be focused and occur in the scope of a focus operator and the contrastive negation. Moreover, only argument reflexives can be replaced by another (non-reflexive) DP and they can be questioned and moved into the sentence initial position. These differences are illustrated in (14), (15) and (16). (14)
This is all impossible for non-argument reflexives as can be seen in (15) for middle constructions and in (16) for anticausatives. The same holds for inherent reflexive verbs. The ‘*’ indicates that all sentences in (15) and (16) cannot receive a middle interpretation and an anticausative interpretation respectively. The only reading that is available for (15) and (16) is the reflexive interpretation which would involve linking of both the subject and the reflexive pronoun. But in this case the reflexive pronoun would be an argument reflexive and the meaning of both sentences would be nonsens (books usually do not sell themselves and doors do not open themselves or windows). In the following we argue that the sentences in (15) and (16) are in fact syntactically wellformed. However, the semantics of focus, coordination and fronting forces the reflexive pronoun to linked to a semantic argument, i.e. to be interpreted as an argument reflexive.
According to Haider, these data in (14), (15), and (16) can be explained by a syntactic analysis that distingushes argument reflexives from non-argument reflexives (cf. chapter 3). He argues that the non-argument reflexive is an A’-element only bound in syntax by the subject of the sentence. It is adjoined to VP and receives the theta-role of the implicit first argument of the verb. As opposed to the non-argument reflexive, the argument reflexive is syntactically and semantically bound by the same antecedent, the subject of the sentence. Since non-argument reflexives are A’-elements, they cannot be coordinated with A-elements or, to put it the other way round, if they are coordinated with A-elements, they are interpreted as A-elements themselves. However, we expect that coordination of the non-argument reflexive and another A’-elements should be grammatical. But non-argument reflexives cannot be coordinated at all. Hence, additional constraints on coordination of A’-elements are necessary to exclude non-argument reflexives. In 4.2.1 we give a semantic explanation that does not rely on further constraints on coordination of A’-constituents. Besides, Haider claims that focusing and fronting of non-argument reflexives is impossible because they are not referential (as opposed to argument reflexives that are referential because they are bound by a ‘referential’ antecedent). However, non-referential pronouns can appear in sentence-initial position, as can be seen in (17). Regnen (‘rain’) in (17.a) does not select a referential argument. Nevertheless, the impersonal subject is grammatical in sentence-initial position because a nominative pronoun is usually the first element in unmarked word order. We come back to this issue in section 4.2.3. below.
As a consequence, fronting is not a matter of referentiality. Moreover, it is not clear what Haider means by ‘referential’. Verbs and modifiers might not be referential either, but they can be focused and they can occupy the sentence-initial position. Hence, focus is not a matter of referentiality either.
Note finally that referentiality is a semantic and not a syntactic notion. Therefore, the central part of Haider’s argumentation concerns semantics. It is the semantic status of the reflexive
We repeat the relevant examples from (14), (15) and (16) that illustrate the contrast between the argument and the non-argument reflexive at the beginning of each subsection. (14.a) and (15.a), repeated as (19.a and b), show that only the argument reflexive can be coordinated.
The intuition behind Haider’s explanation of the ungrammaticality of (19.b) and (19.c) seems to be the following: only syntactically and semantically identical constituents can be coordinated. At first sight one could argue that a reflexive pronoun that is conjoined with another (‘referential’) NP must also receive a ‘referential’ interpretation, because both parts of the conjunction are interpreted alike. In (19.b) and (19.c) the second part of the coordination is a referential NP that must be linked to the second argument of the verb (i.e. must be assigned a theta-role). Therefore the first part of the conjunction (i.e. the reflexive pronoun) must also be linked to the second argument variable. But this is only possible for argument reflexives. Therefore the second and the third sentence in (19) are only grammatical if they contain an argument reflexive. Note, however, that in this case the interpretation is nonsense. This analysis is in principle correct but it does not explain why sentence (20.a) below is also ungrammatical. As opposed to the corresponding sentence in (19.c), sentence (20.a) does not involve coordination of two NPs but of two sentences one of which contains a gap in the position of the verb. (20.b) is a similar example and the ungrammaticality of both examples might be re Sentences like (i) might be an example for syntactically asymmetric coordination. In the following discussion we are mainly dealing with symmetric coordination and the problem of semantic ‘identity’.
(i) Gestern ging der Jäger in den Wald und schoß den Hasen Yesterday went a hunter in the forest and shot a hare
Consider example (20.b) first. Trinken (‘drink’) is interpreted differently in each conjunct. In the second conjunct trinken does not mean that Peter is drinking something, i.e. Hans, (this might only be possible if Hans is a liquid). The resultative construction in the second conjunct means that Peter and Hans are drinking alcohol and as a result Hans ends up under the table. In the first conjunct trinken is interpreted as a simple two-place verb, i.e. it means that Maria is drinking a big beer. Similarily, (20.c) involves two different specifications of the concept Schule (‘school’). In the first conjunct the word Schule means an ‘institution’, whereas in the second conjunct it means a ‘building’ (cf. Nunberg 1979, Bierwisch 1983 and Dölling 1992a/b on the concept of polysemy and lexical underspecification).
In the following discussion we refer to Wilder (1994 and 1995), who offers a unified analysis of coordination and ellipsis. He argues that many restrictions on coordination are syntactic. We choose this analysis for two reasons: first, it allows a unified analysis of (19.c) and (20.a); second, we want to illustrate that our main proposal can also be integrated in syntactic oriented approaches to coordination. Wilder analyses coordination as an application of forward and/or backward deletion. This is illustrated in (21) for forward (he) and backward (the newspaper) deletion (the examples in (21) and (22) are from Wilder 1995).
According to Wilder, forward and backward deletion are subject to different restrictions in English. Whereas backward deletion (BWD) affects only right-peripheral material and is licensed at PF, forward deletion (FWD) dependencies are licenced at LF and the deleted material must occur left-peripheral in the conjuncts. Therefore, only backward deleted material must satisfy a condition on form-identity at PF: For details see Wilder (1995: 287f.).
Thanks to Chris Wilder for drawing my attention to this point. Example (23.a) is from Pullum and Zwicky (1986), the Laster-example in (24) is due to Hans-Martin Gärtner. This subtle contrast might be related to processing: in FWD, the interpretation of the deleted element is perhaps fixed as soon as the parser processes the antecedent. But this is just speculation, so we leave this point open.
The situation is less clear in German. For most native speakers, the BWD in (24.a) is as ungrammatical as the corresponding FWD in (24.b). There is, however, a clear contrast between (24.a) and (24.b) on the one hand and (24.c) on the other. Although the first two examples might not be totally ungrammatical, they are both much worse than the third one, which is perfectly grammatical. Only in (24.c) the antecedent and the gap receive exactly the same interpretation.
Speakers have a clear preference to give Laster (either ‘truck’ or ‘vice’) the same interpretation in both conjuncts. The situation is similar in (20.a) and (20.b). We try to interpret the verb drink in the second conjunct also as an action of putting some liquid in one’s mouth and swallowing this liquid because this is the interpretation the verb receives in the first conjunct. But this interpretation does not make sense in the second conjunct. Reinterpretation seems possible to a certain degree which depends on various additional conditions. Various factors influence this. a) syntactic parallelism facilitates reinterpretation:
(i)
??Peter setzt sich auf ____ und Hans geht in die Bank Peter sits down on the bench and the Hans goes into the bank
(ii) *Peter setzt sich auf ____ und Hans beauftragt mit dieser Angelegenheit eine Bank Peter sits down on the bench and Hans instruct with this affair a bank
b) reinterpretation seems to be more difficult, if the homonymous elements cannot be reduced to the same underspecified lexical entry.
c) reinterpretation is easier if both elements (nouns or verbs) belong to the same semantic class. Coordination of a two-place predicates with e.g. an homonymous one-place predicate is much worse than coordination of two homonymous two-place predicates:
The problem of reinterpretation requires, of course, further research.
In German LF-identityThe following example might be evidence for LF-identity of the copy and its antecedent. Although (i) does not involve PF-deletion, the same kind of zeugma-effect can be still observed. Therefore, this effect might be a matter of further conceptual inference.
Sentence (25.b) gets grammatical if we use und zwar (namely) instead of und. In this case, the second conjunct does not describe an independent event but restricts the meaning of the first conjunct. We ignore und zwar in the following discussion.
In (25.a) the second part of the coordination can only mean that Peter loaded sand on the truck, too. It cannot mean that Peter loaded the truck. It is impossible to take a different variant of the locative alternation verb load for each conjunct. The same effect can be observed in (25.b). The verb brummen (‘growl’) is either a one-place predicate with the meaning ‘to produce a sound’ or a verb of motion selecting a directional PP. Cf. Jackendoff (1990), Levin (1991) and Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1991) on this issue. We do not want to discuss whether this kind of verbal polysemy must be represented in the lexicon (e.g. by so-called ‘lexical extension’ or ‘lexical subordination’) or whether it is another case of underspecification.
Coordination of a non-argument reflexive with some other DP leads to the same conflict. In (27) we repeat the corresponding examples from (15) and (16). (27.a’) and (27.b’) is a simplified semantic representation (‘b’, ‘a’, and ‘t’ stand for Buch, Autor, and Tür; ‘Op’ stands for the semantic operator that binds the implicit argument in middle constructions, cf. chapter 7.)
We argue in the next chapter that the non-argument reflexive is not linked to an argument variable of the verb. But a verb that does not link its first argument to syntax cannot be the antecedent of a verb that links both the first and the second argmuent. Moreover, the subjects in (27.a) and (27.b) are linked to different arguments of the verb in each conjunct. In the first conjunct the subject in linked to the second argument of the verb, whereas it is linked to first argument in the second conjunct. Hence, the coordination in (27) does not only involve two different interpretations for the verb but also for the subject. LF-identity between the deleted material and its antecedent is impossible in both sentences in (27). We could either choose the anticausative or middle interpretation (first conjunct) or the reflexive interpretation (second conjunct). If we chose the former, the accusative object in the second adjunct could not be linked to a semantic argument. We argue below that all syntactic arguments that are specified as [+R] must be linked to a semantic argument. The only element that is not inherently specified as [+R] is the reflexive pronoun. The impersonal subject must also not be linked to a semanntic argument, although it is specified as [+R], cf. chapter 5 for the principles of argument linking in German. Examples like (28) become slightly better with narrow focus on the auxiliary. (i) ??Das Buch WURDE und Hans HAT gelesen
Coordination of the argument reflexive with another argument DP is perfectly grammatical (cf. 14.a repeated below as 29). In (29) the verb waschen (‘wash’) receives identical interpretations in both conjuncts, as can be seen in (29.I) and (29.II).
According to Wilder’s analysis, the traditional NP-coordination in (27) involves deletion of the verb and the subject. We argued that the interpretation of both the verb and the subject is
The same difference can be found in sentence (31), which corresponds to (27.a). The second conjunct is a middle construction, the subject of which is again linked to the second argument of the verb verkaufen (‘sell’). The examples in (30) and (31) seem to be slightly better than the corresponding examples in (27). As opposed to (27), the sentences in (30) and (31) contain two different subjects, one for each conjunct. Therefore reinterpretation is only possible in (30) and (31). Neither conjunct in (27.a) and (27.b) can reiceive a meaningful interpretation under reinterpretation. A similar effect can be observed if we coordinate two reflexive verbs, one with an argument reflexive (rasieren – ‘shave’) and one with a non-argument reflexive (schämen – ‘be ashamed’).
(i)
???Peter schämt und rasiert sich Peter is-ashamed and shaves rp
We conclude that the ungrammaticality of example (19.b) and (19.c) can be derived from the semantics of the non-argument reflexive (to which we turn in chapter 5).
We subsume the examples in (14.-16.b) to (14.-16.f) under the term focus because they are all more or less connected to this phenomenon, as will be illustrated in this subsection. Recent theories of focus divide the semantic representation of a sentence into two parts. The first part corresponds to the focus of the sentence, the second part to the background. The focus-background structure of a sentence can be represented as an ordered pair in semantics (for the structured meaning approach see von Stechow 1991, Jacobs 1991, or Krifka 1992; for alternative semantics see Rooth 1985 and 1992 or Büring 1995; cf. also Schwarzschild 1999). We introduce the main concepts of this theory of focus in a nutshell before we apply it to the interpretation of argument and non-argument reflexives.
Consider first the following example in (32), which is taken from Büring (1995). The DP the baseball is the focus of the sentence. It is dominated by the syntactic feature [F] for focus. The head-noun baseball receives a pitch accent at PF and the whole DP is translated as focus at LF. On the assignment of focus accents see Jacobs 1992 and 1993 or Féry 1993, on focus projection see Büring 1995 or Jacobs 1993. Büring translates the NP the baseball as an iota expression (i.e. an individual type variable) instead of a generalized quantifier to simplify the illustration.
The background (32.c) results from lambda abstraction. The focus of a clause is replaced by a variable bound by a lambda-operator. The semantic background (or according to Rooth (1992) the focus semantic value of a sentence or constituent) is a set of alternatives to the ordinary semantic value of the sentence. (32.c) (‘λx. threw (John, x)’) is the set of worlds where John threw some x and x is an alternative to the focus (32.d).
(33) {John threw the baseball, John threw the football, John threw his pencil, ...}
Applying the focus to the background will give us the ordinary meaning of the sentence: the set of worlds where John threw the baseball. The focus in (32) is called free focus, i.e. it is not bound by a focus sensitive operator. Jacobs (1984 and 1988) assumes that free focus is bound by an operator as well, namely the illocutionary operator of the clause, which is the assertion operator ASSERT in (32.b). This is illustrated in (34).
(34) ASSERT (<λx. threw (John, x), (ιz. baseball (z)>)
What is the meaning of the ASSERT-operator? Assertion can be seen as a modification of the ‘shared knowledge’ of the participants in the conversation, i.e. the common ground CG (cf. Stalnaker 1978). ASSERT(<α(β)>) maps a common ground CG to a common ground CG’. In a simplistic version the CG is a set of possible worlds. In fact, the situation is more complex. Among other things we need a representation of the hearer’s assumptions of the speaker’s knowledge and vice versa. But these refinements are irrelevant for the following discussion. On the term common ground see e.g Stalnaker (1978) and especially Zeevat (1997) or Kruijff-Korbayová and Hajicová (1997) for the similar term stock of shared knowledge.
(35) CG’ = CG ∩λx. threw (John, x), (ιz. baseball (z))
We can state the felicity conditions for the ASSERT-operator now (cf. Krifka 1992: 20 and Büring 1995: 23f.) <α(β)> is the focus-background structure with α the background and β the focus. If we assume that the semantic background (or semantic focus value) corresponds to the actual common ground CG, then condition (36.c) can be derived from (36.a). There must be at least one alternative X to the focus that fulfills (36.c), otherwise CG’ = CG (cf. Büring 1995: 32).
According to (36.a), the assertion of a new proposition with respect to CG must provide new information. (36.b) means that the truth of α(β) must not be excluded by CG, i.e. that there is at least one possible world that makes α(β) true and is part of CG or, to put it the other way round, CG’, the intersection of CG and the proposition asserted by the speaker must not be
Consider first the sentences in (14.b), (15.b) and (16.b), repeated below as (37.a-c). In all examples sich is the focus of the sentence (indicated by the labelled brackets []F):
We put sich selbst aside for the moment and only consider the stressed reflexive pronoun SICH. It is not important for the ongoing presentation whether this focus is presentational or contrastive. Note that weak pronouns like sich can be stressed in German. An alternative to focus on the reflexive pronoun itself (with nuclear stress on sich) is the complex form sich SELBST with stress on the adnominal particle selbst (we discuss sich SELBST right away). The semantic representation in (38.c) is an oversimplification. Actually, possible alternatives to sich (Otto) are not only elements of type <e> but also generalized quantifiers of type << e,t > t >. If the alternatives are required to be type-equivalent, pronouns and argument reflexives must be translated as generalized quantifiers, too.
Syntactic expletives, which are also not linked to a semantic argument, equal non-argument reflexives, cf. (39.a) Narrow focus is again impossible. Furthermore, narrow focus on constituents that do not have plausible type-equivalent alternatives (condition 36.c) is excluded as well (cf. 39.b). Note that every element that is (i) represented in the semantic form and (ii) has at least one plausible alternative can be the focus of the clause, no matter whether it is an A- or A’-element in syntax, cf. e.g. (39.c). It must only fulfills condition 36.c.
Unlike (39.c), sentence (39.b) contains no alternatives to the focused preposition. The only plausible alternative is zu (‘to’). This preposition, though, selects a dative DP (dem Vermieter), so that it is ungrammatical in this syntactic context.
The analysis of narrow focus can also be applied to the examples with focus particles (14.c, 15.c and 16.c). The relevant examples are repeated in (40.a-c).
Jackendoff (1972), Jacobs (1983), or Krifka (1992) among many others analyze focus particles like nur (‘only’) or sogar (‘even’) as focus sensitive operators. Focus sensitive operators, like the ASSERT operator mentioned above, bind the focus of a sentence/constituent. Example (41) illustrates this for nur (‘only’).
The meaning of ONLY can be outlined as follows: There is a wide range of investigations in the semantics of particles like only (cf. Horn 1996 for only and the references cited there).
The relevant examples for contrastive negation (14.d, 15.d and 16.d) and substitution (14.e, 15.e and 16.e) are repeated in (42.a-c) and (43.a-c) respectively. Both require a semantic representation of the negated or replaced element, too.
If we replace the non-argument reflexive by some other accusative DP, nothing happens in syntax. We have yet another transitive sentence:
(44) Die Tür öffnet sich ⇒ Die Tür öffnet Peter
But in semantics things change. We can substitute one element for another element of the same logical type only if this element is present in the semantic representation. In the semantic representation of (44) we cannot replace sich by the DP Peter because sich is not present there at all whereas the DP Peter is translated as a generalized quantifier or an individual constant. This explanation is parallel to the impossiblity of non-argument reflexives to be focus discussed above. The background results from replacement of the actual focus by a variable bound by a lambda-operator. Substitution of a variable (or of a constant) for another type-equivalent element in the semantic representation is only possible if the element to be replaced is present.
According to Jacobs (1982/1991), contrastive negation (‘fokussierende Negation’) in German can be analysed parallel to focus particles. The negation attracts the focus β. Furthermore, there is an implication that an alternative X exists, with X subject to the condition in (36.c) that requires: (i) X ≈β, (ii) X ≠β, and (iii) X makes the proposition α(X) true. We need again a partition of the semantic representation into focus and background which is again impossible with focussed non-argument reflexives.
So far two examples related to focus are still unexplained: questions and selbst. We will turn to questions first. Consider the examples (14.f, 15.f and 16.f), which we repeat in (45.a-c):
Semantically questions can be analysed as a set of possible answers (cf. e.g. Karttunen 1977).
Hence, the meaning of a question corresponds to the background of the respective answer and the wh-word corresponds to the focus of this answer. We omit presuppositions and further semantic issues related to questions.
Finally we turn to the analysis of selbst. We already saw that the non-argument reflexive cannot be focused and/or modified by selbst.
German does not distingush between weak and strong reflexive pronouns. Sich selbst is not the strong counterpart of a weak form sich. The simple form sich with a pitch accent and the complex form sich selbst are almost identical in German and can be used in the same contexts. In this respect German differs from so-called two-form languages (cf. section 2.3 and chapter 5). The reflexive pronouns zich and zichzelf Dutch, for example, have different syntactic distribution. Only the strong form zichzelf can be focused (i.e. assigned a pitch accent) whereas the weak form zich can only be used with inherent reflexives, anticausatives and verbs that are likely to be reflexive as, for example, wash. König and Siemund (1997: 4) argue that the complex form sich selbst in German consists of two independent parts: the reflexive pronoun sich and the adnominal focus particle selbst. They distinguish between four different types of the particle selbst:
In (49.a) selbst is a scalar focus particle, whose meaning is very similar to that of the focus particle sogar (‘even’). Like all scalar focus particles, selbst bears no accent, precedes its fo Focs particles seem to receive the pitch accent when they follow their focus. This correslation between the syntactic position and stress assignment also applies to the focus particle allein (cf. Primus 1992:70 and König and Siemund 1997:8). (ii) Allein in HAMburg gibt es riesige ProBLEme In the following transitive clause, there is a strong preference that the first selbst that precedes the indefinite object is exclusive and the second one is inclusive.
(i) Ich habe (selbst) einen Aufsatz (selbst) gelesen I have (selbst) a paper (selbst) gelesen
Experiencer verbs are typical examples for dative and accusative objects that can precede the subject. In this case inclusive selbst does not modify the subject but the object, example (i) is from König and Siemund (1996:11). For unmarked word order see also section 4.1. above and the references cited there.
The interpretations of inclusive and exclusive selbst are highly context dependent. The inclusive interpretation requires events that are repeatable (like e.g. read a book vs. write the book) or states that are not exclusive (like e.g. speak a language). The exclusive reading only makes sense if something cannot only be done on one’s own but also with other people’s help. Furthermore, minimal pairs like (i) show that there is a certain interaction between topic/focus and the inclusive/exclusive reading: the exclusive reading is preferred if the NP is topic (cf. Jäger 1995), and the inclusive one is favored if the NP is focused.
It is an interesting issue whether all occurrences of selbst can be reduced to one underlying lexical entry and whether they all belong to the same syntactic category (as e.g. proposed in Primus 1992). However, our main interest is the interaction of selbst with non-argument reflexives. Both the scalar focus particle and the adnominal selbst cannot modify the non-argument reflexive. Although inclusive and excluse adverbial selbst is grammatical in sentences that contain a non-argument reflexive it does not interact with the non-argument reflexive but with the subject of the sentence. We underline the constituent, inclusive and exclusive selbst modifies in these examples. In (59.f) the exclusive selbst applies to the implicit argument.
The explanation for (51.a) is straightforward. The semantic representation of the scalar focus particle is basically identical to that of other focus sensitive operators like nur (‘only’) or even (‘sogar’). The meaning of the focus operator selbst is almost equivalent to even (for differences in syntax and semantics see Primus 1992). Therefore, the explanation for the incompatibility between focus sensitive operators and non-argument reflexives can also be applied to this type of selbst. The explanation of (51.b) is also based on the theory of focus outlined above. Primus (1992) and König and Siemund (1997) argue that the adnominal selbst is a focus sensitive operator, too. According to Primus, adnominal selbst has also a scalar implication: the adjacent NP is ranked lower on a scale of likelihood determined by the rest of the sentence. Unlike the scalar focus particle, the adnominal selbst does not presuppose that (all/some/no) focus alternatives make the proposition also true. König and Siemund’s analysis Note that the following examples are sometimes ambiguous between the adnominal and the adverbial exclusive reading. We indicate the adnominal interpretation with brackets. Adnominal selbst is restricted to persons that are in some sense central or important. The following examples show that modifying non-central persons with adnominal selbst does not make sense. It is difficult to establish a meaningful centre in (i) and (ii.a):
(i)
??Die Putzfrau SELBST hat unsere Wohnung geputzt The cleaning lady herself has our flat cleaned (ii) The bus had a bad accident … a.
??Die Fahrgäste SELBST ist ums Leben gekommen The passengers himself died b. Der Fahrer SELBST ist ums Leben gekommen The driver himself died
In (52) the likelihood for Peter to speak to the boss is ranked lower than the likelihood to speak to other contextually salient persons (e.g. the assistant, the secretary, …). (52) implies that Peter was not expected to talk to the boss directly. This line of argumentation can be applied to reflexive pronouns, as can be seen in the following two examples.
The adnominal focus sensitive operator indicates in (53) that it is remarkable for Peter to see the president or his own self in the TV. This implication is also nicely illustrated by the following minimal pair that is taken from König and Siemund (1997: 28).
By means of his function the leader is the centre of his gang. (54.a) implies that the most important or most clever and cautious person of the gang betrayed him- or herself. (54.b), on the other hand, sets the actual victim (the leader him- or herself) in contrast to other potential victims (the rest of the gang). (54.b) implies that it is noteworthy that the leader has betrayed him- or herself and not the rest of the gang, i.e. that it was a self-betrayal. The scalar implication of adnominal selbst is not always easy to make out, especially if it modifies a reflexive pronoun. In some of these examples selbst does not necessarily imply a ranking between the centre on the one hand and the alternatives on the other. In these cases reflexive + selbst is equivalent to a reflexive with narrow focus (example (55) is from Primus: 75):
Buying liquor for herself need not be more remarkable for Maria than buying liquor for her father, mother, or brother. This might be due to the fact that the reflexive pronoun and selbst, unlike some NP and selbst, seem to form an idiomatic unit. The fusion of (reflexive) pronouns and adnominal focus sensitive operators like selbst can be observed in the history of many languages. Many languages have reflexive pronouns that incorporate a selbst-like element (e.g. English him-/her-/itself - pronoun and scalar expression -, Dutch zichzelf - anaphor and scalar expression - or Hungarian maga). These reflexive pronouns seem to have developed from a pronoun or anaphor and an adnominal scalar expression. The basis for this might have been predicates that favor a disjoint reference interpretation of the arguments over a coreference reading (i.e. the reflexive use is more remarkable than the non-reflexive use). In these contexts, scalar expressions seem to occur regularly together with pronouns or anaphora. In addition to this, this fusion leads to the disambiguation of the binding domains in languages like English. The pronoun him is subject only to Principle B while the reflexive pronoun him-/her-/itself takes on the work of Principle A. For more details see Primus (1992) and König and Siemund (1997) and the references cited there.
We conclude that both the adnominal and the prenominal focus particle selbst establish a set of semantic alternatives to the denotation of the focus, i.e. the NP they are adjoined to. This is again only possible for argument reflexives. Non-argument reflexives are correctly excluded in the middle construction (48.b) and the anticausative (48.c), (51.a), and (51.b) above. Many issues have been touched only in passing, but we hope that we convincingly argued that a (focus) semantic analysis of the examples discussed in this subsection is on the right track.
One issue is still unexplained. Besides their inability to be coordinated and focused, non-argument reflexives cannot be fronted either. The sentence-initial position is not simply a mirror image of the initial position of the middle field. In German various elements can occupy the sentence-initial position (CP,Spec in GB terminology). It is neither a pure topic- nor a pure focus position and neither topic nor focus must occupy this position. Elements that move to CP,Spec are subject to various conditions, that are necessary but not sufficient. These conditions mainly relate to information structuring and discourse semantics (cf. Gärtner and We correlate unmarked word order with focus projection. Only unmarked word order allows for maximal focus spreading (cf. Höhle 1982, Jacobs 1992 and 1993 and Vogel and Steinbach 1998).
We will not be concerned with condition (57.d). Reflexive pronouns cannot refer to discourse referents directly because they are usually bound within the sentence they are included (condition A of binding theory). We will see in the next section that non-argument reflexives must be bound by the subject of the same sentence. Therefore, we only discuss condition (57.a), (57.b) and (57.c).
ad a) To be the first element of the unmarked word order is always a good reason for a constituent to appear in sentence-initial position. We already saw that reflexive pronouns can precede the subject (i.e. their antecedent) in the unmarked order in the middle-field only if the subject is not a pronoun itself (the relevant examples are repeated in (58)).
Pronominal elements tend to be right-adjacent to C°, the Wackernagel position (cf. Anderson 1993 for a crosslinguistic study of the so-called Wackernagel-Effekt). Therefore pronominal elements precede full NPs. This constraint overrides the constraint which states that nominative precedes accusative. However, the Wackernagel-effect can only be observed in the middle-field, because C° is the left border (Linke Satzklammer) of the middle-field. Hence this constraint does not help us on the sentence initial position. Besides these rare cases, German has some idiomatic expressions that permit accusative-nominative order (e.g. ihn hat der Schlag getroffen - ‘he was floored’). Note that the experiencer verb interessieren (‘be intertested in’) in (59.c) becomes inherent reflexive when we substitute a reflexive pronoun for the accusative NP ein Mädchen (‘a girl’).
(i) Sie interessierte sich für ein Buch She is-interested-in rp a book
Besides, ‘stage-setting’ adverbials like gestern (‘yesterday’) can also appear unmarked sentence initially (i.e. they need not be focus or topic).
ad b) Focused constituents can also occur in sentence-initial position.
(61.a) illustrates that a reflexive pronoun can be moved to CP-Spec, if it is the focus of the sentence. We saw in section 4.2.2. above that non-argument reflexives cannot be focused at all because they are not linked to a semantic argument variable of the verb. Hence this difference between argument and non-argument reflexives is again due to the (semantic) inability of non-argument reflexives to be focused. Similarly, all fronted constituents that have to be focus because they cannot appear unmarked in sentence initial position (i.a) need some semantic content. We explained in 4.2.2, example (39.b), why focus on the preposition is ungrammatical in (ib), which is only grammatical with narrow focus on the pronoun sie (i.c).
(i) a. *[An sie] habe ich einen Brief geschrieben b. *[AN sie] habe ich einen Brief geschrieben c. [An SIE] habe ich einen Brief geschrieben
to her have I a letter written
ad c) Besides focus, there is an additional condition that can be subsumed under the notion of topic. Recall that the semantic representation of a sentence is divided into two parts, the focus and the background. Vallduví (1992) argues that the background (ground in his terminology) is further subdivided into topic and comment (link and the tail). The link (or topic) is a designated element, i.e. ‘an address pointer in the sense that it directs the hearer to a given address [...] in the hearer’s knowledge store, under which the information carried by the sentence is entered’ (p. 47). This partition might be too static. At a certain stage of a discourse different expressions can be equally salient or ‘designated’, so that it is sometimes not clear which element of the background is the actual address pointer for the ongoing discourse. See Kruijff-Korbayová and Hajicová (1997) for a dynamic approach.
S-topics can be used to pick up entities mentioned in the preceding discourse, to narrow down a given dicourse topic (partial topic), to indicate that there are some alternatives to talk about (implicational topic) or ‘to move the conversation away from an entity given in the previous discourse’ (p. 49) (contrastive topic). Sentence (62.b) is an example for a partial topic and sentence (63.b) for an implicational topic:
We do not want to go into detail here. The reader is referred to the detailed presentation in Büring (1995). Two points are of interest here. Firstly, S-topic can appear in sentence initial position. S-topics have to precede the focus at surface structure. Therefore, CP-Spec is one (maybe the preferred) option for S-topics. They can also appear on the left periphery of the middle-field.
According to Büring (p. 56f.), the topic value is computed by replacing the S-topic in (62.b’) with type-equivalent salient alternatives. Thus the topic value of a sentence is a set of such sets:
Furthermore, S-topics have an implication that can be informally outlined as follows: The use of a S-topic in a sentence A implies that there is an element Q from the topic value (62.b’’), such that Q is still under consideration after uttering A (i.e. some elements in one of these sets in (62.b’’) must be non-absurd and informative with respect to CG). After uttering (62.b), we know that there must be some element from (62.b’’) that is still under consideration. The most
The focus alternatives are salient type-identical elements as we saw in section 4.2.2 above. The topic value (of the reflexive pronoun) results from a second substitution: in all focus alternatives the S-topic (the argument reflexive) is replaced by type-equivalent salient alternatives (cf. 64.d).
According to the implication of topics, the residual topic must be informative. The second element of the topic value is a good candidate for the residual topic: ‘and where did he photograph his friends?’ Sentence (64.b) gets worse if we ask for the subject, i.e. the antecedent of the reflexive pronoun:
(i) a. Who photographed himself in front of the Matterhorn? b. ?[/Sich] hat [der Peter\] vor dem Matterhorn fotografiert
The residual topic is something like: and who photographed not himself but something else (X photographed Y with X ≠ Y). In this case we contrast a reflexive action with a non-reflexive action. The only thing that is under discussion here is the intrinsic meaning of the reflexive pronoun, its reflexive function. But for that we need a very special context.
Note that we can replace sich in sentence initial position by sich selbst without change of meaning (cf. 4.2.2).
We conclude that the accusative reflexive pronoun cannot occur in the sentence-initial position in unmarked word order. Therefore, it must either be focus or S-topic to occupy CP,Spec. Neither of these options is available for non-argument reflexives, because they are not linked to an argument variable of the verb. And finally, non-argument reflexives must be bound by
We can summarize that non-argument reflexives do not differ from argument reflexives in syntax. They are subject to the same restrictions on word order in the middle-field on the one hand and on binding on the other. The differences between argument and non-argument reflexives are due to the different interpretations of these elements. As far as we see, these differences do not follow from any approach that draws a syntactic distinction between argument and non-argument reflexives. Furthermore, syntactic theories would have to explain the strict correspondence between two syntactically different kinds of reflexive pronouns with respect to word order. And last but not least, a semantic approach can abandon the unnecessary stipulation that accusative reflexive pronouns can be either arguments or adjuncts. The ungrammaticality of coordination, focus and fronting results from a linking-mismatch: a syntactic argument (the accusative reflexive pronoun in the position of the direct object) is not linked to a semantic argument of the verb. In the next chapter we will have a closer look at this important issue.
So far, we argued that the different interpretations of transitive reflexive sentences are not related to different syntactic representation. Both the argument and the non-argument reflexive are analyzed as a direct (or accusative) object. In this chapter we will show that the ambiguity of transitive reflexive sentences can be derived at the interface between syntax and semantics. The accusative reflexive pronoun need not be linked to a semantic argument of the verb. This very specific property of the ‘middle marker‘ in German results from the interaction between a universal property of (weak) reflexive pronouns and a language specific distinction between structural and oblique case forms. We will argue below that (weak) reflexive pronouns are ‘referentially’ underspecified. As a consequence, (weak) reflexive pronouns can either be linked to a semantic argument themselves or they mediate the linking of another syntactic argument (usually the subject). We called the former argument reflexive and the latter non-argument reflexive. In German, the latter interpretation is only available for reflexive pronouns that are assigned structural case. Argument reflexives receive a reflexive interpretation whereas non-argument reflexives are indicators of valency-reuction that receive a middle, a anticausative or a inherent reflexive interpretation. The non-argument reflexive indicates that the first argument of the verb is not linked to syntax. It can either be implicitly present in the semantic representation of the sentence (argument saturation) or deleted (argument reduction). Figure (1) illustrates this ambiguity of transitive reflexive sentences in German.
In the previous chapter we argued that all transitive sentences with an accusative object that is a reflexive pronoun are syntactically identical. It turned out that certain differences between argument and non-argument reflexives concerning coordination, focus, and fronting are semantic rather than syntactic. In this chapter we investigate the first ambiguity of the accusative reflexive pronoun in transitive sentences. We turn to the second ambiguity in chapter 6. We argue that the morphosyntactic features of reflexive pronouns are maximally underspecified. Thus they can either head their own A-chain or they can be included in a complex A-chain, which is headed by another syntactic argument that c-commands the accusative reflexive pronoun (i.e. the subject). Besides, we argue that A-chains are subject to the following to linking-principles: (i) VP,Spec is linked to the first argument position of the verb and (ii) the complement position of V° is linked to the second argument position of the verb. According to (i) and (ii), the complex A-chain that includes the subject and the reflexive pronoun is linked to the second argument position via its base, the complement position of V°. Hence, the non-argument reflexive mediates the linking of the subject to the second argument position. As opposed to the non-argument reflexive, the argument reflexive heads its own chain and is thus linked to a semantic argument itself. We will see that this approach offers a uniform analysis of the reflexive, middle, anticausative and inherent reflexive interpretation.
Before we turn to reflexive pronouns in transitive reflexive sentences, we must introduce the basic notions of binding theory first. Of course the crucial element for the interpretation of In the following presentation, we mostly use only the third person singular form. We are not interested in personal pronouns, possessive pronouns and R-expressions. In languages like German or English, personal possessive pronouns are ambiguous between a bound variable interpretation and pragmatic coreference (cf. e.g. Reinhart 1983 and 1991) whereas other languages have also reflexive possessive pronouns. In the following presentation, we ignore this issue as well as the status of Chomsky’s binding principle C. Additional issues of binding theory that are irrelevant for the problem under discussion are long distance anaphors, reciprocal pronouns, distributive vs. collective interpretations of plural antecedents, or different kinds of conceptualization of binding relations - e.g. the body or body parts, personality, pictures, reflections, images or statues.
German does not always draw a morphological distinction between personal pronouns and reflexive pronouns
Unlike most Indo-European languages, German is a one-form language that does not distinguish weak from strong reflexive pronouns
structural binding of reflexive pronouns differs from logophoric binding
the distinction between structural and oblique case forms turns out to be relevant for binding theory
We will be concentrating on the interpretation of locally bound pronoun, irrespective of whether the paradigm has always two morphologically different forms for reflexive and personal pronous. Furthermore, German has only one kind of reflexive pronoun, as opposed to many other languages. German is a so-called one-form language (Kemmer 1993), that does not morphologically distinguish weak from strong reflexive pronouns. We will put the first two issues (i) and (ii) aside for the present, but we come back to the morphology of reflexive pronouns in the course of the this chapter. In the next subsection we turn to (iii) first and in the following sections we are dealing with point (iv).
Reflexive pronouns in German are subject to principle A of Chomsky’s (1981) binding theory. In Chomsky (1981:188) binding theory is defined as follows: (A) An anaphor is bound in its governing category (B) A pronominal is free in its governing category (C) A R-expression is free The governing category, i.e. the local domain for binding, is defined on the base of a governor and a subject available for the pronominal element. Chomsky (1986) replaces this term by the term complete functional complex (see Haegeman 1992 or Gärtner 1991 among others). For further empirical and conceptual arguments against Chomsky’s theory of binding cf. P&S (1994) and R&R (1993).
In each case, the reflexive pronoun and its antecedent are not (co-)arguments of the same predicate. Furthermore the reflexive pronoun cannot be bound by a co-argument of the same predicate (the noun), because it is its sole argument. In addition, Chomsky’s principles of binding predict strict complementary distribution of personal pronouns and reflexive pronouns. But this contradicts the observation that in certain contexts the reflexive pronoun can be replaced by a personal pronoun as can be seen in (3.a) and (3.b) for German. Grewendorf (1983) suggests that non-configurational aspects may play a role in these cases. Under his analysis two different governing categories are available in certain examples and hence each pronominal element is grammatical relevant to one of these two governing categories. Examples like (3.b) have been taken as empirical evidence that the subject of so-called psych-verbs must base-generated somewhere below the object to account for the binding of the reflexive pronoun in line with Chomsky’s principle A (cf. Belletti and Rizzi 1988 or Stroik 1994). However, this kind of analysis predicts that the reflexive pronoun cannot be replaced by a personal pronoun. Additionally, it cannot be applied to sentence (2.b) because make is certainly not a psych-verb and the object ideal gifts for the twins is not an experiencer argument. Under R&R’s and P&S’s theory of binding these anaphors are exempt from the binding conditions in both cases.
R&R call reflexive pronouns that are exempt from the (structural) conditions on binding logophoric anaphors, P&S call them exempt anaphors. Crosslinguistically, different types of reflexive pronouns are used as logophoric anaphors. Consider three closely related languages (cf. Reinhart and Reuland 1995). Dutch, for example, distinguishes weak from strong reflexive pronouns which both are independent words (zich vs. zichzelf). The weak form zich is used logophorically in Dutch. As opposed to Dutch, English uses the strong form him-/her-/itself as logophoric anaphor because the weak form of the reflexive pronoun is morphologically empty (cf. section 2.3). In Frisian the weak form of the reflexive pronoun is identical to the personal pronoun (in both cases him/har) - note that the third person feminine has an additional pronominal form se that can only be used as a personal pronoun, i.e. it cannot be locally bound as opposed to him/har. In Frisian we cannot morphologically distinguish logophoric anaphors from personal pronouns. The following table summarizes this (the logophoric anaphor is underlined):
(i) Logophoric anaphors
weak form
strong form
Dutch
zich
zichzelf
Frisian
him/har (≈ pronoun)
him-/harsels
English Ø
him-/her-/itself
(i) Max1 said that the queen invited both Lucie and himself1 for tea (ii) Max1 sagte dass die Königin Lucie und *sich1/ihn1 zum Tee eingeladen hat
The conditions for logophoric anaphors vary from language to language as well. On the one hand. it seems to be easier to use English reflexive pronouns logophorically than e.g. German reflexive pronouns (cf. (i) with (ii)). On the other hand, in German a reflexive pronoun is obligatory in contexts that allow also the personal pronoun in Dutch.
Max said that the queen Lucie and rp/him for tea invited has
Note that a NP-internal subject (agent or possessor) like in (i)-(iii) blocks the coindexation between a NP-internal reflexive pronoun and a NP-external antecedent in picture-noun-phrases:
(i) */? Lucie1 liked [your picture of herself1]
(ii) */? [Your picture of myself] would be nice on the wall
(iii) */?[Deine Bilder von sich1] gefallen dem Hans1 (i.e. Your pictures of rp like the Hans-dat)
One could argue that in (i)-(iii) the head noun picture or Bilder selects two arguments, which must be coindexed, because they are subject to R&R’s condition A or P&S’s principle A (cf. next section). In this case, local coindexation is obligatory and prevents the logophorical use of the reflexive pronoun. Alternatively, one could argue that the reflexive pronoun is still exempt from the conditions on binding, but the intervening NP-internal subject blocks the coindexation with an antecedent outside the DP similar to the examples in (5) below (cf. R&R 1993: 681f.).
So far, we separate logophoric from structural binding relations as stated in (iii) above. Logophoric or exempt anaphors provide arguments for a reformulation of binding theory. In the following we ignore logophoric or exempt anaphors and concentrate on structural binding, because only the structural restrictions on reflexive pronouns will be relevant for the anaylsis of argument and non-argument reflexives. Logophoric anaphors are always argument reflexives, whereas the accusative reflexive pronoun in transitive sentences (i.e. the middle marker in German) is always (structurally) bound by the subject of its sentence. We discuss R&R’s binding theory first because it is based on a distinction between syntactic and semantic arguments that turns out to be very fruitful for our explanation of the ambiguity of accusative reflexive pronouns. In the next section we give an outline of R&R’s theory, which will be necessarily incomplete. In section 5.3 we modify the syntactic part of R&R’s binding theory. Besides, R&R’s (1993) analysis is based mainly on Dutch, which is a two-form language. Therefore, a modification of the semantic part of their binding theory will also be necessary in order to apply it to German. This will be done in section 5.4 and 5.5. In this connection we also refer to P&S’s binding theory. P&S do not distinguish between syntactic and semantic arguments but they assume a hierarchy of grammatical relations, which also turns out to be fundamental for the interpretation of reflexive pronouns in German. In sum, the theory we develop in this chapter is based on the assumption that only co-arguments of the same predicate are subject to principle A of Chomsky’s binding theory. Reflexive pronouns that cannot be bound by a co-argument are exempt from (structural) binding. In addition, we postulate that accusative reflexive pronouns are also ‘bound’ in syntax, because arguments that check structural case are subject to the general condition on A-chains. This syntactic ‘binding’ relation, that results from chain formation, is responsible for the ambiguity of the accusative reflexive pronoun. The following discussion can be outlined as follows:
We introduce the binding theory of Reinhart and Reuland. Their distinction between syntactic and semantic binding and the General Condition on A-chains will be important in the discussion (section 5.2).
The syntactic part of R&R’s binding theory can be reduced to General Condition on A-chains, as is argued in Fox (1993). This condition will be relevant to the analysis of argument and non-argument reflexives in German. Besides, we argue that in German the definition of syntactic argument is based on structural case (also section 5.2).
R&R distingush between two types of reflexive pronouns. This distinction is irrelevant to the analysis of reflexive pronouns in German, because German is a one-form language (section 5.3).
As a consequence of (iii), the semantic part of R&R’s binding theory is replaced by principle A of Pollard and Sag’s binding theory (section 5.4).
Recall that R&R’s binding theory is based on Dutch, which is a two-form language. As opposed to German, Dutch has two kinds of reflexive pronouns. In the following presentation of R&R’s theory we use the term reflexive pronoun, although R&R use the term anaphor. According to their theory, both kinds of reflexive pronouns have less specified Φ-features than personal pronouns but only the strong reflexive pronoun is a reflexivizer, i.e. only the strong form is specified as [+REFL]. Thus the weak reflexive pronoun is the pronominal element that is less specified. It is neither specified with [+REFL] nor with [+R] (= referential independence), cf. table (6) below. Therefore, it does not make sense to call the weak reflexive pronoun a reflexive pronoun in R&R’s theory. As opposed to R&R, we do not distingush between [+REFL] and [–REFL]. We will keep on using the term reflexive pronoun in order to avoid confusion. Besides, the notion ‘reflexive pronoun’ is more specific than ‘anaphor’. In R&R’s framework, [R] is a purely morphosyntactic feature: ‘Having this property is a necessary condition for an expression to function as an independent argument, but R itself does not have anything to do with reference’ (R&R 1993: 697). The property [R] depends on the internal specification of an NP: (i) An NP is +R iff it carries a full specification for Φ-features and structural Case This issue will be discussed in greater detail below.
SE anaphors are the less specified elements of the pronominal paradigm, because they are neither reflexivizers nor referentially independent elements. The distribution of pronominal elements in Dutch is illustrated in (7).
The first example (7.a) contains the inherent reflexive verb gedragen (‘behave’), the object of which must be the weak form of the reflexive pronoun, i.e. the SE anaphor. The same holds for reflexive anticausatives in Dutch. Dutch, like German, has inherent reflexive verbs and also some reflexive anticausatives, whereas middle constructions are formed without a reflexive pronoun like middle constructions in English, cf. section 2.3. This table is taken from the discussion of R&R’s theory in Vogel and Steinbach (1995).
R&R formulate a theory of binding that accounts for the different distribution of weak and strong reflexive pronouns in Dutch. Their binding theory is based on the following two conditions. The relevant definitions of the notions reflexive, reflexive marked, syntactic and semantic predicate and syntactic argument are given in (10)- cf. R&R (1993: 678): (9) and (10) are abbreviated versions of R&R’s binding theory. R&R relativize their binding conditions to an index i. This is necessary to exclude the licensing of a coindexation i by an SELF anaphor bearing the index j. The following example illustrates this: (i) *Max1 showed myself2 to him1
The predicate is reflexive marked by the anaphor myself and it is reflexive because two of its arguments are coindexed. Nevertheless, sentence (i) is ungrammatical. This restriction of the conditions to a certain index correctly excludes sentences like (i), because the index of the anaphor differs from the index of the coindexed arguments. In (9) and (10) the terms reflexivity and coindexation must be replaced by i-reflexivity and i-coindexation (cf. also Fox 1993). We continue referring to the simplified versions in (9) and (10) because the restriction to an index is not relevant for the problem under discussion.
Condition A and B correctly explain the distribution of the SE and SELF anaphors in Dutch. Condition B says that, whenever a semantic predicate is reflexive, it must be reflexive-marked. A predicate is reflexive-marked either if it is lexically reflexive or if one of its arguments is a SELF anaphor. Gedragen in (7.a) is a inherent reflexive verb that is lexically reflexive, We do not think that inherent reflexive verbs are two-place predicates with both arguments obligatorily coindexed. Unlike two-place verbs like wassen, that are optionally reflexive, inherent reflexive verbs equal anticausatives. Both inherent reflexives and anticausatives do not select an external argument (cf. section 2.2). R&R’s theory cannot account for the fact that weak reflexive pronouns (i.e. [–REFL] anaphors) indicate valency reduction. We come back to this issue in section 5.6 and in chapter 6. The SELF anaphor is ungrammatical for matters of economy. The SELF anaphor would reflexive-mark the predicate once again but binding condition B requires only one reflexive marking, cf. also below. R&R assume two different lexical entries for verbs of grooming like wassen. We already saw in section 2.3 that identical cases can be observed in many Indo-European languages. We come back to this issue in section 5.4 below.
R&R give the following definition of chain, following Chomsky (1986a, b): (i) Generalized Chain definition C (α1, …, αn) is a chain iff C is the maximal sequence such that a. there is an index j such that for all j , 1≤ j ≤ n, αj carries that index, and b. for all j, 1≤ j ≤ n, αj governs αj+1. For the term government see example (33) below.
The crucial difference between SE anaphors and personal pronouns is the feature [R]. Only personal pronouns (and R-expressions) are referentially independent, i.e. [+R], cf. table (6) above. As a consequence of (12), personal pronouns can only be the head of an A-chain. Hence they are excluded in all positions αj with j > 1. The GCC correctly predicts that personal pronouns are ungrammatical in all examples in (7).
Fox (1993) goes even further than R&R and argues that condition A of R&R’s binding theory can be completely reduced to the GCC in (12). As opposed to R&R, In R&R’s version only two-member chains are relevant: “Either we define [the general condition on A-chains, i.e. (13)] as a condition on chains with more than one link, or we define an A-chain as consisting of at least two coindexed links” (R&R 1993: 702). The predicate coindexed is reflexive: every element X bearing an index i is coindexed with itself (cf. also Chomsky 1995, chapter 3 on one-member chains). This condition is trivially met if every syntactic argument is forced to move to some Agr-position to check its case feature. As a consequence of obligatory A-movement, every a element heads its own chain, which is of course only possible for [+R]-expressions. Note that indices are assigned to all DPs in syntax and must not change at the interface to semantics. Otherwise, R&R (as well as Fox) cannot exclude personal pronouns on the basis of the general condition on A-chains either. A predicate is not reflexive-marked by a personal pronoun, hence no coindexation of the syntactic arguments is required by condition A (cf. Chomsky 1980, Fiengo and May 1994 for assignment of indices). Chomsky (1995: 215, footnote 53) claims that “a theoretical apparatus that takes indices seriously as entities, allowing them to figure in operations (percolation, matching, etc.), is questionable on more general grounds. Indices are basically the expression of a relationship, not entities in their own right. They should be replaceable without loss by a structural account of the relation they annotate.”
A theory that reduces condition A to the modified version of the GCC predicts that the SE anaphor zich in (13) must be bound by the subject, because it is [–R] and cannot head its own A-chain. Therefore, it is forced to form a chain with a [+R] A-element c-commanding it, i.e. the subject of the matrix clause. Besides, this modification of R&R’s binding theory renders movement of the embedded verb in ECM superfluous. On the one hand, R&R assume that the embedded verb must not stay in situ in (13.b) (cf. also footnote 17 above). Otherwise it would be reflexive marked without being reflexive, because the ECM-subject is a syntactic argument not only of the matrix predicate but also of the embedded predicate, which assigns a theta-role to the SELF anaphor, cf. (10.b) above. R&R claim that raising of the verb prevents it from being reflexive marked (R&R 1993:708f.). According to R&R, LF-raising and LF-lowering is always optionally permitted. They propose that in Dutch the embedded verb raises at S-structure and adjoins to the matrix predicate. An examples like (i) has the S-structure representation in (ii). (i) ... dat Max zichzelf Lucie hoorde critiseren (ii) ... dat [IP Max [IP zichzelf Lucie ti] [V hoordej critisereni ]j ] (i.e. ... that Max SELF Lucie heard criticize) On the other hand the embedded predicate must stay in situ in (iii) - alternatively it could be lowered at LF -, because it is reflexive marked by its second argument.
(iii) Peter hoorde [Maria1 zichzelf1 critiseren](reflexive-marked by zichzelf)
The verb stays in situ, if two syntactic arguments must be coindexed, and it is forced to raise, if the syntactic arguments must not be coindexed. raising and lowering of the embedded verb in ECM-constructions becomes superfluous in the modified version of R&R’s theory, because it no longer relies on the term syntactic predicate. This revised version only requires grammatical A-chains and does not depend on additional verb-movement at LF.
Peter heard Maria SELF criticize
Besides, after raising the direct object of the embedded clause, i.e. Lucie, is still a syntactic argument of the head critiseren, because it receives accusative case via the trace t i of the verb (cf. R&R 1993: 708, footnote 49). Hence, the head P (i.e. critiseren) is available at S-structure for case-marking its arguments (cf. definition 10.b) and it is not clear why P is not available for predicate formation as well (cf. definition 10.a).
Finally we follow Vogel and Steinbach (1995 and 1998), who argue that in German the term syntactic argument should be defined on the basis of structural case. In German, only NPs that are marked with structural case (or have a structural case-feature to check) are syntactic arguments. In chapter 6 we give empirical evidence in support of a distinction between structural and oblique case. We will see that nominative and accusative are structural. As opposed to nominative and accusative, dative is oblique. Hence, A-chain formation is restricted to subjects and accusative objects. The relevant modification of R&R’s definition (10.b) is given in (14).
As we mentioned in chapter 2, German is a so-called one-form language. Unlike Dutch and many other Indo-European languages, German does not distinguish weak from strong reflexive pronouns, or in R&R’s terminology SE from SELF anaphors. The sole reflexive pronoun in German morphologically correspond to the SE anaphor in Dutch (cf. the diagram (8) above and section 2.1.3). We argued in chapter 4 that sich selbst in German is formed by adjunction of the adnominal focus particle selbst to the NP sich. In German, the expression sich selbst is not grammaticalized as opposed to Dutch zichzelf or English him-/her-/itself. Note that it can always be replaced by the stressed simplex anaphor sich, although some speakers seem to prefer sich selbst in some contexts. The Dutch simplex anaphor zich cannot be stressed at all. It is the intrinsically weak counterpart to the strong anaphor zichzelf.
We conclude that German does not distinguish between weak and strong reflexive pronouns or SE and SELF anaphors. R&R (1993 and 1995) argue that an intrinsic/nonintrinsic contrast shows up at least on the dative argument of three-place predicates in German. They give the following examples to illustrate this.
(i) a. Peter stellte sich/??sich selbst die Statue vor ([+R] verb) Peter imagined rp-dat a statue PARTICLE b.
??Peter vertraute sich seine Tochter an ([-R] verb) c. Peter vertraute seine Tochter nur sich selbst an Peter entrusted his daughter only RP himself (i.e. .. place her only in his hands) (ii) a. Peter hat sich wieder die besten Karten (selbst) gegeben b. Maria hat sich den Rest gegeben Maria has rp-dat rest given (i.e. Maria has finished herself off) c. Udo gestattet sich wieder einmal gar nichts (iii) Helmut hat immer nur sich geholfen
However, example (i.b) seems to be odd for pragmatic reasons. If we replace vertrauen by another [–R] verb, sentence (i.b) gets perfectly grammatical (cf. (ii.a)). Moreover, two-place predicates that require a dative object allow a simple reflexive as well, as can be seen in (iii). There is no evidence that German distingushes between [+/– REFL]-elements.
Peter entrusted rp-dat his daughter PARTICLE
Peter has rp-dat again the best cards (himself) given
Udo allows rp-dat once again absolutely nothing
Helmut has always only rp-dat helped
Additionally, middle constructions in German are also reflexive, whereas Dutch middle constructions are formed without a (weak) reflexive pronoun.
Note that the non-argument reflexive must be the weak [–REFL] form. Hence, every verb that can undergo middle formation must also be lexically specified for [–REFL] because its direct object is a SE anaphor that is specified as [–REFL]. In most Indo-European languages ‘middle verbs’ are lexically reflexive, cf. section 5.6 for more details.
But how can we account for the difference between argument and non-argument reflexives in German. We think that another feature, that is also discussed in R&R, is relevant to the ambiguity of reflexive pronouns in German (and any other Indo-European languages). According to R&R, the feature [R] is a morphosyntactic feature, that depends on the inherent specification of a lexical item, cf. footnote 10 above. All nominal expressions are intrinsically specified for Φ-features. Moreoever, only elements that are not least specified for these features (i.e. not maximally underspecified) are [+R]. (18) and (19) illustrate the specification of the Φ-features number, person, gender, and case of personal and reflexive pronouns (homonymous forms within one paradigm are written in italics and homonymous forms in both paradigms are underlined).
Reflexive pronouns in Modern German differ from personal pronouns at least in two dimensions: they are not specified for gender and they lack nominative case. In German the lack of nominative reflexive pronouns can be derived from the obliqueness hierarchy we propose below. Nominative NPs are always the least oblique elements. Therefore they cannot be bound by any other co-argument of the same predicate. Things might different for a language like Islandic. Everaert (1990) argues that in Islandic a nominative reflexive pronoun in VP-internal position is expected to be bound by a dative subject. The relevant example is given in (i). The dative personal pronoun honum locally binds the nominative NP. Instead of a potential (but nonexisting) reflexive pronoun REFL, the personal pronoun hann must be used.
(i) Honum1 finnst *REFL1/hann (sjalfur)(vera) skrytinn
(i)Anderson (1986:69) shows that possessive pronouns have reflexive forms for both dative and nominative. they are licensed in the subject position of embedded sentences. Nominative reflexive pronouns are excluded in these cases although they seem to be structurally licensed as well. One might argue that languages generally lack nominative forms for reflexive pronouns (cf. also Pollard and Sag 1993 and R&R 1995 on this issue).
Him-dat finds refl/he-nom (self) (be) strange
There are at least three issues that need further discussion.
(i) homonymous forms within one paradigm (e.g. the personal pronoun sie).
(ii) homonymous forms in two paradigms (e.g. the 2. person reflexive and personal pronouns dich and dir), cf. below.
(iii) two-form languages that have two kinds of reflexive pronouns, cf. section 5.6.
As can be seen in (18) and (19) Modern German, like many other languages, does not morphologically distinguish reflexive from personal pronouns in the first and second person. Although Modern German does not always have two morphologically distinct forms, it discriminates between reflexive pronouns and personal pronouns in principle. Besides, we saw in section 2.3 that Middle High German has no dative reflexive pronouns, using personal pronouns for local binding relations, too. In addition, some languages distinguish reflexive possessive pronouns from personal possessive pronouns whereas others have only personal possessive pronouns that are used in every context - i.e. locally bound (bound variable) and locally free (pragmatic coreference). Cf. Reinhart (1991) on possessive pronouns that are interpreted either as bound variables or via pragmatic coreference.
(21) does not imply that every maximally underspecified element must be locally bound. In Modern German the first and second person pronominal forms are maximally underspecified (there is no comparable pronominal form that is even less specified), but they need not be locally bound (cf. also dative pronouns in Middle High German, and logophoric or exempt anaphors). The following definition accounts for this.
Hence, a maximally underspecified pronominal element is not lexically specified for [R]. A pronominal element that is not maximally underspecified is [+R]. If we compare, for example, the third person singular personal pronoun ihr (‘her’) in (23.a) with a third person singular reflexive pronoun sich in (23.b) it becomes clear that the reflexive pronoun in (23.b) is less specified than the personal pronoun in (23.a). Thus only the personal pronoun is [+R].
We conclude that the semantic ambiguity of (weak) reflexive pronouns – or more general of the elements that are least specified for Φ-features – results from the intrinsic lexical specification of these elements and the pronominal systems of a language. Expressions that are not specified for [R] can be either [+R] or [–R]. This ambiguity seems to be a universal property of (weak) reflexive pronouns, which can also be observed in German. All reflexive pronouns in German are inherently underspecified for the feature [R]. As a consequence, they are ambiguous and can be used as [+R] and as [–R]-expressions. The GCC discussed in the previous section requires that reflexive pronouns that are [+R] must head a chain of their own, which is linked to a semantic argument. Thus [+R] reflexive pronouns yield the argument reflexive interpretation. In contrast, [–R] reflexive pronouns cannot head their own chain. Instead they must be included in another A-chain, which is headed by a [+R]-expression. The [–R] reflexive pronoun yields the non-argument reflexive interpretation. The derivation of this ambiguity will be discussed in section 5.5 in greater detail. Recall that our approach differs from R&R’s binding theory on two points. First, (weak) reflexive pronouns (or SE anaphors in R&R’s terms) can but need not be [–R] expressions. Second, German does not discriminate between [+REFL] and [–REFL] expressions. Because of this second difference, R&R’s condition B cannot applied to German, cf. (9) above. The next section deals with the final modification of the semantic part of R&R’s binding theory.
This final modification follows P&S (1994), who argue that the definition of binding should be based on the relative obliqueness of arguments. In the previous section we saw that in German the feature [REFL] is needless. Therefore, we cannot apply R&R’s binding condition B, repeated here as (24), to German.
(24) B: A reflexive semantic predicate is reflexive-marked
We replace binding condition B by P&S’s condition on reflexive pronouns, which will be needed anyway to account for certain binding asymmetries in German. Let us first introduce P&S’s binding principle A and B: Note that P&S use the term anaphor instead of reflexive pronouns We can replace P&S’s original principle A in (21) by (21’): (21’) Principle A: A locally o-commanded reflexive pronoun must be locally o-bound
Local o-command and local o-binding are defined in the following way.
In P&S the relative obliqueness of grammatical functions is reflected by the order of the syntactic arguments on the SUBCAT list: a synsem object Y is less oblique than a synsem object Z iff Y precedes Z on the SUBCAT list of the same lexical head. Consider, for example, the following SUBCAT-list in (27). The first synsem value can bind the second and the third one, because NP [NOM] is less oblique than NP [ACC] and NP [DAT], and the second synsem value can bind the third one, but not vice versa. Hence, a dative NP (or indirect object) can be bound by an accusative NP (or direct object) and a nominative NP (or subject) whereas an accusative NP can be bound only by a nominative NP. These asymmetries will be illustrated immediately.
(27) [SUBCAT < NP [NOM], NP [ACC], NP [DAT] >]
As opposed to P&S, we do not think that the obliqueness of arguments has to be fixed in each lexical entry separately. Instead we assume the general obliqueness hierarchy for German. This might be connected to processing asymmetries between different kinds of syntactic constituents. We will see in section 6.1.6 that the parser prefers structural case to oblique case and nominative to accusative.
Besides, P&S lexical definition of obliqueness is incompatible with our analysis of non-argument reflexives. Their theory requires a lexical derivation of non-argument reflexives, because the relative obliqueness is defined on the basis of subcat lists. However, we argued at
A similar issue might be free dative objects in German. They are unlikely to be subcategorized for by the verb. They can be inserted rather freely and they are very often ambiguous between various interpretations as, for example, possessor or beneficiary. Besides, German has multiple occurences of dative objects, cf. chapter 6.
Free datives show the same syntactic behaviour and the same binding properties as ‘subcategorized’ dative objects. They can be asymmetrically bound by the nominative subject or accusative object of the same sentence, cf. (31.a) and (31.b) and they asymmetrically bind more oblique objects, cf. (31.c) and (31.d). Again, a lexical binding theory based on the selectional properties of predicates fails to account for free dative objects. A lexical theory could introduce a lexical rule of ‘free dative insertion’ that adds a free dative object to the SUBCAT-list of a basic verb. However, a lexical rule of dative insertion does not provide an argument against the general obliqueness hierarchy we proposed for German, because all datives (no matter whether they are subcategorized or free, i.e. introduced by a lexical rule) share the same syntactic properties. Note that free dative objects also pose a problem for configurational binding theories that define the binding conditions on the basis of c-command and VP-internal A-positions. They are forced to base-generate free datives along with subcategorized dative objects in a position c-commanded by nominative subjects and accusative objects. However, this base position is motivated mainly by the selectional properties of a verb (the verb assigns a theta-role to this position). Below we give further arguments that dative objects cannot be analyzed parallel to accusative objects, cf. Müller (1993) and Vogel and Steinbach (1995 and 1998) and chapter 6.
To summarize, the binding conditions for German should not be defined relative to lexical synsem objects but to semantic arguments of a predicates. In addition, the obliqueness hierarchy as stated in (28) does not depend on individual lexical entries but is a general property of German. Before we formulate the final version of our binding theory we briefly discuss the relevant German examples, that illustrate the asymmetry in binding relations in German. Consider first simple two-place predicates. The examples show that a nominative subject can bind less oblique objects as, for example, the accusative object in (32.a) or the dative objects in (32.b). Both examples include an argument reflexive. Besides, accusative reflexive pronouns need not be linked to a semantic argument of the verb, cf. the anticausative in (32.c). In addition, the accusative object can also be bound in resultative constructions by the subject, cf. (32.d). In resultatives, the accusative object is linked to a semantic argument of the complex resultative predicate.
Besides, the nominative subject can also bind a dative object in ditransitive clauses like (33). In this case binding across a less oblique accusative object is possible because the relation ‘x is less oblique than y’ is transitive.
It is a well known fact that in German accusative objects can bind dative objects but not vice versa as can be seen in (34), cf. Grewendorf (1988), Müller (1993) and Vogel and Steinbach (1998). This is correctly predicted by the obliqueness hierarchy in (28).
The examples in (35) illustrate that accusative and dative objects can asymmetrically bind other more oblique objects. We already saw in (31) that free datives equal subcategorized datives in this respect.
Note that an explanation that relies on R&R’s (1993) binding condition B (a reflexive semantic predicate is reflexive-marked) would incorrectly predict that both sentences should be grammatical, because condition B does not refer to an order of obliqueness. Thus even if we would relate our explanation to R&R’s original version of the binding theory, that we discussed in section 5.2, some additional condition on the obliqueness of arguments would be necessary. The next kind of example can be already found in P&S (1994: 275f.). In German, like in English, a reflexive pronoun included in a by-phrase can be bound by the subject of the sentence – ‘pass’ is the passive axiliary.
These examples clearly show that o-command must be defined relative to case (or grammatical relations) instead of thematic roles. A binding theory based on a thematic hierarchy cannot account for the reflexive pronoun in (34). Note that under this theory, reflexive pronouns should be ungrammatical in passives at all. This theory incorrectly predicts that the reflexive pronouns cannot bear the agent-role because this would violate the thematic hierarchy. On the other hand, if the reflexive pronouns would correspond to the theme or patient of the verb, they are ungrammatical either because English and German lack a nominative form for reflexive pronouns..
Lassen differs from verbs of perception in certain respects (cf. e.g. Grewendorf 1983). Firstly, lassen, unlike sehen and hören, does not select a corresponding finite complementizer-initial embedded clause.
(i) a. *Peter ließ dass der Mechaniker das Auto reparierte b. Peter sah dass der Mechaniker das Auto reparierte (i) a. Peter ließ das Auto (von einem Mechaniker) reparieren b. Peter sah das Auto (von einem Mechaniker) repariert werden (iii) a. Der Chef läßt arbeiten b. Der Chef sieht arbeiten (iv) a. Der Pfarrer läßt die Kinder in Ruhe b. *Der Pfarrer sieht die Kinder in Ruhe (v) a. Das Buch läßt sich leicht lesen b. *Das Buch sieht sich gut lesen (vi) Peter läßt sich waschen
Secondly, as opposed to sehen and hören, lassen selects embedded passives without passive morphology.
Peter lets that the mechanic the car repaired
Thirdly, only lassen selects bare infinitives (iii), resultative constructions (iv), and so-called lassen-middles (v).
Peter lets the car (by the mechanic) repair
Wunderlich (1985) argues that the ECM-subject is also a semantic argument of lassen. We will argue below that the same is true for perception verbs. Therefore, the ECM-subject can be bound by a less oblique co-argument, i.e. the subject of the matrix clause.
The boss lets work
The minister lets the children quiet
‘The minister leaves the children alone’
The book lets RP easily read
‘The book is easy to read’
Peter lets rp wash
This issue is rather more complex. Some data are very subtle and require more discussion (cf. for example Reis 1976 and Grewendorf 1983 for detailed analyses). In the following we present only the core cases..
We turn to the the matrix clause first. Recall that R&R argue that the ECM-subject (the reflexive pronoun in (37.a) is a syntactic argument of the matrix verb, because it assigns accusative case to the ECM-subject. However, the ECM-subject is not only a syntactic but also a semantic argument of the matrix verb. See also Pollard and Sag (1994:132), who argue that equi verbs select an embedded VP, the unexpressed subject of which is also a semantic argument of equi verb itself.
Likewise negation in the ECM-construction implies that subject of the matrix clause does not see or hear the ECM-subject at all. As opposed to (39.a), (39.b) does not imply that Hans did not see Hans. Only the latter sentence can be uttered in a situation, where Peter is sitting next to Hans in the living room. In addition, both sentences permit a narrow scope reading of the negation. In this case only the constituent im Garten (‘in the garden’) is in the scope of the negation and the sentences mean that it is not in the garden but somewhere else where Peter saw Hans playing.
We conclude that in ECM-constructions the matrix object is not only a syntactic but also a semantic argument of the matrix verb. The ECM-subject can be bound by the matrix subject, because they are co-arguments of the matrix predicate (sehen or hören) and the matrix subject is less oblique than the ECM-subject. Hence, the binding relations in the matrix clause follow from the obliqueness hierarchy proposed in (28) above. We complete the discussion with the embedded clause of ECM-constructions. (37.b) above and the similar example in (40) illustrate that the embedded object can only be bound by the ECM-subject. Recall that the ECM-subject is also a semantic argument of the embedded predicate. Hence, binding should be possible. However, the antecedent is not less oblique than the reflexive pronoun, because both arguments are assigned accusative case. These examples demonstrate that o-command must not be defined relative to less oblique constituents. Instead a constituent X o-commands a constituent Y iff X is not more oblique than Y. Thus the antecedent must not be more oblique than the reflexive pronoun. This modification would also be necessary for the original version of P&S’s binding theory. Alternatively, one could exempt the reflexive pronoun in (40) from binding, because it is not locally o-bound by a less oblique co-argument. This proposal would predict that sich in (40) is a logophoric reflexive pronoun that should be subject to processing and discourse constraints (cf. P&S 1994:266f.). However, binding of the embedded reflexive pronoun by the matrix subject seems to be only marginally possible even if the intervening ECM-subject is excluded from binding (‘pp’stands for personal pronoun).
(i) a. Die Königin läßt nur mich ??sich/sie waschen b. Die Katzen lassen mich immer wieder ??sich/sie waschen
Note that the binding relation between the ECM-subject and the embedded object cannot be reversed, because a reflexive ECM-subject must also be bound by the matrix subject.
The queen lets only me RP/PP wash
The cats let me again and-again RP/PP wash
We are now in the position to define the final version of our binding theory for German. The following table illustrates the different kinds of arguments and the relevant binding relations we defined for German. The structural (or configurational) binding in (i) and (42.1) below will be relevant for the analysis of non-argument reflexives in the following section.
Note that (ii) deals with to the standard examples of binding, argument reflexives that are coreferent to another argument of the same predicate, whereas (iii) accounts for the examples we discussed in section 5.1. The only pure syntactic condition in (i) explains the distribution of non-argument reflexives in German. The distinction between (i) and (ii) is based on the observation that (weak) reflexive pronouns are lexically underspecified for the feature [R]. Syntactic arguments are defined on the basis of structural case: only NPs that are structurally case-marked (or that check a structural case-feature) count as A-elements. Hence, not all semantic arguments of a verb are also syntactic arguments: dative objects, mit-phrases, für-phrases, or von-phrases are A’-elements in syntax, that can be arguments of the verb in semantics. [–R] reflexive pronouns that check structural case must be included in an A-chain headed by a [+R]-expression, because they are subject to the GCC. The distribution of [+R] reflexive pronouns is generally controlled by principle A. Either they are locally o-commanded or they are logophorical. Our binding theory is summarized in (42).
Having defined the conditions on o-binding and A-chain formation, we can now turn to the interpretation of accusative reflexive pronouns in the position of the direct object. In the final part of this chapter we turn to the first ambiguity of accusative reflexive pronouns illustrated in figure (1) above. The accusative reflexive pronoun in the position of the direct object can but need not be linked to a semantic argument of the verb. The examples are repeated in (43) on the one hand and (44) on the other. We will argue that this ambiguity can be derived from the binding theory defined in (42) above. The ambiguity between (44.a) and (44.b), which results from the interpretation of the implicit argument, will be discussed in the next chapter. This second ambiguity is not directly related to the interpretation of the accusative reflexive pronoun.
Following Chomsky (1995:chapter 3) a DP must check its (structural) case feature in the extended projection of V (cf. also chapter 4 above). In German, only nominative and accusative case is structural. In chapter 4 we argued that our approach to reflexivity does not depend on a special analysis of structural case. All we need is a (syntactic) distinction between structural and oblique case. We follow Chomsky (1995: chapter 3) because this approach enables us to account for the differences between structural and oblique case straightforwardly (we turn to the syntactic analysis of oblique case forms in the next section). A-movement can take place either before or after Spell-Out depending on the case feature: strong features must be checked before Spell-Out, weak features need not be checked before Spell-Out (and according to Procrastinate must not be checked before Spell-Out), cf. Chomsky 1995.
In (45) both A-chains check their case-feature in the head-position and they are interpreted in the tail- (or base-) position. Both chains are headed by a [+R]-expression, which is linked via the base position to a semantic argument of the verb. Chain number 1 is interpreted in its VP-internal position t1, i.e. VP,Spec. This position is always linked to the first argument of the verb. We assume that the arguments of a two-place predicate are ordered pairs.
Note that in German the linking-principles for syntactic argument are very simple: (i) Spec of VP is linked to the first argument variable x and (ii) the complement position of V° is linked to the second argument variable y. In the next chapter we come back to these two principles. Let us now turn to reflexive pronouns in AgrOP,Spec. Reflexive pronouns are not lexically specified for the feature [R]. Therefore, they can be either [+R] or [–R]. According to the General Condition on A-Chains (GCC), only the latter must be a proper part of a maximal A-chain that is headed by another A-element that is specified as [+R]. The [–R] reflexive pronoun is forced to form a chain with the nominative subject, otherwise the resulting syntactic structure would be ungrammatical. Thus whenever the second A-chain in (46) is headed by a [–R]-expression, it must be coindexed with the first chain, which results in the complex A-chain 3. The complex chain meets the GCC, because it is headed by the [+R]-expression in AgrSP,Spec. On the other hand, chain 2 in (46) must not be coindexed with chain 1 if the former is headed by a [+R] reflexive pronoun. Otherwise this would lead to a violation of the GCC, which excludes A-chains that contain two [+R]-expressions. Condition (42.1) states that a maximal A-chain is any sequence of coindexation of syntactic arguments that satisfies antecedent government. The syntactic arguments are chains themselves. In (38) they consist of two members, that are coindexed. In case two syntactic arguments (i.e. chains) are coindexed, all four members bear the same index. Alternatively, one can define maximal A-chains in the following way: A maximal A-chain is any sequence of coindexation of A-positions that satisfies antecedent government. An A-position is any position/link of a chain to which structural case is assigned. This slightly revised definition yields the same result: a [–R]-expression in an A-position must not be the head of the A-chain it is part of.
As a consequence, the [–R] reflexive pronoun must be included in a complex A-chain, the head of which is linked via the chain’s VP-internal base position t1 (i.e. the complement position of V°). Thus a complex A-chain is always linked to the second argument of the verb,
Let us take a closer look at [+R] reflexive pronouns first. The lexically underspecified reflexive pronoun can only be the head of an A-chain if it is specified as [+R]. The resulting syntactic representation in (49) equals the one in (46) above. Both structures contain two A-chains that are linked to a semantic argument each. The reflexive pronoun is linked to the second semantic argument of the two-place verb and the subject to the first one.
Hence, the [+R] reflexive pronoun is linked to a semantic argument itself and it must be bound by another argument of the same predicate. Recall the binding principles from the previous section, which are defined relative to semantic arguments. Principle A states that a locally o-commanded reflexive pronoun must be locally o-bound bound, i.e. it must be bound by a co-argument that is not more oblique than the reflexive pronoun itself. In (49) the subject is less oblique than the reflexive pronoun. Thus it locally o-commands and locally o-binds the reflexive pronoun. Thus both arguments are coindexed.
(50) W < pi, rpi >
Reinhart (1983) defines a translation mechanism for bound reflexive pronouns. Reinhart’s (1983: 160) original version is limited to S’-expressions: [S’
Φ ] ⇒ [S’β(λx ( Φβ/x ))]. This definition follows the binding theory in Chomsky’s (1981) which is defined on the basis of (syntactic) governing categories. Our theory of binding is, however, defined on semantic predicates. Therefore, we omit this restriction.
So far our theory predict the correct semantic representation for argument reflexives. In the next step we derive the interpretation of non-argument reflexives. We already saw that [–R] reflexive pronouns, unlike their [+R] counterparts, must be included in another A-chain that is headed by a [+R]-expression. This complex A-chain is again interpreted in its base-position, the complement of V°, which corresponds to the second argument position of the verb. Note that in (53) VP,Spec cannot be linked to a semantic argument, because it is not the base position of the chain. Therefore the first argument position of the verb is not linked to syntax. The only [+R]-expression is linked to the second argument. We will argue in the next chapter that the implicit argument can either be reduced or saturated. Argument reduction removes the free argument variable from the semantic representation, whereas argument saturation binds the argument variable (‘OP’ stands for operator and ‘Ø’ for the deleted first argument).
Impersonal middles can be derived in the same way. In (54) the reflexive pronoun is bound by a [+R]-element, the impersonal subject es (‘it’) in Spec of AgrSP. We mentioned in chapter 4 that this [+R]-element might base-generated in the VP-internal subject-position, because a VP must contain at least one [+R]-expression. Structure (54) contains one complex A-chain, which must be linked again to the second argument of the verb. However, the impersonal subject es cannot be linked to a semantic argument. Although it is not maximally underspecified, it is only a quasi-argument that is not interpreted in semantics. Note that the impersonal subject, which bears the default values third person singular neuter is the nominative counterpart of the non-argument reflexive. Within the nominative paradigm, the third person singular personal pronoun es is the ‘weakest’ element. Thus it can be used as a pleonastic element or dummy that only fulfills a syntactic function.
Es (‘it’) can fulfill rather different functions in German. It is used as impersonal subject in impersonal middle constructions, with weather verbs (i.a), and in active sentences that do not select a subject (i.b), cf. also Bierwisch (1996).
(i) a. … weil es regnet b. … weil es in dieser Stadt viele Autos gibt (ii) a. .... weil es1 mir sehr gut gefallen hat, [dass ihr gekommen seid]1
b. .… weil der Hans es allen erzählt hat, dass die Ökosteuer nicht ausgesetzt wird (iii) Es steht ein Männlein im Walde
Besides, it is an expletive element, that can optionally occur in the middle field if the corresponding clausal complement is extraposed.
… because it rains
… because it in this town many cars gave
‘… because there are many cars in this town’
And thirdly, es can also be used as so-called ‘Vorfeld-es’ in sentence-initial position.
... because it to-me very much pleased has that you come have
… it seems that Hans contented with himself is
Note finally, that es, unlike other personal pronouns, cannot be stressed and coordinated. It seems to be intrinsically ‘weak’. For further discussion see Hall (1998) and Cardinaletti and Starke (1994).
It stands a little-man in-the forest
We conclude this section with a final remark about ECM-constructions. Our analysis predicts that the non-argument reflexive can also occur in ECM-constructions. This seems to be correct. Reflexive pronouns in ECM-constructions show the same ambiguity between an argument and a non-argument interpretation. An embedded [–R] reflexive pronoun can form an A-chain with the ECM-subject and a [–R] reflexive pronoun in the position of the ECM-subject (i.e. accusative object of the matrix clause) is governed by the matrix subject. Thus the reflexive pronoun in both positions can be included in a maximal A-chain that is headed by a [+R]-expression. The examples in (55) illustrate the ambiguity between argument- and non-argument reflexives for accusative reflexive pronouns in the embedded clause.
In the position of the ECM-subject non-argument reflexives are harder to find. The reason for this is that ECM- (or A.c.I.-) verbs in general do not form perfect in middle constructions. Besides, they are ungrammatical in anticausatives (cf. next chapter for a brief discussion of the semantics of anticausatives). The ECM-middle construction in (56.b) seems to be as acceptable as the corresponding simple middle construction (56.b’). One exception are so-called let-middle like (56.c). The embedded predicate lesen (‘read’) is interpreted as passive in this case, although it has no passive morphology. Recall from footnote 33 above that embedded passives of lassen A.c.I.-constructions must not be marked for passive.
In this section we argued that the non-argument interpretation of the accusative reflexive pronoun in the position of the accusative object depends solely on A-chain formation. According to the GCC, an A-chain must be headed by an [+R]-expression. Therefore, [–R]-expression must not be the head of an A-chain. A non-argument reflexive, which are [–R]-expressions, in the position of the accusative object is forced to form an A-chain with the nominative subject. Argument reflexives on the other hand are [+R]-expressions, which must be the head of their own chain. In addition, we saw that A-chains are linked to semantic arguments of the verb. Therefore, both the subject and the direct object can only be linked a semantic argument if