Reflexives and resultatives: some differences between English and German

Oya, Toshiaki

doi:10.1515/ling.2002.040

Cited by 33 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Steinbach (2002: 46 ff. ), for instance, notes that the English reflexive cannot be used as a middle marker at all (on our use of the notion 'middle', see section 3.1), whereas both Dutch and German allow the weak reflexive zich/sich in so-called anticausative constructions, see (4), and only German has reflexive sich in facilitative constructions of the type illustrated in (5) (for similar observations, see also Oya 2002Oya , 2003.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…In English, which lacks a weak reflexive form, the strong reflexive may be used in resultative constructions which resemble middle situations involving autocausative motion to some degree, see (37) (examples are taken from Oya 2002).…”

Section: Autocausative Motion In Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It cannot be used, for example, in contexts involving motion in which the result phrase expresses the final location of the subject (Oya 2002: 976). In contrast to German and Dutch, the reflexive is excluded in such cases, see (38), taken from Oya (2002). If a reflexive is available, as illustrated in (37a-c), some metaphorical change of state of the subject is expressed which is possibly achieved through motion.…”

Section: Autocausative Motion In Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Analogues of the way-construction in German and Dutch: another Germanic sandwich?

Mortelmans¹,

Смирнова²

2020

German and Dutch in Contrast

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This paper addresses the English way-construction [SUBJ i V POSS i way OBL] and its reflexive analogues in German and Dutch. We argue that the different constructions are best compared using conceptual terms describing middle situations in the domain of autocausative motion (Kemmer 1993). Two dimensions are especially important: path traversal and goal-directedness (or telicity). It will be shown that way-constructions and their analogues can be arranged along these dimensions. Moreover, there is a general parallel tendency for newer constructions to occupy the domain of 'path traversal'. In English, this development has resulted in the way-construction being dominant at the cost of the historically prior reflexive resultative construction. In Dutch, the weg-construction, which expresses path-traversal, competes with the more generally established Transitionto-Location Construction, which specialises in the expression of telic transition of location. In German, finally, there is no schematic Weg-construction: the entire conceptual space of autocausative motion is covered by reflexive constructions-either instantiations of a more general reflexive construction [SUBJ V sich OBL] or inherently reflexive verbs. Zusammenfassung: Der vorliegende Beitrag behandelt die englische way-Konstruktion [SUBJ i V POSS i way OBL] und die äquivalenten Reflexivkonstruktionen des Deutschen und des Niederländischen. Es wird gezeigt, dass sich diese unterschiedlichen Konstruktionen am besten mithilfe von Kategorien vergleichen lassen, die für die Beschreibung von Medialsituationen im Bereich der autokausativen Bewegung entwickelt wurden (Kemmer 1993). Vor allem zwei Dimensionen erweisen sich dabei als wichtig: Zurücklegen eines Pfades und Zielgerichtetheit (oder Telizität). Außerdem wird gezeigt, dass die way-Konstruktionen und ihre Äquivalente entlang dieser Dimensionen geordnet werden können und dass jüngere Konstruktionen dazu neigen, zunächst die Domäne des 'Zurücklegens eines Pfades' zu besetzen. Im Englischen hat dies dazu geführt, dass die way-Konstruktion die historisch ältere reflexive Resultativkonstruktion weitgehend verdrängt hat. Im Niederländischen befindet sich die weg-Konstruktion, die das Zurücklegen eines Pfades ausdrückt, in Konkurrenz mit einer bereits etablierten Konstruktion, die auf den Ausdruck eines telischen Ortswechsels spezialisiert ist. Im Deutschen gibt es schließlich keine schematische Weg-Konstruktion: Hier wird Open Access.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Section: Autocausative Motion In Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Autocausative Motion In Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Analogues of the way-construction in German and Dutch: another Germanic sandwich?

Mortelmans¹,

Смирнова²

2020

German and Dutch in Contrast

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“…One could therefore take them to be a development subsequent to the OE period. The problem with this conclusion is that unsubcategorised object cases are also found in other Germanic languages (see Oya 2002 and Boas 2003 for German, Whelpton 2006 for Icelandic), as shown in (53): cry oneself hoarsesich heiser schreien (German)garga sig hásan (Icelandic)skrike seg hås/hes (Norwegian) It is difficult to believe that this pattern was not possible in OE and that it developed (possibly after the Norman invasion) independently of the other Germanic languages. The fact that no examples of this pattern have been found in OE records may simply be a historical accident related to the restricted range of texts and text types which have come down to us (as was underlined at the beginning of section 2.2).…”

Section: Conclusion and Complicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a history of English resultative constructions: the case of adjectival resultative constructions

Broccias¹

2008

English Language and Linguistics

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This contribution provides a corpus-based investigation of the history of adjectival resultative constructions (RCs), e.g. He wiped the table clean, with special reference to Old English and Middle English. The article first briefly discusses some of the parameters relevant to a synchronic analysis of RCs, namely causativity, causality and force-dynamics, as well as the distinction between adjectival and adverbial RCs (collectively referred to as ARCs since the two types cannot always be differentiated diachronically). The article then shows that the diachronic data point to an expansion of the ARC from very specific instantiations, involving a limited set of verbs and adjectives/adverbs (i.e. the washing and cutting scenarios), to progressively more general types (which, however, set up a coherent network of analogical extensions). It is observed that this evolutionary path correlates with the metaphorical interpretation of actions as forces and the emergence of ‘proper’ causative examples, i.e. examples where the verb only symbolises the causing subevent in the causal chain evoked by the RC. Further, it is argued that this investigation highlights the importance of the usage-based model in linguistic analysis.

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Agreement, case and A-movement

Radford

2009

An Introduction to English Sentence Structure

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Reflexives and resultatives: some differences between English and German

Cited by 33 publications

References 9 publications

Analogues of the way-construction in German and Dutch: another Germanic sandwich?

Analogues of the way-construction in German and Dutch: another Germanic sandwich?

Towards a history of English resultative constructions: the case of adjectival resultative constructions

Agreement, case and A-movement

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