Verbal particles in German: aspect, structure, and processing

Thesis

This thesis investigates German verbal particles through two of their least understood subclasses: aspectual particles and double particles. It combines theoretical analysis with experimental evidence to address three central questions: (i) how aspectual meaning is distributed in particle verb constructions, (ii) to what extent this meaning, and more generally, the polysemy of German verbal particles, is structurally determined, and (iii) how morphologically complex particle verbs are theoretically analysed and empirically processed by German native speakers.

The first part of the thesis develops a structural analysis of aspectual particles in German. It argues that aspectual particles form a distinct subclass of verbal particles, systematically separable from resultative particles and capable of encoding telicity independently of object quantisation. Building on this distinction, it proposes a classification of aspectual particles according to the event boundary they encode, distinguishing inceptive particles, which mark the initial boundary of an event, from egressive particles, which mark its terminal boundary. It then develops a syntactic account on which the polysemy of a particle follows from the distinct syntactic positions in which it is realised rather than from lexical stipulation. Through a detailed case study of the particle auf, aspectual readings are located in the head of an inner aspect projection and resultative and idiosyncratic readings in a PP in the complement of the verb. To capture the inceptive-egressive contrast, the thesis proposes a feature-based theory of inner aspect built on the event-structural features [init] and [telic].

The second part of the thesis examines German double particles from syntactic, semantic, and processing perspectives. Although double particles are morphologically complex, the theoretical literature largely treats them as integrated units rather than as combinations of two independent particles. To investigate how such forms are mentally represented, the thesis presents an ERP cross-modal priming experiment comparing single particle verbs, double particle verbs, and prefix verbs. Single and double particle verbs pattern closely during early lexical activation, supporting analyses that treat double particles as unified preverbal constituents, while later processing stages remain sensitive to their internal morphological complexity.

Overall, the thesis shows that the morphological form of a German verbal particle does not transparently reflect its grammatical structure. It contributes a structural account of particle polysemy, a refined theory of inner aspect, and experimental evidence that brings the theoretical literatures on single and double particles into closer relation.

Authors: Si, Y

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-dpdob2eoy
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: neo-constructionism; German; aspect; verbal particle; ERP; priming; syntax; morphology
• Subjects: Morphology; Psycholinguistics; German language; Linguistics; Syntax