Solving the bracketing paradox - German Grammar Group FU Berlin

ST. MÜLLER
however, proven to be useful to distinguish the verbal complement from
other complements (Chung 1993; Rentier 1994; Müller 1997; Kathol 1998).
For the purpose of representing the information about complements that
form a predicate complex with their head, the feature VCOMP is introduced.
Its value is a list that contains a synsem object if the verb selects for a dependent
to form a complex with, and the empty list otherwise.
The description in (17) shows the CAT value for the stem entry of the
future tense auxiliary werden. 7
(17) werden ‘will’ future tense auxiliary
⎡
⎤
HEAD verb
⎢
⎥
⎣SUBCAT 1
⎦
〈 〉
VCOMP V[bse, SUBCAT 1 , VCOMP 〈〉]
Werden selects a verb or a verbal complex via VCOMP. All arguments of this
verbal complex (1) are raised. 8 The instantiations of the list 1 may be the
empty list. Werden does not assign thematic roles to dependents of the embedded
verb. Therefore no reference to elements possibly contained in
SUBCAT is necessary. Lexical entries for the perfect auxiliaries (haben/sein)
are completely analogous to (17) except for the verb form of the selected
verbal complex.
As Hinrichs & Nakazawa (1994) have shown, it is reasonable to assume a
schema that licenses the verbal complex in addition to the head complement
schema. I suggest the following schema, which licenses head cluster structures.
Schema 1 (cluster schema)
head-cluster-structurep
⎡
⎤
SYNSEM|LOC|CAT|VCOMP 1
⎢
⎣HEAD-DTR|SYNSEM|LOC|CAT|VCOMP 1 ⊕ 〈 〉 ⎥
2 ⎦
〈 〉
NON-HEAD-DTRS [SYNSEM 2 ]
A head is combined with its verbal complement (2). The remainder of the
VCOMP list (1) is passed up to the mother node. In our example, 1 will be the
empty list. The specification of the VCOMP value of the verbal complement of
verbs like werden ‘will’ as the empty list ensures that the verbal complex that
[7] For explanatory purposes, I assume that both subjects and complements are represented on
the SUBCAT list. The issues discussed in this paper are orthogonal to the representation of the
subject. Representations like the ones suggested in Pollard & Sag (1994: chapter 9), Kiss
(1995), or Pollard (1996) are also compatible with the analysis.
[8] The lexical entry as given in (17) admits multiple analyses of sentences containing this
auxiliary since it is not specified that the verb that is embedded has to be lexical. Since it is
not relevant to the rest of this paper, I have omitted the necessary specifications in lexical
entries and in schema 1.
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