Kempf, Luise; Hartmann, Stefan (2022). What’s extravagant about be-sandal-ed feet? Morphology, semantics and pragmatics of German pseudo-participles. In: Eitelmann, Matthias; Haumann, Dagmar (eds.) Extravagant Morphology. Studies in rule-bending, pattern-extending and theory-challenging morpohology. Studies in Language Companion Series: Vol. 223 (pp. 20-50). Amsterdam: John Benjamins
Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)Extravagance can be conceived of as a (more or less) deliberate deviation from established norms that evokes surprise or attention. In this paper, we present an empirical case study of a rare but quite remarkable morphological pattern, namely German pseudo-participles – forms that look like past participles but lack a verbal counterpart, e.g., be-brill-t ‘be-glassed’ (derived from the noun Brille ‘glasses’).
In our study, we investigate the extravagance of the pattern using data from the webcorpus DECOW16AX. We combine a detailed qualitative analysis of singleton coinages with various explorative quantitative approaches, taking into account the complexity of the formations and their anchoring in the context. In addition, we examine metalinguistic indicators of extravagance such as double quotes and meta-comments. We argue that German pseudo-participles are a prime example of an “extravagant” phenomenon at the interface of morphology and pragmatics, and as such can be instructive for our understanding of extravagant morphology on a general level, especially with regard to the role of surprise in generating extravagant effects.
Item Type: |
Book Section (Book Chapter) |
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Division/Institute: |
06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies > Institute of Germanic Languages 06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies > Institute of Germanic Languages > German Linguistics 06 Faculty of Humanities > Other Institutions > Walter Benjamin Kolleg (WBKolleg) > Center for the Study of Language and Society (CSLS) |
UniBE Contributor: |
Kempf, Luise |
Subjects: |
400 Language > 410 Linguistics 400 Language > 430 German & related languages |
ISBN: |
978-90-272-1086-9 |
Series: |
Studies in Language Companion Series |
Publisher: |
John Benjamins |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Nicolas Cyrus Schatzmann |
Date Deposited: |
14 Feb 2022 10:10 |
Last Modified: |
05 Dec 2022 16:05 |
Uncontrolled Keywords: |
pseudo-participles, creativity, web corpora, givenness, stereotypes |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/164863 |
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