Anaphoric potential of bare nominals, incorporated objects and weak definites in German

Abstract

In many languages, syntactic objects can be realized in a variety of ways, from maximally distinct DPs to morphologically integrated nominal stems. For example, German allows for viele Fische fangen, Fische fangen, am Fischefangen sein, beim Fischfang sein and fischen. We also find strong definite and weak definite DPs, e.g., in das Kino gehen vs. ins Kino gehen, and bare singular nouns such as Zeitung lesen. While the syntactic differences between these examples are obvious, their semantic differences and their functions in discourse are less clear. We present experimental evidence about differences in the likelihood of anaphoric uptake of such expressions. We suggest semantic representations that help explain the options of anaphoric potential of these expressions within a version of Discourse Representation Theory (DRT).