Infinitival syntax infinitivus pro participio as a repair strategy - Schmid, Tanja (John Benjamins Pub., 2005)
Includes bibliographical references and index
Infinitival Syntax; Editorial page; Title page; LCC data; Acknowledgements; Contents; List of constraints; 1. Introduction; 2. Infinitive or past participle; 3. The verb order; 4. Main features of previous analyses of the IPP; 5. Introduction to Optimality Theory (OT); 6. A case study of German I: Obligatory versus impossible IPP; 7. A case study of German II: The verb order; 8. Optional IPP in German; 9. Parameterisation in OT: The other languages; 10. Conclusion; References; Index; The series Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today
This monograph offers a new analysis of West Germanic 'Infinitivus Pro Participio' (IPP) constructions, within the framework of Optimality Theory. IPP constructions have long been problematic for syntactic theory, because a bare infinitive is preferred over the expected past participle. The book shows how the substitution of the past participle by the infinitive in IPP constructions can be captured straightforwardly if constraints are assumed to be violable. The basic idea is that IPP constructions are exceptional because they violate otherwise valid rules of the language. Thus, IPP is a 'last