# Is the 'Vorfeld' of a German clause a single slot?



## Sibutlasi

Hello all!

The German reference grammars/textbooks I have seen so far all insist, with very minor - and at bottom irrelevant - qualification, that the ‘Vorfeld’ of a German clause is a *unique* functional slot and must contain a *single *syntactic constituent.  They also typically explain that phenomenon as a consequence of the ‘V-second’ property of German, which some spell out as a) the finite verb in the position alternatively occupied by “dass” and “ob” in subordinate clauses (technically: ‘Comp’) and b) the content of the ‘Vorfeld’ in the ‘specifier of Comp’ (a structural position directly 'to the left' of Comp, with no comma inbetween), a standard view in German 'generative' grammar up to the late 1980’s. 

However, if that is right, the ‘Vorfeld’ must lodge elements with very different syntactic, informational and prosodic properties, i.e., in view of what the same grammars claim to be its possible exponents, it must minimally accommodate no less than *ten* *different* classes of constituents: 1) all ‘unmarked’ subjects, 2) mere place-holders like “es” (as in “Es ist klar, daß …”), 3) non-referential “es” (as in “Es regnet”), 4) referential “es” (as in “Es [< Dieses Wort] ist schwer zu übersetzen”), 5) non-contrastive ‘topics’ (e.g., “Geld haben wir kein mehr__”), 6) ‘contrastive topics’ (as in “DÁs kann ich nicht __versprechen”, “VersprÉchen kann ich das nicht __”, respectively implying that there is something else the speaker can promise, or something else he can do, but not promise), and *four* different classes of strongly stressed ‘foci’, i.e., 7) interrogatives like “Wer”, “Was”, “Wem”, 8) exclamatives like “was für…”, “wie”, 9) negative emphatic adverbials like “Nie”, “Nirgends”, “Niemals”…, and 10) ‘big mess’ expressions like “So ein(e) + N …, etc. At least! [Actually, some grammars further include the initial finite verb of yes/no questions, imperatives, and some desiderative and conditional clauses among the 'exponents' of the 'Vorfeld', rather than assuming it sits in 'V-2' with an 'empty' 'Vorfeld', a complication I prefer to ignore here].

That is highly suspicious, though, because, in closely related languages (e.g., English - or Spanish, for that matter), pairs of perfectly parallel elements to nearly all those just listed do *not* occupy the same structural position and so can, under appropriate circumstances, co-occur, as later research in generative grammar has firmly established. 

Now, couldn´t the German ‘Vorfeld’ be equally complex, except that, for reasons yet to be clarified, the exponents of syntactic functions like 'topic', 'focus', and 'subject' cannot co-occur in any single clause (*if* that is what really happens)? Or perhaps that is *not quite* what happens and, as a matter of fact, there are cases in which a topic and a focus (or a topic and a subject) can co-occur, and precisely in that left-to-right order, before the finite verb? If so, could anybody here supply relevant examples?

Thank you in advance.

S.


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## berndf

Sibutlasi said:


> That is highly suspicious, though, because, in closely related languages (e.g., English - or Spanish, for that matter), ...


Why is that suspicious. Neither English not Spanish are V2 languages. English used to be one until about 500-600 years ago, though never as strictly as other Germanic languages, but now definitly isn't any more. This has mainly to do with the loss of inflections in the Middle English period that made a strict word order (SVO in the case of modern English) necessary. Within Indo-European languages, V2 syntax is a peculiarity of Germanic languages.


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## Schimmelreiter

_Alle unsere Freunde in Österreich und Deutschland von unseren Hochzeitsvorbereitungen im Detail in Kenntnis gesetzt haben werden wir erst nächste Woche._

Is that helpful in any way?


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## berndf

Schimmelreiter said:


> _Alle unsere Freunde in Österreich und Deutschland von unseren Hochzeitsvorbereitungen im Detail in Kenntnis gesetzt haben werden wir erst nächste Woche._
> 
> Is that helpful in any way?


That is is fine example of an ungrammatical sentence. In which way would that be helpful?


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## Schimmelreiter

_Dabei gilt, dass die vom Prädikat abhängigen Objekte und Adverbialbestimmungen meist zusammen mit dem Prädikatsteil nach vorne verschoben werden._



Vorfeld​_Alles aufgeräumt haben_​_werden wir erst morgen.__Ihm vertrauen _​_kann ich nicht.__Über seine Herkunft gelogen _​_hatte auch der zweite Verdächtige.__So schnell fahren _​_solltest du wirklich nicht.
_


canoo


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## berndf

Now you are talking business.

These seeming violations of V2 syntax works only in so far as the prefield can plausibly be analysed as a single clause. That this indeed corresponds to way such sentences are intuitively structured by speakers is underscored by the fact that these sentences have a very restricted prosodic structure: the prefield clause can carry only one stress and the finite verb is unstressed and preceded by a hiatus.


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## Schimmelreiter

berndf said:


> Now you are talking business.
> 
> These seeming violations of V2 syntax works only in so far as the prefield can plausibly be analysed as a single clause. That this indeed corresponds to way such sentences are intuitively structured by speakers is underscored by the fact that these sentences have a very restricted prosodic structure: the prefield clause can carry only one stress and the finite verb is unstressed and preceded by a hiatus.


May I ask what makes you call the occupants of the prefield a _clause_​? I'd say that together with the finite verb, they constitute the predicate, which preserves the V2 principle.



PS
What you're saying about the restricted prosody is in line with my suggestion we speak of one predicate, or super-predicate, as it were: The prosody reflects the fact that the occupants of the prefield are so tightly knit together that they are merged into one super-predicate:

predicate: _aufgeräumt haben werden_ > "super-predicate": _alles aufgeräumt haben werden_ [wir erst morgen]

predicate: _vertrauen kann > _"super-predicate": _ihm vertrauen kann_ [ich nicht]

predicate: _gelogen hatte > _"super-predicate": _über seine Herkunft gelogen hatte_ [auch der zweite Verdächtige]

predicate: _fahren solltest > _"super-predicate": _so schnell fahren solltest_ [du wirklich nicht]

predicate: _in Kenntnis gesetzt haben werden > _"super-predicate": _a__lle unsere Freunde in Österreich und Deutschland von unseren Hochzeitsvorbereitungen im Detail in Kenntnis gesetzt haben werden _[wir erst nächste Woche]


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## berndf

Schimmelreiter said:


> May I ask what makes you call the occupants of the prefield a _clause_​? I'd say that together with the finite verb, they constitute the predicate, which preserves the V2 principle.


Because only depended objects and adverbals can be moved to the prefield together with exactly one main constituent which is in all the examples an infinitive, i.e. where all other constituents can be analysed as attributes of one and only one main constituent. In the words of the site you quoted:





> Dabei gilt, dass die vom Prädikat abhängigen Objekte und Adverbialbestimmungen meist zusammen mit dem Prädikatsteil nach vorne verschoben werden.


It is quite obviously a construction in analogy to non-finite clauses like _Ihn getroffen zu haben war ein Vergnügen_.

Maybe your #3 still fits the paradigm but it stretches it unduly; to my taste at least. But never mind.


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## Sibutlasi

berndf said:


> Why is that suspicious. Neither English not Spanish are V2 languages. English used to be one until about 500-600 years ago, though never as strictly as other Germanic languages, but now definitly isn't any more. This has mainly to do with the loss of inflections in the Middle English period that made a strict word order (SVO in the case of modern English) necessary. Within Indo-European languages, V2 syntax is a peculiarity of Germanic languages.




Thanks, Berndf.

It is suspicious because, in that case, the German 'Vorfeld' slot would be a derived structural position with *no* (distinctive) properties. It must be 'derived', as opposed to 'base-generated', because it has no proprietary 'resident', it behaves merely as an empty 'landing site' alternatively occupied by elements of different kinds whose 'canonical' position is, according to other clause rules, *somewhere else*, and it would be a property-less position because the 'unification' of the sets of properties of the 10 or more different elements it must accommodate is either *empty or trivial* (say, 'phrase', but neither +Topic, nor -Topic, neither +Focus nor -Focus, neither + Subject, nor -Subject, neither +Contrastive nor -Contrastive, etc. = the same for features like +/-referential (or +/-thematic), +/-Q[uestion], +/- Negative, +/-Emphatic, .... = all the features characteristic of the 10+ items in my list above). If the prefield is indeed a categoriless and featureless slot (an underspecified 'phrase', assuming the finite verb never occupies it), then why each of those 'displaced' elements must land precisely in it, rather than anywhere else, becomes inexplicable, and the clause-level grammar of German literally collapses.

 Saying that German is V2, even assuming V-2-ness were a categorical property of languages (which it is not, just as 'head-final' is not a categorical property of German _tout court_, nor 'head-initial' of English _tout court_, etc.) does not explain anything much in that respect. Of course it leads us to expect no more than one [phonologically integrated] pre-verbal element, but we still have to account for the fact that subjects, topics, foci, ...what not, should *all* have to land in that *unique* property-less slot. Not to mention the fact that V-2-ness need not interfere, anyway, with the possibility of attaching a phonologically 'dislocated' topic (a phrase followed by 'comma intonation'), before the 'prefield', as in (admittedly recherché, but grammatical) English examples like "Such a fantastic job, why should I say 'no' to __?", nor with the 'landing' of relatives before topics or foci in (also recherché, but not ungrammatical) cases like "This is a problem on which, really new ideas, I have not seen any __ for a long time" (= Relative < Topic < Subject <...) or "This is a mess you have made for which why/under no circumstances should I be made responsible __ __(?/.) (= Relative < +Q/+Emphatic Focus < Inverted Auxiliary < Subject,...). Etc. So, I still think we foreign learners of German do need a better understanding of the 'prefield' than current learner-oriented materials offer, 

S.


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## Sibutlasi

Schimmelreiter said:


> _Alle unsere Freunde in Österreich und Deutschland von unseren Hochzeitsvorbereitungen im Detail in Kenntnis gesetzt haben werden wir erst nächste Woche._
> 
> Is that helpful in any way?



Thank you again, Schimmelreiter.

No, it's not. , but it is still an interesting example, because, granted the rules grammars offer, it *should* be fine: the sequence "Alle.... gesetz haben" can perfectly well be *a single constituent* (a VP ultimately headed by "haben", preceded by a VP complement of "haben" headed, in its turn, by "gesetzt, preceded by the various complements and adjuncts of "gesetzt") and I see no reason why it should not be displaceable to the 'prefield' of the main clause headed by "werden" in V-2, as the clause rules of German allow. "Alle unsere Frende.... in Deutschland" has arguably 'risen' leftwards inside the fronted VP, as direct (and indirect) objects often do, but *not* beyond the boundaries of the VP complement of "haben"/"werden": in other words, the complement of "werden" has been shifted into the prefield as a block, but nothing has been extracted *from* it (and that's why the example should be fine, as well as irrelevant to the issue under discussion here). To the extent native speakers find it unacceptable, we must still be told why.

S.


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## Schimmelreiter

berndf said:


> It is quite obviously a construction in analogy to non-finite clauses like _Ihn getroffen zu haben war ein Vergnügen_.


Thank you. Very logical. I agree.

Now that we agree on the clause , isn't _ihn getroffen zu haben_ a predicative clause? And then, isn't this in line with my interpretation that whatever precedes the subject in those sentences is predicative? I invented the term "super-predicate" for it, probably over-creatively. It incorporates, in a merged form, the predicate proper and the object/adverbial dependent on it. Similarly, in 


berndf said:


> _Ihn getroffen zu haben war ein Vergnügen_.


the predicate consists of the predicative clause (which includes the object) and the finite verb. Needless to say the clause may also include an adverbial.


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## berndf

Schimmelreiter said:


> Now that we agree on the clause , isn't _ihn getroffen zu haben_ a predicative clause?


Or a subject clause, both interpretations are valid, I think. But I don't think that matters. Here is an example with a non-finite object clause: _Ihn getroffen zu haben berichtete er mir gestern_.


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## Schimmelreiter

Sibutlasi said:


> If the prefield is indeed a categoriless and featureless slot (an underspecified 'phrase', assuming the finite verb never occupies it), then why each of those 'displaced' elements must land precisely in it, rather than anywhere else, becomes inexplicable, and the clause-level grammar of German literally collapses.


It's not true they can't land anywhere else.

Let's take the dative object of the following sentence (unless emphasised, it precedes the accusative object):

_Ich gebe dem Mann das Buch._

If you wish to emphasise the dative object, _displacing_ it from its standard position, it need not at all necessarily _land _in the prefield:

_Ich gebe das Buch dem Mann._

It's just another option for it to _land _in the prefield:

_Dem Mann gebe ich das Buch.


_PS
Following is the standard organisation of the middlefield: 

_dative object - accusative object - imprecise temporal adjunct - precise temporal adjunct - causal adjunct - local adjunct - modal adjunct - complement

_All sorts of _displacements and landings within the middlefield _are possible. Replacing the subject with one of those in the prefield is just another option.


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## berndf

Sibutlasi said:


> It is suspicious because, in that case, the German 'Vorfeld' slot would be a derived structural position with *no* (distinctive) properties.


Yes, that is the gist of it. V2 syntax can at present only be described as a structural constraint. Should we one day decover the development that led to this structure we might know more. But in OHG the V2 structure was already almost fully developed.

As far as foreign learner of the modern language are concerned, I am afraid there really is nothing more to say other than that the finite verb has to be in second position and the very coarse heuristic that the prefield is occupied by the constituent the speaker wants to mark as the single most important for the message he is trying to convey.


Sibutlasi said:


> ...then why each of those 'displaced' elements must land precisely in it, rather than anywhere else, becomes inexplicable, and the clause-level grammar of German literally collapses.


Not _must_ but _may_. Placing a constituent other then the subject (or an object in case of subject-free sentences) in the prefield is an instrument the speaker has at his disposal to place particular emphasis on it.


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## Sibutlasi

Schimmelreiter said:


> Thank you. Very logical. I agree.
> 
> Now that we agree on the clause , isn't _ihn getroffen zu haben_ a predicative clause? And then, isn't this in line with my interpretation that whatever precedes the subject in those sentences is predicative? I invented the term "super-predicate" for it, probably over-creatively. It incorporates, in a merged form, the predicate proper and the object/adverbial dependent on it. Similarly, in
> the predicate consists of the predicative clause (which includes the object) and the finite verb. Needless to say the clause may also include an adverbial.




Hello,

Just for the sake of proper syntactic analysis: I do not think "ihn getroffen zu haben" can be categorized as a 'predicative' element in your sentence, and on two accounts. First, if the subject of your clause were "ein Vergnügen", as you claim, "ihn getroffen zu haben" would properly be an 'attribute', in this case, since the verb is an ordinary copula: "sein". [The term 'predicative' is used to describe 'attributes' of subjects (or objects) that accompany verbs *other than* the copula (e.g., "came back", in "He came back from Japan a different man", where "a different man" *is* a 'predicative' - or a 'secondary predicate', in current jargon). Such verbs, however, do not usually require the presence of the 'predicative', and that's why predicatives have often been associated to optional 'adverbials', whereas "sein", of course, does require an attribute, or the sentence is incomplete (cf. "*Karla ist__", "*Ihn getroffen zu haben ist__", "*Ein Vergnügen ist__")]. But, above all, second: in your clause, as pronounced in the absence of any indication of contrastive stress, "ihn getroffen zu haben" is not the 'attribute', but the subject (as Berndf alternatively suggests); it is "ein Vergnügen" that encodes the attribute. In that case there is no 'inversion', because nothing has been shifted into the prefield and ousted the subject; the subject sits in the prefield, "ist" is in V-2, and "ein Vergnügen" is the obligatory attribute. Indefinite noun phrases following the copula are typically attributes, not subjects, and, when they are, subject and attribute cannot be interchanged around the copula. This is what happens in your example, I believe: "To meet him was a pleasure" sounds natural, but "?A pleasure was to meet him" does not unless "pleasure" carries contrastive stress. I assume the same applies to the German examples: "Ihn getroffen zu haben war ein Vergnügen" sounds to me natural *without* any special stress, but "?*Ein Vergnügen war ihn getroffen zu haben" does not unless you stress it heavily, as in "Ein VerGNÜgen (,) war ihn getroffen zu haben". Do you agree, or perhaps things are different in German and I am wrong?

Of course all this is completely irrelevant to the point raised in this thread.

S.


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## berndf

Sibutlasi said:


> Just for the sake of proper syntactic analysis: I do not think "ihn getroffen zu haben" can be categorized as a 'predicative' element in your sentence, and on two accounts. First, if the subject of your clause were "ein Vergnügen", as you claim, "ihn getroffen zu haben" would properly be an 'attribute', in this case, since the verb is an ordinary copula: "sein". [The term 'predicative' is used to describe 'attributes' of subjects (or objects) that accompany verbs *other than* the copula...


P_redicative _is a generic term for predicative adjectives, nouns (or NPs) and clauses that (usually) *do* accompany a copula:
_Der Ball ist *rot.*
Das Gebäude ist *ein Wohnhaus.
*Dies ist, *was ich wollte.

*_Your seem to be accustomed to a somewhat different terminology than we are (which is this one).


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## Sibutlasi

Schimmelreiter said:


> It's not true they can't land anywhere else.



Obviously, I meant 'anywhere else in that pre-verbal area.' Whenever non-subject elements are shifted forward into the pre-verbal area, they must move exactly into that 'dummy' position known as the 'Vorfeld' (or that is the theory, anyway). They cannot land either after or before it. Of course, they *need not* move [this answers your correction with respect to "must/may", too, Berndf], and objects, adjuncts, etc. may also move into other (conceptually just as problematic) positions *after* the finite verb, but we are not talking about such displacements now. Starting with a basic sentence like "Ich gebe dem Mann das Buch","dem Mann" can shift leftwards and land in the 'Vorfeld', but the subject cannot remain there. Moving "dem Mann" leftwards into any other position in principle available in that pre-verbal area of the sentence is out: "*Dem Mann Ich gebe __ das Buch" is bad, as is "*Ich dem Mann gebe das Buch" (= the 'Vorfeld' is a unique slot). 

Of course, the problem is that all sorts of things are allowed to land in that very slot (which obscures its inherent properties), but not in theoretically possible ones immediately before or after it, and an explanation is needed, because 'displacements' are not gratuitous. Displacements occur *for some reason*, some special communicative (or just grammatical) effect that follows from the displacement operation, and such effects, in their turn, arise because of inherent architectural properties of the structural positions themselves (or of the heads that allow them to exist). That's general consensus, nowadays. The problem I raised is that, whereas the prefield 'position' clearly seems unique, it is impossible to identify any credible single 'effect' that moving something into it should have. 'Emphasis' ('Hervorhebung?') is too unspecific a term, and it is very dubious that it should make sense in all the cases involved: unmarked subjects, for one, are by no means 'emphatic', and yet they must occur precisely in the 'Vorfeld', exactly the same slot in which we want to say that marked topics and foci of all classes must move into to be interpreted as 'contrastive', 'focal', 'emphatic', ... whatever. That makes the ten or so different processes that land elements in the 'Vorfeld' seem arbitrary from both the grammatical and the 'functional' (discourse, communication) perspective, which is, of course, very unsatisfactory. 

Unfortunately, displacement into the 'Vorfeld' is not the only grammatical operation that seems obscure as to its effects/motivations; for example, why objects often move into positions above (= to the left of) negation but to the right of V/2 is just as obscure, since you mention to the freedom of elements in the 'Mittelfeld'. Perhaps the technical literature on German grammar of the last two decades has already offered more detailed analyses of the properties of such 'landing sites' and the displacement operations themselves can by now be functionally/syntactically justified, I do not know, I'm not really familiar with the recent technical literature on German grammar, but such progress, if real, does not yet seem to have benefited the German-as-a-foreign-language teaching materials available, and it would be nice if it did.

S.


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## Sibutlasi

berndf said:


> P_redicative _is a generic term for predicative adjectives, nouns (or NPs) and clauses that (usually) *do* accompany a copula:
> _Der Ball ist *rot.*
> Das Gebäude ist *ein Wohnhaus.
> *Dies ist, *was ich wollte.
> 
> *_Your seem to be accustomed to a somewhat different terminology than we are (which is this one).



Well, obviously, my sources, terminology-wise, are not Wikipedia articles, but terminology does not really matter. My second reason for objecting to "ihn getroffen zu haben" as a predicative/attribute (in that sentence) is more substantial, I think.

S.


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## berndf

Sibutlasi said:


> Displacements occur *for some reason*...


Yes, emphasis.


Sibutlasi said:


> ..., some special communicative (or just grammatical) effect that follows from the displacement operation, and such effects, in their turn, arise because of inherent architectural properties of the structural positions themselves (or of the heads that allow them to exist). *That's general consensus, nowadays*.


No, only among those who think that Chomsiky is a great linguist and the GG/TG is the correct approach to linguistics. I am not not one of them and I don't think SR is one either.


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## berndf

Sibutlasi said:


> Well, obviously, my sources, terminology-wise, are not Wikipedia articles, but terminology does not really matter.


Indeed it doesn't. The description in Wikipedia just happens to match the use I have been accustomed to for decades.


Sibutlasi said:


> My second reason for objecting to "ihn getroffen zu haben" as a predicative/attribute (in that sentence) is more substantial, I think.


I agree with you except that _Ein Vergnügen war ihn getroffen zu haben _carries already sufficient stress on_ Vergnügen_ merely through word order and doesn't need to be reenforced prosodically. The copula _sein_ (as opposed to the intransitive verb _sein_ in the sense of _exist_) has in principle three possible semantics:
1._ A <_conjugation of_ sein> B_ (unmarked) or _B <conjugation of sein> A_ (marked) := _A ∈ B_ or _A ⊆ B_.
2. _A <_conjugation of_ sein> B_ (unmarked) or _B <conjugation of sein> A_ (marked) := _B(A)_.
3. _A <_conjugation of_ sein> B_ := _A = B_.
Cases 1. and 2. are semantically asymmetrical and it is clear what is subject and what is predicative (in my terminology). The relevant meaning in our case is obviously 2. and the word order B _ist_ A is already sufficently marked. You would need prosodic support only in case 3.


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## Schimmelreiter

From _Sprache und Pragmatik_:

_Morelli in seiner Not wandte sich... _
_Effenberg indessen beschuldigte... _
_Einer Dame rote Rosen sollte jeder Gentleman mitbringen. _

I thought we might discuss those.

I find all three admissible.

One might call _Morelli in seiner Not_ the subject, likewise _Effenberg indessen_, with the postponed adverbials _in seiner Not _and _indessen _behaving like postponed attributes.

And _einer Dame rote Rosen [mitbringen] _is again a quasi-clause?

Any ideas?


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## Sibutlasi

berndf said:


> I agree with you except that _Ein Vergnügen war ihn getroffen zu haben _carries already sufficient stress on_ Vergnügen_ merely through word order and doesn't need to be reenforced prosodically.



Thanks, Berndf, but the 'sufficient stress' "Vergnügen" would receive as a consequence of its occurring in a marked word order in "Ein Vergnügen war ihn getroffen zu haben" would be indistinguishable from the 'prosodic reinforcement' I had in mind in my earlier discussion of that sentence. I think we fully agree, in this respect.



> The copula _sein_ (as opposed to the intransitive verb _sein_ in the sense of _exist_) has in principle three possible semantics:
> 1._ A <_conjugation of_ sein> B_ (unmarked) or _B <conjugation of sein> A_ (marked) := _A ∈ B_ or _A ⊆ B_.
> 2. _A <_conjugation of_ sein> B_ (unmarked) or _B <conjugation of sein> A_ (marked) := _B(A)_.
> 3. _A <_conjugation of_ sein> B_ := _A = B_.
> Cases 1. and 2. are semantically asymmetrical and it is clear what is subject and what is predicative (in my terminology). The relevant meaning in our case is obviously 2. and the word order B _ist_ A is already sufficently marked. You would need prosodic support only in case 3.



This is entirely marginal to the issue in this thread, and I do not feel well about insisting here, but Are you sure that the German copula "sein" has *three* semantic values rather than just *two*? Identity (your case 3) and class membership/(proper) set inclusion (your case 1) are clear enough, but 'function application' [= 'B(A)', (your case 2)] reduces to case 1, as far as I know, since 'functions' extensionally reduce to 'sets', too. Informally, 'B(A)' means 'A is in B', or, in a formal, extensional interpretation, in truth-conditional terms, 'B(A) is true iff A is in B', where B is a set, A may be a first-order entity or an nth-order set (or 'proper subset' of B), and 'in' spells either set-membership or (proper) set inclusion. Am I missing something about the semantic interpretation of "Ihn getroffen zu haben war ein Vergnügen"?

Anyway, thanks for the details.

S.


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## berndf

Sets are if course defined in terms of properties and expressions can be extensionally equivalently transformed. I would still consider the sentences "this car is red" and "this car is a Mercedes" sufficiently different in logic that it worth mentioning. But you are right, all this is completely marginal to our question.


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## Sibutlasi

Schimmelreiter said:


> From _Sprache und Pragmatik_:
> 
> _Morelli in seiner Not wandte sich... _
> _Effenberg indessen beschuldigte... _
> _Einer Dame rote Rosen sollte jeder Gentleman mitbringen. _
> 
> I thought we might discuss those.
> 
> I find all three admissible.
> 
> One might call _Morelli in seiner Not_ the subject, likewise _Effenberg indessen_, with the postponed adverbials _in seiner Not _and _indessen _behaving like postponed attributes.
> 
> And _einer Dame rote Rosen [mitbringen] _is again a quasi-clause?
> 
> Any ideas?



Thanks, Schimmelreiter.

Your first and third examples seem to me relevant exceptions to the would-be rule 'the Vorfeld must be a single constituent'. 

In the first case, although you do not supply the full sentence and, in very special circumstances, sequences of that form [N(P) + Prepositional Phrase] *can* in other languages be single constituents, actually 'small clauses' of sorts (e.g., in English, ["Lenny in pink shorts] was quite a sight"), in this case the presence of the reflexive "sich" strongly suggests the alternative analysis [Morelli] + [in seiner Not] + [wandte sich...], because under the single constituent analysis [Morelli + in seiner Not] ... etc.  the subject would *not* c-command the reflexive and the sentence should violate Principle A of Binding Theory (= reflexives must be bound by suitable antecedents) and be ungrammatical. Hence, unless "in seiner Not" is 'dislocated' (and the two commas are missing), if the sentence is acceptable it is indeed an exception to the pre-field rule.

In your third example, "einer Dame" and "rote Rosen" obviously play two different syntactic/semantic roles (IO: Recipient, DO: Theme) and would certainly have to count as two separate constituents. Although, under all analyses derived from Larson's (1988) 'shell theory', IO ... DO are both dominated by *a single* VP node, in this case it is obvious that that 'extended' VP has *not* been shifted into the Vorfeld _in toto_, as the presence of its head verb ("mitbringen") at the end of the clause clearly shows. If the whole VP had been shifted forwards, the result would have been "[Einer Dame rote rosen mitbringen] sollte jeder Gentleman", which seeems to me fine, if a bit unbalanced. On the contrary, separately shifting "Einer Dame" and "rote Rosen" forwards into a unique prefield position should be impossible. Since you find the sentence OK, perhaps the prefield has more than one position, after all. 

Your second example, on the contrary, does not seem to me to by itself supply evidence against the 'unique Vorfeld slot' restriction, because certain adverbials (adverbs, PPs) *can* occur between the subject and the finite verb attached to the category that dominates the latter (i.e., not in the prefield), and, in view of its meaning, "indessen" could very well be one of those. 

To avoid this source of uncertainty, I think we should choose examples in which either a topic or a focus is shifted forwards along with some other constituent of those known to be possible exponents of the prefield, e.g., "?Rote Rosen, meiner Frau habe ich nie mitgebracht", "?Meiner Frau, rote Rosen habe ich nie mitgebracht", ?Meiner Frau, niemals habe ich rote Rosen mitgebracht", "?Rote Rosen, wem sollte jeder Gentleman mitbringen?". All invented, and possibly wrong, of course. Yet, all of them sound to me much better than "*Wem, rote Rosen sollte jeder Gentleman mitbringen?", where a focus ("Wem") has been expelled from the slot next to V2 (and dislocated, note the comma) in order to leave a topic in it; that suggests that Topic < Focus < V-2 is either fine or a lighter violation of the rules than *Focus < Topic < V-2, which, if true, of course, is perfectly in tune with what happens in other languages that allow for a more articulated left periphery. In Spanish, for one, it is possible to front several topics provided none of them intervenes between the "WH" Focus and the verb : "Tú, los regalos, a tu mujer, ¿cómo se los mandas?" (= "You, the presents, to your wife, how her them send-you?")

S.


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