A Study of Word Order Variation in German, with Special ... - CiteSeerX

A STUDY OF WORD ORDER VARIATION IN GERMAN,
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO MODIFIER PLACEMENT
January 1994
Ralf Günter Wilhelm Steinberger
Ph.D. Thesis
submitted to the University of Manchester in the Faculty of Technology
Department of Language and Linguistics
University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology
I

This work was carried out under the supervision of Dr. Paul Bennett.
No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an
application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or
other institution of learning.
II

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994)
Abstract
This work discusses word order in written German at sentence level, and suggests how to
deal with word order variation in Machine Translation. It specially refers to modifier
placement, as modifiers are generally neglected in linguistic (word order) description.
The order of phrases in free word order languages is not entirely free, as some variations
can be ungrammatical, and further variations are less natural than others. The intuition of a
German speaker on the adequate word order in a specific context is influenced by at least
eleven factors. In this thesis, these are described independently, and their interaction is
shown. The context plays a major role for the natural word order in a sentence, so that one
can say that sentences are embedded in their context.
After the linguistic description, the methods suggested in literature to model word order
variation in Natural Language Processing are discussed, and a suggestion is made to
overcome the problems linked to word order variation. For analysis, means are provided to
recognise theme, rheme and focus of a given sentence. For synthesis, it is proposed to use a
flexible canonical form which involves over eighty position classes, including places for
the categories theme, rheme and focus. Depending on the analysis of thematic, rhematic
and focused phrases in the source language of the translation, varying German sentences
are generated to guarantee their appropriate embedding in the context. The appendix
contains a list of adverbs including the syntactic features which are necessary for their
automatic treatment.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST 1994)
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Paul Bennett for his support,
pointers to relevant literature, his fast reaction, and useful comments.
I would also like to thank my international colleagues and friends who helped me to find
out about tricky aspects of their languages. I am particularly grateful to Tina Burnley,
Archana Hinduja, and Chris Chambers, who put a lot of effort into proof-reading the
thesis. Their comments and suggestions were very helpful. Chris' rules-of-thumb on
modifier placement finally helped me to avoid most errors concerning adverb positioning
in English, on which I failed to have a native speaker's intuition.
Many thanks go also to my former colleagues Dr. Nadia Mesli, Oliver Streiter and Randy
Sharp at the Institute for Applied Information Science (IAI) in Saarbrücken. They
supported me a lot when I implemented my ideas on word order in the Machine
Translation system CAT2, by explaining the formalism as well as the German, English and
French grammars.
And finally, I want to thank Tina Burnley for her excellent cooking and personal support,
especially during the last tiring months.
II

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST 1994)
Education and Background
1994 • Centre for Computational Linguistics (CCL) at UMIST: TRADE Machine
Translation project (English-Spanish-Italian)
1993 • CCL, UMIST: Conception and Implementation of a German-English dictionary
for Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL); planning of
new projects, fund-raising
1991 - 1992 • CCL, UMIST: Machine Translation project EUROTRA (French-English)
• Training in the ET-6 Machine Translation formalism ALEP, Luxembourg
• Summer School for Logic, Linguistics and Information (LLI), Colchester
1991 • Institute for Applied Information Science (IAI), Saarbrücken (FRG):
CAT2 Machine Translation project (German-English)
• LLI Summer School, Saarbrücken
1/1991 • Magister Artium ("with distinction"), München
1986 - 1990 • PANA Schaumstoff GmbH, Geretsried (FRG): Public Relations, sales promotion,
production management
1984 - 1985 • Lycée Louis-Le-Grand, Paris: Teacher Assistant (PAD scholarship)
1982 - 1/1991 • Studies of Theoretical, French and Spanish Linguistics at Ludwig-
Maximilians Universität München (1986-1990) and Freie Universität Berlin
(1982-1986)
1981 - 1982 • PANA Werk KG, Wolfratshausen (FRG): Executive Training in the
textiles field
1980 • Abitur, Gymnasium Pullach (FRG), mathematical/scientific orientation
III

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST 1994)
CONTENTS
1 DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM ........................................................................1
1.1 Scope and Limits of the Thesis ..............................................................................1
1.2 Word Order in a Wider Context.............................................................................6
1.3 Contents................................................................................................................13
1.4. Problems of German Word Order Description ....................................................16
1.5. Why Describe Word Order?.................................................................................19
1.5.1 Analysis of German Sentences in NLP................................................................19
1.5.1.1 Disambiguation of Homonyms ............................................................................20
1.5.1.2 Resolution of PP-Attachment...............................................................................21
1.5.1.3 Recognition of Emphasis .....................................................................................22
1.5.1.4 Contextual Embedding of Sentences ...................................................................23
1.5.1.5 Scope of Degree Modifiers ..................................................................................26
1.5.2 Synthesis of German in NLP................................................................................27
1.5.2.1 Basic Ordering of Constituents ............................................................................30
1.5.2.2 Cumulation of Modifiers......................................................................................30
1.5.2.3 Correct Scope .......................................................................................................31
1.5.2.4 Sentence Embedding............................................................................................31
1.5.3 Foreign Language Teaching.................................................................................32
2. COMPLEMENT, MODIFIER, ADVERB AND ADVERB SUBTYPES...............34
2.1. Modifiers (Angaben) vs. Complements (Ergänzungen) ......................................35
2.2. Definition and Classification of Adverbs.............................................................39
2.2.1. Different Definitions of the Adverb.....................................................................40
2.2.2. Semantic Classification........................................................................................43
2.2.3. Adverbs and Related Word Classes .....................................................................46
2.2.3.1. Adverbs and Particles...........................................................................................46
2.2.3.2. Adverbs vs. Conjunctions and Prepositions.........................................................47
2.2.3.3. Adverbs vs. Adjectives.........................................................................................49
2.2.4 Conclusion, Final Definition................................................................................55
2.3. Modifier Types (Angabeklassen).........................................................................57
2.4. Some Information on the Position of Modifiers ..................................................62
IV

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST 1994)
2.5. Some Statistical Facts about Adverbs..................................................................67
3. FACTORS WHICH DETERMINE GERMAN WORD ORDER ..........................70
3.1 Theme-Rheme Structure ......................................................................................72
3.1.1 Some Definitions of the Terms Theme and Rheme .............................................72
3.1.2 The Realization of Thematic and Rhematic Elements.........................................74
3.1.3 The Order of Thematic and Rhematic Complements...........................................76
3.1.4 The Separation of Theme and Rheme by Modifiers ............................................80
3.2 Behaghel's "Gesetz der wachsenden Glieder"......................................................81
3.3 Functional Sentence Perspective..........................................................................82
3.3.1 Thematisation and Rhematisation........................................................................84
3.3.2 Further Means to Express Functional Sentence Perspective ...............................85
3.4. Verbnähe ..............................................................................................................90
3.4.1. Which Elements are Semantically Close to the Verb?.........................................93
3.4.1.1. Arguments ............................................................................................................93
3.4.1.2. Modifiers ..............................................................................................................95
3.4.2. Limits of the Verbnähe Principle .........................................................................98
3.5. The Animacy-First Principle................................................................................99
3.6. Semantic Roles...................................................................................................101
3.7. Scope ..................................................................................................................103
3.7.1. Definitions of Scope...........................................................................................104
3.7.2. Problems with the Term Scope ..........................................................................105
3.7.3. The Difference between Scope and Focalisation...............................................107
3.8. Rhythm...............................................................................................................108
3.9. Natural Gender ...................................................................................................109
3.10. Grammaticalisation (Habit)................................................................................110
3.11. Lenerz' "Satzklammerbedingung"......................................................................111
4. THE INTERACTION OF PREFERENCE RULES, AND SOME
RESTRICTIONS.................................................................................................................113
4.1. Interaction of the Principles ...............................................................................113
4.2. Relative Weight of some Principles...................................................................116
4.3. Calculation of Acceptability ..............................................................................120
4.4. Restriction on the Interaction of Preference Rules ............................................123
4.4.1. Syntactic Subordination .....................................................................................123
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Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST 1994)
4.4.2. Possessive Relations...........................................................................................125
4.4.3. Quantificational Elements..................................................................................126
4.4.4. The Pragmatic Need of a Sentence Focus..........................................................126
4.5. Summary ............................................................................................................129
5. HOW TO DESCRIBE GERMAN FREE WORD ORDER FORMALLY ..........131
5.1. Acceptability Calculation and LP Rule Disjunction ..........................................131
5.2. The Relevance of a Canonical Form for German ..............................................133
5.3. Canonical Forms for German in Literature........................................................137
5.3.1. Engel's Canonical Form .....................................................................................138
5.3.2. Hoberg's Canonical Form...................................................................................139
5.3.3. New Preliminary Canonical Form .....................................................................141
5.4. Why Do some Sentences Differ from the Basic Word Order ............................145
5.5. The Vorfeld Position..........................................................................................149
5.6. The Importance of Theme, Rheme and Focus ...................................................154
6. AIDS FOR COMPUTATIONAL ANALYSIS........................................................159
6.1. Compulsory Orders ............................................................................................159
6.2. Recognition of Focus .........................................................................................163
6.3. Recognition or Theme and Rheme.....................................................................167
6.4. Some More Details.............................................................................................171
6.4.1. Permutation of Pragmatic Modifiers..................................................................171
6.4.2. Permutation of Modal Modifiers........................................................................172
6.4.3. Permutation of Pragmatic and Situative/Modal Modifiers ................................173
6.4.4. Permutation of Situative Modifiers....................................................................174
6.5. Final Version of the Canonical Form.................................................................177
6.5.1. Placement of the Theme.....................................................................................177
6.5.2. Placement of the Rheme.....................................................................................180
6.5.3. Placement of the Focus ......................................................................................184
6.6. Preferential PP Attachment ................................................................................189
6.7. Dictionary Entries for Adverbs ..........................................................................191
6.7.1. Coding of Adverbs in the Dictionary.................................................................191
6.7.2. Some Generalizations.........................................................................................201
6.8. Summary of Chapter 6 .......................................................................................203
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Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST 1994)
7. CONCLUDING REMARKS ....................................................................................205
8. APPENDIX.................................................................................................................210
8.1. Angabestellungsklassen (according to Hoberg, 1981: 106-131) .......................210
8.2. Alphabetical Listing of Modifiers......................................................................214
8.3. Listing of Modifiers According to Position Classes ..........................................230
8.4. Canonical Form (Final Version, cf. 6.5.3) .........................................................248
9. BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................................................................................249
VII

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST 1994)
ABBREVIATIONS
a
a i
8.1)
a mod
a neg
Angabe (modifier)
index numbers (i) refer to Hoberg's position classes_a1-a44 (cf.
modal modifiers (a42-a44)
negational modifiers (a40)
a pragm , a exist pragmatic (existimatorial) modifiers (a1 - a18)
a sit
situative modifiers (a19-a40)
+/- a +/- animate
A
accusative case
Adj
predicate adjective
adv
adverb
ap
adjectival phrase
card
cardinal numbers
Comp
Comparability (can an adverb be compared?)
conj
conjunction
D
dative case
+/- d +/- definite
DIR
directional complement
Dist
Distance (can a degree modifier be separated from the modified
phrase?)
EN Ulrich Engel (1988)
Exp
expansive complement
FSP
functional sentence perspective
G, GEN genitive case
Grad
gradability (can an adverb be modified by a degree modifier?)
HK87 Mannheimer Handbuchkorpus 1987 (cf. 6.7)
HO Ursula Hoberg (1981)
man manner modifiers (a 43 )
N
nominative case
Neg
Negability (can an adverb be negated?)
Nom
predicate noun
NP
nominal phrase
npp
NP or PP
OF
Obligatorische-Folge-Regel
PO
prepositional object
PP
prepositional phrase
pragm pragmatic modifiers (a 1 -a 18 )
Pred
predicative use (can an adverb be used predicatively?)
Pre/Post
Does a degree modifier precede or follow modified phrases?
pron
pronominal
RS
Ralf Steinberger
s
sentence
Sit
situative complement
sit situative modifiers (a 19 -a 40 )
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Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST 1994)
SVC
support verb construction
SVO
subject-verb-object word order
SOV
subject-object-verb word order
TRS
theme-rheme structure
VF
Vorfeld
VL
verb-last, final position of the verb in the clause
VSO
verb-subject-object word order
V2
verb-second, second position of the verb in the clause
XP phrase of whatever category (NP, PP, AP, ...)
SYMBOLS
CAPITALS represent semantic roles (AGENT etc)
or indicate (contrastive) stress
A < B
A precedes (tends to precede) B
A / B
complementary occurrence of A and B
? sentence is less acceptable/natural than without "?"
?? sentence is less acceptable/natural than sentence with "?"
* sentence is ungrammatical
# ungrammatical; can be considered acceptable if very strongly
stressed (contrast)
! unacceptable for semantic reasons
+/-* The judgement on the +/- value of a feature is based on occurrences
in the corpus HK87
-*&
Although no positive evidence was found in HK87, our intuition is
that the feature value should be positive (+) (cf. 8.1 and 8.2)
[...] square brackets in quotations indicate omission or addition of text
IX

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST 1994)
Meinen Eltern
X

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994)
1 DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM
Before presenting the contents of this thesis in detail, by describing the chapters one by one
(1.3), we want to point out the scope and the limits of our work (1.1), and set the
investigation in a wider context (1.2). The other sections of chapter 1 are dedicated to the
problems (1.4) and to the benefits of an appropriate word order description (1.5).
1.1 SCOPE AND LIMITS OF THE THESIS
The adequate treatment of word order is still an open problem in linguistics.
(Erbach, 1993: 177)
The goal of this section is to describe both the scope and the limits of this thesis. We also
feel the need to describe the work we carried out earlier as it is the basis for the further
development presented here.
This thesis contains a linguistic word order description of written German at sentence level,
including the variation of constituents, and the limits of their interchangeability.
Furthermore, it makes suggestions on how to use this theoretical knowledge in Natural
Language Processing (NLP) in general, and Machine Translation (MT) in particular. In
Machine Translation, the challenges of language analysis, language synthesis, and languagecontrastive
differences are combined. As most other NLP applications have to solve one of
these tasks, they can make use of our suggestions for the treatment of word order in Machine
Translation.
A further use of the data which can be found here concerns foreign language teaching. Word
order in general, and the ordering of modifiers in particular are widely neglected in grammar
books (cf. 2.4). Although the information presented in this work is too detailed for language
learners, it contains many explanations and ordering rules, which can be presented in a
simple way to non-linguists (1.5.3) who intend to learn German as a foreign language.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 2
We limit ourselves to the sentence level, as this is the most difficult part of word order
description. Within nominal (NP) or prepositional phrases (PP), sequences are either
relatively fixed, or they are easy to describe. 1 shows how limited the permutation of noun
arguments is:
1a Caesars Verteidigung der Stadt gegen die Angreifer
1b die Verteidigung der Stadt gegen die Angreifer durch Caesar
1c * die Verteidigung der Stadt durch Caesar gegen die Angreifer
1d * die Verteidigung gegen die Angreifer der Stadt durch Caesar 1
1e * die Verteidigung gegen die Angreifer durch Caesar der Stadt
1f * die Verteidigung durch Caesar gegen die Angreifer der Stadt
1g * die Verteidigung durch Caesar der Stadt gegen die Angreifer
Furthermore, the position of determiners, prepositions and adjectival modifiers relative to
nouns does not allow for any variation at all:
2 * Angreifer die
3 * die Angreifer gegen
4 * die Angreifer bösen
Verb participles with the function of noun modifiers are the only elements which allow for
some variation in the sequence of their modifiers (5). Although we did not investigate the
order of these adjuncts, it seems that they follow the same regularities as modifiers at
sentence level. At least the comparison of 5a with 6a and 5f with 6b gives this impression:
5a
5b
5c
5d
5e
5f
6a
6b
das damals dort aus München verfrüht angekommene Flugzeug
das dort damals aus München verfrüht angekommene Flugzeug
das damals aus München verfrüht dort angekommene Flugzeug
das damals dort verfrüht aus München angekommene Flugzeug
das damals verfrüht aus München dort angekommene Flugzeug
* das dort verfrüht aus München damals angekommene Flugzeug
Das Flugzeug kam damals dort aus München verfrüht an.
* Das Flugzeug kam dort verfrüht aus München damals an.
Our research concentrated on the description of declarative clauses, which represent the
major part of most written discourse. It turned out to be the case that main clauses involving
a Vorfeld 2 can best be treated as a particular instance of subordinate clauses, which do not
1 The * in 1d refers to 1d as a reformulation of the meaning in 1a.
2 For a brief description of the terms Vorfeld, Mittelfeld and Nachfeld, see section 1.5.2.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 3
have a Vorfeld. Hence our main concern is the Mittelfeld. The treatment of the Vorfeld does
not require a lot of attention (see section 5.5).
Word order regularities in imperative sentences and questions will probably differ slightly
from the order in declarative clauses, in that they can involve a different sentential focus.
The order of the elements which are not affected by the sentential focus, however, should
remain the same.
Although the ordering of verb arguments is dealt with in many parts of the thesis, our
intention was to focus on modifiers. The reason for this is that verb arguments have been
widely discussed, and from different perspectives, whereas the description of modifier
position is generally limited to small subsets. When discussing word order, linguists
generally choose to compare the two frequent groups of temporal and local modifiers (e.g.
Lenerz 1977: 79ff, Vennemann 1982: 4ff and 19f, Gadler 1982: 159f,
Whittemore/Ferrara/Brunner 1990: 29, Oliva 1992b: 11). Others specialise on further
subgroups, such as the distinction between verb modifiers and sentential modifiers
(Heringer/Strecker/Wimmer, 1980: 278). Thurmair (1989) and Weydt (1977) describe toners
(Abtönungspartikeln 3 ), Waltzing (1986) concentrates on existimatorial modifiers, Altmann
(1976 and 1978) on degree modifiers, and Jacobs (1982) on the negational particle.
To our knowledge, Engel (1988, 1973, 1970, and others) and Hoberg (1981) are the only
authors who did not avoid mentioning all the other smaller and bigger modifying subgroups.
Consequently, their work played a major role in our research. The fact that modifiers are less
frequently discussed in linguistics and computational linguistics is reflected in our
bibliography. Many of the books and articles quoted were written more than five or ten years
ago. More recent literature on this neglected field is scarce. 4
3 For definitions of the different subclasses see section 2.2.
4 We have used and quoted all relevant articles which appeared in the following journals, reviews and
proceedings (in alphabetical order):
• Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen, 1990 and 1991, Berlin

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 4
Within the description of modifier position, we propose ordering rules, as well as a list of
features, which are necessary to handle modifiers in NLP. We believe that these means are
sufficient to deal with modifiers realised as adverbs, PPs and NPs. On practical grounds,
however, we focus on adverbials realised by single words, such as adverbs, toners, and
others (cf. 2.2). The reason is that one-word modifiers are a closed class which can be listed
exhaustively. This gives the advantage that full dictionary entries, incorporating all details
on their classification and encoding, can be made available.
PPs and NPs, however, are an open class. Its elements have to be analysed and classified
before their handling by the procedure suggested here. We did not suggest solutions for their
analysis, as this is a complex problem which should be investigated independently. We are
convinced, however, that our classification is a first step for their proper analysis, as it
provides the necessary categories and features.
This thesis builds on theoretical and practical work which we have carried out earlier. In our
Magisterarbeit (Steinberger, 1990), we compared word order permutations in hundreds of
example pairs, in order to judge which variations are more natural. The sentences involved
• ACL: Proceedings of the Conference: Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational
Linguistics, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993
• CLAUS: Reports of the Computational Linguistics Department at the University of Saarland, 1990,
1991, 1992, 1993, Saarbrücken
• COLING: Proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Linguistics, 1990, 1992
• Der Deutschunterricht. Beiträge zu seiner Praxis und wissenschaftlichen Grundlegung, 1990,
1991, 1992, Seelze
• Deutsch als Fremdsprache, 1991 and 1992, München/Berlin
• Deutsche Sprache. Zeitschrift für Theorie, Praxis, Dokumentation, 1990 and 1991, Berlin
• EACL: European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the
Conference, 1991, 1992, 1993
• EUROTRA-D: Working Papers of the Institute of Applied Information Science (IAI), 1986, 1987,
1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992
• Muttersprache, 1991 and 1992, Wiesbaden
• Language. Journal of the Linguistic Society of America, 1990, 1991, 1992, Baltimore
• Lingua. International Review of General Linguistics, 1991 and 1992, Amsterdam
• Linguistic Analysis, 1990 and 1991, Seattle
• Linguistic Inquiry, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992
• Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 1991 and 1992, Dordrecht/Boston/London
• Proceedings of the Third Conference on Applied Language Processing, 1992
• UMIST/CCL-Reports: Reports of the Centre for Computational Linguistics at UMIST, 1981-1993,
Manchester

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 5
all types of verb arguments, as well as elements of all major modifier classes (cf. 2.3). We
also carried out tests on the order of dative and accusative complements, as well as on the
relevance of the animacy and definiteness features for these verb arguments. Both results are
discussed in 4.2 below. On the basis of these results, we described a canonical form, which
we adopt in 5.3.3, and which we develop further in chapter 6.
In the same work, we listed translational difficulties which are not linked to positioning.
These include the complex problem which is the scope of negation, and the fact that some
modifiers are not translated by the same category. In this thesis, we shall assume the
simplest case only, namely the translation of an adverb by an adverb (7). However,
translation is often more complicated.
In the case of transposition (Pelz, 1963: 8ff), adverbs can be translated by another word
class (8). In a special case of transposition, the chassé-croisé, the function of two words is
interchanged (Barth, 1961, 80ff). In 9, for instance, the meaning of the German adverb gern
is represented by the English main verb to like, and the German main verb lesen by the
English subordinate participle reading. The modifier doch in 10 disappears completely in the
target language. In 11, the German adverb causes the use of the continuous form in English.
The difficulty in 12 is that the adverb ganz refers to a PP, whereas its English equivalent
modifies the noun inside the PP 5 :
7 Er kam gestern.
He arrived yesterday.
8 Er wäre beinahe hingefallen.
Il a failli tomber.
9 Ich lese gern.
I like reading.
10 Ich kann doch nichts dafür.
Je n'y peux rien.
I cannot do anything about it.
5 For universally available means to express the meaning of adverbs, see Schachter (1985: 22).

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 6
11 Er liest gerade.
He is reading.
12 ganz am Ende
at the very end 6
We shall not discuss these problems any further. Complex translation as in 8 to 12 has to be
treated by different means. For a discussion of such cases see Thurmair (1990), Dorr (1990),
and Lindop/Tsujii (1991). We shall not comment on the scope of negation in this thesis
either. Negation is a complex phenomenon which deserves an independent investigation. For
the treatment of degree modifier scope, see 3.7.
Besides the Magisterarbeit, we shall refer to Steinberger (1992a and 1992b). These papers
present an implementation of German and English modifier treatment within the CAT2
Machine Translation (MT) system. CAT2, a sideline of the European MT system Eurotra, is
a rule-based, unification and constraint-based formalism (Sharp, 1989, 1993). In Steinberger
(1992a), we describe the implementation of German and English word order treatment, as
suggested in chapter 6 of this thesis, with minor differences. In 1992b, we present a way of
recognising and translating degree modifier scope in the same formalism. Degree modifier
treatment is only partially handled in this thesis (3.7 and 6.7). The 1992 papers are thus an
application of the findings presented in this thesis.
1.2 WORD ORDER IN A WIDER CONTEXT
On l'apprend difficilement et est encore plus fascheux à prononcer: de sorte que les
enfants mêmes, qui sont naiz au pays, sont bien grandeletz avant qu'ils puissent
bien former les mots et proférer les paroles. (Claude Duret on the German
language, 17 th century, quoted in Scaglione, 1981: 39) 7
Some people seem to believe that word order differences between languages are not just
differences in the order of words. It was said that the language of a nation shows how its
people think. One claim is that some languages encourage clear and precise thinking,
6 For an analysis of this special use of the adverb very, see Brugmann (1984).
7 "It is difficult to learn and even worse to pronounce, so that even children who are born in the country are
quite old before they are able to shape and utter the words."

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 7
whereas others are confusing, so that they provide ideal means to evoke emotions, and to
deceive. In 1751, the French philosopher of the Enlightenment, Denis Diderot, affirmed his
conviction that his language was superior to others:
il faut parler français dans la société et dans les écoles de philosophie; et grec, latin, anglais dans les
chaires et sur les théâtres [...] Le français est fait pour instruire, éclairer et convaincre; le grec, le latin,
l'italien, l'anglais, pour persuader, émouvoir et tromper." 8
Denis Diderot, as well as his colleague Antoine de Rivarol, claimed that a major reason for
French being so correct, clear and precise is its direct word order, which is due to a lack of
inversion. In 1784, the Prussian Academy even awarded Rivarol a prize for his essay, in
which he used this argument to explain why French was, and deserved to be, the "universal
language of intellectual intercourse" (Scaglione, 1981: 5).
German, on the other hand, is traditionally regarded as a language which is "both unusually
systematic and ultimately illogical, even irrational" with respect to word order (Scaglione,
1981: 3). One peculiarity of German is exactly what, from the French point of view, looks
like inversion, namely the possibility to shift the subject behind the verb, by starting the
sentence with an object or an adverbial. Does the flexibility of word order prevent German
from being clear and precise?
Another equally popular and doubtful myth is one of "German being the philosophical
language par excellence, or at least the ideal language for philosophy" (Scaglione, 1981: 4).
If one believes Martin Heidegger, the lack of direct order, and the illogicality of German do
not particularly prevent German philosophers from having deep insights 9 :
8 "One should speak French in society and in schools of philosophy; and Greek, Latin and English in
universities and theatres. French is suitable to teach, to enlighten and to convince; Greek, Latin, Italian
and English are suitable to persuade, move and deceive." In: Lettre sur les sourds et muets (1751), quoted
in Scaglione (1981: 5)
9 Martin Heidegger in an interview recorded on September 23, 1966 by the staff of Der Spiegel. Due to the
philosopher's wishes, the interview was only published after his death (Der Spiegel, 30-23, May 31,
1976). Found in Scaglione (1981: 4).

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 8
Ich denke an die besondere innere Verwandtschaft der deutschen Sprache mit der Sprache der Griechen
und deren Denken. Das bestätigen mit heute immer wieder die Franzosen. Wenn sie zu denken
anfangen, sprechen sie Deutsch; sie versichern, sie kämen mit ihrer Sprache nicht durch [...] Weil sie
sehen, daß sie mit ihrer ganzen großen Rationalität nicht mehr durchkommen in der heutigen Welt,
wenn es sich darum handelt, diese in der Herkunft ihres Wesens zu verstehen.
Another more scientific context in which German word order has been discussed is its
comparison with other languages. Vennemann (1982), for instance, contrasts German with
Korean and English. The point of departure for his discussion is that the unmarked order of
elements in the German sentence 13 is similar to the one in Korean (14), but it is nearly a
complete inversion of the English order in 15 (Vennemann, 1982: 10ff):
German:
13 Maria gab gestern in Seoul einem Freund das Buch.
5 0 4 3 2 1
Korean:
14 Maria yesterday Seoul_in friend_DAT book_ACC gave. 10
5 4 3 2 1 0
English:
15 Mary gave the book to a friend in Seoul yesterday.
5 0 1 2 3 4
At the sentential level, the Korean word order thus corresponds to the order in German
subordinate clauses, in which the verb is in the final position. Using Greenberg's (1966)
classification, one would say that Korean is an SOV language, a language in which the verb
is in the final position, and in which the subject precedes the object. English, however, is
SVO: the subject precedes the verb, whereas the object follows it. German seems to be SOV
in subordinate clauses, and SVO in main declarative clauses. What does this involve for the
classification of German in Greenberg's typology? Is it SVO, because every sentence has a
10 In Vennemann's paper, the Korean sentence is printed using Korean letters. We are not able to show these
here due to a lack of appropriate printing facilities.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 9
main clause, whereas subordinate clauses can be avoided? Or is it SOV, because the order of
the other elements is very similar to the Korean order?
Whatever the answer is, the complementary distribution of verb positions imposes the view,
that there is an underlying word order. But can we exclude in that case, that German is a
VSO language, as Beckmann (1980) dares to assume? To answer these questions, one has to
consider further facts.
In part of his implicational universals, Greenberg (1966) claims that there is a
correspondence between the position of the verb in the sentence, and other sequences. These
include the position of the preposition relative to the noun, the genitive attribute relative to
its head, the position of adjectives and adverbs relative to the elements they modify, and
many more.
The idea of implicational universals and their correlation was developed further by
Vennemann (1977), who formulated the principle of natural serialisation. This principle
says that languages tend to be consistent in the direction in which elements are specified
(modified or complemented). When modifiers and complements precede their head, the
construction is called pre-specifying (16), when they follow, it is post-specifying (17).
16 complements/modifiers head (e.g. sehr gut)
17 head complements/modifiers (e.g. Hit der_Woche)
If all specification relations within one language have the same direction, this language is
called consistent. However, many languages, including German, are mixed with respect to
specification direction. The German degree modification shown in 16, for instance, is a prespecifying
construction, whereas the genitive attribute in 17 post-specifies its head (the noun
Hit).

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 10
According to Vennemann (1974, 1975), the principle of natural serialisation is one of the
forces which act on languages diachronically. As only consistent languages satisfy the
principle, mixed languages tend to change towards consistency.
If German was an SOV language, Greenberg's fourth universal would suggest that it should
have postpositions, as opposed to prepositions (1966: 79).
Universal 4: With overwhelmingly greater than chance frequency, languages with normal SOV order
are postpositional.
According to Greenberg and Vennemann, adpositions 11 are the heads of PPs (pre-
/postpositional phrases). Prepositional phrases are hence post-specifying constructions, as
the noun phrase complements the preposition. The similarity of German with Korean shown
in 1 suggests that German is pre-specifying at the sentential level. At the PP level, however,
it is post-specifying. Here again, German proves to be a mixed language with respect to
specification direction. If Vennemann's claim is true that languages diachronically tend
towards consistency, where is German going? Is it drifting towards consistent pre- or postspecification?
Scaglione (1981: 29ff) claims that German is developing away from a former basic order
SOV towards the order SVO, and thus towards post-specification. Lehmann (1978b: 49ff) in
principle seems to agree with this view. He maintains that, in earlier times, German, as well
as English, French and Spanish, were SOV languages (see also Fanselow, 1987: 128ff).
While English and the Romance languages have nearly completed their drift towards SVO,
German is still mixed. Lehmann explains the different position of German by the
interference of social forces, which prevented its development towards consistency. The
crucial difference with the neighbouring languages was that, at the beginning of the 16 th
century, the sentence-final verb position was introduced artificially for German subordinate
clauses (Lehmann, 1978c: 410ff; see also section 1.5.2).
11 According to Vennemann's terminology, we shall use the term adposition as a superordinate for pre- and
postpositions.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 11
Since that time, two conflicting patterns acted on the German language: the post-specifying
construction SVO in main clauses, and the pre-specifying SOV sequence in subordinate
clauses. According to Lehmann (1978c: 409ff), the new SOV pattern is responsible for the
emergence of several pre-modifying structures, which did not exist before the 16 th century.
These include the appearance of several postpositions, the use of preposed relative
constructions, and others.
According to Vennemann (1982: 27f), today's German is closer to being a post-specifying
than a pre-specifying language. It is thus closer to English than it is to Korean, which is a
consistent pre-specifying system. The following graph by Vennemann (1982: 34) visualises
the scale of pre- and post-specification. Consistent post-specifying languages such as Maori
(Vennemann, 1982: 32) belong at the far right of the scale, consistent pre-specifying ones at
the far left.
Korean
German English
+________________________________________________________+_______+______+
consistent
consistent
pre-speci-
post-specification
fication
A further context in which German word order is frequently mentioned is when discussing
free word order languages. German is opposed to languages with relatively fixed word order
such as English, in that German allows many permutations of constituents at sentence level.
In a sentence with two verb arguments and one sentence modifier, for instance, there can be
six combinatorial possibilities: ABC, ACB, BAC, BCA, CAB and CBA. In English,
however, only modifiers have a certain choice of position. When subject and object
interchange, the meaning of the sentence is distorted (cf. 3.3.2):
18a
18b
Der Mann sieht den Tisch.
Den Tisch sieht der Mann.
19a The man sees the table.
19b * The table sees the man.
The term free word order is rather confusing, and even wrong, as it suggests that all
elements of the sentence can be scrambled and put together in whatever new order.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 12
Obviously, this is not possible in German, as determiners have to precede the noun,
adjectives must be adjacent to the noun they qualify, and the verb position has to be
sentence-initial in yes/no questions, but verb-final in subordinate clauses, just to give a few
examples. For this reason, Schäufele (1991: 365f) suggests the more accurate term free
phrase order for German, and pleads that the term free word order language be used for
languages which also allow the permutation of elements within a phrase, such as Sanskrit,
Latin, Ancient Greek, and Warlpiri. However, as the expression free word order is wellestablished
in linguistic literature, we shall keep it.
It is probably less well-known that even the constituents of a sentence cannot be permuted
with each other that easily, and that some restrictions apply. Some constituents must precede
others, and in other cases, one word order variation is more natural. The naturalness of a
sentence is often determined by the context, but sometimes no context makes a sentence
sound natural. Even the replacement of one element by another one, which is closely related
semantically, can make a natural sentence sound odd or even make it ungrammatical.
These last questions, including both the reasons and the limits for word order freedom in
today's German, are the ones we 12 shall concentrate on. We mentioned language universals
and diachronic change in order to put our research in a larger context. However, an ultimate
12 It is worth pointing out our use of personal pronouns at the beginning of this thesis: One of the difficulties
of scientific writing is to express oneself in an objective way without producing heavy and artificial
language. Objectivity requires the use of impersonal constructions such as passive voice, nominalisations
and expletives. Readability, on the other hand, calls for an agent who carries out the verbal action. As
psychological tests have shown that active versions of sentences are processed and recalled better
(Macdonald, 1983), I made the conscious decision to use personal pronouns. As there seems to be a strong
convention not to use the first person singular pronoun, we shall stick to the plural.
[...] many scientists and scientific editors now recognise and even promote the use of the active
voice, including the use of first-person pronouns.
Why should we avoid the passive voice? The rhetoric books describe it as "dron[ing] like nothing
under the sun," wordy and unclear, and less direct and less vigorous than the active voice. It may
indeed be all those things, but in addition, psychological research has shown that the active versions
of a sentence are recalled better and verified faster. Scientific texts written in the third person
passive, as "It was concluded that ..." are remembered less well and appreciated less than the same
content written in the active voice. (Macdonald, 1983: 1893)

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 13
answer to the questions regarding language change and language universals is not crucial for
a correct description of today's German language system.
In the next section, we shall present the contents of this thesis.
1.3 CONTENTS
Besides clarifying the scope of this thesis (1.1), and setting the problem of word order
description in a larger frame (1.2), this first chapter intends to present the problems related to
our task (1.4), as well as the different practical benefits which can be reaped from our
results. We shall point out the advantages for language teaching (1.5.3), and for Natural
Language Processing, distinguishing analysis (1.5.1) and synthesis (1.5.2).
Chapter 2 provides the definitions and distinctions we need for a concise word order
description. These are made up of the dichotomous concepts of modifier and complement
(2.1), as well as the definition for the part-of-speech adverb, which is more heterogeneous
than all other word classes. In 2.2, we give a definition which opposes it to related word
classes. As a practical simplification, we shall roughly distinguish three major modifier
types, which will be introduced in 2.3. Section 2.4 summarises the scarce and contradictory
information on the position of modifiers in grammar books. The chapter ends with a few
statistical facts about adverbs (2.5).
Chapter 3 is dedicated to the explanation of the German word ordering mechanism. We list
eleven different factors which explain German native speakers' intuitions on why one word
order variation is better than another. Most of these principles act on verb arguments as well
as modifiers. The strongest factors are linked to theme-rheme structure (3.1), functional
sentence perspective (3.3), verb bonding (3.4), animacy (3.5), and semantic roles (3.6).
Another powerful determinant is the scope of scope-including elements (3.7), which we
discuss again in 4.4.3. Further regularities which have an influence on our word order
preferences are linked to heaviness (3.2), rhythm (3.8), the natural gender of the persons that

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 14
nouns refer to (3.9), hardened grammatical structures (3.10), and finally a regularity which
Lenerz (1977) mentions as "Satzklammerbedingung" (3.11).
Most of these principles are extracted from diverse linguistic literature and grammar books.
The ones concerning natural gender (3.9) and hardening of syntactic structures (3.10) are the
result of our own investigation.
Chapter 4 deals with the question of how these different determinants interact. The most
likely explanation seems to be that all factors act in each sentence. As, depending on the
specific ordering, the factors can require different sequences (4.1), the question arises of how
strong the various principles are (4.2). A model of how to calculate the acceptability of
sentences is presented in 4.3. A problem related to the calculation is, that other factors
restrict the interaction of factors. These constraints are listed in 4.4.
Due to the problems of word order calculation, we suggest further ways of dealing with
word order in chapter 5. The most efficient method proves to be a sophisticated canonical
form (5.2). After discussing two different canonical form versions suggested by Engel
(1988) and Hoberg (1981), we present a new, preliminary canonical form (5.3), which will
be refined in chapter 6. In section 5.4, we compare some sentences with the canonical form
in order to show its appropriateness. We also throw light on the reasons why some sentences
differ from the fixed order which is represented in the canonical form. As the Vorfeld has not
been considered yet, neither in the word order principles nor in the canonical forms, we
discuss its special status in 5.5. Section 5.6 is devoted to the importance of theme, rheme and
focus for the treatment of word order. These categories are essential for the further
suggestions we shall make on word order variation in Natural Language Processing.
Chapter 6 concentrates more specifically on the computational treatment of word order
variation. A major problem for computers is the structural and lexical ambiguity of language.
Reliable grammar rules are crucial for their resolution. Concerning word order, very few
such rules can be formulated in the free word order language German, because some
sequences may be less natural, but they can hardly be excluded. In section 6.1, we present a

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 15
list of the few hard word order rules we have discovered. The discussion of theme, rheme
and focus in 5.6 showed how important these categories are for the translation from one
language into another. In 6.2 and 6.3, we therefore suggest a mechanism to identify the three
categories automatically during the analysis of German.
Section 6.4 contains a number of details which are not mandatory for a successful treatment
of German in Natural Language Processing, but which may help to understand the free word
order phenomenon better. They concern the idiosyncrasies we identified when investigating
the permutations of different modifier subclasses. In the following section (6.5), we
accomplish the preliminary version of the canonical form presented in 5.3.3. Through the
insertion of the flexible categories theme, rheme and focus, we achieve the result that
generated word order differs, depending on the analysis of the source language. A
constituent can have different positions, depending on whether it is thematic, rhematic, or
neutral with respect to these categories.
In 6.6, we present a preference rule for the resolution of some cases of PP attachment. It is
based on our findings concerning which constituent sequences are more natural than others.
Section 6.7 gives an overview of the suggested modifier classes, and the 10 features that are
necessary to treat them in NLP. These are the features used for the classification and coding
of approximately four hundred adverbs listed in the appendix (8.2 and 8.3). In 6.8, we
summarise the procedure presented in chapter 6.
We end the thesis with concluding remarks (chapter 7). These comprise a brief summary of
our findings, an evaluation of the research carried out, as well as suggestions for future
investigations, which could be carried out to complement the research presented here.
The appendix consists of Hoberg's list of modifier classes (8.1), an extended alphabetical list
of adverbs which we encoded using the features presented in 6.7 (8.2), and a third list, which
presents the same modifiers ordered according to position classes (8.3). Appendix 8.3 is
particularly interesting, as it allows the comparison of the feature values of the adverbs
belonging to the same class, and to the same subgroups.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 16
1.4. PROBLEMS OF GERMAN WORD ORDER DESCRIPTION
Daß es in der deutschen Sprache ziemlich viele Variationsmöglichkeiten im
Bereich der Abfolge gibt, bedeutet nicht, daß keine Regeln vorhanden wären. Im
Gegenteil, die Abfolge ist besonders kompliziert geregelt; denn für jede
Folgevariante gibt es spezielle Bedingungen, die sich in speziellen Regeln
niederschlagen. (Engel, 1988: 303)
In this section, we want to present the difficulties related to word order in general, and to
modifier placement in particular, without going into too much detail at present.
One difficulty regarding word order description is that the data is generally fuzzy. There is
no clear cut-off point between grammatical and ungrammatical data, instead there seems to
be a graded borderline with different shades. Furthermore, spoken language differs from
written language, and different concepts which are relevant for the description of word
ordering can easily be mixed up, namely style, meaning, scope, focus, and finally the
semantic versus the syntactic classification of elements.
When dealing with the more specific task of modifier placement, we are confronted with a
further problem, namely that the part-of-speech adverb is one of the most heterogeneous
word classes in German (see also 2.2). This statement also seems to be true for other
languages, as Schachter (1985: 20ff) and Givón (1984: 77ff) confirm in their universaloriented
investigations. The differences between the large amount of different adverb classes
make the description of their syntactic behaviour rather difficult.
German word order variation usually changes the relative acceptability of sentences, without
creating either ungrammatical or completely natural utterances. The grammarian
nevertheless has to decide which word order variation is grammatical and which one is not.
As in other domains of linguistic description native speakers differ in their judgements.
Therefore, we have to rely on our own intuition, sometimes backed up by other native
speakers' judgements. To express the grades in the range of acceptability between
grammatical and ungrammatical sentences we shall use the following means:

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 17
? odd, or less acceptable than examples without "?"
?? less acceptable than "?" (to express grades of acceptability)
# ungrammatical; can be considered acceptable if very strongly accentuated (contrast)
! unacceptable for semantic reasons
* definitely ungrammatical
German grammars only give a partial and rather unsatisfying explanation of where to put
adverbials and what the differences between the positions are (see section 2.4). The general
trend is to make a link between semantic classes and syntactic behaviour. Hoberg's
positional classification of modifiers (1981: 106-131) shows, however, that the semantic and
the syntactic classifications have to be partly dissociated to arrive at an appropriate
description of adverb placement 13 . This makes the explanation of their syntactic behaviour
even more difficult.
A further problem is the question of what the differences between word order variations of
the same sentence, and subsets of these variations, are. Are they purely stylistical? In this
case it would be interesting to find out what stylistical means. Do they involve a different
meaning? Or does the difference consist of something else, which would then have to be
stated more precisely?
20a
20b
20c
Paul gab gestern der Frau das Buch.
Paul gab der Frau das Buch gestern.
Paul gab das Buch gestern der Frau.
21a Paul gab nur der Frau das Buch.
21b ! Paul gab der Frau das Buch nur. 14
21c Paul gab das Buch nur der Frau.
The sentences in 21 definitely involve different meanings, as nur is a degree adverb which
changes its scope when moved. But what about 20? According to Engel (1988: 337) all
modifiers have a scope, which means that the movement of gestern in 20 also involves a
change of meaning. What then is this difference and how can we master it in order to be able
13 Greenbaum (1969: 231) makes a similar statement about English.
14 For reasons to be explained in 4.4.4, the only possible place for the sentence focus is the verb gab which
has to be stressed contrastively. 21b is ungrammatical, as it does not make sense to contrast nur geben
since there is nothing to oppose it to. If it was Paul LIEH der Frau das Buch nur, 21b would be perfectly
acceptable, as nur leihen can be imagined in opposition to schenken.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 18
to translate the difference into other languages? This is one of the main questions we shall
focus on.
What are the criteria to decide on the acceptability of sentences? Is 22a more acceptable than
22b?:
22a Hans traf sie gestern im Kino.
22b # Hans traf gestern SIE im Kino. 15
22b is a perfectly acceptable sentence but is contextually much more restricted than 22a
because the personal pronoun sie has to be strongly stressed. It is very easy to mix up
acceptability, focalization and scope, and this increases the difficulty of word order
description.
Spoken and written German certainly differ as speakers often form their ideas while
speaking, whereas most written utterances are more thought-through 16 . Indeed, utterances
like 23, with the temporal adverb behind the local verb complement, are likely to be heard
but very unlikely to be read:
23 ? Ich war im Kino gestern.
We shall concentrate on our own intuition of what contemporary written German is like,
supported by some judgements of other native German speakers. For parts of the work, we
shall also use a corpus of written German to verify our intuition (cf. sections 6.7 and 6.8).
We shall try to differentiate clearly between the different phenomena and to give answers to
the questions asked in this introductory chapter.
15 Throughout this work, we capitalise words or syllables which have to be stressed strongly in order to
make a sentence acceptable. 3b would be ungrammatical if the personal pronoun sie was not stressed
contrastively.
16 Further differences between spoken and written language will be discussed in sections 1.5.1.4 and 3.1.3.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 19
1.5. WHY DESCRIBE WORD ORDER?
There are three main domains to which the precise description of word order in general, and
adverb placement in particular, could be a useful contribution: (a) the general knowledge of
how German and related languages work, (b) foreign language teaching, for which rules-ofthumb
can be formulated, and (c) Natural Language Processing. We are mainly interested in
the last of these. Concerning NLP, we shall distinguish between problems arising whilst
analysing a text and whilst generating text. As Machine Translation (MT) is confronted with
both analysis and synthesis of sentences, it is an ideal application for which to discuss the
use of our findings. However, we believe that our work is useful for other NLP applications,
as well.
When talking about Machine Translation, we refer to the rule-based approach as applied in
the MT systems Eurotra, CAT2, METAL, Rosetta and others 17 . Due to our previous work,
we are most familiar with this approach. Furthermore, it is the only approach which relies on
the precise formulation of linguistic regularities. We do not want to exclude the fact, that our
findings can be of use for other methods, such as the statistical approach. Whether, and how,
our findings could be used for other approaches would have to be subject to a separate
examination.
1.5.1 ANALYSIS OF GERMAN SENTENCES IN NLP
Whilst automatically analysing a given sentence we need to know which word order
variations are ungrammatical, which ones are unlikely or marked, and which ones are likely
to occur. We shall argue in chapter 4 that these three stages are grades of grammaticality.
17 For an introduction to Eurotra, METAL and Rosetta, see Hutchins and Somers (1992: 239ff). For a more
detailed presentation of Eurotra, see Machine Translation Volume 6, Numbers 2 and 3 (1991), and
especially Bech/Maegaard/Nygaard (1991) and Durand et al. (1991). For an introduction to CAT2, see
Mesli (1991: 34ff) and Sharp (1989, 1993). Different approaches to MT, such as the rule-based,
knowledge-based, example-based and statistics-based methods are presented in Steinberger (1993) and
Hutchins/Somers (1992).

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 20
Through the precise description of possible and impossible word order variations we hope to
contribute to the resolution of several problematic domains. These include the
disambiguation of homonyms (1.5.1.1), resolution of prepositional phrase (PP) attachment
(1.5.1.2), recognition of emphasis linked to word order (1.5.1.3), embedding of sentences in
the context (1.5.1.4), and the recognition of degree modifier scope (1.5.1.5). Concerning PP
attachment and degree modifier scope, we offer only partial solutions in this work. However,
as they are related to word order, we shall discuss them briefly for the sake of completeness.
1.5.1.1 DISAMBIGUATION OF HOMONYMS
Disambiguation of homonyms is necessary in both human and machine translation.
In stratificational approaches to Machine Translation, such as Eurotra and CAT2, analysis is
done in several steps. The first level is dedicated to morphological analysis, followed by the
syntactic and the semantic analyses. When a word or a structure is ambiguous, the system
generates two (or more) analysis objects according to the different readings. The general
procedure is to process all readings in parallel, until the ambiguity is resolved. Sometimes
disambiguation is not feasible at all, and often it can be achieved at the semantic level only.
As the parallel translation of several analyses typical for rule-based systems is timeconsuming,
it is important to provide tools to solve ambiguity as soon as possible.
The two adverbs ehrlich in 24 and in 25 are word class homonyms, as they are semantically
closely related adverbs which belong to two different sub-classes (for a further explanation
of the term, see 2.3).
Due to their different positional behaviour, they can already be recognised at the syntactic
level, as ehrlich 1 in 24 has to precede the negational adverb nicht, whereas ehrlich 2 in 25
must follow it:
24 Peter kann ehrlich 2 nicht sprechen.
(Honestly, Peter cannot speak)
25 Peter kann nicht ehrlich 2 sprechen.
(Peter cannot speak honestly)

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 21
In MT systems of the afore-mentioned type, the first step of the analysis procedure would be
to generate two analysis objects, one with ehrlich 1 and one with ehrlich 2 (26 and 27). In the
next step, filters of the form: a certain group of elements containing ehrlich 2 may not
precede the negational modifier nicht would apply to the two objects. With their help, the
system discovers which readings among 26a, 26b, 27a and 27b are the correct ones. These
homonyms can thus be disambiguated, before entering the phase of semantic analysis, by
checking their position relative to the negational adverb nicht.
26a Peter kann ehrlich 1 nicht sprechen.
26b Peter kann ehrlich 2 nicht sprechen.
27a Peter kann nicht ehrlich 2 sprechen.
27b Peter kann nicht ehrlich 1 sprechen.
Our goal is to identify a set of impossible sequences and to formulate them in as general a
way as possible, in order to provide means to disambiguate homonyms, as well as cases of
structural ambiguity.
The real ambiguity in 28, however, cannot be solved without knowledge of the context:
28 Peter kann ehrlich sprechen.
(Honestly, Peter can speak; Peter can speak honestly)
1.5.1.2 RESOLUTION OF PP-ATTACHMENT
Another reason for ambiguity is the ambiguous attachment of prepositional phrases (PP).
The problem with PPs is that very often it is difficult to decide whether they are verb
arguments (prepositional objects), sentence modifiers (adverbials), or attributes or arguments
to nouns, which thus belong to the preceding noun phrase.
We hope that the precise description of word order regularities is a useful contribution to the
identification of the most likely attachment of PPs. The idea is to use our findings on which
constituent sequences are either ungrammatical or unnatural. When one of the readings of
structurally ambiguous sentences is such an unlikely sequence, the other analysis should be
preferred.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 22
An example in which probability can help to choose one reading over the other, is sentence
29. The PP vor der Bank could either be analysed as an adjunct, namely a modifier of the
nominative NP (29a), or as a sentence modifier expressing the location of the whole event
expressed in 29 (29b). We shall see below (e.g. 6.2) that the reading in 29b is unlikely and
should thus be avoided if an alternative analysis, such as 29a, is available. In 30, the strength
of the preference is easier to see, since the attachment of the PP to the pronoun is not
possible (30a). If we want vor der Bank to be a sentence modifier, we tend to use the order
in 30c:
29 Deshalb hat der Mann vor der Bank ihn einfach ignoriert.
29a Deshalb hat {der Mann vor der Bank} ihn einfach ignoriert.
29b ?? Deshalb hat {der Mann} {vor der Bank} ihn einfach ignoriert.
30a * Deshalb hat {er vor der Bank} ihn einfach ignoriert.
30b ?? Deshalb hat er {vor der Bank} ihn einfach ignoriert.
30c Deshalb hat er ihn {vor der Bank} einfach ignoriert.
Structural ambiguity as shown in 29 and 30 is not limited to PPs (cp 4.4.1) but it is much
less of a problem for one-word modifiers. As the latter are our main concern, we shall treat
PP attachment resolution only briefly (6.6). We believe, however, that the regularities and
the means discussed in this work can be used to formulate more rules of the same kind.
1.5.1.3 RECOGNITION OF EMPHASIS
The German variation in word order is sometimes used to stress a certain element in the
sentence. In 31a, the personal pronoun sie has to be stressed and is hence the focus of the
sentence, whereas in 31b all five elements of the sentence can be stressed:
31a Paul hat gestern SIE eingeladen.
31b Paul hat sie gestern eingeladen.
It is indeed a regularity that definite personal pronouns must not follow adverbs, unless they
are strongly (contrastively) stressed. This, and other regularities, can be used to detect
focusing due to word order variation in German sentences.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 23
Sentences with contrastive stress, such as 31a, are strongly restricted with respect to the
possible contexts in which they can occur. For instance, 31a is natural when following
context 32 but impossible after context 33:
32 War Paul gestern bei Marie-Christine oder war sie bei ihm?
31a' Paul hat gestern SIE eingeladen.
33 Wann war Marie-Christine bei Paul?
31a'' * Paul hat gestern SIE eingeladen.
If possible, and depending on the language in which or from which it will be translated, the
differences in meaning and context compatibility should be equally rendered. 31a', for
instance, is equivalent to the Italian sentence 34a in which the stressed pronoun lei is used. A
translation of 31a' (with context 32) by 34b involving the unstressed pronoun la (also called
clitic), and where the sentence focus is on invitata would be wrong:
34a Ieri, Paul ha invitato LEI.
34b * Ieri, Paul la ha invitata. (as a translation of 31a' in the context 32)
34 and 35 show that rendering the contrastive stress when translating into Italian is essential
to get a sentence which is correct in the context. It is impossible to use the clitic pronoun la
when there is a not-clause (non-clause, in Italian) as this makes the contrast explicit (35a).
Not rendering the Italian stress on lei in 34a into German is less harmful. 36a shows that, if
the context requires it, even the word order in 36a allows stress on sie, even if 36b would be
more natural:
35a * Ieri, Paul la ha invitata, non Maria.
35b Ieri, Paul ha invitato lei, non Maria.
36a
36b
Paul hat SIE gestern eingeladen, und nicht sie ihn.
Paul hat gestern SIE eingeladen, und nicht sie ihn.
One of the goals of our work is to describe stress due to word order variation appropriately,
and to provide means to recognise, translate and render it in Machine Translation.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 24
1.5.1.4 CONTEXTUAL EMBEDDING OF SENTENCES
Other word order variations do not lead to obligatory contrastive stress, but rather to a
change of the position of the sentence focus. The differences between 37a, 37b, 37c and 37d
are more subtle than the ones in 31 and 34. Nevertheless, 37a to 37d have different uses and
belong to different contexts:
37a Paul gab gestern der Frau das Buch.
37b Paul gab der Frau das Buch gestern.
37c Paul gab das Buch gestern der Frau.
37d Der Frau gab Paul das Buch gestern.
...
The main differences between the sentences in 37 concern the theme-rheme structure and
functional sentence perspective (discussed in detail in 3.1 and 3.2). Languages differ in the
degree to which they (have to) express these differences. In Russian, Czech and German, for
instance, word order largely depends on the context. Word order in more rigid languages,
like French or English, depends less on context. Even these languages, however, render
some of the differences, by choosing different places for the adverb and other means (3.3.2):
38a Er traf diesen Mann sehr oft.
38b Il a rencontré cet homme très souvent.
38c ? Il a très souvent rencontré cet homme. (as a translation of 38a)
39a Er traf sehr oft diesen Mann.
39b Il a très souvent rencontré cet homme.
39c ? Il a rencontré cet homme très souvent. (as a translation of 39a)
It is not useful to discuss one language in detail without carrying out research on a second
language, as it does not help to recognise a focus, for instance, without rendering it in the
translation. We therefore hope that such work will be carried out for further languages.
Shorter descriptions already exist for English in Hajicová/Sgall/Skoumalová (1993) and
Steinberger (1992a).
The goal of our work is (a) to identify the differences between the afore-mentioned sets of
sentences in German, and (b) to provide means for their automatic recognition and
translation.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 25
We want to address one problem related to discussing categories, such as focus and stress,
when dealing with written language. How can we recognise focus in written text? And what
is its importance in written language? In order to recognise as well as to express focus in
written language, we have to rely upon our personal intuition. Although there are no
objective means to verify our judgement, we believe that there is little doubt, if any, that in
sentence 40 the personal pronoun has to be stressed contrastively for the sentence to be
acceptable.
40 Paul hat gestern SIE eingeladen.
For sentences such as 41, we shall make statements similar to: It is likely that either gestern
or eingeladen carry the sentence focus. This is also difficult to prove. The only means we
have is to formulate possible contexts which require some phrases to be thematic and others
to be rhematic. Then, we can judge (according to our own intuition) in which of these
contexts our sentence sounds natural and in which ones it does not.
41 Paul hat sie gestern eingeladen.
However, our intuition corresponds to what is generally said about the order of elements in
the German sentence since the findings of the Prague School of linguists. After having
carried out psycholinguistic experiments, Hajicová, Sgall and Skoumalová, for instance, take
it for granted that the sentence focus normally falls on the last words of the sentence (for
further references, see sections 3.1 and 3.3):
In technical texts (spoken or written), there is a strong tendency to arrange words so that the intonation
centre falls on the last word of the sentence (where it need not be phonetically manifested), with the
exception, of course, of enclitic words (Hajicová/Sgall/Skoumalová, 1993: 179).
Linguists and grammarians are becoming more and more aware of the importance of large
corpora to verify their intuition. We acknowledge this necessity and therefore want to point
out that written corpora are of no help to our research, as they do not carry information on
stress etc. Spoken language, however, in which information on intonation and stress is
available, differs from written language in that the latter only has syntactical means to
express the intonation centre. For this reason, the syntax of written language has to be less

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 26
ambiguous. According to Hajicová/Sgall/Skoumalová (1993: 179), the focalization of an
element which is not at the end of the sentence is unlikely in written language. This proves
our claim:
In languages with a high degree of "free" word order (as in most Slavonic languages), a secondary
position of the intonation center is frequent only in spoken dialogues.
We thus see no way of verifying our intuition in corpora. For the part of our work in which
we could use corpora, namely the coding of modifiers, we made use of the Mannheim
Korpus HK87 (see section 6.7.1). Concerning the classification of modifiers in position
classes (see section 5.3.2 and the appendix), our work is based on Hoberg (1981), who used
corpora for her work as well. We hope and believe that, in spite of the amount of judgement
based on intuition, our research will be valid and useful for future applications and research.
1.5.1.5 SCOPE OF DEGREE MODIFIERS
Degree modifiers are a subgroup of the word class adverb (cf. section 2.2). Most degree
modifiers can modify various word classes and they vary with respect to their position
relative to the modified element. The movement of degree modifiers, from one position in
the sentence to another, changes the meaning of the sentence considerably. Therefore, the
description of the positional behaviour of this word group is particularly important.
42a Paul hat nur der Frau ein Buch gegeben.
42b (Paul only gave a book to the woman.)
42c (It is only to the woman that Paul gave a book.)
43a Paul hat der Frau nur ein Buch gegeben.
43b (It is only a book that Paul gave to the woman.)
Nur in 42a is likely to refer to the dative NP der Frau but it can also refer to the sentence as
a whole. In 43a, nur is likely to refer to the accusative NP ein Buch, but can also refer to the
whole sentence (Steinberger, 1992b: 13ff). The English equivalent 42b is as ambiguous as
42a. However, 42a and 43a could also be translated as 42c and 43b, which clearly show the
change of meaning linked to a change of position of nur.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 27
Due to the considerable change of meaning linked to the scope of elements, it is extremely
important to recognise the possible scope of degree modifiers and hence the meanings of the
sentence.
The goal of this thesis is to suggest how to deal with word order variation under the
exclusion of elements with scope 18 . Even though the distinction between scope and emphasis
can be difficult, and many degree modifiers can also refer to the whole sentence, we shall
nevertheless discuss degree modifier scope briefly (3.7, 6.7).
1.5.2 SYNTHESIS OF GERMAN IN NLP
German synthesis is probably easier than its analysis but it is by no means trivial. A good
synthesis of German sentences does not only include the generation of correct word order,
which is a much more complicated task than it may seem at a first glance, but it also
involves the rendering of more fine-tuned information, which we obtain by analysing a
source language in the way described in 1.5.1.
We distinguish two types of problems which have to be solved when generating German
sentences. The first group comprises requirements which are obligatory for the production of
grammatical output. The second is related to less basic requirements, which can be neglected
without generating ungrammatical output, but are important to produce a natural flow of
sentences.
One reason why a translation can result in ungrammaticality is because languages differ
essentially in syntactic structure. A further common problem is that, in spite of German word
order freedom, some sequences of phrases are impossible. This is particularly relevant for
the cumulation of modifiers, as these have as of yet not been studied in so much detail. And
18 Degree modifiers can generally refer to different phrases in the sentence. To avoid too many analyses a
preference mechanism can be applied which choses among the several possible readings. For a suggestion
on how to recognise, translate and render degree modifier scope see Steinberger (1992b).

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 28
finally, translated sentences may not correspond to the source language sentence, because
scope is rendered incorrectly.
A natural flow of sentences, and thus a coherent and eligible text, can be reached by
embedding sentences appropriately, and by rendering contrastive stress. We shall discuss
these basic requirements, as well as the desirable improvements, in the following sections.
Before that, we want to point out some basic facts concerning the structure of German,
which we will then take for granted, without describing them explicitly in our discussion.
This section will also serve to define some terms generally used to describe German
structure.
The following examples show that the order of words generally has to be changed when
translating from one language into another:
44a I shall probably see him tomorrow.
44b * Je peut-être verrai le demain.
44c * Ich werde vielleicht sehen ihn morgen.
44b'
44c'
Je le verrai peut-être demain.
Ich werde ihn vielleicht morgen sehen.
The structure of German declarative sentences is generally described as being composed of
Vorfeld, Mittelfeld, Nachfeld and the two verb positions which, together, form the
Satzklammer (verbal bracket) (e.g. Engel, 1988: 303ff). In declarative main clauses (45a)
with one simple verb, the verb follows one element and is thus in second position (verbsecond,
or V2-clause). In subclauses (45b), it is in final position (verb-letzt/verb-last, or VLclauses).
When the verbal part of the sentence in declarative main clauses consists of more
than one part, one of the parts is in V2 position and the other one in VL position. The latter
can be the case when auxiliaries or separable verb prefixes occur. Together, these two
groups of verbal elements form the verbal bracket:

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 29
VORFELD V2 MITTELFELD VL NACHFELD
45a Tina sprach gestern mit Wolf.
[Ich weiß, daß ...]
45b Tina gestern mit Wolf sprach.
45c Tina hat gestern mit Wolf gesprochen.
45d Tina hat mit Wolf gesprochen gestern.
I__________________________________I
verbal bracket
The Vorfeld (pre-field) is the position preceding the verb in second position, Mittelfeld
(middle-field) is what is embraced by the verbal bracket, and Nachfeld (after-field) is what
follows the verb in final position.
As we have seen, the position of the verb is fixed rigidly. It has to be in second position in
declarative main clauses, and in end position in subclauses. This has not always been the
case (Lehmann, 1978c: 410ff). Up until the beginning of the 16th century, the verb tended to
be in second position, even in subordinate clauses. The shift to the sentence-final position
was an act of will by writers who tried to imitate the superior language Latin. For a
collection of original quotations by philosophers and grammarians who shaped todays'
German see Scaglione (1981: 29ff):
The OV pattern of subordinate clauses was adopted as the regular construction by learned writers
around the beginning of the sixteenth century on the basis of Latin, though it was not wholly absent in
earlier forms of German. Gradually the twofold patterning of VO order in independent clauses, OV in
dependent, was installed, so that it is now regular in the standard written language. (Lehmann, 1978c:
410)
Another basic requirement for German is that every verb-second clause generally has to
have one element in the Vorfeld 19 . The other elements, with the exception of the verb(s),
belong in the Mittelfeld. In 5.5, we shall discuss how to choose which element goes into the
Vorfeld. The position behind VL is less important for written German 20 .
19 Cases in which more than one element fills the Vorfeld are discussed in Altmann (1981: 285ff)
20 For details on the role of the Nachfeld in German sentences, see Engel (1970: 83ff) and Altmann (1981).

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 30
It should be clear now why the English and French sentences in 46 and 47 cannot be
translated into German without reordering. The English verb is followed by two constituents,
and the French verb is preceded by two constituents. Both sequences are not possible in
German:
46 I shall probably see him tomorrow.
* Ich werde vielleicht sehen ihn morgen.
47 Je le verrai peut-être demain.
* Ich ihn werde sehen vielleicht morgen.
It is obvious that the order of elements has to be changed during the translation process. The
reordering within these basic limits generally does not pose a problem, as the rules are
transparent and clear-cut. More important questions are which element should go in the
Vorfeld, and in which order should the constituents in the Mittelfeld follow. These are the
questions we focused on in our research.
1.5.2.1 BASIC ORDERING OF CONSTITUENTS
As phrases have to be reordered we have to ask, according to which principles and rules
should this be done. Both German language learners and Machine Translation systems are
likely to produce ungrammatical sentences like 1a and 1b:
48a # Ich habe ein Geschenk gestern zum Geburtstag bekommen.
48b * Ich habe ein Geschenk zum Geburtstag gestern bekommen.
48c Ich habe gestern ein Geschenk zum Geburtstag bekommen.
Ungrammatical sequences such as in 48 can be avoided by obeying some basic rules of
thumb. The rule neglected in 48a, for instance, is that adverbs, with the exception of manner
adverbs 21 , should not follow indefinite noun phrases. In 48b, the additional rule is violated
that the same group of modifiers should not follow prepositional objects.
21 We shall define adverbs and their subclasses in 2.2.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 31
1.5.2.2 CUMULATION OF MODIFIERS
Although word order rules for arguments and for a subset of modifiers are well-known, little
research has been carried out on the position of most modifier classes. The cumulation of
modifiers is a problem which has been neglected by most grammar writers (see 2.4). We
intend to provide means to avoid sentences such as 49a:
49a * Er fuhr gleichfalls dennoch nach München.
49b Er fuhr dennoch gleichfalls nach München.
As we shall see later, modifier classes are so heterogeneous and diverse that it is very
difficult to formulate rules of thumb like the one suggested in the previous section. For this
reason, we shall suggest a canonical form which helps to generate a correct sequence of all
constituents including a large number of modifier classes (sections 5.2 and 5.3). In chapters
3 and 4, we shall give at least a partial explanation of why some sequences are
ungrammatical. These are also the chapters which will probably result in being the most
useful for language learners and teachers.
1.5.2.3 CORRECT SCOPE
According to an unambiguous and correct recognition of scope as described in 1.5.1.5, we
also have to render scope appropriately in synthesis. The French ne que (only) in 50a refers
to hier and not to Marie, and therefore translation 50b is correct whereas 50c is wrong .
50a Je n'ai vu Marie qu'hier.
50b Ich habe Marie erst gestern gesehen.
50c * Ich habe nur Marie gestern gesehen.
The fact that ne que is translated as erst when referring to gestern but as nur when referring
to Marie is secondary here. Even though it is important that the correct translation is chosen,
this is not directly related to word order, but rather to the class of the modified element. The
translation of ne que as either erst or nur is not an isolated case. In Steinberger (1992b: 31),
for instance, we show that the modifier gleich has to be rendered by either of the five
translations: equivalent, same, identical, immediate or equal. Which of the translations is

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 32
correct depends on whether gleich is an adjective (the first two options) or an adverb (last
three options), and on the word class they modify.
1.5.2.4 SENTENCE EMBEDDING
Similar to what we said about embedding a sentence translated from German into another
language, we should also take care that a text translated into German fits into the context
naturally. If the sentences 51a and 52a are translated by 51b, 51c and 52b, the sentence focus
in the Spanish and the German sentences are on the constituents corresponding to each other.
In the translations 51d and 52c, they are not:
51a A Maria le voy a dar el libro.
51b Maria werde ich das Buch geben.
51c Ich werde Maria das Buch geben.
51d ? Ich werde das Buch Maria geben.
52a Le voy a dar el libro a Maria.
52b Ich werde das Buch Maria geben.
52c ? Ich werde Maria das Buch geben.
PP attachment and the correct choice of homonyms are no problems for synthesis. Once we
know what a PP refers to - a difficulty which must be solved during analysis - it is easy to
find its appropriate place in the target sentence. The same applies for words which are
homonyms in the source language. Once we know which homonym reading is correct, the
word can be translated exactly like every other word, as source and target language words
are linked through a bilingual dictionary.
1.5.3 FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING
The fine-tuned differences between word order variations in general and modifier placement
in particular, are a major problem for foreigners speaking the German language. Our own
teaching experience has shown that even students with a very broad vocabulary and a sound
knowledge of the grammar make striking errors linked to incorrect adverb positioning.
Grammars have little to say about this (see 2.4) so that even most zealous study is no
remedy.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 33
We hope that our findings are a contribution to improve foreign language teaching on two
levels. Firstly, we want to explain more clearly than in existing grammar books how free
German word order is, and what its limits are. Secondly, we intend to provide concrete
means of avoiding the noticeable errors which, in spite of some foreigners perfect
pronunciation, make it so often obvious that a foreigner is speaking.
In the chapters 6 and 7, we concentrate on how to deal with word order variation in Natural
Language Processing. These chapters may not be very important for language learners and
teachers, but they include however data which is interesting for language acquisition, in that
they describe which sentences are natural and which ones are contextually more restricted
(or marked).
The canonical form which we develop in these two chapters comprises over eighty position
classes and therefore, it may be tiresome to use for humans. The section about compulsory
orders, however, can be seen as a list of useful rules of thumb to avoid severe mistakes
linked to word order.
It is certainly an advantage for language learners if they are made aware of the interaction of
preference rules described in chapter 3. The understanding of some of these preferences
probably requires sound linguistic knowledge which the average language learner does not
have. We believe, however, that the mere statement of the fact how they interact (chapter 4)
can be of help for foreigners, whose language has more fixed word order.
Last but not least, it may be helpful for language teachers to be made aware of the fuzzy
borderline which exists between the word classes described in chapter 2. As we show in
2.2.1 and 2.2.4, grammar books provide contradictory definitions of the word class adverb. It
may help language students to get over the problems they have with German when they see
that the terms they confuse have their roots in vague definitions.
We believe that our most important contribution to language teaching and learning is the
general explanation and the formulation of rules of thumb.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 34
2. COMPLEMENT, MODIFIER, ADVERB AND ADVERB
SUBTYPES
In this chapter, we want to discuss the terms we shall use. One distinction we make is
between modifiers (Angaben) and complements (Ergänzungen) (2.1), another one between
different adverb subtypes (2.2, 2.3). We shall also give an overview of what grammar books
say about adverb placement (2.4), and some statistical information on adverbs in German
(2.5).
We want to point out that the term adverb designates a word class, whereas modifier and
complement name different functions or relations within the sentence. Adverbs, NPs, PPs
and clauses can thus function as adverbials (1 to 4) or as verb complements (5 to 8).
1 Harold spielt dort Softball.
2 Harold spielt den ganzen Tag Softball.
3 Harold spielt mit Vergnügen Softball.
4 Harold spielt Softball, weil es ihm Vergnügen bereitet.
5 Paul wohnt dort.
6 Paul liest das ganze Buch.
7 Paul spricht mit Christoph.
8 Paul weiß, daß Softball Harold Vergnügen bereitet.
We do not agree with Givón (1984: 77), who uses adverb in the sense of adverbial:
Unlike the categories noun, verb and adjective, adverbs are a rather mixed lexical class, semantically,
morphologically and syntactically. Many adverbs are full sentential constructions rather than one-word
lexical items [...]. But even single adverbial words ...
Another area where some grammarians lack consistency is the distinction between some
parts-of-speech. The reason for the confusion is the badly drawn borderline between the
word class adverb and other particles. Schulz and Griesbach (1980: 211), for instance, use
the expression "Adverb als Konjunktion", and Liebsch/Doering (1976: 135) mix up several
word classes:
Das Adverb wird zur Präposition, wenn es sich mit Nomen verbindet. [...] Adverbien können als
Konjunktionen auftreten, aber auch als Adverbialbestimmungen mit Satzgliedwert.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 35
Although we understand how this confusion can arise, we shall only use the word classes for
the domain in which they are defined. If an adverb takes over the function of a conjunction,
we shall say it is a conjunction, which is homonymous to an adverb.
The distinction between modifiers and complements is not trivial. We shall discuss this
subject briefly before saying more about adverbs and their subclasses in 2.2.
2.1. MODIFIERS (ANGABEN) VS. COMPLEMENTS
(ERGÄNZUNGEN))
In Deutsche Grammatik (1988: 862ff), Engel defines the two complementary notions as
follows:
Ergänzung: "syntaktisches Glied, das seinem Regens subklassenspezifisch zugeordnet ist; kann
obligatorisch oder fakultativ sein; kommt vor allem bei Verb, Nomen, Adjektiv, Pronomen vor
(Gegensatz: Angabe)".
Angabe: "syntaktisches Glied, das beliebigen Elementen einer regierenden Wortklasse (vor allem
Verben, Nomina, Adjektiven) aspezifisch zugeordnet werden kann, meist fakultativ (Gegensatz:
Ergänzung)".
However, in the same grammar book (1988: 219) he cuts down the use of sentence modifiers
saying that they are never compulsory ("es gibt keine obligatorischen Satzangaben"). At
least at sentence level, modifiers are thus always optional.
Bußmann's (1983: 125) definition slightly differs. According to her, complements are:
"Von der Valenz sprachlicher Ausdrücke (Verben, Adjektive, Nomen) geforderte syntaktische Elemente
(im Unterschied zu den beliebig hinzufügbaren oder weglaßbaren Angaben)"
Bußmann thus defines complements as obligatory elements. Engel explains his differing
view with a considerable number of complements, which may or may not be omitted,
without resulting in a distinct verb meaning. Most of these optional complements are
accusative objects:
9 Peter ißt (ein Steak).
10 Helga liest (die Schmutzigen Hände von Jean Paul Sartre).
11 Holga schwimmt (auf der Isar nach München).

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 36
According to Engel (1988: 183), the optional phrases in brackets must be considered as
complements, because they cannot be combined with other verbs:
12 * Der Kaktus blüht ein Steak.
13 * Ihm graut die schmutzigen Hände von Jean Paul Sartre.
14 * Holga liest ein Buch nach München.
Engel distinguishes eleven subtypes of verb complements, which can be realised by
pronouns, definite NPs, indefinite NPs, NPs accompanied by a modifier or a complement,
proper names etc (Engel, 1988: 185). The subtypes are (1988: 185-198):
- Nominativergänzung (subject): Der Mann liest.
- Akkusativergänzung: Er sieht die Frau.
- Genitivergänzung: Er bedarf des Buches.
- Dativergänzung: Er folgt ihr.
- Präpositivergänzung: Wir verlassen uns auf dich.
- Situativergänzung: Sie wohnt in München.
- Direktivergänzung: Sie fährt nach Paris.
- Expansivergänzung: Er war einen Kilometer gelaufen.
- Nominalergänzung: Mein Bruder ist Beamter.
Er hat sich als Betrüger erwiesen.
- Adjektivalergänzung: Sie wird krank.
Sie benimmt sich anständig.
Sie war wie wild.
Sie war es auch.
Sie war eben so.
- Verbativergänzung: Peter läßt die Puppen tanzen.
Es heißt, er wolle zurücktreten.
Engel's argumentation is problematic, as modifiers can be selectionally restricted as well.
Modifiers indicating an instrument (Instrumentalangabe), a goal (Finalangabe) and an
iteration (Iterativangabe), for instance, cannot be freely combined with any verb:
15 * Etwas fällt mir auf + Finalangabe (mit diesem Ziel/zu diesem Zweck).
16 * Vor dem Buch graut ihm + Instrumentalangabe (mit der Lupe/mit dem Hammer).
17 * Er wurde in München geboren + Iterativangabe (wiederum, erneut).
18 * Er las sehr.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 37
It seems that these selectional restrictions are of a semantic nature and that they can be
overcome by choosing a semantically different word of the same word class (Er las schnell).
On the other hand, syntactic valency certainly is of semantic or pragmatic origin as well. The
verb geben, for instance, has three complements, as the action of giving concerns humans
with respect to three aspects: AGENT, (given) OBJECT and RECEIVER 22 . These are
realised by the nominative, accusative and dative complements. Although time and place can
be relevant in certain situations, they are usually less dominant than the roles represented by
the complements. The verb wohnen, however, calls for local information, and this is the
reason we would say that the phrase referring to the PLACE is a complement, rather than an
adverbial:
The two criteria (a) obligatoriness and (b) the ability to occur with every verb, do not
provide a clear-cut borderline between the concepts of complement and modifier. As for
obligatoriness, it seems to us that the distinction is rather one of degree, in the sense that
some complements can be omitted more easily than others. The phrases expressing location
with the verb wohnen, for instance, can hardly be dropped (19). The only exceptions are rare
cases such as 19c. The accusative object of the verb essen, however, is omitted quite
frequently, without causing odd or ungrammatical sentences (20). One could thus argue that
optional complements have less the quality of complements, and more the quality of
modifiers, than obligatory complements.
19a * Ralf wohnt.
19b Ralf wohnt in München.
19c Ralf wohnt modern.
20a
20b
Christoph ißt.
Christoph ißt einen Apfel.
We shall not follow this question any further, because it is not of immediate relevance to us.
We shall use the dichotomous distinction because intuitively it is quite clear, and we did not
encounter any problems using it. Furthermore, Engel and Hoberg, to whose work we refer a
22 Throughout this work, we write semantic roles in capitals.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 38
lot, use it. However, it is not essential for the relevance of our work what the exact
borderline between the two concepts is. If we dropped the distinction completely, we would
have to rename the categories which we use but even this would not put into question our
core findings.
We thus use the notion modifier (Angabe) as equivalent to the term optional adverbials
which can be realised by the following categories (Bußmann, 1983: 9):
- pure adverbs (heute, dort)
- de-adjectival adverbs (schön, neu) 23
- pronominal adverbs (Pronominaladverbien) (darin, deshalb)
- PPs (auf dem Tisch)
- Genitive NPs (eines Morgens)
- Accusative NPs (den ganzen Tag)
- adverbial clauses (Adverbialsätze) (Er folgte ihr, wohin sie wollte.) 24
Some linguists do not include toners (Abtönungs- or Modalpartikel: ja, doch, halt,
eigentlich) and degree modifiers (Gradadverbien: sehr, nur) in the word class adverb (cf.
2.2). We include toners in our research and include degree modifiers if they refer to the
sentence, as opposed to a phrase of the sentence. Most degree modifiers can refer to the
whole sentence as well as to parts of it, so that nearly the whole group is included.
The only realization of modifiers we exclude in our work are adverbial clauses. Among the
other realizations, we focus on one-word modifiers, as they are a limited set (cf. 1.2).
23 An example is schnell in Caroline liest schnell. For a more detailed discussion of these elements which
are sometimes called Adjektivadverbien (Bußmann, 1983: 7) or adverbiale Adjektive (Eisenberg, 1989:
220), see section 2.2.3.3.
24 Bußmann does not mention the realization of adverbials by infinitival clauses (Er setzte sich, um sich
auszuruhen) which we shall not treat here either.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 39
2.2. DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION OF ADVERBS
Die Adverbien gehören zum Widerspenstigsten und Unübersichtlichsten, was die
deutsche Grammatik zu bieten hat. Kaum eine andere Kategorie wird ähnlich
uneinheitlich abgegrenzt und intern nach so verschiedenen Gesichtspunkten
gegliedert, eine den Gesamtbereich des Adverbs überzeugend ordnende
Darstellung fehlt bisher. Auch im Terminologischen besteht ein Wirrwarr, der
seinesgleichen sucht. (Eisenberg, 1989: 204)
For our purposes, we shall distinguish three main modifier classes (2.3):
a) existimatorische Angaben
b) situative Angaben
c) modale Angaben
which will be subdivided later. Further terms for word classes used in our research are toners
(Abtönungspartikeln) and degree adverbs (Gradpartikeln). In addition to these terms, other
ways of classifying adverbs have been suggested in linguistic literature and grammar books.
We shall also mention these, so as to give an overview.
Adverbs are particularly difficult to define, as they share a lot of properties with other word
classes. There is no set of distinctive features which would be sufficient to distinguish this
heterogeneous word class from all other word classes. This fact explains why the term
adverb is often used as a waste paper basket for other linguistic elements, which cannot be
categorised appropriately. Sommerfeldt and Starke (1988: 159) therefore state that the term
adverb is reduced to being a "Sammelwortart". In The Structure of German, Fox (1990: 160)
comes to the same conclusion:
In practice, however, the class of adverb covers a very wide area, and any word which cannot otherwise
be accomodated tends to be called an adverb by default.
This confusion is not restricted to German. French and English grammar writers seem to
have the same problem:

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 40
La classe des adverbes est un des plus remarquables "fourre-tout" de la grammaire traditionelle. A2 sa
décharge, on relèvera que l'analyse de ces unités est extrèmement délicate. (Jolivet, 1982: 387) 25
Grammarians are not in general agreement on what to include among sentence modifiers or sentence
adverbs. (Greenbaum, 1969: 2)
In his description of universal part-of-speech systems, Schachter (1985: 20ff) questions
[...] whether there is sufficient similarity among the various types of adverbs that may be recognised in
a language to justify their being assigned to a single parts-of-speech class.
The difficulties experienced by grammar writers are reflected in the handling of modifiers in
linguistic theory, such as Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) and X-Bar
Theory:
In HPSG theory, as in linguistic theory at large, the analysis of adjuncts is at a very primitive stage.
(Pollard/Sag, 1987: 158)
Remarkably absent is the lexical category preposition-postposition [-N, -V] (as well as adverb). This
fact emphasises the deficient treatment of this lexical category in current X-bar theory. (Zonnefeld,
1991: 147)
For an overview of the different classifications of the word class systems see
Sommerfeldt/Starke (1988: 58ff).
To specify what we understand by adverb and modifier, we shall have to look at how it has
been defined in linguistic literature (2.2.1 and 2.2.2), as well as what the borderlines with the
related word classes particle, conjunction, preposition and adjective are (2.2.3). We shall
evaluate the results of the comparison in a conclusion, in which we define the term adverb
(2.2.4).
2.2.1. DIFFERENT DEFINITIONS OF THE ADVERB
The word adverb suggests that these words accompany verbs and thus modify their meaning.
Admoni (1970: 198, 142), Liebsch/Doering (1976: 134f), Erben (1972: 166) and
Dreyer/Schmitt (1985: 218) thus see the primary use of adverbs as verb modifiers, and all
25 The class adverb is one of the biggest catchalls in traditional grammar. It must be said in its defence that
its analysis is extremely delicate.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 41
other uses as secondary uses. Lyons (1971: 331), however, emphasises that the Latin word
"verbum" is more general than the German or English word verb, and that it means "word".
Accordingly, Erben (1972: 166) translates "ad-verbium" as "Bei-wort" or Nebenwort and
thus concludes that adverbs are dependent words with a supporting ("dienend") function.
This criterion cannot be taken in a very strict sense, as adverbs can realise the same functions
as, for instance, prepositional objects (21; PO) and a few of them even have a valency with
dependent complements (22; Duden, 1984: 346 and Dreyer/Schmitt, 1985: 220ff):
21 Er freute sich darüber (über den Besuch; PO).
22 Er ist mir in der Musik voraus.
A distinctive feature of adverbs in which most 26 sources agree is that adverbs are elements
that cannot be inflected. They share this characteristic with prepositions, conjunctions and a
few smaller word classes (Engel, 1988: 18). We shall list further characteristics that
grammars use to define and describe adverbs.
Eisenberg (1989: 204) mentions that in most cases adverbs situate other entities in a local,
temporal or modal way. Adverbs are an open class because there are morphological means to
multiply the otherwise restricted number. Generally, they have a lexical meaning and they
are no-function words.
Engel (1988: 749) states that adverbs can fill the preverbal position (Vorfeld) in Verb-
Second (V2) sentences and that they can either be answers to w-questions (wer, wen, wann,
warum etc), or they are w-elements themselves. They can be modifiers, be equivalent to a
sentence, be verb complements, or attributes of nouns. Engel gives an allegedly exhaustive
list of 150 simple adverbs (i.e. derivation or compounding has not been applied) 27 .
26 Some sources point out that adverbs used to have inflectional endings in Middle-High-German, and Erben
(1972: 57f) combines adverbs and adjectives in a common class of elements which is inflectable with a
subgroup having the feature that they are not inflectable (see also below in this section and 2.2.3.3).
27 The small number can be explained by the strict application of tests, for instance (a) adverbs must be able
to fill the Vorfeld position, which excludes adverbs like mindestens and (b) they must not be inflectable,
which excludes schnell, bereitwillig and others (Engel, 1988: 754).

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 42
Bußmann (1984: 8f) defines adverbs as modifiers of verbs, adjectives, adverbials and entire
sentences. They occur freely (frei vorkommende Adverbien; abends, bergauf, gern) or are
pro-forms of prepositional objects or adverbials (Pronominaladverbien: darauf, dorthin,
deswegen). The subgroup of sentence adverbs expresses the speakers' judgement, which
refers to the whole sentence.
Liebsch & Doering (1976: 135ff) state that adverbs do not have comparative forms, although
they admit that there are exceptions to this.
Helbig/Buscha (1988: 337ff) call attention to the fact that, although adverbs cannot be
inflected, some of them do have comparative forms (23). Furthermore, adverbs have three
possible uses: adverbial (24, 25), predicative (26) and attributive (27):
23 oft - öfter - am öftesten
gut - besser - am besten
24 Der Mann arbeitet dort. (adverbial use)
25 Der dort arbeitende Mann ist Kameruner. (adverbial use)
26 Der Mann ist dort. (predicative use)
27 Der Mann dort arbeitet den ganzen Tag. (attributive use)
In the Duden (1984: 90f), adverbs are defined as non-inflectables specifying circumstances
(nähere Umstände). They can also be used as attributes to nouns.
Erben (1972: 166ff) subsumes adverbs as well as adjectives in one class called
charakterisierendes Beiwort. He gives it this name, because adverbs and adjectives
characterise other words, which they accompany. The elements of this class have
comparative forms and can be combined with degree modifiers. As they have comparative
endings, Erben (1972: 57ff) lists these by-words together with nouns and verbs under the
header inflectables.
According to Hammond (1981: 185ff) adverbs cannot only be used to extend or modify
verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, prepositions, adverbial phrases and conjunctions, but also to
form compound verbs (herumfahren) and to ask questions (warum).

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 43
Jung (1971: 318) reveals that some adverbs diachronically are not only hardened genitive
forms of NPs (flugs, abends), but also dative (zuweilen, vergebens) or accusative forms
(weg, allzeit), which can no longer be recognised as such. Some adverbs were formed in
analogy to genitive forms, without actually being genitives (nachts, neuerdings).
Most sources, but not all of them, accept the term adverb as the name for a word category,
and see it in opposition to the relational term adverbial (cf. Eisenberg, 1989: 204).
2.2.2. SEMANTIC CLASSIFICATION
All grammars classify adverbs semantically. The Duden (1984: 346ff) for instance
distinguishes the following semantic sub-groups to express:
- local information (dort, links, worin, hin, herum, fort)
- temporal information (heute, wann, seither, vorerst, manchmal, erstens)
- modal information
- manner ("Art und Weise") (quality) (gerne, geradeaus, nebenher, umsonst, so)
- degree, amount (quantity)
- high degree (zu, wieviel, besonders, sehr, gar)
- limited degree, approximation, uncertainty (beinahe, etwa, halbwegs, rund, etwa,
höchstens, über)
- extension (zudem, außerdem, weiterhin, ebenfalls)
- restriction, adversative (insofern, allerdings, immerhin, weder - noch, vielmehr)
- emphasis (ausgerechnet, genau, nur, sogar, besonders)
- judgement (vielleicht, gewiß, leider, hoffentlich, nicht)
- toners (personal feelings like astonishment, anger, doubt ...) (aber, ja, doch, denn,
mal, nur, schon, vielleicht)
- information about the cause
- cause and consequence (weshalb, darum, folglich, meinetwegen)
- instrument (dadurch, hiermit, womit)
- condition (notfalls, sonst, strenggenommen)
- concession (dennoch, nichtsdestoweniger, doch)
- finality, intention (dazu, hierfür, warum)
Due to the vastness of the semantic field covered by adverbs, the classifications by different
authors vary considerably. Engel for instance (1988: 750ff) distinguishes:

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 44
- local (links, daneben, wo)
- directive (dahin, davor, wohin)
- temporal (anfangs, neulich, wann)
- "komitativ" (describing the surrounding circumstances) (damit, womit)
- causal (daher, meinetwegen, warum)
- conditional (dann)
- instrumental (damit, dadurch, womit)
- final (dafür, dazu, wofür)
- modificational (gerne, heimlicherweise, wie)
- grading (sehr, teilweise, inwiefern)
Two word classes which by some grammarians are included in the group of adverbs (Duden,
1984) and by others are not (Heidolph et. al., 1981; Altmann, 1976), deserve to be discussed
more specifically: degree modifiers and toners.
Degree modifiers like nur, einzig, auch, sogar, schon, erst etc can modify the whole
sentence, as well as parts of it. The modified constituent is called the scope of the modifier
(cf. 3.7). According to Engel (1988: 764) they cannot be inflected or compared, cannot fill
the Vorfeld position on their own and can be positioned between conjunctions and Vorfeld
elements. Altmann's (1978, 1976: 1f) definition is more semantically oriented and does not
include the condition, that the degree modifiers must not fill the Vorfeld position on their
own. It therefore covers wenigstens, beinahe and others, which Engel classifies as
Rangierpartikel and Modalpartikel.
Semantically, they rank the modified constituent (in the following example: wir) on a scale
(Altmann, 1976: 122ff). Sogar wir has the meaning, that besides us there were others who
saw Sartre, and that these others were more likely to see him. Sogar can also be seen as an
expression of the speaker's personal judgement: we put the likelihood of seeing Sartre low
on the scale, so that one would not have expected that we would see him.
28 Sogar wir haben J.-P. Sartre gesehen.
Degree modifiers have word class homonyms among conjunctions, toners and other adverbs
(Eisenberg, 1989: 207). We use the term word class homonym to express the fact, that some

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 45
lexemes have two or more related meanings, whilst being members of different word classes.
The term is a relative one, because degree modifiers, conjunctions and toners, for instance,
are in the same word class, the non-inflectables, but they are in different sub-classes. We
shall use the term strictly for all sets of homonymous elements, which belong to at least two
different modifier subclasses.
Toners (Abtönungspartikeln) are a very limited group of particles like aber, doch, wohl, eben
etc which cannot fill the Vorfeld position on their own (Thurmair, 1989: 25ff). Engel (1988:
19) lists the further characteristics: (a) they cannot be asked for and (b) they cannot be
negated 28 . Toners have also been called Modalpartikeln (Thurmair, 1988), Würzwörter or
Füllwörter (Duden, 1984: 351), Färbewörter (Sommerfeldt/Starke, 1988: 163),
Fülladverbien and Gefühlsträger (Pelz, 1963: 104).
Toners cannot refer to a part of the sentence, but they are always at the same level as the
sentence itself (Eisenberg (1989, 206): Sie "treten als Konstituente neben den ganzen Satz";
see also section 2.3). They cannot fill the Vorfeld and they are rarely stressed
(Sommerfeldt/Starke, 1988: 164) 29 . Semantically, they relate the contents of the sentence to
the speaker's attitude or judgement. The meaning of these typically German particles is often
difficult to grasp. They are indeed often omitted when translating into other languages (Pelz,
1963: 102ff; Barth, 1961: 102-104). Weydt (1969: 73) estimates that one out of ten, or even
only one out of a hundred toners, are translated into French.
29 Männer sind eben so.
30 Tina ist aber klug.
The toner eben in 29 expresses something like "I always knew that" and aber in 30 expresses
a feeling of astonishment combined with admiration. For a semantic description of these
elements see Engel (1988: 231-238). A peculiar characteristic of toners is that every single
28 We do not want to add Engel's claim here that they never cumulate, as he himself gives several examples
which show more than one toner together (1989: 327).
29 According to our own judgement, toners can never be stressed (see the coding in appendix 8.3, as well as
the discussion in section 6.7)

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 46
one of them has at least one word class homonym. Aber, for instance, can also be a
conjunction, and eben can be a (temporal) adverb as well as an adjective.
2.2.3. ADVERBS AND RELATED WORD CLASSES
2.2.3.1. ADVERBS AND PARTICLES
Grosse Unterschiede [in der Klassifikation] gibt es auch im Hinblick auf
Gliederung und Zuordnung der Pronomen, Adverbien und Partikeln, auch des
Artikels. (Sommerfeldt/Starke, 1988: 58)
Duden (1984: 91) sees adverbs as one out of three subgroups of particles (adverbs,
prepositions and conjunctions) and opposes this supergroup to the other main categories
verb, noun, adjective, article/pronoun and interjection.
verb
noun
adjective
article / pronoun
interjection
particles
- adverbs
- prepositions
- conjunctions
Heidolph's et. al. classification (1981: 683), however, subsumes adverbs, prepositions and
conjunctions, in addition to the particles, under the header non-inflectables
(Nichtflektierbare). They see particles as the subgroup of toners (Abtönungspartikel), degree
modifiers and others.
non-inflectables
- adverbs
- prepositions
- conjunctions
- particles - toners
- degree modifiers
- ...
Altmann (1976: 3) includes all word classes, which cannot be inflected, as direct daughters
in the super-class particle:
particles
- adverb particles
- conjunction particles
- preposition particles
- toners (Abtönungspartikeln)
- degree modifiers (Gradpartikeln)
- ...

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 47
Sommerfeldt and Starke (1988: 58ff and 159ff) see adverbs as the superclass to pure
adverbs, modal words and particles, with particles being elements which cannot fill the
Vorfeld on their own.
For a critical discussion of the different ways of classifying adverbs and particles see
Eisenberg (1989: 204ff).
Another related word class which should be mentioned briefly here are interjections like ah,
oh, äh, hm, miaou, hoppla etc. Engel (1988: 772ff) classifies them as a subgroup of the
elements which can be equivalent to a sentence (Satzäquivalente). The specific feature of
this word class is that they are syntactically isolated elements (Duden, 1984: 90f). This
characteristic is sufficient to distinguish them from adverbs, some of which can also
constitute one-word sentences (31), but which always can be part of a longer sentence.
Isolated elements, such as äh, do not pose a problem with respect to word order. We shall
leave them aside in our research.
31 A: Liebt sie Heinz?
B: Vermutlich.
In the next section, we try to shed some light on the borderlines between adverbs on one
hand side, and prepositions, conjunctions and adjectives on the other.
2.2.3.2. ADVERBS VS. CONJUNCTIONS AND PREPOSITIONS
A few words can be prepositions as well as adverbs (e.g. abseits, links, oberhalb), and
elements of both word classes can denote similar things, such as a position. For Liebsch &
Doering (1976: 135) the difference between the two is that adverbs refer to the verbal
statement, whereas prepositions refer to nouns. As we have seen that adverbs can also refer
to nouns, Eisenberg's (1989: 206) distinctive feature seems more appropriate: prepositions
call for one or even several cases (32a, 33a), whereas adverbs do not (32b, 33b):
32a Sie lebt abseits des Dorfes. (abseits + genitive)
32b Sie lebt abseits (vom Dorf). (abseits + optional von-PP)
33a Er kleidete sich entsprechend der Vorschrift. (entsprechend + genitive)
33b Er kleidete sich entsprechend. (entsprechend + ∅)

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 48
Eisenberg's distinction thus allows for words such as abseits to be both prepositions and
adverbs, depending on whether the complement is realised or not. As we want to avoid
claiming that elements belong to two classes, we suggest a different borderline, by allowing
adverbs to have valency: The two word classes differ in that the arguments of prepositions
are compulsory, whereas adverbs can occur on their own. According to this criterion, abseits
(32) and entsprechend (33) are adverbs with valency, but für is a preposition, as it cannot
occur on its own (34):
34a Paul gab Harold das Buch für Jock.
34b * Paul gab Harold das Buch für.
Examples of elements that can be adverbs or conjunctions are da and seitdem (Duden, 1984:
380). The difference between these two classes are that conjunctions link more than one
word or word group of a certain category to each other (35a, 36a), whereas adverbs appear
with one word or word group (35b, 36b; Eisenberg, 1989: 206):
35a Da (=weil) sie keine Zeit hatte, konnte sie nicht kommen. (conj)
35b Da (=dort) liegt ein Buch. (adv)
36a Seitdem Peter nach Köln gezogen ist, haben wir nichts mehr von ihm gehört. (conj)
36b Peter ist nach Köln gezogen. Seitdem haben wir nichts mehr von ihm gehört. (adv)
A subgroup of adverbs, namely the interrogative adverbs (Fragewörter,
Interrogativadverbien, also called Relativadverbien (Duden, 1984: 355)) like weshalb,
superficially resembles conjunctions: both can introduce subordinate clauses. The difference
between them is that the adverb is a Stellungsglied of the subordinate clause (that is to say a
constituent belonging to it), whereas the conjunction is not (Eisenberg, 1989: 338ff). ob in
37a cannot be replaced in 37b by any element having the same or a similar meaning.
Weshalb in 38a, however, corresponds to deshalb, or to aus diesem Grund, in 38b. Weshalb
asks for a constituent, which is part of the subordinate clause, whereas ob is not part of the
subordinate clause:
37a Er fragt, ob du das machst. (conj)
7b * Du machst das wie/so/aus diesem Grund/... .
38a
38b
Er fragt, weshalb du das machst. (adv)
Du machst das deshalb / aus diesem Grund.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 49
Interrogative adverbs always have a non-interrogative equivalent (weshalb - deshalb etc),
which Helbig/Buscha (1988: 341) call conjunctional adverbs. Although interrogative
adverbs normally introduce the subordinate clause, they can stand in the same position as
their non-interrogative counterpart. The resulting sentences, which contain interrogative
adverbs, are generally called echo-questions (Stechow/Sternefeld, 1988: 354; examples from
Eisenberg, 1989: 341):
39a Wann/Morgen trifft Luise den Herrn Direktor (?).
39b Luise trifft wann/morgen den Herrn Direktor (?).
39c Luise trifft den Herrn Direktor wann/morgen (?).
2.2.3.3. ADVERBS VS. ADJECTIVES
[...] adjectives refer to properties of individuals, and adverbs refer to properties of
actions. (Kempson, 1977: 13)
A further distinction to make is the one between adverbs and adjectives. Adverbs and
adjectives can modify nouns (40), and both categories can be used predicatively (41):
40a Der Mann dort spricht sehr gut Deutsch.
40b Der große Mann spricht sehr gut Deutsch.
41a Der Mann ist dort.
41b Der Mann ist intelligent.
The difference between der Mann dort and der große Mann is that the adverb is not inflected
and it follows the noun, whereas the adjective precedes the noun and is inflected. A case
where it is more difficult to distinguish between adverbs and adjectives is the non-inflected
adjective following the noun in antiquated German (42), and in advertising language (43).
Engel (1988: 612f) states that these constructions have already left the limited domain of this
sub-language and hazards the guess that they are growing more and more popular:
42 Ein Röslein rot steht auf der Weide.
43a Campari bitter
43b Benzin bleifrei
43c Putenschenkel bratfertig
43d Fahrspass total
Engel's exclusive definition of adverbs as words which must never be inflected, clearly
identifies the non-inflected elements in 42 and 43 as adjectives. Our definition will be

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 50
broader (see the conclusion below) and therefore we have to give another criterion for
classifying them as adjectives. The number of adverbs which can post-specify nouns is very
limited, and a feature indicating this syntactic behaviour is necessary. We shall therefore say
that all post-nominal, non-inflected elements, which are not adverbs having the explicit
feature that they can follow nouns, are adjectives.
A further difficulty for the distinction between these two word classes is that most adjectives
can be used adverbially when not inflected.
44 Hans schreit laut.
45 Hans verwischt sorgfältig die Spuren.
As a result of this similarity between the two word classes, they have been classified in
different ways. Russon/Russon (1978: 31f), Admoni (1970: 146f), Helbig/Buscha (1988:
338f) and Dreyer/Schmitt (1985: 218ff) see them as adverbs. Hammond (1981: 176ff)
maintains they are adjectives used as adverbs. Eisenberg (1989: 219ff), Engel (1988: 558ff),
Bußmann (1983: 7), Glinz (1971b: 231) and the Duden (1984: 581ff) classify them as
adjectives, giving them the additional name of Adjektivadverb and Satzadjektiv.
Sommerfeldt and Starke (1988: 58ff), who give an overview of different word class systems
in linguistic literature, also conclude that nowadays these elements are widely accepted as
adjectives, which have the function of adverbials. Erben (1972: 166ff) tries to generally
avoid the distinction between adverbs and adjectives by assigning them the common class
name charakterisierendes Beiwort, but nevertheless uses the term adverb on a few occasions
when speaking about sentence adjectives, such as schnell (1972: 177f).
Even the grammars which claim that these elements are adjectives, are sometimes not
consistent. The authors of the Duden, for instance, who clearly state that these elements are
adjectives, are inconsistent, as they classify adjectives like früh and schön as adverbs when
explaining how to generate the comparative forms (1984: 606).
Eisenberg (1989: 219ff) summarises the arguments for and against the classification of these
elements as adverbs.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 51
Reasons why laut and sorgfältig could be considered as adverbs are that (a) they can stand in
the same positions as adverbs like hier and niemals. (b) They refer to the verb and (c) they,
as well as adverbs, are not inflected.
However, Eisenberg prefers their classification as adverbial adjectives because (a) there are
some positions that they do not share with adverbs, like for instance:
46 * Hans ist sorgfältig Lehrer.
47 Hans ist hier Lehrer.
(b) Adverbs very often do not refer to the verb which invalidates the second argument, and
(c) laut and sorgfältig are not inflected, whereas adverbs generally are not inflectable. A
consequence of classifying non-inflected adjectives as adverbs would be that predicative
adjectives, such as in 48, would have to be categorised as adverbs as well:
48 Hans ist sorgfältig.
We want to point out two arguments against Eisenberg's classification which have not been
brought up in any grammar. The first one is that, diachronically, these elements were
adverbs, which had special adverb endings in Old Greek, Latin and in Old and Middle High-
German (-o and -e). The endings disappeared on the way to New High-German so that
nowadays these adverbs are form-identical with adjectives (Wahrig, 1986: 32). According to
Jung (1971: 317), a few adverbs with an -e ending still exist in parallel in today's German
(49a, 49b), although some of them are restricted to poetic language (49c):
49a gern - gerne
49b lang - lange
49c Guter Mond, du gehst so stille. (poetic)
A second point worth mentioning is that, apparently, in most languages the equivalent
expressions of German deutlich (50a) are adverbs, which are clearly identifiable as such.
Mostly this is because of an adverb-specific ending (-ly, -ment, -mente etc). The only
languages in our list which behave like German in that the adverb and the uninflected
adjective have the same form are the Indo-European languages Dutch (50c), Greek (50l) and
Persian (50p).

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 52
The fact that the equivalent expressions of deutlich in other languages are adverbs, is not a
proper argument for German deutlich to be an adverb, as languages sometimes do express
semantic contents by different parts of speech (cf. German adverb gern vs. English: to like).
In Hindi, for example (50o), clearly is translated as a postpositional phrase (clarity with),
and we would not like to argue that deutlich is a PP. In teaching practice and NLP, however,
it would probably make things easier, if we assume that deutlich, in analogy to most other
languages, is an adverb:
50a German:
50b English:
50c Dutch:
50d French:
50e Spanish:
50h Italian:
50i Portuguese:
Er spricht deutlich.
He speaks clearly.
Hij spreekt duidelijk.
Il parle nettement.
Habla claramente.
Habla claro. 30
Parla chiaramente.
Ele fala claramente
50k Swedish: Han talar tydligt 31
he speaks clearly
50l Greek: Milaei kaqara. 32
speaks clearly
50m Welsh: Maén siarad yn glir. 33
he speaks clearly
30 In most cases, Spanish allows for an alternative to the adverb which is the masculine singular adjective
form (claramente - claro). However, a few adverbs do not allow the use of the masculine singular form,
like for instance (Thanks to Elena Bárcena):
50f trabaja concienzudamente
* trabaja concienzudo
50g corrige descuidadamente
* corrige descuidado
31 The Swedish adjective tydlig has the adverb suffix -t. The adverb form is identical to the form of
adjectives accompanying -ett nouns. However, as no such noun occurs in the sentence to agree with, the
suffix cannot be the adjective ending (Thanks to Kristiina Jokinen). It seems that most Danish adverbs are
also formed by adding the adverb suffix -t to adjectives (Thanks to Neil Tipper).
32 The Greek equivalent of German deutlich is kaqara. The form is identical to the nominative or accusative
form of the neuter adjective (Thanks to Melina Alexa).

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 53
50n Irish (Ghaeilge): Labhraíon sé go soileir. 34
Speaks he adv clear
50o Hindi: Woh sufaayi say boolta hai. 35
he clarity with speaks
50p Persian: Vaazeh sohbat miikonad. 36
He clear to speak
50q Russian: On govorit jasno. 37
He speaks clearly
50r Finnish: Hän puhuu selvästi. 38
S/he speaks clearly
50s Basque: Argi hitz egiten du. 39
clearly speaks he
50t Arabic: Yatakalam waadihan. 40
He speaks clearly
50u Japanese: Kare-wa hakkiri-to hanasu. 41
he -theme clarity-adv speak
50v Mandarin Chinese: Ta qingchu-de jianghua. 42
he clear -ly speak
33 The Welsh equivalent of deutlich, yn glir, is composed by the adverb marker yn and the following
adjective glir (Thanks to Debbie Sapsed and her Welsh helpers).
34 Irish behaves the same as Welsh, in that the obligatory adverb marker precedes the adjective (Thanks to
Liam Murray).
35 Hindi expresses clearly as the postpositional phrase sufaayi say (clarity with) (Thanks to Archana
Hinduja).
36 The Persian equivalent of German deutlich is sohbat. The form is identical to the uninflected adjective
(Thanks to Farid-Ali Khazaee).
37 The Russian adverb jasno can be clearly identified as such, because of the adverb ending -o and because
of its position in the sentence (Thanks to Anne Reck).
38 The Finnish adverb ending is -sti (Thanks to Kristiina Jokinen).
39 In Basque, the adjective has to agree in number with the element it modifies, even in predicative structures
(sg: argia, pl: argiak). Thus, argi is an adverb because it does not have an ending (Thanks to Maria
Victoria Arranz).
40 In Arabic, the adjective clear is waadih and the adverb is formed by affixing the accusative ending (-an)
(Thanks to Catherine Pease).
41 In Japanese, clearly is derived from a noun (hakkiri - clarity) by using the adverbial affix ending (Thanks
to Masaki Kiyono).
42 Modern Mandarin Chinese behaves like most of the other languages, in that the adverb marker -de is
added to the adjective qingchu. It is interesting that, in parallel to this modern way of speaking, an older
one exists, which is hard to analyse in terms of Indo-European traditions: Ta jianghua qingchu. Either he
(ta) and speak (jianghua) are analysed as double subject, with the first one being marked as topic (cf.
Japanese), or speak and clear (qingchu) are analysed as double predicate. However, none of the analyses

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 54
50w Esperanto: Li parol-as klar-e. 43
he (nom) speak (pres) clear-ly
50x Malay: Percakapan-nya jelas. 44
speaking his clear
Dia ber- jacap dengan jelas.
He doing speak with clarity
However, following the general trend of some grammars, which we consider as being among
the most powerful ones, we shall call these elements adjectives. The names adverbial
adjectives and sentence adjectives will help us to distinguish their use from the predicative
and the attributive uses.
51a ein zuverlässiger Partner
51b Tina ist zuverlässig.
51c Wir erledigen die Sache zuverlässig.
(attributive)
(predicative)
(adverbial adjective)
Another problem, which is linked to this type of adjective, should be mentioned briefly:
Adverbial adjectives can refer to several elements in the sentence, probably depending on
the semantics of all involved words. The adjectives below refer to the subject (52a/53a), to
the object (52b/53b) or to the verbal action (52c/53c; Duden, 1984: 582f):
52a Der Beamte verlangt den Ausweis zerstreut.
52b Der Beamte verlangt den Ausweis aufgeschlagen.
52c Der Beamte verlangt den Ausweis laut.
53a Der zerstreute Beamte
53b Der aufgeschlagene Ausweis
53c Das laute Verlangen / (Der laute Beamte)
The complexity involved in this problem is particularly clear in the last example, where one
cannot exclude the modification of der Beamte by laut. We shall not follow up this question
any further, as it does not have any impact on word order. For further discussion and
references see Eisenberg (1989: 222ff), Duden (581ff) and Helbig/Buscha (1988: 554ff).
would see qingchu as an adverb, as old Mandarin Chinese does not formally distinguish between parts-ofspeech
(Thanks to Jiping Sun).
43 In Esperanto, the adverb ending -e must be added to adjectives, such as klar, when they modify the verb
(Thanks to Wei Li).
44 In Malay, the distinction between adverb and adjective does not exist. Example v seems to be a copula
construction with the copula verb being left out. Furthermore, the adjective/adverb jelas is the same word
as the noun clarity in He speaks with clarity (Thanks to Seet Wykeen):

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 55
2.2.4 CONCLUSION, FINAL DEFINITION
Due to the heterogeneity of the word class, adverbs have been classified and defined in very
different ways. Criteria concerned the following features:
- etymology of the word ad-verbum (accompanying a verb/word)
- inflection (not inflectable, not inflected)
- semantics (situate other entities locally, temporally etc)
- lexical meaning
- can or cannot fill the Vorfeld position
- can be an answer to w-questions or are w-elements themselves
- function as modifiers or attributes, or accompany sentences
- open class
- modify verbs, adjectives, adverbials, and sentences
- occur freely or as pro-forms
- sentence adverbs can express the speakers' intentions, judgement etc
- adverbial, predicative and attributive use
- some have comparative forms
- adverb is a word category or/and a relational term
- no case marking (as opposed to prepositions)
- constitute a member of the subordinate clause when linking clauses (as opposed
to conjunctions)
- historically, adverbially-used adjectives are adverbs (endings -e and -o in Middle
High-German)
- in many languages, adverbially used adjectives have adverb endings
Furthermore, we saw that the semantic classification, as well as the categorization with
respect to the term particle, vary considerably from one grammar to the other.
We want to define the term adverb in the following way:

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 56
DEFINITION: The term adverb denotes a non-inflectable word class. The
characteristic concerning inflectability distinguishes the adverb from the inflectable
word classes verb, noun, adjective, article and pronoun. Adverbs share this feature
with prepositions, conjunctions and interjections. In opposition to prepositions,
adverbs calling for a specific case can also occur on their own. Conjunctions are not a
constituent (Satzglied) of the subordinate clause when linking clauses, whereas
adverbs are. Interjections always occur syntactically isolated, whereas adverbs can be
part of a sentence.
This definition is purely exclusive and does not consider the large amount of semantic and
syntactic similarities adverbs share with adjectives, PPs, conjunctions etc. We also do not
want to restrict the use of the term adverb to elements which can fill the Vorfeld position 45 .
Without having said so explicitly in the definition, toners (54a), degree modifiers (54b),
modals (Modalwörter) (54c) and pronominal adverbs (54d) are part of what we consider as
adverbs:
54a Er arbeitet ja noch.
54b Er arbeitet sehr konzentriert.
54c Er arbeitet vermutlich noch.
54d Er war dabei sehr konzentriert. (bei der Arbeit)
This definition of adverb does not include all one-word modifiers at sentence level which we
would like to cover in our work, as sentence adjectives (which by some are categorised as
adverbs) are excluded. This constitutes a problem, as we do not have a name for the whole
group of one-word modifiers at sentence level. Therefore, we shall use the terms modifier
and adverbial to name this group. These two terms normally include NPs and PPs, which
have the same function as adverbs, and therefore our use of them is not entirely correct.
We believe, however, that the confusion of the terms can be pardoned, as we state here
explicitly that, in the context of our research, we understand by modifiers and adverbials the
group of one-word modifiers at sentence level, unless otherwise stated. Furthermore, NPs
45 Our reason for this is that this criterion can easily be stated independently. Although we honour Engel's
attempt to offer clear syntactic criteria for the classification of the different word classes, this results in too
great a number of word classes.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 57
and PPs used adverbially behave very similarly to one-word modifiers, with respect to their
positioning in the sentence. As we stated in 1.2, the only reason we do not consider NPs and
PPs, is that they are an open class and therefore difficult to recognise automatically.
2.3. MODIFIER TYPES (ANGABEKLASSEN)
Hoberg (1981: 132ff) and Engel (1988: 219ff) distinguish four main modifier classes, which
we want to discuss briefly, as we shall often refer to their classification: (a) existimatorial
modifiers, (b) situatives, (c) modifiers to express negation and (d) modal adverbials. Hoberg
calls the last group modale Angaben, whereas Engel (1988: 219f) calls it modifizierende or
modifikative Angaben. The borderline between the four groups is not clear-cut. Therefore,
the following description of these superclasses should not be taken too strictly. There is also
a large number of relevant subclasses.
The group of existimatorial modifiers includes elements, such as the following and many
more: denn, ja, eben (not temporal), jedoch, freilich, besonders, primär, immerhin,
theoretisch, vielleicht, sicher(lich), hoffentlich, leider, normalerweise, wirklich, selbst, ruhig,
... (see adverb lists in appendix 8.1 and 8.3).
Existimatorial modifiers can be realised as adverbs (in particular degree adverbs, toners and
modal adverbs), non-inflected adjectives, PPs and subclauses. The Latin word existimare
means to assess or to evaluate (Engel, 1981: 226). Hoberg (1981: 132f) also calls this
modifier class sentence adverbials or pragmatical modifiers. By using these modifiers the
speaker gives an assessment, evaluation or judgement, with respect to the proposition of the
sentence. In future, we shall use the terms evaluative, existimatorial and pragmatical
modifiers as synonyms. Existimatorial modifiers indicate the role of the sentence as a
pragmatic entity within the discourse. The term sentence adverbial relates to the fact that
these elements represent a superordinate sentence (or hyper-sentence), which can generally
be paraphrased by: "Es ist [modifier] der Fall, daß ..." (55b) or an equivalent (55c):

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 58
55a Peter spielt leider Klavier.
55b Es ist leider der Fall, daß Peter Klavier spielt.
55c Es tut mir leid, daß Peter Klavier spielt.
One could also say that evaluative modifiers modify the verb of the hyper-sentence and that,
in an underlying structure, they are not part of the sentence in which they occur, but rather
part of a superordinate sentence. They cannot be replaced by a proform (5d) and cannot be
asked for (55e):
55d * Peter spielt so Klavier. (as an equivalent of a)
55e * Wie / warum / weshalb... spielt Peter Klavier? (as a question to 55a)
The group of situative modifiers includes the following elements and many more: trotzdem,
rechtlich, deshalb, gestern, hier, plötzlich, endlich, ebenfalls, nochmals, selten, bloß, erst, ...
These elements give the temporal, causal, local etc circumstances for the verb, for its
complements and sometimes also for further modifiers. They are the biggest and most
frequent subclass of modifiers, having the most subgroups, and they can be realised as
adverbs, PPs, accusative NPs, adjectives (adjective phrases) and subclauses (Engel, 1988:
220ff). Situatives are less restricted, with respect to their placement, than the other modifier
classes.
The group of modal modifiers includes schnell, laut, so, sehr, ganz, gern, miteinander, damit
and many more. These elements modify, degree-modify or quantify the verb (excluding its
complements). They can be realised by adverbs, uninflected adjectives, PPs, wie-phrases
(Sie spricht wie ihre Tante) and others (Engel, 1988: 219f). They can never be placed behind
the main verb, if the verb is in clause-final position. Hoberg (1981: 133f) claims that modal
modifiers can never be combined with the copula sein, as sein is semantically empty (56b),
but at least the adverb gern can (56c). It is however correct that de-adjectival adverbs cannot
modify the verb sein:
56a Er rechnet die Beträge sorgfältig zusammen.
56b * Er ist sorgfältig Lehrer.
56c Er ist gern Lehrer.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 59
It is interesting to see that, among the few dozen manner adverbs listed in appendix 8.3
(class a 43 ), only three can modify sein: gern, umsonst and vergebens:
57a Er ist vergebens Lehrer.
57b * Er ist laut/schnell/gut/sorgfältig/... Lehrer.
Umsonst and vergebens are adverbs which, for semantic reasons, we were unhappy to
classify as manner modifiers (a 43 elements). We categorised them as members of a 43 for
their positional behaviour only (see section 6.7.1, C: position class).
The third exception, the adverb gern, is slightly peculiar in several respects, including the
fact that it can occur in positions as in c. We want to use this occasion to highlight briefly
some further aspects of this special modifier.
According to Engel's strict definition (cf. 2.2.3.3), gern is the only adverb among the
elements which can play the role of verb modifier (Engel, 1988: 219). All other one-wordelements
of this group are either degree modifiers or they are inflectable, and thus adjectives.
Another peculiarity about this adverb is that a lot of languages render its semantic contents
(its meaning) by a verb, as opposed to by an adverb. These include Indo-European languages
such as English, French, Spanish, Italian, Irish Gaelic, Welsh and Persian, as well as non-
Indo-European ones such as Basque, Nkwen, Arabic, Malay and Mandarin Chinese 46 :
58 Ich lese gern.
59 I like reading.
60 Persian: Khaandan-raa duust-daaram.
reading I to like
61 Mandarin: Wo xihuan yuedu.
I like reading
46 For their help with discussing the equivalent of gern in other languages, we want to thank Masaki Kiyono,
Maria-Victoria Arranz, Farid-Ali Khazaee, Catherine Pease, Jiping Sun, Kristiina Jokinen, Sylvana
Sofkova, Wim Peters, Siety Meyer, Emma Mumford, Liam Murray, Neil Tipper, Seet Wykeen and Blaise
Nkwenti Azeh.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 60
To our knowledge, the only language, which behaves like German in that it normally
expresses the meaning of gern by an adverb is Dutch (62). In Finnish, gern can be expressed
by a postpositional phrase (63) or by a verb (64). Both ways are equally possible and likely
to occur:
62 Ik lees graag.
63 Hän lukee miele+llä+än
S/he reads pleasure+with+3pers.poss.suff
64 Hän pitää luke+mise+sta
S/he likes read+ing +elative case (nominal form of the verb, not infinitive)
The artificially created language Esperanto is very flexible and therefore allows for
constructions using an adverb (65), as well as three different verb constructions (66, 67, 68):
65 Mi shat-e leg-as.
I likingly (-e is Adverb morpheme) read (pres.)
I read likingly (I read enjoyingly)
66 Mi shat-as leg-i.
I(nom) like (pres.) read (inf)
Lit.: I like to read.
67 Mi shat-as leg-on (or: leg-ad-on).
read (noun, acc.)
Lit.: I like reading.
68 Leg-i/leg-o/leg-ad-o plach-as al mi.
Lit.: To read/Reading pleases me.
Danish and Swedish do have adverbs expressing German gern, namely gerne and gärna, but
it seems that both languages would rather express German gern by a verb. The part-ofspeech
of the Japanese equivalent of gern is not clear to us, as it seems that our Indo-
European word classes cannot be applied directly. According to different linguistic analyses,
suki da (69) is either an adjectival verb or it is an adjectival noun (suki), followed by the
verb to be (da/desu):
69 Kare wa (hon wo) yomu no ga suki da.
(he) (read) (like)

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 61
In Irish Gaelic (Ghaeilge), gern is expressed as maith which, apparently, could be a noun, an
adjective or an adverb (70). When the meaning He likes to read is intended, Irish Gaelic can
form an adverb on the basis of the noun pleasure (71) or the adjective pleasant (72):
70 Is maith liom leamh.
Is good/well/like "with"-1st-sg read
reading is good with me
71 Léann sé go pléisiúrtha.
read he adv pleasure
72 Léann sé go laoibhneach.
read he adv pleasant
We do not have anything more to say about the special status of gern but want to point out
that this adverb may also behave slightly differently from the other elements of its group,
with regard to position.
To come back to the three main groups, one can say that evaluative modifiers modify the
utterance, situative adverbials the sentence and modal modifiers the verb.
Negational modifiers include a limited number of one-word elements (nicht, keineswegs,
keinesfalls, kaum, nirgends and niemals) and combinations of these (gar nicht, nicht mehr
etc). Semantically, they negate clauses (73) or parts of them (74) (Engel, 1988: 226), and
they cannot be asked for (75). The negational particle nicht, and its combinations with
adverbs, cannot fill the Vorfeld, whereas the others can.
73 Peter hat Paul das Buch nicht gegeben.
74 Peter hat Paul das Buch nicht in der Kirche gegeben.
75 * Wie/warum/wofür/... hat Peter Paul das Buch gegeben? (as a question to 73)
As the scope of negation is a very complex subject, which deserves more thorough
treatment, we shall not include negational modifiers in our word order discussion. For some
relations between word order and negation see section 5.6, as well as Steinberger (1990:
117ff) and (1992b).
We shall subdivide these four main groups later and discuss the subgroups in the chapters 3,
5, and 6.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 62
2.4. SOME INFORMATION ON THE POSITION OF MODIFIERS
Adverb Placement: Slippery Johnnies, adverbs. [...] However, it is not clear what
factors influence the choice of resting place. (Balkan et. al., 1991: 171)
In this section, we want to summarise the information given by different grammars, on the
placement of adverbs in relation to each other. We shall also point out contradictions
between them. The main goal is to give an overview of what information is currently
available to both language learners and writers of computer grammars. We shall limit
ourselves to listing the sequences of adverb classes, without mentioning how the authors
explain them. Explanations will be given in chapter 3.
The knowledge most grammars provide regarding modifier sequences is very scarce. Only
some more recent ones, namely Engel (1988), Sommerfeldt/Starke (1988) and
Helbig/Buscha (1988), have a more sophisticated approach, showing the interaction of
multiple factors. All grammars but one (Liebsch/Doering, 1976) give at least some
information on the position of adverbs in the sentence and/or their relative position to each
other.
The development in the treatment of word order in grammar books shows, that the linguistic
research of the last decades has been of immediate use for the language learner. We hope
that our work will be a further contribution to the explanation and treatment of this
particularly confusing subject. In this section, we shall not go into much detail, because our
discussion of the problem depends on the facts given in chapter 3, those being the factors
which determine German word order.
Russon and Russon (1978: 7-9) place adverbial expressions after pronouns, between two
noun objects and before prepositional objects, "single noun objects" and predicative
adjectives. They distinguish six adverbial position classes, the order of which tends to be:
cause < time < manner < place < purpose or result < degree

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 63
The flash ("A < B") indicates that A stands before B. They add that when there is a
cumulation of several modifiers of one subtype, the more general precedes the more specific.
The negational modifier nicht precedes the past participle, the infinitive, the separable
prefix, the predicative adjective or noun and adverbial phrases of place, manner or degree.
Jung (1971: 147) claims the same order, but does not mention purpose or result modifiers. If
any of these elements is focused on, the order can change:
cause < time < manner < place < goal
Helbig and Buscha (1988: 564-583) give a very good explanation of some principles, and
stress their interaction, but distinguish only four types of modifiers which appear in the weak
order:
temporal and causal < local and modal
Conjunctional adverbials, like deswegen, precede the others. Furthermore, they mention that
adverbials tend to fill the Vorfeld position and that facultative elements (including modifiers)
generally precede compulsory elements (Ergänzungen), but that pronouns precede
adverbials:
pronominal arguments < free adverbials < indefinite/article-less arguments
According to Schulz and Griesbach (1980: 389ff) time and place modifiers often fill the
Vorfeld position and thus tend to precede other modifiers and arguments. The sequence of
the other modifiers is not fixed but is likely to be:
temporal < causal < modal < local
When the causal modifier is realised as a pronoun (e.g. deshalb) it precedes the temporal
adverbial.
Schulz and Griesbach furthermore mention a list of four adverbs which have the order:
auch < mehr < noch < schon

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 64
but which vary in their order with respect to the negational element nicht: nicht precedes
mehr in nicht mehr, but follows noch in noch nicht. This apparently contradicts the above
order:
76 nicht mehr noch nicht
auch nicht mehr
auch noch nicht
auch noch
auch nicht
auch schon
According to the model of degree modifier treatment presented in Steinberger (1992b), there
is no inconsistency here, as nicht mehr is analysed as one positional element: nicht is
modified by mehr (similar to gar nicht etc; cf. 4.4.1). If we assume that nicht, including its
modifiers, follows the four adverbs, the order is not contradictory.
The authors of the Duden (1984: 721-724) also stress that several grammatical and nongrammatical
(pragmatical) factors interact, and that one can only give rules-of-thumb.
Taking over Engel's (1970: 48ff) classification, they state the following order:
1a: temporal, local, causal
< 2: existimatorial (evaluative)
< 1b: (like 1a but which also express judgement/assessment or indefiniteness
(e.g. manchmal))
< 3: negation particles
< 4: adverbial sentence adjectives
They do not commit themselves to a certain sequence with respect to verb arguments, but
state that some elements have a very strong tendency to the right (some adverbials, POs,
genitive objects; less when they are pronominal), whereas others are relatively free
(indefinite NPs).
Heidolph, Flämig and Motsch (1981: 702ff) give an order for all elements in the sentence,
which is roughly the following:

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 65
Adverbials III (temporal)
< Adverbials III (causal)
< Adverbials II (local)
< Adverbials II (modal, instrumental)
< accusative and dative and prepositional objects
< absolute directional adverbial I (initial point)
< absolute directional adverbial I (medium)
< absolute directional adverbial I (goal)
< relative directional adverbial
< predicative element
< verb
The sequence of the second group of elements is fixed, whereas the order of the elements of
the first group can change.
Sommerfeldt and Starke (1988: 277ff) give a whole range of factors, which determine the
order of elements in the sentence. The overall order of complements is:
Subj < Dat < Acc < Gen < PO/"Objektprädikativum"
This however varies with the realization of the arguments as pronouns, and definite and
indefinite NPs.
Just as Schulz and Griesbach, they mention that local and temporal modifiers often fill the
Vorfeld, but add that local modifiers can vary quite a lot. Modal modifiers also tend to vary
in their position relatively to each other. Directional elements have a fixed place at the end
of the Mittelfeld. The only order Sommerfeldt and Starke commit themselves to is:
instrumental modifier < local modifier < objects < local complement
According to them, even this order is not obligatory, but any change results in marked word
order and the focusing of some element.
The most fine-grained description is given by Engel (1988: 325-344), who distinguishes
compulsory and non-compulsory sequences. He also focuses on the existence of different

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 66
factors, which have an impact on the order of non-compulsory elements. Engel gives a basic
word order and only then lists its possible variations. The general sequence of modifiers is:
existimatorial < situative < negational < modal
Modals follow indefinite complements and precede prepositional, directive and predicative
complements, as well as the nominal parts of support verb constructions. Situative and
evaluative modifiers normally follow non-stressed pronouns and precede the indefinite
complements. The negational element must follow evaluative modifiers, and it generally
follows situatives.
Within groups of existimatorial modifiers the order is the following:
toners < judicative < ordinative < verificative < cautive < selective
The sequence of toners relative to each other is strictly ordered within seven subgroups,
which are listed by Engel. The subgroup of ordinatives is strictly ordered in part, the reason
for which seems not to be known.
Most grammars stress that it is impossible to give a concise description of modifier classes,
and their relative order as the sequence is determined by several factors. However, most of
them distinguish classes, which generally follow a certain sequence, but which allow for
variations. One should assume that the basic orders given by different grammars are
compatible. There are however several contradictions. Russon and Russon assume that the
basic order of causal and temporal modifiers is cause < time, whereas Helbig/Buscha and
the Duden do not favour any sequence, and Schulz/Griesbach, as well as
Heidolph/Flämig/Motsch, favour the opposite order, namely time < cause.
Sommerfeldt and Starke are the only authors who situate instrumental modifiers ahead of all
other modifiers, whereas the other grammarians, who specify the position of instrumentals
(e.g. Heidolph/Flämig/Motsch), place them after the temporal, causal and local modifiers.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 67
The different places for modal adverbials might have to do with the large differences in
defining this subgroup. Heidolph/Flämig/Motsch and Engel assume their position after all
the other modifiers, whereas Schulz/Griesbach position them in front of the locals.
All in all, it seems obvious that the modifier sequences given by the grammars differ
considerably, as no two use the same classification for their description. Furthermore, there
are different opinions regarding the relative order of time and cause modifiers, as well as
others.
2.5. SOME STATISTICAL FACTS ABOUT ADVERBS
The authors of the Duden (1984: 386) estimate the amount of German words, excluding
specialised language, at between 300,000 and 500,000. This includes the most common
compounds and derivations, but certainly not all possible words that can be combined by
using the over 200 morphological means to create new words. This number must be handled
with care, as the borderline between the general and the specialised lexicon is very vague.
The specialised lexicon of the medical language alone has been estimated at about 170,000
words (Duden, 1984: 386).
The three to five hundred thousand words are derived from a few thousand simple lemmas
("Simplizia"; Duden, 1984: 386f). Ortmann (1975: vol. 3, XXXI) counted 5849 lemmas. The
list below shows the number of verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs and their percentage
compared to the total number of lemmas:
Verbs 1129 19,3 %
Nouns 2692 46,0 %
Adjectives 1323 22,6 %
Adverbs 389 + 6,7 %
Total of these word classes: 94,6 %
There are 69 prepositions, 75 conjunctions, 24 question words and 47 pronouns. In
agreement with our classification, Ortmann classified the uninflected adjectives as
adjectives, and stated the non-inflectability as a criterion for the classification of adverbs.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 68
The difference between Ortmann's classification and ours is that Ortmann also includes noninflectable
adjectives in the group of adverbs (1975, vol. 2: 5f). This group is very small and
includes adjectives like extra, prima, rosa, amongst others (Helbig/Buscha, 1988: 312).
Ortmann's 389 simple adverbs by far exceed Engel's count of 247 elements (1988: 749ff). As
Engel's definition of adverbs is narrower than ours, we include the following of Engel's
classes:
adverbs 150
modal particles 22
ordering particles 17 ("Rangierpartikeln")
degree modifiers 26
copula particles 8
toners + 24
Total: 247
Although we do not know from where this discrepancy arises, it is quite probable that Engel
forgot to consider a few adverbs. Indeed, we found some additional adverbs in the Siemens
METAL lexicon, which do not appear in either of Engel's lists.
Ortmann's and Engel's numbers have to be extended by the elements that can be generated
by using morphological means, as they only list simple lemmas.
The most frequent adverb in Ortmann's corpus of nearly 11 million words (Ortmann, 1975,
vol. 1: 3) is the particle nicht with 114,518 occurrences (1975, vol. 2: L142ff). The most
frequent word form altogether is die with 349,553 occurrences (1975, vol. 2: S51). Die thus
occurs only three times as frequently as the most common modifier nicht. This is even more
surprising, as the occurrences of die include all instances of die, whatever its category
(article, relative pronoun, etc). According to Engel's (1988: 876) classification, nicht belongs
to two categories, as well: it can be a degree modifier or a toner.
Nicht is the eighth most frequent word form in Ortmann's whole corpus. The following are
the 20 most frequent adverbs extracted from Ortmann's list (1975, vol. 2: L142ff):

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 69
Place
Adverb Occurrences out of 10,910,777 Words
8 nicht 114518
22 so 74273
24 auch 60750
32 aber 44201
36 nur 39507
38 noch 39179
60 da 23497
64 doch 21994
72 mehr 18549
74 denn 18488
75 nun 17891
77 sehr 17293
78 selbst 16911
79 schon 16727
80 hier 16667
84 dann 15545
88 wieder 14693
101 ja 12527
103 jetzt 11859
104 immer 11664
According to Meier (1978, vol. II: 111f), 7994 word forms 47 , corresponding to 3.1% of all
counted word forms, represent 87.44% of German texts. The word forms die, der and und
alone represent 9.27% of text. The fact that 17 adverbs are among the 100 most frequent
German word forms makes it obvious that a satisfying treatment of modifiers in grammars
and NLP is mandatory.
47 Every different inflection form of a lexeme is one word form. Gehe, gehst, geht, ging etc are thus different
word forms of the verb gehen.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 70
3. FACTORS WHICH DETERMINE GERMAN WORD ORDER
Many of the universals [...] suggest strongly that performance is the driving force
behind linearization principles of the competence grammar. (Hawkins, 1990: 225)
In this chapter, we describe the factors which can have an influence on the order of elements
in the German sentence. Part of our goal was to describe and explain in which order several
modifiers follow each other, but the task is not limited to this. Another question is where to
position modifiers in relation to verb arguments. As we cannot describe modifier positioning
in absolute terms, but only with respect to other elements, namely verb arguments and the
verb itself, we did not limit ourselves to the description of adverb placement, but tried to
gather information on German word order in general.
The examples 1, 2 and 3 show that the position of a single modifier differs, depending on the
realization of the verb arguments as definite NPs (1), indefinite NPs (2) and pronouns (3). In
the first case, the adverb morgen can either precede or follow both complements or stand in
between them (1). When the verb arguments are both indefinite, the modifier can follow one
of them but not both (2). When the objects are realised as pronouns, the adverb cannot
precede both of them, and the middle-position is acceptable only when the dative pronoun is
stressed contrastively (3):
1a
1b
1c
2a
2b
2c
3a
3b
3c
Er gibt morgen dem Mann das Buch.
Er gibt dem Mann morgen das Buch.
Er gibt dem Mann das Buch morgen.
Er gibt morgen einem Mann ein Buch.
Er gibt einem Mann morgen ein Buch.
* Er gibt einem Mann ein Buch morgen.
* Er gibt morgen es ihm.
# Er gibt es morgen IHM.
Er gibt es ihm morgen.
It is obvious, without having to discuss the other combinations of pronominal, definite and
indefinite complements, that the potential places for the modifier differ depending on the

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 71
realization of the verb arguments. Therefore, we shall discuss German word order in general
and shall focus on modifiers when necessary.
This chapter tries to answer the question, "what are the reasons for word order variation in
German?". As one could expect in a free word order language, the result of our investigation
is not easy and straight-forward. Instead, we found eleven principles which can all apply to
determine German word order in one sentence, namely:
1) Theme-rheme structure
2) Behaghel's "Gesetz der wachsenden Glieder"
3) Functional sentence perspective
4) Semantic-syntactic closeness to the verb ("Verbnähe")
5) The Animacy-first principle
6) Semantic roles
7) Scope
8) Rhythm
9) Natural gender
10) Grammaticalisation (habit)
11) Lenerz' "Satzklammerbedingung"
These principles are only tendencies which interact, their violation does not necessarily lead
to ungrammaticality. We compiled this list by combining what we found in linguistic
literature with the results of our own investigation. None of the sources known to us have
mentioned all of these factors, or even the majority of them. Furthermore, the factors they
mention differ considerably from one source to another. Some of the factors are very closely
related to each other.
In chapter 4, we shall show how these principles interact, and in chapter 6 we shall discuss
what it is possible to do with this knowledge in Natural Language Processing. This includes
the questions of how to featurise the differences between word order variation and of how to
recognise the different values for these features.
We shall now discuss these principles in turn.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 72
3.1 THEME-RHEME STRUCTURE
The theme-rheme structure (TRS) is widely accepted as a main factor determining the order
of elements in German sentences (Engel, 1970: 12). It is very closely related to another
factor, called functional sentence perspective (3.3), as well as to Behaghel's Gesetz der
wachsenden Glieder (3.2). The principle claims that the theme, which could roughly be
called the known information precedes the rheme, the new information in the sentence. In 4a,
the pronoun he is thematic:
4 Context: Yesterday, I met Peter.
4a He was drunk as always.
3.1.1 SOME DEFINITIONS OF THE TERMS THEME AND RHEME
The two terms have been discussed a lot and have been used with different meanings.
Furthermore, a lot of different terms are in use more or less synonymously:
functor/argument, given/new, topic/comment, presupposition/focus and topic/focus (cf.
Steiner/Winter, 1987: 3, and Eisenberg, 1989: 149ff) 48 . Normally, the theme is not only the
known or given information but at the same time it is the topic of the sentence which we
presuppose. The rheme, on the other hand, is the new information which constitutes a
comment or a predication over the theme. It is generally the focus of our attention. In
predicate logic, the functor would correspond to the theme and the argument to the rheme.
Although these concepts are obviously interrelated, they are not identical.
We shall concentrate on the dichotomy given versus new information, as these concepts have
a correspondence in the realization of NPs (see section 3.1.2), and therefore are most likely
to be recognised in NLP. Given information is thus everything that has been mentioned in
the previous context, explicitly or not. In spoken language, the given would include the
immediate surroundings of both speaker and listener, as they are accessible to both persons.
48 For a further discussion of the terms theme and rheme, as well as some related concepts
(argument/predication, presupposition/assertion, context restriction ("Kontextgebundenheit") and context
independence ("Kontextfreiheit")), see Eroms (1986, and in particular pp. 9-29).

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 73
In written language, however, writer and reader are normally separated by time and space, so
that the given information should be restricted to what is found in the context. Given
information is the complementary term, namely the information that has not been referred to
previously.
One problem related to the theme-rheme dichotomy is that the borderline between old and
new information is often not clear cut. Consequently, some linguists claim that the difference
between the two should be seen as a question of degree (Bußmann, 1983: 541f). The theme
would be the element with the least degree of "communicative dynamism", whereas the
rheme is the element with the highest degree 49 .
In Eroms' (1986: 54) classification, there are several grades of thematic elements 50 :
A) the thematic basis (TB (=T0))
B) situative, thematic adverbials (TSit)
C) further thematic elements T1, T2, T3 etc, with T1 having less communicative
importance ("geringerer Mitteilungswert") than T2, and so on
5 Ich habe heute Otto das Buch, von dem ich dir gestern erzählt habe, geschenkt.
TB R TSit T1 T2 R
According to the TRS, elements linking the sentence to the preceding text tend to stand at
the beginning of the sentence. Among them are coordinating and subordinating
conjunctions, as well as adverbials expressing cause, goal or contrast. Local and temporal
adverbials also can have this function, mainly when they are realised as pro-adverbs (davor,
seither etc):
6 Sie ging nach Hause. Dort wartete ihr Mann mit dem Nudelholz auf sie.
49 For the distinction between the terms "communicative dynamism" and "communicative importance" in
relation to the notions theme and rheme, see Lenerz (1977: 13f).
50 Eroms (1986: 30f) points out that in addition to the serialisation of elements, the intonation and the voice
of the verb can express the TRS. For the discussion of voice, cf. pp. 73-80. These three components are "i
n t e g r a t i v e Signale der Funktion des Satzes im Diskurs" (emphasis in the original).

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 74
Eroms (1986: 31 and 81ff) points out that the TRS even plays a role below sentence level,
namely at phrase level ("Satzgliedebene"). Therefore, a precise treatment would make it
necessary to distinguish the phrase and the sentence level. In contracted structures
("verdichtete Strukturen"), secondary accents can help to identify the thematic and the
rhematic parts. Attributes replacing whole clauses, for instance, can contain themes and
rhemes.
7a Nach einer Entscheidung des Gerichts müssen ...
T1
7b Nach einer Entscheidung, die das Gericht getroffen hat, müssen ...
TSit TB R1 R0
In his discussion of the multi-level approach, Eroms (1986: 82f) concludes however that
the sophisticated analysis of (7a) as (7b) is not necessary. All information relevant to the
dialogue or monologue structure is available in the contracted sentence. However, if a
sentence is realised in its extended (not contracted) form, it must be analysed at all its levels,
i.e. at the matrix and at the subclause level.
3.1.2 THE REALIZATION OF THEMATIC AND RHEMATIC ELEMENTS
With respect to the realization of themes and rhemes in the sentence, Engel (1988: 322)
distinguishes three groups, which will appear in the sequence A

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 75
C) Indefinite verb arguments: They are the most rhematic elements, realised either as
indefinite pronouns (jemand, nichts etc) or as indefinite NPs. Indefinite NPs either do
not have any article (excluding proper names), have indefinite articles (ein) or
indefinite determiners (einige, kein etc). While the indefinite subject still tends to stand
at the beginning, all other complements have a clear tendency towards the right of the
sentence. The nominal genitive complement always tends to the right, independently
from whether it is definite or indefinite.
Reis (1987: 158) points out that, although definite NPs can be as thematic as pronominal
elements, the latter have a much stronger tendency towards the left than definite NPs. As a
result, the reason for this has to be independent from the TRS.
Eroms (1986: 47) distinguishes three groups as well, but these differ from Engel's:
A) Nominal thematic elements
B) Pronominal elements, reflexive pronouns and proper names
C) Demonstrative elements
Eroms classifies the proper names with the pronouns, as opposed to with the definite
arguments, as Engel does. As personal pronouns can never refer to unknown persons,
whereas definite NPs and proper names can, Engel's classification seems more appropriate to
us.
Hawkins (1986: 46f) points out that an ill-defined distinction between theme and rheme is
not enough to explain the order of elements in the sentence. He pleads that a more finegrained
classification, considering concepts such as shared information and mutual
knowledge, be applied.
Lenerz (1977: 46ff) underpins Hawkins' idea, by showing that there is no one-to-one
relationship between definiteness and thematicity. In 8a for instance, the definite NP is not
thematic and the indefinite NP is not rhematic (example from Lenerz, 1977: 46):
8 Context: Wem hast du ein Buch geschenkt?
8a Ich habe dem NACHbarkind ein Buch geschenkt.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 76
Because of these cases, Lenerz pleads for the distinction [+/- known] instead of [+/-
definite]. Furthermore, he distinguishes three subgroups within the indefinite NPs, which are
three possible realizations of [-def] (1977: 46ff):
SPEC (spezifisch bzw. spezifiziert = [+bekannt])
9 Maria kennt einen Schornsteinfeger.
INDEF (indefinite = [-bekannt])
10 Maria möchte einen Schornsteinfeger kennenlernen, hat aber noch keinen bestimmten im Auge.
GEN ([+generic])
11 Schornsteinfeger werden als Glücksbringer geschätzt.
The definite article can have a specific as well as a generic use. The indefinite article has
even more uses.
Although we agree with Lenerz' classification, we shall adopt the one suggested by Engel.
The reason is, that it can be very difficult to automatically calculate whether NPs and PPs
are specific, indefinite or generic. This means that we take the three-fold classification of
unstressed pronouns, definite and indefinite NPs as an approximation for thematicity. We
hope that this will give us the right result in a lot of sentences, although we know that some
cases will not be analysed correctly. The major problem concerns the classification of
definite NPs as thematic elements, because they are often rhematic. Indefinite NPs and
pronouns, on the other hand, are almost invariably rhematic and thematic, respectively.
3.1.3 THE ORDER OF THEMATIC AND RHEMATIC COMPLEMENTS
In most German sentences, the theme precedes the rheme. This has to do with two factors.
The first is that, when speaking or writing, we tend to start off by referring to something
which has been mentioned earlier (the topic). By this procedure, we make a link between our
statement and its context. It is only at this stage, that we add the new information (the
comment).

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 77
Blinkenberg (1928: 27ff), and many others since, have called this, in various ways,
psychological order (as opposed to grammatical order). According to the psychological
order, the psychological subject ("la notion initiale") precedes the psychological predicate,
which is the goal of the statement ("le but de l'énoncé"). Blinkenberg claims that people tend
to match the grammatical and the psychological order, so as to make sentences as easily
understandable as possible. Free word order languages provide better means to achieve this
than fixed word order languages, but even the latter have means to shift the psychological
predicate towards the end of the sentence.
According to Eisenberg (1989: 401), the reward for an achieved match between surface and
psychological order is improved "perceptual and cognitive processability" 51 . It seems that we
take longer to understand a sentence if we do not initially know what it refers to.
Because of grammatical requirements, psychological and grammatical order do not often
coincide. This causes a tension, which we tend to avoid. Oliva (1991: 10) claims that our
need to mention thematic elements before rhematic ones is so strong, that it can even lead to
crossing dependency, which is a strong violation of grammatical order. In long-distance
scrambling, for instance, as described by Becker/Joshi/Rambow (1991), a verb argument
belonging to the deeper-embedded verb precedes arguments of the higher-embedded one,
because it is thematic (12b, example from Becker/Joshi/Rambow, 1991: 22):
12a ... daß ich i dem Kunden [PRO i den Kühlschrank zu reparieren] versprochen habe.
12b ... daß ich i [den Kühlschrank] j dem Kunden [PRO i t j zu reparieren] versprochen habe.
The second fact which explains why thematic elements should precede rhematic ones is that
the sentence focus, which is the intonation centre of the sentence, tends to be at the end of
the sentence. Most linguists seem to agree on this, not only for German, but for other
languages as well 52 . As we are generally more interested in new information than in what we
51 "perzeptuelle und kognitive Verarbeitbarkeit"
52 For German, for instance, Rochemont (1989: 3), Fox (1990: 253), Oliva (1991: 9f), Reis (1987: 169) and
Erben (1970: 275) take it for granted, that the intonation centre is at the end of the sentence. Quirk et al.
(1979: 938-955), Taglicht (1984: 172), and Steiner/Winter (1987: 4ff) have the same assumption for

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 78
know already, and as we tend to stress what we are interested in, it seems quite natural that
new information and sentence focus coincide.
However, it is not clear whether the sentence focus tends to be at the end, because the new
information tends to be located there, or whether there are independent (e.g. phonetic)
reasons for it. An argument for the sentence focus having its own right is that even fixed
word order languages try to match the psychological and the grammatical orders (cf. last
footnote and section 3.3.2).
With this background knowledge, it is easier to understand why verb arguments in the
German Mittelfeld 53 tend to have the order (Engel, 1988: 322):
pronouns < definite NPs < indefinite NPs
Pronouns refer to known information and are thus thematic, indefinite NPs often refer to
rhematic information, and definite NPs can be both, with a tendency towards being thematic.
Although this order applies in general, we have to add some details. According to Engel
(1988: 323), the genitive pronoun tends less to the left than other pronouns, and nominatives
have a stronger tendency to the left. Pronouns tend to follow in the order N

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 79
N pron /N +d < (Nom - A - D) pron < N -d < (D - A) +d < G pron < (D - A) -d < G +/-d
55
This means that the unmarked order of elements in the German sentence is: nominative
complement realised as a pronoun or as a definite NP, pronominal nominal argument 56 ,
pronominal accusative and dative arguments, indefinite nominative complement, definite
dative and accusative complements, pronominal genitive NP, indefinite dative and
accusative NP, genitive arguments independently from their definiteness.
The following sentences correspond to this basic order (Engel, 1988: 323):
14 Darum habe ich es meiner Mutter gegeben. (N pron < A pron < D +d )
15 Darum hat es ihr niemand gebracht. (A pron < D pron < N -d )
16 Deshalb ist unsere Freundin es bis an ihr Lebensende geblieben. (N +d < NOM pron )
Heidolph/Flämig/Motsch (1981: 737) point out that prepositional objects (PO) always tend
to the right, so that they will follow the NP arguments. We shall see below that, within the
relative order of several POs, the distinction of pronominal, definite, and indefinite PPs
nevertheless holds.
We mentioned before that the preference rule concerning TRS can be violated without
resulting in an ungrammatical sentence. Indeed, sentences with the rheme preceding the
theme exist. However, this phenomenon seems to be rare in written sentences of free word
order languages (Oliva, 1991: 9f; Hajicová/Sgall/Skoumalová, 1993: 179). The reason for
this discrepancy between spoken and written language is that in written language intonation
and stress are not available as means of expression, so that word order which does not
55 From now on, we shall use the abbreviations +/-d for the feature values definite/indefinite and +/-a for
animate/inanimate.
56 Hoberg (1981) and Engel (1970) name this group "Nominalergänzung". Unlike Engel, Hoberg (1981: 85)
not only includes nominative (13a) and accusative predicative nouns (13b), but also prepositional
predicative elements (13c):
13a Das ist ein übler Scherz.
13b Das nenne ich einen üblen Scherz.
13c Das halte ich für einen üblen Scherz.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 80
correspond to the TRS would be confusing and unnatural. Siewierska (1988: 85) mentions a
further reason why spoken language can differ from written utterances:
The readily accessible information is not of prime interest to the speaker, his aim being to convey some
salient information which has not yet been activated - the focus of the utterance. [...] Consequently, the
salient information could be expected to be placed prior to the more accessible material. [...] The shared
situational context and often actual knowledge of each other's experiences, wants and expectations, plus
the possibility of immediate feedback, reduce the need for stating a frame for the interpretation of the
utterance.
According to Engel (1970: 15), the following sentences contradict the TRS, as in 17 there is
no theme, in 18 drei Männer and in 19 kamen are the themes:
17 Es regnet.
18 Es ritten drei Männer zum Tore hinaus.
19 Da kamen drei Direktoren.
With respect to 17, we agree with Engel, although we do not think the fact that the whole
sentence is rhematic constitutes any contradiction. The TRS just does not apply to 17. We
disagree, however, concerning the explanation of the second and the third sentences: The
existence of the expletive es in the Vorfeld in 18 shows that there is no theme in the
sentence. It is for the same reason that the prototypical German fairy tale starts off with the
expression "Es war einmal ...", namely because there is no theme at the very beginning of
the text. In 19, the temporal or causal adverb da is thematic. It expresses that the whole
proposition is consequent upon what has been said before. None of these sentences
contradict the TRS.
3.1.4 THE SEPARATION OF THEME AND RHEME BY MODIFIERS
Several authors mention that modifiers separate theme and rheme but they differ with respect
to the subclasses, to which they attribute this task. According to Zemb (1968: 111) and
Eroms (1986: 19ff), it is the negation (20b). According to Engel (1988: 340) and Hoberg
(1981: 153), the situative modifiers have this function. Thurmair (1989: 29ff) suspects the
toners and Waltzing (1986: 128ff) attributes this quality to the whole group of evaluative
modifiers. When the modifiers are adjacent, these statements are not contradictory (20c), but
they are sometimes separated (21):

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 81
20a Er ist per Anhalter nach Katmandu gefahren.
20b Er ist nicht per Anhalter nach Katmandu gefahren.
20c Er ist damals sit wohl toner vermutlich exist nicht per Anhalter nach Katmandu gefahren.
21 Er hat gestern sit dem Mann wohl exist wieder sit nicht neg geholfen.
Waltzing (1986: 128ff) argues that the negation nicht, when a sentence modifier, cannot
move in a flexible way, and therefore it is not likely to move when dependent on the context.
22a confirms his doubt, as nicht definitely follows the rhematic elements seine Eltern,
gestern and einen Wunsch:
22 Context: Warum ist Peter heute so traurig?
22a Er ist traurig, weil ihm seine Eltern gestern einen Wunsch nicht erfüllt haben.
Situative modifiers do have more flexibility but they are an important part of the proposition,
and can therefore be thematic or rhematic themselves. This makes the borderline between
old and new information unclear. Waltzing's (1986: 129) argument for the evaluative
modifiers as separators is that they are not really elements of the sentence itself, but
represent performative (hyper-) verbs. They represent the speaker's opinion and cannot be
stressed. Therefore, they cannot be part of the rheme and allow for a much more precise
borderline between old and new:
Nichts ist schließlich naheliegender, als daß der Sprecher gerade die Elemente, mit denen er seine
Stellungnahme zum verbalisierten Sachverhalt ausdrückt, gleichzeitig zur Markierung der von ihm
intendierten kommunikativen Gewichtung, der Verteilung von Thema und Rhema innerhalb einer
Äußerung benutzt. (1986: 129f)
The following examples show that situative as well as existimatorial modifiers can have this
separating function. Neither 4a nor 4b are good answers to question 23, which asks for the
dative NP seinem Onkel. Instead, 23c is the only satisfying answer, as the dative
complement follows both adverbs:
23 Context: Wem hat er gestern zu viel Wein gegeben?
23a ?? Er hat gestern sit seinem ONKEL wohl exist zu viel Wein gegeben.
23b ? Er hat wohl exist seinem ONKEL gestern sit zu viel Wein gegeben.
23c Er hat wohl gestern/gestern wohl seinem ONKEL zu viel Wein gegeben.
23b seems to be slightly more acceptable than 23a, but 23c definitely is the only appropriate
answer. Consequently, we can say that elements of both modifier groups can separate theme
and rheme. When there is more than one modifier, the last one is relevant. If it is a situative

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 82
modifier, we cannot decide whether the modifier itself is thematic or rhematic without
recurring to the context. We shall come back to the separating function of modifiers in
section 3.3, which handles functional sentence perspective.
3.2 BEHAGHEL'S "GESETZ DER WACHSENDEN GLIEDER"
The law of the increasing constituents goes back to Behaghel (1932: 5f) and is known in
English literature as the heaviness principle. It states that the longer the constituents are, the
later they serialise in the sentence. This does not seem to be a very rigid rule, as it applies for
some sentences (24), but not for the majority of others (25, 26):
24 Gestern kam endlich die ersehnte Nachricht.
25 Ich esse meine Suppe nicht.
26 Er kehrte mit unermeßlichen Schätzen heim.
The negational modifier nicht in 25 is less heavy than the accusative NP, but cannot be
moved in front of the complement without a considerable change of meaning. The separable
verb prefix heim cannot be moved in front of the sentence-modifying PP at all, although it is
much shorter than the PP. Behaghel's law only applies to the order of some constituents. It
should be reduced to the statement that pronouns tend to precede full NPs and that, in some
cases, longer NPs, which are extended by an attribute, tend to follow shorter NPs (Engel,
1970: 14):
27a Paul hat der Frau den langen Brief über moderne Kleidung gegeben.
27b ? Paul hat den langen Brief über moderne Kleidung der Frau gegeben.
28a Paul hat den Brief der langen Frau in moderner Kleidung gegeben.
28b ? Paul hat der langen Frau in moderner Kleidung den Brief gegeben.
Eisenberg (1989: 401), again, explains Behaghel's law by the easier perceptual and cognitive
processing of sentences which conform to the law. For the same reason, relative clauses
often are extraposed to the end of the sentence (Engel, 1988: 333f).
Behaghel's Gesetz der wachsenden Glieder is closely related to the TRS as heavy NPs are
mostly rhematic. Attributes to nouns generally carry new information, and thematic elements
do not normally need to be specified. We nevertheless list the principle independently,

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 83
because heaviness might be measurable and this could be of use for the automatic treatment
of language. A definite NP, for example, is typically thematic, but there is a greater chance
that it is rhematic with an attribute rather than without.
3.3 FUNCTIONAL SENTENCE PERSPECTIVE
Für die Bestimmung einer Normalfolge von Ergänzungen im Mittelfeld spielen
statt morphosyntaktischer viel eher pragmatische, das heißt sachverhalts- und
sprecherbezogene Faktoren eine Rolle. (Lötscher, 1981: 44)
The term functional sentence perspective (FSP) goes back to the Prague linguist Vilém
Mathesius (1929). It is an extremely important factor for German, and is very closely related
to the theme-rheme relationship and the heaviness of phrases. The principle requires that not
only should new information follow known information, but also that elements should
serialise according to their informational value. Speakers will generally first mention the
facts they consider less important, so that the facts they want to stress appear at the end of
the sentence. We mentioned before that the sentence focus normally falls on the end of the
sentence. According to Hajicová/Sgall/Skoumalová (1993: 179), a sentence focus not being
at the end of the sentence is rare in written language. Thus, the important parts of the
statement would be stressed automatically.
The FSP includes the TRS, because new information is normally more important than old
information. The two principles are however not identical, as we see in 29a:
29a Er wird es morgen IHM geben.
29b * Er wird es morgen ihm GEben.
29c Er wird es ihm morgen geben.
29d Er wird es morgen IHM geben, und nicht IHR.
The pronoun ihm refers necessarily to known information, as otherwise the use of the
pronoun would not be possible. However, 29b shows that ihm in a is the only element, which
can carry stress. The stress is so strong, that 29a can only be understood by contrasting the
pronoun ihm to another pronoun such as ihr (29d). In the more natural order of 29c, all
elements but es can carry the main accent, but either morgen or geben are the most likely to

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 84
be stressed. The dichotomy known versus new information fails to explain 29. Another term,
referring to communicative importance, is required.
In addition to the old/new distinction, the FSP represents the intention of the speaker or
writer. This principle can override the theme-rheme structure as a thematic pronoun can have
the largest informational content, and therefore goes to the end of the sentence. Although
this principle seems more important than the TRS, and in any case includes the latter, we
have to mention them separately. The reason for this is that theme and rheme can be
recognised approximately by the form of the arguments (cf. 3.1.2), whereas the
informational value, linked to the intention of the speaker or writer, cannot.
3.3.1 THEMATISATION AND RHEMATISATION
FSP explains what has been called thematization and rhematization (Engel, 1988: 340f).
Thematization of elements means assigning little informational value to them, and
rhematization means focusing on them.
These terms are slightly misleading, as the thematicity of elements does not change with the
writer's attitude towards them. What the writer can do, however, is to assign relative
importance to some elements. In spite of the slight imprecision of the terms, we shall keep
using them, as they seem to be well-accepted in the literature. Foley and Van Valin (1985)
use the more fortunate term Information Packaging. However, it includes many more
devices than just thematization and rhematization (cf. 3.3.2).
As elements with little informational value tend to precede elements with high content, one
can actively thematise elements by placing them at the left. Rhematization is the reverse
procedure: the speaker places subjectively important information at the right. This is shown
in 30. 30a and 30b are similar sentences, which only differ in that different phrases are
thematised and rhematised:
30a Die Kinder sollten während des Gewitters ihre Zimmer aufräumen.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 85
30b Ihre Zimmer sollten die Kinder während des Gewitters aufräumen.
Thematization and rhematization are frequently used in newspaper articles:
31 Gestern Nachmittag um 15.30 Uhr in | hat eine Unbekannte
der Balanstraße | einen Mann geohrfeigt.
Even if time and place in 31 are not thematic (known), they can be represented as
background information to the main action. Phrases can be thematised artificially,
independently from whether they are realised as proforms (dort, bei ihr) or full forms (letzte
Woche, bei Tante Emma) (Heidolph/Flämig/Motsch, 1981: 736).
As some modifiers separate theme and rheme (3.1.4), their movement to the left or to the
right changes the theme-rheme structure. In 32, the normal position of the adverb gestern
(not involving rhematization) would be as in 32b (Hoberg, 1981: 149). When gestern
precedes the dative complement (32a), the dative NP dem Verleger Axel Springer is
rhematised. The difference between 32a and 32b is very little, as the number of potential
rhematic elements is nevertheless quite large in (32b). The movement of gestern to the right
(32c) has a more distinctive effect. Only the modifier itself and the main verb can be
rhematic (example from Hoberg, 1981: 154):
32a Bundespräsident Heinrich Lübke hat gestern ... dem Verleger Axel Springer das große
Verdienstkreuz ... überreicht.
32b Bundespräsident Heinrich Lübke hat ... dem Verleger Axel Springer gestern das große
Verdienstkreuz ... überreicht.
32c Bundespräsident Heinrich Lübke hat ... dem Verleger Axel Springer das große
Verdienstkreuz ... gestern überreicht.
3.3.2 FURTHER MEANS TO EXPRESS FUNCTIONAL SENTENCE
PERSPECTIVE
Word order variation, as discussed in 3.3.1, is a means available to free word order
languages only. The question arises, what can languages with more or less fixed word order
do to express theme, rheme and the relative informational value of elements. Do languages

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 86
such as English and French actually express it, or do they use the same order of words for
different contexts?
At least for the positioning of modifiers, English and French have some choice.
Complements, however, are only recognised by their position so that a change of position
would consequently lead to a change of roles 57 :
34a The man gave the dog bones.
34b * The dog gave the man bones. (as an equivalent of a)
34c * Bones gave the dog the man. (as an equivalent of a)
There are a few exceptions to this, which are generally called subject-verb inversion (35, 36)
(Quirk et al., 1979: 948ff). They often belong to literary style. Declarative sentences
beginning with a verb such as 37 seem to be hardly possible in English (37 is chosen from
the explaining text in Wagner/Pinchon, 1962: 393):
35 Here comes the bus.
36 Under no circumstances must the switch be left on.
37 Appartiennent à cette catégorie les adverbes circonstanciels (de temps ou de lieu) et les
adverbes par lesquels un locuteur exprime son opinion sur D.
(Belong to this category circumstantial adverbs (of time and place) and the adverbs by
which a speaker expresses his/her opinion on D.)
(Circumstantial adverbs (of time and place) and adverbs by which speakers express their
opinion on D belong to this category)
In fixed, as well as free word order languages, functional sentence perspective can often be
expressed by other means than word order variation. According to Lenerz (1977: 15f), these
include passive, clefting, change of the intonation peak in spoken language and sometimes
morphological means, as in Japanese. To these, we would like to add the syntactical means
of topicalisation, dislocation, pseudo-clefting, as well as lexical means. For an overview of
universally available packaging devices see Foley/Van Valin (1985).
57 A similar thing happens in German when case marking fails and when the context does not help with the
disambiguation of the readings. In this case, there is a strong tendency for the reader to assume a normal
default word order (Höhle, 1982: 130). In contextless sentences without case-marking such as 33a and
33b below, one is thus tempted to read both sentences with the subject verb object order:
33a Stefan liebt Marie.
33b Marie liebt Stefan.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 87
In addition to the permutation of elements in the sentence, German has access to the means
listed in the preceding paragraph as well, although some of them are less natural than in
English or French. Explicit morphological theme marking, as with the Japanese marker wa,
is not at all available. Instead, some verbs allow the use of prefixes to change the theme
rheme perspective in German.
We shall briefly discuss the relation between the listed constructions and FSP, and shall
compare them with the use in English, French and Spanish. The word order of the former
two is very restricted. Spanish (as well as Italian) does not have case-marking, but
nevertheless has relatively free word order.
An essential prerequisite for this discussion is the fact that, in these languages, the sentence
focus also tends to be at the end of the sentence, and the topic has a propensity to stand
sentence-initial (cf. footnote 51 in 3.1.3).
In passive sentences, the rhematic deep subject stands at the end. In this position, it cooccurs
with the sentence focus (38).
38 Context: Wer hat dieses Haus gebaut.
38a Dieses Haus wurde von Gaudí gebaut.
38b This house was built by Gaudí.
38c Cette maison a été construite par Gaudí.
38d Esta casa fue construida por Gaudí. 58
Cleft constructions are used to position focused elements at the very beginning of the
sentence. They are particularly stressed in this position (Quirk et al., 1979: 951ff) but this is
linked much more to the marking by the clefting construction "es ist X, der" than by the
position at the head of the sentence. Although clefting is possible in German, it seems to be
less frequently used than in Romance languages and English:
58 Although this sentence is perfectly well-formed, Spanish speakers would rather express it by using
dislocation:
38e Esta casa, la construió Gaudí.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 88
39 Context: Wer hat das Haus gebaut.
39a Gaudí war es, der das Haus gebaut hat.
39b Es war Gaudí, der das Haus gebaut hat.
39c Das Haus hat Gaudí gebaut.
39d It was Gaudí who built the house.
39e C'était Gaudí qui a construit cette maison.
39f Era Gaudí que construió la casa.
Topicalisation is a means to place the topic, and thus a thematic element, at the head of the
sentence. This results in a relative right movement of the rhematic elements. In German,
topicalisation of the English type is not possible (40c). In English, both the topic and the
subject precede the verb, whereas in German only one of them can precede the verb, when it
is in verb second position. This object or modifier-fronting construction is very common in
German. According to Gadler's (1982: 163f) small Austrian newspaper corpus, four out of
five topicalised elements are adverbials (example a from Quirk et al., 1979: 946):
40a Really good cocktails they made at that hotel.
40b Wirklich gute Cocktails mixten sie in diesem Hotel.
40c * Wirklich gute Cocktails sie mixten in diesem Hotel.
40d Vraiment, de bons cocktails ils faisaient à cet hotel.
40e Realmente buenos cocteles hicieron en ese hotel.
Dislocation has the same effect as topicalisation, namely the relative right movement of
rhematic elements towards the end of the sentence. In contrast to topicalisation, the
dislocated element is picked up by a pronoun. Spanish and French often use dislocation as an
equivalent of the English topicalisation construction.
41a Die Agnès, die werde ich morgen treffen.
41b Agnès, I shall meet her tomorrow.
41c Agnès, je la reverrai demain.
41d Agnès, la vedré otra vez mañana.
By using the pseudo-cleft structure, a rhematic subject can be moved right of the theme so
that it receives the sentence focus. Although pseudo-clefting is possible in German, there is
no need for this structure and it is therefore not very common:
42 Context: Was ärgert dich?
42a Was mich ärgert, ist der Lärm.
42b Mich ärgert der Lärm.
42c What is bothering me is the noise.
42d Ce qui m'ennuie c'est le bruit.
42e Lo que me molesta es el rumor.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 89
In spoken language, the intonation peak is an explicit means of focusing a particular element
in the sentence. In German and English, as well as in the Romance languages, even phrases
at the beginning or in the middle of the sentence can be stressed. When a non-final element
is stressed, the elements following the focus are always contextually bound (thematic)
(Hajicová/Sgall/Skoumalová, 1993:179). When non-final focus occurs, this is normally
required by the context:
43 Context: Who is it who will cook tomorrow?
43a ALAN will cook tomorrow.
43b ! Alan will COOK tomorrow.
43c ! Alan will cook toMORrow.
In Japanese, a specific particle (wa) exists to mark the topic:
44 Kiyono-wa watashi-tachi-no tomodachi desu.
Kiyono-topic 1stpers-plur -Gen/Poss friend be
(Kiyono is our friend)
This means is not available in any of the mentioned European languages. However, by using
the German verb prefix ver- with a limited set of verbs, the semantic roles of verb arguments
can be changed for repackaging purposes (Foley/Van Valin, 1985: 294ff). This perspective
change is not a productive morphological means:
45a Ralf kaufte ein Buch von Harold.
45b Harold verkaufte Ralf ein Buch.
The same conversive relation exists in other languages on a lexical level (46a/46b, 47, 48). It
has identical consequences for the sentence perspective (Foley/Van Valin, 1985: 291ff).
Note that English has the additional means of dative shift (Foley/Van Valin, 1985: 347ff).
When dative shift is used, the sentence focus is on the direct object (46c), as opposed to on
the indirect object (46b):
46a Ralf bought a book from Harold.
46b Harold sold a book to Ralf.
46c Harold sold Ralf a book.
47a Ralf a acheté un livre de Harold.
47b Harold a vendu un livre a Ralf.
48a Ralf compró un libro de Harold.
48b Harold vendí un libro a Ralf

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 90
Oliva (1991: 10f) claims that even the phenomenon of raising can be explained by our
tendency to avoid the:
[...] tension between syntactic requirements such as (multiple) subcategorization or (especially in the
case of German) word order constraints imposed onto the governing elements by the grammar on one
hand and communicative dynamism of the subcategorised elements on the other hand.
This actually brings us very near to answering the question of raison d'être of the phenomenon of
raising: primarily, it is but a means of removing this tension from the structure of the sentence.
Raising structures only change the topic position, but not the position of the sentence focus.
If we assume that Paul is the topic in 49, the raising construction in 49b decreases the
tension between the tendency of the topic to move into sentence-initial position and the
syntactic requirement, which is that the nominative complement of kaufen has to be in the
middle of the sentence:
49a Es scheint, daß Paul auch ein Buch von Harold kauft.
49b Paul scheint auch ein Buch von Harold zu kaufen.
We have seen that a lot of linguistic constructions have the same goal, namely allowing us to
order information as required by the context, or according to our intention. We want to point
out that some of these means can entail other consequences, such as the change of quantifier
scope. In 50, for instance, the active and the passive sentences have different meanings
(example from Primus, 1987: 61):
50a Jeder Mann küsst eine Frau.
50b Eine Frau wird von jedem Mann geküßt.
3.4. VERBNÄHE
Another parameter, which has a great influence on the order of elements in the German
clause is what has been called semantic-syntactic closeness of elements to the verb, or
Verbnähe. In the English literature, the expressions verb bonding (e.g. Tomlin, 1986: 73ff)
and obliqueness (e.g. Pollard/Sag, 1987: 174ff) are used but these terms are often limited to
the verb object relation. We shall use the term verb bonding synonymously with Verbnähe
and semantic-syntactic closeness.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 91
Behaghel (1932: 4) formulates in his first law concerning the order of elements in German:
Das oberste Gesetz ist dieses, daß das geistig eng zusammengehörige auch eng zusammengestellt wird.
Behaghel's law is of a very general nature and is not restricted to the order of constituents in
the sentence. Ursula Hoberg (1981: 63) specifies the closeness principle for the sentence
level:
Je enger die strukturelle Relation, desto enger auch die positionelle Relation zum Verb (in Endstellung).
This principle thus says that there is a tendency in German to express the semantic-syntactic
closeness between the verb and its arguments and modifiers topologically. Verb arguments,
for instance, which have a strong semantic relationship with the verb tend to be situated at
the end of the middle field. In this position, they are adjacent to the main verb in verb-final
sentences. Conversely, elements which are not semantically close to the verb tend to the left,
far away from the verb in clause-final position.
It is important to point out that the sequence of verb arguments and modifiers tends to be the
same in verb-second and verb-initial sentences. If we accept the verb bonding principle as
stated here - and there are good reasons to do so - it is an argument for the assumption that
the underlying word order of German is verb-final (cf. 1.1).
According to Hoberg (1981: 63), the only criterion to find out which elements are
semantically close to the verb is the substitution test:
Je geringer die syntaktischen und semantischen Substitutionsmöglichkeiten für ein Element sind, desto
enger ist seine Bindung ans Verb, und umgekehrt: Je größer seine Substituierbarkeit ist, desto ferner
steht es dem Verb.
Am deutlichsten ist dieser Zusammenhang bei Funktionsnomen: Sie sind nicht pronominalisierbar
(Letzte Woche rettete er einem alten Mann das Leben. * Gestern hat er es einem Mädchen gerettet.),
nicht durch einen Gliedsatz ersetzbar, in der Regel auf eine bestimmte Artikelart (definite, indefinite
oder ohne Artikel) festgelegt, nur beschränkt attribuierbar und jeweils auf einige wenige Lexeme (ein
und desselben Wortfeldes - z.B. Gedanke, Idee, ...) beschränkt, sofern überhaupt eine Wahl in den
Lexemen besteht. Oft ist nur das gesamte Funktionsverbgefüge, also FN [Funktionsnomen, RS] + Verb,
substituierbar, und zwar gegen ein einfaches Verb. (italics in the original)
Tomlin (1986), who looks at ordering principles from a universal point of view, specifies
that verb object bonding "is not to be taken as an absolute language universal, but rather as

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 92
another fundamental principle that may shape natural languages" (p. 74). He describes the
effect of the principle in the following way (1986: 73):
in general in transitive clauses it is more difficult to interfere with the syntactic juxtaposition and
semantic unity of the verb and object than it is to interfere with that of the verb and subject. Various
independent syntactic, semantic, and even phonological processes appear to conspire to prevent the
separation of the object from the verb; and these same processes often permit separation of the subject
from the verb in order to maintain the bond between the verb and object.
We want to extend the term bonding to elements which are not verb arguments (similarly
Pollard/Sag, 1987: 181).
Pollard and Sag (1987: 175) differ from Hoberg in that they mention four different kinds of
evidence for obliqueness: control, binding, passivisation and agreement. Regarding the first
phenomenon, they state:
The theory of control [...] requires that the unexpressed subject of a VP complement must be controlled
by a less oblique complement [...]. [...], the theory of control implies that these elements [the controllers,
RS] are less oblique than their VP[INF] sisters.
Their point is that the infinitival verb arguments as a whole must be more oblique than the
controller of the non-realised subject PRO of the VP, namely the direct and the indirect
objects in 51 and 52 (examples by Pollard and Sag):
51 He persuaded Kim i PRO i to cooperate.
52 He appealed to Lou i PRO i to be polite.
Pollard and Sag are not very explicit on the relation between binding and obliqueness. They
refer to the second, still forthcoming volume instead.
Similarly, the binding theory [...] explains familiar constraints on the distribution of reflexive and
nonreflexive pronouns in terms of the same hierarchical obliqueness relations required for the theory of
control.
According to Pollard and Sag, passivisation can only apply to sentences with a direct object,
which in their opinion is a sign of the direct objects being more oblique than indirect objects.
Their assumption is: the more oblique a verb argument, the more likely it is that its verbal
governor can be passivised. It is worth pointing out that some German verbs do allow for
dative (53) and even PO passivisation (54) but that the datives and POs are not realised as
nominatives (or subjects). It seems that it would be more accurate to limit Pollard and Sag's

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 93
statement to passivisation involving the realization of oblique case NPs or PPs as a
nominative NP:
53a Er hilft dem Mann.
53b Dem Mann kann geholfen werden.
54a Er spricht mit dem Direktor.
54b Mit dem Direktor wird gerade gesprochen.
And finally, Pollard and Sag maintain that the least oblique verb argument, which typically
is the subject, is the one which agrees with the verb.
We have seen that both the names of the verb bonding phenomenon and the criteria to
describe its effect differ. What we understand by Verbnähe will become clearer in the next
section, in which we describe which arguments and modifiers are more bound than others.
3.4.1. WHICH ELEMENTS ARE SEMANTICALLY CLOSE TO THE VERB?
In linguistic literature, the verb object relationship has been discussed in much more detail
than the verb modifier relationship. As we extend the term verb bonding to modifiers, we
shall discuss both, starting with verb arguments, and then review Hoberg's statements on the
verb bonding of modifiers.
3.4.1.1. ARGUMENTS
According to Hoberg (1981: 63f), nouns of support verb constructions (SVC), which we
shall from now on call SVC-nouns, are semantically very close to the verb.
SVC are noun verb combinations such as etwas in Anwendung bringen in which the noun
carries the main information. According to Mesli (1991: 4ff), the nouns are abstract nouns
expressing a process, a state, an event or a quality. They generally have an argument
structure (55a, 55b), and they can represent a sentence (55c). One could say that the noun is
"conjugated" (Mesli, 1991: 4) by the support verb, in that the verb carries the information on
time, mode and number for the action expressed by the noun.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 94
55a Die Anwendung des Gesetzes durch das Parlament.
55b Anwendung (Parlament, Gesetz)
55c Das Parlament brachte das Gesetz in Anwendung.
Due to the special status of SVC-nouns, and their close relationship with the support verbs,
they cannot be substituted by a pronoun (56b), and often one single verb corresponds to the
whole support verb construction (56c). And indeed these NPs cannot be separated from the
verb in end position (56d, 56e):
56a Stefan will die emanzipatorischen Gedanken endlich in Anwendung bringen.
56b * Stefan will die emanzipatorischen Gedanken endlich in sie bringen.
56c Stefan will die emanzipatorischen Gedanken endlich anwenden.
56d * Stefan will die emanzipatorischen Gedanken in Anwendung endlich bringen.
56e * Stefan will in Anwendung die emanzipatorischen Gedanken endlich bringen.
Further elements which are semantically close to the verb are prepositional objects (PO).
They are verb complements realised as a PP with a fixed preposition, such as glauben an and
sich verlassen auf (Bußmann, 1983: 402). They differ from obligatory adverbials in that the
adverbial PP can vary and in that its preposition is meaningful (57), whereas the fixed PO
prepositions are semantically empty (58):
57a Man kann sich auf Archana verlassen.
57b * Man kann sich in Archana verlassen.
57c * Man kann sich vor Archana verlassen.
57d * Man kann sich bei Archana verlassen.
58a
58b
Archana wohnt in Wilmslow.
Archana wohnt nahe Macclesfield.
POs tend to follow case objects (accusative, dative, nominative or genitive NPs),
independently from their realization as a full NP or as a pronoun (Heidolph/Flämig/Motsch,
1981: 737).
Lenerz (1977: 65ff) claims that accusative complements are more closely linked
semantically to the verb than POs. He bases his view on the fact that in sentences like 3a the
ellipsis einen Brief schreiben is more of a unit ("Einheit") (Lenerz, 1977: 78) than an meinen

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 95
Vater schreiben 59 . Lenerz agrees, however, that POs tend to follow case arguments. He
explains this tendency towards the right by the German development from an SOV to an
SVO language (cf. Vennemann's theory of Natural Serialisation and word order change,
1974 and others). According to Lenerz, the order NP argument before PP argument is a sign
for the new order SVO.
59a Ich schreibe einen Brief an meinen Vater.
59b einen Brief schreiben
59c ? an meinen Vater schreiben
There are several reasons why we do not agree with Lenerz' assumption: Firstly, in sentences
like (60), the object is not more closely linked to the verb than the PO. Secondly, Lenerz
does not account for the influence of the other factors in his examples, so that they have to
be reevaluated. Thirdly, we shall see that, at sentence level, German is a very consistent
SOV language, apart from the verb, which can occur in verb second position. And fourthly,
the preposition of POs is semantically empty and subcategorised for by the verb, instead of
matching the semantics of the PP (see example 57, above):
60a
60b
60c
Er berichtet dem Freund über die Auseinandersetzung.
dem Freund berichten
über die Auseinandersetzung berichten
Universally, objects are more closely linked to the verb than subjects (Tomlin, 1986: 73).
For this reason, generative grammar (e.g. Stechow/Sternefeld, 1988) assigns the subject a
special status: it gets its case assignment from Infl (the head of the Inflectional Phrase)
whereas objects get it from the verb. Infinitive verb forms cannot be accompanied by a
subject 60 :
62a einem Mann ein Buch geben.
62b * er einem Mann ein Buch geben.
59 Lenerz' decision of what a unit is is more or less based on intuition (ellipsis test). Constituent tests do not
seem to prove the existence of these units clearly, as their outcome is contradictory (Lenerz, 1977: 75ff).
For a discussion of the validity of Lenerz' data see Gadler (1982: 156ff).
60 Note that in exceptional structures the subject can receive its (accusative) case form the matrix verb:
61 Ich sah ihn einem Mann ein Buch geben.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 96
For most German speakers the accusative object intuitively is more closely linked to the verb
geben than the dative object. Therefore, they feel that ein Buch geben is more likely to be a
unit than einem Mann geben. However, a questionnaire on this subject described and
analysed in Steinberger (1990) shows that the bonding of the object types is verb-specific
(cf. 4.2).
3.4.1.2. MODIFIERS
We suggested in 2.3 that we should distinguish three modifier types which refer to the
utterance (existimatorial, pragmatic), to the sentence (situative) and to the verb (modal). It is
obvious that the verb-modifying modal modifiers are the ones which are closest to the verb,
whereas existimatorial adverbials are least close (cf. Hoberg, 1981: 132ff). According to
their links with the verb the elements of the modifier classes can permute with different
degrees of freedom:
63a
63b
Peter hat Frauenbücher gern gelesen.
Peter hat gern Frauenbücher gelesen.
63c Peter hat leider Frauenbücher gelesen.
63d * Peter hat Frauenbücher leider gelesen.
The modal modifier gern tends to stand at the right (the end) of the sentence and can
permute with the indefinite plural noun Frauenbücher, whereas the evaluative adverb leider
tends to the left. Its position behind the indefinite accusative noun is not possible.
However, the distinction of four main modifier classes is not enough to describe German
word order. In Regeln zur Wortstellung (1970), Engel distinguishes 22 modifier classes.
Both his classification, and the order in which he claims they follow, are based on his
intuition. Hoberg (1981: 98-149) verified the order of these classes empirically, using the
Mannheimer Duden-Korpus 61 . She found that Engel's intuition did not always correspond to
61 The Mannheimer Duden-Korpus consists of a collection of written German contemporary texts (since
1945). It is composed of five text types: fiction and poetry, light fiction, popular scientific texts, memoirs
and newspapers/magazines. Out of 20 texts, she chose blocks from the beginning, the middle and the end,

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 97
the real-life occurrence in the corpus. Furthermore, some of the co-occurring elements were
of the same class, so that Engel's list did not make any prediction on their order. On the basis
of her findings, Hoberg split Engel's modifier groups and reordered some of them. The result
are 44 modifier position classes which are ordered according to their indexes from 1 to 44.
They are described in detail in Hoberg (1981: 106-131). A shorter version is listed in
appendix 8.1.
What we identified as the group of existimatorial modifiers corresponds to the indexes a1 to
a18 (a for Angaben). The situatives are represented by a19 to a40, and the modals by a42 to
a44 (Hoberg, 1981: 132f). The class a41 denotes the negation. Her classification is not
restricted to adverbs, but also includes adverbial phrases such as PPs and NPs.
In the following examples, the modifier sequence is according to her classification. The
indexes indicate to which group the modifiers belong (Examples from Hoberg, 1981: 131):
64 Es hat beispielsweise 8 zweifellos 12 erst 39 einer sehr langen Erfahrung bedurft.
65 ... und wenn auch..., so ist der Sprung doch 4 immer wieder 37 deutlich 43 zu spüren.
66 Wie solche von den Nationalsozialisten verstanden wurde, hatten wir ja 1 inzwischen 26
ein paarmal 37 erfahren können.
The indexes roughly reflect the semantic closeness to the verb. The higher the index of a
modifier, the closer it is to the verb. Hoberg (1981: 134) admits, however, that it is not
possible to see the difference in verb bonding from one class to the next. It would be difficult
to argue, for instance, that adverbials expressing condition are less bound than those
expressing a concession, etc (see Hoberg's classes, 1981: 106-132):
... condition 19 < concession 20 < cause 22 < consecutive 23 < final 24 < medial 25 <
time_period 26 < local 27 < accompanying_circumstances 28 ...
In linguistic literature, a small number of modifier classes have been discussed more
frequently, with respect to their serialisation. These groups always tend to be the same,
of approximately 1,400 words each. Hoberg's test corpus thus comprises about 85,000 words
corresponding to 11,000 simple sentences (sentences with one main verb each) (Hoberg, 1981: 27).

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 98
namely time, place, manner, and sometimes cause modifiers (cf. 1.2). All the others are
generally neglected.
Lenerz (1977: 78ff), for instance, discusses the order of local (LOC) and temporal (TEMP) 62
adverbials, using Vennemann's universal principle of natural serialisation (cf. 1.1). He states
that TEMP, which is more abstract, is less closely related to the verb than the more concrete
LOC and that the SOV language German therefore prefers the order TEMP < LOC. English,
which is known as an SVO language, prefers LOC < TEMP. However, Lenerz restricts his
claim by saying that the modifiers' degree of verb bonding differs depending on the verb
concerned. Although it should be the more closely linked element which is able to be
topicalised with the verb, in 67 only the temporal modifier can move to the Vorfeld with the
verb. Lenerz encounters even more contradictions when comparing the relative verb bonding
of LOC and case arguments (1977: 89ff):
67 Vor Mitternacht einschlafen kann man in diesem Hotel nie.
* In diesem Hotel einschlafen kann man vor Mitternacht nie.
It seems that verb bonding can roughly explain the order of modifier classes, namely for the
superclasses existimatorial, situative and modal modifiers. However, it does not provide
enough motivation for the more fine-grained distinction of position classes as offered by
Hoberg.
3.4.2. LIMITS OF THE VERBNÄHE PRINCIPLE
A sequence which cannot be explained by the Verbnähe principle is the relative order of
toners (examples from Engel, 1988: 327):
68 Er ist aber 3 eben 8 viel zu hartnäckig.
69 Wie hieß er denn 1 noch 34 ?
62 Local modifiers correspond to Hoberg's class a 27 . Temporal modifiers are spread over the classes a 26 ,
a 33 , a 36 , a 37 , a 39 and a 40 (cf. 6.7.1).

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 99
Verb bonding is a very strong principle but, as far as we are aware, it has limited explanatory
power for the more fine-grained order of modifiers. Another problem linked to it is that it is
difficult to grasp, other than by intuition. The arguments given by Pollard and Sag are of no
great assistance: The control criterion only applies for infinitival clauses, and the fact that
subjects agree with the verb only identifies subjects as being least oblique. The latter
criterion even causes a contradiction, as the most oblique verb arguments are direct objects
(passivisation), and direct objects are the ones which become subjects in passivised
sentences. None of Pollard and Sag's criteria is applicable to modifiers.
It is intriguing to see that a principle with the strength of verb bonding is so much based on
intuition. One wonders why the verb geben immediately calls for the question "Was?", and
only then "Wem?"? Why does the statement: "Er starb" call for the questions: "Woran?" and
"Wann?" and only much later: "Wo?" whereas "Er wohnt" needs the answer to the question
"Wo?". It looks as if these questions cannot be answered without reverting to pragmatics.
Research on valency could also probably contribute to finding an appropriate answer (cf.
also section 3.6 on semantic roles).
3.5. THE ANIMACY-FIRST PRINCIPLE
Another principle is the tendency of elements with animate reference to precede other
elements which do not (Eisenberg, 1988: 424f). This factor applies only to nouns and is
furthermore restricted to subdomains: Pronominalised NPs, animate or not, have a strong
tendency to precede full NPs, and definite NPs precede indefinite ones. To name the
features, we shall use the following convention:
N, A, D, G for the cases nominative, accusative, dative and genitive
[+/-a] for +/- animate NPs
[pron] for pronouns
FN for nouns (Funktionsnomen) in support verb constructions (SVC)
As pronominality and animacy have a strong influence on German word order, Hoberg
(1981: 79) chose these features to describe the order of verb arguments in her canonical

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 100
form. According to her, the following is the unmarked sequence in the German Mittelfeld: 1)
pronouns [pron], 2) animate nouns [+a], 3) inanimate nouns [-a] and 4) nouns of support
verb constructions [FN]. Hoberg claims that the sequence of the cases within these four
groups is N, A, D and G (the slash "/" between two or more groups means that elements of
these groups do not occur together):
(N - A - D/G) pron - (N - A - D/G) +a - (N - A - D/G) -a - (N/A/D/G) FN
The animacy-first principle explains that datives normally precede accusatives when the
verb is a verb of giving, taking, communication or concealment. It is worth pointing out that
Hoberg does not take into consideration the definiteness feature, but only refers to
pronominality and animacy. We shall discuss this in section 4.2.
Eisenberg (1989: 424f) calls attention to the interesting fact that non-prototypical verbs like
the psychological verbs (ärgern, beruhigen, begeistern, interessieren, ...) often differ from the
order N

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 101
It may be assumed, and it has often been asserted, that among the infinity of potential referents that may
engage our attention some are intrinsically more salient than others, just as certain potential distinctions
upon which the classification of phenomena might be based are, by virtue of our biological endowment,
intrinsically more salient than others are [...]. What is known of course, almost by definition, more
salient than what is unknown; and, other things being equal, the more recently that something has been
mentioned and put into the universe-of-discourse, or the more familiar that something is to the
participants in a conversation, the greater will be its psychological salience.
Lyons assumes that man is more interested in humans than in animals and more interested in
the latter than in inanimate entities (similar: Tomlin, 1986: 102ff). This is the reason why the
following passive clause seems more normal than the active counterpart (example from
Lyons, 1977: 511):
73a A man was stung by a bee in the High Street to-day.
73b ? A bee stung a man in the High Street to-day.
Foley and Van Valin (1985: 287ff) claim that the universal animacy hierarchy is even more
fine-tuned:
speaker < addressee < human proper < human common < other animate < inanimate
To underpin the relevance of this hierarchy, they mention the Mexican language Mixe, in
which it determines the order of phrases in the sentence. It seems, though, that Foley and
Van Valin confuse animacy with a more general hierarchy of mental presence or of general
interest. Speaker, addressee and other human beings certainly do not differ in how animate
they are, but rather in how interested we are in the different persons and objects. We, the
speakers, are always aware of what we feel and of what we want. The addressee also
deserves a considerable part of our momentary interest. Other people, as well as other things,
are probably of least interest to us, when we are speaking to someone else. Foley and Van
Valin's hierarchy is thus more likely to represent a hierarchy mixing animacy, semantic roles
(3.6) and probably something else.
Animacy is not only relevant for German, where it definitely plays an important role for
word order (cf. our weighing up against definiteness in 4.2). Tomlin (1986) and Foley/Van
Valin, (1985) show that the effect of this principle is relevant universally, or at least for a
considerable part of the other languages of the world.

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3.6. SEMANTIC ROLES
Hoberg (1981: 58) indicates that there could be a relationship between the semantic roles of
NPs in a sentence and their animacy. The roles AGENT and EXPERIENCER, for instance,
are necessarily animate and the role OBJECT rarely is. It seems reasonable to assume that
the animacy-first principle could be replaced by a precedence principle, based on semantic
roles. In his book on universal word ordering principles, Tomlin (1986: 104) links animacy
directly to Fillmore's hierarchy of case roles:
One NP will be more animated than another if it is higher on a hierarchy of semantic roles derived from
Fillmore (1968: 24-25, 33): [...]
Agent > Instrumental > Benefactive/Dative > Patient
He furthermore claims that semantic roles "take precedence over animacy" (1986: 106).
Siewierska (1988: 56ff) gives an example, in which the exact opposite holds, namely the
language Sesotho, in which animacy takes precedence over semantic roles. She claims
generally, that there "are relatively few instances of ordering phenomena directly
attributable to the semantic role hierarchy" (Siewierska, 1988: 51).
For German, Jacobs (1988) seems to share Tomlin's assumption as he does not even mention
animacy in Probleme der freien Wortstellung, where he explains German word order
variation by eight positioning principles, four of which are based on semantic roles (1988:
19ff):
P1: AGENT < X
P2: DATIVE < PATIENT
P7: GOAL < THEME
P8: OBJECT < DIRECTIONAL
X refers to any semantic role other than AGENT, and DATIVE subsumes the semantic roles
which are often realised by dative NPs, namely RECIPIENT, ANIMATE GOAL,
BENEFACTIVE etc (1988: 19). Jacobs understands by THEME the "moved or localised
entity" ("die bewegte oder lokalisierte Entität", 1988: 23).

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 103
Principles based on semantic roles can be very strong. Some verb groups differ in their
syntactical behaviour from the prototypical verbs (Eisenberg, 1989: 424f). The psychic verbs
calling for an accusative, for example (ärgern, beruhigen, begeistern, erfreuen, entsetzen,
interessieren), have A

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 104
3.7. SCOPE
Another factor which can determine the order of elements is what Engel (1970: 14f) calls
"Zemb's thesis" making reference to Les structures logiques de la phrase allemande (Zemb,
1968). Simplified, this thesis states that elements at the left determine elements at the right.
Behaghel (1932: 5) refers to the same regularity when he says "daß das unterscheidende
Glied dem unterschiedenen vorausgeht". At sentence level, this principle is confirmed by
negational elements and degree modifiers. In 76, they refer to the NPs (76a-76c) or the verb
(76d) which immediately follow them:
76a {Nicht/Nur} ICH habe den Leuten die Bücher geliehen.
76b Ich habe {nicht/nur} den LEUten die Bücher geliehen.
76c Ich habe den Leuten {nicht/nur} die BÜcher geliehen.
76d Ich habe den Leuten die Bücher {nicht/nur} geLIEhen.
77 and 78 show that there are exceptions to this rule, which claims that elements with scope
precede those they refer to:
77 Peter gerade sollte aber kein Glück haben.
78 Männer zumindest neigen dazu, in ihrem Verhalten unpolitisch zu sein.
If we assume that determination means specification or modification, this principle does not
apply to the order of verb arguments (79), temporal and local adverbials (80) and toners
(81). In 79 to 81, this principle does not apply, as there is no scope:
79a
79b
80a
80b
Ich habe der Frau ein Buch geschenkt.
Ich habe das Buch einer Frau geschenkt.
Ich habe den Mann hier letzte Woche gesehen.
Ich habe den Mann letzte Woche hier gesehen.
81a Männer sind eben durchaus noch nicht emanzipiert.
81b * Männer sind durchaus eben noch nicht emanzipiert.
The formulation left determines right seems to be too general, as only some elements have
the capacity of scope inclusion. Jacobs (1988: 20) therefore limits the principle to scopeincluding
elements and thus to the relevant part of the lexicon. NPs can have a scope when
they are accompanied by a quantifier. Evidence of this is the following example, in which
the active and the passive sentences have different meanings (Primus, 1987: 61). In 82,

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 105
every man kisses one woman, and this woman can differ from one man to the other. In 83,
however, it is the same woman who is kissed by the men:
82 Jeder Mann küsst eine Frau.
83 Eine Frau wird von jedem Mann geküßt.
Concerning modifiers, we shall have to specify which ones have scope. The scope of
operators in natural language is a complex area and therefore cannot be discussed
exhaustively here. In the following paragraphs, we shall sketch some problems linked to this
phenomenon. For a more in-depth description of degree modifiers and their treatment in
Machine Translation, see Steinberger (1992b) and the literature quoted there.
3.7.1. DEFINITIONS OF SCOPE
In Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft (1983: 465), Bußmann defines scope as follows:
Skopus [griech. scopos >Zielpunkt Logische Partikeln und Quantoren) bezeichnet, wird
Skopus in der Sprachwissenschaft für den semantischen Bezugsbereich von Negation, sprachlichen
Quantoren und Partikeln verwendet. Dem Skopus eines Operators in der Logik entspricht in der
Sprachwissenschaft die Konstituente, die durch Quantoren oder Partikeln modifiziert wird; vgl. auch in
Philip hatte auch Hunger (nicht nur Durst) vs. Philip hatte auch Hunger (nicht nur die anderen).
Fixierung und Interpretation des Skopus hängt häufig von der Akzentsetzung ab, vgl. Intonation.
Scope-including elements are thus the negation (84), quantifiers (85) (jeder, alle, ...) and
degree modifiers (86) (sogar, nur, ...):
84 Sie gibt nicht den Männern die Schuld.
85 Jede Frau sollte drei Männer haben.
86 Sie mag nur Männer.
Engel (1988: 764) specifies the effect of degree modifiers:
[Gradpartikeln] präzisieren [...] unter Umständen den Grad einer Eigenschaft des folgenden Elements
(z.B. nahezu), zugleich und oft ausschließlich spezifizieren sie aber die Erwartbarkeit (sogar), oder sie
setzen das Folgeelement in Beziehung zu gleichartigen Elementen (besonders). So kann der Sprecher
auch mit ihrer Hilfe vor allem seine Einstellung zu einem Sachverhalt ausdrücken.
Thus, the functions of scope-including elements are:

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 106
A) modification of a constituent
B) graduation of a quality
C) specification of how expected an event is
D) to make a relation between similar elements
E) expression of the speaker's attitude
Due to the close relationship between the scope-including element and the modified lexemes
and phrases, Engel (1988) and Hoberg (1981) call this relationship adjunction.
3.7.2. PROBLEMS WITH THE TERM SCOPE
Bußmann's and Engel's definitions are not as clear as they seem at a first glance. According
to Hoberg, particles such as aber, nämlich and allerdings, in (87), (88) and (89) are adjuncts
to the other elements in the Vorfeld. However, none of Engel's (1988: 764) descriptions is
appropriate for their relation (examples 87, 88 and 89 according to Hoberg, 1981: 178):
87 Dann aber bekam sie etwas Unerwartetes zu hören.
88 In der Antike nämlich war jede poetische Gattung erst in einer beschränkten Zahl von
Mustern vertreten.
89 Eines allerdings steht fest: ... (wobei eines dafür steht, daß "sein Ansehen in der
arabischen Welt gelitten hat")
Waltzing (1986: 141f) also has doubts concerning the adjunction relation of these particles
and the Vorfeld elements:
Es verhält sich doch wohl eher so, daß das durch allerdings zum Ausdruck gebrachte einschränkende
Zugeständnis die g a n z e Proposition (daß etwas feststeht) betrifft und daß diese Äußerung - bis auf
noch zu klärende Nuancen - gar nichts anderes besagt als:
90a Es steht allerdings eines fest: ...
90b Allerdings steht eines fest: ...
90c Feststehen tut allerdings eines: ...
90d Eines steht allerdings fest: ...
[...] Alles deutet darauf hin, daß die I ex [existimatorischen Angaben, RS], die ja im Mittelfeld die
Grenze zu den (rechts davon stehenden) rhematischen Mittelfeldelementen markieren, auch im Vorfeld
eine ähnliche Funktion erfüllen, nämlich die, das l i n k s neben ihnen stehende Element als rhematisch
- und zwar mit hohem Fokussierungsgrad/hohem Mitteilungswert - zu kennzeichnen. (Waltzing, 1986:
142; emphasis in the original; numbering changed)
In all four variations, eines is rhematic, but the degree of its focalization varies from one
sentence to the other. 90a is the most neutral (i.e. ambiguous) with respect to the
specification of the relative importance of the elements, but in all four variations eines is

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 107
focused. Further evaluative modifiers which can be used to stress the Vorfeld element are
freilich, immerhin, jedenfalls, schließlich, übrigens, zum Beispiel and beispielsweise
(Waltzing, 1986: 143).
A further problem is the fact that sometimes degree modifiers can also refer to the sentence
as a whole (Altmann, 1976: 248ff). Therefore the borderline between degree modifiers, on
one side, and existimatorial and situative modifiers, on the other, is often unclear. In
particular the distinction between degree modifiers and toners is gradual. There are indeed
no elements in the group of toners which exclusively belong to this group (Eisenberg, 1989:
208).
91 Geh Du mir nur noch einmal alleine in die Diskothek! (toner)
92 Er wiegt nur noch vierzig Kilogramm. (degree modification)
As further particles, such as beinahe, can refer to a phrase as well as to a sentence, Hoberg
(1981: 145) formulates the behaviour of these elements as having a tendency to be adjuncts.
In 93, beinahe refers to the NP, in 94 it refers to the whole sentence:
93 Er hat beinahe jeden Tag mit ihr telefoniert.
94 Er hätte beinahe mit ihr telefoniert.
The difference between 93 and 94 seems to depend on the semantics of the elements which
follow beinahe: When beinahe is a degree modifier, it needs something which can be
considered in terms of degree, such as frequency adverbials (jeden Tag), measurements (10
meters), an evaluation (häßlich, gut) etc.
3.7.3. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SCOPE AND FOCALISATION
According to Engel (1988: 337), all modifiers have a scope. In the sentence
Solange haben sie im Vorraum unruhig auf die Polizei gewartet.
[ist] die modifikative Angabe unruhig auf das Gefüge auf die Polizei warten zu beziehen, die
Lokalangabe im Vorraum aber auf das größere Gefüge unruhig auf die Polizei warten. Das der Polizei
geltende Warten wird also als unruhig charakterisiert und dieses unruhige Warten wird im Vorraum
lokalisiert. Vertauscht man die beiden Angaben, so ändern sich die Bezugsbereiche und damit die
Bedeutung des Satzes entsprechend. (italics in the original)

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 108
We do not agree with Engel's interpretation of Bezug (scope): Although it is true that the
restless waiting takes place in the hall, the persons referred to as sie are also in the hall while
waiting. Furthermore, it is very difficult to imagine what is meant when im Vorraum and
unruhig are permuted relative to each other, as in that case unruhig should refer to Vorraum.
Contrary to his intention, Engel's example makes it clear that one has to distinguish between
scope inclusion and focalization. When elements with scope move, their scope, and thus the
meaning of the sentence, change. Word order variation involving all other elements changes
the theme-rheme structure, but no change of scope takes place.
Although the scope of elements has an impact on the order of words, it is an impact which
also obstructs word order variation. When we want to express that the scope-including
element nur refers to the subject (95a), rather than to the indirect object (95b), the positions
of nur are very limited. For this reason, we shall list scope in section 4.4.3 again, when
discussing restrictions to the interaction of the word order principles.
95a {Nicht/Nur} ICH habe den Leuten die Bücher geliehen.
95b Ich habe {nicht/nur} den LEUten die Bücher geliehen.
When we refer to elements such as nur from now on, we refer to their sentence-modifying
reading. In the analysis suggested in Steinberger (1992b), degree modifiers are part of the
phrase they modify, and move with it in the sentence. Nur ich in 95a would thus be analysed
as one NP.
With this short discussion, we intended to show what is generally referred to by the term
scope. Furthermore, we mentioned some problems which are linked to it, namely the
different use of the term by different authors, as well as the difficult borderline between
scope-including elements and others.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 109
3.8. RHYTHM
Eroms (1986: 50) and Lötscher (1983: 185) suggest that rhythm plays a role when we decide
on the order of elements in the German sentence. However, they do not specify this
principle. Behaghel (1932: 6f) states more precisely:
Das Deutsche hat das Bestreben, stärker und schwächer betonte Glieder abwechseln zu lassen.
A similar formulation can be found in Sommerfeldt/Starke (1988: 287f) who also see a
relationship between rhythm and Behaghel's Gesetz der wachsenden Glieder, which they
comprehend as a variation on the factor rhythm. Furthermore, some of the people who
answered the questionnaire discussed in Steinberger (1990) mentioned that rhythm has
influenced their acceptability decision. We do not have more information or intuition on this
subject, and therefore we cannot discuss it any further.
In French there seems to be no doubt that rhythm has an influence on the position of
adverbials. This factor is mentioned in several grammars (see e.g. Grevisse, 1986: 1421).
3.9. NATURAL GENDER
We have not come across literature mentioning natural gender as a factor determining word
order, but the questionnaire discussed in Steinberger (1990) gave some evidence that the
natural gender of the referents of nouns can influence people's decisions on the order of NPs.
38 German native speakers were asked to decide on which sentence, out of a sentence pair,
they thought was more natural. All sentences were given without context, and the answer
that both sentences are equally natural was allowed. The numbers show how many
informants chose the respective sentences to be the more natural ones (test 2, page III:
96a Sie hatten dem Mann die Frau gleichgestellt. 6
96b Sie hatten die Frau dem Mann gleichgestellt. 32
97a Sie hatten der Frau den Mann gleichgestellt. 13
97b Sie hatten den Mann der Frau gleichgestellt. 25

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 110
When deciding whether 96a or 96b was more natural, 32 out of the 38 tested persons
preferred the order accusative before dative (96b). In the sentence pair 97, the same order
was preferred but the amount of votes for the dative-accusative order was larger (13
compared to 6 answers). As the factors animacy, definiteness and semantic roles are
identical in both sentence pairs, the answers show that another principle must have
influenced the tested persons. Indeed several of the informants said independently that they
wanted to give precedence to the woman ("ich wollte der Frau den Vortritt lassen"), or that
they were used to letting the woman go first.
In another test (test 5, page VI) we wanted to find out how the tested persons interpreted the
semantic roles of NPs if they are not expressed morphologically. The test is based on Höhle's
(1982: 130) claim that hearers prefer unmarked order for contextless sentences, as this
allows them most liberal interpretation:
Außerhalb von disambiguierenden Kontexten bevorzugt der Hörer eine Interpretation, die der normalen
Wortstellung entspricht [..., denn ...] unter normaler Wortstellung [ist] die Anzahl der prinzipiell
möglichen Kontexttypen am größten; diese Interpretation ist daher eine relativ sichere Interpretation.
We asked our informants to put articles in front of the proper names in sentences, such as 3,
in order to identify their syntactic and semantic roles. From this procedure, we hoped to
discover which word order they thought was more natural, or unmarked.
In five test sentence pairs we used male names. The result was that in 87% of the cases
people preferred the order dative before accusative. In only one sentence was a female name
involved (Helga in 98), which changed the result drastically: Only 45% gave the answer
98b, which shows that they preferred the order dative before accusative. 50% of the
informants preferred the opposite order (98b). A possible explanation for these diverging
results is that the tested persons preferred the idea that a man (Fritz) introduces a man
(Wolfgang) to a woman (Helga) to the one that a man introduces a woman to a man:
98 Dann stellte Fritz Wolfgang Helga vor. (morphologically and syntactically ambiguous)
98a Der Fritz dem Wolfgang die Helga D

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We want to stress that it is not the 5% difference between the D

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 112
principle could be formulated: Dative verb complements tend to precede accusative
complements.
3.11. LENERZ' "SATZKLAMMERBEDINGUNG"
Lenerz (1977: 63) formulates a further rule:
Es besteht die stilistische Tendenz, Sätze ohne hinten geschlossene Satzklammer möglichst nicht auf ein
gewichtsloses Satzglied enden zu lassen.
This tendency explains the perception-related difference in acceptability between 102a and
102b (example, stress marking and acceptability judgement according to Lenerz, 1977: 61):
102a ? Ich widme den vielen überaus hilfreichen KolLEgen, die durch ihre Kritik erst seine
Entstehung ermöglicht haben, dieses Buch.
102b
Ich habe den vielen überaus hilfreichen KolLEgen, die durch ihre Kritik erst seine
Entstehung ermöglicht haben, dieses Buch gewidmet.
Both sentences contradict Behaghel's Gesetz der wachsenden Glieder, which Lenerz also
lists under the header stylistic tendencies. Lenerz claims that 102b is more acceptable than
102a, because in 102b the light element dieses Buch is supported by gewidmet. Sommerfeldt
and Starke (1988: 283ff) mention the same argument as "zu schwacher Klammerrand",
leading to the extraposition of middle field elements into the Nachfeld. Furthermore, they
explain the related phenomenon that, if the middle field is too crowded, some or all of its
elements are extraposed.

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4. THE INTERACTION OF PREFERENCE RULES, AND SOME
RESTRICTIONS
In the preceding chapter we discussed eleven factors which can have an impact on the order
of elements in the German sentence, namely:
1) Theme-rheme structure
2) Behaghel's "Gesetz der wachsenden Glieder"
3) Functional sentence perspective
4) Semantic-syntactic closeness to the verb ("Verbnähe")
5) The Animacy-first principle
6) Semantic roles
7) Scope
8) Rhythm
9) Natural gender
10) Grammaticalisation (habit)
11) Lenerz' "Satzklammerbedingung"
For demonstration purposes, we discussed the different principles independently, but all act
and interact in every single sentence. In 4.1. we shall discuss this interaction and in 4.2 the
relative weight of certain factors. 4.3. will be dedicated to the calculation of acceptability,
and some limitations to the free interaction of the principles will be the subject of 4.4.
4.1. INTERACTION OF THE PRINCIPLES
All principles discussed in 3 apply at the sentence level. However, not all can be dealt with
purely at sentential level. Instead, some rely on contextual information (i.e. theme-rheme
structure and functional sentence perspective). The factors can be categorised as pragmatic
(TRS, FSP), semantic (semantic roles), syntactic (grammaticalization, scope), socio-cultural
(natural gender) and prosodical (rhythm) but all have an impact on the syntax, namely the
word order of the sentence. The principles are not rigid but are tendencies towards a certain

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 114
order of elements. Therefore, contradiction among them does not necessarily make a
sentence ungrammatical.
Some of the principles are interrelated. Long and heavy elements tend to be rhematic,
rhemes tend to have a high informational value (sentence perspective), and the scope of
degree modifiers also tends to be the focus of the sentence (sentence perspective). Rhythm,
as well as Behaghel's Gesetz der wachsenden Glieder have been subsumed under the
common header stylistics. The latter restricts the isolated occurrence of short verbs, or verb
prefixes, at the end of the sentence, and is thus also linked to Behaghel's Gesetz. Moreover,
there is a relationship between semantic roles and animacy, as some roles are necessarily
animate (e.g. AGENT, EXPERIENCER) whereas others tend to be inanimate (e.g.
OBJECT). One can assume that Verbnähe and the importance of semantic roles are
interrelated, too: AGENTs tend to be realised as subjects, and are thus minimally bound by
the verb, whereas OBJECTs tend to be realised as closely verb-bound direct objects. And
finally, Verbnähe can be a result of grammaticalisation, as can be seen by the rigidity of
support verb constructions.
The politeness of the persons who tend to give precedence to the woman, and the restriction
that some people would rather expect a man to introduce a man to a woman than a woman to
a man (see 3.9) are not in an obvious relationship with any of the other principles. However,
although this factor is worth mentioning and might be found amusing, it probably does not
play a very important role compared to some other preference rules.
It is obvious that normally not all preference rules can be satisfied, and that therefore, they
prefer constituent sequences, which are not compatible with each other. We want to show
this using example sentence 1:
1a
Ich habe das sehr dicke Buch einem Mann gegeben.
In 1a, the rules concerning theme-rheme structure (1), scope (7) and rhythm (8) are satisfied,
whereas the rules 2 (wachsende Glieder), 4 (verb bonding), 5 (animacy) and 6 (semantic
roles) are violated. We cannot say anything about the subjective factor of functional sentence

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perspective (3) as we do not know the speaker's intention but can only deduce that the
speaker apparently assigns more informational value to einem Mann than to das sehr dicke
Buch. Principle 9 (natural gender) does not apply because only a man is referred to in the
third person. Preference rule 10 concerning grammaticalisation does not apply here either, as
there occurs no rigid structure in example 1, except probably the tendency to the order D

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 116
It seems reasonable to assume that the grammaticality of sentences is a function of the
principles which apply (cf. Jacobs, 1988). Example 1 shows that the violation of several
rules does not lead to ungrammaticality and that apparently one rule can have the same
weight as several others.
The interaction of the preference rules suggests that grammaticality and ungrammaticality
are merging concepts. The best sentence is one which satisfies all preference rules and the
more principles are satisfied the better a sentence is. To simplify, one could thus say that our
intuition on the grammaticality of sentences can approximately be measured by counting the
principles which are satisfied, and those which are violated. In this assumption we are in
agreement with Sampson (1987):
The majority of computational linguists develop systems which analyse NLs using some form of
generative grammar which defines a clearcut class of well-formed sentences. But computational
linguists who work with corpora of authentic NL material often doubt the validity of any clearcut
distinction between grammatical and ungrammatical sequences. Statistics on the different types of noun
phrase in a 40,000-word sample of written English are used to show (i) that there is a continuous
gradient from very common to very rare constructions, and (ii) that alternative constructions grow more
numerous at lower frequency-levels in a regular fashion which implies that a significant proportion of
grammatical constituents in a text will belong to extremely rare types. (Sampson, 1987: 219)
The limitations we see to this approach will be discussed in 4.3. and 4.4.
The question of whether the principles are universal or German-specific has to be examined
separately.
4.2. RELATIVE WEIGHT OF SOME PRINCIPLES
Most likely there are also absolute weight differences among ordering principles;
for instance, the principle that orders pronouns before nonpronominal NPs seems
stronger throughout than the heaviness principle. (Uszkoreit, 1987: 123)
Eine verallgemeinerte Beschreibung auch von nichtnormalen Satzgliedfolgen im
Mittelfeld muß eine Darstellung des Zusammenspiels verschiedener,
unterschiedlich gewichteter Einflüsse beinhalten. (Lötscher, 1981: 44)
We saw in 4.1 that the principles have different weights, so that sometimes the contradiction
of one single rule can make a sentence less acceptable than the contradiction of several
weaker ones. A rule which turns out to be more important than all other single rules is the

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theme-rheme structure (1) (Engel, 1970: 12). Weaker rules are the ones concerning natural
gender (9), Behaghel's Gesetz der wachsenden Glieder (2), rhythm (8) and Lenerz'
Satzklammerbedingung (11).
It is very difficult to find out exactly how powerful the single factors are, as some cannot be
separated. To weigh them properly we would have to be able to isolate them. However, this
is not possible, as some rules, such as semantic roles for instance, apply in every single
sentence. What we can do, though, is to compare n-tuples of sentences which are identical
and to vary one feature only. This is what we have done in a test to find out the relative
importance of animacy and definiteness, which are two features which compete strongly, as
well as the unmarked order of dative and accusative objects. The tests and the results are
described in detail in Steinberger (1990).
The reason for doing this test was that Ursula Hoberg and Ulrich Engel base their canonical
forms on different features. Hoberg's is based on the features pronominality and animacy
(1981: 94, 194), whereas Engel (1988: 326) uses definiteness instead. Both agree in that
pronouns have the order N

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 118
Engel's forecast
correct : false
D +d < A +d They 26:17 cases
D +d < A -d do not 48: 0 cases
A +d < D -d agree 1: 5 cases
D -d < A -d
8: 0 cases
Total result: (out of 105 cases) 83:22 cases
In the second group of NP sequences, Engel and Hoberg do not really disagree, but use
different features for their forecasts, which makes them unable to be compared. If one NP is
animate and definite, and the other one is inanimate and indefinite, both approaches foresee
the same order. Only if the features are distributed differently do the theses contradict each
other.
The table shows that in the cases in which Engel and Hoberg do not agree, namely the order
of full NPs, Engel's forecast is wrong in 21% of the cases (22 out of 105 occurrences). In one
point, namely the order of an animate accusative and a inanimate dative, Engel is even
wrong in the relation 1:5. Unfortunately, Hoberg does not investigate the statistical
relevance of her assumption so that we do not know whether the use of the animacy feature
is more appropriate than the use of definiteness. However, Hoberg (1981: 59f) lists several
examples which should underpin the relevance of her canonical form:
3 Mit einem Fünfzigmarkschein rettete der Eßlinger Holzfabrikant Hermann Bischoff einer
Frau das Leben. (D -d+a - A +d-a )
4 ..., was im Einzelfall auch bedeuten kann, das persönliche dem allgemeinen Wohl
einzuordnen. (A +d-a - D +d-a )
5 ...; er hatte den Tod der Vertreibung von Heimat und Besitz vorgezogen. (A +d-a - D +d-a )
6 Wenn wir den schwarzen Bankbeamten in Aruscha dem Stallknecht in einem entlegenen
bayrischen Dorf gegenüberstellen ... (A +d+a - D +d+a )
3 is one of the cases where an indefinite dative precedes a definite accusative argument. The
strong tendency of das Leben in das Leben retten suggests to us that the whole term should
probably be categorised as an idiomatic phrase. In this case, the example would not
constitute a counter-example.

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In 4, Hoberg is definitely right, as the opposite order would be unnatural. The NPs das
persönliche (Wohl) and das allgemeine Wohl could be interpreted respectively as starting
point and goal of an action. The A

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 120
large amount of verbs which call for animate dative and inanimate accusative arguments
explains why most grammarians assume basic D

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The only application of such a weighing mechanism we know of was carried out by Jacobs
(1988: 27ff) who uses addition and subtraction as the weighing function, and an open set of
values indicating the importance of the principles. The higher the number, the more
important the preference is. Jacobs' principles P1, P2, P7 and P8 are based on semantic roles.
P3, P4 and P5 are more or less related to theme-rheme structure and functional sentence
perspective:
Jacobs' preference rule
assigned score
P1: AGENT < X 3
P2: DATIVE < PATIENT 2
P3: PPro < full-NP 3
P4: definite < indefinite 2
P5: background < focus 1
P6: scope-including < scope-included
P7: GOAL < THEME
P8: OBJECT < DIRECTIONAL
According to Jacobs (1987: 30), P6 is a super-principle which cannot be assigned a score as
it rules out all the others (cf. our section 4.4.3 below). P7, on the other hand, is very weak
(Jacobs, 1988: 23), which is probably why he did not assign it a score at all. P8 is supposed
to be a strong principle (Jacobs, 1987: 30). Nevertheless, Jacobs mentions it only briefly and
fails to assign it a value without giving a reason for this.
When a principle is satisfied, its value is added to the preference value of the sentence, when
it is violated, its value is subtracted. The intuitive interpretation of the score is that the
violation of P5, for example, is three times less harmful than the violation of P1 or of P3.
Jacobs' approach is more fine-grained than another one suggested by Erbach (1993). Erbach
recommends to introduce preference into typed feature formalisms such as head-driven
phrase structure grammar (HPSG) by associating every feature structure with a preference
rule (Erbach, 1993: 177):
The preference value is intended to model the degree of confidence that the feature structure is an
appropriate representation of a linguistic utterance. In the case of ambiguity, several feature structures
can be found each of which has a preference value. The feature structure with the highest preference is
the one which is given most confidence. The ordering imposed on the feature structures is just the
numerical order of the associated preferences.

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For the treatment of word order, Erbach suggests using the subcat list to express unmarked
word order, as is usual in HPSG (Pollard/Sag, 1987: 172ff). If the arguments are taken from
the subcat list in the unmarked order, the default preference value 1.0 (100%) is assigned. If
the element which has to be bound first is not first on the subcat list, the preference value
decreases (e.g. by the factor 0.8). The further away the element is from the head of the list,
the worse the preference. Erbach (1992: 179) shows his idea using the following examples:
7 (weil) der Mann dem Mädchen das Buch gibt.
gibt 1.000
das Buch gibt 1.000
dem Mädchen das Buch gibt 1.000
der Mann dem Mädchen das Buch gibt 1.000
8 (weil) dem Mädchen der Mann das Buch gibt.
gibt 1.000
das Buch gibt 1.000
der Mann das Buch gibt 0.800
dem Mädchen der Mann das Buch gibt 0.800
9 (weil) dem Mädchen das Buch der Mann gibt.
gibt 1.000
der Mann gibt 0.640
das Buch der Mann gibt 0.512
dem Mädchen das Buch der Mann gibt 0.512
In 7, all elements are bound in the unmarked order, which corresponds to the order of the
subcat list of the verb geben:
lexicon (gibt) ==>
synsem: local:
(head: cat: v &
subcat: [np(acc), np(dat), np(nom)] ).
The preference for the whole sentence thus is 1.00. In 8, the nominative NP is bound before
the dative NP, which reduces the preference value to 0.8 because the nominative NP is the
second element of the remaining subcat list, and not the first one. Then only is the dative NP
taken. The dative NP is the only remaining element on the subcat list and therefore does not
reduce the preference value any further.
In 9, der Mann, which is the third element on the list, is bound first, which reduces the value
to 0.64 (0.8 multiplied by 0.8). Then, das Buch is bound. As the accusative NP is the second
element on the remaining subcat list, the preference value is reduced again by the factor 0.8

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(resulting in 0,512). The dative NP is the only element left on the list so that the overall
value does not decrease any further. The preference values reflect the fact that 7 is the most
natural and 9 the least natural of the three sentences.
After the broad discussion of the complexity of our word order rules it is obvious that
Erbach's approach is not suitable for the description of German word order. The problems
linked to his suggestion are (a) that it uses the subcat list, which automatically limits the
effect to arguments, and (b) that it is far too crude. It does not account for differences
between pronouns and full NPs, for definiteness differences, animacy, rhythm and gender.
The merit of Erbach's work, however, is that he introduces preference in a formalism which
does not normally allow preference at all (cf. Uszkoreit, 1991: 237). It would be interesting
to see whether it could be applied to the more sophisticated linear precedence rules
suggested by Uszkoreit (1987), or to combine them with our findings on word order
regularities.
As for Jacobs' score calculation model, we do sympathise with it. If we do not want to assign
our principles a score here it is because it is difficult to isolate the rules in order to weigh
them properly. Furthermore, there are too many inconsistencies, or hardened structures,
which interfere with the free interaction of the principles. These are the restrictions
discussed in 4.4, but also, and mainly, hardened structures such as the strict order of toners,
the impossibility of stressing the accusative neuter pronoun es, and many others which are
listed in section 6.1. Instead, we shall use a detailed canonical form including flexible
categories such as theme, rheme and focus to describe word order. This alternative method,
as well as the arguments for it, will be discussed in section 5.2. For this reason, we shall
leave the subject of relative principle weighing now and discuss some restrictions which
interfere with the principles.

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4.4. RESTRICTION ON THE INTERACTION OF PREFERENCE
RULES
Several general restrictions apply to the free interaction of word-ordering principles. These
are the limitation to the sentence or VP level, the occurrence of possessive relations or
quantificational elements, and the pragmatic need of a sentence focus
("Mitteilungszentrum"). More idiosyncratic limitations will be listed in 6.1.
4.4.1. SYNTACTIC SUBORDINATION
We claim in this section that modifiers and arguments which are part of a PP, NP, AP or an
AdvP, are not subject to the effect of the word-ordering principles. The influence of the
preference rules is restricted to the verb arguments (including the nominative or subject
argument), and the modifiers which refer to anything else, namely to the verb and the
sentence.
Preference rules thus apply to phrases as a whole, including their complements and
modifiers. Noun attributes or adjective complements are not determined by the word order
preferences and will thus not be described by the canonical form which we shall develop
below, either.
The following examples show that subordinate elements do not behave the same way that
phrases at sentence and VP level do:
10 ..., weil ihr Heimweh nach Berlin ihm auf die Nerven ging.
11 ..., weil die eines Ordens würdige Nonne ihm Heilung brachte.
12 Gestern brachte der Vater des Kindes der Hebamme Blumen.
In 10, the PP nach Berlin is a PO of the noun Heimweh. Therefore, it must be adjacent to the
noun which precedes the pronoun ihm. If the PP was a PO of the verb and thus a PO at
sentence or VP level, it would have to follow the pronoun. The same applies for the genitive
complement of würdige (eines Ordens), and for the genitive attribute of Vater (des Kindes).
If they were verb complements they would have to follow the dative objects.

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In a few cases, this observation may help to disambiguate sentences with respect to their
structures, as one possible analysis is either ungrammatical or unlikely. In sentences such as
10 to 12, the verb dependency reading of PPs or NPs can be excluded. In 6.6, we shall
briefly discuss how such a disambiguation could be realised in a Machine Translation
system.
More cases of ambiguity arise with respect to modifiers. These can often refer either to the
sentence or to a noun (or NP, PP etc). According to Eisenberg (1989: 210), all local and a few
temporal modifiers can be noun attributes. Modal adverbs never occur with this function. To
guarantee correct analysis, adverbs need a feature indicating whether they can modify other
parts of speech. In 6.7, we shall propose features which help to find out whether their position
has to be dealt with at sentence level or not. 13 and 14 show an adverb and a PP as attributes to
nouns:
13 Der Mann dort schielt.
14 Die Vorlesung um 12 Uhr wird sicherlich langweilig werden.
Generally, the only situation in which one can be sure that a phrase modifies the preceding
noun is in the Vorfeld. Dort in 13 and um 12 Uhr in 14 must be noun modifiers because there
is only space for one constituent in the Vorfeld. In the Mittelfeld, nearly all occurrences of
temporal and local modifiers are ambiguous (15a). 15b is one of the few cases where, for
semantic reasons, dort can unambiguously be analysed as a noun attribute, as the woman
cannot be a teacher here and there simultaneously:
15a Ich weiß das, weil die Frau dort früher Lehrerin war.
15b Ich weiß das, weil die Frau dort früher hier Lehrerin war.
We have seen that it is necessary to distinguish subordinated elements from those which are
not. The former and the latter follow different positioning regularities. Another fact worth
pointing out is that some subordinated elements have to be adjacent to their regent (Heimweh
nach Berlin in 16), whereas others do not (dessen verdächtig in 17):
16 ..., weil ihr Heimweh nach Berlin dem Mann Angst machte.
* ..., weil ihr Heimweh dem Mann nach Berlin Angst machte.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 126
17 Er hat sich dessen gewiß verdächtig gemacht.
Er hat sich gewiß dessen verdächtig gemacht.
4.4.2. POSSESSIVE RELATIONS
Possessive relations also restrict the power of preference rules. When there is a possessive
relation within a clause, the possessor must antecede the possessed (Lenerz, 1977: 99f;
examples from Lenerz):
18a Ich habe das Buch seinem Besitzer zurückgegeben.
18b * Ich habe seinem Besitzer das Buch zurückgegeben.
(if Besitzer is the possessor of das Buch)
Behaghel (1929: 203f) claims that this even applies for implicit possessive relations:
19a Wenn ein Kind den Eltern gleicht, ist niemand überrascht.
19b * Wenn den Eltern ein Kind gleicht, ist niemand überrascht.
4.4.3. QUANTIFICATIONAL ELEMENTS
The scope of quantifiers is a fundamental part of the meaning of a sentence, which changes
with their different positions in the sentence. As the above-mentioned preference rules must
not change the semantics of the sentence, the presence of quantifiers can counteract the play
of the preference rules, or even cancel them out. The meaning of 20a, for instance, differs
from that of 20b (examples and explanation from Lenerz, 1977: 58):
20a Ich habe vielen Leuten drei Bücher gezeigt.
20b Ich habe drei Bücher vielen Leuten gezeigt.
[Der Unterschied besteht darin, daß (20a)] auch dann wahr [ist], wenn ich nicht jedem der Leute die
gleichen Bücher gezeigt habe. (20b) jedoch ist nur dann wahr, wenn jeder der Leute die gleichen drei
Bücher gezeigt bekommen hat. Unter diesen Bedingungen sind aber alle Verteilungen von definiten und
nicht-definiten Determinatoren sowohl bei IO DO wie bei DO IO akzeptabel. [Lenerz uses IO and DO
for indirect and direct objects; numbering changed]
The same reason leads Jacobs (1988: 30) to not include the super principle scope in his
acceptability calculation. Even a high score would not be enough to account for the qualitative
difference between the effect of scope and the other principles. The fact that scope-including
elements have to precede the scope-included ones can rule out all other principles. Jacobs
(1988: 30f) assumes that the violation of restrictions involving c-command (in terms of
Government and Binding Theory, Chomsky, 1981) will always make sentences ungrammatical.

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4.4.4. THE PRAGMATIC NEED OF A SENTENCE FOCUS
Every sentence needs a focus, or Mitteilungszentrum (central information unit, or centre of
interest), in order to be acceptable. By focus we understand a potential rheme, or an element
which ranks relatively high on the scale of communicative importance. This focus can
consist of a rhematic (i.e. unknown) element, or of a thematic element which is stressed
contrastively. This constraint is a pragmatic truth which is self-evident, as we normally
speak in order to say something. This speech act constraint can have an impact on the syntax
of sentences.
We have mentioned in 3.1.4. and 3.3.1. that pragmatic and situative modifiers normally
separate theme and rheme. Although they can precede the theme, their position behind the
rheme leads to ungrammatical sentences. For this reason the right-movement of elements of
these modifier groups limits the potentially rhematic domain. The following examples show
that the further right the position of the existimatorial modifier wohl is, the smaller the
potential rhemes of the sentences are (the potential rheme is marked by italics):
21a Der Mann hat wohl der Frau das Buch geschenkt.
21b Der Mann hat der Frau wohl das Buch geschenkt.
21c Der Mann hat der Frau das Buch wohl geSCHENKT.
In 21a, the dative and the accusative objects, as well as the past participle, can carry the
sentence accent, whereas in 21b the dative NP cannot. In 21c the focus is limited to the past
participle (cf. 21d and 21e). If the focus is on either of the objects, wohl has to precede them
(21f, 21g):
21d * Der Mann hat der FRAU das Buch wohl geschenkt.
21e * Der Mann hat der Frau das BUCH wohl geschenkt.
21f Der Mann hat wohl der FRAU das Buch geschenkt.
21g Der Mann hat der Frau wohl das BUCH geschenkt.
Some German native speakers may disagree with the harsh acceptability judgement
concerning 21d and want to replace it by ??, but they will certainly agree that the other
permutations (21a, 21b, 21c, 21f and 21g) are much better.

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If in a correct sentence there is no typically rhematic element such as an infinite NP, a noun
of a support verb construction, a predicative element, a modal modifier or a main verb
(Hoberg, 1981: 175), a typically thematic element (e.g. a definite NP) has to function as a
rheme. Consequently, the sentence "Der Mann ist wohl der Präsident" is acceptable in 22
but not in 23 as the NP der Präsident cannot be rhematic in the latter:
22 Context: August, schau mal den stattlichen Herrn da drüben an!
22a Der Mann ist wohl der PräsiDENT.
23 Context: Der Präsident muß irgendwo hier im Raum sein!
23b * Der Mann ist wohl der Präsident.
23b could probably be regarded as acceptable if the determiner der is interpreted as a
demonstrative which carries a contrastive accent (DER Mann ist wohl der Präsident). This
has to do with the exceptional status of the Vorfeld which we shall discuss in 5.5.
If the focus is reduced to an element which cannot be stressed, such as the copula verb sein
for example, the sentence is ungrammatical:
24a ..., weil der Mann wohl der PräsiDENT ist.
24b * ..., weil der Mann der Präsident wohl ist.
The toner wohl cannot itself be focused, as toners are generally not focusable (Bußmann,
1983: 325) 66 and therefore cannot carry the sentence accent. However, it would be wrong to
conclude that these particles cannot follow definite NPs, or that they must not finish the
sentence. If there is another possible rheme or focus in the sentence (26), or if the finite verb
in verb-second position can be focused (27), this order is perfectly possible:
26 Der Mann ist dem Präsidenten wohl zuWIder.
27 Der Mann SCHENKte das Buch dem Präsidenten wohl.
A topicalised verb complement can carry the sentence focus, too (28a). However, if it is
moved back to the Mittelfeld, it has to follow the particle which limits the potential focus
66 Wohl in 4 is no exception to this regularity. Instead, it is a homonym to wohl in 3 (see modifier list in
appendix 8.2):
25 Der Minister lügt sehr WOHL.

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(28b versus 28c). Alternatively, the verb has to function as the sentence focus (28d). The
phenomenon that, even if the potential rheme is limited to the right, the Vorfeld element and
the verb in verb-second position can function as focus will be discussed in 5.5:
28a Dem MANN gab er das Buch wohl.
28b Er gab das Buch wohl dem MANN.
28c * Er gab dem MANN das Buch wohl.
28d Er GAB dem Mann das Buch wohl.
The compulsory existence of a sentence focus must be taken into consideration when
describing word order variations, as we do not want to exclude sentences which would be
correct if this constraint was satisfied.
In this context we wish to mention another regularity: A simple sentence not only has to
have at least one potential focus, but it should not have more than one either (Altmann,
1976: 30f; Rochemont, 1989: 6). In 6.2, we shall list the constructions which can inflict
focus on phrases. In 29, jetzt is focused by the degree modifier erst, and the pronoun er must
be stressed because of its position behind the adverb deshalb:
29 * Erst JETZT hat deshalb ER ihn besucht.
Note that in some cases context can also call for the focusing of elements. 30 is
ungrammatical because the degree modifier nur focuses er, and Sibylle carries a contrastive
accent because of the context:
30 Context: Peter hat nicht MARIA geküßt.
30a * Nur ER hat SiBYLle geküßt.
4.5. SUMMARY
The goal of this chapter was to show how the preference rules described in chapter 3
interact. The factors can have different weights, and they can favour competing word orders.
Our intuition on whether a phrase sequence is natural depends on how many principles
favour it, and on how strong these principles are (cf. 4.1 and 4.2). In 4.3, we presented two
models to imitate people's intuitions on which word order is most natural. Jacobs (1987)
suggested to give each preference rule a weight. If the rule is satisfied in a given sentence,

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the value is added to the acceptability score of the sentence, if it is violated, its score is
subtracted. The sentence with the the highest score is the most natural.
Another proposition is made by Erbach (1993), who claims that the most natural sentences
are the ones whose phrases are ordered according to the obliqueness hierarchy. Each
diversion from this ideal order decreases the acceptability score of the sentence by a factor
0.8. Although this latter approach seems far too crude, as it does not account for the varying
effect of different variations, and as it does not include the position of modifiers, it could
probably be modified. The interesting part of Erbach's proposition is that he introduces the
notion of preference in feature-based formalisms, so that it could be applied to more
sophisticated preference rules.
In 4.4, we show that the phrase ordering principles only apply to verb arguments, and to
sentence and verb modifiers. Subordinate elements, such as noun arguments and modifiers
behave differently (4.4.1). Further factors which can interfere with the free interaction of
positioning principles are possessive relations (4.4.2) and the scope of quantificational
elements (4.4.3). 4.4.4 finally shows that the condition that every sentence needs a possible
rheme can also have an impact on ordering, as rheme-less sentences must be avoided. The
latter condition mainly concerns the position of the subgroup of modifiers which restrict the
possible rheme of a sentence, and which cannot be rhematic themselves.

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5. HOW TO DESCRIBE GERMAN FREE WORD ORDER
FORMALLY
In this chapter we mention three formal possibilities of how to describe a free word order
language (5.1). One of these methods is the calculation of the score of different permutation
variations, as mentioned in section 4.3. Another is the use of complex linear precedence (LP)
rules, suggested by Uszkoreit (1987). The third possibility is the use of a canonical form
(5.2). We claim that the latter method is more efficient for applied linguistics. We then
discuss what the term canonical form (CF) implies for a free word order language, and
discuss those suggested by Hoberg (1981), Engel (1988) and Steinberger (1990) (5.3). The
latter will be developed further in chapter 6. In the following sections, we discuss why some
sentences do not comply with our CF (5.4), examine the role of the Vorfeld (5.5) and show
how important it can be for translation to recognise theme, rheme and focus of a sentence
(5.6).
5.1. ACCEPTABILITY CALCULATION AND LP RULE DISJUNCTION
In 4.3, we discussed the possibility of describing German word order by calculating the
score of different permutation variations. This method would not only be helpful for the
acceptability comparison of several permutation variations in analysis, but it could also be
used in synthesis, by generating all possible variations, and then choosing the one with the
highest score, in order to get the most acceptable or natural one. However, we mentioned in
the same section that this procedure is problematic, because the calculation does not take
into account the restrictions formulated in 4.4. Rigid sequences such as support verb
constructions, the fixed order of toners, and other idiosyncrasies could not be accounted for
either.
One could possibly avoid the problem by giving the rules involving these regularities
extraordinarily high scores. Alternatively, one could think of having an interaction of

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preference and hard rules, the latter of which must not be violated. Although the named
possibilities should not be excluded, this method seems relatively complicated. Furthermore,
it is computationally expensive, as all possible variations would have to be created and
compared in sentence generation, before the word order with the highest score could be
identified.
An alternative method was suggested for the treatment of free word order in Generalized
Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG) by Uszkoreit (1987: 115ff). In GPSG, Linear
Precedence (LP) Rules are traditionally used to order phrases in the sentence. Some of the
rules that Uszkoreit (1987: 114 and 167) suggests concern compulsory word ordering
regularities, such as the position of the finite verb in main and subordinate clauses, and the
position of the conjunction daß in the subordinate clause. A further subset of Uszkoreit's LP
rules is more relevant for our purpose, as it is related to the preference rules listed in chapter 3:
A) +NOM < +DAT
B) +NOM < +ACC
C) +DAT < +ACC
D) -FOCUS < +FOCUS
E) +PRONOUN < -PRONOUN
F) +TOP < X (The topic precedes everything else)
Uszkoreit (1987: 118) concedes that these rules are only a subset of the rules applying in
German. They are all related to the preference rules mentioned earlier. LP rules A and B are
vaguely linked to the preference rules discussed in 3.4 (verb bonding), 3.5 (animacy-first)
and 3.6 (semantic roles). Rule D corresponds to functional sentence perspective (3.3), and E
and F are part of what we discussed in 3.1 (theme-rheme structure). Concerning the ordering
of dative and accusative arguments (C), we expressed our reservations in 4.2.
As far as we are concerned however, the main interest of Uszkoreit's word order treatment is
that he solves a major problem linked to LP rules in standard GPSG, namely that the
violation of one of these rules involves the rejection of the whole structure. We have seen in
4.3 that even several preference rules can be violated without the sentence being

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ungrammatical. Uszkoreit (1987: 115ff) solves this problem by combining the atomic LP
rules into one complex LP rule, consisting of a major LP disjunction. The idea is that
any of the atomic LP rules within the complex LP rule can be violated as long as the violations are
sanctioned by at least one of the atomic LP rules. (Uszkoreit, 1987: 118)
Only if none of the LP rules legitimises the violation of the other(s) is a sentence
ungrammatical. Uszkoreit exemplifies his method using the sentences 1 to 3:
1 Dann will der Doktor dem Mann die Pille geben.
-FOCUS +FOCUS -FOCUS
+NOM +DAT +ACC
2 Dann will der Doktor die Pille dem Mann geben.
-FOCUS -FOCUS +FOCUS
+NOM +ACC +DAT
3 ?? Dann will der Doktor die Pille dem Mann geben.
-FOCUS +FOCUS -FOCUS
+NOM +ACC +DAT
According to his model, 1 and 2 are grammatical, whereas 3 is not, as in 3 the atomic LP
rules +DAT < +ACC and -FOCUS < +FOCUS are violated, and no other atomic LP rule
legitimises these violations.
Uszkoreit's model is interesting in that it introduces a way to deal with the combination of
several weak word ordering rules in sentence analysis. In synthesis, it would generate all
permutations sanctioned by any atomic LP rule. Although this is a good result for a
formalism which intends to imitate the speaker's competence, it generates too many
sentences for a Machine Translation system, where one single word sequence is required.
In the following sections, we suggest the use of a flexible canonical form
(Grundwortstellung) for Machine Translation.
5.2. THE RELEVANCE OF A CANONICAL FORM FOR GERMAN
The canonical form of a language indicates the sequence of different elements in the
sentence. If a language has fixed word order with an obligatory place for subject, objects, PO
and modifiers, the canonical form is relatively simple. In German, however, we encounter at

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least two complications. First, we have to distinguish between the different realizations of
the verb arguments as pronoun, definite NP/PP or indefinite NP/PP. This is because
pronouns tend to precede full NPs, and indefinite NPs normally follow both pronouns and
definite NPs. Second, we have to be able to cope with the fact that even one single subgroup,
such as that of definite object NPs, does not always take the same place. Instead, its position
varies depending on the theme-rheme structure, on the speaker's intention as to what the
sentence focus should be, the semantic roles, the animacy of the referents, and others.
German word order is the result of the interaction of various ordering principles. The natural
or unmarked order varies depending on the parametrisation of the single factors. Jacobs
(1988: 29) concludes that the principles apply in every single sentence, even in the ones with
most natural or normal word order. As long as all parameters remain constant there is one
single unmarked word order. Any German canonical form can thus represent only one
possible order of elements. We want to show this again in the following three examples:
4 Without context: Er hat es ihm gestern geliehen.
5 Context: Wem hat er es gestern geliehen?
5a ?? Er hat es IHM gestern geliehen.
5b Er hat es gestern IHM geliehen.
6 Context: Wann hat er es ihm geliehen?
6a * Er hat es GEStern ihm geliehen.
6b Er hat es ihm GEStern geliehen.
The sentences differ with respect to their theme-rheme structure. The elements which are
asked for are the rhemes or focuses of the sentences. Word order in 4, 5a and 6b complies
with Engel's canonical form (5.3.1), and indeed it seems to be the most natural one in
isolated sentences (4). However, 5a is considerably less good an answer to 5 than 5b, as the
rhematic element ihm in 5a precedes the thematic element gestern. Context 5 requires the
answer 5b. As an answer to 6, the same order is unacceptable. Context 6 requires the order
of Engel's canonical form (5.3.1).

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It is obvious that no canonical form satisfies all context requirements. Because of varying
parametrisation, every context requires its own canonical form instead. A fixed canonical
form which would produce correct sentences in all possible contexts does not exist.
Due to this conflict, we would like to put forward the view that canonical form describes the
order of elements which generates natural sentences in the highest possible number of
contexts. This definition coincides with what Höhle (1982) calls "normale Wortstellung"
(summarised by Eisenberg, 1989: 420):
Je mehr mögliche Rhemata ein Satz hat, desto normaler ist er. Denn je mehr mögliche Rhemata er hat,
in desto mehr Kontexten kann er stehen. Der Satz mit der maximalen Zahl von Rhemata ist kontextuell
am wenigsten restringiert und insofern normal. Zwei Sätze mit derselben Anzahl von Rhemata sind
gleich normal.
Eisenberg's example sentences:
7a
7b
Emma hat dem Studenten das Auto gegeben.
Emma hat das Auto dem Studenten gegeben.
have the same amount of rhemes. Therefore, each variation is as normal or basic as the
other. This does not necessarily mean that the serialisations in 7a and 7b statistically are
equally frequent, as the number of occurrences of different contexts is not the same.
Eisenberg (1989: 420ff) suggests several tests which help to find the unmarked order in the
sense explained earlier. The question test, for instance, shows how many elements of a given
sentence are possible rhemes. The principle of the question test is to ask for every single
phrase in the sentence, and to examine whether the sentence is 7a possible answer to this
question. One problem we see with this method is that it does not account for more finetuned
acceptability differences. It is our intuition, for example, that 7a is a better answer to
the question 8c than it is to the question 9e (compare 8a and 9a). In our intuition, 7a is
indeed more natural than 7b:
8 Wem hat Emma das Auto gegeben?
8a Emma hat dem Studenten das Auto gegeben.
9 Was hat Emma dem Studenten gegeben?
9a ? Emma hat das Auto dem Studenten gegeben.

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A similar test is the accentuation test (Engel, 1989: 422f). The goal is to stress every single
phrase of a sentence and to count the amount of stressable constituents. The more phrases
can be stressed, the more normal the sentence. This test does not really differ from the
question test, as the exact purpose of the questions is to focus on different constituents.
A better alternative is the definite/indefinite test. Eisenberg (1989: 423) suggests to test all
word order variations and all definite/indefinite combinations to see which word order
allows for more combinations:
10 Emma hat dem Studenten ein Auto geliehen.
11 Emma hat einem Studenten das Auto geliehen.
12 Emma hat das Auto einem Studenten geliehen.
13 * Emma hat ein Auto dem Studenten geliehen.
Eisenberg points out that the focus should lie on a constituent which is not involved in the
variations of order, such as the subject or the verb. The result of the test is that the order
D

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The order in 14c for example, involving a definite dative NP, seems to us as acceptable as
the one in 14a. However, the order in 14a seems natural even with a definite dative
complement (14d):
14c
14d
dem Schüler mit einem Füller eine Note in ein Heft schreiben.
mit einem Füller dem Schüler eine Note in ein Heft schreiben.
Although all the tests are not without contradictions, they are helpful as they can underpin
our intuition. Note, however, that intuition plays an important role in all tests. The only nonintuitive
evidence for word order distribution we can think of is statistical data. It would be
interesting to see how frequent different sequences are in multi-million word corpora. Note,
however, that even statistical data is not a reliable source for unmarkedness because real-life
texts are contextually bound, and not all contexts occur with equal frequency.
Although the canonical form statistically does not necessarily represent the most frequent
order (cf. Engel, 1988: 304 and Eisenberg, 1989: 421), there is a strong reason for assuming
a canonical form. It seems reasonable to assume one order as the basic word order so as to
take it as a point of departure for the description of variations. In order to discuss
serialisation variations, we shall use the movement metaphor such as: "The result of moving
a dative pronoun behind a definite accusative object NP is that the pronoun has to be
stressed contrastively". We want to point out, however, that we do not intend to imply by
using this formulation that we follow a transformational theory such as Government and
Binding (e.g. Chomsky, 1981) which is based on the transformation move-alpha and deep
and surface structures.
5.3. CANONICAL FORMS FOR GERMAN IN LITERATURE
In this chapter, we want to present, compare and evaluate the canonical forms suggested by
Engel (1988) and Hoberg (1981). We shall examine the few sequences where they contradict
each other and suggest a new canonical form in which we try to combine the advantages of
both models.

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5.3.1. ENGEL’S CANONICAL FORM
Engel's canonical form (Grundwortstellung) in Deutsche Grammatik (1988: 326) is the
following (we replace Hoberg's and Engel's conventions by ours in order to keep the
description as clear and consistent as possible):
N pron / N +d < (A

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groups any further as it has been already mentioned in 2.4. Instead, we shall concentrate on
Hoberg's classification which is more fine-tuned.
There are several comments to make with respect to Engel's order. Our tests (cf. section 4.2
and Steinberger, 1990: annex, Iff) have shown that the unmarked order of verb objects is not
D

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(N < A < D / G / Nom / Adj) pron < (N < A < D / G / PO) +a <
^
^
a pragm
a sit
(a 1 -a 18 ) (a 19 -a 40 )
< (N < A) -a < (D / G / PO / Sit / Dir) -a <
^
a neg

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As we have pointed out in section 4.2 the definiteness feature is more powerful than the one
concerning animacy. Consequently, Hoberg's canonical form must be complemented by the
definiteness feature. In the following section, we shall develop a new canonical form based
on Engel's and Hoberg's.
5.3.3. NEW PRELIMINARY CANONICAL FORM
In a new canonical form both features, animacy and definiteness, should be present, with
definiteness being super-ordinated to animacy (cf. section 4.2). These features should also
apply to POs. We want to present here a preliminary version of this new canonical form. It is
based on earlier work carried out in Steinberger (1990), with minor changes. We compiled it
by combining groups of two constituents or more in hundreds of sentence pairs with varying
word order. We decided intuitively for each sentence pair which order is more natural, and
combined these groups of two into a complex canonical form. A basic assumption of our work
was that word sequences are transitive. This means that from A

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Interpretation: According to this canonical form, the verb complements serialise in the
following order:
A) pronominal or definite and animate subject NPs (=nominative NPs)
B) pronominal complements in the accusative and dative cases, pronominal nominal or
adjectival complements
C) nominative complements with the features [+d,-a]
D) nominative complements with the features [-d,+a]
E) animate and definite accusative and dative complements
F) pronominal genitive complements
G) indefinite and inanimate nominative complements
H) definite and inanimate accusative and dative complements
I) accusative and dative complements with the features [-d,+a]
K) pronominal prepositional objects
L) accusative and dative complements with the features [-d,-a]
M) prepositional complements with the features in the order [+d,+a], [+d,-a], [d,+a],
[-d,-a]
N) nominal genitive complements, independently from the features
O) situative, directive or expansive complements
P) nominal or adjectival complements in full form
Q) NPs or PPs of support verb constructions
We take over Hoberg's fine-tuned modifier classification. Although we restrict ourselves to
the treatment of one-word modifiers here, we shall not omit in the canonical form the
modifier classes which can only be realised by PPs. The reason is that it is easier for the user
to take out some classes, which are not relevant for some purposes and applications, than it
is to insert new classes when a complete canonical form is needed. In our Machine
Translation implementation using the CAT2 formalism for instance, we reduced the 44
modifier groups to 17, as PPs and toners were reduced to one single class each (Steinberger,
1992a: 28f and 38ff). Some modifier classes are very text-specific, so that several classes
can be combined within sublanguages such as the language used in technical manuals.
The groups of pragmatic (a 1 -a 18 ) and situative modifiers (a 19 -a 40 ) follow pronouns and
definite nominative complements, and they precede indefinite accusative and dative
complements. The negational modifier a 41 and the modal modifier group a 42

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("Konkomitanzangabe") 69 follow the situative and pragmatic modifier groups and the
definite accusative and dative arguments. The main modal modifier group a 43 either
precedes indefinite and animate accusative and dative complements, or is placed in between
them, or follows them. The instrumental modifier group a 44 , which Hoberg classifies as a
modal modifier, follows the other modifiers and thus precedes pronominal and indefinite
verb complements in accusative and dative cases.
It is difficult to be more precise with respect to the pragmatic and situative modifiers, as
their position can vary greatly. In section 6.5 we shall narrow down their position. In
Steinberger (1990: 73ff), we positioned pragmatic modifiers after pronominal genitive
complements, and situatives in the area between pragmatic modifiers and the negational
modifier. Although a more restricted position would be desirable, we believe that it would be
wrong to limit the places where modifiers can occur in that way. Pragmatic and situative
modifiers can thus appear at both extremes of the range. In 19, the adverbs should precede
the indefinite nominative. 20 shows that their occurrence behind a inanimate definite
accusative is also perfectly natural:
19a Deshalb erschien irrtümlicherweise 14 / gestern 26 ein Mann.
19b ?? Deshalb erschien ein Mann irrtümlicherweise 14 / gestern 26 .
20a
20b
Sie schenkte irrtümlicherweise 14 / gestern 26 das Buch einem Fremden.
Sie schenkte das Buch irrtümlicherweise 14 / gestern 26 einem Fremden.
This canonical form differs from Hoberg's and Engel's mainly in that ours is more detailed:
NP and PP objects are split into four subgroups differing in the features [+/-animate] and
[+/-definite]. Furthermore, we placed the modifier groups a 42 to a 44 in separate places as,
according to our intuition, they behave differently. We also changed a few sequences, such
as, for instance, in the domain of the nominative complements. These changes are again due
69 The term Konkomitanz is based on the Latin word concomitatus which means accompanied (Bußmann,
1983: 260). Konkomitanzangaben are adverbials which refer to accompanying persons (Hoberg, 1981:
129), such as mit den Kindern or miteinander. Throughout this work, we shall use the German term.

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to our intuition, based on our own tests, in which we evaluated the markedness of sets of
sentences involving representatives of different position classes.
The following examples verify the order of the new canonical form (examples according to
Hoberg, 1981: 152ff):
21 ...; den Sinn von dramatisch prägt mir vielleicht 12 ein Wortwechsel ein.
(D pron -a 12(=pragm) -A -d-a )
22 Ich überlegte auch, ob ich wirklich 15 die Lauretanische Litanei singen sollte...
(N pron -a 15(=pragm) -A +d-a )
23 ... in die Lage kommen, für sich oder seine Angehörigen 30 die Hilfe gerade dieses Arztes in
Anspruch nehmen zu müssen. (a 30(=sit) -A +d-a )
24 Deshalb müßte dem Landarzt in solchen Fällen 19 ein Zeugnisverweigerungsrecht
zugebilligt werden. (D +d+a -a 19(=sit) -N -d-a )
25 ..., "ich habe nur gehört, daß es so etwas [ein Tempelchen] gegeben hat, und es lag auch 7
bei meinen Eltern 27 eine Zeichnung herum." (a 7(=pragm) -a 27(=sit) -N -d-a )
25 Um den alten Kornmarkt zu verschönern, ließ der französische Reichstagsabgesandte
im Jahr 1788 26 auf dem Platz 27 eine Baumallee anlegen.
(N +d+a -a 26(=sit-temp) -a 27(=sit-lok) -A -d-a )
26 ...; kann man den Defekt eines elektrischen Gerätes durch bloßes Berühren 25 feststellen?
(A +d-a -a 25 )
The next examples were quoted by Engel (1988: 326f):
27 ..., daß Hans mich offensichtlich 12 letzte Woche 26 auf diesen Umstand hat hinweisen
wollen. (N +d+a -A pron -a 12 -a 26 -PO +d-a )
28 Sie konnte sich eben 5 nicht mehr 41 dieses Vorfalls entsinnen. (A pron -a 5 -a 41 -G nom )
29 Sie wollen dich immer wieder 36 in die Geschichte hineinziehen. (A pron -a 36 -PO +d-a )
30 Er ist einfach 14 allmählich 26 alt geworden. (a 14 -a 26 -Adj nom )
31 Man könnte natürlich 12 diese Dinge viel schneller 43 erledigen. (a 12 -A +d-a -a 43 )
32 Das würde gut 43 zu ihrem sonstigen Verhalten passen. (a 43 -PO +d-a )
33 Hat er nicht obendrein noch Grundstücke gekauft? (N pron -a 5 -a 7 -a 34 -A -d-a )
34 Sie hatte allerdings 6 sowieso 9 gekündigt. (a 6 -a 9 )
35 Du kannst doch 4 wohl 12 nicht 41 einfach 43 absagen. (a 4 -a 12 -a 41 -a 43 )
36 ..., weil der Kollege mir das gestern Abend 26 erzählt hat. (N +d+a -D pron -A +d-a -a 26 )
37 Hierzu bedarf er nicht 41 der Zustimmung seines gesetzlichen Vertreters.
(N pron -a neg -G nom )

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 145
38 ... in die Lage kommen, für sich oder seine Angehörigen 30 die Hilfe gerade dieses Arztes
in Anspruch nehmen zu müssen. (a 30 -A +d-a -PO SVC )
39 Sie konnte sich eben 5 nicht mehr 41 dieses Vorfalls entsinnen. (A pron -a 5 -a 41 -G +d-a )
Most of the position classes behave quite straightforwardly in that there is no doubt with
respect to the unmarked order of elements. These include the pronominal verb complements,
dative and accusative objects, and all complements which have a strong tendency to be
positioned to the right of the sentence, namely the situative and directive complements, the
nominal and adjectival complements, as well as the NPs and PPs of support verb
constructions.
However, there are some classes which have less clear syntactic behaviour, namely
prepositional objects, indefinite nominative complements, genitive objects and the
negational modifier a 41 . We discussed the position of these problematic constituents in
Steinberger (1990: 76-88).
5.4. WHY DO SOME SENTENCES DIFFER FROM THE BASIC WORD
ORDER
In this section, we discuss a few sentences which do not comply with the canonical form.
First, we shall have a look at the possible reasons for the order of some sentences to differ
from the canonical form. Then, we want to list the effects of word order variation which are
relevant for translation.
40 ... alle Päckchen und Pakete aus dem Westen zu beschlagnahmen, die nicht haargenau den von
Pankow erlassenen Bestimmungen entsprachen. (a 41 -a 43 -D +d-a )
Sentence 40 is from Hoberg's corpus (1981: 153). It could easily be reversed into the CF
order "..., die den von Pankow erlassenen Bestimmungen nicht haargenau entsprachen." A
reason why the order in 40 differs from that foreseen in the CF is the application of the
Gesetz der wachsenden Glieder. The heaviness principle explains, why the long dative NP
follows the negational particle nicht and the manner adverb haargenau.
41 Er hat immerhin 9 obendrein 7 bezahlt. (a 9 -a 7 )

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 146
41 was quoted by Engel (1988: 326) in order to show that the position of some modifiers can
change without a change in the meaning: Er hat obendrein 7 immerhin 9 bezahlt.
42a Er hat einem Einbrecher das Messer entgegengesetzt. (D -d+a - A +d-a )
42b ? Er hat das Messer einem Einbrecher entgegengesetzt.
43a Er hat einem Mann das Buch aufgenötigt. (D -d+a - A +d-a )
43b ? Er hat das Buch einem Mann aufgenötigt.
42 and 43 are sentences which were part of the questionaire. 23 of the 38 participants in the
case of 42, and 21 participants in the case of 43 decided that they preferred the order D

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 147
We shall first list the meaningful variations, and then discuss some meaningless ones.
Deviation from the canonical form can fulfil three main functions: focusing (rhematization)
of some elements, change of theme-rheme structure, and the change of scope of scopeincluding
elements. It is obvious that focusing on one phrase, such as in 44, should be
rendered in translation. It is not important by which means the target language expresses
focusing (cf. 3.3.2).
The theme-rheme structure seems to be slightly less important than focusing. According to
the theme-rheme structure, elements referring to known information tend to precede the
others. German sentences are concatenated through this procedure. Languages differ in their
requirement for concatenation:
45a Als kleiner Junge fiel Obelix in den Topf mit dem Zaubertrank. Deshalb darf er ihn jetzt nicht
mehr trinken.
45b Étant enfant, Obélix est tombé dans la marmite de potion magique. C'est pourquoi il ne peut
plus en boire maintenant.
45c When Obelix was a little boy, he fell into the pot with the magic potion. That's why he must
not drink it any more.
46a Als Kind fuhr ich oft zu meiner Großmutter. In ihrem Garten pflanzte ich Tulpen.
46b Lorsque j'étais enfant, je me rendais souvent chez ma grand-mère. Je plantais des tulipes
dans son jardin.
46c When I was a child, I often went to our grandmother's. I planted tulips in her garden.
The adverb deshalb in 45a is a thematic element which makes the link between both
sentences. Therefore, its place is in the Vorfeld where it precedes the rest of the sentence.
This concatenation is rendered in the French and English translations. The rendering of the
German structure in 46, however, is possible but less natural. In ihrem Garten links the
German sentences together but its equivalents are likely to stand at the end of the French and
English sentences. In 46, German differs from French and English with respect to the
rendering of theme-rheme structure. Theme and rheme should be expressed in the other
language if it has means to express them. Therefore, these categories have to be recognised
and featurised during analysis.
A further change of meaning is achieved by moving scope-including elements. In German, it
is possible to move degree-modifiers and negational particles to the left (and more rarely to

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 148
the right) of an element which one wants to be scope-included. Other languages do not allow
this (47c, 48a), or are more restrictive than German (48a, 48b). In these languages the
element which should be included should probably be clefted so that only this and no other
elements are included. In French, seulement and ne que cannot be moved freely within the
sentence so that dislocation (47d) or clefting (47e) are necessary. German and English
behave the same for nur/only (47b) but differ for example with respect to negation.
Sondernegation (partial negation) is possible in German but very restricted in English:
47a Nur ich habe diesem Mann ein Buch gegeben.
47b Only I gave a book to this man.
47c * Seulement je/moi ai donné un livre à ce Monsieur.
47d Je suis le seul à avoir donné un livre à ce Monsieur.
47e Il n'y a que moi qui ai donné un livre à ce Monsieur.
48a * Not I gave a book to this man.
48b Not I but my brother gave a book to this man.
In addition to the volitional divergences already mentioned, there are further reasons for
deviations which do not imply a change of meaning, and therefore do not have to be
rendered in translation. An example of the latter is the clarification of complex syntactic
structures, which we mentioned in 3.2 and 3.11. Extraposition of heavy constituents has its
reason in better processability. Besides this, extraposition of constituents does not have any
impact:
49a ? Ich habe auch DEM Mann, dem wir letztes Jahr in Spanien in den Gärten der Alhambra
in Grenada unseren Reiseführer geschenkt haben, die Einladung zu unserer Party
geschickt.
49b
Ich habe unsere Einladung auch DEM Mann geschickt, dem wir letztes Jahr in Spanien
in den Gärten der Alhambra in Granada unseren Reiseführer geschenkt haben.
49a is marked compared to 49b, as the main verb as well as the accusative object follow very
late. In 49b, the relative clause is extraposed and, in contradiction to the canonical form, the
animate dative NP follows the inanimate accusative NP in order to keep the distance from
the relative clause smaller. As rhematic NPs and PPs tend to be longer than thematic ones
and tend to the right anyway, it is quite unlikely that the clarification of complex syntactic
structures leads to a divergence from the canonical form. In 49, both NPs are definite but it
seems very likely that most parts of the complex dative NP are rhematic. The clarification of

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 149
complex syntactic structures as a reason for the divergence from the canonical form does not
involve any change of meaning, and therefore must not necessarily be rendered in a target
language when translating.
A further meaningless process is the addition of information in the Nachfeld (Nachtrag). The
reason for Nachtrag is that speakers forgot to mention something before, or that they
suddenly decide that the hearer/reader needs some more information (Engel, 1988: 333):
Häufig kommt es vor, daß die Struktur von Sätzen sich erst während des Sprechens bildet und daß der
Sprecher bei den ersten Worten das Gesamtgerüst einer Äußerung noch nicht völlig durchschaut: Er
redet, und während des Redens wird ihm bewußt, daß er ein Element vergessen hat, das nach den
geltenden Regeln schon zuvor hätte erscheinen müssen. In solchen Fällen wird das Element ins
Nachfeld gesetzt; es ist dann meistens unbetont und hat offensichtlich die Funktion eines Nachtrags.
Allerdings ist die Nachfeldstellung von Ergänzungen nur sehr begrenzt möglich. Vor allem kann
praktisch nur die Präpositivergänzung im Nachfeld auftauchen.
Nachtrag is uncommon in written language because the slower speed of the writing process
allows authors to plan their utterances better (Engel, 1988: 316ff). In Early New High-
German (1500-1650), the position of all verb arguments in the Nachfeld was possible. When
such word ordering is used nowadays, it has a strongly archaising function (Engel, 1988:
316). Nachtrag of modifiers in spoken language does not have an archaising effect.
We want to point out that other languages may behave the same as German with respect to
the clarification of complex syntactic structures and to Nachtrag. One may thus want to
render these constructions when translating into these languages. However, we do not see
any need for a featurisation of these as they do not contribute to the meaning of the sentence.
The same applies to all the other preferences listed in chapter 3, and which we have not
mentioned in this section. Theme, rheme, focus and scope, on the other hand, convey more
of a meaning, in the sense that they are important for the use of the sentence within a certain
context.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 150
5.5. THE VORFELD POSITION
So far, we have restricted our statements on word ordering principles, as well as on
canonical form, to the German Mittelfeld. The Mittelfeld is the part of the sentence which is
limited by the verb in verb-second position to the left, and by the participle or verb prefix to
the right. For this reason, we want to discuss the Vorfeld now.
The Vorfeld is the part of the sentence which precedes the verb in verb-second position. In
sentences other than verb-second (i.e. verb-initial and verb-final) it does not make sense to
speak of a Vorfeld. One single phrase of the constituents which occur in the Mittelfeld of
verb-final clauses, can be chosen and put into the Vorfeld. The most likely phrase to move to
the Vorfeld is the nominative complement, but most other elements can be in this position as
well. The order of the remaining constituents in the Mittelfeld does not change.
The X-bar syntax model combined with the transformational approach, as described in
Stechow/Sternefeld (1988) and Fanselow/Felix (1987), for example, describes this
mechanism very conveniently. We can assume that the order of elements in the deep
structure is similar to the one found in German subordinate clauses. In declarative sentences,
the verb is moved by move-alpha from its final position to verb-second. Any other XP
(maximal projection, such as NP, PP, AP etc) is shifted by the same transformation to the
Vorfeld position. In terms of X-bar syntax, the latter is the structural position Spec-Comp
(complement phrase specifier position). The other elements are not affected by the
movement and their order does not change.
The order of the elements in the Mittelfeld is decided by the word-ordering principles. Once
these have applied, one of the elements is moved to the Vorfeld. It seems reasonable to
assume nevertheless a place (a trace) for the moved elements in the Mittelfeld. Gestern in
50a, for example, belongs between the pronominal NP ihr and the indefinite NP einen
Bären, and not in a different position such as in 50c:
50a Gestern hat er ihr __ einen Bären aufgebunden.
50b Ich sagte, daß er ihr gestern einen Bären aufgebunden hat.
50c * Ich sagte, daß er ihr einen Bären gestern aufgebunden hat.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 151
If we use this model, which assumes a certain order with one element being moved into the
Vorfeld, it is sufficient to describe the order in the Mittelfeld and then to provide means to
choose the element which moves to the sentence-initial position. We have seen that a main
criterion in choosing the moved element is the theme-rheme structure, which requires that a
thematic element makes the link to one of the last sentences (concatenation). Waltzing
(1986: 144) furthermore mentions that in sentences with too many existimatorial modifiers
(51a), one of them often moves to the Vorfeld in order to avoid an overloaded Mittelfeld
(51b). This overflowing probably does not happen very often, as it seems that the Mittelfeld
is quite robust in this respect (examples according to Waltzing):
51a ? Er hat damals ja natürlich außerdem dankenswerterweise seinen Vertreter geschickt.
51b Außerdem hat er damals ja natürlich dankenswerterweise seinen Vertreter geschickt.
We assume that whatever element is marked as being thematic moves to the Vorfeld
position. This is a very simple mechanism and does not need further discussion (for an
implementation in a synthesis grammar see Steinberger, 1992a: 38ff). However, there are
some more details to mention concerning how we can make use of the particular status of the
Vorfeld.
In a few cases, the position of an element can help us to disambiguate homonyms as not all
elements can fill the Vorfeld position. For instance, if an element A is in the Vorfeld, and its
homonym A' generally cannot occur there, we can deduce that the word in question is A, and
not A'. The lexeme eben for instance can be either a toner, a temporal adverb or an adjective.
In 52, it is nearly certain that eben is the temporal adverb as toners cannot stand in the
Vorfeld, and we can almost exclude the possibility that it is an adjective, as the verb sein
only calls for either two NPs, or for one NP and an AP. However, we have to consider the
possibility that eben is a sentence adjective. This does not make any sense in 52, but the
occurrence of adjectives as sentence modifiers in the Vorfeld cannot generally be excluded,
as shown in 53:
52 Eben war Ralf noch kein Herr Doktor.
53 Behutsam schrieb Ralf Kapitel für Kapitel.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 152
The Vorfeld can also help with structural ambiguity as one can assume that it is filled by one
phrase only. This means that the occurrence of two phrases in the Vorfeld means that one of
them is likely to be an adjunct to the other (54). This is not an absolute rule, though, as there
are a few exceptions. In 55 this analysis is wrong 70 :
54 Der Prüfer von Ralfs Doktorarbeit erkennt sich wieder.
55 Im Stadion auf der Tribüne steht mein Doktorvater.
A further regularity linked to the Vorfeld, which can be used to improve analysis, is that
some elements have to be stressed when they are in the Vorfeld (56). This fact is not only
important for the recognition of focus (cf. 6.2), but also for the scope identification of degree
modifiers and negation in the Mittelfeld. We shall see later (cf. 5.6) that nicht in sentences
such as 56 has to refer to the focused Vorfeld element:
56 Dem MANN gab er das Buch nicht.
For the analysis of German sentences we can simply assume that if the Vorfeld element is
not focused, it is thematic. This makes it easy to identify the theme. The filling of the
Vorfeld by a rhematic element is quite rare in written language but exists. The most frequent
rhematic elements to occur there are modal modifiers (example from Hoberg, 1981: 173):
57 Ohne Pilot startete in Frederikshaven (Dänemark) ein Flugzeug.
However, this kind of sentence is likely to occur at the beginning of texts as it does not leave
any space for contextual embedding. According to Hoberg (1981: 172), this rare structure
mainly occurs in emotional language such as headlines of the popular press and spoken
language (Hoberg, 1981: 173):
Die Besetzung des Vorfelds mit dem Rhema, d.h. also das Aufrollen der Äußerung vom
Mitteilungskern aus, läßt in der Regel keinen Raum für die kontextualle Einbettung der Äußerungsbasis,
obwohl sich Rhema- und Satzverknüpfungsfunktion grundsätzlich nicht ausschließen müssen.
For the generation of German sentences it is interesting to look at statistical data. When a
theme can be identified during analysis of the source language sentence, there is no need to
70 See Altmann (1981: 285ff) on the double filling of the Vorfeld position.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 153
use statistics, but if not, we can choose the element which statistically is most likely to fill
the Vorfeld. In both columns of the following table, only sentences having a Vorfeld are
considered (V2-sentences). The first column shows how often different elements occur in the
Vorfeld of all V2-sentences. We see that the nominative complement is clearly ahead of all
other constituents. The second column displays how often these elements occur as a
percentage of all V2-sentences which involve these elements (Hoberg, 1981: 162):
Vorfeld Element in Percentage of all Percentage in
verb-second sentences elements occurring in sentences only
the Vorfeld
in which they occur
Nominative complement 63.15 % 55.60 %
Other complements 10.15 % 9.27 %
Modifiers 26.06 % 28.32 %
among these:
a pragm 5.38 % 38.37 %
a sit 17.74 % 28.13 %
a mod 1.93 % 16.98 %
For our purpose, the second column is more interesting. The data shows that in over 55% of
the cases, the nominative complement fills the Vorfeld. If pragmatic modifiers are present
these are the second most likely to occur there (over 38%). As toners are pragmatic
modifiers which cannot precede the verb in verb-second position, the percentage of the
remaining pragmatic modifiers should even be higher. As one may have expected, the
default candidate for the Vorfeld position is the nominative complement. It is closely
followed by the subgroup of existimatorial modifiers which can fill the Vorfeld. If no theme
can be identified during analysis, the nominative complement should precede the verb in
second position.
Hoberg deduces that the further left elements normally occur in the Mittelfeld, the more
likely they are to go into the Vorfeld if there is one (Hoberg, 1981: 164):
[...] wenn man sich in einem Satzerzeugungsprozeß die Anordnung der Elemente im Mittelfeld als
Basisoperation und die Besetzung des Vorfelds als Permutation eines dieser Mittelfeldelemente an den
Satzanfang vorstellt: es wird aus der Menge der Mittelfeldelemente am häufigsten dasjenige Element als
Vorfeldelement ausgewählt, das am weitesten links steht und entsprechend am wenigsten häufig
dasjenige, das am weitesten rechts steht.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 154
According to Hoberg (1981: 156ff), the particle groups a 2 (da, dann, nun, jetzt (not
temporal)) and the speech act-structuring adverbials a 6 , a 7 and a 8 (jedoch, indessen,
allerdings, ..., erstens, ferner, ..., z.B., in erster Linie, ...) are the modifiers which occur in the
Vorfeld most frequently. She assumes that thematicity and the concatenating function are not
the only principles responsible for the choice of the element which moves into the Vorfeld.
Further investigation should be carried out on this subject, probably involving large corpora
for reliable statistical information. We consider that we have discussed the Vorfeld enough to
ensure reasonable translational results and will therefore go back to the treatment of word
order in the Mittelfeld.
5.6. THE IMPORTANCE OF THEME, RHEME AND FOCUS
The intention of this section is to show the importance of the categories theme, rheme and
focus. Their main relevance to this dissertation concerns the concatenation of sentences,
which is necessary to guarantee a natural flow within the text. Furthermore, the categories
play an important role when treating negation and quantifier scope. We shall discuss the
latter only briefly.
Scope as an essential part of the propositional content of a sentence should always be
rendered correctly. It is mostly independent from theme-rheme structure and functional
sentence perspective, and therefore overrules any order suggested by these categories (cf.
4.4.3). However, scope and focus are not completely independent, at least as far as negation
is concerned (Payne, 1985: 232):
One well-known feature of standard negation is its tendency to associate with the focused elements in a
sentence.
According to Altmann (1976: 30f) and Rochemont (1989: 6), simple sentences (involving
one main verb) should have only one focus. It is possible that a simple sentence has two or
more focuses, but this is rare and stylistically marked. In 58 (found in Engel, 1988: 764), for
instance, the author focuses two different phrases by using the degree modifiers auch and

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vor allem. The focused phrases are mit ihrer Hilfe and seine Einstellung zu einem
Sachverhalt:
58 So kann der Sprecher auch mit ihrer Hilfe [der Gradpartikel, RS] vor allem seine
Einstellung zu einem Sachverhalt ausdrücken.
It is thus very likely that the focus of degree adverbs, as well as the negational particle nicht,
coincides with the sentence focus. In the case of sentence negation, nicht can generally focus
on all single elements of the sentence (59a-59e) 71 :
59a Die Schwester von Wolf hat dem Lehrer das Buch nicht geliehen (sondern Wolf
SELBST/die Schwester von JOHANNES).
59b Die Schwester von Wolf hat dem Lehrer das Buch nicht geliehen (sondern WIRD es
ihm leihen).
59c Die Schwester von Wolf hat dem Lehrer das Buch nicht geliehen (sondern einem
ANDEREN Lehrer/dem SCHÜLER).
59d ? Die Schwester von Wolf hat dem Lehrer das Buch nicht geliehen (sondern ein
ANDERES Buch/die ZEITSCHRIFT).
59e Die Schwester von Wolf hat dem Lehrer das Buch nicht geliehen (sondern
GESCHENKT).
When any of these elements is focused by other means, the negation nicht is likely to focus
on the same element (60a). Although this is not obligatory, it is very likely, as the unnatural
sentence (60b) suggests. Therefore the recognition of focused elements may help to identify
the scope of the negational element nicht. For a discussion of the relationship between
quantifier scope and focus, see Steiner/Winter (1987: 3ff).
60a Nur WOLF hat dem Lehrer das Buch nicht geliehen.
60b ?? Nur Wolf hat dem Lehrer das Buch nicht geLIEhen.
What we shall rather focus on in this thesis is the correct placement of thematic, rhematic
and focused elements in order to guarantee natural sentence concatenation. We shall
intuitively distinguish rheme and focus. A focused constituent will be much more strongly
stressed than other rhematic elements. In 61a, ihn carries a heavy (contrastive) stress,
whereas its full form equivalent den Mann in 61b is likely to be rhematic. It is not as strongly
stressed as ihn in 61a. The accusative pronoun in 1a is thus a focus, whereas we would say that
71 A minor restriction to this statement is brought forward by Höhle (1982: 426). He claims that, supposedly
for pragmatic reasons, sentence negation never includes all constituents of the sentence.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 156
the full form in 61b is likely to be a rheme. The difference between 61b and 61c is that, in the
former, the accusative NP is likely to be rhematic, whereas in the latter it is not marked as either
thematic, rhematic or focused. In 61c, gestern is likely to be rhematic. In the model we suggest,
gestern in 61a and 61b, and den Mann in 61c are neutral with respect to the three categories:
61a Ich habe gestern IHN gesehen.
61b Ich habe gestern den MANN gesehen.
61c Ich habe den Mann GEStern gesehen.
It is a well-known fact that context can require focusing on a particular constituent in a
sentence. Minimal contexts requiring focusing are wh-questions, because they make it clear
which elements are thematic and which ones are not. Question 62 asks for the PP mit dem
Nudelholz, whereas 63 asks for the accusative complement den Mann. In our intuition, the
best order of constituents in 62 is the order accusative NP before PP (62a), whereas the best
answer to question 63 has the order PP before accusative NP (63a). Answering question 62
with the phrase order of 63a, however, is very unnatural (62c):
62 Mit was erwartete die Frau ihren Mann gestern?
62a Die Frau erwartete ihren Mann mit dem NUdelholz.
62b ? Mit dem NUdelholz erwartete die Frau ihren Man.
62c ?? Die Frau erwartete mit dem NUdelholz ihren Mann.
62d * Die Frau erwartete mit dem Nudelholz ihren MANN.
63 Wen erwartete die Frau gestern mit dem Nudelholz?
63a Die Frau erwartete mit dem Nudelholz ihren MANN.
63b ? Die Frau erwartete ihren MANN mit dem Nudelholz.
63c ?? Mit dem Nudelholz erwartete die Frau ihren MANN.
In the contexts 62 and 63, the phrase orders of the answers should not be interchanged.
Many other contexts probably do not allow the recognition of theme and rheme so clearly, so
that the differences in acceptability judgement should be less pronounced. We believe,
however, that even in these cases, proper sentence concatenation produces a more natural
flow of the text. In order to achieve sentences with varying, and appropriate, word order, we
suggest to identify theme, rheme and focus, and to assign them places in the canonical form.
In chapter 6, we shall show how to recognise the categories during analysis, and how to
incorporate them in the canonical form to generate natural sentences.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 157
As we deal with written language only, a focus will be recognised as a focus only when it is
clearly marked by syntactical means, as is the case in 61a. We assume that the occurrence of
focused phrases is very restricted in written language. The accusative NP den Mann in 61b
could be as strongly stressed as ihn in 61a, but without a context it is impossible to find out
whether it is or not. Therefore, we shall treat it as not focused. Rhemes are less easy to
recognise and also play a less important role when deciding on word order. This will become
clearer in the sections to come.
We have to distinguish the generation of German sentences from their analysis. We start
with the former. We suggest that a neutral situative modifier, for example, will be positioned
at a different place than the same modifier when it is thematic or focused. When thematic, it
should be placed earlier (more to the left), when rhematic or focused, it should be placed
later. Some focused elements could be stressed by using a clefting construction.
We shall show a few simplified examples for the distribution of phrases which are thematic,
rhematic and focused. The following sentences would be generated on the basis of the
canonical form and the three categories:
A) No theme, rheme or focus information is available; the word order is according to
the canonical form. The same sentence would be produced with ich carrying the theme
feature, and/or den Mann carrying the rheme feature:
64a Ich habe gestern den Mann gesehen.
B) If gestern is marked as rhematic, and the other elements are not marked at all or ich
is marked as thematic, 64b would be generated:
64b Ich habe den Mann gestern gesehen.
C) c is the sentence generated if the theme is gestern, and the other elements are either
not marked at all or Mann is rhematic:
64c Gestern habe ich den Mann gesehen.
D) Ich is focused and gestern is thematic:
64d Gestern habe den Mann ICH gesehen.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 158
It is easy to imagine more variations of feature combinations.
The main idea is that without any information available on the theme-rheme structure and
the functional sentence perspective, sentences are generated according to the canonical form.
If an element has been recognised as theme, and it is a potential Vorfeld element, it starts off
the sentence. If an element is rhematic, its place is towards the end of the sentence (in the
examples a to d it precedes the verb in final position). If a phrase has been recognised as
being focused, it takes special positions which are to be described in 6.5.3. The different
parametrisations can also be combined, e.g. the theme precedes the verb in second position
and the rheme position is late in the sentence etc.
Before defining the places of the three categories in the new canonical form (cf. 6.5.3), we
shall describe how to recognise theme, rheme and focus automatically in a Machine
Translation system. Such a procedure is presented in Steinberger (1992a: 20ff) for German
and English. Its application to the Machine Translation formalism CAT2 in a slightly
simplified version is described in Steinberger (1992a: 33ff). In addition to listing means to
recognise these three categories, we shall also list elements with compulsory order, as these
facts are particularly important for automatic treatment.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 159
6. AIDS FOR COMPUTATIONAL ANALYSIS
[...] no implemented NL system has been demonstrated so far that handles partially
free word order of German and many other languages in a satisfactory way
(Engelkamp/Erbach/Uszkoreit, 1992: 201)
Chapter 6 is dedicated to the computational treatment of German free word order in Machine
Translation. In 6.1, we list compulsory orders, which are particularly important in Natural
Language Processing. Then, we concentrate on how to recognise focused, thematic and
rhematic elements in a sentence (6.2 and 6.3). Section 5.6 made it clear that the recognition
of theme, rheme and focus is needed for German synthesis. We therefore want to provide the
same information for the generation of sentences in other languages, when German is the
source language.
In 6.4, we mention some details which are not absolutely mandatory for the computational
treatment of word order variation, but which certainly give us a better understanding of the
problem. They concern the consequences of modifier sequence variations. In 6.5, we develop
the final version of the canonical form which includes positions for theme, rheme and focus.
For cases in which the grammar allows several analyses of one sentence, the formulation of
preference rules could help to choose the most likely one. We formulate such a preference in
6.6. Before summarising the results of chapter 6 in 6.8, we give a list of features which are
both necessary and sufficient for the satisfying syntactic treatment of adverbs (6.7). These
are the features used to encode the modifiers listed in the appendix (8.2 and 8.3).
6.1. COMPULSORY ORDERS
A major problem of automatic analysis is ambiguity. Too many analyses are created for most
sentences, and only few means are available to choose among them. The parallel treatment
of all of them is computationally expensive and should be avoided. A commercial Machine
Translation system not only has to be fast but should also offer a single output sentence, as
opposed to listing a translation corresponding to each possible ambiguity.

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In some cases, our list of obligatory order of elements may help to rule out wrong analyses
and to recognise lexically or structurally ambiguous elements. How these facts can be
formulated within the grammar depends entirely on the formalism. In Eurotra (Bech, 1991,
17f) as well as in CAT2 (Sharp, 1993: 16ff), obligatory sequences can be expressed as strict
rules. Impossible order can be ruled out by killer rules.
What we can do to recognise whether a sentence is grammatical is to list all strong
restrictions found during our research. One of these restrictions is for example, that
existimatorial modifiers must not be in the scope of the negational particle nicht. This
regularity can help to identify sicher in 1a as a pragmatic modifier, and in 1b as a manner
adverb:
1a
1b
Er spricht sicher nicht. (It is certain that he does not speak)
Er spricht nicht sicher.
(He does not speak confidently / He is not confident when he speaks)
We want to point out that the number of constituent sequences which are absolutely
impossible is restricted. Our experience corresponds to Reis' (1987: 167) claim that, in
German, strong stress (and thus focalization) can overrule most word order variations which
would be impossible with normal intonation:
überhaupt vermag Betonung grundsätzlich auch sonst relativ strenge Abfolgeregeln (z.B. DOPO to DO

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 161
The same regularity explains why we can work with isolated (contextless) sentences: Some
word order variations call for a certain theme-rheme structure, or even for contrastive stress,
so that the context in which these sentences can occur is restricted.
As we have described the obligatory-order rules (Obligatorische Folge-, or OF-Regeln) in
detail in previous work, we shall only mention some of them briefly to specify the kind of
rules we are thinking of. For a more explicit discussion and examples, see Steinberger (1990:
102-116), to which the OF-rules in this section refer.
A) Rule OF1 says that NPs and PPs of support verb constructions (as described in
3.4.1.1) must follow all other complements and modifiers in the sentence.
B) OF2 and OF5 state the fact that obligatory reflexive pronouns, as well as neutral
accusative pronouns, can never be contrastively focused. Therefore, they must precede
the negation nicht and all situative modifiers. In this they differ from other pronouns.
C) In OF3, we mention that full form nominative complements can follow either
accusative or dative full form complements, but not both.
D) Another regularity is that an element A referring to an element B by a possessive
pronoun must follow the referred-to element B (OF7). The order B

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 162
I) Modal modifiers, with the exception of gern (2), cannot precede personal pronouns
(3). Gern has a special status within the modal adverbs (cf. section 2.3). This is
confirmed by Hoberg (1981: 136):
Gern "scheint nicht so fest an die Endstellung gebunden zu sein wie die übrigen modalen Elemente."
2 Ich küsse gern SIE.
3a
3b
* Ich küsse laut SIE.
Ich küsse sie laut.
K) Indefinite genitive complements cannot be followed by a modifier:
4a
4b
* Ich habe gehört, daß Peter einer Frau früher bedurfte.
Ich habe gehört, daß Peter früher einer Frau bedurfte.
L) Manner adverbs (a 43 ) must not precede definite, animate nominative complements.
We cannot think of any reasonable stress which would make sentences like 5
acceptable:
5 * Deshalb hat laut der Papst gepredigt.
M) No modifiers can follow indefinite, inanimate verb complements other than the
nominative:
6a
6b
* ..., weshalb ich einen Tisch GEStern geschreinert habe.
* ..., weshalb ich mich eines Tisches GEStern entledigt habe.
N) No modifiers can follow indefinite, animate verb complements other than the
nominative when the arguments have an article (7a). (7b) shows that without an article
this sentence is grammatical:
7a
7b
* Deshalb grüße ich einen Unbekannten oft.
Deshalb grüße ich Unbekannte OFT.
O) No elements must follow complements expressing an expansion
(Expansivergänzungen):
8 * Der Sportler warf den Speer 100 Meter weit vor 10 Jahren.
P) In our intuition, the combination of two manner adverbs in a simple sentence is also
ungrammatical:
9a
9b
* Er spielte laut eifrig Klavier.
* Er spielte eifrig laut Klavier.
The first part of this section is very short given the importance of obligatory order rules in
Natural Language Processing. The reason for this is that these rules have been sufficiently

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discussed in Steinberger (1990). We shall now concentrate on the recognition of focus,
theme and rheme.
6.2. RECOGNITION OF FOCUS
In this section, we shall look at focalization from the point of view of analysis. There are
several means to express focusing of a phrase in a sentence. We shall discuss them one by
one in order to isolate the cases in which a phrase is focused. A general point is that
positional change of elements which have a strong tendency to the left or to the right causes
stronger focalization than the permutation of other elements.
The position of some elements in the Vorfeld leads to their strong accentuation. Reis (1987:
169) confirms that stressed verb arguments tend to be positioned in the Vorfeld:
[Es] sei daran erinnert, daß betonte Verbargumente sehr häufig, ja normalerweise, ihre nichtnormale
(mit minimalem Fokus verbundene) Stellung im Vorfeld haben, das den Satzanfang bildet.
Elements which can automatically be recognised as being stressed when in the Vorfeld are
manner adverbs (10), Konkomitanzangaben (11), instrumental modifiers (12), situative (13)
and directional complements (14), indefinite verb complements with the exception of the
nominative complement (15) as well as infinitives (16):
10 SCHNELL bist Du gelaufen.
11 Mit BERNhard will sie in den Urlaub fahren.
12 Mit dem HAMmer hat er Mücken gejagt.
13 In MÜNchen wohnt Günter.
14 Nach MÜNchen fährt er.
15 Eine INderin hat Anne im Bus kennengelernt.
16 SCHENken will er mir das Buch nicht.
The focalization of these seven types of elements is probably due to the fact that the Vorfeld is
typically filled by elements with a linking function but that these seven classes are typically
rhematic. They are also quite closely linked to the verb and have a strong tendency towards the
end of the sentence. The elements in sentences such as 10 to 16 sometimes do not carry the
main focus of the sentence but they are always contrastive elements. It is for example very
difficult to find a possible context for 12 in which the instrumental modifier is not focused:

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 164
17a ? Mit dem HAMmer hat er MÜCken gejagt, mit dem SCHRAUBENzieher AMeisen.
17b ?? Mit dem Hammer hat er Ameisen gejagt und nicht FLIEgen.
17c ?? Mit dem Hammer hat er Ameisen geJAGT und nicht geSTREIchelt.
Nominative and other definite verb complements, as well as existimatorial and situative
modifiers, on the other hand often have linking function and are likely to be the topic of a
sentence. These elements can be focused (21a) when they are positioned in the Vorfeld but
the neutral reading is as likely (21b, 18, 19, 20). Therefore, the Vorfeld position of these
phrases should not be analysed as focalization:
18 Ralf hätte gerne im Bus eine Inderin kennengelernt.
19 Wahrscheinlich hat Axel Fieber.
20 Gestern habe ich Wim Wenders' Reise ans Ende der Welt gesehen.
21a DIEses Buch will Paul lesen (... und kein ANderes).
21b Dieses Buch habe ich LETZtes Jahr schon gelesen.
Schwartz and Tomaselli (1991: 252) point out the interesting fact that the position of oblique
pronouns in the Vorfeld is marked (22). This is unexpected because pronominal elements are
thematic and should thus be unmarked in sentence-initial position. This can probably also be
explained by the larger verb bonding of non-nominative complements. We did not however
list this case among the focalising sequences shown in 10 to 16, as a reading with another
focused phrase in the sentence is possible. As in the sentences 18 to 21, ihm in 22 can be
stressed contrastively, but this is not compulsory.
22 Ihm hat Piklu eine runtergehauen.
As definite pronouns tend to the left, their right-movement leads to their focalization (23, 124).
We would expect definite and animate nominative complements to behave in the same way but
they are not necessarily focused when following a modifier (25). We mentioned in 6.1. (point
L) that modal modifiers cannot precede this group of nominative complements at all.
23 Axel hat Cornelia IHM vorgezogen (und nicht etwa umgekehrt).
24 Philippe wollte dennoch IHN küssen.
25 Deshalb hat gestern der Papst sein Konto überzogen.
For elements which tend strongly to the right the opposite holds: When other elements
follow them, the ones with right-tendency are thematised and the ones moved to the right are

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 165
focused. The elements whose left-movement has this effect are: POs in full form (26),
directional (27) and situative complements (28), genitive full NPs (29) and indefinite and
animate NPs without a determiner (30):
26 Kutluk unterrichtete uns über den Sieg eine Woche zu SPÄT.
27 Ralf schrieb Upamanyu nach Indien immer GERN.
28 Ralf wohnt in diesem Haus schon LANge.
29 Er wollte sich seiner Frau am MONtag entledigen.
30 Deshalb grüße ich Unbekannte OFT.
We mentioned in 6.1 (A, H, M, N and O) that NPs and PPs of support verb constructions,
predicative elements, indefinite and inanimate NPs, indefinite and animate NPs with a
determiner, as well as expansion complements cannot be moved to the left at all. Pronominal
POs and modal modifiers do not have enough right-tendency to actually focus other
elements. We shall therefore mention them when discussing the recognition of rhemes.
When whatever element is modified by a degree modifier (31), or when it is partially
negated (32) (Sondernegation), it is focused, as well:
31 Till küßt sogar MÄNner.
32 Bärbel schickte den Brief nicht der FRAU.
As degree modification and partial negation cause the focusing of the modified phrase, it
should not be necessary to use a focusing construction, such as clefting, to express the
focusing in a fixed-word order language (cf. 3.3.2).
Some languages, such as English, tend to express focusing less than German (Sgall, 1982:
68). When translating into German, we thus cannot rely on the fact that focus has been
recognised during analysis. However, as partial negation and degree modification always
lead to focalization, we can automatically add the focus feature to the degree-modified
phrase before generating the German sentence. In this way, we can recover at least some of
the focuses we failed to recognise during analysis.
We have seen several examples in which the verb had to be focused. The reason for this is
not that the verb itself was moved, as its position depends on the sentence type rather than on
functional sentence perspective. Its focalization can rather be explained by the restriction

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 166
concerning the Mitteilungszentrum, discussed in 4.4.4: When a non-focusable pragmatic
modifier is the last non-verbal element in the sentence, the verb has to be focused. Pragmatic
modifiers exclude preceding elements from being thematic, and the condition says that at
least one element in the sentence must be a possible rheme. The verb is the only available
element left (33). In sentences with auxiliary or modal verbs, we do not have any means to
distinguish whether the auxiliary or the main verb are focused (34):
33 Randy ASS den Regenwurm wohl.
34 Peter will heute hoffentlich KOMmen.
In a lot of other sentences we have no means of finding out whether the verb is focused or
not as this simply depends on the context, to which we do not have access.
Independently of whether other languages have means to express focalization of the verb,
the identification of such a verb focus can be of use. As we assume that every sentence has
only one focus it helps to avoid double-assignment of focus.
To summarise this section, we can say that focusing constructions in German are:
A) Marked Vorfeld position
B) Right-movement of definite personal pronouns
C) Right-movement of elements behind some elements which strongly tend to the right
D) Degree modification
E) Partial negation (negation of a single element in the sentence)
F) Restriction of the focus on the verb due to the Mitteilungszentrum-condition (cf.
4.4.4)
In Steinberger (1992a: 33ff), we describe how we realised the implementation of focus
recognition in the CAT2 formalism. English focusing constructions are discussed at the same
place, pages 23f.
Two points are worth remarking upon: One is the fact that focusing constructions may not be
frequent in written language at all. When analysing spoken language, we may not need the
word order analysis as phonetic information on the sentence stress is available. The other is
the problem that we have no means but our intuition to distinguish between what we call

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 167
focalization and rhematization. Other native speakers may disagree in their judgement of
how strongly the phrases in the sentences of this chapter are focused.
The analysis may also depend on the comparison with the language into which we want to
translate. If the equivalent focusing construction (such as clefting) is much stronger than the
German word-ordering, translation by this means would sound exaggerated or wrong. In that
case, it would be better to analyse the German construction as rheme-identifying instead. To
decide on how to analyse the different phenomena, we should compare the relevant language
pair. When implementing these phenomena for the CAT2 Machine Translation formalism
we did not distinguish between focus and rheme. The disadvantage of that approach is that
strong focalization such as in (35) is analysed the same as the weak one in (36):
35 Er hat gestern IHN gesehen.
36 Er hat Petra gestern einen Bären aufgebunden.
We shall discuss these problems again in 6.8.
6.3. RECOGNITION OR THEME AND RHEME
Recognising the thematic element in a sentence is probably easiest. We assign the feature
{theme=yes} (expressed in attribute value notation {attribute=value}) to the first element in
the sentence if this is not already marked as being focused. By this sequence of feature
assignment, we avoid phrases such as the accusative NP in (37) being analysed as being both
focus and theme. We do not claim that focus and theme generally exclude each other, but
there is no practical use for us in combining these two features:
37 Einen REgenwurm will er essen.
All other elements automatically get the complementary feature {theme=no}. By this
procedure, nominatives are analysed as being thematic when they are sentence-initial. If
other elements such as modifiers or object NPs etc start the sentence, these are marked as
being the theme. By sentence-initial position we either mean the Vorfeld or the first position
in verb-final sentences.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 168
Rhematic elements can be recognised in a similar way: If no element in the sentence has
been marked as being the focus, the last constituent in the sentence but the verb 73 will be
recognised as rheme (1, 2, 3):
38 Nadia sprach mit Randy über die Unterschiedlichkeit der Geschmäcker.
39 Daraufhin hat Randy Hans kürzlich einen Regenwurm geschenkt.
40 Dieser verschlang ihn eilig.
According to what we stated in the preceding paragraph, the toner wohl in (41) would be
analysed as being rhematic. This is wrong, however, as wohl cannot carry the sentence
focus 74 . Instead, the verb must be focused. To avoid wrong analysis, non-stressable
modifiers should be marked with a feature indicating that they cannot be rhematic. We
suggest such a feature in section 6.7, and apply it to the adverb lists in the appendix (8.2 and
8.3). One can roughly say that pragmatic modifiers cannot be rhematic or stressed, whereas
manner adverbs (a 43 ) can. However, this generalization allows some exceptions, such as the
existimatorial adverb wirklich 15 in 42:
41 Er GLAUBT es deshalb 22 wohl 12 .
42 Peter wird heute hoffentlich KOMmen.
43 Er glaubt es deshalb 22 WIRKlich 14 .
In addition to most modal modifiers, full-PP and full-NP complements can be rhematic.
Many situative modifiers can also be rhematic and focused (45), but some of them cannot
(46a). This quality should also be mentioned in the dictionary.
45 Er sprach deshalb 22 GEStern 26 .
46a * Er sprach deshalb 22 SCHON 39 .
46b Er SPRACH deshalb 22 schon 39 .
73 For the reason why the verb is excluded, see below in this section. Note also that, according to what we
said in 4.4.1, the whole constituent über die Unterschiedlichkeit der Geschmäcker in 38 is marked as
rhematic, and not the modifying NP der Geschmäcker.
74 Note, however, that every word can be focused when used in metalanguage:
44 Ich sagte "WOHL", und nicht "HOHL".

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Intuitively, we assumed that the elements which cannot be rhematic are the same elements
which cannot be negated. The comparison of the features in appendix 8.3 shows, however,
that this is not always the case.
Although elements with right-tendency such as modal adverbs, indefinite NPs, etc have a
stronger tendency to be rhematic than other constituents, no further rules will be necessary to
identify the rheme. If a modal modifier, for instance, does not appear at the very end of the
sentence, it will not have the main sentence accent. In (47), either einen Regenwurm or zum
Geburtstag can have the main accent. In (48), eilig cannot and vor dem Abendessen is most
likely to be the rheme. In both cases, our algorithm assigns the rheme feature to the last
constituent. Other elements, such as directional complements etc, will normally be in
sentence-final position and they will thus be analysed correctly as being rhematic.
47 Randy hat Hans kürzlich einen Regenwurm zum Geburtstag geschenkt.
48 Er verschlang ihn eilig 43 vor dem Abendessen.
Pronominal prepositional objects cannot be rhematic, as (49) and (50) show, and should
therefore get a similar feature in the lexicon:
49a Kate dachte daran zu SPÄT.
49b * Kate dachte zu spät daRAN.
49c ? Kate dachte zu SPÄT daran.
50a Kate gab gestern 10 PFUND dafür aus.
50b * Kate gab gestern 10 Pfund DAFÜR aus.
Although verbs are frequently rhematic, this algorithm excludes the possibility that verbs are
identified as rhemes. The reason for this is that it is difficult to be sure about the status of the
verb. Reis (1987: 169) mentions some verbs which attract the sentence focus, including
tanzen, beten and gefallen, but their number is very small. The suggestion by Hajicová, Sgall
and Skoumalová (1993: 180), who offer an algorithm for English to identify rhematic verbs,
is of more help:
if the main verb of sentence n has the same meaning as (or a meaning included in) that of sentence n-1,
then it belongs to the topic; also verbs with very general lexical meanings (such as be, have, happen,
carry out, become may be handled as belonging to the topic. Otherwise (i.e. in the unmarked case), the
verb generally belongs to the focus.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 170
The main problems linked to this proposition are that a complex semantic system is needed
to recognise whether the meaning of a verb is included in that of the preceding sentence.
Furthermore, depending on the complexity of the sentence n-1, there can be several verbs,
and the algorithm involves operation over sentence borders, which most Machine
Translation systems cannot handle. Alternatively, one could leave aside the first condition
(inclusion of meaning), and decide for every verb whether it can be rhematic or not. This
information can be encoded in the dictionary, similarly to our suggestion for adverbs.
However, we decided to leave verbs aside in our implementation of theme and rheme
recognition, because the verb position is generally fixed by other factors, so that it does not
matter whether the verb is rhematic. In 10 to 13, for instance, it would be irrelevant for
German whether the verbs are rhematic or not.
We suggest that only one rheme feature be assigned in a simple sentence. This means that in
47, for instance, only zum Geburtstag should be marked as rhematic, although einen
Regenwurm could in principle be rhematic as well. The algorithm is not perfectly reliable, as
there is the possibility that either einen Regenwurm or zum Geburtstag can be rhematic. As
with the theme and the focus assignment, it happens to be the case that whatever choice we
make, we can go wrong. The only possibility we have is to go for the most likely analysis.
In this and the preceding section, we gathered rules and regularities to identify focus, theme
and rheme of sentences without referring to the context. These categories may help us to
concatenate sentences by assigning them a place in the canonical form presented in 5.3.3.
The final canonical form, including these categories, will be developed in 6.5.
6.4. SOME MORE DETAILS
In this section, we want to point out some more details concerning the idiosyncratic
behaviour of some adverbs, or rather adverb sequences. These aspects are not necessary for
a successful treatment of word order, but they underpin the relevance of focus recognition.

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Furthermore, they can help language learners to better understand the mechanics and the
effects of word order variation.
The goal is to find out to which extent the effect of modifier combinations and permutations
is predictable by discussing the combination of the different subtypes with each other. We
shall see that, after all that has been said so far, we do not as yet know everything about the
effects of modifier placement and their permutation. In that sense, this section encourages
further linguistic investigation.
6.4.1. PERMUTATION OF PRAGMATIC MODIFIERS
We mentioned in 6.1 that toners are strictly ordered. Other pragmatic modifiers can permute
(51a, 51b, 51c). Although some of the sentences in (51) seem more natural than others, and
(51d) is even ungrammatical, none of the existimatorial modifiers can be rhematic. For this
reason, their permutation does not have any effect on the theme-rheme structure. For our
purpose, it follows that we can always generate the order of pragmatic modifiers according
to the canonical form, without variation. A further consequence is that, during analysis, we
do not have to care about the order of pragmatic modifiers, as it has no significance.
51a Er war hoffentlich 13 klugerweise 14 tatsächlich 15 VOLLkaskoversichert.
51b Er war klugerweise 14 hoffentlich 13 tatsächlich 15 VOLLkaskoversichert.
51c Er war hoffentlich 13 tatsächlich 15 klugerweise 14 VOLLkaskoversichert.
51d * Er war tatsächlich 15 klugerweise 14 hoffentlich 13 VOLLkaskoversichert.
There is however a subgroup of pragmatic modifiers which must be exempt from this
statement. The order of elements of the modifier group a 7 , which Hoberg calls
sprechaktgliedernd (speech act-ordering), is relevant, as one can see in (52a) and (53a):
52a Er ist bekanntlich 12 erstens 7 ein Mörder, zweitens 7 säuft er, ...
53a Er ist erstens 7 bekanntlich 12 ein Mörder, zweitens 7 säuft er, ...
In (52a) bekanntlich refers to what is said under erstens and zweitens. In (53a), we only
know that the person in question is a murderer, whereas the fact that this person is a drinker
is not known to everybody. These speech act-ordering modifiers create a strict hierarchy,
which can be shown graphically by using a colon:

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 172
52b Er ist bekanntlich 12 :
erstens 7 ein Mörder
zweitens 7 säuft er, ...
53b Er ist:
erstens 7 bekanntlich 12 ein Mörder
zweitens 7 säuft er, ...
6.4.2. PERMUTATION OF MODAL MODIFIERS
Modal modifiers include Hoberg's position classes a 42 , a 43 and a 44 . Sentences with two
modal adverbs, such as (54a), often sound heavy, or are even ungrammatical. The reason for
this could be that both attract the sentence focus, which contradicts Altmann's and
Rochemont's claim that simple sentences should only have one focus. The sentence sounds
better when one of the modifiers moves to the Vorfeld (54b):
54a * Die Radfahrer fuhren gemeinsam 42 SCHNELL 43
54b GeMEINsam 42 fuhren die Motorradfahrer SCHNELL 43 .
When Konkomitanzangaben (a 42 ) follow manner adverbs (a 43 ) there must be another
element coming after both of them (54c and 54d). It seems that Konkomitanzangaben must
not carry the sentence focus when a manner adverb is present (54c), whereas they can when
no manner adverb is involved (55). Probably this data can be explained by saying that
manner adverbs attract the sentence stress more strongly than Konkomitanzangaben.
54c * Die Radfahrer fuhren schnell43 gemeinsam42.
54d Die Radfahrer fuhren schnell43 gemeinsam42 in die Stadt.
55 Die Radfahrer fuhren gemeinsam42.
When manner (a 43 ) and instrumental modifiers (a 44 ) are combined, the opposite holds: the
manner adverb must precede the instrumental modifier (56a, 56b), except if a following
element attracts the sentence stress (56c):
56a ? Er predigte die Worte deutlich 43 über den Lautsprecher 44 .
56b * Er predigte die Worte über den Lautsprecher 44 deutlich 43 .
56c Er predigte über den Lautsprecher44 deutlich43 biblische Worte.
Konkomitanzangaben (a 42 ) and instrumental modifiers (a 44 ) are more compatible. Both
sequences are grammatical. The latter element is more strongly stressed (57a, 57b). When

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 173
the latter is pronominal, it cannot carry the stress (57c) and the preceding modifier takes this
role (57d):
57a Er sprach mit Brigitte 42 über das Telefon 44 .
57b Er sprach über das Telefon 44 mit Brigitte 42 .
57c * Er sprach mit Brigitte 42 daRÜber 44 .
57d Er sprach mit BriGITte 42 darüber 44 .
We mentioned in 6.1 that, in our intuition, the combination of two manner adverbs is not
grammatical at all.
6.4.3. PERMUTATION OF PRAGMATIC AND SITUATIVE/MODAL
MODIFIERS
Pragmatic modifiers tend to precede situative modifiers, as they refer to the super-ordinated
verb (cf. 2.3 and 3.4.1.2). When elements of these two groups are permuted we can assume
that the situative adverb is thematic. The pragmatic adverb, however, is not rhematic. This is
why the verb in (58b), and either the verb or the adverb spät in (58c) and (58d), must be
rhematic:
58a ? Er kam vielleicht 12 DEShalb 22 .
58b ? Er KAM deshalb 22 vielleicht 12 .
58c Er kam deshalb 22 vielleicht 12 zu SPÄT 40 .
58d ? Er KAM deshalb 22 vielleicht 12 zu spät 40 .
Although the modal modifier group a 43 cannot precede pragmatic and situative modifiers,
the two other modal modifier classes (a 42 : Konkomitanzangaben and a 44 : instrumental
modifiers) can. In that case, the modal modifiers are thematised:
59 Sie fuhren miteinander 42 eben 5 in URlaub.
60 Sie sprach damit 44 (mit dem Megaphon) indessen 6 zu den DemonsTRANten.

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6.4.4. PERMUTATION OF SITUATIVE MODIFIERS
The group of situative modifiers comprises the largest amount of subclasses 75 . It is also the
most complicated and intriguing group.
Some sequences of situative modifiers are ungrammatical, or at least less natural than others.
We have not found out yet what the reasons for this are. Before going into details, we want
to point out that the facts mentioned in this section pose no problems for the computational
treatment of modifiers. When analysing sentences, we can assume that the order of elements
is grammatical. The means provided so far are enough to find out theme, rheme and focus of
the sentence, and this is all we need. When generating German sentences, we can use the
order foreseen by the canonical form. In this manner, we avoid all possible problems.
It is however unsatisfactory to accept the existence of this insufficiently explained section on
the mechanism of modifier positioning. We do not have suggestions on how to solve this
problem, but we would like to mention it in order to encourage further research on this
subject.
Situative modifiers have been discussed from different angles, such as natural serialisation
(Lenerz, 1977; Vennemann, 1982), word order treatment in grammar theory (Oliva, 1992b),
and restrictions on their combination (Steinitz, 1969; Bartsch, 1972). Depending on their
purposes, most linguists choose and discuss only a small subset of classes, such as local,
causal and temporal modifiers (with the subclasses temporal, durative and iterative). To our
knowledge, no research has been carried out on the whole range of combinations of Hoberg's
22 situative modifier classes.
According to what has been said so far, one should assume that situative modifiers follow in
the order of the canonical form, and that the right-movement of each modifier causes its
75 We suspect that the biggest modifier subgroup in terms of amount of elements belonging to this subclass
is the group a 43 . It includes all manner adverbs, as well as the adjectives that we classified as sentence
adjectives.

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focalisation. However, this is not always the case. The permutation of modifiers has more
effect when there is no other possible rheme behind them (61). This is due to the fact that in
this case the last modifier carries the stress. When there is another phrase following the
modifiers, it carries the sentence stress instead of the modifiers (62). There seems to be very
little difference between (62a) and (62b) whereas there is a noticeable difference between
(61a) and (61b):
61a Er hält den Vortrag bei gutem Wetter 28 auf der TAgung 29 .
61b Er hält den Vortrag auf der Tagung 29 bei gutem WETter 28 .
62a Er will bei gutem Wetter 28 auf der Tagung 29 einen VORtrag halten.
62b Er will auf der Tagung 29 bei gutem Wetter 28 einen VORtrag halten.
(61a) and (61b) belong to different contexts but they are equally grammatical. However,
when local and temporal modifiers coincide, one of the two possible orders is less natural
than the other:
63a Der Meister sprach letzte Woche 26 am M.I.T. 27 .
63b ? Der Meister sprach am M.I.T. 27 letzte WOche 26 .
In 63a, both modifiers can have the sentence accent. In 63b, the accent is restricted to the
second modifier (compare Lenerz, 1977: 80ff). 63a is thus less contextually restricted. It
offers more possible rhemes.
In addition to the two different effects of modifier permutation shown in 61, 62 and in 63,
there is a third case. The permutation of the situative modifiers in 64 and 65 is not
grammatical at all. 64 and 65 are particularly astonishing, as the directional complement
following the modifiers is likely to be rhematic, so that the permutation of the modifiers
should have less importance. Furthermore, we see in 66 that the concessive adverb dennoch
can be stressed:
64a Er fuhr dennoch 19 gleichfalls 35 nach München.
64b * Er fuhr gleichfalls 35 dennoch 19 nach München.
65a Er fuhr daher 22 endlich 33 nach München.
65b * Er fuhr endlich 33 daher 22 nach München.
66 Es war ihm egal. Er fuhr DENnoch 19 nach München.

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What is it, that makes (64b) and (65b) ungrammatical? We shall have to look at these
examples separately, starting with the first one. In (67a), our intuition tells us that dennoch
can refer to the whole sentence: There is an argument for Paul not to go to Munich but he
goes nevertheless. Gleichfalls in (67b), however, must refer to Paul: Paul, too, goes to
Munich. If we wanted to express that Paul not only goes to Berlin but also to Munich, we
would have to express this by using the adverb auch (67c):
67a
67b
67c
Paul fuhr dennoch 19 nach München.
Paul fuhr gleichfalls 35 nach München.
Paul fuhr auch 35 nach MÜNchen.
Gleichfalls is thus a scope-including element. In parallel to other degree modifiers and the
negation nicht, gleichfalls has to be stressed strongly when separated from the scopeincluded
element. Gleichfalls differs from the other degree modifier auch, in that it cannot
refer to the directional complement nach München. Furthermore, it cannot precede the
scope-included subject in the Vorfeld (67d):
67d * Gleichfalls 35 Paul fuhr nach München.
67e Auch 35 PAUL fuhr nach München.
Apparently, the position of dennoch after gleichfalls in (64b) requires that dennoch has to be
stressed contrastively. The reason for this sentence to be ungrammatical thus seems to be
that both gleichfalls and dennoch need to be stressed heavily.
We mentioned the second example, 65, in order to show that, even without scope inclusion
being involved, some situative modifiers cannot be permuted. Both endlich and daher
definitely refer to the sentence. Nevertheless, the modifier daher expressing a cause must not
follow the evaluative-temporal adverb endlich. We cannot see any independent reason for
this impossible word order, and thus have to accept it for the moment as being an
idiosyncratic behaviour of the two adverbs, or of the adverb sequence.
To summarise, we can say that the description of the permutation of situative modifiers
relative to each other is more complex than the permutation of the other modifier groups. We
could distinguish three cases: (a) The permutation results in the second modifier being more

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 177
stressed. (b) Permutation is possible, but one of the two sequences is more natural in that
both modifiers can be stressed, whereas in the other only the latter can. (c) One of the two
sequences is ungrammatical. The reason why modifier sequences differ with respect to
grammaticality is not clear to us. We have to accept it as idiosyncratic behaviour of modifier
sequences.
This result is unsatisfying and leaves an unexplained gap for language teachers and learners.
However, it does not pose a problem for the computational treatment of modifier placement.
In generation, we can simply use the order of modifiers suggested by the canonical form. In
analysis, we can assume that the input sentences are grammatical. The means to identify
theme, rheme and focus of the sentence are sufficient to guarantee correct translation.
6.5. FINAL VERSION OF THE CANONICAL FORM
In 5.6, we discussed the importance of the categories theme, rheme and focus for the
generation of German sentences. In 6.2 and 6.3, we gave means to identify them during
analysis. Now, we have to decide on the place of these categories in the canonical form. We
shall start by determining the position of thematic elements, and then do the same for rheme
and focus.
6.5.1. PLACEMENT OF THE THEME
The category theme is primarily, but not exclusively, of importance for our treatment of
verb-second sentences, as the theme is the category which is likely to fill the Vorfeld, in
order to guarantee sentence cohesion (cf. 5.5). In verb-final sentences, thematicity is
implicitly realised in the canonical form through the features pronominality and definiteness.
Thematic complements are likely to be realised either as a pronoun or as a definite NP, and
therefore they precede most other elements, even without being marked as being the theme.
Pronouns are always thematic, whereas definite NPs can be rhematic. Above all, we thus
have to decide where to place thematic modifiers in the Mittelfeld, and whether thematic
definite verb complements are placed differently from rhematic ones.

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As themes tend to the left of the sentence, one should assume that the category theme has its
place in the canonical form somewhere among the elements with left-tendency. We shall
indeed argue that thematic modifiers immediately follow pronominal elements, so that the
first line of the canonical form is the following:
N pron /N +d+a < (A

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 179
71 Context: Was passierte dann? Warum ist Patrick so blau im Gesicht?
71a # ..., weil der Mann dann 26 ihn geohrfeigt hat. 76
71b ..., weil der Mann ihn dann 26 geohrfeigt hat.
We mentioned before that manner adverbs tend to be rhematic. If they are not rhematic, they
are normally not thematic either, but unmarked with respect to both features. It is indeed
quite difficult to imagine sentences with thematic manner adverbs, as they would probably
not be repeated, except in combination with the verb group. However, as (72a) in which
schwer precedes the indefinite animate nominative is grammatical, we shall assume the same
place for thematic manner adverbs, bearing in mind that the theme will normally not be
realised by a manner adverb:
72a ..., weshalb unbeholfen 43 ein Betrunkener hereinwankte.
72b ..., weshalb ein Betrunkener unbeholfen 43 hereinwankte.
The preceding examples involved thematic modifiers. The other group we have to consider
are thematic definite verb complements. The following examples show that they behave the
same as modifiers:
73 Context: Wo ist das Paket?
73a Ich vermute, daß der Postbote das Paket der Frau gab.
73b # Ich vermute, daß der Postbote der Frau das Paket gab.
73c * Ich vermute, daß das Paket der Postbote der Frau gab.
As a conclusion, we can confirm that, in verb-final sentences, thematic elements tend to
follow the groups of definite and animate nominative complements, and of pronominal verb
complements. In verb-second sentences, they are likely to fill the Vorfeld.
N pron /N +d+a < (A

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6.5.2. PLACEMENT OF THE RHEME
We mentioned in 6.5.1 that thematicity of arguments is implicitly realised in the canonical
form, so that we do not have to care about pronouns and indefinite NPs. The goal of this
section will thus be to find out the position of rhematic modifiers, and of definite NP
complements which are marked as being rhematic.
In 5.3.3, we could not be precise about the position of most modifiers but had to give a range
within which they can appear. As now we distinguish thematic, rhematic and neutral 77
position classes, we shall be able to be more specific.
Rhematic elements tend to follow thematic ones. Therefore the position RHEME will have
to appear quite late in the sequence of the canonical form. We suggest to place the rheme
behind the modifier groups a 41 to a 43 , and before the indefinite and animate accusative and
dative complements. We shall discuss this order below and give a few examples which
underpin its accuracy:
THEME < N +d-a /N -d+a < (A

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 181
75a ?? Anthony hat einen Indianer DAmals 26 getroffen.
75b ?? Anthony hat einen Indianer damals 26 geTROFfen.
75c Anthony hat damals 26 einen InDIAner getroffen.
Rhematic modifiers tend to follow the group of definite verb complements (76) whereas they
are likely to precede it when thematic (77):
76 Context: Wann war Melina betrunken?
Sie holte sich den Rausch GEStern 26 .
? Sie holte sich GEStern 26 den Rausch.
77 Context: Was tat Melina gestern?
Sie traf gestern 26 den Mann ihrer Träume.
* Sie traf den Mann ihrer Träume gestern 26 .
The example sentences 74 to 77 underpin our claim that the position of the category rheme
in the canonical form should be in between definite and indefinite accusative and dative
arguments.
After having introduced the categories theme and rheme, we can now specify the canonical
form position of neutral pragmatic and situative modifiers: They follow the definite
accusative and dative verb arguments (78, 79). The a-sentences are clearly better than the b-
sentences, in spite of the fact that neither the modifier nor the accusative NP have to carry
stress, as the manner adverb gern attracts the sentence focus:
Context: Was sagtest Du gerade über Christoph?
78a Ich sagte, er schenkte Pauline das Buch damals 22 gern 43 .
78b ? Ich sagte, er schenkte Pauline damals 22 das Buch gern 43 .
Context: Was sagtest Du gerade über Christoph?
79a Ich sagte, er schenkte Pauline das Buch sicherlich 12 gern 43 .
79b * Ich sagte, er schenkte Pauline sicherlich 12 das Buch gern 43 .
Note that, in spite of neutral and rhematic modifiers having nearly the same position in the
canonical form, it is crucial that they are in separate classes. The distinction is necessary,
because several modifiers can occur in one sentence, so that we need means to regulate the
order of rhematic and neutral modifiers (80). Furthermore, the category rheme also includes
complements. 81b can only be generated if neutral modifiers precede the category rheme:
80a Er küßte Maria deshalb 26 meistens 37 .
80b Er küßte Maria meistens 37 deshalb 26+rheme .

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 182
81a Er küßte Maria gestern 26 .
81b Er küßte gestern 26 Maria +rheme .
Note that modifiers can only be marked as rhematic if the relevant feature in the dictionary
entry allows it (cf. 6.7 and appendix 8.2/8.3). Therefore, sequences such as 82b will not
occur:
82a Er küßte Maria allenfalls 16 ehrenhalber 22 .
82b * Er küßte Maria ehrenhalber 22 allenfalls 16+rheme .
The second group of elements for which we could not define a precise position in the earlier
version of our canonical form are manner adverbs relative to the complement group (A

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rheme. In 3.1.4, we mentioned the contradictory claims put forward by Thurmair (1989:
29ff) and Engel (1988: 340), who say, respectively, that toners and situative modifiers
separate theme and rheme. We can specify now that all modifier classes have this separating
function, if they are not marked as being thematic or rhematic themselves.
... < N -d-a < (A

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 184
could only be shifted to the left, which would have a thematising, rather than a rhematising,
function (87). The place for the rhematic PO in 87 should thus be the one in 87b, and not the
one in 87a:
87a ?? Er hat dem Autor für die WIDmung +rheme herzlich 43 gedankt.
87b Er hat dem Autor herzlich 43 für die WIDmung +rheme gedankt.
For the categories with absolute right-tendency, such as the nominal part of support verb
constructions (6.1., condition A), a shift to the left would even lead to ungrammaticality. The
category rheme should thus only apply to elements which are to the left of the category
rheme in the canonical form. It should never cause a left-movement of whatever category.
The rheme category is therefore limited to rhematic elements of the classes: N +d-a , N -d ,
(A

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 185
A) Marked Vorfeld position
B) Right-movement of elements which strongly tend to the left
C) Right-movement of elements behind elements which strongly tend to the right
D) Degree modification
E) Sondernegation (negation of a single element in the sentence)
F) Restriction of the focus on the verb due to the Mitteilungszentrum-condition
As the focusing constructions differ with the category of the focused elements, we need
different focus positions in the canonical form, depending on what kind of element should be
focused. Therefore, we shall discuss the possibilities (A) to (F) one by one.
Focusing of degree-modified (D) and partially negated (sondernegiert) phrases (E) does not
depend on their position in the sentence, as they are automatically focused by the degree
modification and the negation. Nevertheless, their position should ideally coincide with the
sentence focus. Stressing the verb through word order permutation (F) is not possible in
German, so that we cannot consider the last case. The means (A), (B) and (C), however, are
realised by word order variation.
A general problem linked to the treatment of focus is that specific sequences focus in some
cases, but not in others. For instance, the position of the temporal adverb heute behind an
indefinite accusative NP leads to focalization in (88), but is ungrammatical in (89). This does
not pose a problem for analysis, as there is no danger in saying that if a modifier follows an
indefinite and inanimate verb complement, the modifier is focused. In synthesis, however,
we should try to avoid the generation of wrong order, such as in 89.
88 Peter fürchtet Autos HEUte 26 noch 39 .
89 * Peter sah Autos gestern 26 noch 39 .
We have seen in 6.2 that the following elements can be focused by their placement in the
Vorfeld (A): manner adverbs, Konkomitanzangaben, instrumental modifiers, situative and
directional complements, indefinite verb complements (90a) with the exception of the
nominative, as well as infinitives. When generating verb-second clauses involving any of
these focused categories, it is thus appropriate to replace the theme category in the Vorfeld
by the focused phrase. In verb-final clauses, however, these elements cannot be focused, as

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the place at the end of the sentence is the neutral position (90b), and left-movement would
have the opposite effect, namely topicalisation. The only means of focalising them in written
language would be through a clefting structure, such as in (90c):
90a Eine ROSE schenkte er der Frau.
90b ..., weshalb er der Frau eine Rose schenkte.
90c ..., weshalb es eine ROSE war, die er der Frau schenkte.
There is thus no focus position for the categories listed in the preceding paragraph in verbfinal
sentences. To avoid the use of clefting structures, because of their heaviness, and
because of the computational complexity involved, one can either choose the normal
canonical form position of these elements, or the rheme position. This position (90b) does
not require stress, but it allows focalization. One can thus hope for a free ride, as the context
may make it obvious that Rose is focused.
Elements that tend strongly to the left (B) are personal pronouns and definite, animate
nominative complements. They can be stressed by being moved to the right. The question is
what exactly is the position of these elements. In 90, the position of the focused nominative
complement behind the A +d-a constituent is grammatical, whereas in 91, it is not. The
difference between 90 and 91 seems to be that the pronoun in 91 follows several
constituents, whereas in 90 it follows only one. 91 makes it clear that a position too far
towards the end of the sentence can cause ungrammaticality. A better place to focus
elements with left-tendency seems to be the position following the nominative class N -d+a ,
and preceding the classes (A

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In 92 and 93, this focus position within the canonical form gives good results, but in
sentences involving other categories, it does not. The nominative complements in 94 and 95
are marked as focus, but word order according to the canonical form does not require them
to be stressed. The nominatives can be stressed, but this is not indicated by the word order.
In 94 and 95, the canonical form does not generate an unambiguous sentence, as the
nominatives could be either focus or neutral constituents. In such cases, we have to rely on
context to make it clear that the focus constituents have to be stressed:
94 ..., weil er +focus die Schönheitskönigin gestern 26 geküßt hat.
95 ..., weil gestern +theme der Besucher +focus die Schönheitskönigin geküßt hat.
As we are not able to find an unambiguous place for the category focus, it is worth
considering to always use the clefting construction instead of word order. However, clefting
structures are stylistically heavy, and therefore we suggest to use this focus position, to the
detriment of cases such as 94 and 95.
The elements which neither tend strongly to the left, nor to the right can be focused by being
positioned behind elements with strong right-tendency (C). We consider the latter to be most
elements from the modal element a 42 to the right in the canonical form, namely modifier
groups a 42 to a 44 (96), indefinite, inanimate (cf. 6.2) accusative and dative complements,
non-pronominal genitive complements (97) and prepositional objects (98, 99). The other
complement groups with right-tendency, such as the directional complement, for instance,
cannot be moved to the left (100):
96 Wolf schrieb mit dieser Feder 44 einen ganzen RoMAN +focus .
97 Tina erinnerte sich des Geschehnisses GEStern 26+focus .
98 Tina bewarb sich für die Stelle GEStern 26+focus .
99 Deshalb bewarb sich damals 26 für die Stelle ein MANN +focus .
100 * Tina fuhr in die Arbeit GEStern 26+focus .
The problem linked to the focus position of elements with left-tendency, namely that not all
sentences generated by this canonical form require strong stress, applies here, as well. In 97
to 99, strong focus on the last constituents is required, whereas the accusative NP in 96 is not
more stressed than a normal rhematic constituent.

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This focus category comprises all elements which are positioned to its left, excluding the
elements included in the first focus category, and thus all accusative, dative and genitive
complements and all modifiers, as well as the nominative complements with the features
N +d-a and N -d+a . Note that the focus elements within the complex class can be unordered,
as there should not be more than one focus in the sentence (indicated by the slash "/").
(A/D/G/PO/N +d-a /N -d /a pragm /a sit /a mod ) +focus
The final canonical form, including theme, rheme and the focus categories is thus the
following:
N pron /N +d+b < (A

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ungrammatical. Instead, a default word order is generated, which is correct in a large number
of sentences.
6.6. PREFERENTIAL PP ATTACHMENT
One of the major problems in natural language analysis is the highly ambiguous attachment
of prepositional phrases. Whittemore, Ferrara and Brunner (1990) discuss several PP
attachment schemes. The attachment predictors include (1990: 23f):
A) Right association, namely "the tendency for constituents to associate with adjacent
items to their right [...], also known as low attachment."
B) Minimal attachment, which is the "tendency to attach in a manner in which the least
number of syntactic rules are employed".
C) The lexical preference of PPs to attach to certain verbs or nouns, and the preference
of certain prepositions for specific kinds of constructions.
D) Referential success, which is the prediction that PPs are likely to attach to
indefinite NPs and PPs, and to verbs, rather than to definite NPs, because the former
"require less search over discourse space". This attachment predictor is linked to the
statement made in section 3.1.2 that rhematic elements (indefinite NPs) are more likely
to be modified than thematic ones.
To these four methods, we want to add the prediction that PPs in sentences involving strong
stress, as described in 6.2, are likely to be attached to the preceding constituent, if by this
attachment the existence of contrastive stress can be avoided. The reason for this suggestion
is that word order involving strong focusing is stylistically marked. It cannot be excluded in
analysis because it may occur, and if it occurs the focusing should be recognised, so that it
can be expressed in the target language of the translation. However, if there is a more natural
analysis available, it should be preferred.
We shall thus assume that focusing constructions are relatively unlikely to occur in written
text, and suggest that the analysis involving focus where another analysis is possible should

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be avoided. This is the case when the analysis of the PP as an adjunct results in a sentence
without contrastive stress.
An example of this is sentence 101, in which vor der Bank could either be an adjunct,
namely a modifier of the nominative NP der Mann (101a), or a sentence modifier (a 27 )
expressing the location of the whole event expressed in 101 (101b). In the latter case, the
accusative pronoun ihn would have to be stressed contrastively, as shows 102, in which the
PP cannot modify the nominative NP. 101a is definitely a more natural reading than 101b.
Note that, in spite of the markedness of the focalising construction in 101b, we cannot
generally exclude the position of a modifier before pronouns. If we did, our grammar would
wrongly exclude sentences such as (102b), where the adjunction shown in (102a) is not
possible:
101 Deshalb hat der Mann vor der Bank ihn ignoriert.
101a Deshalb hat {der Mann vor der Bank} ihn ignoriert.
101b ? Deshalb hat der Mann {vor der Bank} 27 IHN ignoriert.
102a * Deshalb hat {er vor der Bank} ihn ignoriert.
102b ?? Deshalb hat er {vor der Bank} 27 IHN ignoriert.
Instead of a preference, an absolute word order restriction can be formulated regarding the
last few complement classes of the canonical form, namely NPs and PPs of support verb
constructions, predicative nouns and adjectives, expansion complements, and complements
other than the nominative which have the features X -d-a (cf. 6.1, rules H, K, M and O). The
PP in der Sprachenschule is an adjunct to Lehrerin in 103a, as modifiers cannot follow
predicative elements. The word order restriction is clearer in 103b, where the adjunct
reading of the PP is not possible:
103a Assunta sagt, daß Louisa vor einem Jahr Lehrerin in der Sprachenschule war.
103b * Assunta sagt, daß Louisa vor einem Jahr gut in der Sprachenschule war.

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6.7. DICTIONARY ENTRIES FOR ADVERBS
The adverb is the most complicated, and perhaps also the most interesting part of
speech. Past research in natural language processing, however, has not dealt
seriously with adverbs, [...]. (Conlon/Evens, 1992: 1192)
Having presented our suggestions of how to deal with word order variation in German, we
now want to list the adverb-related features we need to realise this method in Natural
Language Processing. Section 6.7.1 contains a list of features and their values, as well as a
description of how we proceded to do the encoding of the adverbs listed in 8.2 and 8.3.
Section 6.7.2 discusses some generalizations, namely the fact that some position classes tend
to have specific feature values. Based on these facts, we also suggest default values which
can be used in future coding.
Some of the features, such as the classes of elements degree modifiers can modify, do not
relate directly to word order. We want to list them nevertheless, for the sake of
completeness, and because most degree modifiers can also modify the whole sentence. The
specific degree modifier information is needed in order to find out whether it refers to the
sentence or to part of it. As far as we are aware, the following information, which can be
formulated as features, is enough to deal syntactically with adverbs in Natural Language
Processing. The appendices 8.2 and 8.3 contain four hundred one-word modifiers which are
encoded using these features.
6.7.1. CODING OF ADVERBS IN THE DICTIONARY
The adverbs listed are the ones Hoberg (1981) found in her corpus, and which she classified
according to her list of adverbial position classes. We added Engel's (1988) lists of adverbs
(749ff), modal particles (762f), ordering particles (Rangierpartikeln, 763f), degree modifiers
(764ff) and toners (774f) 78 . Engel's lists are supposed to be exhaustive, but they only include
simple, namely non-derived, modifiers. We added to this list all modifiers we came across
78 Note that Engel (1988) uses his own, strictly syntactic classification which can differ from the ones used
by other linguists (cf. section 2.2).

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 192
while coding the elements of this list. However, the listing is by far not exhaustive, as nearly
all adjectives can be used adverbially. For the classification of these see section C, POS
(position), below.
We coded the adverbs alphabetically, as opposed to by position groups, in order to avoid
being biased or complacent. Furthermore, we coded them feature by feature, as opposed to
modifier by modifier. This means that we first checked, whether all adverbs were able to fill
the Vorfeld on their own, then whether they could be compared, and so on.
There were an astonishing number of cases in which our intuition failed to be 100% in
favour of one value. For instance, it was not clear to us, whether the adverb
durchweg/durchwegs 37 could be negated (+) or not (-). A feature value which turned out to be
particularly difficult to judge was rheme. The question of whether a modifier such as
dereinst 26 could carry the sentence focus cannot be answered objectively, at least when limited
to written language. For spoken language, there might be means to measure relative loudness,
or the intensity one puts on a word. In written texts, one is reduced to one's own intuition.
For this reason, we checked the occurrences of the modifiers for which we lacked a clear
intuition in a corpus. The German corpus we used is called HK 87 (Handbuchkorpus). It has
been compiled by the Institut für deutsche Sprache (IdS) in Mannheim. It consists of articles
written for the newspaper Mannheimer Morgen in the year 1987, and it comprises 3 million
words. This corpus turned out to be too small, as a limited number of modifiers only
occurred a few times, which makes our encoding less reliable. However, no other corpus was
accessible at the time we carried out our work.
We did not check all values for all modifiers in the corpus. In order to make the information
given in our list as objective a possible, we added a star (*) to the values we have checked in
the corpus. A star with a plus feature is more significant than a star with a minus feature. The
reason is that the value "+*" indicates that we have found at least one occurrence which
proves that the modifier really deserves this value (e.g. insgeheim 28 did occur at least once
in the Vorfeld). If a value is accompanied by a minus sign with a star (-*), this only means

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 193
that in our corpus there was no positive evidence. However, in a bigger corpus, there might
be positive evidence. Diesseits 27 , for instance, did not occur in the Vorfeld in our corpus,
and thus got the value "-*", but this may be linked to the fact that HK87 is too small.
In a very small number of cases, our intuition differed strongly from what we found in the
corpus. An example is ausnahmsweise 14 , which occurred only 12 times in the corpus, and
which did not occur once in the Vorfeld. As we firmly believe that ausnahmsweise can fill
the Vorfeld, we added a "&" sign to the minus sign (-) of VF (-&) indicating that we believe
the value should be plus (+).
We shall now discuss the single features and their values, as well as the problems we
encountered while encoding.
A) Modifier:
This feature designates the one-word modifier we encoded. According to the definition in
2.2.4, we included elements such as beiderseits 27 , as beiderseits can occur without its
genitive complement, in spite of its classification as a preposition in Wahrig (1986: 245).
About 40 modifiers in the list occurred less than 50 times. As the coding information is not
really reliable for such a small amount of occurrences, we added in brackets how often the
modifier occurred in the corpus, when the numbers were small.
A lot of modifiers have homographs either among the one-word sentence modifiers, or
among other word classes. In order to distinguish them, we added a short comment
indicating the meaning, such as:
bloß 5 (Wunsch, Aufforderung)
bloß 38 (nur, allein)
to differentiate the two meanings of bloß in 104a and 104b:
104a Ach, käme Peter doch bloß 5 heute.
104b Bloß 38 Peter kommt heute.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 194
B) Who: Source of the position class
The position class is the most difficult feature for which to identify the values. In order to
make the value-finding process more transparent, we mention in the column Who from
which source we got the information on the position class. The adverbs and their position
classification which we took over from Hoberg (1981) are indicated by the value HO. Where
possible, we directly assigned Engel's (1988: 749ff) semantic classification to Hoberg's
position classes. All local adverbs (1988: 751) could for example be assigned position class
27. When there was no doubt about the assignment, we gave the Who column the value EN
(for Engel). However, the assignment of other semantic classes was much less obvious.
Among others, this is the case for the group of temporal adverbs (Engel, 1988: 752).
Temporals split into the position classes 26, 33, 36, 37, 39 and 40. As the assignment of the
modifiers to these six groups is not based on Engel's classification, the value of the Who
column in such cases is RS (Ralf Steinberger). All further modifiers added to Engel's and
Hoberg's lists carry the value RS, as well.
C) POS: Position class
Our goal was to assign all one-word modifiers to any of the 44 position classes. We
mentioned in the previous paragraph that we took over the classification of all modifiers
made by Hoberg. Furthermore, we assigned the adverb groups classified semantically by
Engel (1988:, 751ff) to the following position classes:
local adverbs a 27
causal adverbs a 22
conditional adverb a 19
instrumental adverbs a 44
final adverbs a 24
Another group mentioned by Engel (1988:751), the adverbs expressing direction, are not
classified as modifiers but as complements.

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The coding was not always easy, as several of the classes are very similar. Doing this
classification is quite time-consuming, but the effort is limited because adverbs, toners and
degree modifiers are closed classes. There is only a limited amount of means to generate
new adverbs (cf. Engel, 1988: 755ff). As far as we can see, adverbs which can be derived
from adjectives belong to a small subset of position classes only, namely a 21
(wirtschaftlich), a 33 (plötzlich), a 36 (erneut), a 37 (selten) and the manner adverbs a 43 (laut,
schön, ...). a 43 is by far the biggest group 79 (Steinberger, 1992a: 29ff). According to
Schachter (1985:21), German shares the fact that manner adverbs are derivable from
adjectives with a lot of other languages.
The three position classes 10, 23 and 32 are not represented by one-word modifiers but by
PPs or NPs only. We nevertheless did not change the numbering, as we wanted to do our
classification in conformity with Hoberg and other authors who use her classification (e.g.
Waltzing, 1986).
In order to find the position class a modifier belongs to, we did the following: We narrowed
down the possible position classes of an adverb by comparing it with the description
provided by Hoberg (1981: 106-131). A good share of the adverbs could be assigned a
position class because of their semantics (e.g. somit expresses a cause and should thus
belong to the group a 22 ). Within the diverse group of temporal modifiers, we used the
restrictions mentioned by Hoberg, namely:
a 26 (denotes a period of time; Zeitraum, -intervall, -erstreckung)
a 33 (evaluative temporal modifiers, denoting a specific moment (Zeitpunkt)) precede
a 36 , whereas a 40 follow a 36 .
a 36 (repetition; "Wiederholung eines Vorgangs") precede a 37
a 37 (frequency (how often?); Häufigkeit) follow a 36
a 39 (temporal-pragmatic modifiers) are often adjoined to other elements
a 40 (either denoting a period of time or a specific moment) follow a 37
79 In our list it looks as if the temporal modifier group a 26 is the one with most entries. However, the reason
for this is that we deliberately limited the amount of manner adverbs because they are an open class.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 196
Several adverbs belong to both a 26 and a 40 and both are frequently combined with other
modifiers of the same type (gestern um drei Uhr).
We then searched for all occurrences of the adverbs for which we could not yet identify a
single position class in the corpus, and made a list of all other modifiers which occurred in
the corpus, to the left and to the right of the unclassified adverb. We only considered adverbs
in the main part of the sentence (Mittelfeld) which were not adjuncts. With the help of these
left and right-hand side occurrences, we could finally choose the position class which fitted
best in the overall order of the 44 position classes. The result of this procedure was not
always obvious, as it happens regularly that modifiers vary from the order of the position
classes. We nevertheless believe that the result is satisfying.
Due to this procedure, we had to assign the position class a 43 (manner adverbs) to the two
adverbs umsonst and vergebens, in spite of the fact that we felt that these modifiers would fit
perfectly well into the modifier group a 14 . The reason is that they follow all other modifiers
of the corpus they occur with. Most modifiers, however, could be assigned more
straightforwardly.
D) CLASS: Modifier class
As mentioned in 2.3, we distinguish three main modifier classes, existimatorial (pragmatic)
modifiers (a 1 -a 18 ), situatives (a 19 -a 40 ), and modal modifiers (a 42 -a 44 ). The feature
modifier class is redundant, as the information to which class modifiers belong is expressed
indirectly through their position class. However, we want to mention it because three
superclasses are intuitively more accessible than Hoberg's 44 position classes, and because
we want to formulate some generalizations based on them. These mainly concern scope,
discussed under (G) below.
E) VF: Ability to occur in the Vorfeld
Some modifiers can occur in the Vorfeld on their own (105a), others cannot (105b, 105c).
This information is expressed by the feature VF with its boolean values +/-. It is necessary in

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 197
order to avoid the generation of incorrect sentences and can be used to improve the analysis
by disambiguating some homonyms (such as einfach 18/43 , erst 34/39 , eigentlich 9/11 ,
also 3/22 and others) if one of them can appear in the Vorfeld and the other cannot
(Steinberger, 1992a: 12f and 37).
105a Einfach 43 geht das nicht! (manner)
105b Er ging einfach 18 nicht. (pragmatic)
105c * Einfach 18 ging er nicht.
F) NEG: Negability
This is also a boolean feature indicating whether a modifier following the negator nicht can
be partially negated or not. It may help to disambiguate homonyms if one of them is
negatable (107), and the other is not (106) (Steinberger, 1992b: 20f):
106a Ich kann gerade 33 nicht 41 gehen. (temporal: now)
106b * Ich kann nicht 41 gerade 33 gehen.
107a * Ich kann gerade 43 nicht 41 gehen. (manner: straight)
107b Ich kann nicht 41 gerade 43 gehen.
G) SCOPE: 80
Scope is to be understood here as what the (degree) modifier refers to 81 . In Steinberger
(1992b), we distinguished seven possible classes that can be referred to: (a) modal adverbs
(a 42 -a 44 ), (b) situative (a 19 -a 40 ) and (c) pragmatic adverbs (a 1 -a 18 ), (d) adjective phrases
(AP), (e) NPs and PPs, (f) cardinal phrases and (g) the sentence. We have added to this (h)
the negation particle nicht (gar/überhaupt nicht) and conjunctions (nur wenn).
For degree modifiers, this feature distinguishes what they can modify. Rund 16 for instance
can only modify cardinal numbers (rund 10 Leute, *rund heute), whereas nur 38 can modify
everything but pragmatic modifiers and the negation. Adverbials which are not degree
modifiers (in the sense used here) only refer to the sentence. We are aware of the fact that
80 The features scope and grad play only a marginal role in the treatment of word order. For this reason, they
are not explained in detail. For a more detailed description, see Steinberger (1992b).
81 For the definition of the word class degree modifier, see 3.7.1.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 198
modal adverbs, for example, rather modify the verb or the verb phrase than the sentence, but
this simplification does not matter in our case 82 . Modal adverbs are coded as such (D), and
so are existimatorial and situative adverbs.
H) PRE/POST: Position of modifiers
In addition to what a modifier can modify we have to specify whether it has to precede (pre)
or follow (post) the modified phrase. Some modifiers can stand in both positions and thus
get the value both.
J) DIST: Distance of modifiers
Furthermore, we have to specify whether the modifier has to be adjacent (-) to the modified
phrase, or whether it can stand in a position distant from it (+).
K) GRAD: Gradability 83
Not all elements can be modified or graded. Therefore, we need a boolean feature which
indicates this. The feature scope (G) expresses, for instance, that nur can modify situatives.
With the gradability feature we have to specify that heute and dort can be modified (nur
heute) whereas sogar and schon cannot (*nur sogar) (Steinberger, 1992b: 18f).
We believe that the two features, scope and gradability, are enough to find out whether a
modifier should be seen as independent, or rather as modifying, and thus dependent on
another element. One could certainly specify in more detail that ganz, for instance, can
modify wahrscheinlich, but not leider. However, we hope that a sequence such as ganz
leider will simply not occur in a text so that the information we give is sufficient.
82 Also, this corresponds more to our non-configurational approach which is strongly influenced by our
findings on word order, namely that word order is the result of the interaction of preference rules rather
than being the consequence of a strongly hierarchical constituent structure.
83 For a more detailed discussion of this feature, see Steinberger (1992b).

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 199
L) RHEME: Potential rhematicity
This boolean feature is important to guarantee the correct recognition of the rheme of the
sentence. We assume in 6.3 that the rheme is the last element in the sentence which can be
rhematic. In 108, it is thus gestern 26 , whereas in 109 it is sang, as bereits 39 is not a
potential rheme:
108 Er sang GEStern 26 .
109a * Er sang BeREITS 39 .
109b Er SANG bereits 39 .
Whether an element can be rhematic or not can be found out by constructing short sentences
with a structure such as in 108, in which the last element should be stressed. If the verb in
verb-second position has to be stressed, the modifier is not a potential rheme.
However, sometimes the decision is not as obvious as in 108 and 109. For instance, it was
less clear to us whether the adverb unverzüglich 33 is a potential rheme. In all cases in which
we did not have a clear-cut intuition, we searched the corpus for occurrences of the modifier
in question, and checked where we would put the sentence accent when reading the
sentences in the given contexts. If in any of them, the modifier carried the sentence accent,
we gave it the value "+*", and otherwise "-*".
M) Valency:
Not a lot of modifiers take arguments but some of them do. They are never obligatory.
Entsprechend 31 , for instance, can be accompanied by a genitive NP (110). We have shown
in 4.4.1 that it is important to recognise syntactic subordination such as in 110:
110 Er verhielt sich entsprechend 31 der Abmachung.
N) PRED: Predicative use
Some adverbs can be used predicatively (111a), others cannot (111b). This feature helps to
distinguish adverbial homonyms such as so 22/43 , eher 6/26/40 , gleich 18/33 and others:

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 200
111a Harold war so 43 . (proform for manner adverbs)
111b * Harold war so 22 . (cause: somit)
O) COMP: Comparability
Another feature which does not directly have to do with word order is the one indicating
comparability. This boolean feature indicates whether a modifier can be compared or not. If
it can, a set of further features is necessary to generate the correct comparison and
superlative forms morphologically (cf. Zähner/Gupta/Steinberger, forthcoming).
Nine of these features are necessary to cope with word order variation, and the related
degree modification, in Natural Language Processing (C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K and L). In
addition to these, one may want to express the compatibility of modifiers with each other.
Work on this subject has been carried out by Steinitz (1963) and by Bartsch (1972). Such
information may be necessary to solve some cases of ambiguity caused by homonyms, if the
syntactic features suggested in this section fail to provide help. Another use of cooccurrence
restrictions could be made in German sentence generation, in order to facilitate the choice
among several lexemes.
Semanticists may want to add further features, such as the influence of adverbs on time and
aspect. The German adverb gerade, for instance, bears aspect information which in English
has to be rendered morphologically (112). And temporal expressions can be of importance to
decide on the tense of the translated sentence (113):
112a Juan las gerade ein Buch.
112b Juan was reading a book.
112c * Juan read a book.
113a Archana steht morgen um acht Uhr auf.
113b * Tomorrow, Archana gets up at eight o'clock.
113c Tomorrow, Archana will get up at eight o'clock.
Although the number of modifier-related features probably has to be extended for these
tasks, we believe that the means offered in this section are sufficient to treat word order
problems satisfactorily.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 201
6.7.2. SOME GENERALIZATIONS
Once the coding work in alphabetical order was finished, we ordered the entries according to
their position classes to see whether the position classes shared the same feature values.
Furthermore, we wanted to verify some intuitive assumptions we had, such as the one that
manner adverbs are all potential rhemes, and that most pragmatic modifiers are not, among
others.
We found out that position classes do not share all feature values but that, in the position
classes a 1 to a 25 , there is a strong tendency to share values, with only a few exceptions. It
seems that the higher the position classes, the less homogenous their values.
It is particularly surprising that the 45 adverbs of the position classes a 1 to a 7 have the same
values for the features VF, KOMP, NEG, MOD, RHEME and PRED, with the exception of
one single feature each for two adverbs: eher 6 (rather) can be modified (viel eher), and
weiterhin 7 is a potential rheme. Some more exceptions can be seen in the table below.
In the following, we shall list the position classes which are consistent for some features.
This information could be interesting for further research, for instance into why different
groups are so consistent, and what they have in common with other classes which share the
same feature values. Another interesting question is whether modifiers share the same
feature values with their equivalents in other languages. Generalizations can furthermore be
of importance for future coding work as both, consistencies and strong tendencies, can be
used to formulate default values.
The list below shows all position classes, and the values they share for different features. It
also contains the classes which have a strong tendency towards a certain value. For the latter,
we add the information on how many exceptions there are. "-1/12" thus means, for instance,
that the class comprises 12 elements which generally have a negative value, and that there is
only one exception with a positive value.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 202
Class members VF COMP NEG GRAD RHEME PRED
1 2 - - - - - -
2 4 - - - - - -
3 2 - - - - - -
4 1 - - - - - -
5 7 - - - - - -
6 12 + - - - 1/12 - -
7 18 + - - - - 1/18 -
8 10 - - 1/10 - 1/10
9 6 - - - -
10 -
11 11 - - 1/11 - 1/11 - 1/11
12 22 + 1/22 - -
13 7 + - - - - -
14 13 -
15 2 - - + +
16 7 - - - - -
17 4 - - - - - -
18 9 - - 1/9 -
19 1 + - - + - -
20 2 + - - - + -
21 3 + - + - -
22 21 + -
23 -
24 3 + - + +
25 2 + - + + -
26 46 + 3/46 - 2/46
26/40 18 + - 1/18 + 1/18 + 1/18
27 43 + 3/43 -
28 1 + - - - - -
29 2 + - + +
30 2 + - + +
31 1 + - + - + +
32 -
33 18 - 2/18 -
34 7 - - 1/7 -
35 5 -
36 5 + - +
37 29 +
38 5 - - -
39 5 -
40 6 +
41 2 + - + + + -
42 1 + - + + + -
43 33+
44 1 + - + + - +

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 203
6.8. SUMMARY OF CHAPTER 6
We dedicated chapter 6 to a discussion of the consequences that our research could have for
Natural Language Processing. We started by giving a list of compulsory orders which apply
in the free word order language German (6.1). Their value cannot be underestimated as they
are part of the small number of hard and reliable word order rules we can work with in
sentence analysis.
In the next two sections (6.2 and 6.3) we suggested means of automatically recognising
theme, rheme and focus in a German sentence. We understand focus as being an element
which must be very strongly, or contrastively, stressed. Although the procedure of
recognising thematic, rhematic and focused phrases is not completely safe, we believe that it
provides us with correct results in most cases.
Section 6.4 contains some findings which are not immediately relevant for the treatment of
word order in Natural Language Processing, but which help to understand German word
order better. They concern the positional behaviour of several modifiers relative to each
other. The regularities concerning situative modifiers (6.4.4) proved to be more complex
than the ones concerning other groups. When situative modifiers permute, this can either not
have any effect at all, or it can result in focalization of the latter, or it can cause contrastive
stress, or it can even lead to ungrammaticality, depending on the modifiers involved.
Although we could not explain these different results satisfactorily, from a linguistic point of
view, we believe that they do not represent a problem for Machine Translation. The reason is
that, in sentence generation, we can simply order the modifiers according to the canonical
form. When analysing a German sentence, we can assume that the input is correct, and use
all the means described in this chapter to extract theme, rheme and focus, in order to
guarantee a correct translation.
Section 6.5 is dedicated to the elaboration of the final version of the canonical form. The
changes with respect to the one suggested in 5.3.3 mainly concern the incorporation of the

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 204
flexible categories theme, rheme and focus. Complements and modifiers which have been
identified as being thematic can take the position of theme, and the same applies for rheme
and focus constituents. When German sentences are generated with the help of this canonical
form, their word order differs depending on the analysis of the source sentences.
One problem encountered in the earlier canonical form presented in 5.3.3 was that we could
not identify a specific place for modifiers, because of their varying positional behaviour.
Section 6.5 showed that this problem was due to the fact that modifier position varies
considerably depending on the theme-rheme structure. Thanks to the insertion of the three
new categories in the final version of the canonical form, we could now identify a specific
position for each neutral modifier subtype.
In section 6.6, we suggested a preference for PP attachment resolution, which is based on the
fact that focusing word order is marked. Whenever constructions leading to contrastive
stress can be avoided by analysing the PP as an adjunct, this should be done.
In 6.7, finally, we gave a list of the modifier-related features we need in order to deal with
word order variation. We hope that the information they contain is sufficient for the
syntactic treatment of adverbs in Natural Language Processing.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 205
7. CONCLUDING REMARKS
To conclude, we want to summarise the contents briefly 84 , evaluate the results of our work,
and suggest areas of future research, which could make use of the outcome of this thesis.
We have discussed the complexity of the mechanism of German word order from the
linguistic point of view, and we made suggestions of how to cope with this complexity in
Machine Translation. We paid special attention to the treatment of modifiers, as most word
order information in linguistic literature concerns verb complements.
We started the work by giving the motivation for word order description (1.5), and by
defining the relevant terminology (2). The definitions of the word class adverb (2.2) found in
grammar books turned out to be contradictory. Chapter 3 is dedicated to the factors which
determine German word order. We could identify eleven factors, including the theme-rheme
structure (3.1), functional sentence perspective (3.3), and the scope of scope-including
elements (3.7). All of these factors can be seen as preferences, as opposed to clear-cut
ordering rules (4). It cannot be said, for instance, that thematic phrases always precede
rhematic ones, but it can only be formulated that themes tend to precede rhemes. Depending
on the parameters set for each factor in a specific sentence, the different factors often prefer
different phrase sequences. It can therefore occur that, in a given sentence, a phrase referring
to the AGENT of an action tends to precede the EXPERIENCER of the action (3.6), but that
the theme-rheme structure prefers the opposite order. In chapter 4, we described this
interaction of ordering factors, and gave evidence for the fact that some preferences are
stronger than others. It was also pointed out that this mechanism of weighing several factors
is restricted by possessive relations, the involvement of quantificational elements, amongst
others (4.4).
84 For a more detailed summary, see section 1.3.

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On the basis of this data, we discussed in chapter 5 recent suggestions of how to deal with
free word order in Natural Language Processing (5.1). As no proposition seems to be
satisfying, we suggest another method, namely the use of a flexible canonical form. As it is
not evident how appropriate a canonical form is for a free word order language, we discuss
this question in 5.2. The idea is that a canonical form expresses some of the preferences
implicitly. The requirement of the theme-rheme structure, for instance, that definite NPs and
PPs should precede indefinite ones, can be satisfied by formulating the canonical form
accordingly. A further essential component is that a canonical form can be made flexible, by
including categories such as theme, rheme and (contrastive) focus. These position categories
can include unlike elements such as complements and most modifier types (5.6 and 6.5).
Depending on which elements have been recognised as theme, rheme and focus, this flexible
canonical form produces sentences which are naturally embedded in their context. In order
to make the best use of such a canonical form, the relevant categories should be identified
during analysis. In sections 6.2, 6.3, and 6.7 we suggest the means for recognising theme,
rheme and focus in German, this being the source language.
Free word order poses major problems for both Natural Language Processing and language
learning, especially with respect to the neglected field of modifier positioning. We believe
that the suggested procedure using the canonical form is a good means of coping with word
order variation in German.
However, several problems are linked to our suggestion, and we are still far away from
having solved all difficulties. An unsatisfying aspect is that the data we used to develop the
canonical form is largely based on our own intuition. However, we could take over Hoberg's
(1981) findings on modifier classes, which are based on the Mannheimer Duden corpus.
Furthermore, we did a survey on people's preferences regarding word order permutation
(Steinberger, 1990), and used a German three million word corpus (6.7) to decide on the
feature values for the adverbs listed in the appendix (8.2 and 8.3).

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 207
If a lot of our work had to rely on linguistic intuition, this is because, as far as we are aware,
there is no tagged corpus which would comprise of tags for thematic, rhematic and focused
phrases, or for the sophisticated modifier classes we are using. An automatic assignment of
these categories by using our own findings, if possible, would lead to circular argumentation.
If one wanted to test the newly developed canonical form empirically, one would thus have
to put a lot of hard work into hand-tagging a large corpus. An alternative possibility would
be to apply the canonical form to a Machine Translation system and to evaluate the results it
produces in real-life applications.
Another weak point of this work is the distinction between rheme and focus, which cannot
be checked automatically either. Everybody will agree that there is a difference between the
stresses in examples involving contrastive focus and others involving a simple rhematic
element, but often the borderline between the two is unclear. We cannot think of any means
to verify this distinction empirically for written texts.
The recognition of the categories theme, rheme and focus seems to work well for German. In
our research, we took German as both a source and target language. In a Machine
Translation system, however, we will be confronted with differences between languages
regarding their means to express thematicity and functional sentence perspective. English
and French, for instance, express theme and rheme far less than German, so that the
information gathered during the analysis of any of these languages will not be enough to
make full use of the sophisticated canonical form for German. On the other hand, when
German is the source language, a lot of information on theme and rheme will be found, but
English and French cannot make use of all of it. This is not a real problem, as the canonical
form can be used perfectly well without the categories theme, rheme and focus. Any further
information on thematicity will be an advantage. The best use of it, however, could probably
be made when translating from another free word order language, such as Czech, into German,
or vice versa.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 208
German analysis should depend on the language it is compared with. Focusing, for instance,
may or may not be expressed by special means in the other language. In 1, we have to
choose between rendering the very strong focusing of the German sentence and the stylistic
heaviness of the equivalent English clefting construction. However, as the word order in 1a
is very strongly marked, 1c is a more appropriate translation than 1b. According to the
Collins German dictionary (1981: 582), the degree modifier schon in sentences such as 2a
should disappear when translating into English. In the German sentence 2a, schon is
necessary to underline the focus on gestern. For a German speaker's intuition, 2b seems to be
an inapproprate translation of 2a, as both an equivalent of schon and the forced stress on
yesterday are missing. 2 shows to what extent German and English differ with respect to
expressing differences in functional sentence perspective.
1a
1b
1c
2a
2b
2c
Er hat gestern IHN gesehen.
?? He saw him yesterday.
It was HIM that he saw yesterday.
Er sprach mit der Frau GEStern schon.
He talked to the woman yesterday.
?? It was yesterday that he talked to the woman.
1 and 2 show that our distinctions and suggestions should be reviewed according to the
language into or from which it is translated. It did nevertheless make sense to analyse
German without referring to another language, as our intention was to show the principle.
We provided all the means and, depending on the other languages, either all of them or an
appropriate subset can now be chosen.
Another problem is that our canonical form is only an approximation. We found example
pairs which showed that no canonical form generates the correct order of elements for all
sentences. On whatever order of categories in the canonical form we decide, some sentences
will be generated incorrectly. This indicates either that these examples are highly
idiosyncratic, or that we still have not found all distinctive features necessary for an
automatic treatment of word order. However, we hope and believe that most sentences can
be generated correctly.

Ralf Steinberger – Word Order Variation in German, Modifiers (Ph.D. Thesis, UMIST, 1994) 209
In an evaluation of the suggested method, it should also be mentioned that it can only treat
adverbs and that we had to leave aside the bigger group of prepositional phrases. PPs still
cannot be disambiguated and classified automatically. However, the existence of a sound
classification system based on the closed word class of adverbs, combined with our
explanatory findings on word order variation, might be a first step in the direction of solving
this problem. Interesting research that could be carried out in the future would be, for
instance, to categorise the PPs occurring in a corpus according to the classification suggested
in this thesis. Are there any regularities which can be used for an automatic assignment of
PPs to the modifier classes? Are certain prepositions and nouns linked to specific modifier
classes or to the feature values shown in the appendix (8.2 and 8.3)? And is there a relation
between the modifier position classes and the definiteness of NPs or PPs? The answers to
these and other questions would certainly help in progress concerning the automatic
treatment of prepositional phrases. Another future application based on the findings of this
thesis would be the formulation of further preferences such as the one presented in 6.6.
We implemented a slightly simpler version of our model within the CAT2 Machine
Translation system, and for the several hundred test sentences, it seemed satisfactory. The
next step would now be to apply this method to a commercial system on a larger scale, in
order to find out its strength as well as its limits.

210
8. APPENDIX
8.1. ANGABESTELLUNGSKLASSEN (ACCORDING TO HOBERG,
1981: 106-131)
a 1
denn, ja (meist in direkten oder indirekten Fragesätzen)
a 2
da, dann, nun, jetzt (nicht temporal)
a 3
aber (nicht nur adversativ),
also (nicht kausal)
a 4
doch (nicht adversativ oder konzessiv, sondern bekräftigend)
a 5
eben/halt (nicht temporal)
nämlich
nicht, etwa (in Fragesätzen)
nur, bloß (Wunsch oder Aufforderung)
(pragmatischer Charakter des Satzes)
a 6
jedoch, indessen, allerdings, nur (=allerdings), freilich, zwar, wohl (=zwar),
vielmehr, dagegen, übrigens, jedenfalls ...
(oft Gegensatz, Einschränkung, Korrektur eines anderen Satzes)
a 7
erstens, zweitens ..., ferner, weiter(hin), außerdem, auch (=außerdem), sonst
(=außerdem), zudem, überdies, obendrein, daneben, zugleich, endlich/schließlich
(nicht temporal), einerseits, andererseits
(zur Gliederung des Sprechaktes)
a 8
beispielsweise, z.B., etwa (=z.B.), u.a.
in erster Linie, primär, sekundär, vor allem, besonders, insbesondere, nicht zuletzt,
vorwiegend, zumal, eben, gerade
(Ordnungsfunktion)
a 9
sowieso, ohnehin, ohnedies, überhaupt, eigentlich (=überhaupt), immerhin
(= wie dem auch sei, Unabänderlichkeit)

211
a 10
laut Protokoll, nach Chomsky
(referentiell, mit existimatorisch-pragmatischem Charakter)
a 11
an sich, im Grunde genommen, eigentlich (=im Grunde), genau/streng genommen,
im Prinzip, prinzipiell, letztlich, letzten Endes, theoretisch, praktisch,
gewissermaßen, sozusagen, gleichsam, im allgemeinen, im großen und ganzen,
im wesentlichen, z,T., teilweise, mehr oder weniger/minder, fast, beinahe
(betreffen die Gültigkeit der Aussage, relativierend)
a 12
eventuell, vielleicht, womöglich, möglicherweise, wohl, vermutlich, voraussichtlich,
wahrscheinlich, sicher(lich), gewiß, bestimmt, zweifellos, ohne Zweifel, ...
natürlich, selbstverständlich, bekanntlich, angeblich, anscheinend, scheinbar,
offenbar, offensichtlich, augenscheinlich ...
(modifizieren den assertorischen Modus / Evidenz wird bekräftigt oder
abgeschwächt)
a 13
hoffentlich, erfreulicherweise, Gottseidank, zum Glück
unglücklicherweise, bedauerlicherweise, leider, ...
(erwünscht oder unerwünscht)
a 14
dummerweise, klugerweise, merkwürdigerweise, eigentuümlicherweise,
billigerweise, zu (Un-)Recht, unmöglich, besser, ...
normalerweise, irrtümlicherweise, ausnahmsweise, notwendigerweise,
zwangsläufig, ...
(kommentieren stark subjektiv wertend)
a 15
in Wirklichkeit, in Wahrheit, wirklich, tatsächlich, in der Tat
(nicht performatorisch, sondern beziehen sich auf das Tatsache-sein)
a 16
wenigstens, zumindest, höchstens, allenfalls, bestenfalls
(Maß-Adverbiale, Vergleich / oft adjungiert)
a 17 (so)gar, selbst (=sogar) (ähnlich a 18 )
a 18 ruhig, getrost, einfach, geradezu, leicht, regelrecht, ...
(existimatorischer Charakter)

212
a 19
dann, in diesem Fall, unter der Bedingung/Voraussetzung, bei diesen Verhältnissen)
(konditional)
a 20
trotzdem, dennoch, ... (konzessiv)
a 21 in dieser Hinsicht, rechtlich, wirtschaftlich, -mäßig, ...
(Proform: in dieser Hinsicht, limitieren die Prädikation auf einen bestimmten
Aspekt)
a 22
deshalb, daher, (al)so, aus diesem Grunde, infolge von, (kausal)
a 23
mit der Folge, daß (konsekutiv)
a 24
zu diesem Zweck, mit diesem Ziel, ... (final)
a 25
mit diesen Mitteln, damit, auf diesem Wege, durch solche Maßnahmen,
mithilfe dieses Verfahrens (medial)
a 26 gestern, nach dem Essen, 1980, jetzt, damals, später, mittlerweile, ...
(Zeitraum, in dem sich der Sachverhalt abspielt)
a 27
hier, auf der Straße, in Bonn
(lokal, Proform: dort) "Quasi-Lokale", (echte Lokale sind Ergänzungen)
a 28
bei gutem Wetter, mit zweistündiger Verspätung, unter großem Beifall
(Begleitumstände, Proform: wobei-Satz)
a 29
bei der Feier, auf der Tagung, anläßlich ... (Anlaß, Gelegenheit, Proform: dabei)
a 30
hier, in der Kunst, auf diesem Gebiet, bei Goethe, für mich, bezülich, betreffs
(limitierende Funktion, lokal oder abstrakt-geistig)
a 31
entgegen allen Voraussagen, im Verhältnis/Vergleich zu früher,
entsprechend/gemäß der Vereinbarung
(Gegensatz oder Entsprechung eines Sachverhaltes im Vergleich)
a 32
von der Polizei, durch die Amerikaner
((Personaler) Urheber eines Geschehens, Agensangabe im Passivsatz)

213
a 33
plötzlich, auf einmal, endlich, schließlich, bald, sofort, (so)gleich, unverzüglich,
gerade, (so)eben, ... (valuativ-temporal, geben Zeitpunkt an)
a 34
doch, durchaus, (sehr) wohl, schon/noch/erst (nicht temporal).
(ca. pragmatisch, sprecherbezogen)
a 35
auch, ebenfalls, gleichfalls.
a 36 wieder(um), erneut, noch einmal, nochmals, abermals, immer wieder, ...
(Wiederholung, iterativ)
a 37
ein paarmal, jedesmal, selten, zeitweise, vielfach, wiederholt, häufig, oft,
regelmäßig, stets, immer(zu)... (Frequenz)
a 38
nur, bloß, lediglich, allein, einzig. (limitierend)
a 39
schon, bereits, noch, immer noch, erst.
(temporal-pragmatisch, schon: (Erwartung des Sprechers)
a 40 3 Wochen, den ganzen Tag, von 8-10 Uhr, lange, am Montag, um 9 Uhr, ...
(zeitliche Dauer, Zeitpunkt)
a 41
nicht, gar nicht, überhaupt nicht, nicht mehr, nicht etwa, nicht einmal, keineswegs,
in keiner Weise, kaum, nie(mals), ...
(Negationsangaben, auch graduierend (ganz und gar nicht, kaum))
a 42 mit den Kindern, in Begleitung eines Erwachsenen, miteinander, ...
(konkomitant, begleitend-kooperational)
a 43
so, schnell, laut, mit großem Eifer, gut, gern, auf diese Weise, sehr, wenig, völlig,
ganz, ein bißchen, ...
modifizieren, graduieren, quantifizieren
(Modificativa (unter Ausschluß der attributiv verwendeten Modalangaben)),
Proformen: so/in diesem Maße
a 44 mit dem Messer, mit Hilfe eines Bohrers, ...
(Instrumentalangaben) (konkreter als Mediale)

8.2. ALPHABETICAL LISTING OF MODIFIERS
Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
1980 26 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
abends 26,40 sit EN +* - + + + + s - - -
aber (nicht nur adversativ) 03 pragm HO - - - - - - s,man,sit,npp,ap post - -
abermals 36 sit HO + - - - + - s - - -
abseits (17; 5 ohne GEN) 27 sit RS +*# -* -*& +* +* +* s - - GEN
allein (einzig, nur) 38 sit HO -* -* +* +* -* - s,man,sit,npp,card both - -
allenfalls 16 pragm HO - - - - - - s,man,sit,npp,card,ap pre - -
allenthalben 27 sit EN + - - - -* -* s - - -
allerdings 06 pragm HO +* -* -* -* -* -* s,sit post - -
allezeit (-) 37 sit RS -? - +? - -? -? s - - -
also 22 sit HO + - - - - - s,sit,npp post - -
also (nicht kausal) 03 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
andererseits 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
anders 43 mod RS + - + + + + s - - -
anderswo 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
anfangs 26 sit EN + - - + + + s - - -
angeblich 12 pragm HO +* - -* -* -* -* s - - -
anläßlich ... 29 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
anscheinend 12 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
auch (außerdem) 07 pragm HO +* - -* -* -* -* s - - -
auch (gleichfalls) 35 sit HO -* - +* -* +* -* s,man,sit,npp,ap,koord pre - -
augenscheinlich (4) 12 pragm HO +* - - + - -* s - - -
außen 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
außerdem 07 pragm HO + - -* - - - s - - -
ausnahmsweise (12) 14 pragm HO -*& -* -* +* -* -* s - - -
214

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
auswärts 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
bald 33 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
bedauerlicherweise 13 pragm HO +* -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
beiderseits 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - GEN
beinahe 11 pragm HO + - - - -* - s,man,sit,ap,card pre - -
beispielsweise 08 pragm HO + - - - - - s,sit,npp,ap post - -
beizeiten (2) 39 sit RS + - + + + + s - - -
bekanntlich 12 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
bereits 39 sit HO - - - - - - s,man,sit,npp,card,ap both yes -
besonders (Ordnungsfunktion) 08 pragm HO +* -* - +* +* -* s,man,sit,pragm,npp,ap pre - -
besser 43 mod RS + - + + + + s - - -
besser (subjektiv wertend) 14 pragm HO -* -* -* - - - s - - -
bestenfalls 16 pragm HO + - - - - - s,man,sit,card,ap pre - -
bestimmt (96) 12 pragm HO +* - - + + -* s,npp pre - -
billigerweise (-) 14 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
bisher 26 sit EN + - - + +* + s - - -
bislang (328) 26 sit EN +* - - -* -* + s - - -
bisweilen 26 sit EN + - - - -* -* s - - -
bitte (81) 18 pragm RS + - - - -* - s - - -
bloß (Wunsch, Aufforderung) 05 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
bloß (nur, allein) 38 sit HO +*& - +* -* - -* s,man,sit,npp,card,ap pre yes -
da 02 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
da 26 sit EN + - + + -* + s - - -
dabei 27 sit EN + - + +* + +* s - - -
dabei (Anlaß) 29 sit HO + - + + - -* s - - -
215

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
dadurch (medial) 25 sit RS + - + + - - s - - -
dafür (final: zu diesem Zweck) 24 sit EN + - + + - - s - - -
dagegen (indessen) 06 pragm HO + - - - - - s,npp post - -
daher (kausal) 22 sit HO + - - - - - s - - -
dahinter 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
damals 26 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
damit (instrumental) 44 mod EN + - + + -* + s - - -
damit (medial, weniger konkret als a 44 ) 25 sit HO + - + + -* + s - - -
danach 26 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
danach 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
daneben 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
daneben (obendrein) 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
dann 26 sit EN + - - + -* -* s - - -
dann (da, nun, jetzt; ähnlich a 19/26 ) 02 pragm HO - - - - -* - s - - -
dann (in diesem Fall) 19 sit HO +* - - +* - -* s - - -
daran 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
darauf 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
darin 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
darüber 27 sit EN +* - + + + + s - - -
darum 22 sit EN + - + + - +* s - - -
dauernd 37 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
davon 27 sit EN + - + + - - s - - -
dazu (final: zu diesem Zweck) 24 sit EN + - + + - -* s - - -
dazwischen 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
deinethalben 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
216

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
deinetwegen 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
demnächst 26 sit EN + - + - + + s - - -
denn 01 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
dennoch 20 sit HO + - - - +* -* s - - -
dereinst (5) 26 sit EN -* -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
derzeit 26 sit EN +* - -* - - -* s - - -
deshalb 22 sit HO + - + + -* -* s - - -
deswegen 22 sit EN + - + + -* -* s - - -
dienstags 26,40 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
diesbezüglich 30 sit HO +* - + + -* -* s - - -
diesseits (5) 27 sit EN -* -* -* -* -* + s - - GEN
doch (nicht adversativ/konzessiv; bekräftigend) 04 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
doch (pragmatisch: durchaus) 34 sit HO + - - - +* - s - - -
donnerstags 26,40 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
dort 27 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
draußen 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
drinnen 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
droben 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
drüben 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
drunten 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
dummerweise 14 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
durchaus 34 sit HO - - - - + - s,sit pre - -
durchweg (ausnahmslos) (52) 37 sit RS +* -* +* +* -* -* s,ap pre - -
durchwegs (ausnahmslos) (1) 37 sit RS +* -* +* +* -* -* s,ap pre - -
eben 08 pragm HO - - - - - - s,sit,npp pre - -
217

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
eben (halt; nicht temporal) 05 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
eben (temporal) 33 sit HO + - - - + + s - - -
ebenfalls 35 sit HO +* - - -* + - s,npp - yes -
ebenso 35 sit RS + - - - + - s,man,sit,ap pre - -
ehedem (14) 26 sit EN +* -* -* -* +* - s - - -
ehemals 26 sit EN -* - - - - - s - - -
eher 26,40 sit EN + + + + + + s - - -
eher (rather) 06 pragm RS + - - +* - - s,man,sit,pragm,npp,card,ap pre - -
ehrenhalber 22 sit EN + - + + + - s - - -
eigentlich (im Grunde) 11 pragm HO + - +* - - - s - - -
eigentlich (überhaupt) (nur Fragen) 09 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
eigentümlicherweise (2) 14 pragm HO +* -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
einerseits 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
einfach 18 pragm HO -* -* +* +* -* - s - - -
einfach 43 mod RS +* + + +* +* + s - - -
einmal (1 Mal) 37 sit RS + - + +* + -* s - - -
einmal (toner) 14 pragm RS - - - - - - s - - -
einst 26 sit EN + - - - - -* s - - -
einstmals 26 sit EN + - - - - -* s - - -
einstweilen 26 sit EN + - -* - - - s - - -
einzig (nur) 38 sit HO - - -* - - - s,sit,npp pre - -
endlich 33 sit HO + - - - - - s - - -
endlich (nicht temporal) 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
entsprechend 31 sit HO + - + - + + s,man,sit,ap pre - GEN
erfreulicherweise 13 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
218

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
erneut (210) 36 sit HO +* - -*& -* + - s - - -
erst 39 sit HO + - - - - - s,sit,npp,card pre - -
erst (nicht temporal) 34 sit HO - - - - - - s - - -
erstens 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
etwa (in Fragesätzen) 05 pragm HO - - -* - - - s - - -
etwa (ungefähr) 16 pragm RS - - -* - - - s,sit,npp,card pre - -
etwa (z.B.) 08 pragm HO - - - - - - s,sit,npp post - -
eurethalben 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
euretwegen 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
eventuell (40) 12 pragm HO + - - -* - - s - - -
fast 11 pragm HO + - - - - - s,sit,npp,card,ap pre yes -
ferner (148) 07 pragm HO +* -* -* -* - - s - - -
fortan 26 sit EN +* -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
freilich 06 pragm HO + - - - - - s,sit,npp post - -
freitags 26,40 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
früh 40 sit RS + + + + + + s - - -
früher (damals) 26 sit RS + - - + + + s - - -
ganz 43 mod HO + - +* - +* +* s,man,sit,pragm,npp,ap pre - -
gar 17 pragm HO -* - - - - - s,neg pre - -
gelegentlich 37 sit HO + - + - -* -* s - - -
genauso 43 mod RS + - - + + + s - - -
genauso (ebenso) 35 sit RS + - - + + + s,man,sit,pragm pre - -
gerade 43 mod RS -* + + + + + s - - -
gerade (eben; erst recht) 08 pragm HO -* - +* - - -* s,sit,npp,coord pre - -
gerade (jetzt) 33 sit HO +* - - +* - + s - - -
219

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
geradeheraus (1) 43 mod RS -* -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
geradenwegs (-) 43 mod RS + - -? -? + - s - - -
geradeswegs (-) 43 mod RS + - -? -? + - s - - -
geradewegs (7) 43 mod RS -* -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
geradezu 18 pragm HO - - - - - - s,man,ap pre - -
gern 43 mod HO + - + + + - s - - -
gestern 26 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
getrost 18 pragm HO - - - + -* - s - - -
gewiß 12 pragm HO + - - + + + s - - -
gewissermaßen 11 pragm HO -* - - - - - s - - -
glatt (ohne weiteres) 43 mod RS +* + +* +* +* +* s - - -
glattweg (ohne weiteres) (2) 43 mod RS -* -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
gleich 18 pragm RS - - -* - - - s - - -
gleich 33 sit HO + - +* - + + s - - -
gleichfalls 35 sit HO - - - - + - s - - -
gleichsam 11 pragm HO + - - - -* - s - - -
gleichzeitig 26,40 sit RS + - + + + + s - - -
glücklicherweise 13 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
Gottseidank 13 pragm HO + - - - -* - s - - -
gut 43 mod HO - + + + + + s,card pre - -
häufig 37 sit HO + + + + + + s - - -
halt (eben) 05 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
hernach (8) 26 sit EN - -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
heute 26 sit EN + - -* + -* -* s - - -
heutzutage (43) 26 sit EN +* - - + -* -* s - - -
220

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
hier 27 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
hier 30 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
hierfür 24 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
hinten 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
hinterher 26 sit EN + - +* + + + s - - -
hinterrücks 43 mod RS -*& -* -* -* -* - s - - -
höchstens 16 pragm HO +* - - - - - s,npp,card,coord pre yes -
hoffentlich 13 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
ihrethalben 22 sit EN + - + -*& + + s - - -
ihretwegen 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
immer 37 sit HO + - + + + - s,man,sit,npp pre - -
immerhin 09 pragm HO + - - - - - s,ap,card pre - -
immerzu 37 sit HO + - - - + - s - - -
indessen 06 pragm HO + - - - - - s,npp post - -
innen 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
insbesondere 08 pragm HO +* - - - - - s,sit,npp pre - -
insgeheim (14) 28 sit RS +* -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
inzwischen 26 sit HO + - - - - -* s - - -
irgendwann (97) 26,40 sit RS + - - - - -* s - - -
irgendwo 27 sit EN + - - - + + s - - -
irrtümlicherweise 14 pragm HO + - - - -* - s - - -
ja 01 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
jäh (15) 33 sit RS - - -* -* +* -* s - - -
jählings (-) 33 sit RS + - + - + - s - - -
jahrelang 40 sit HO + - + + + - s - - -
221

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
jedenfalls 06 pragm HO +* - - - - - s,sit,npp both - -
jederzeit 37 sit RS + - + - + - s - - -
jedesmal 37 sit HO + - + + + - s - - -
jedoch 06 pragm HO +* - - - - - s,sit,npp post - -
jenseits 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - GEN
jetzt 26 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
jetzt (nicht temporal) 02 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
kaum 41 neg HO + - - - + - s - - -
keineswegs (224) 41 neg HO +* - +* +* +* - s,man,sit,npp,ap pre - -
klugerweise 14 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
kopfüber 43 mod RS -* -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
künftig 26 sit HO + - - - + - s - - -
kürzlich (126) 26 sit RS +* - -* +* -* -* s - - -
längsseits (-) 27 sit EN + - + + -*& -* s - - GEN
längst (400) 33 sit RS +* - - +* - - s,neg pre - -
lange 40 sit HO + + + + + + s - - -
laufend 37 sit HO +* - -* -* +* + s - - -
laut 43 mod HO + + + + + + s - - -
lediglich 38 sit HO - - - - - - s,man,sit,npp,card,ap,coord pre - -
leicht 18 pragm HO + - +* + +* - s - - -
leicht 43 mod RS + + + + + + s,ap pre - -
leider 13 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
letztens 07 pragm RS + - - - - - s - - -
letztlich 11 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
links 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
222

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
mal 17 pragm RS - - - - - - s - - -
manchmal 37 sit HO + - - - + + s - - -
mehrmals 37 sit RS +* - - +* + + s - - -
meinethalben 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
meinetwegen 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
meist 37 sit RS + - - - + + s - - -
meistens 37 sit HO + - - - + + s - - -
merkwürdigerweise 14 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
miteinander 42 mod HO + - + + + - s - - -
mittendrin 27 sit EN + - - + + + s - - -
mittlerweile 26 sit HO + - - - - - s - - -
mittwochs 26,40 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
mitunter 37 sit HO + - - - - - s - - -
möglicherweise 12 pragm HO +* - - - - - s - - -
momentan 26 sit RS + - - - -* - s - - -
montags 26,40 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
morgen 26 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
morgens 26,40 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
nächstens 26 sit EN + - - + - + s - - -
nämlich 05 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
nachher 26 sit EN + - + + - + s - - -
nachmittags 26,40 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
natürlich 12 pragm HO + - - - - -* s - - -
natürlich 43 mod RS + + + + + + s - - -
nebenan 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
223

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
neulich 26 sit EN + - - + + + s - - -
nicht (nur Fragen) 05 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
noch 39 sit HO + - - +* -* + s,sit,npp both yes -
noch (nicht temporal) 34 sit HO - - - - - - s - - -
nochmals (71) 36 sit HO + - +* +* + - s - - -
normalerweise 14 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
notwendigerweise (10) 14 pragm HO -* - +* + -* -* s - - -
nun 02 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
nun 26 sit EN + - - - - - s - - -
nur (Wunsch/Aufforderungssatz) 05 pragm HO -* - - - - - s - - -
nur (allerdings) 06 pragm HO +* - - - - - s - - -
nur (bloß; limitierend) 38 sit HO -* - + - - - s,man,sit,pragm,npp,card,coord pre yes -
öfters 37 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
oben 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
obenauf (1) 27 sit EN +* -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
obendrein 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
obenhin (-) 43 mod RS -? - +? + + - s - - -
offenbar (311) 12 pragm HO +* - - +* - +* s,npp pre - -
offensichtlich 12 pragm HO + - -* + - + s - - -
oft 37 sit HO + + + + + + s - - -
oftmals 37 sit RS + - - - + -* s - - -
ohnedies 09 pragm HO - - - - + - s - - -
ohnehin 09 pragm HO - - - - + - s - - -
plötzlich 33 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
praktisch (140) 11 pragm HO +* - -* - - + s,neg pre - -
224

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
primär (21) 08 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
prinzipiell (18) 11 pragm HO +* - -*& + + - s - - -
rechtlich 21 sit HO + - - + + - s - - -
rechts 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
regelmäßig 37 sit HO + + + + + + s - - -
regelrecht 18 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
rings (5) 27 sit RS +* -* -* -* -* -* s - - PP (um)
ringsherum (1) 27 sit EN -* -* -* -* +* -* s - - -
ringsum (10) 27 sit EN +* -* -* -* +* -* s - - -
ruhig 18 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
ruhig 43 mod RS + + + + + + s - - -
rund 16 pragm RS - - - - - - card pre - -
rundheraus (offen) (1) 43 mod RS + - - + + - s - - -
rundweg (unumwunden) (7) 43 mod RS + - - -* + - s - - -
samstags 26,40 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
scheinbar 12 pragm HO + - - - - - s,man,sit,npp pre - -
schließlich 33 sit HO + - - - - - s - - -
schließlich (nicht temporal) 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
schnell 18 pragm RS - - - + - - s - - -
schnell 43 mod HO + + + + + + s - - -
schnurstracks (5) 43 mod RS + - + -* + - s - - -
schon 39 sit HO + - + - - - s,sit,npp both yes -
schon (nicht temporal) 34 sit HO - - - - - - s - - -
sehr 43 mod HO -* - + - + - s,man,sit,pragm,ap pre - -
seinerzeit (58) 26 sit EN +* - - +* - - s - - -
225

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
seinethalben 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
seinetwegen 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
seitdem 26 sit EN + - + + + -* s - - -
seither 26 sit EN + - + - - -* s - - -
sekundär 08 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
selbst ("sogar", nicht "selber") 17 pragm HO - - - - - - s,man,sit,npp,ap,coord pre - -
selbstverständlich 12 pragm HO + - - + + + s - - -
selten 37 sit HO + + + + + + s - - -
sicher 43 mod RS -* + + + + + s - - -
sicher (sicherlich) 12 pragm HO + - - + + - s - - -
sicherlich 12 pragm HO + - - - + - s - - -
so 43 mod HO + - + + + + s,man,sit,pragm,ap pre - -
so (kausal) 22 sit HO + - - + - - s - - -
soeben (26) 33 sit HO +* - -* +* + -* s - - -
sofort (312) 33 sit HO +* - +* -* +* -* s - - -
sogar 17 pragm HO - - - - - - s,man,sit,pragm,npp,card, pre yes -
sogleich 33 sit HO + - - - -* -* s - - -
somit (kausal) 22 sit RS + - - - - - s - - -
sonntags 26,40 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
sonst (außerdem) 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
sowieso 09 pragm HO -* - - - + - s - - -
sozusagen 11 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
später 26 sit HO + + + + + + s - - -
ständig 37 sit HO + + + - + + s - - -
stets 37 sit HO + - - - + + s - - -
226

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
tagelang 40 sit RS + - + + + - s - - -
tagsüber (28) 26 sit EN +* - -* +* + + s - - -
tatsächlich (63) 15 pragm HO +* - -* - + + s - - -
teilweise 11 pragm HO + - - + - - s - - -
theoretisch 11 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
trotzdem 20 sit HO + - - - + - s - - -
überall 27 sit EN + - + - + + s - - -
überdies 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
überhaupt 09 pragm HO + - - - + - s,neg pre - -
übermorgen 26 sit EN + - + + + -* s - - -
übrigens 06 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
umher 27 sit EN - - - + + - s - - -
umsonst (31) (Bedeutung=a 14 ?) 43 mod RS +* - +* + + + s - - -
unbedingt (27) 34? sit RS + - +* + + - s - - -
unglücklicherweise 13 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
unlängst 26 sit EN +* - - + -* -* s - - -
unmöglich 14 pragm HO + - - + + + s - - -
unserthalben 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
unsertwegen 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
unsretwegen 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
unten 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
unterdessen 26 sit HO + - - - - - s - - -
unumwunden 43 mod RS + - - + + - s - - -
ununterbrochen (7) 37 sit EN + - + - -*& -* s - - -
unversehens 33 sit RS + - - + + - s - - -
227

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
unverzüglich 33 sit HO -* - - -*& -* -* s - - -
vergebens (21) (Bed=a 14 ?) 43 mod RS +* - + + + + s - - -
vermutlich 12 pragm HO + - - - - - s,sit,npp,ap pre - -
vielfach 37 sit HO + - - - + - s - - -
vielleicht 12 pragm HO +* - -* - - -* s - - -
vielmehr 06 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
völlig 43 mod HO -* - + - + - s,man,npp,ap pre - -
voraussichtlich (55) 12 pragm HO +* - - -* - -* s - - -
vorerst (89) 33 sit EN +* - -* - - - s - - -
vorgestern 26 sit EN + - -* + + + s - - -
vorher 33 sit EN +* - + + + + s - - -
vorhin 26 sit EN + - - + -* -* s - - -
vorne 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
vorwiegend 08 pragm HO +* - -* -* -* -* s,npp,ap pre - -
währenddessen 26 sit EN + - -* + -*& -* s - - -
wahrscheinlich 12 pragm HO + - - + - + s,sit,card,ap pre - -
weiter (142) 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
weiterhin 07 pragm HO + - - - + - s - - -
wenig 43 mod HO -* + + +* + + s,sit,npp,ap pre - -
wenigstens 16 pragm HO + - - - - - s,man,sit,npp,card pre - -
wieder 36 sit HO + - - + + + s - - -
wiederholt 37 sit HO + - - + -*& -* s - - -
wiederum 36 sit HO + - - - + + s - - -
wirklich 15 pragm HO - - + - + + s,man,sit,ap pre - -
wirtschaftlich (60) 21 sit HO + - + + + - s - - -
228

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
wirtschaftsmäßig (-) 21 sit HO + - - +? + - s - - -
wochenlang 40 sit RS + - + + + - s - - -
wohl (adversativ/entgegen d.allgemeinen Auffassung) 34 sit HO -*& - - +* +* -* s - - -
wohl (toner: Einschränkung im nächsten Satz) 06 pragm HO +* - - - - -* s - - -
wohl (vermutlich; bestimmt) 12 pragm HO -* - - +* - -* s,sit,npp,card,ap pre yes -
womöglich 12 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
zeitlebens (17) 40 sit RS + - - - -*& -* s - - -
zeitweise 37 sit HO + - - + -*& -* s - - -
zudem 07 pragm HO +* - - - - - s - - -
zuerst 26,40 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
zugleich 26,40 sit EN + - + + -*& -* s - - -
zugleich (obendrein, ferner) 07 pragm HO +* - - - -* -* s - - -
zuletzt 26,40 sit EN + - + + -*& -* s - - -
zumal 08 pragm HO - - - - - - s,sit,npp pre - -
zumindest 16 pragm HO + - - - - - s,man,sit,pragm,npp,card pre yes -
zunächst (642) 33 sit RS +* - - -* - - s - - -
zuvor 26,40 sit EN + - + + + -* s - - -
zuweilen 37 sit RS + - - - - - s - - -
zwangsläufig 14 pragm HO +* - +* +* + +* s - - -
zwar 06 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
zweifellos 12 pragm HO + - - + + - s - - -
zweitens 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
zwischendurch 26,40 sit EN + - + + + - s - - -
229

8.3. LISTING OF MODIFIERS ACCORDING TO POSITION CLASSES
Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
denn 01 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
ja 01 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
da 02 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
dann (da, nun, jetzt; ähnlich a 19/26 ) 02 pragm HO - - - - -* - s - - -
jetzt (nicht temporal) 02 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
nun 02 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
aber (nicht nur advers.) 03 pragm HO - - - - - - s,man,sit,npp,ap post - -
also (nicht kausal) 03 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
doch (nicht adversativ/konz.; bekräftgend) 04 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
bloß (Wunsch, Aufforderung) 05 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
eben (halt; nicht temporal) 05 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
etwa (in Fragesätzen) 05 pragm HO - - -* - - - s - - -
halt (eben) 05 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
nämlich 05 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
nicht (nur Fragen) 05 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
nur (Wunsch/Aufforderungssatz) 05 pragm HO -* - - - - - s - - -
230

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
allerdings 06 pragm HO +* -* -* -* -* -* s,sit post - -
dagegen (indessen) 06 pragm HO + - - - - - s,npp post - -
eher (rather) 06 pragm RS + - - +* - - s,man,sit,pragm,npp,card,ap pre - -
freilich 06 pragm HO + - - - - - s,sit,npp post - -
indessen 06 pragm HO + - - - - - s,npp post - -
jedenfalls 06 pragm HO +* - - - - - s,sit,npp both - -
jedoch 06 pragm HO +* - - - - - s,sit,npp post - -
nur (allerdings) 06 pragm HO +* - - - - - s - - -
übrigens 06 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
vielmehr 06 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
wohl (toner: Einschränkung im nächst. Satz) 06 pragm HO +* - - - - -* s - - -
zwar 06 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
231

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
andererseits 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
auch (außerdem) 07 pragm HO +* - -* -* -* -* s - - -
außerdem 07 pragm HO + - -* - - - s - - -
daneben (obendrein) 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
einerseits 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
endlich (nicht temporal) 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
erstens 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
ferner (148) 07 pragm HO +* -* -* -* - - s - - -
letztens 07 pragm RS + - - - - - s - - -
obendrein 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
schließlich (nicht temporal) 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
sonst (außerdem) 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
überdies 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
weiter (142) 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
weiterhin 07 pragm HO + - - - + - s - - -
zudem 07 pragm HO +* - - - - - s - - -
zugleich (obendrein, ferner) 07 pragm HO +* - - - -* -* s - - -
zweitens 07 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
232

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
beispielsweise 08 pragm HO + - - - - - s,sit,npp,ap post - -
besonders (Ordnungsfunktion) 08 pragm HO +* -* - +* +* -* s,man,sit,pragm,npp,ap pre - -
eben 08 pragm HO - - - - - - s,sit,npp pre - -
etwa (z.B.) 08 pragm HO - - - - - - s,sit,npp post - -
gerade (eben; erst recht) 08 pragm HO -* - +* - - -* s,sit,npp,coord pre - -
insbesondere 08 pragm HO +* - - - - - s,sit,npp pre - -
primär (21) 08 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
sekundär 08 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
vorwiegend 08 pragm HO +* - -* -* -* -* s,npp,ap pre - -
zumal 08 pragm HO - - - - - - s,sit,npp pre - -
eigentlich (überhaupt (nur Fragen) 09 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
immerhin 09 pragm HO + - - - - - s,card,ap pre - -
ohnedies 09 pragm HO - - - - + - s - - -
ohnehin 09 pragm HO - - - - + - s - - -
sowieso 09 pragm HO -* - - - + - s - - -
überhaupt 09 pragm HO + - - - + - s,neg pre - -
beinahe 11 pragm HO + - - - -* - s,man,sit,ap,card pre - -
eigentlich (im Grunde) 11 pragm HO + - +* - - - s - - -
fast 11 pragm HO + - - - - - s,sit,npp,card,ap pre yes -
gewissermaßen 11 pragm HO -* - - - - - s - - -
gleichsam 11 pragm HO + - - - -* - s - - -
letztlich 11 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
praktisch (140) 11 pragm HO +* - -* - - + s,neg pre - -
prinzipiell (18) 11 pragm HO +* - -*& + + - s - - -
sozusagen 11 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
teilweise 11 pragm HO + - - + - - s - - -
theoretisch 11 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
233

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
angeblich 12 pragm HO +* - -* -* -* -* s - - -
anscheinend 12 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
augenscheinlich (4) 12 pragm HO +* - - + - -* s - - -
bekanntlich 12 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
bestimmt (96) 12 pragm HO +* - - + + -* s,npp pre - -
eventuell (40) 12 pragm HO + - - -* - - s - - -
gewiß 12 pragm HO + - - + + + s - - -
möglicherweise 12 pragm HO +* - - - - - s - - -
natürlich 12 pragm HO + - - - - -* s - - -
offenbar (311) 12 pragm HO +* - - +* - +* s,npp pre - -
offensichtlich 12 pragm HO + - -* + - + s - - -
scheinbar 12 pragm HO + - - - - - s,man,sit,npp pre - -
selbstverständlich 12 pragm HO + - - + + + s - - -
sicher (sicherlich) 12 pragm HO + - - + + - s - - -
sicherlich 12 pragm HO + - - - + - s - - -
vermutlich 12 pragm HO + - - - - - s,sit,npp,ap pre - -
vielleicht 12 pragm HO +* - -* - - -* s - - -
voraussichtlich (55) 12 pragm HO +* - - -* - -* s - - -
wahrscheinlich 12 pragm HO + - - + - + s,sit,card,ap pre - -
wohl (vermutlich; bestimmt) 12 pragm HO -* - - +* - -* s,sit,npp,card,ap pre yes -
womöglich 12 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
zweifellos 12 pragm HO + - - + + - s - - -
234

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
bedauerlicherweise 13 pragm HO +* -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
erfreulicherweise 13 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
glücklicherweise 13 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
Gottseidank 13 pragm HO + - - - -* - s - - -
hoffentlich 13 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
leider 13 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
unglücklicherweise 13 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
ausnahmsweise (12) 14 pragm HO -*& -* -* +* -* -* s - - -
besser (subjektiv wertend) 14 pragm HO -* -* -* - - - s - - -
billigerweise (-) 14 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
dummerweise 14 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
eigentümlicherweise (2) 14 pragm HO +* -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
einmal (toner) 14 pragm RS - - - - - - s - - -
irrtümlicherweise 14 pragm HO + - - - -* - s - - -
klugerweise 14 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
merkwürdigerweise 14 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
normalerweise 14 pragm HO + - - - - - s - - -
notwendigerweise (10) 14 pragm HO -* - +* + -* -* s - - -
unmöglich 14 pragm HO + - - + + + s - - -
zwangsläufig 14 pragm HO +* - +* +* + +* s - - -
tatsächlich (63) 15 pragm HO +* - -* - + + s - - -
wirklich 15 pragm HO - - + - + + s,man,sit,ap pre - -
235

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
allenfalls 16 pragm HO - - - - - - s,man,sit,npp,card,ap pre - -
bestenfalls 16 pragm HO + - - - - - s,man,sit,card,ap pre - -
etwa (ungefähr) 16 pragm RS - - -* - - - s,sit,npp,card pre - -
höchstens 16 pragm HO +* - - - - - s,npp,card,coord pre yes -
rund 16 pragm RS - - - - - - card pre - -
wenigstens 16 pragm HO + - - - - - s,man,sit,npp,card pre - -
zumindest 16 pragm HO + - - - - - s,man,sit,pragm,npp,card pre yes -
gar 17 pragm HO -* - - - - - s,neg pre - -
mal 17 pragm RS - - - - - - s - - -
selbst ("sogar", nicht "selber") 17 pragm HO - - - - - - s,man,sit,npp,ap,coord pre - -
sogar 17 pragm HO - - - - - - s,man,sit,pragm,npp,card, pre yes -
bitte (81) 18 pragm RS + - - - -* - s - - -
einfach 18 pragm HO -* -* +* +* -* - s - - -
geradezu 18 pragm HO - - - - - - s,man,ap pre - -
getrost 18 pragm HO - - - + -* - s - - -
gleich 18 pragm RS - - -* - - - s - - -
leicht 18 pragm HO + - +* + +* - s - - -
regelrecht 18 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
ruhig 18 pragm HO - - - - - - s - - -
schnell 18 pragm RS - - - + - - s - - -
dann (in diesem Fall) 19 sit HO +* - - +* - -* s - - -
dennoch 20 sit HO + - - - +* -* s - - -
trotzdem 20 sit HO + - - - + - s - - -
236

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
rechtlich 21 sit HO + - - + + - s - - -
wirtschaftlich (60) 21 sit HO + - + + + - s - - -
wirtschaftsmäßig (-) 21 sit HO + - - +? + - s - - -
also 22 sit HO + - - - - - s,sit,npp post - -
daher (kausal) 22 sit HO + - - - - - s - - -
darum 22 sit EN + - + + - +* s - - -
deinethalben 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
deinetwegen 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
deshalb 22 sit HO + - + + -* -* s - - -
deswegen 22 sit EN + - + + -* -* s - - -
ehrenhalber 22 sit EN + - + + + - s - - -
eurethalben 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
euretwegen 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
ihrethalben 22 sit EN + - + -*& + + s - - -
ihretwegen 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
meinethalben 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
meinetwegen 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
seinethalben 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
seinetwegen 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
so (kausal) 22 sit HO + - - + - - s - - -
somit (kausal) 22 sit RS + - - - - - s - - -
unserthalben 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
unsertwegen 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
unsretwegen 22 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
237

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
dafür (final: zu diesem Zweck) 24 sit EN + - + + - - s - - -
dazu (final: zu diesem Zweck) 24 sit EN + - + + - -* s - - -
hierfür 24 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
dadurch (medial) 25 sit RS + - + + - - s - - -
damit (medial, weniger konkret als a 44 ) 25 sit HO + - + + -* + s - - -
1980 26 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
anfangs 26 sit EN + - - + + + s - - -
bisher 26 sit EN + - - + +* + s - - -
bislang (328) 26 sit EN +* - - -* -* + s - - -
bisweilen 26 sit EN + - - - -* -* s - - -
da 26 sit EN + - + + -* + s - - -
damals 26 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
danach 26 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
dann 26 sit EN + - - + -* -* s - - -
demnächst 26 sit EN + - + - + + s - - -
dereinst (5) 26 sit EN -* -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
derzeit 26 sit EN +* - -* - - -* s - - -
ehedem (14) 26 sit EN +* -* -* -* +* - s - - -
ehemals 26 sit EN -* - - - - - s - - -
einst 26 sit EN + - - - - -* s - - -
einstmals 26 sit EN + - - - - -* s - - -
einstweilen 26 sit EN + - -* - - - s - - -
fortan 26 sit EN +* -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
früher (damals) 26 sit RS + - - + + + s - - -
gestern 26 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
238

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
hernach (8) 26 sit EN - -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
heute 26 sit EN + - -* + -* -* s - - -
heutzutage (43) 26 sit EN +* - - + -* -* s - - -
hinterher 26 sit EN + - +* + + + s - - -
inzwischen 26 sit HO + - - - - -* s - - -
jetzt 26 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
künftig 26 sit HO + - - - + - s - - -
kürzlich (126) 26 sit RS +* - -* +* -* -* s - - -
mittlerweile 26 sit HO + - - - - - s - - -
momentan 26 sit RS + - - - -* - s - - -
morgen 26 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
nächstens 26 sit EN + - - + - + s - - -
nachher 26 sit EN + - + + - + s - - -
neulich 26 sit EN + - - + + + s - - -
nun 26 sit EN + - - - - - s - - -
seinerzeit (58) 26 sit EN +* - - +* - - s - - -
seitdem 26 sit EN + - + + + -* s - - -
seither 26 sit EN + - + - - -* s - - -
später 26 sit HO + + + + + + s - - -
tagsüber (28) 26 sit EN +* - -* +* + + s - - -
übermorgen 26 sit EN + - + + + -* s - - -
unlängst 26 sit EN +* - - + -* -* s - - -
unterdessen 26 sit HO + - - - - - s - - -
vorgestern 26 sit EN + - -* + + + s - - -
vorhin 26 sit EN + - - + -* -* s - - -
währenddessen 26 sit EN + - -* + -*& -* s - - -
239

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
abends 26,40 sit EN +* - + + + + s - - -
dienstags 26,40 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
donnerstags 26,40 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
eher 26,40 sit EN + + + + + + s - - -
freitags 26,40 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
gleichzeitig 26,40 sit RS + - + + + + s - - -
irgendwann (97) 26,40 sit RS + - - - - -* s - - -
mittwochs 26,40 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
montags 26,40 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
morgens 26,40 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
nachmittags 26,40 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
samstags 26,40 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
sonntags 26,40 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
zuerst 26,40 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
zugleich 26,40 sit EN + - + + -*& -* s - - -
zuletzt 26,40 sit EN + - + + -*& -* s - - -
zuvor 26,40 sit EN + - + + + -* s - - -
zwischendurch 26,40 sit EN + - + + + - s - - -
240

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
abseits (17; 5 ohne GEN) 27 sit RS +*# -* -*& +* +* +* s - - GEN
allenthalben 27 sit EN + - - - -* -* s - - -
anderswo 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
außen 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
auswärts 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
beiderseits 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - GEN
dabei 27 sit EN + - + +* + +* s - - -
dahinter 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
danach 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
daneben 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
daran 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
darauf 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
darin 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
darüber 27 sit EN +* - + + + + s - - -
davon 27 sit EN + - + + - - s - - -
dazwischen 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
diesseits (5) 27 sit EN -* -* -* -* -* + s - - GEN
dort 27 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
draußen 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
drinnen 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
droben 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
drüben 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
drunten 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
hier 27 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
hinten 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
241

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
innen 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
irgendwo 27 sit EN + - - - + + s - - -
jenseits 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - GEN
längsseits (-) 27 sit EN + - + + -*& -* s - - GEN
links 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
mittendrin 27 sit EN + - - + + + s - - -
nebenan 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
oben 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
obenauf (1) 27 sit EN +* -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
rechts 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
rings (5) 27 sit RS +* -* -* -* -* -* s - - PO (um)
ringsherum (1) 27 sit EN -* -* -* -* +* -* s - - -
ringsum (10) 27 sit EN +* -* -* -* +* -* s - - -
überall 27 sit EN + - + - + + s - - -
umher 27 sit EN - - - + + - s - - -
unten 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
vorne 27 sit EN + - + + + + s - - -
insgeheim (14) 28 sit RS +* -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
anläßlich ... 29 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
dabei (Anlaß) 29 sit HO + - + + - -* s - - -
diesbezüglich 30 sit HO +* - + + -* -* s - - -
hier 30 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
entsprechend 31 sit HO + - + - + + s,man,sit,ap pre - GEN
242

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
bald 33 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
eben (temporal) 33 sit HO + - - - + + s - - -
endlich 33 sit HO + - - - - - s - - -
gerade (jetzt) 33 sit HO +* - - +* - + s - - -
gleich 33 sit HO + - +* - + + s - - -
jäh (15) 33 sit RS - - -* -* +* -* s - - -
jählings (-) 33 sit RS + - + - + - s - - -
längst (400) 33 sit RS +* - - +* - - s,neg pre - -
plötzlich 33 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
schließlich 33 sit HO + - - - - - s - - -
soeben (26) 33 sit HO +* - -* +* + -* s - - -
sofort (312) 33 sit HO +* - +* -* +* -* s - - -
sogleich 33 sit HO + - - - -* -* s - - -
unversehens 33 sit RS + - - + + - s - - -
unverzüglich 33 sit HO -* - - -*& -* -* s - - -
vorerst (89) 33 sit EN +* - -* - - - s - - -
vorher 33 sit EN +* - + + + + s - - -
zunächst (642) 33 sit RS +* - - -* - - s - - -
doch (pragmatisch: durchaus) 34 sit HO + - - - +* - s - - -
durchaus 34 sit HO - - - - + - s,ap pre - -
erst (nicht temporal) 34 sit HO - - - - - - s - - -
noch (nicht temporal) 34 sit HO - - - - - - s - - -
schon (nicht temporal) 34 sit HO - - - - - - s - - -
unbedingt (27) 34? sit RS + - +* + + - s - - -
wohl (adversativ/entgegen d.allg.Auffassung) 34 sit HO -*& - - +* +* -* s - - -
243

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
auch (gleichfalls) 35 sit HO -* - +* -* +* -* s,man,sit,npp,ap,koord pre - -
ebenfalls 35 sit HO +* - - -* + - s,npp - yes -
ebenso 35 sit RS + - - - + - s,man,sit,ap pre - -
genauso (ebenso) 35 sit RS + - - + + + s,man,sit,pragm pre - -
gleichfalls 35 sit HO - - - - + - s - - -
abermals 36 sit HO + - - - + - s - - -
erneut (210) 36 sit HO +* - -*& -* + - s - - -
nochmals (71) 36 sit HO + - +* +* + - s - - -
wieder 36 sit HO + - - + + + s - - -
wiederum 36 sit HO + - - - + + s - - -
allezeit (-) 37 sit RS -? - +? - -? -? s - - -
dauernd 37 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
durchweg (ausnahmslos) (52) 37 sit RS +* -* +* +* -* -* s,ap pre - -
durchwegs (ausnahmslos) (1) 37 sit RS +* -* +* +* -* -* s,ap pre - -
einmal (1 Mal) 37 sit RS + - + +* + -* s - - -
gelegentlich 37 sit HO + - + - -* -* s - - -
häufig 37 sit HO + + + + + + s - - -
immer 37 sit HO + - + + + - s,man,sit,npp pre - -
immerzu 37 sit HO + - - - + - s - - -
jederzeit 37 sit RS + - + - + - s - - -
jedesmal 37 sit HO + - + + + - s - - -
laufend 37 sit HO +* - -* -* +* + s - - -
manchmal 37 sit HO + - - - + + s - - -
mehrmals 37 sit RS +* - - +* + + s - - -
meist 37 sit RS + - - - + + s - - -
244

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
meistens 37 sit HO + - - - + + s - - -
mitunter 37 sit HO + - - - - - s - - -
öfters 37 sit HO + - + + + + s - - -
oft 37 sit HO + + + + + + s - - -
oftmals 37 sit RS + - - - + -* s - - -
regelmäßig 37 sit HO + + + + + + s - - -
selten 37 sit HO + + + + + + s - - -
ständig 37 sit HO + + + - + + s - - -
stets 37 sit HO + - - - + + s - - -
ununterbrochen (7) 37 sit EN + - + - -*& -* s - - -
vielfach 37 sit HO + - - - + - s - - -
wiederholt 37 sit HO + - - + -*& -* s - - -
zeitweise 37 sit HO + - - + -*& -* s - - -
zuweilen 37 sit RS + - - - - - s - - -
allein (einzig, nur) 38 sit HO -* -* +* +* -* - s,man,sit,npp,card both - -
bloß (nur, allein) 38 sit HO +*& - +* -* - -* s,man,sit,npp,card,ap pre yes -
einzig (nur) 38 sit HO - - -* - - - s,sit,npp pre - -
lediglich 38 sit HO - - - - - - s,man,sit,npp,card,ap,coord pre - -
nur (bloß; limitierend) 38 sit HO -* - + - - - s,man,sit,pragm,npp,card,coord pre yes -
beizeiten (2) 39 sit RS + - + + + + s - - -
bereits 39 sit HO - - - - - - s,man,sit,npp,card,ap both yes -
erst 39 sit HO + - - - - - s,sit,npp,card pre - -
noch 39 sit HO + - - +* -* + s,sit,npp both yes -
schon 39 sit HO + - + - - - s,sit,npp both yes -
245

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
früh 40 sit RS + + + + + + s - - -
jahrelang 40 sit HO + - + + + - s - - -
lange 40 sit HO + + + + + + s - - -
tagelang 40 sit RS + - + + + - s - - -
wochenlang 40 sit RS + - + + + - s - - -
zeitlebens (17) 40 sit RS + - - - -*& -* s - - -
kaum 41 neg HO + - - - + - s - - -
keineswegs (224) 41 neg HO +* - +* +* +* - s,man,sit,npp,ap pre - -
miteinander 42 mod HO + - + + + - s - - -
anders 43 mod RS + - + + + + s - - -
besser 43 mod RS + - + + + + s - - -
einfach 43 mod RS +* + + +* +* + s - - -
ganz 43 mod HO + - +* - +* +* s,man,sit,pragm,npp,ap pre - -
genauso 43 mod RS + - - + + + s - - -
gerade 43 mod RS -* + + + + + s - - -
geradeheraus (1) 43 mod RS -* -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
geradenwegs (-) 43 mod RS + - -? -? + - s - - -
geradeswegs (-) 43 mod RS + - -? -? + - s - - -
geradewegs (7) 43 mod RS -* -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
gern 43 mod HO + - + + + - s - - -
glatt (ohne weiteres) 43 mod RS +* + +* +* +* +* s - - -
glattweg (ohne weiteres) (2) 43 mod RS -* -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
gut 43 mod HO - + + + + + s - - -
hinterrücks 43 mod RS -*& -* -* -* -* - s - - -
246

Adverb Pos Class Who VF Comp Neg Grad Rheme Pred Scope Pre/Post Dist Valency
kopfüber 43 mod RS -* -* -* -* -* -* s - - -
laut 43 mod HO + + + + + + s - - -
leicht 43 mod RS + + + + + + s,ap pre - -
natürlich 43 mod RS + + + + + + s - - -
obenhin (-) 43 mod RS -? - +? + + - s - - -
ruhig 43 mod RS + + + + + + s - - -
rundheraus (offen) (1) 43 mod RS + - - + + - s - - -
rundweg (unumwunden) (7) 43 mod RS + - - -* + - s - - -
schnell 43 mod HO + + + + + + s - - -
schnurstracks (5) 43 mod RS + - + -* + - s - - -
sehr 43 mod HO -* - + - + - s,man,sit,pragm,ap pre - -
sicher 43 mod RS -* + + + + + s - - -
so 43 mod HO + - + + + + s,man,sit,pragm,ap pre - -
umsonst (31) (Bedeutung=a 14 ?) 43 mod RS +* - +* + + + s - - -
unumwunden 43 mod RS + - - + + - s - - -
vergebens (21) (Bed=a 14 ?) 43 mod RS +* - + + + + s - - -
völlig 43 mod HO -* - + - + - s,man,npp,ap pre - -
wenig 43 mod HO -* + + +* + + s,sit,npp,ap pre - -
damit (instrumental) 44 mod EN + - + + -* + s - - -
247

8.4. CANONICAL FORM (FINAL VERSION, CF. 6.5.3)
Npron/N+d+b < (A

249
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