The Different Readings of Wieder and Again An Experimental Investigation
Anthea Schöller∗
University of Tübingen, Germany
[email protected]
Abstract This paper experimentally examines which readings
(repetitive/restitutive/counterdirectional) of the adverb again/wieder are
still in common usage in English and German. The diachronic change can
be explained with Rapp&Stechows (1999) Visibility Parameter for adverbs. Experiment 1 confirms the hypothesis that English again is moving
from setting (iii) to (ii). This means that it is losing its ability to see into
the components of a lexical accomplishment predicate and is becoming
less and less common when having a restitutive meaning. German wieder
in combination with a LA is still accepted in a restitutive context; it still
has setting (iii). Experiment 2 shows that neither again nor wieder are
used with a counterdirectional meaning any more. Two different semantic
analyses are necessary to explain this diachronic development, the lexical
analysis and the structural analysis.
Keywords: again, wieder, decomposition adverb, diachronic, experiment, lexical accomplishment
1
Overview
This paper presents empirical evidence which shows that English again is losing
its restitutive reading and is shifting towards the repetitive, whereas both are
still accepted in German. Furthermore, the results suggest that the counterdirectional reading has nearly disappeared in both languages. Two different semantic
analyses are necessary to explain this.
2
Background
Sentences with the adverb again can be ambiguous (cf. McCawley 1968). In (1a)
the whole event is repeated. In (1b) only the result state of the event is restored.
(1) Felix opened the window again.
a) Felix opened the window and he had done that before.
repetitive
b) Felix opened the window and the window had been open before.
.
restitutive
∗
I thank Sonja Tiemann and Sigrid Beck for insightful comments.
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Examples of counterdirectional (presupposing an action in a reversed direction) again from the literature are given in (2).
(2) “talk to them again” = reply to them; “write again to him” = write back to
him
There are two competing approaches to analysing these sentences:
1) the lexical analysis (Fabricius-Hansen 2001)
2) the structural analysis (Stechow 1995).
In the lexical analysis the adverb has two different lexical entries, a repetitive
(3)a and a counterdirectional (3)b. The analysis relies on conceptual prerequisites, such as the availability of a counterdirectional predicate, a result state and
a prestate of an event.
(3) (a) [[again rep]] = λP. λe. ∃ e’[e’<e & P(e’)]. P(e)
(b) [[again rest]] = λP. λe. ∃ e’[e’<e & Pc (e’) & resP c (e’) = preP (e)]. P(e)
In the structural analysis again always indicates repetition and only has the
lexical entry (3)a. One must distinguish complex predicates, which have an
overt result state (as in: Sonja painted the door blue.), from lexical accomplishment predicates (LA) as in ((1)), whose result state is not overt and can
be accessed only after a process of decomposition. The adjunction sites of again
bring about the different interpretations.
(4) (a)
[
VP
]
repetitive
openAdj [the window]] again ]]
restitutive
[V P Felix [∅V [SC openAdj [the window]]]] again
(b) [V P Felix [∅V
[
SC [SC
]
Rapp&Stechow (1999) propose a Visibility Parameter for Adverbs that
Beck refined in 2005. An adverb like again is able to attach to a whole VP, to the
result state of a resultative and can even see into the internal compositions of an
accomplishment predicate. That is why these adverbs are called decomposition
adverbs.
(5) The visibility parameter for adverbs (Beck 2005)
An adverb can modify
(i) only independent syntactic phrases
(ii) any phrase with a phonetically overt head
(iii) any phrase
The default setting is (i).
Being a decomposition adverb, again can modify any phrase. That means
that theoretically the participants should be able to understand a restitutive
reading in sentences with complex predicates. If they do not, a plausible explanation is that again with setting (iii) of the visibility parameter vanishes from
their lexicon and moves to setting (ii) as proposed in Beck, Berezovskaya &
Pflugfelder.
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3
The puzzle
Which readings of again/wieder are still in common usage and how are they
accounted for? The literature does not provide a consistent answer. In 2005,
Beck described again and wieder as adverbs that have setting (iii). In a corpus
study in 2009, Beck et al. found that the use of restitutive again is disappearing
and that the repetitive meaning has become the most prominent. Not only the
number of restitutive agains has diminished but also the range of predicates
used with it. Especially LA are hardly combined with a restitutive again any
more. This supports the structural analysis and suggests that again is moving
from setting (iii) to (ii). In 2012 Gergel & Beck examined the transition from
EModE to LModE. Their observation was that again was used in contexts where
it did not have a repetitional meaning but was counterdirectional. Gergel & Beck
propose that EModE has counterdirectional again; a counterdirectional analysis
needs to be considered.
Hypotheses Based on the literature the hypothesis is that again has lost
setting (iii). English speakers are expected to refuse a restitutive use of again
with LA predicates, so (1a) should be the prominent reading. For German, the
transition in the setting of wieder is expected to not have evolved that far; the
test sentences in German should be better accepted. The rep./rest. ambiguity is
accounted for by the structural analysis. To show that counterdirectional again
does not exist any more in English and hardly in German is the objective of
experiment 2. The counterdirectional meaning (as in 2) has disappeared from the
lexicon. This requires the lexical analysis. All in all, both analyses are necessary
to grasp the diachronic development.
4
Experimental setup
The study has a 2x2 design with fixed factors context (rep./rest.) and language
(English/German). An online questionnaire was filled out in English or German.
The sentences’ acceptability was rated on a 4-point scale from 1 (acceptable) to
4 (not acceptable). There were 99 participants, 52 native English and 47 native
German speakers.
4.1
Experiment 1
In the twelve target sentences (as in (6)) the adverb either has a repetitive or a
restitutive reading, depending on the context introducing it.
(6) Repetitive context in English Jack is at primary school and is fascinated
by pirates. In the playground he buried a necklace and marked the spot on a
treasure map. Last month he dug out his treasure to make sure that it was
still there. He carefully examined the necklace and then buried it
again.
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Restitutive context in English Jack is at primary school and is fascinated by pirates. In the playground somebody lost a golden necklace which
was covered by a thick layer of leaves last autumn. Looking for treasures he
accidentally found it and was thrilled about his first discovery. He carefully
examined the necklace and then buried it again.
4.2
Experiment 2
Six sentences as in (7) with counterdirectional again or wieder were provided.
(7) In a newspaper advert Margarete was looking for a pen pal. A woman
answered and sent her a nice letter. Enthusiastically, Margarete wrote
to her again.
4.3
Results for restitutive again
The restitutive sentences are rated at a grand mean of 2.09 in English. This
means that they are rather acceptable, but not as good as in German. With
a 1.59 rating, againin restitutive sentences is acceptable. There is a significant
interaction for the factor language. For English, the grand mean rating of the
repetitive sentences is 1.88 and it is 2.09 for the restitutive sentences. The statistical analysis of the English sentences with an ANOVA reveals that the difference
is significant (p < 0.05). For German, the means of repetitive and restitutive
sentences do not differ significantly (p > 0.1). Both readings are rated roughly
equally.
4.4
Results for counterdirectional again
The counterdirectional sentences are generally not accepted in both languages
with a grand mean rating of 2.37 in English and 2.67 in German. The German
speakers disapprove of every item with ratings of 2.28 or above and about one
third did not accept any item.
5
Discussion
The results of the study in large support the initial hypotheses. The ratings
for restitutive again and wieder suggest that in German the adverb is still
accepted in combination with lexical accomplishment predicates and can attach
to the result state after the decomposition process. English again is losing this
feature. In other words, German wieder still has setting (iii) of the Visibility
Parameter, but English again is moving from (iii) to (ii), its meaning is mainly
repetitive; the structural analysis explains this nicely.
The counterdirectional reading of the adverb is not in common usage
any more in either language; in German it is rejected even more firmly than
in English. An interesting observation is that not even the complex predicate
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anrufen is accepted in German. This supports Gergel & Beck’s theory that
counterdirectionality cannot be explained with the structural approach. Even
with a separable verb counterdirectional wieder is not accepted. The structural
approach explains sentence’s ambiguity and the restitutive reading with the fact
that the adverb decomposes the predicate and attaches to its result state. In the
case of a reversal of direction, however, such a result state does not necessarily
exist. A verb like "write" in (2) is not a lexical accomplishment predicate and
does not a have a result as "open" in ((1)) does. Thus, the second reading that
"write" used to have cannot be accounted for by the structural approach. We
can conclude that there used to be a second lexical entry for counterdirectional
wieder and again and that these have vanished from the lexicon. Note, however,
that the participants still understand the sentences’ meaning and do not rate the
sentences as bad as the ungrammatical fillers. All in all, none of the presented
semantic theories is able to explain the results of the study by itself. A hybrid
approach seems more promising and able to grasp the diachronic development
of wieder and again.