Programa 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.