The Syntax, Semantics, and Prosody of German "VP"-fronting

Focus Fronting and the Syntax-semantics Interface

German Partial-vp Fronting Revisited { Back to Basics

Introduction The topicalization of partial verbal projections in German (henceforth: pvp topicalization)

The Syntax and Semantics of Focus-sensitive Particles in German

We propose a comprehensive account of both the distribution and the interpretation of German focus particles such as nur, auch and sogar (‘only’, ‘also’, ‘even’). We argue that they always adjoin to non-arguments (in recent terms this means that they can adjoin to VPs, IPs, APs and root CPs, but never to argument DPs or argument CPs), and that they do not undergo LF raising. Presenting a range ...

Syntax and Semantics of Causal denn in German

This paper presents a new analysis of denn (because) in German. In addition to causal links between propositions, denn can express the causation of epistemically judged propositions or of speech acts. Denn’s behavior is explained by two properties: On the semantics side, I show that denn is a conventional implicature item. Syntactically, denn is a coordinating conjunction of CPs. These facts ex...

Prosody, Syntax and Parsing

We describe the modification of a grammar to take advantage of prosodic information provided by a speech recognition system. This initial study is limited to the use of relative duration of phonetic segments in the assignment of syntactic structure, specifically in ruling out alternative parses in otherwise ambiguous sentences. Taking advantage of prosodic information in parsing can make a spok...