Antje Roßdeutscher

The paper presents the results of a comprehensive case study which examined to what extent the semantics of particle verbs with auf can be understood as composed from the semantics of their parts. We give substance to our leading hypothesis that the semantics of particle constructions can be reconstructed as rule-based by means of semantics construction algorithms in a DRT-based framework. The compositional process is displayed through merging the semantic representations of the verbal root and the particle. Composition, as it is made operative in the DRT-framework, is akin to processes of presupposition justification as familiar from Dynamic Semantics. This method is shown appropriate for modelling the wide spectrum of compositional mechanisms which have to be taken into account in the formal semantics of particle verbs. The ambiguity of the particle auf can be reconstructed as restricted to only a few core meanings, some of which are familiar from the literature. We present lexical entries for the core meanings, apply them in the semantics construction and discuss sub-cases as well as metaphorical extensions.

The paper presents a theory of the semantics und the discourse effects of German temporal dann in its sentence-initial and its sentence-internal position. The theory provides an algorithmic reconstruction of these differences on the basis of a single specification of the semantics of dann, which interacts with other semantic elements at sentence and discourse level in ways that vary with its position. The requirement which dann imposes is that the time it denotes is separated from the time which the narration had reached by a change in some contextually salient property of a topical discourse referent. What is available as contextually salient property depends on whether dann occurs at the beginning of a sentence or in the middle of it. Integration of this insight into a general account of semantic processing entails a shift of perspective in current semantic theory. Semantic processing must now be treated as incremental not only sentence by sentence but word by word.The paper also shows how the requirements which dann imposes on context in the different positions it can occupy interact with interpretation principles involving causation, initiated action and planned action. In this connection we introduce the distinction between ,continuous' and ,discontinuous' descriptions of event sequence.