Non-Manner ‘how’-Complements in English and in German

Abstract

This paper compares the lexical and selectional semantics of non-interrogative, nonmanner how-complements in English and German. It argues that English has two types of such complements: how-complements that are licensed by perception, memory, and fiction verbs and allow paraphrase by a DP of the form ‘the event in which [TP ]’ (see Umbach et al., submitted), and how-complements that are licensed by presuppositional and ‘say’-verbs and allow paraphrase by a DP of the form ‘the fact that [TP ]’ (see Legate, 2010). The paper shows that German only has the first type of non-manner how-complement. It provides a characterization of these types of complements in terms of their observed entailment behavior.