Linguistische Berichte Heft 209

The aim of the present article is twofold. Firstly I want to illustrate that German shows grammatical phenomena that remind one of split ergativity. Thus I want to present case marking patterns in (Modern High) German that help to understand a phenomenon that is supposed to be very exotic and difficult to grasp for a German native speaker. The second contribution is the proposal of a case linking mechanism that is different from the preponderant proposals on the market by Wunderlich (1994/1997), Primus (1999b) and Haider (1993). Although this linking device is still to be developed further and has been formulated mainly for German, it is offered here to apply quite generally.

This paper compares the German Resultativconstruction and the Chinese ba-construction and reveals their similarities in syntactic, semantic properties, argument structure and cognitive conception. Both the constructions require the transitivity and activity of the primary verb, yet in different ways: the transitivity of the German verb is realized through the four cases of the noun while that of the Chinese verb is achieved by the use of the particle ba. Also, the extension and change in the argument structure of the primary verb which is caused by the introduction of the secondary predicate exist in both constructions. Therefore, we can say the two constructions share the same cognitive basis. Finally, the paper tries to explain the two constructions in cognitive perspective through perception in time and space and claims that both constructions are projected and developed from move-imageschema (start—path—goal schema). When they are constructed, they are confined by the agent predicate and the theme predicate. The primary predicate and the secondary resultative predicate must be connected by a time and causative relation. These similarities show that people fundamentally share the same principle in their perception and cognition of the world and thus share the same principle in organizing information while constructing similar syntactic structures.

Sentential force is a complex category which is realized at the left (or right) periphery of clauses. In the Germanic V/2-languages (especially in German), the interaction of various components of the grammatical system is responsible for the constitution of sentential force which can be understood as a preliminary stage of illocutionary force. This paper deals with assumptions about the grammatical means, their properties and combinatorial capabilities to derive intuitively adequate representations of what is usually designated as sentential force. In particular, the paper proposes a compositional theory of sentential forces which deals with the V/2-property, ±wh-movement and verbal mood as basic elements and operations. Together with the respective semantic representations, sentential force is derivable from a few semantic principles without the need of a syntactic projection ForceP.