Modifying the ordering source – unstressed 'uberhaupt' in German purpose clauses

My goal is to reconcile the seemingly unrelated meanings of the two variants of the German particle 'überhaupt', stressed 'überhaupt' (≈ ‘at all’, ‘in general’) and unstressed 'überhaupt' (≈ ‘even’) in one specific embedded case: purpose clauses with the complementizer 'um'. I propose an account of 'überhaupt' in purpose clauses that does justice to its focus-sensitive scalar meaning but keeps intact the domain widening meaning, as argued for by Anderssen 2006 for the stressed variant. I claim that unstressed 'überhaupt' modifies the bouletic ordering source in purpose clauses by excluding all higher ranked focus alternatives of the embedded proposition 'q' in 'p in order to q'. The result is a wider domain which is quantified over by a bouletic modal included in the purpose clause with um.

Publication Details

Journal
Open Journal Systems (Global Science & Technology Forum)
Published
2024-12-13
DOI
https://doi.org/10.18148/sub/2024.v28.1153
Primary Topic
Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
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article

Modifying the ordering source – unstressed 'uberhaupt' in German purpose clauses

Open Journal Systems (Global Science & Technology Forum)
Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
article

Modifying the ordering source – unstressed 'uberhaupt' in German purpose clauses

article en

Abstract

My goal is to reconcile the seemingly unrelated meanings of the two variants of the German particle 'überhaupt', stressed 'überhaupt' (≈ ‘at all’, ‘in general’) and unstressed 'überhaupt' (≈ ‘even’) in one specific embedded case: purpose clauses with the complementizer 'um'. I propose an account of 'überhaupt' in purpose clauses that does justice to its focus-sensitive scalar meaning but keeps intact the domain widening meaning, as argued for by Anderssen 2006 for the stressed variant. I claim that unstressed 'überhaupt' modifies the bouletic ordering source in purpose clauses by excluding all higher ranked focus alternatives of the embedded proposition 'q' in 'p in order to q'. The result is a wider domain which is quantified over by a bouletic modal included in the purpose clause with um.

Open Journal Systems (Global Science & Technology Forum)
Peace, Justice and strong institutions
Openalex Percentile: Top 39%
Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
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