Towards a correlation of form, use and meaning of German 'ge'-prefixed predicative participles

• Main Authors: Tillmann Pross, Antje Roßdeutscher
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Open Library of Humanities 2019-08-01
• Series: Glossa
• Subjects: German; Lexical Semantics; Adjectival Passive; Predicative Participle; Stativity; Target State; Resultant State
• Online Access: https://www.glossa-journal.org/articles/753

We argue for a split semantics of German predicative participle constructions, depending on whether or not the formation of the participle involves prefixation with the dedicated morpheme 'ge'-. Against the background of the analysis of participles of German 'be'-prefixed verbs proposed in Pross (2019), and using the licensing of superlative constructions and 'ung'-nominalizations as tests, we show that 'ge'-prefixed participles denote a result relation between a property of an event and an individual. In contrast, 'be'-prefixed participles, like adjectives, denote properties of individuals. We cast the distinction between event properties and individual properties in a compositional semantics of 'ge'-and 'be'-prefixed participles and show how the resulting semantic distinction allows to predict the distinction between target and resultant state participles drawn in Kratzer (2000) without using the questionable 'immer noch' ‘still’ test.