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- Title
A corpus-based analysis of pronoun choice in German relative clauses.
- Authors
Brandt, Patrick; Fuß, Eric
- Abstract
This paper investigates the conditions that govern the choice between the German neuter singular relative pronouns <italic>das</italic> ‘that’ and <italic>was</italic> ‘what’. We show that <italic>das</italic> requires a lexical head noun, while in all other cases <italic>was</italic> is usually the preferred option; therefore, the distribution of <italic>das</italic> and <italic>was</italic> is most successfully captured by an approach that does not treat <italic>was</italic> as an exception but analyzes it as the elsewhere case that applies when the relativizer fails to pick up a lexical gender feature from the head noun. We furthermore show how the non-uniform behavior of different types of nominalized adjectives (positives allow both options, while superlatives trigger <italic>was</italic>) can be attributed to semantic differences rooted in syntactic structure. In particular, we argue that superlatives select <italic>was</italic> due to the presence of a silent counterpart of the quantifier <italic>alles</italic> ‘all’ that is part of the superlative structure.
- Subjects
PRONOUNS (Grammar); NOUNS; LEXICAL access; PSYCHOLINGUISTICS; ADJECTIVES (Grammar)
- Publication
Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 2017, Vol 31, Issue 1, p194
- ISSN
0774-5141
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1075/bjl.00008.bra