Anaphoric Potential of Incorporated Nominals and Weak Definites (ANAPIN)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Manfred Krifka
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2016 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 319494951

The project investigates objects that are syntactically particularly closely integrated (so-called pseudo-incorporated objects), their semantic interpretation and their ability to be picked up by anaphoric expressions. This is done using the example of bare objects in Persian (as in "film di-dam", 'I have seen a film / films’) and of weak definitions in German (as in "Wir sind ins Kino gegangen"). It is widely assumed that such objects do not introduce discourse referents and are therefore not accessible for anaphoric expressions, except possibly by associative anaphors. Our project has shown experimentally that such expressions are taken up somewhat less often in discourse, but that they are taken up more often than expected from previous work. This is consistent with the theoretical suggestion of Krifka & Modarresi (2016). The planned continuation of 18 months has, on the one hand, the goal of finalizing some of the project's work packages. This was not possible in the first phase because of the disadvantageous choice of an experimental procedure (self-paced reading) and because a planned research semester for the PI was not feasible. In the extension phase, the tried and tested method of sentence completion as well as a new, very promising method (two antecedent candidates) will be used to gain further knowledge about the anaphoric potential of these objects. Furthermore, additional predictions from the structural assumption of Krifka & Modarresi are to be tested (in particular the totality effect in the interpretation of the anaphoric element and the investigation of the anaphoric potential of expressions in constructions that are structured similarly according to our hypothesis, so-called donkey sentences) . In addition, we plan to investigate the anaphoric potential of indefinites marked with the suffix "-i" in contrast to mere objects and indefinites marked with "yek". We plan for several special publications and a more comprehensive final publication.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants