Designation modality and the disposition of artifacts

This article is about a modal construction of German that has hardly received any attention in the literature, and I link it to the philosophical notion of the disposition of artifacts. The name that I propose for this kind of modality is designation modality. It is instantiated by the sentence 'Dieser Wein ist zur Begleitung des Käses' ‘This wine is meant to accompany the cheese.’ Being a subtype of goal-oriented modality, it features a theme or instrument oriented semantics specifying the use to which an artifact is put. A modal head underlying the preposition+determiner element 'zu'+DET ‘to+DET’ combines the nominalized VoiceP in its comple ment with the external argument of the whole structure. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first proposal to trace the philosophical notion of the disposition of artifacts within a clearly delineated structure in natural language.

Publication Details

Journal
Open Journal Systems (Global Science & Technology Forum)
Published
2024-12-12
DOI
https://doi.org/10.18148/sub/2024.v28.1138
Primary Topic
Retinal Development and Disorders
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

Designation modality and the disposition of artifacts

Open Journal Systems (Global Science & Technology Forum)
Retinal Development and Disorders
article

Designation modality and the disposition of artifacts

article en

Abstract

This article is about a modal construction of German that has hardly received any attention in the literature, and I link it to the philosophical notion of the disposition of artifacts. The name that I propose for this kind of modality is designation modality. It is instantiated by the sentence 'Dieser Wein ist zur Begleitung des Käses' ‘This wine is meant to accompany the cheese.’ Being a subtype of goal-oriented modality, it features a theme or instrument oriented semantics specifying the use to which an artifact is put. A modal head underlying the preposition+determiner element 'zu'+DET ‘to+DET’ combines the nominalized VoiceP in its comple ment with the external argument of the whole structure. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first proposal to trace the philosophical notion of the disposition of artifacts within a clearly delineated structure in natural language.

Open Journal Systems (Global Science & Technology Forum)
Openalex Percentile: Top 69%
Retinal Development and Disorders
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