West Germanic IPP-constructions : an optimality theoretic approach

Abstract

The dissertation deals with 'Infinitivus Pro Participio' (IPP) constructions in West Germanic languages. These constructions pose a longstanding problem for syntactic theory: An unexpected form (the bare infinitive) appears in certain constructions in which the past participle would be expected, i.e., a 'wrong' form is grammatical. The main object of this dissertation is to provide an adequate account of this construction from a comparative point of view. Constructions of seven languages and dialects (Standard German, Bernese German, Sankt Gallen German, Zürich German, Dutch, West Flemish, Afrikaans) are systematically investigated and compared with each other. The notions Infinitivus Pro Participio, i.e., infinitive instead of a past participle, and the German term 'Ersatzinfinitiv' ('substitute infinitive') reflect the exceptional status of IPP. It has seldom been discussed, however, what this means theoretically: If IPP is a substitute for an expected past participle, are then those grammatical rules violated that normally account for the past participle? In contrast to previous literature on IPP, this question is explicitly answered with 'yes' in this dissertation. It is shown that under the assumption of violable rules a straightforward account of the IPP-construction can be given. The leading hypothesis of this dissertation is that IPP-constructions are regarded as exceptional because they violate otherwise valid rules of the language. IPP appears as a last resort' or repair strategy only in cases in which the past participle would be 'even worse'. As such a view at the IPP-data requires a theory in which constraints are violable and hierarchically ordered, the analysis is carried out in an Optimality Theory (OT) framework in which exactly this is assumed.

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