How to manage something in Bavarian German: The verbal prefix 'der-'

Authors

  • Sarah Zobel
  • Jakob Majdič

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18148/sub/2022.v26i0.1036

Abstract

The intuitive semantic contribution of the Bavarian German verbal prefix der- is usually paraphrased with either manage or be able to (e.g., Pia der-zieht den Wagen, ‘Pia {manages / is able}to pull the cart.’). While existing work has emphasized the relation of der- to its ability paraphrase (Sonnenhauser, 2009, 2012), we show that its semantic properties are much closer (though not identical) to that of manage: (i) der- gives rise to inference patterns that mirror those of manage and (ii) like manage but unlike be able to, predicates built from verbs prefixed by der- interact with temporal adverbials in the same way as achievement predicates. We take these results at face value and propose that der- introduces an event boundary to the event described by its semantic argument, thereby creating an achievement predicate. We argue that der- contributes projective content regarding the agent’s commitment and the difficulty of performing the event described by its argument.

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Published

2022-12-22

How to Cite

Zobel, S., & Majdič, J. (2022). How to manage something in Bavarian German: The verbal prefix ’der-’. Proceedings of Sinn Und Bedeutung, 26, 904–922. https://doi.org/10.18148/sub/2022.v26i0.1036