Talk by Frank Sode – Thursday 6th 4-6 pm
We are happy to announce a talk by Frank Sode (Goethe Universität). Please find an abstract below.
Title: The syntax and semantics of suppletive „wenn“-clauses: Evidence from V2
Room: IG 4.301
Date: February 6th
Time: 4pm – 6pm
Abstract: As Williams (1974) observed, the sentence in (1-a) can have a reading that can be paraphrased as in (1-b).
(1) a. I would be happy if Bill were here.
b. I would be happy that Bill was here, if he were.
Pesetsky (1991) argues that Williams‘ paraphrase is „more than a mere paraphrase“. According to Pesetsky (1991), something like (1-b) is an actual syntactic representation of (1-a) at some level of the derivation.
It is well-known that V2-clauses in German can alternate with suppletive „wenn“-clauses in construction with preference predicates, see for example Frank (1998), Meinunger (2004), Meinunger (2007).
(2) a. Es ist besser, wenn du kommst.
It is better if you come
b. Es ist besser, du kommst.
It is better you come
Both: ‚It is...