Kleine Schriften zur Sprachgeschichte und Sprachgeographie

The monograph explains how the lack of a 'nominal article' category in some Slavic languages influences nominal reference and textual coherence. The book demonstrates that the missing category cannot be represented by the absence of the functional category D 0, but that a phonologically empty category with the meaning of the semantic default determiner must be assumed. Otherwise, syntactically and semantically well-formed sentences could not be generated. The semantic default determiner is only specified contextually when the DP with a fixed function in a sentence combines the aspect of the verb and a defined position within the information structure of the sentence. These factors establish the reference of the DPs as well as their discourse-pragmatic potential.
The book follows the two-level semantic system of the modular grammars of the Slavic languages. The syntactic structures are mapped onto compositionally constructed semantic structures that are interpreted conceptually. This means that grammatical knowledge is strictly separated from extra-linguistic knowledge, which helps to interpret the utterance meanings in coherent texts.