Syntactic pivot point

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The syntactic fulcrum is the verb argument around which the sentences of a language revolve.

That generally means

  • if the verb has an argument, then one of them is the syntactic fulcrum,
  • if the verb semantically follows one of the arguments, then this is the syntactic pivot point,
  • if an argument can be omitted in combined subsets, then that is the syntactic pivot point.

The first two characteristics relate to morphosyntax , and they show that in German , as in most European languages, the syntactic fulcrum is the subject . German verbs always need at least one subject for a sentence, even in the imperative the subject is an implicit "you". The verb semantically follows the subject by inflecting it accordingly depending on the number and person . A verb with only one object cannot form a sentence in German.

The third statement can be explained using an example:

I drove the car to the market and sold it.

This sentence consists of two sub-clauses, which are connected by the conjunction and . The second sentence has no explicit subject, but since the subject is the syntactic fulcrum, it is assumed that this sentence uses the same subject ( me ) of the first sentence. This cannot be done with the object, because the result would have a different meaning:

I drove the car to the market and I sold.

The syntactic pivot is a characteristic of the morphosyntactic alignment of a language. In accusative languages , the syntactic pivot is the "subject", the argument in the nominative . In ergative languages ​​it should be the argument in the absolute , but this is not always the case due to the mix-up caused by language development; there may well be ergative morphology and accusative syntax.

Languages ​​with a passive form allow the syntactic fulcrum to change its semantic role from agent to patient or vice versa in combined subsections :

He worked hard and was rewarded with an award.

literature

  • Anderson, Stephen: On the notion of subject in ergative languages . In: C. Li (Ed.): Subject and topic . Academic Press, New York 1976, pp. 1-24 .
  • Dixon, RMW: Ergativity . University Press, Cambridge 1994.
  • Foley, William & Van Valin, Robert: Functional syntax and universal grammar . University Press, Cambridge 1984.
  • Plank, Frans (Ed.): Ergativity: Towards a theory of grammatical relations . Academic Press, London 1979.