Werner Abraham
Biographic Data
| ID | 603812 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Werner Abraham |
| GIVEN NAMES | Werner |
| FAMILY NAME | Abraham |
| SIGNATURE | ABRAHAM W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Groningen |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6739-7941 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 92 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 16 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 72 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 20 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1970 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Episodic versus generic eventualities and nominals: The unified link between sentence structure and DP-structure in Chinese and German
This paper proposes an analysis of the DP structure of Chinese in comparison with German and other West Germanic languages, particularly English. The analysis is linked to sentence structure, particularly event structure of the respective languages and the relation between nominal classifiers and sentential tense. Chinese is a language without nominal declension; German is not as other Indo-European languages. Among the inflectional paradigms, Ge…
Mood alternation in German: Negation as a specific case of epistemic weakening
This paper is mainly about a unique case of syntactic epistemic weakening, i.e. the present subjunctive mood and its negation trigger in surface coordination. In contrast to modern colloquial German, which limits the use of the present subjunctive quite restrictively to root clauses, the older periods of German, Old and Middle High German, showed an extended use of the subjunctive beyond root, i.e. also in dependent structures. However, the seman…
Subjunctions as Discourse Markers? About Appropriate Arguments on the Topic ‘Insubordinate Subordination’
The present paper is about types of seeming subordination (i.e. subordination by form), which in fact bears all distributional assets of insubordination. Yet, such insubordinate subordination is characterized by sentential autonomy in terms of illocutive force (i.e., it is not only presupposed as subordinates usually are). It will be shown that a reliable diagnostic is provided by the selection of modal particles in the narrow sense, which German…
Pervasive underspecification of diathesis, modality, and structural case coding: The gerund in historical and modern German
The focus of this paper is about the copula+infinitive in Modern German, its older stages, and its dialectal and sociolectal varieties. In doing so, the paper comes to conclusions different from other discussion of this topic, mainly Demske 1994. The prepositional infinitive and the verbal substantive (gerund) in modern German are not only minimally distinct syntactic structures, but they also have a clear sociolectal distribution: gerunds are mo…
Prädikative Kopula+Infinitiv-Formen und ihre Funktionen im Deutschen. Die Kopula unter Bühlerscher Desambigierung
Zum grundsätzlichen Unterschied von Ereignissubjunktion (de re) und Prämissensubjunktion (de dicto) im Westgermanischen: On the principled distinction of event subjunctions (de re) and premiss subjunc…
Es ist bekannt, dass neben weil als unterordnender Subjunktion ( weil -Vletzt) weil ebenso in nebenordnender Koordination ( weil -V2) erscheinen kann. Dies geschieht aufgrund normativen Drucks zwar bloß im mündlichen Ausdruck – und wird deshalb im Schulunterricht als grammatischer Fehler gebrandmarkt. Die jüngste Forschung hat aber gezeigt, dass weil -V2 immer stärker vordringt. Die schulische Entscheidung beruht auf einem grundsätzlichen Irrtum:…
Konstruktionsgrammatik ist analytische Grammatik unter empirischen Frequenzvoraussetzungen. Die ‚Passivfamilie‘
Prädikative Kopula + Infinitiv-Formen und ihre Funktionen im Deutschen. Die Kopula unter Bühlerscher Desambigierung
Im Deutschen gibt es mehrere Formen der Kopula+Infinitiv-Struktur, deren Bedeutungen sich zum Teil decken, zum anderen Teil jedoch trennen. Die vorliegende Diskussion geht zum einen der Frage nach, wie bei solchen Formen die Absentivbedeutung (de Groot 2000, Abraham 2007) zustande kommt – ob sie nach rein lexikalischen Voraussetzungen zustande kommt, nachgrammatischen oder nach origo-pragmatischen Diskursvoraussetzungen – undinwieweit sich die un…
Modes of modality: Modality, Typology, and Universal Grammar
Beobachtungen zum „Schicksalsfutur“ mit sollte . Ein Beitrag zu ‘Tempus und Textualität’
The present paper deals with the so-called ‘fate future’, a use of the German modal verb sollen in a specific epistemic usage. It will be shown that the fate future rests on the reportative reading of sollte and that other modals in the paradigm cannot replace sollte +infinitive in the specific reading of the fate future. Very generally, the position is held that epistemic readings of the modals are not due to Traugott's grammaticalizing notion o…
Dialektsyntax
Funktionen von Modalität
The term “modality” encompasses a number of categories: modal verbs, modal particles, and confirmatory questions. This volume examines, on the one hand, the common features of basic modal and epistemic versions of modal verbs, and, on the other, modal particles. What level of certainty do words of this kind communicate to the listener? This is the key question posed by the work.
The Case Differential: Syntagmatic Versus Paradigmatic Case – Its Status In Synchrony And Diachrony
In today’s leading discussions on case and its licensing mechanics there is only one approach: the syntagmatic type of case assignment. In contrast, the present article describes patterns of paradigmatic case assignment. Paradigmatic case assignment means that two different m(orphological)‐cases fill one slot licensed for the same theta role, whereas under the strategy of syntagmatic case assignment there is just one case form assigned for one th…
Modality and Theory of Mind Elements across Languages
Modality is the way a speaker modifies her declaratives and other speech acts to optimally assess the common ground of knowledge and belief of the addressee with the aim to optimally achieve understanding and an assessment of relevant information exchange. In languages such as German (and other Germanic languages outside of English), this may happen in covert terms. Main categories used for this purpose are modal adverbials (modal particles) and …
Introduction: Theory of mind elements across languages. Traces of Bühler’s legacy in modern linguistics
Sprecherdeixis und Merkmaldistributionsdifferential deutscher Modalitätselemente
Tempus - Aspekt - Modus: Die Lexikalischen und Grammatischen Formen in Den Germanischen Sprachen
Misleading Homonymies, Economical PPs in Microvariation, and P as a Probe
This chapter is devoted to microvariation in the use of morphological case and linear order of PPs in substandard varieties of German, where morphological case plays an important distinguishing role between semantic stativity and directionality of otherwise homonymic PPs. The gist of the chapter is that both prepositions and case need to be divided into the lexical, spatial, type and the grammatical one. The former selects verbal predicates as a …
Tempus- und Aspektkodierung als Textverketter: Vorder- und Hintergrundierung
On the logic of generalizations about cross-linguistic aspect-modality links
In what follows the attempt is made, in all due brevity and succinctness, to gain more solid insight into links between aspect and modality as observed to hold in German and other West and North Germanic languages in Abraham (1990a, b, 2001, 2002, 2005). The basic idea (developed in more detail in the Introduction to this volume) is that there are such logical relations at the basis of the hypothesis, but that they are subject to markedness influ…
Modality–Aspect Interfaces: Implications and typological solutions
The main topics pursued in this volume are based on empirical insights derived from Germanic: logical and typological dispositions about aspect-modality links. These are probed in a variety of non-related languages. The logically establishable links are the following: Modal verbs are aspect sensitive in the selection of their infinitival complements – embedded infinitival perfectivity implies root modal reading, whereas embedded infinitival imper…
Nominal Determination: Typology, context constraints, and historical emergence
The following theoretical-empirical points on the DP are discussed: Article and its referential-anaphoric properties by Abraham (Determiners in Centering Theory); Bartra (On bare NPs in Old Spanish and Catalan); identification of all functional nominal categories by Stvan (Bare singular count nouns); Kupisch & Koops (Specificity and negation); Jäger (History of German indefinite determiners); typological comparison of the interaction of nominal a…
Kristin Melum Eide. 2005. Norwegian modals [Studies in Generative Grammar 74]
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Passivization and Typology: Form and function
Is the passive a unified universal phenomenon? The claim derived from this volume is that the passive, if not universal, has become unified according to function. Language as a means of communication needs the passive, or passive-like constructions, and sooner or later develops them based on other voices (impersonal active, middle, reflexive), specific semantic meanings such as adversativity, or tense-aspect categories (stative,perfect, preterit)…
Introduction: Passivization and typology: Form vs. function - a confined survey into the research status quo
Discourse, Grammar and Typology: Papers in honor of John W.M. Verhaar
1. Introduction 2. Curriculum vitae (by Verhaar, S.J., John W.M.) 3. List of publications 4. Section I: Transitivity and voice 5. Diathesis: The Middle, Particularly in West-Germanic (by Abraham, Werner) 6. How many Transitivisers are in Kope? (by Clifton, John M.) 7. Complement Clauses versus Relative Clauses: Some Khmer Evidence (by Comrie, Bernard) 8. The two Prototypes of Ditransitive Verbs: The Indonesian Evidence (by Kaswanti, Bambang Purwo…
Stil, metapher und pragmatik
Kompetenz und mittelwertgrammatik zur taxonomie der 'Angewandten Sprachwissenschaften
Null subjects in the history of German: From IP to CP
Towards a theory of style and metaphor
Zur linguistik der metapher
Passiv Und Verbableitung Auf E. -Able, Dt. -Bar
A criterion of naturalness in grammatical analysis: The adjective
Kompetenz und mittelwertgrammatik zur taxonomie der 'Angewandten Sprachwissenschaften
Stil, metapher und pragmatik
The Ethic Dative in German
Semanteme und relationen: Zur systematik der inhaltssatzgefiige im Deutschen
Towards a theory of style and metaphor
Zur linguistik der metapher
Valence, Semantic Case, and Grammatical Relations: Workshop studies prepared for the 12th International Congress of Linguists, Vienna, August 29th to September 3rd, 1977
The papers in this volume have been grouped in three thematic parts: Valence which plays a key concept in the syntactic classification of verbs and adjectives, provides a necessary link for decoding and encoding grammatical relations, and is an important requisite for the evaluation of formal languages for the purpose of describing and explaining phenomena of natural language. The second group of papers concerns the notion of (deep) case and the …
But
The Synchronic and Diachronic Semantics of German Temporal noch and schon , With Aspects of English still, yet , and already
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On the Formal Syntax of the Westgermania: Papers from the 3rd Groningen Grammar Talks (3e Groninger Grammatikgespräche), Groningen, January 1981
It has often been noted that Dutch (and Frisian) reflects a particular stage of development between German and English. Phonologically, syntactically and morphologically, Dutch and German are closely related languages. Yet, there remain sufficient morphosyntactic differences in terms of language development. The contributions of this collection focus on the relationships and differences of these neighbouring West Germanic languages.
On the formal syntax of the Westgermania: Papers from the "3rd Groningen Grammar Talks," Groningen, January 1981
Topic, Focus and Configurationality: Papers from the 6th Groningen Grammar Talks, Groningen, 1984
Some fundamental questions regarding sentence structure in linguistics concern whether all languages, at some level of abstraction, have the same structure, and what are the basic categories with which to describe sentence structure. The contributors of this volume are specialized in two quite different languages: Hungarian and German. Of the German papers three are mainly about focus (Abraham, Jacobs, and Stechow-Uhman), whereas the remaining on…
Word Order in the Middle Field of the German Sentence
Terminologie zur neueren Linguistik
Issues in Germanic Syntax
Die Grammatikalisierung Von Auxiliar- Und Modalverben
Article DIE GRAMMATIKALISIERUNG VON AUXILIAR- UND MODALVERBEN was published on January 1, 1990 in the journal Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur (volume 112, issue Jahresband).
Syntaktische und semantische Korrelate zum Lesartwechsel zwischen epistemischen und deontisch/volitiven Modalverben
Discourse particles in German: How does their illocutive force come about?
The grammaticization of the German modal particles
Discourse Particles: Descriptive and theoretical investigations on the logical, syntactic and pragmatic properties of discourse particles in German
This book is about particles in the narrower sense of the word as opposed to the broader meaning covering all uninflected words of a language. In the narrower meaning of the linguistic term particles can be distinguished between logical, or scalar particles and modal, or pragmatic particles. The semantic, pragmatic and syntactic properties of modal particles differ vastly from those of the scalar particles, on the one hand, and their homonymic co…
How Much of the German Tense System is "Aspect" and "Aktionsart"?
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Aktionsartsemantik und Auxiliarisierung im Deutschen
Terminologie zur neueren Linguistik
Philosophy (68 works) · Linguistic research and analysis (64 works) · Linguistics (49 works) · Computer Science (42 works) · German (27 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (25 works) · Linguistic Education and Pedagogy (24 works) · Psychology (19 works) · History (18 works) · Linguistics and language evolution (17 works)