On lauter so’ne quirks – some amendments to Eckardt 2006: ch. 7

This paper is concerned with the predeterminer lauter in German (cf. Eckardt 2002, 2006) and aims at showing two things: First, the distribution of lauter can be more closely determined if combined with so’n (Hole and Klumpp 2000; Lenerz and Lohnstein 2005; von Heusinger 2012). This possibility suggests that lauter is not a determiner. Secondly, I propose that lauter’s resistance to split topicalization in German is to be found in its syntax: I show that if we adopt the symmetric-Merge approach to the phenomenon by Ott (2012, 2015), not only do the commonly observed facts fall in line, but new ones involving lauter do as well, which prove problematic for a stranding account. Crucially, lauter lacks a pronominal/N-elliptical use implicated in the former analysis.