Adjective order restrictions on attributive adjectives (AORs) have been subject to debate in modern linguistic research for a long time. Most generally, the question whether AORs can be located in grammar as such in rule-based fashion is still unsettled. In the current paper, we largely argue against this view and claim that several of the core data to be explained are preferences based on norms rather than rules. A pragmatic explanation is offered to account for marked or apparently ungrammatical examples. First, we demarcate AORs in the narrow sense against data based on truth-conditional differences, show the sole hard constraint to be found in a distinction between object- and kind-modification, and introduce several of the factors argued to drive AORs in the literature. A large-scale corpus study on German AAN-phrases shows a hierarchy of relative adjectives preceding absolute ones to reliably predict preferences, while temporariness and weight do not. We then illustrate that norm-based preferences can be overwritten via discourse linking and implement markedness in out-of-the-blue contexts pragmatically based on the M-principle. Speculating that AORs in the narrow sense have their origins in more general cognitive principles, our findings support approaches that locate the better part of AORs outside the realm of core grammar.

In this paper the grammatical and conceptual properties of decausative verbs of the type The plate broke are explored from the viewpoint of a model of language production that systematically upholds the distinction between grammatical and extralinguistic information. In the constructions under consideration, an agentive entity -just like in passives -is suppressed by grammatical means. The first part of the paper centers around the question of whether an implicit entity can be derived from linguistic form, that is, whether there is any grammatical/lexical indication of an entity causing the result state. On the basis of several grammatical tests it is argued that decausatives in comparison to passives do not grammatically encode any causal component. In the second part the conceptual structures underlying decausative verbs are determined. An investigation of the information-structural constellations suggests that with decausatives no causal entity is introduced into the discourse. Instead, the implicit causality intuitively understood with these verbs is based on the concept of abstract causation, which does not involve a sortally or referentially specified entity. Thus the conceptual structures underlying decausatives and nonalternating inchoatives as burst prove to be identical. Finally, the regularities behind the alternation are defined. An examination of event-structural and object properties suggests that alternating verbs are the ones that can denote an independent change in an inherent object property and a canonical activity that initiates the corresponding change.

This paper aims at a unified analysis of the different interpretations which constructions involving the German name-mentioning modifier sogenannt ‘so-called’ can adopt. In contrast to nouns like Sepsis ‘sepsis’, a noun like Hotel ‘hotel’, as in sogenanntes Hotel, gives rise to a “distanced” interpretation of the construction rather than one informing about a concept’s name. After a thorough investigation of the lexical-semantic properties, we propose the reading of the construction to emerge from an interplay between lexical factors like the head nominal’s conventionalization, on the one hand, and pragmatic implicatures rooted in relevance- as well as manner-based principles, on the other. From a compositional perspective, the so in sogenannt will be reasoned to be identical in function to quotation marks as a means to refer to a linguistic shape through demonstration. The different interpretations of the construction will be coupled with the type of binding of the agent-argument variable as well as the event variable of the verbal root nenn- ‘call’ of sogenannt.

This article deals with semantically transparent particle verbs in German which contain an incorporated local expression cognate with a local preposition. In contrast to expressions containing local prepositional phrases, the potential reference object of the incorporated local particle remains systematically unspecified. Regarding the data from a procedural vantage point, we argue that an adequate formulation of the underlying contextual/conceptual structure of particle verbs requires no referential specification of the Imissing reference object -which is at most indirectly pragmatically construable -and that the lexical-semantic structure of the construction ultimately reflects this fact. We assume a modular language production model in which a two-level approach to semantics is embedded and concentrate on those interacting components of the model responsible for the assembly of meaning representation.

Quotation marks are a tool to refer to the linguistic form of an expression. For instance, in cases of so-called pure quotation as in “Hanover” has three syllables, they point to the syllabic characteristics of the name of the town of Hanover. Cases of this nature differ from sentences like Hanover is a town in New Hampshire, in which Hanover is used denotationally and, thus, refers to the town of Hanover itself. Apart from quotation marks, other means such as italics, bold, capitalization, or air quotes represent potential means to signal a non-stereotypical use of an item in the written or gestural mode. It is far less clear, however, whether acoustic correlates of quotation marks exist. The present contribution aims at investigating this issue by focusing on instances of quotation, in which the conventionalized name of a lexical concept is highlighted by means of quotation marks, either together with or without an additional lexical quotational marker, such as so-called, on the lexical level (cf. The so-called “vuvuzela” is an instrument from South Africa vs. The “vuvuzela” is an instrument from South Africa). The data clearly show that quotation marks are pronounced, primarily triggering a lengthening effect, independently of whether they appear together with or without a name-informing context. The results of the experiments are interpreted against the background of a pragmatic implementation of quotation marks in general as well as in spoken discourse in particular.