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This experiment is a replication of the temporal bisection study by Zhang, Jia, and Ren (2014), in which fast-speed words were overestimated compared to slow-speed words. In this experiment, 11 German slow verbs of motion and 11 German fast verbs of motion will be used as stimulus material.

This experiment is a replication of the temporal bisection study by Zhang, Jia, and Ren (2014), in which fast-speed words are overestimated compared to slow-speed words. In this experiment, 11 German slow verbs of motion and 11 German fast verbs of motion will be used as stimulus material.

The present paper offers evidence that there are two variants of adverbial modification that differ with respect to the way in which a modifier is linked to the verb's eventuality argument. So-called external modifiers relate to the full eventuality, whereas internal modifiers relate to some integral part of it. The choice between external and internal modification is shown to be dependent on the modifier's syntactic base position. External modifiers are base-generated at the VP periphery, whereas internal modifiers are base generated at the V periphery. These observations are accounted for by a refined version of the standard Davidsonian approach to adverbial modification according to which modification is mediated by a free variable. In the case of external modification, the grammar takes responsibility for identifying the free variable with the verb's eventuality argument, whereas in the case of internal modification, a value for the free variable is determined by the conceptual system on the basis of contextually salient world knowledge.

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Within the Davidsonian paradigm copula-predicative constructions are commonly assumed to involve a state argument. Its source is taken to be either the copula 'be' (cf. e.g. Bierwisch 1988) or the predicative (cf. the ongoing stage level/individual level debate). Yet, a critical examination of copula-predicative constructions in contexts that call for Davidsonian arguments (locative modifiers, manner adverbials, perception verbs, etc.) reveals that they do not behave as expected. In fact, the data examined here do not support the assumption that copula-predicative constructions are equipped with a Davidsonian argument nor is there any evidence for a grammatically reflected distinction between temporary and permanent properties. The present paper argues alternatively for a grammatical distinction between states like' sit', 'stand', 'sleep', 'wait', 'live' and statives like 'resemble', 'know', 'hate', 'cost' which is invoked by the presence or absence of a Davidsonian argument. Copula-predicative constructions are shown to belong uniformly to the class of statives. The acceptability differences of copula-predicative constructions in combination with locative modifiers are accounted for pragmatically on the basis of conversational implicatures.

Maienborn, C. (2011). Strukturausbau am Rande der Wörter: Adverbiale Modifikatoren beim Zustands­passiv. In S. Engel­berg, A. Holler & K. Proost (eds.), Sprachliches Wissen zwischen Lexikon und Grammatik. Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Jahrbuch 2010, 317-343. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter.

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Ulrich, R. & C. Maienborn (2010). Left-right coding of past and future in language: The mental timeline during sentence processing. Cognition 117 (2), 126-138.

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The renowned Grimm Dictionary (1854-1961) makes the statement that the German copula sein (to be) is “the most general and colourless of all verbal concepts” (der allgemeinste und farbloseste aller verbalbegriffe). A more concise summary of the linguistic issues surrounding the copula is hardly possible. These two properties (and the latent tension between them!) make copulas a particularly interesting and vexing subject of linguistic research. Copulas appear to be almost colourless, i.e., devoid of any concrete meaning, thus leading to the question of why such expressions exist at all, not only in German but in the majority of the world’s languages. And at the same time copulas presumably provide the best window into the core of verbal concepts thereby telling us what it actually means to be a verb – at least in a language like German or English. While there is a rather rich body of research on copulas in philosophical and formal semantics including several in-depth studies on the copular systems of individual languages, copulas have received comparably little attention from a typological perspective. The monograph of Regina Pustet sets out to fill this gap. She presents an extensive cross-linguistic study of copula usage based on a sample of 154 languages drawn from the language families of the world. The analysis is embedded in the theoretical framework of functional typology. The study aims at uncovering universal principles that govern the distribution of copulas in nominal, adjectival, and verbal predications. Its major objective is the development of a “semantically-based model of copula distribution” (p.62) by means of which the presence vs. absence of copulas can be motivated through the inherent meaning of the lexical items they potentially combine with. Drawing mainly on the work by Givón (1979, 1984) and Croft (1991, 2001), who provide a functional foundation of the traditional parts of speech, Pustet identifies four semantic parameters which, if taken together, are claimed to support substantial generalisations on copula distribution – within a given language as well as crosslinguistically. These parameters are DYNAMICITY, TRANSIENCE, TRANSITIVITY, and DEPENDENCY. Pustet goes on to argue – and this is in fact the driving force behind the overall monograph – that the distributional behaviour of copulas, in turn, yields a useful methodology for developing a general approach to lexical categorization. Thus, in the long run Pustet aims at contributing to a better understanding of the traditional parts of speech, noun, adjective, and verb by defining them in terms of “semantic feature bundles, which can be arranged in [a] coherent semantic similarity space” (p.193).

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Band II von II, ZAS Papers in Linguistics, Bd. 35 Nr. 2 (2004): Proceedings of the Dislocated Elements Workshop, November 2003, ZAS Berlin

One important difference between stage level predicates (SLPs) and individual level predicates (ILPs) is their behavior with respect to locative modifiers. It is commonly assumed that SLPs but not ILPs combine with locatives. The present study argues against a semantic account for this behavior (as advanced by e.g. Kratzer 1995, Chierchia 1995) and proposes a genuinely pragmatic explanation of the observed stage level/individual level contrast instead. The proposal is spelled out using Blutners (1998, 2000) optimality theoretic version of the Gricean maxims. Building on the observation that the respective locatives are not event-related but frame-setting modifiers, the preference for main predicates that express temporary properties is explained as a side-effect of “synchronizing” the main predicate with the locative frame in the course of finding an optimal interpretation. By emphasizing the division of labor between grammar and pragmatics, the proposed solution takes a considerable load off of semantics.

The article offers evidence that there are two variants of adverbial modification that differ with respect to the way in which a modifier is linked to the verbs eventuality argument. So-called event-external modifiers relate to the full eventuality, whereas event-internal modifiers relate to some integral part of it. The choice between external and internal modification is shown to be dependent on the modifiers syntactic base position. Event-external modifiers are base-generated at the VP periphery, whereas event-internal modifiers are base-generated at the V periphery. These observations are accounted for by a refined version of the standard Davidsonian approach to adverbial modification according to which modification is mediated by a free variable. In the case of external modification, the grammar takes responsibility for identifying the free variable with the verbs eventuality argument, whereas in the case of internal modification, a value for the free variable is determined by the conceptual system on the basis of contextually salient world knowledge. For the intriguing problem that certain locative modifiers occasionally seem to have nonlocative (instrumental, positional, or manner) readings, the advocated approach can provide a rather simple solution.

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Semantic research over the past three decades has provided impressive confirmation of Donald Davidsons famous claim that “there is a lot of language we can make systematic sense of if we suppose events exist” (Davidson 1980:137). Nowadays, Davidsonian event arguments are no longer reserved only for action verbs (as Davidson originally proposed) or even only for the category of verbs, but instead are widely assumed to be associated with any kind of predicate (e.g. Higginbotham 2000, Parsons 2000).1 The following quotation from Higginbotham and Ramchand (1997) illustrates the reasoning that motivates this move: "Once we assume that predicates (or their verbal, etc. heads) have a position for events, taking the many consequences that stem therefrom, as outlined in publications originating with Donald Davidson (1967), and further applied in Higginbotham (1985, 1989), and Terence Parsons (1990), we are not in a position to deny an event-position to any predicate; for the evidence for, and applications of, the assumption are the same for all predicates. (Higginbotham and Ramchand 1997:54)" In fact, since Davidson’s original proposal the burden of proof for postulating event arguments seems to have shifted completely, leading Raposo and Uriagereka (1995), for example, to the following verdict: "it is unclear what it means for a predicate not to have a Davidsonian argument (Raposo and Uriagereka 1995:182)" That is, Davidsonian eventuality arguments apparently have become something like a trademark for predicates in general. The goal of the present paper is to subject this view of the relationship between predicates and events to real scrutiny. By taking a closer look at the simplest independent predicational structure – viz. copula sentences – I will argue that current Davidsonian approaches tend to stretch the notion of events too far, thereby giving up much of its linguistic and ontological usefulness. More specifically, the paper will tackle the following three questions: 1. Do copula sentences support the current view of the inherent event-relatedness of predicates? 2. If not, what is a possible alternative to an event-based analysis of copula sentences? 3. What does this tell us about Davidsonian events? The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 first reviews current event-based analyses of copula sentences and then gives a brief summary of the Davidsonian notion of events. Section 3 examines the behavior of copula sentences with respect to some standard (as well as some new) eventuality diagnostics. Copula expressions will turn out to fail all eventuality tests. They differ sharply from state verbs like stand, sit, sleep in this respect. (The latter pass all eventuality tests and therefore qualify as true “Davidsonian state” expressions.) On the basis of these observations, section 4 provides an alternative account of copula sentences that combines Kim’s (1969, 1976) notion of property exemplifications with Ashers (1993, 2000) conception of abstract objects. Specifically, I will argue that the copula introduces a referential argument for a temporally bound property exemplification (= “Kimian state”). The proposal is implemented within a DRT framework. Finally, section 5 offers some concluding remarks and suggests that supplementing Davidsonian eventualities by Kimian states not only yields a more adequate analysis for copula expressions and the like but may also improve our treatment of events.

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The present paper offers evidence that there are two variants of adverbial modification that differ with respect to the way in which a modifier is linked to the verb's eventuality argument. So-called external modifiers relate to the full eventuality, whereas internal modifiers relate to some integral part of it. The choice between external and internal modification is shown to be dependent on the modifier's syntactic base position. External modifiers are base-generated at the VP periphery, whereas internal modifiers are base generated at the V periphery. These observations are accounted for by a refined version of the standard Davidsonian approach to adverbial modification according to which modification is mediated by a free variable. In the case of external modification, the grammar takes responsibility for identifying the free variable with the verb's eventuality argument, whereas in the case of internal modification, a value for the free variable is determined by the conceptual system on the basis of contextually salient world knowledge., ZAS Papers in Linguistics, Bd. 17 (2000): Approaching the grammar of adjuncts : proceedings of the Oslo conference, September 22 - 25, 1999

Within the Davidsonian paradigm copula-predicative constructions are commonly assumed to involve a state argument. Its source is taken to be either the copula 'be' (cf. e.g. Bierwisch 1988) or the predicative (cf. the ongoing stage level/individual level debate). Yet, a critical examination of copula-predicative constructions in contexts that call for Davidsonian arguments (locative modifiers, manner adverbials, perception verbs, etc.) reveals that they do not behave as expected. In fact, the data examined here do not support the assumption that copula-predicative constructions are equipped with a Davidsonian argument nor is there any evidence for a grammatically reflected distinction between temporary and permanent properties. The present paper argues alternatively for a grammatical distinction between states like' sit', 'stand', 'sleep', 'wait', 'live' and statives like 'resemble', 'know', 'hate', 'cost' which is invoked by the presence or absence of a Davidsonian argument. Copula-predicative constructions are shown to belong uniformly to the class of statives. The acceptability differences of copula-predicative constructions in combination with locative modifiers are accounted for pragmatically on the basis of conversational implicatures., ZAS Papers in Linguistics, Bd. 14 (1999): Kopula-Prädikativ-Konstruktionen als Syntax/Semantik-Schnittstellen

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Agentivity in copular constructions such as Sophia is being friendly, compared to its non-agentive counterpart Sophia is friendly, is a phenomenon that has received some attention in the theoretical debate but has not been widely investigated in psycholinguistics. The implications of Sophia’s voluntary control over her deliberate actions, which arise in the former sentence, seem to stem from the interplay between the subject, the verb, and the adjective. Truthfully, there is not much more to the sentence itself. In comparison, Sophia is friendly can be interpreted both as a state and as an event. Neither the predicate nor the verb in isolation can explain how agentivity comes about. Furthermore, the restrictions on the utterance’s agent are vague and flexible. Two theoretical accounts explain the agentivity effect by means of either underspecification or coercion. According to the Underspecification Account, the copula is semantically undetermined and adapts to the requirements of its lexical context as they arise. The adjectival predicate dictates the availability of the agentive interpretation. The Coercion Account postulates that the copula is lexically stative. The state interpretation of the copula-predicate combination is constructed compositionally, but the agentive reading is the result of reinterpreting the utterance as an activity. Underspecification and coercion are reflected in differing ways during processing. The former is effortless, whereas the latter elicits an increase in processing effort and a decrease in naturalness or sensicality. In a series of offline and online experiments on German copular sentences, the predictions of the Underspecification Account and the Coercion Account are put to a test. The results point to the stative nature of the copula, in line with the Coercion Account’s hypothesis. The availability of an adjective’s agentive interpretations appears to hinge on the specific circumstances. However, some degree of uncertainty remains in relation to the subtle nature of agentive coercion effects.

Time is a fundamental concept for human behaviour and existence. It is ubiquitous in language, yet, its mental representation is not resolved. Grounded cognition accounts suggest that the mental representation of time as an abstract concept is based on perceptual and motor brain areas. The present dissertation investigated this hypothesis for two instances of grounding of linguistically expressed temporal information. Firstly, the grounding of deictic and sequential time in space by means of the activation of the mental timeline was examined. Secondly, the grounding of duration information via simulation, i.e., the activation of modal representations, upon the processing of expressions containing manner of motion verbs with associated slow or fast movement on a given path was assessed. This was implemented in three approaches. Firstly, a meta-analysis on the space-time congruency effect was conducted. The results show that the effect is robust when time is task relevant, implying that the mental timeline gets activated when temporal reasoning takes place. Secondly, it was investigated whether the reaction time pattern of faster responses to fast-speed sentences (e.g., Clara is dashing to the hospital) compared to slow-speed sentences (e.g., Clara is limping to the hospital) in a motion detection task reflects a processing difference that is ascribable to the simulation of the denoted events’ duration. The results indicate that this might be the case. However, since the observed pattern asks for an adjustment of the original hypothesis about how the simulation of duration is reflected in reaction times, conclusions cannot be drawn until verification studies have been carried out. Thirdly, it was assessed whether linguistically expressed duration information acts on the internal clock like physical duration, thus drawing on the field of temporal cognition to proceed with questions raised within the grounded cognition debate. Reproduced durations increased with an increase in the duration of the denoted events, which implies that linguistically expressed duration affects perceived duration like physical duration. Importantly, this dissertation also assessed whether the mentioned effects can be considered instances of automatic activation of modal representations. Yet, task variations indicate that this is not the case. By seeking out contexts in which the above- mentioned grounded cognition effects are reliable, this dissertation contributes to the ongoing project of increasing our understanding of the conditions under which modal representations are activated during language processing.

Gegenstand der Dissertation sind kausal interpretierte Präpositionalphrasen mit "von" in Modifikatorfunktion, z.B. in Sätzen wie (1) "Paul ist müde von der Reise" oder (2) "Der Platz ist rot von Blättern". Kausale "von"-Phrasen treten im Deutschen in zwei Lesarten auf: Eventiv-kausal, wobei die Kausalrelation zwischen zwei Ereignissen besteht, vgl. (1), und stativ-kausal, wobei die Kausalrelation zwischen zwei Eigenschaften bzw. Tropen besteht, vgl. (2). Auf Basis mehrerer umfangreicher Korpusstudien untersucht die Arbeit den Bedeutungsbeitrag der Präposition "von" im Spannungsfeld zwischen Semantik und Pragmatik.

Die Dissertation widmet sich dem Zustandspassiv aus einem ereignissemantischen Blickwinkel unter Verwendung einer empirischen, insbesondere psycholinguistischen Methodik. Die Grundlage der Arbeit stellt die Annahme einer Kopula-Adjektivanalyse des Zustandspassivs dar, wie sie Rapp (1997, 1998) formuliert und Maienborn (2007) präzisiert hat. Nach dieser ergibt sich die Zustandspassivsemantik als Resultat der Adjektivierung des verbalen Partizips durch ein adjektivisches Nullaffix. Das Hauptanliegen der Dissertation ist es, die Semantik dieses Adjektivierungsaffixes zu formulieren und die pragmatischen Interpretationsbedingungen herzuleiten. Eine besondere Herausforderung ergibt sich dabei aus einer Vielfalt von Zustandspassivverwendungen mit ihren je eigenen Interpretationsoptionen. Das Zustandspassiv erweist sich in den durchgeführten empirischen Studien als lexikalisch nur wenig restringiert. Insbesondere ist von einem in zweierlei Hinsicht gelockerten Bezug des Zustandspassivs zu seiner verbalen Basis auszugehen: Der bei der Zustandspassivbildung stattfindende Adjektivierungsprozess beinhaltet (i) eine Lockerung des Resultatsbezugs via Einführung einer semantisch unterbestimmten Resultatseigenschaft sowie (ii) eine Überführung des verbalen Ereignisprädikats in eine Ereignisart. Durch die Verwendung experimenteller Methodik werden Reflexe dieser beiden Flexibilisierungsprozesse in der Verarbeitung des Zustandspassivs aufgedeckt. Umgekehrt liefern die empirischen Studien Evidenz für die vorgeschlagene semantische Analyse. Die Arbeit zeigt somit, dass sich formale Semantik und psycholinguistische Methodik nicht nur nicht ausschließen, sondern gegenseitig befruchten.