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Thetics and Categoricals
Edited by Werner Abraham, Elisabeth Leiss and Yasuhiro Fujinawa
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 262] 2020
► pp. 155–178

Strong and weak nominal reference in thetic and categorical sentences

sampling German and Chinese

| Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

In this paper, it will be discussed how, in both German and Chinese, strong and weak reference in thetic and categorical sentences are expressed if held against Carlson’s (1977) semantic event types of stage-level/SL- and individual-level/IL-predicates. This article will put emphasis on correspondents of indefinite and bare nouns in German on personal pronouns, the construction zhè/nà (this/that) (+Num)+CL(assifier)+N or the repetition of DP, which can only express the strong reference of the subject. The problems arise from the fact that Chinese, in contrast to German, signals reference strength not by articles as there are no articles in Chinese. In order to come to a comparison, we will use the Carlsonian reference option as a criterion.

The article is structured as follows: Section 1 introduces the definition of the strong and weak nominal reference. The second section will discuss thetic and categoric constructions in German and Chinese. The third section deals with the interplay of SL- and IL-predicates, thetic/categorical sentences, and the nominal reference of subjects, whereby the SL- and the IL-predicate are each described in a separate section. Section 4 concludes this paper with a summary of the results obtained in the previous sections.

Keywords: bare noun, classifier, strongly referential, thetic and categorical sentence, weakly referential
Article outline
  • 1.Definition: Strong and weak nominal reference
  • 2.Thetic and categorical in German and Chinese
  • 3.Nominal reference with the stage-level and individual-level predicates in thetic and categorical sentences
    • 3.1Nominal reference with the stage-level predicates
      • SVO-structure
      • OSV construction
    • 3.2Nominal reference with the individual-level predicates
      • SVO construction
  • 4.Conclusion
  • 5.Final outlook
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 22 July 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.262.06lee
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