Anaphoric potential of bare nominals, incorporated objects and weak definites in German
Experimental results and theoretical modeling
In many languages, syntactic objects can be realized in a variety of ways, from maximally distinct DPs to morphologically integrated nominal stems. For example, German allows for viele Fische fangen, Fische fangen, am Fischefangen sein, beim Fischfang sein and fischen. We also find strong definite and weak definite DPs, e.g., in das Kino gehen vs. ins Kino gehen, and bare singular nouns such as Zeitung lesen. While the syntactic differences between these examples are obvious, their semantic differences and their functions in discourse are less clear. We present experimental evidence about differences in the likelihood of anaphoric uptake of such expressions. We suggest semantic representations that help explain the options of anaphoric potential of these expressions within a version of Discourse Representation Theory (DRT).
Article outline
- 1.Accessibility of discourse referents
- 2.Anaphoric reference to incorporated antecedents
- 3.Varieties of incorporation in German
- 4.Anaphoric potentials: Experimental results
- 4.1Antecedent choice experiments: Indefinites, bare plurals, incorporated and implicit objects
- 4.2Antecedent choice experiment: Indefinite vs. bare singulars
- 4.3Free discourse completion experiments: Weak definites
- 4.4Interpretation of anaphors: Weak definites vs. indefinites
- 5.An explanative account of anaphoric uptake
- 5.1Anaphoric uptake in standard DRT
- 5.2Anaphoric uptake of indefinite and bare plural objects
- 5.3Anaphoric uptake of incorporated objects in compounds
- 5.4Anaphoric uptake with bare singulars
- 5.5Anaphoric uptake of weak definites
- 5.6Anaphoric uptake with implicit objects
- 6.Conclusion
-
Acknowledgements
-
Notes
-
References
References (54)
References
Aguilar-Guevara, Ana & Zwarts, Joost. 2010. Weak definites and reference to kinds. SALT 20: 1–15. 

Ariel, Mira. 2001. Accessibility theory: An overview. In Text Representation. Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Aspects [Human Cognitive Processing 8], Ted J. M. Sanders, Joost Schilperoord & Wilbert Spooren (eds), 29–87. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 

Asudeh, Ash & Mikkelsen, Line. 2000. Incorporation in Danish: Implications for interfaces. In Grammatical Interfaces in HPSG, Ronnie Cann, Claire Grover & Philip Miller (eds), 1–15. Stanford CA: CSLI.
Björkelund, Anders, Eckart, Kerstin, Riester, Arndt, Schauffler, Nadja & Schweitzer, Katrin. 2014. The extended DIRNDL corpus as a resource for coreference and bridging resolution. In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC’14), Nicoletta Calzolari, Khalid Choukri, Thierry Declerck, Hrafn Loftsson, Bente Maegaard, Joseph Mariani, Asuncion Moreno, Jan Odijk & Stelios Piperidis (eds), 3222–3228. Reykjavik: European Language Resources Association (ELRA).
Borik, Olga & Gehrke, Berit (eds). (2015). The Syntax and Semantics of Pseudo-Incorporation. Leiden: Brill. 

Borthen, Kaja. 2003. Norwegian Bare Singulars. PhD dissertation, Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
Brocher, Andreas, Weeber, Frederike, Hoek, Jet & von Heusinger, Klaus. 2020. Referent management in discourse: The accessibility of weak definites. CogSci 2020: 2829–2835.
Carlson, Gregory N. 1977. Reference to Kinds in English. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts.
Carlson, Gregory & Sussman, Rachel Shirley. 2005. Seemingly indefinite definites. In Linguistic Evidence: Empirical, Theoretical, and Computational Perspectives, Stefan Kepser & Marga Reis (eds), 26–30. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 

Clark, Herbert H. 1977. Bridging. In Readings in Cognitive Science, Philip Nicholas Johnson-Laird & Peter Cathcart Wason (eds), 411–420. Cambridge: CUP.
Crawley, Rosalind A., Stevenson, Rosemary J. & Kleinman, David. 1990. The use of heuristic strategies in the interpretation of pronouns. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 19: 245–264. 

Dayal, Veneeta. 2011. Hindi pseudo-incorporation. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 29: 123–167. 

de Swart, Henriette & Zwarts, Joost. 2009. Less form – more meaning: Why bare singular nouns are special. Lingua 119: 280–295. 

Diesing, Molly. 1992. Indefinites. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
Farkas, Donka & de Swart, Henriette. 2003. Semantics of Incorporation. From Argument Structure to Discourse Transparency. Stanford CA: CSLI.
Frey, Werner. 2015. NP-Incorporation in German. In The Syntax and Semantics of Pseudo-Incorporation, Olga Borik & Behrit Gehrke (eds), 225–261. Leiden: Brill.
Fukumura, Kumiko & van Gompel, Roger P. G. 2011. The effect of animacy on the choice of referring expression. Language and Cognitive Processes 26: 1472–1504. 

Gordon, Peter C., Randall, Hendrick, Ledoux, Kerry & Yang, Chin Lung. 1999. Processing of reference and the structure of language: An analysis of complex noun phrases. Language and Cognitive Processes 14: 353–379. 

Grimshaw, Jane. 1990. Argument Structure. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
Gundel, Jeanette K., Hedberg, Nancy & Zacharski, Ron. 1993. Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in discourse. Language 69: 274–307. 

Heim, Irene. 1982. The Semantics of Definite and Indefinite Noun Phrases. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts.
Kamp, Hans. 1981. A theory of truth and semantic representation. In Formal Methods in the Study of Language [Mathematical Centre Tracts 135], Jeroen A. G. Groenendijk, Theo M. V. Janssen & Martin J. B. Stokhof (eds), 277–322. Amsterdam: Mathematisch Centrum.
Kamp, Hans & Reyle, Uwe. 1993. From Discourse to Logic. Introduction to Model Theoretic Semantics of Natural Language, Formal Logic, and Discourse Representation Theory. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Kamp, Hans & Reyle, Uwe. 2011. Discourse representation theory. In Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language and Meaning, Claudia Maienborn, Klaus von Heusinger & Paul Portner (eds), 923–945. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Karttunen, Lauri. 1976[1969]. Discourse referents. In Notes from the Linguistic Underground, James D. McCawley (ed.), 363–385. New York NY: Academic Press. 

Kehler, Andrew, Kertz, Laura, Rohde, Hannah & Elman, Jeffrey L. 2008. Coherence and coreference revisited. Journal of Semantics 25: 1–44. 

Kratzer, Angelika. 1980. Die Analyse des blossen Plural bei Gregory Carlson. Linguistische Berichte 70: 47–50.
Krifka, Manfred & Modarresi, Fereshteh. 2016. Number neutrality and anaphoric uptake of pseudo-incorporated nominals in Persian (and weak definites in English). Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 26: 874–891. 

Law, Jess H.-K. & Syrett, Kristen. 2017. Experimental evidence for the discourse potential of Mandarin. In 47th Annual North East Linguistics Society (NELS 47), Andrew Lamont & Katerina Tetzlo (eds), 231–240. Amherst MA: University of Massachusetts.
Massam, Diane. 2001. Pseudo noun incorporation in Niuean. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 19: 153–197. 

Massam, Diane. 2017. Incorporation and pseudo-incorporation in syntax. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Mark Aronoff (ed.), Oxford: OUP. 

Meinschaefer, Judith. 2005. Event-oriented adjectives and the semantics of deverbal nouns in Germanic and Romance. The role of boundedness and the mass/count distinction. In La Formazione delle Parole, Maria Grossmann & Anna M. Thornton (eds), 355–368. Rome: Bulzoni.
Modarresi, Fereshteh. 2015. Discourse properties of bare noun objects. In The Syntax and Semantics of Pseudo-Incorporation, Olga Borik & Berit Gehrke (eds), 189–221. Leiden: Brill.
Modarresi, Fereshteh, Fortmann, Jette & Krifka, Manfred. 2019. Weak definites vs. implicit entities vs. indefinites in German. Presentation at the 41st Annual Meeting, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft, Bremen.
Modarresi, Fereshteh & Krifka, Manfred. 2021a. Pseudo incorporation and anaphoricity: Evidence from Persian. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 6(1): 1–32. 

Modarresi, Fereshteh & Krifka, Manfred. 2021b. Pseudo-incorporated antecedents and anaphora in Persian: The influence of stereotypical knowledge. In Proceedings of ELM (Experiments in Linguistic Meaning), Beltrama Andrea, Florian Schwarz & Anna Papafragou (eds), 224–236. <[URL]> (13 July 2022). 
Modarresi, Fereshteh & Krifka, Manfred. To appear. In Linguistic Evidence by Experimental Data. Proceedings of Linguistic Evidence 2020, Sam Featherston, Robin Hörnig, Andreas Konietzko & Sophie Wietersheim (eds).
Nübling, Damaris. 2005. Von in die über in’n und ins bis im. Die Klitisierung von Präposition und Artikel als “Grammatikalisierungsbaustelle”. In Grammatikalisierung im Deutschen, Torsten Leuschner, Tanja Mortelmans & Sarah Groodt (eds), 105–131. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 

Poesio, Massimo, Di Eugenio, Barbara, Stevenson, Rosemary & Hitzeman, Janet. 2004. Centering: A parametric theory and its instantiations. Computational Linguistics 30: 309–363. 

Postal, Paul. 1969. Anaphoric islands. Chicago Linguistic Society 5: 205–239.
Ramelli, Christian. 2013. The am+INF construction in German varieties. In Current Approaches to Limits and Areas in Dialectology, Ernestina Carrilho, Magro Catarina & Álvarez Xose (eds), 367–398. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.
Schumacher, Petra B., Backhaus, Jana & Dangl, Manuel. 2015. Backward and forward-looking potential of anaphors. Frontiers in Psychology 6. <[URL]> (13 July 2022). 
Schwarz, Florian. 2009. Two Types of Definites in Natural Language. Amherst MA: University of Massachusetts.
Schwarz, Florian. 2013. Two kinds of definites cross-linguistically. Language and Linguistic Compass 7: 534–559. 

Schwarz, Florian. 2014. How weak and how definite are weak definites? In Weak Referentiality [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 219], Ana Aguilar-Guevara, Bert Le Bruyn & Joost Zwarts (eds), 213–235. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 

Stvan, Laurel Smith. 2009. Semantic incorporation as an account for some bare singular count noun uses in English. Lingua 119: 314–333. 

van Geenhoven, Veerle & McNally, Louise. 2005. On the property analysis of opaque complements. Lingua 115: 885–914. 

van Riemsdijk, Henk. 1989. Movement and regeneration. In Dialect Variation and the Theory of Grammar, Paolo Benincà (ed.), 105–136. Dordrecht: Foris. 

von Heusinger, Klaus & Schumacher, Petra B. 2019. Discourse prominence: Definition and application. Journal of Pragmatics 154: 117–127. 

Ward, Gregory, Sproat, Richard & McKoon, Gail. 1991. A pragmatic analysis of so-called anaphoric islands. Language 67: 439–473. 

Williams, Adina. 2019. A morpho-semantic account of weak definites and bare institutional singulars in English. In Definites across Languages, Ana Aguilar-Guevara, Julia Pozas Loyo & Vazquez-Rojas Maldonado (eds), 319–345. Berlin: Language Science Press.
Wittenberg, Eva & Trotzke, Andreas. 2021. Semantic incorporation and dis-course prominence: Experimental evidence from English pronoun resolution. Journal of Pragmatics 186: 87–99. 

Yanovich, Igor. 2008. Incorporated nominals as antecedents for anaphora, or How to save the thematic arguments theory. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 14: 367–379.