A re-examination of wieder: remarks on an overlooked prefix

Vol.65,No.1(2017)

Andreas Blümel Hans-Joachim Particke

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/136656

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Abstract
Departing from the repetitive-restitutive ambiguity of the German adverb wieder ('again'), we investigate its homophonous counterpart, the verbal prefix wieder (VPW). It occurs in verbs like wiederauferstehen ('to resurrect') and corresponding deverbal nouns (Wiederauferstehung 'resurrection'). We offer an initial structural and semantic description of these forms and elaborate on the specific requirements that VPW seems to impose on the base it attaches to. We observe that formations with VPW show a strong preference for restitutive interpretations and that VPW, in contrast to the adverb, seems to require completeness of the end state, which can be attained by a specific morphological makeup of the base. This suggests that VPW constructions might also be analyzable in a scalar fashion, calling into question the decompositional approach proposed for the adverb. Our findings are also briefly put into cross-linguistic perspective by looking at re-, the English counterpart of VPW, and some data from Dutch.

Keywords:
adverbs; decomposition; morphology; verbal prefix; restitution/repetition

Pages:
37–50
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