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ABSTRACTThe human ability to keep track of time can be distorted by several non-temporal stimulus aspects such as size or intensity. First studies indicate that not only physical but also implicit stimulus aspects can affect duration estimates. The present study expands these findings by investigating the effects of linguistic expressions including speed and duration information via temporal reproduction (Experiments 1 and 2) and temporal bisection tasks (Experiment 3). In Experiment 1, implicit duration was manipulated by combining verbs that denote slow or fast motion with a path expression (to stroll to schoolvs. to spurt to school). Reproduced durations were consistent with an effect of implicit duration but not implicit speed. To control whether implicit speed affects perceived duration when exempted from duration information, single manner of motion verbs were presented in Experiments 2 and 3. The results speak against an effect of implicit speed analogous to physical speed.

The German adjectival passive, or “Zustandspassiv”, belongs to the most controversial topics of German grammar. The controversy centers around the following questions: What is the grammatical status of the Zustandspassiv: Does it belong to the verbal paradigm or is it a combination of copula plus adjectivized verbal participle? What are the restrictions governing its construction and combination? And what is its characteristic meaning range? The paper reviews a set of diagnostics, which will turn out to provide ample evidence for a “copula plus adjective”-account of the Zustandspassiv. It then goes on to discuss one particular problem for such an account, viz. the combination with event-related modifiers and it offers a new solution for the interpretative variability of the Zustandspassiv, aiming at a more balanced division of labor between grammar and pragmatics. Basically, the Zustandspassiv is analyzed as assigning an (arbitrarily complex) ad hoc property to the subject referent. While the grammar imposes only few constraints on the construction, legitimating and interpreting such an ad hoc property in context is basically the task of pragmatics. Adopting the notion of ad hoc properties from cognitive psychology, this article is an attempt to explore the fruitfulness of applying Lawrence Barsalou's theory of mental representations to linguistic analysis.

This study offers syntactic and semantic evidence that there are three types of locative modifiers within the verbal domain that differ with respect to their syntactic base position and interpretation. Two of them are subject to semantic indeterminacy, thereby leading to multiple utterance meanings. The study aims at showing that the full range of interpretations can be derived within a rigid account of lexical and compositional semantics. Locative modifiers are invariably treated as first-order predicates adding a locative constraint. All semantic differences originate from the structural environment they are embedded in and the pragmatic resolution of semantic indeterminacy. The syntactic distribution of locative modifiers is shown to be derivable from interface conditions.