The German weg-construction and its instantiations in the German press

Gallez, Françoise [UCL]

In German caused motion and resultative constructions (Goldberg 1995, 2006; Ziem/Lasch 2013) can be realized with a particle verb whose particle expresses the locative or the result (Dewell 2011), e.g. (1): (1) Er boxte seine Idee durch. Lit. ‘He boxed his idea through.' Instances of these constructions – also with non-lexicalized phrasal verbs – are very productive, especially in the German press where they are created ad hoc. The presentation focuses on constructions with phrasal verbs with the particle weg- (‘away'), e.g. (2) and (3): (2) Sie haben die Scheidungsgerüchte weggeküsst. Lit. ‘They kissed the rumors about their divorce away.' (3) Sie haben den Direktor weggestreikt. Lit. ‘They struck the director away.' Constructions with phrasal verbs often alternate with constructions with a prepositional phrase introduced by the corresponding preposition, e.g. the particles ein (‘in/into') and durch (‘through') and respectively the prepositions in or durch. In the case of weg- (‘away'), there is no corresponding preposition weg. However, constructions with a prepositional phrase introduced by von (‘from/off') can be interpreted as alternatives of the weg-construction as in (4): (4) Aufgebrachte Zuschauer buhten den Ukrainer Vladimir Kuzmenko weg. [phrasal verb wegbuhen] Lit. ‘Outraged spectators booed the Ukrainian V. K. away.' Cruz rückt demonstrativ von Trump ab – und wird von der Bühne gebuht. [simple verb + prepositional phrase] Lit. ‘Cruz distances himself from Trump – and is booed off the stage.' Our presentation describes the syntactic and semantic contexts in which the German constructions with weg- and their alternatives occur in the German press. The data consist of a list of instances of the constructions with weg- collected in the German newspapers corpora of the IDS Mannheim. First the examples are classified according to the verb classes (Levin 1993, Winkler 2009). Then we describe their arguments and look for alternating constructions with a prepositional phrase introduced by von in similar syntactic and semantic contexts. The objectives of this study are the compilation of a constructional network of the weg-construction and its alternating constructions, i.e. a constructicon, and the definition of regularities. The analysis provides some insights in the use and possible realizations of the construction and proves useful, notably for learners of German, as far as most of these constructions are not lexicalized.