Predicative Adjective Agreement

Sten Vikner

Predicative Adjective Agreement

Institut for Kommunikation og Kultur - Engelsk

Publikation: Bidrag til bog/antologi/rapport/proceeding › Bidrag til bog/antologi › Forskning

Abstract

German is a complicated language. Any speaker of e.g. French or Danish who has ever tried to learn German would agree to this. Coming from languages with only two genders and with no case outside the pronoun system, German, with three genders and with four cases throughout the nominal system, seems unjustifiably complicated, as if it had been specially designed to torment poor students.

However, there is one area where German agreement morphology could not possibly be simpler, and where German is much easier for non-native speakers than e.g. French or Danish: predicative adjectives. Both gender and number distinctions, disappear when adjectives are used predicatively. This paper will try to account for why the Germanic languages that inflect attiributive adjectives but not predicative ones are all SOV-languages (e.g. German, Dutch, Frisian and Yiddish).

Originalsprog	Engelsk
Titel	Sprachkontakt, Sprachvergleich, Sprachvariation : Festschrift für Gottfried Kolde
Redaktører	Kirsten Adamzik, Helen Christen
Antal sider	16
Udgivelsessted	Tübingen
Forlag	Max Niemeyer Verlag
Publikationsdato	2001
Sider	399-414
Status	Udgivet - 2001

Adgang til dokumentet

http://www.hum.au.dk/engelsk/engsv/papers/vikn01b.pdf

Citationsformater

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AB - German is a complicated language. Any speaker of e.g. French or Danish who has ever tried to learn German would agree to this. Coming from languages with only two genders and with no case outside the pronoun system, German, with three genders and with four cases throughout the nominal system, seems unjustifiably complicated, as if it had been specially designed to torment poor students.However, there is one area where German agreement morphology could not possibly be simpler, and where German is much easier for non-native speakers than e.g. French or Danish: predicative adjectives. Both gender and number distinctions, disappear when adjectives are used predicatively. This paper will try to account for why the Germanic languages that inflect attiributive adjectives but not predicative ones are all SOV-languages (e.g. German, Dutch, Frisian and Yiddish).

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EP - 414

BT - Sprachkontakt, Sprachvergleich, Sprachvariation

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A2 - Christen, Helen

PB - Max Niemeyer Verlag

CY - Tübingen

ER -

Predicative Adjective Agreement

Abstract

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