Universität zu Köln

Strunk, Jan Angelo Joachim (2004). Possessive Constructions in Modern Low Saxon. Masters thesis, Department of Linguistics, Stanford University.

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Abstract

This thesis is a study of nominal possessive constructions in modern Low Saxon, a West Germanic language which is closely related to Dutch, Frisian, and German. After identifying the possessive constructions in current use in modern Low Saxon, I give a formal syntactic analysis of the four most common possessive constructions within the framework of Lexical Functional Grammar in the first part of this thesis. The four constructions that I will analyze in detail include a pronominal possessive construction with a possessive pronoun used as a determiner of the head noun, another prenominal construction that resembles the English s-possessive, a linker construction in which a possessive pronoun occurs as a possessive marker in between a prenominal possessor phrase and the head noun, and a postnominal construction that involves the preposition van/von/vun and is largely parallel to the English of-possessive. In the second part of this thesis, I report the results of a corpus study on the range of use of the four possessive constructions analyzed in the first part. I show that the four constructions constitute a case of syntactic alternation and try to determine the prototypical contexts in which they are used. I sample a reasonable number of instances of each of the four constructions and annotate them with information about morphosyntactic, semantic, and functional factors in order to obtain an objective picture of the typical uses of the four constructions.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters thesis)
Translated title:	Title Language Possessivkonstruktionen im modernen Niederdeutschen German
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Strunk, Jan Angelo Joachim jan.strunk@uni-koeln.de UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
Additional Information:	\urlhttp://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.606.6803&rep=rep1&type=pdf
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-69154
Date:	2004
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Fächergruppe 1: Kunstgeschichte, Musikwissenschaft, Medienkultur und Theater, Linguistik, IDH > Institut für Linguistik
Subjects:	Language, Linguistics Germanic Other Germanic languages
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language Low Saxon English Niederdeutsch German possessive construction English Possessivkonstruktion German syntactic alternation English syntaktische Alternation German Lexical Functional Grammar UNSPECIFIED
Date of oral exam:	13 June 2004
Referee:	Name Academic Title Bresnan, Joan Prof. PhD Wasow, Thomas Prof. PhD Jurafsky, Daniel Prof. PhD
Related URLs:	Publication
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/6915