{"title":"What does a verb? Indicate sentence type","authors":"A. Speyer","doi":"10.1075/ml.00009.spe","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract An important task of the verb in German is to indicate sentence type. Depending on where the verb is positioned, the clause is a declarative (verb after the first constituent, which can be any constituent), wh-interrogative (verb after the first constituent, being the wh-phrase), yes/no-interrogative (verb in first position, bearing indicative or subjunctive mood) or imperative clause (verb in first position, bearing imperative mood). This system developed out of a system in which sentence type was indicated by clause-final sentence mood particles, as is usual in older Indo-European (and Semitic) languages. In declarative sentences, the verb-second syntax only came about shortly before the Old High German attestation sets in. We can trace the gradual development of the modern German verb-second syntax with variable prefield from a clear topic-comment structure to a more flexible structure.","PeriodicalId":45215,"journal":{"name":"Mental Lexicon","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6000,"publicationDate":"2019-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1075/ml.00009.spe","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Mental Lexicon","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.00009.spe","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract An important task of the verb in German is to indicate sentence type. Depending on where the verb is positioned, the clause is a declarative (verb after the first constituent, which can be any constituent), wh-interrogative (verb after the first constituent, being the wh-phrase), yes/no-interrogative (verb in first position, bearing indicative or subjunctive mood) or imperative clause (verb in first position, bearing imperative mood). This system developed out of a system in which sentence type was indicated by clause-final sentence mood particles, as is usual in older Indo-European (and Semitic) languages. In declarative sentences, the verb-second syntax only came about shortly before the Old High German attestation sets in. We can trace the gradual development of the modern German verb-second syntax with variable prefield from a clear topic-comment structure to a more flexible structure.
期刊介绍:
The Mental Lexicon is an interdisciplinary journal that provides an international forum for research that bears on the issues of the representation and processing of words in the mind and brain. We encourage both the submission of original research and reviews of significant new developments in the understanding of the mental lexicon. The journal publishes work that includes, but is not limited to the following: Models of the representation of words in the mind Computational models of lexical access and production Experimental investigations of lexical processing Neurolinguistic studies of lexical impairment. Functional neuroimaging and lexical representation in the brain Lexical development across the lifespan Lexical processing in second language acquisition The bilingual mental lexicon Lexical and morphological structure across languages Formal models of lexical structure Corpus research on the lexicon New experimental paradigms and statistical techniques for mental lexicon research.