Big Events, Small Clauses The Grammar of Elaboration LCC 12 (Language, Context and Cognition, 12)

This book investigates specific syntactic means of event elaboration across seven Indo-European languages (English, German, Norwegian, French, Russian, Latin and Ancient Greek): bare and comitative small clauses (“absolutes”), participle constructions and related clause-like but non-finite adjuncts that increase descriptive granularity with respect to constitutive parts of the matrix event (elaboration in the narrowest sense), or describe eventualities that are co-located and connected with but not part of the matrix event. The book falls in two parts. Part I addresses central theoretical issues: How is the co-eventive interpretation of such adjuncts achieved? What is the internal syntax of participial and converb constructions? How do these constructions function at the discourse level, as compared to various finite structures that are available for co-eventive elaboration? Part II takes an empirical cross-linguistic perspective. It consists of five self-contained chapters that are based on parallel corpora and study either the use of a specific construction across at least two of the seven object languages, or how a specific construction is rendered in other languages.

Die Sprachkenntnis ist ein überaus ökonomisches Wissenssystem, das zur Interpretation der Äußerungen in der Regel nur beizusteuern braucht, was nicht durch die übrigen konzeptuellen Systeme geliefert wird. Daher sind grammatische Unterspezifikation und Kontextabhängigkeit nach Sprachtyp und Einzelsprache verschieden ausgeprägt, substantielle sprachliche Eigenschaften.
Die Reihe Language, Context and Cognition untersucht diese Eigenschaften natürlicher Sprachen in deren Lexikon, in der Interaktion ihrer grammatischen Subsysteme und in den Textbildungsverfahren in der Gegenwart wie auch in historischen Wandelprozessen.
Kontextabhängigkeit setzt Kooperation von Sprachwissenschaftlern mit den Kognitions- und Neurowissenschaften, mit der Phonetik, der mathematischen Logik sowie den pragmatischen und experimentell orientierten Disziplinen voraus, aber ebenso Zusammenarbeit mit Wissenschaftlern, die andere konzeptuelle Systeme erforschen oder Modellierungsmöglichkeiten für Ergebnisse aus unterschiedlichen Wissensbeständen erkunden.

Editorial board:

Dr. habil. Kai Alter (Newcastle University und Oxford University),
Prof. Dr. Ulrike Demske (Universität Potsdam),
Prof. Dr. Ljudmila Geist (Universität Stuttgart),
Prof. Dr. Rosemarie Lühr (Humboldt Universität Berlin),
Prof. Dr. Thomas Pechmann (Universität Leipzig),
Prof. Dr. Richard Wiese (Universität Marburg)

Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright 5 Table of Contents 6 Preface 8 List of abbreviations 10 Introduction 12 Part I: Theoretical issues 30 1. Co-eventive adjuncts: main issues and clarifications 32 2. Closed adjuncts: degrees of pertinence 66 3. Open adjuncts: participial syntax 104 4. Open adjuncts: degrees of event integration 142 5. Competing structures: the discourse perspective 190 Part II: Language-specific case studies 238 6.1. Possessive absolutes in English and their Norwegian correspondences 240 6.2. On absolutes in French, German, and Norwegian 270 7. Open verb-headed adjuncts in New Testament Greek and the Latin of the Vulgate 298 8. The meaning of Russian converbs 334 9. Participant- and event-oriented adjectival adjuncts in translation German-Norwegian 374 10. German wobei-clauses in translation 402 Summary and final discussion 434 References 450 Index 464 Contributors 468 Non-finite clause-like structures such as converb and participial constructions, depictive adjectivals, absolute and comitative small clauses are important means of enriching the description of the event or situation conjured up by the main verb; but they have not been studied in depth from that perspective. The present book takes up that challenge. It throws new light on the interface between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and presents new empirical findings based on parallel corpora involving English, German, Norwegian, French, Russian, Latin, and Ancient Greek. Cathrine Fabricius-Hansenand Dag Haug, University of Oslo, Norway Non-finite clause-like structures such as converb and particípial constructions, depictive adjectivals, absolute and comitative small clauses are important means of enriching the description of the event or situation conjured up by the main verb; but they have not been studied in depth from that perspective. The present book takes up that challenge. It throws new light on the interface between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and presents new empirical findings based on parallel corpora involving English, German, Norwegian, French, Russian, Latin, and Ancient Greek. Edited By Cathrine Fabricius-hansen And Dag Haug. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.