@phdthesis{Engels2004,
  author    = {Engels, Eva},
  title     = {Adverb placement : an optimality theoretic approach},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-2453},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2004},
  abstract  = {Adverb positioning is guided by syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic considerations and is subject to cross-linguistic as well as language-specific variation. The goal of the thesis is to identify the factors that determine adverb placement in general (Part I) as well as in constructions in which the adverb's sister constituent is deprived of its phonetic material by movement or ellipsis (gap constructions, Part II) and to provide an Optimality Theoretic approach to the contrasts in the effects of these factors on the distribution of adverbs in English, French, and German. In Optimality Theory (Prince \& Smolensky 1993), grammaticality is defined as optimal satisfaction of a hierarchy of violable constraints: for a given input, a set of output candidates are produced out of which that candidate is selected as grammatical output which optimally satisfies the constraint hierarchy. Since grammaticality crucially relies on the hierarchic relations of the constraints, cross-linguistic variation can be traced back to differences in the language-specific constraint rankings. Part I shows how diverse phenomena of adverb placement can be captured by corresponding constraints and their relative rankings: - contrasts in the linearization of adverbs and verbs/auxiliaries in English and French - verb placement in German and the filling of the prefield position - placement of focus-sensitive adverbs - fronting of topical arguments and adverbs Part II extends the analysis to a particular phenomenon of adverb positioning: the avoidance of adverb attachment to a phonetically empty constituent (gap). English and French are similar in that the acceptability of pre-gap adverb placement depends on the type of adverb, its scope, and the syntactic construction (English: wh-movement vs. topicalization / VP Fronting / VP Ellipsis, inverted vs. non-inverted clauses; French: CLLD vs. Cleft, simple vs. periphrastic tense). Yet, the two languages differ in which strategies a specific type of adverb may pursue to escape placement in front of a certain type of gap. In contrast to English and French, placement of an adverb in front of a gap never gives rise to ungrammaticality in German. Rather, word ordering has to obey the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic principles discussed in Part I; whether or not it results in adverb attachment to a phonetically empty constituent seems to be irrelevant: though constraints are active in every language, the emergence of a visible effect of their requirements in a given language depends on their relative ranking. The complex interaction of the diverse factors as well as their divergent effects on adverb placement in the various languages are accounted for by the universal constraints and their language-specific hierarchic relations in the OT framework.},
  subject      = {Adverb},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Trommer2001,
  author    = {Trommer, Jochen},
  title     = {Distributed optimality},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-0001377},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2001},
  abstract  = {In dieser Dissertation schlage ich eine Synthese (Distributed Optimality, DO) von Optimalit{\"a}tstheorie und einem derivationellen, morphologischem Asatz, Distributed Morphology (DM; Halle \& Marantz, 1993) vor. Durch die Integration von OT in DM wird es m{\"o}glich, Ph{\"a}nomene, die in DM durch sprachspezifische Regeln oder Merkmale von lexikalischen Eintr{\"a}ge erfasst werden, auf die Interaktion von verletzbaren, universellen Constraints zur{\"u}ckzuf{\"u}hren. Andererseits leistet auch DM zwei substantielle Beitr{\"a}ge zu DO, Lokalit{\"a}t und Impoverishment. Lokalit{\"a}t erlaubt eine formal einfache Interpretation von DO, w{\"a}hrend sich Impoverishment als unverzichtbar erweist, um Kongruenz-Morphologie ad{\"a}quat zu beschreiben. Die empirische Grundlage der Arbeit sind die komplexen Kongruenzsysteme von genetisch unterschiedlichen Sprachen. Der theoretische Schwerpunkt liegt in zwei Bereichen: Erstens, sogenannte Direkt/Invers-Markierung, f{\"u}r die gezeigt wird, dass eine Behandlung durch Constraints {\"u}ber Merkmalsrealisierung am angemessensten ist. Zweitens, die Effekte von Abfolge-Constraints, die den Satus von Affixen als Pr{\"a}fixe und Suffixe sowie ihre relative Reihenfolge regeln. Eine konkrete Typologie f{\"u}r die Abfolge von Kongruenz-Affixen auf der Basis von OT-Constraints wird vorgeschlagen.},
  language  = {en}
}