Linguistische Berichte Heft 183

Within the Davidsonian paradigm copula-predicative constructions are commonly assumed to involve a state argument. Its source is taken tobe either the copula be (cf. e.g. Bierwisch 1988, Kamp & Reyle 1993, Rothstein 1999) or the predicative (cf. e.g. Parsons 1990 and the stage level/individual level debate following Kratzer 1989/1995). Yet, a critical examination of copula-predicative constructions in contexts that call for a Davidsonian argument (perception verbs, locative modifiers, manner adverbials, etc.) reveals that they do not behave as expected. The data examined here indicate that copula-predicative constructions lack a Davidsonian argument and they provide counterevidence to the assumption put forth by stage level/individual level accounts that there is a grarnmatically reflected distinction between temporary and permanent properties. The present paper takes an alternative stance and argues for a grammatical distinction between true state verbs like sit, stand, wait and statives like resemble, know, hate, cost. While state verbs introduce a full-fledged Davidsonian argument, statives only provide a temporal argument. Copula-predicative constructions are shown to belong uniformly to the class of statives. That is, they display a temporal argument whose source is the copula. The differences in acceptability observed with temporary vs. permanent properties are accounted for pragmatically on the basis of conversational implicatures.

In „Illokutionäre Akte und Konventionalität" (2000) I argue that the speech-act models of Searle and Bach & Harnish mistakenly reconstruct Austin's term „illocutionary act". The issue of the present article is to provide terms for a more adequate analysis of „illocutionary act" in Austin's sense. Searle's concept of „counts-as"-rules contains important relations to Austin's „conventional consequences". Bach & Hamish have made explicit that „counts-as"-rules and therefore „conventional facts" are to be explained by something like „mutual belief in a community or group". The terms „illocutionary convention", ,,illocutionary intention" and ,,conventional fact" are determined based on these thoughts.

IPP constructions pose a longstanding problem for syntactic theory: An unexpected form (the infinitive) shows up in certain constructions where the past participle would be expected. I shall argue that !PP constructions can be analysed in an optimality theoretic framework (Prince & Smolensky 1993, for syntax see e.g. Grimshaw 1997) as a kind of last resort strategy. Not only cases of obligatory and impossible IPP but also cases of optional IPP can be accounted for crosslinguistically by the optimality theoretic interaction of faithfulness constraints and markedness constraints.

The following investigation is part of a !arger psycholinguistic project on the use of transcription systems in research on spoken discourse. Notation of pause occurrence and duration has become common in such transcription. To date, however, there has been a Jack of empirical research to evaluate the accuracy and efficiency of such notations based on transcribers' perceptual reports. The present research examines one English and two German excerpts of spoken discourse transcribed according to the prosodic transcription of the Survey of English Usage (SEU), the Halbinterpretative Arbeitstranskriptionen (HIAT), and the Gesprächsanalytisches Transkriptionssystem (GAT), respectively. The tape recordings were subjected to acoustic measurement and the measured pauses compared with the pauses notated on the basis of perceptual judgement. This comparison revealed that long (::: 1.0 sec) and medium(> 0.30 - < 1.0 sec) pauses were transcribed relatively accurately, but short pauses (::: 0.12 - $; 0.30 sec) were not; both false alarms and misses occurred. Scaling of pause duration was found to be ordinal, but not in accord with the interval and ratio scales specified within the SEU and GAT notation systems, respectively. The results suggest that the three transcription systems overburden even trained transcribers beyond their capacity.