Modifying the ordering source – unstressed 'überhaupt' in German purpose clauses

Abstract

My goal is to reconcile the seemingly unrelated meanings of the two variants of the German particle 'überhaupt', stressed 'überhaupt' (≈ ‘at all’, ‘in general’) and unstressed 'überhaupt' (≈ ‘even’) in one specific embedded case: purpose clauses with the complementizer 'um'. I propose an account of 'überhaupt' in purpose clauses that does justice to its focus-sensitive scalar meaning but keeps intact the domain widening meaning, as argued for by Anderssen 2006 for the stressed variant. I claim that unstressed 'überhaupt' modifies the bouletic ordering source in purpose clauses by excluding all higher ranked focus alternatives of the embedded proposition 'q' in 'p in order to q'. The result is a wider domain which is quantified over by a bouletic modal included in the purpose clause with um.