Speaker: Miriam Schiele
Title: Preposition Omission and Focus in German Fragments: A Case for a Q-Based Approach
When: Thu 6 March, 16:15 – 17:30
Where: Lipsius 1.23
Zoom: link / Meeting ID: 640 7326 7318 / Passcode: Mq.cK08f
Preposition omission such as in Peter was talking to someone but I don’t know (with) who is allowed in English but not German. Merchant (2001) attributes this to syntactic factors, arguing that English allows preposition stranding under regular syntactic movement but German does not. In contrast, Nykiel & Hawkins (2020) propose a processing-based explanation, suggesting German’s complex case-marking system necessitates the presence of the case-assigning preposition in elliptical clauses to ensure proper processing of the case-marked DP. This talk presents new data on German fragments, examining preposition omission, case marking and focus through an acceptability judgment task. Not only do the findings challenge both Merchant (2001) and Nykiel & Hawkins (2020), but they provide strong support for the Q-based approach to clausal ellipsis.