Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Resolving unexpected case concord in German A–N–N compounds

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

German A(djective)–N(oun)–N(oun) compounds exhibit unexpected internal inflection. The main purpose of this paper is to account for the interesting fact that the adjective in German A–N–N compounds shows several options to inflect for case. It can either agree with the first noun, with the second noun, or with neither of them. A production-task experiment confirms the existence of all three patterns. This is an important result since from a theoretical perspective, agreement of the adjective with the second noun is unexpected because it seems to violate standard locality conditons. Our claim is that the semantic relation in A–N–N compounds is always represented correctly. As a consequence, the different observed inflection strategies are not due to different structures (contra Lawrenz in Deutsch als Fremdsprache 32(1):39–42, 1995). We rather argue that the observed diversity is a consequence of the order of syntactic operations that apply: In German A–N–N compounds, adjectival inflection depends on (i) the order of the operations Agree and Insertion and on (ii) the interaction of these operations with the Strict Cycle Condition and the Minimal Link Condition.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Ackema, Peter, and Ad Neeleman. 1998. Optimal questions. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 16: 443–490.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ackema, Peter, and Ad Neeleman. 2004. Beyond morphology. Interface conditions on word formation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Aissen, Judith. 2003a. Differential object marking: Iconicity vs. economy. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21: 453–483.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aissen, Judith. 2003b. Harmonic alignment in morphosyntax. Ms., University of California, Santa Cruz.

  • Anttila, Arto. 1997. Deriving variation from grammar. In Variation, change and phonological theory, ed. F. Hinskens, 35–68. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Assmann, Anke, Svetlana Edygarova, Doreen Georgi, Timo Klein, and Philipp Weisser. 2014. Case stacking below the surface: On the possessor case alternation in Udmurt. The Linguistic Review 31 (3–4): 447–485.

    Google Scholar 

  • Assmann, Anke, Doreen Georgi, Fabian Heck, Gereon Müller, and Philipp Weisser. 2015. Ergatives move too early: On an instance of opacity in syntax. Syntax 18 (4): 343–387.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baker, Mark. 2008. The syntax of agreement and concord, Vol. 115 of Cambridge Studies in Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Bhatt, Christa. 1990. Die syntaktische struktur der nominalphrase im deutschen. Tübingen: Narr.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boersma, Paul, and Bruce Hayes. 2001. Empirical test of the gradual learning algorithm. Linguistic Inquiry 32: 45–86.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Borer, Hagit. 2009. Compounds: The view from Hebrew. In The Oxford handbook on compounding, ed. R. Lieber, and P. Štekauer. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Borer, Hagit. 2013. Taking form. Structuring sense volume iii. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Breiman, Leo. 2001. Random forests. Machine Learning 45 (1): 5–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bresnan, John, Ashwini Deo, and Devyani Sharma. 2007. Typology in variation: A probabilistic approach to ‘be’ and ‘n’t’ in the Survey of English Dialects. English Language and Linguistics 11: 301–346.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bresnan, John, Shipra Dingare, and Chris Manning. 2001. Soft constraints mirror hard constraints: Voice and person in English and Lummi. In Proceedings of the LFG 2001 conference. CSLI Publications.

  • Broekhuis, Hans, and Ellen Woolford. 2013. Minimalism and optimality theory. In The Cambridge handbook of generative syntax, ed. M. Den Dikken, 122–161. Cambridge (UK)/New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Carstens, Vicki. 2016. Delayed valuation: A reanalysis of goal features, “Upward” complementizer agreement, and the mechanics of case. Syntax 19 (1): 1–42.

  • Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, Noam. 1973. Conditions on transformations. In A festschrift for Morris Halle, ed. S. Anderson, and P. Kiparsky, 232–286. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, Noam. 1993. A minimalist program for syntactic theory. In The view from Building 20, 1–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

  • Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, Noam. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In Step by step, ed. M. Roger, M. David, and J. Uriagereka, 89–155. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, Noam. 2001a. Beyond explanatory adequacy. Ms., MIT, Cambridge, MA.

  • Chomsky, Noam. 2001b. Derivation by phase. In Ken Hale: A life in language, ed. M. Kenstowicz, 1–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, Noam, and Morris Halle. 1968. The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper and Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • De Belder, Marijke, and Marjo van Koppen. 2014. What may cause idiolectal variation? the case of ANN-compounds in Dutch. Ms., HUBrussel, Utrecht University.

  • De Belder, Marijke, and Marjo van Koppen. 2016. One module, different levels of merge: AN(N) compounds in Dutch. Studia Linguistica 70 (1): 1–33

  • Epstein, Samuel David, and T. Daniel Seely, eds. 2002. Rule applications as cycles in a level-free syntax. In Derivation and explanation in the minimalist program, 65–89. Oxford: Blackwell.

  • Fanselow, Gisbert, and Damir Ćavar. 2001. Remarks on the economy of pronunciation. In Competition in syntax, ed. Gereon Müller, and Wolfgang Sternefeld, 107–150. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fischer, Silke. 2004. Towards an optimal theory of reflexivization. PhD diss, Universität Tübingen.

  • Frampton, John, and Sam Gutman. 2006. How sentences grow in the mind: Agreement and selection in efficient minimalist syntax. In Agreement systems, ed. C. Boeckx, 121–157. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Georgi, Doreen. 2014. Opaque interactions of merge and agree. on the nature and order of elementary operations. PhD diss, Universität Leipzig.

  • Georgi, Doreen, and Martin Salzmann. 2010. DP-internal double agreement is not double agree: Consequences of agree-based case assignment within DP. Lingua 121: 2069–2088.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grimshaw, Jane. 1997. Projection, heads and optimality. Linguistic Inquiry 28: 373–422.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hale, John, and Géraldine Legendre. 2004. Minimal links, remnant movement and (non-)derivational grammar. In Minimality effects in syntax, ed. A. Stepanov, G. Fanselow, and R. Vogel, 177–204. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Hale, Kenneth, and Samuel Jay Keyser. 1993. On argument structure and the lexical expression of syntactic relations. In The view from Building 20: Essays in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, ed. K. Hale, and S. Keyser, 53–109. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Halle, Morris, and Alec Marantz. 1993. Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In The view from Building 20: Essays in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, ed. K. Hale, and S.J. Keyser, 111–176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harley, Heidi. 2009. Compounding in Distributed Morphology. In The Oxford handbook of compounding, ed. R. Lieber, and P. Štekauer. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hayes, Bruce. 2001. Gradient well-formedness in optimality theory. In Optimality theory. Phonology, syntax and acquisition, ed. J. Dekkers, F. van der Leeuw, and F. van der Weijer, 88–120. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Heck, Fabian. 2004. A theory of pied piping. PhD diss, Universität Tübingen.

  • Heck, Fabian, and Gereon Müller. 2000. Repair-driven movement and the local optimizations of derivations. Ms., Universität Stuttgart and IDS Mannheim.

  • Heck, Fabian, and Gereon Müller. 2007. Extremely local optimization. In Proceedings of the 26th WECOL, ed. E. Brainbridge and B. Agbayani, 170–183. California State University.

  • Helbig, Gerhard, and Joachim Buscha. 2001. Deutsche grammatik. ein handbuch für den ausländerunter-richt. München: Langenscheidt.

  • Hiraiwa, Ken. 2001. Multiple agree and the defective intervention constraint in Japanese. In Proceedings of the HUMIT 2000, ed. O. Matushansky, 67–80. Los Angeles: University of California. Vol. 40 of UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics.

  • Hothorn, Torsten, Kurt Hornik, and Achim Zeileis. 2006. Unbiased recursive partitioning: A conditional inference framework. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics 15 (3): 651–674.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, Kyle. 2002. Restoring exotic coordinations to normalcy. Linguistic Inquiry 33: 97–156.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kisseberth, Charles. 1972. Cyclical rules in Klamath phonology. Linguistic Inquiry.

  • Koutsoudas, Andreas. 1972. The strict order fallacy. Language 48: 88–96.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lawrenz, Birgit. 1995. Das graue-maus-dasein und das brave-mädchen-image: Zur bildungsweise von a-n-n-komposita im Deutschen. Deutsch als Fremdsprache 32 (1): 39–42.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lebeaux, David. 1988. Language aquisition and the form of the grammar. PhD diss, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

  • Legendre, Géraldine, Paul Smolensky, and Colin Wilson. 1998. When is less more? Faithfulness and minimal links in wh-chains. In Is the best good enough?, ed. S. Karimi, V. Samiian, and W. Wilkins, 249–289. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lieber, Rochelle. 1992. Deconstructing morphology: Word formation in syntactic theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCarthy, John, and Alan Prince. 2004. The emergence of the unmarked. In Optimality theory in phonology. a reader. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • McCawley, James. 1988. The syntactic phenomena of English, vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meibauer, Jörg. 2007. How marginal are phrasal compounds? Generalized insertion, expressivity, and IQ-interaction. Morphology 17: 233–259.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Müller, Gereon. 2000a. Das pronominaladverb als reparaturphänomen. Linguistische Berichte 182: 139–178.

    Google Scholar 

  • Müller, Gereon. 2000b. Optimality, markedness and word order in German. Linguistics 37: 777–818.

    Google Scholar 

  • Müller, Gereon. 2000c. Shape conservation and remnant movement. Proceedings of NELS 30, 525–539. MA, GLSA: Amherst.

    Google Scholar 

  • Müller, Gereon. 2004. Argument encoding and the order of elementary operations. Ms., IDS Mannheim.

  • Müller, Gereon. 2009. Ergativity, accusativity and the order of merge and agree. In Explorations of phase theory. Features and arguments, ed. K. Grohmann, 269–308. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

  • Müller, Gereon. 2012. Optimality-theoretic syntax. Ms., Universität Leipzig.

  • Nagy, Naomi, and Bill Reynolds. 1997. Optimality theory and variable word-final deletion in Faetar. Language Variation and Change 9 (1): 37–56.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Neef, Martin. 2009. IE, Germanic: German. In The Oxford handbook of compounding, ed. R. Lieber, and P. Štekauer. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pesetsky, David. 1989. Language-particular processes and the earliness principle. Ms., MIT.

  • Pesetsky, David. 1998. Some optimality principles of sentence pronunciation. In Is the best good enough?, ed. S. Karimi, V. Samiian, and W. Wilkins, 337–383. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pesetsky, David, and Esther Torrego. 2007. The syntax of valuation and the interpretability of features. In Phrasal and clausal architecture. Syntactic derivation and interpretation, ed. S. Karimi, V. Samiian, and W. Wilkins, 262–294. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

  • Postal, Paul. 1969. Anaphoric islands. Chicago Linguistic Society 5: 205–239.

    Google Scholar 

  • Preminger, Omer. 2011. Agreement as a fallible operation. MIT, Cambridge, MA: PhD diss.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prince, Allan, and Paul Smolensky. 1993. Optimality theory. constraint interaction in generative grammar. Rutgers University: Books ms.

  • Prince, Allan, and Paul Smolensky. 2004. Optimality theory. Constraint interaction in generative grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Reynolds, Bill. 1994. Variation and phonological theory. PhD diss: University of Pennsylvania.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schmid, Tanja. 2001. OT accounts of optionality: A comparison of global ties and neutralization. In Competition in syntax, ed. G. Müller, and W. Sternefeld, 283–319. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Segal, Mark. 2004. Machine learning benchmarks and random forest regression. Center for Bioinformatics & Molecular Biostatistics.

  • Sells, Peter, John Rickford, and Thomas Wasow. 1996. An optimality theoretic approach to variation in negative inversion in AAVE. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 14: 591–627.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sternefeld, Wolfgang. 2006. Syntax: Eine morphologisch motivierte generative beschreibung des Deutschen, vol. 1. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.

    Google Scholar 

  • Uriagereka, Juan. 2002. Multiple spell-out. In Derivations: Exploring the dynamics of syntax, ed. J. Uriagereka, 45–65. London: Routledge.

  • Uriagereka, Juan. 2012. Spell-out and the minimalist program. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vainikka, Anne, and Pauli Brattico. 2014. The Finnish accusative: Long-distance case assignment under agreement. Linguistics 52 (1): 73–124.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vogel, Ralf. 2004. Correspondence in ot syntax and minimal link effects. In Minimality effects in syntax, ed. A. Stepanov, G. Fanselow, and R. Vogel, 401–441. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Wiese, Reinhard. 1996. Phrasal compounds and the theory of word syntax. Linguistic Inquiry 27: 183–193.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, Edwin. 1974. Rule ordering in syntax. PhD diss, MIT, Cambridge, MA.

  • Zeileis, Achim, Torsten Hothorn, and Kurt Hornik. 2008. Model-based recursive partitioning. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics 17 (2): 492–514.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics, University of Leipzig, Beethovenstraße 15, 04107, Leipzig, Germany

    Katja Barnickel & Matías Guzmán Naranjo

Authors
  1. Katja Barnickel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Matías Guzmán Naranjo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Katja Barnickel.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Barnickel, K., Guzmán Naranjo, M. Resolving unexpected case concord in German A–N–N compounds. J Comp German Linguistics 20, 83–138 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-017-9089-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-017-9089-x

Keywords

Search

Navigation