The Interaction between Verb Classes and Constructions in German Path and Property Resultatives – A description of durch-, ein- and weg-Constructions

Gallez, Françoise [UCL]

My presentation focuses on the mapping between verb classes and constructions in German constructions with particle verbs featuring durch- (‘through’), ein- (‘into’) and weg- (‘away’) and/or directional prepositional phrases introduced by durch ('through'), in (‘into’) or aus (‘out’) and von (‘off’)1, see (1)-(7). (1) Er hat die Ware durchgeschmuggelt. (2) Er hat die Ware durch die Absperrung geschmuggelt. (3) Was Männer nicht alles in eine Frisur hineininterpretieren! (4) Er hat den Film in wenigen Silben in die Tonne getwittert: … (5) Kann man die Krise wegtanzen? (6) Heute ist der riesige LVR-Turm nicht mehr aus dem Stadtbild zu denken. (7) Der Politiker wurde von der Bühne weggebuht. The durch-, ein- and weg-constructions allow for both path and property resultatives (Goldberg 1995, Goldberg & Jackendoff 2004). Starting from Levin (1993, 2015), Levin & Rappaport Hovav (2013) and Richter & van Hout (2010), I first describe the verb classes that are compatible with the three constructions. I further analyse the use of the different verb classes within the durch-, ein- and weg-constructions respectively and compare the three constructions with respect to the verb-to-construction relation. Some verbs occur in the three constructions, e. g. schmuggeln (‘to smuggle’) whereas others are not attested in all the instances (e.g. bügeln, ‘to iron’). (8) Er schmuggelt etwas durch/durch das Tor/in die Stadt/weg/aus dem Konzertgelände. (9) Die Falten werden weggebügelt/ *eingebügelt/*durchgebügelt. These differences can partly be explained by the semantics of the verbs and the speakers’ world knowledge. Finally, I describe the interaction between the verbs and the arguments of the constructions (subject, object, Xcomp), more specifically with the aim to describe the different possibilities. Goldberg, Adele. 1995. Constructions. A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Goldberg, Adele; Jackendoff, Ray. 2004. The English resultative as a family of constructions. In: Language 80, 3, pp. 532–568. Levin, Beth. 1993. English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Levin, Beth. 2015. ``Verb Classes Within and Across Languages'', B. Comrie and A. Malchukov, eds., Valency Classes: A Comparative Handbook, De Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 1627-1670. Levin, Beth; Rappaport Hovav, Malka. 2013. ``Lexicalized Meaning and Manner/Result Complementarity'', in B. Arsenijević, B. Gehrke, and R. Marín, eds., Subatomic Semantics of Event Predicates, Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 49-70. Richter, Michael; van Hout, Roeland. 2010. Why some verbs can form a resultative construction while others cannot: Decomposing semantic binding. Lingua, Volume 120, Issue 8, pp. 2006-2021.