The Semantics Of German Verb Prefixes
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The Semantics of German Verb Prefixes
Author: Robert B. Dewell
language: en
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Release Date: 2015-01-14
The Semantics of German Verb Prefixes is the most comprehensive study ever undertaken in this area of German grammar. Using an extensive collection of naturally occurring data, the author proposes an image-schematic interpretation for each of the productive prefixes be-, ver-, er-, ent-, zer-, um-, über-, unter-, and durch-. These abstract semantic patterns underlie a remarkable range of particular meanings, and they consistently account for subtle contrasts between prefixed verbs and alternative constructions such as simple verbs, particle verbs, and verbs with other prefixes. Furthermore, the author develops a schematic meaning for the prefixed verb construction itself. This grammatical meaning reflects the interpreter’s perspective and attentional focus as the objective event is imagined to unfold. Underlying all of these proposals is a novel conception of meaning as a dynamic and flexible process with a constantly active role for the interpreter. This volume will be of great value to cognitive linguists as well as scholars and students of German who want to gain insights into a central and puzzling part of the morphosyntax and semantics of the German language.
Morphosyntactic Change
Author: Bettelou Los
language: en
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Release Date: 2012-05-03
Particle verbs (combinations of two words but lexical units) are a notorious problem in linguistics. Is a particle verb like look up one word or two? It has its own entry in dictionaries, as if it is one word, but look and up can be split up in a sentence: we can say He looked the information up and He looked up the information. But why can't we say He looked up it? In English look and up can only be separated by a direct object, but in Dutch the two parts can be separated over a much longer distance. How did such hybrid verbs arise and how do they function? How can we make sense of them in modern theories of language structure? This book sets out to answer these and other questions, explaining how these verbs fit into the grammatical systems of English and Dutch.
The Meaning of Particle / Prefix Constructions in German
Author: Robert B. Dewell
language: en
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Release Date: 2011-09-28
This is really two books in one: a valuable reference resource, and a groundbreaking case study that represents a new approach to constructional semantics. It presents a detailed descriptive survey, using extensive examples collected from the Internet, of German verb constructions in which the expressions durch (‘through’), über (‘over’), unter (‘under’), and um (‘around’) occur either as inseparable verb prefixes or as separable verb particles. Based on that evidence, the author argues that the prefixed verb constructions and particle verb constructions themselves have meaning, and that this meaning involves subjective construal processes rather than objective information. The constructions prompt us to distribute focal attention according to patterns that can be articulated in terms of Talmy’s notion of “perspectival modes”. Among the other topics that play an important role in the analysis are incremental themes, reflexive trajectors, fictive motion, “multi-directional paths”, and “accusative landmarks”.