Gert Webelhuth (webelhut@gibbs.oit.unc.edu)
Mon, 17 Jul 1995 12:43:47 -0400 (EDT)
On Mon, 17 Jul 1995, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: > > > > [Ein Held zu sein] macht Spass > > a hero to be is fun > > nom > > I will try (as I have tried to do often in my life) to avoid much disussion > of the internal stucture of German NPs, but one could easily imagine > that it is something like > > [np [det Ein] [n1 Held] [vp zu sein]] > > The head "Held" has the case of the entire noun phrase (NOMINATIVE) which > is comes from the lexical entry for the non-finite verb "macht". The > exact bar levels and relationship between the head noun and the determiner > is not really important. The only important assumption is that > "Held zu sein" is not an infinitival S, but is an N followed by > and infinitival VP, and the the N, "Held", is the head of its phrase. > You got some work cut out for yourself, then, because [ein Held zu sein] behaves in all respects like a VP or sentence rather than an NP, as far as I can tell. First, it's content is a psoa rather than a nom-obj, i.e. the above sentence means "being a hero is fun." Heroes are fun would instead be expressed as: Helden machen Spass heroes make fun Syntactically, [ein Held zu sein] has all the trappings of a non-finite verb phrase but no properties of an NP (except, of course, the NP [ein Held] contained in it): 1. The raising verb SCHEINEN can only combine with a VP but not with an NP: (1) Peter scheint [VP zu schwimmen] (2) *Peter scheint [NP ein Mann] (3) is grammatical and hence shows that the bracketed constituent is a VP and not an NP: (3) Peter scheint [ein Held zu sein] 2. NENNEN can only take a secondary predicate of category NP after it but not a VP: (4) Maria nannte mich [NP einen Linguisten] (5) *Maria nannte mich [VP zu schwimmen] (6) is ungrammatical and again shows that [ein Held zu sein] patterns with the VP and not the NP: (6) *Maria nannte mich [VP einen Held zu sein] 3. Finally, if [ein Held zu sein] were an NP, then we would not expect VP adverbs to be able to appear to the left of the determiner, since VP adverbs cannot modify NPs. They can, however, easily appear there, showing that the constituent that follows them is a VP: (7) [Oft ein Held zu sein] macht Spass (8) [Niemals ein Held zu sein] ist reine Feigheit (9) [Anonym ein Held zu sein] ist besser als sich immer selbst zu loben. Best, Gert
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