On the so‐called Absentive – in German

• Published in: Studia linguistica Vol. 73; no. 3; pp. 604 - 649
• Main Authors: Fortmann, Christian, Wöllstein, Angelika
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.12.2019
• Subjects: Copulas; German language; Grammatical categories; Grammatical subject; Implicature; Infinitives; Predicate; Syntactic analysis; Syntactic structures; Verbs
• ISSN: 0039-3193; 1467-9582
• DOI: 10.1111/stul.12111

This investigation targets a syntactic phenomenon of German which is commonly referred to as the absentive construction. The absentive is considered a universal grammatical category denoting absence. Its syntax is characterised by the occurrence of an auxiliary or copula verb accompanied by a non‐finite VP containing a main verb. The expression of absence, predicated over the clausal subject, is assumed to be based on a constructional meaning. Reviewing a wide range of syntactic and interpretive properties of this structure in German, we will demonstrate that certain empirical claims about the construction are not well founded and that its seemingly idiosyncratic properties are indeed available for compositional analyses. We will propose a structural analysis of its core syntactic and interpretive properties: The predication expresses the localisation of the subject at the location of the event, denoted by the infinitival verb. The interpretation of absence, then, can be explained by an implicature.