Sentence and its Parts. A Psycholinguistic Theory of Syntactic Value

Abstract

Focusing on the works of Georg von der Gabelentz, Hermann Paul and Christoph Sigwart, the paper analyses the different ways in which logically or psychologically based categories are related to the structure of sentences. In particular, it aims at establishing the extent to which the new model of syntactic analysis is connected with a new appraisal of the role of the speaker and/or the context, in determining the final functions of the various sentence members. The method of genetic psychology is examined here from the vantage point of the debate on subjectlose Sätze.