<OT> New Posting: ROA-566

[roa@equinox.rutgers.edu]

ROA 566-1202

The optimal placement of 'up' and 'ab' - A comparison

Nicole Dehé <ndehe@tu-bs.de>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=566


Abstract:
The particle verb construction (PVC), also referred to 
in the literature as phrasal verb or separable complex 
verb, occurs in most if not all of the Germanic 
languages. The work presented here deals with a 
comparison of the transitive PVC in English and German. 
In English, the construction occurs in two alternating 
word orders (They called off the concert vs. They called 
the concert off). In German, on the other hand, only one 
order is possible (Sie sagten das Konzert ab vs. *Sie 
sagten ab das Konzert; *Sie absagten das Konzert). The 
central question is why this kind of word order 
alternation is possible in a language with otherwise 
relatively strict word order such as English, but not in 
a related language such as German which is otherwise 
freer in its constituent ordering, allowing e.g. for 
scrambling. The difference between the two languages 
cannot be reduced to the fact that German but not 
English is a verb-second language. In this article, the 
pattern is explained in terms of (the ranking of) 
violable universal constraints. The relevant constraints 
are not only morphosyntactic in nature, but focus 
structure and prosody play a crucial role, too.

Keywords: particle verbs, phrasal verbs, separable complex verbs, word
order alternation, English, German, focus structure

Areas: Information Structure

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=566