Lexical Pragmatics and Unification

Abstract

The German causal preposition durch (‘by’, ‘by means of’, ‘through’) specifies the nature of the causing event in a causal relation between events. In combination with a causative predicate, durch simply contributes additional information concerning the causing event in the causal relation expressed by the predicate. When combined with a non-causative change of state predicate, however, durch may also introduce such a causal relation by itself. It is shown that modelling this varying contribution of durch poses a challenge to formal-semantic analyses applying mechanisms of strict compositionality such as functional application. An alternative formalism based on recent developments in Discourse Representation Theory is developed, including unification as a mode of composition as well as a more elaborate analysis of presuppositional phenomena. It is further argued that the analysis can be restated in pragmatic terms, providing an argument for presuppositions applying solely to the sentence-internal level.