
Partizip II-Konstruktionen des Deutschen als Modifikatoren
Author(s) -
Ilse Zimmermann
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
zas papers in linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1435-9588
DOI - 10.21248/zaspil.14.1999.12
Subject(s) - participle , adverbial , linguistics , attributive , syntax , categorization , computer science , semantics (computer science) , argument (complex analysis) , operator (biology) , natural language processing , artificial intelligence , verb , philosophy , programming language , biochemistry , chemistry , repressor , transcription factor , gene
This contribution concerns the interaction of morphology, syntax and semantics. It treats German past participles and concentrates on their function as heads in attributive and adverbial modifier phrases. It is argued that participles have the same argument structure as the underlying verbs and can undergo passivization, perfectivization and conversion to adjectives. Since these three operations involve changes in the morphosyntactic categorization they are considered as zero affixation. Two affixless templates – without any categorical changes – convert participle constructions to modifiers relating to participants or to situations. These phrases do not have a syntactic position for the grammatical subject, an operator or an adverbial relator. The pertinent components are present only in the semantic structure. Two further templates serve the composition of participle constructions as modifiers with the modificandum. It is necessary to differentiate between modifiers which function as predicates and those which have the status of a propositional operator. In syntax, these different semantic functions correspond to different adjunct positions of the respective participle phrases.