Open AccessSyncretism in German: A unified approach to underspecification, indeterminacy, and likeness of case
Author(s) -
Berthold Crysmann
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
proceedings of the international conference on head-driven phrase structure grammar
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1535-1793
DOI - 10.21248/hpsg.2005.5
Subject(s) - underspecification , syncretism (linguistics) , german , phenomenon , indeterminacy (philosophy) , linguistics , hierarchy , feature (linguistics) , computer science , representation (politics) , dimension (graph theory) , type (biology) , neutrality , epistemology , sociology , mathematics , philosophy , pure mathematics , political science , law , ecology , politics , biology
In this paper I address the phenomenon of syncretism in German andshow how Flickinger (2000)'s approach to related issues in English can beadapted to provide a compact, disjunction-free representation of Germannominal paradigms by means of combined case/number/gender type hierarchies. In particular, I will discuss the issue of case identity constraints inGerman coordinate structures, which has so far prevented successful application of Flickinger's proposal to German, and show how likeness constraintstargetting individual inflectional dimensions of a combined type hierarchycan be expressed by means of typed lists that abstract out the relevant dimension.I further show that current type-based approaches to feature neutralityare unable to combine the treatment of this phenomenon with the virtues ofunderspecification. I will then propose a revised organisation of the inflectional type hierarchies suggested by Daniels (2001), drawing on a systematicdistinction between inherent and external (case) requirements.