We are very happy to announce a guest talk, which will take place on Friday, June 14, 2 – 4 pm in IG 4.301.
Viola Schmitt (University of Vienna) and Frank Sode (Goethe University Frankfurt) „An anti-intellectualist treatment of German wissen (‘know’)“.
Abstract:
German wissen (‘know’) can embed both finite clauses (’wissen-FIN’) as well as infinitives (’wissen-INF ’). Based on novel empirical observations, we argue that wissen-INF cannot be reduced to the standard analysis of wissen-FIN , i.e. that wissen with infinitival complements does not involve a propositional attitude. As cross-linguistic evidence suggests that German wissen is not ambiguous, it follows that wissen-FIN cannot denote a propositional attitude, either. Accordingly, we require a new, uniform meaning for wissen. We derive this meaning by first considering wissen-INF, arguing that it combines semantic properties of ability modals with semantic properties of implicative verbs and enough to-constructions. We then show that these properties can also be used to characterize wissen-FIN , as long as certain non-standard assumptions are made about the denotation of the complement. This gives us a new, unified analysis of wissen and also helps to explain some properties of this verb (with both kinds of complements) that traditional analyses cannot account for.
You are cordially invited!