Ralf Vogel

Grammatiken sind (metaphorisch gesprochen) Anweisungen zum richtigen Gebrauch einer Sprache. Interessanterweise zeigen Grammatiken offenbar Lücken, die dadurch entstehen, dass für bestimmte Bereiche Regeln (bzw. Formen) ganz fehlen oder dass [...]

The syntax of object-related anaphora in German has been subject to a controversy that includes the acceptability status of crucial example sentences, and the relevance of systematic empirical research for syntactic theory. In this paper, the relevant data and results are recapitulated. I show that some results from an experimental study by Featherston & Sternefeld (2003) are confounded by a problem first observed by Jackendoff (1992). Once this problem has been taken into account, it turns out that an observation about object related binding of reciprocals with the verb vorstellen ('to introduce'), thus far treated as exceptional, is the best kind of evidence to answer the question whether object-related anaphors obey the obliqueness hierarchy of case forms. To fully understand the patterns of German reflexivization, it is necessary to take into account patterns of complex reflexives formed with intensifiers like selbst . It is claimed that the intensifiers serve different purposes in different contexts. In the case of complex reflexives bound by dative objects, their interpretation is governed by pragmatic principles.

We report the results of an experimental and a corpus study on free relative constructions with the case ambiguous German wh-pronoun 'was' ('what'). Case conflicts in German free relative constructions lead to reduced acceptability, though not necessarily unacceptability. The aim of this study is to clarify whether the case conflict is only a surface phenomenon, or whether a conflict in the abstract case features only is sufficient to yield reduced acceptability/frequency. The results support the former point of view.A second result of our corpus study must be explained in terms of abstract case, however: The overall frequency of the most problematic conflicting case pattern is unexpectedly low. This can be interpreted as an effect of syntactic markedness on processes of speech planning.The results of a further experiment about conflicting case requirements on the objects of coordinated transitive verbs confirm the position defended in this paper: here, we have a truly syntactic case conflict and no degraded acceptability is observed. Case conflicts can only be resolved if they are morphological, not if they are syntactic.