German concessives as TPs, JPs and ActPs

Abstract

The concessive relation is said to not be expressible by a central adverbial clause (CAC) but by a peripheral adverbial clause (PAC) or a non-integrated dependent clause (NonIC). This is true in the standard case. The paper argues that this ban on the appearance of the concessive as a CAC stems from the fact that the concessive relation standardly involves a judgement, which is due to a conception of an expected course of events that is associated as an implicature with the concessive relation. However, based on d’Avis (2016), it is shown that if a concessive just stands in opposition to a conditional that is salient in the context, it does not involve a judgement and can appear as a CAC.A judgement constitutes a private act of evaluation (Krifka to appear). It follows that in the standard case concessive clauses necessarily involve a richer semantic structure than just a core proposition. This has consequences for syntax. Following Krifka, the paper assumes that the private act of a judgement is syntactically represented in clausal structure by a J(udge)P(hrase). CACs do not contain a JP-projection, but PACs do.NonICs encode a speech act; in addition to a JP they also contain a Com(mitment)P(hrase) and an ActP(hrase). It is demonstrated that while concessives realised as PACs may host so-called weak root phenomena, concessives realised as NonICs may also host commitment modifiers and so-called strong root phenomena. Further distinguishing syntactic properties of concessives realised as PACs or as NonICs are discussed.