German Partial-VP Topicalization Revisited

The topicalization of partial verbal projections in German (henceforth: pvp topicalization) has received much attention because the variable constituency it displays is a challenge to the traditionally central role of constituent structure. In the HPSG framework, Pollard (1996, orig. ms. 1990), and more recently Hinrichs and Nakazawa (1994) and Nerbonne (1994) met this challenge with a variety of mechanisms and drew conclusions for the general architecture: Pollard showed how the extended notion of valence introduced by argument raising (Hinrichs and Nakazawa 1989) can be used to license the required multiple structures. Nerbonne introduced a nonmonotonic device to relax certain requirements for fronted constituents and claimed that only a traceless analysis can provide a satisfactory account. Hinrichs and Nakazawa based their analysis on a special lexical rule constructing new constituents for topicalization only and strengthened the unbounded dependency mechanism to be able to license topicalized constituents containing a gap.