Hubert Truckenbrodt

Dieser Artikel gibt einen Überblick über Analysen und Ergebnisse zur Satzprosodie des Deutschen aus der Sicht des Autors. Dabei stehen die zumeist diskutierten Deklarativsätze im Zentrum der Diskussion. In Abschnitt 1 werden zunächst unterschiedliche Analysen verglichen und es wird eine angenommen, welche u.a. einen Baustein aus den Arbeiten des Autors verwendet. Abschnitt 2 thematisiert die Interaktion mit unterschiedlichen bekannten Faktoren wie kontextuelle Gegebenheit, W-Bewegung, V-nach-C-Bewegung, Topiks und Scrambling. Abschnitt 3 stellt die Analyse des Deutschen kurz in den Kontext einer Analyse des Englischen. Abschnitt 4 bettet die Analyse in die Theorie der Prosodischen Phonologie ein. Andere neuere Vorschläge werden in Abschnitt 5 diskutiert. Abschnitt 6 umfasst abschließende Bemerkungen und eine Zusammenfassung.

This paper documents an unexpected interaction between modal flavour and modal force in the domain of the German necessity modals muss (≈ ‘must’) and soll (≈ ‘be supposed to’) and their Konjunktiv II-inflected versions müsste and sollte. We argue for the following three proposals. First, muss and soll have largely disjoint modal flavours, in both the root and epistemic domains. The root modal flavours of muss are deontic, teleological, and a restricted bouletic use, while root soll is lexically bouletic, allowing deontic inferences; epistemic muss is inferential, while epistemic soll is reportative. Second, the addition of Konjunktiv II counterfactual morphology can create weak necessity modals, as expected on the cross-linguistic account of von Fintel and Iatridou (2008). However, an unanticipated effect on modal flavor occurs. When soll turns into its Konjunktiv II form sollte, it not only becomes a weak necessity modal, it also changes its modal flavours to those of muss. Sollte is thus semantically a weak necessity form of muss, not of soll. Third, the Konjunktiv II form of muss, namely müsste, also shows an unexpected quirk. We analyze this as the interference of polite Konjunktiv II, analyzed as free factive subjunctive (Csipak 2015), with the weak necessity reading. The paper also includes a comparison of the German modals with English have to, should and be supposed to.

This short report presents an experimental exploration of the intonation of German embedded clauses, based on the data of an Austrian speaker of German. The right edge of an intonation phrase is indicated by upstep and by edge tones with this speaker. A right edge of an intonation phrase is regularly found at the right edge of clauses, including embedded clauses, though not preceding medial left edges of clauses. This cannot be captured by the proposal of Downing (1970) to the effect that only root clauses form obligatory intonation phrases, and suggests that clauses affect intonation phrase formation even when they are syntactically more deeply embedded. A brief account in Optimality Theory is presented that relates the present findings to those discussed by Downing. The account generalizes the interaction of Alignment and Wrapping from phonological phrases to intonation phrases.

This paper argues for a meaning of matrix interrogatives as ,Bring it about that it is common ground [whether .. . ]', where [whether .. .] stands for the meaning of an embedded interrogative. This is a modification of the imperative-epistemic approach of Äqvist and Hintikka. The new element is that the common ground, proposed for assertions by Stalnaker, is a central element of the meaning of matrix interrogatives. Evidence comes from non-standard uses of the interrogative form, such as pedagogical, rhetorical, didactic, and deliberate questions and from expectations about the addressee's knowledge, among other things. A comparison of Gerrnan V-to-C interrogatives and imperatives with the meanings of finite verb-final questions and infinite verb- inal clauses (sentence forrns specific to Gerrnan) suggests a new hypothesis about why the finite verb moves to C in Gerrnan: lt seems that this is correlated with the presence of a specification of the addressee in the meaning of a sentence type.