Schedule 77. StuTS

Let’s rephrase the last part of the title, which contains an absentive construction as its predicate: Fritz ist auf der StuTS vortragen. Two questions could warrant this as an answer: Wo ist Fritz? / Was macht Fritz? From this follows intuitively that the predicate tells us two kinds of information: about Fritz’s location and activity.
Current analyses of the absentive are unsatisfactory both from a syntax and a semantics perspective. Haslinger’s (2007) approach requires modifying Principle B of Binding theory to account for disjoint spatial indexes on the sentential subject and PRO. This approach makes predictions that contradict empirical evidence. Abraham (2008) posits a motion verb GO, unexpressed in the final realisation of the absentive. This does not account for the absentive’s static properties. Finally, Muller (2016) assumes the existence of a silent particle AWAY. Her analysis relies heavily on a strong semantics of both absence and remoteness, which Fortmann & Wöllstein (2019) show are not part of the truth-conditional meaning of the absentive. I propose instead extending Svenonius’s (2012) account of PPs to the absentive, decomposing it into a Path and Place element. This is advantageous for both formal and empirical reasons and leads to correct predictions.

References:
Abraham, W. (2008). Absent Arguments on the Absentive: An Exercise in Silent Syntax. Grammatical Category or Just Pragmatic Inference? STUF, 61(4), 358–374.
Fortmann, C., & Wöllstein, A. (2019). On the So-called Absentive - in German. Studia Linguistica. A Journal of General Linguistics, 73(3), 604–649.
Haslinger, I. M. (2007). The Syntactic Location of Events. Aspects of Verbal Complementation in Dutch. Utrecht: LOT (diss., Univ. van Tilburg).
Muller, H. (2016). The Absentive in German. New York: NYU Arts Science (hons. th., New York Univ.).
Svenonius, P. (2012). Structural Decomposition of Spatial adpositions. Ms., Universitetet I Tromsø. Available at .
The title of the talk is a reference to: König, S. (2009). Alle sind in Deutschland... außer Fritz Eckenga - der ist einkaufen! OPAL, 4, 42–74.

Info

Day: 2025-05-15
Start time: 14:40
Duration: 00:30
Room: GWZ 4.116
Track: Syntax
Language: en

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• Slides Absentive