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Article published In: The Evolution of Expletives: Theoretical and diachronic perspectives
Edited by Eric Fuß and Benjamin L. Sluckin
[Evolutionary Linguistic Theory 6:1/2] 2024
► pp. 59–93

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Another adverbial expletive in German?

 | Bergische Universität Wuppertal
Published online: 6 March 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/elt.00054.cat
Abstract
In this paper, I propose that a previously understudied lexical item with the polysemous form so (‘so’) in German can be classified as an adverbial expletive. While so has been extensively analyzed in functions such as modal adverb and discourse marker, this study focuses on its occurrence as a prefield element introducing elaboration or exemplification in formal written registers. Based on corpus data from journalistic and academic prose, I suggest that “this” so (labeled “soex” here) is inserted in Spec,FinP as one of the functional means that satisfy the computational requirements in order for the prefield not to be unfilled (syntactic function); additionally, it performs a grammatic-semantic function in that, similarly to other expletive elements, it anchors the introduced proposition to the preceding discourse while preserving syntactic well-formedness. This proposal positions this element within the broader typology of expletive constructions in Germanic languages, with the aim of advancing our understanding of its role in sentence structure and discourse coherence.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Distributional properties
    • 2.1Contexts of use of soex
      • 2.1.1Study 1: Semi-spontaneous speech
      • 2.1.2Study 2: Standard-oriented speech
      • 2.1.3Study 3: Journalistic and scientific prose
    • 2.2Syntactic aspects
    • 2.3The interpretation of soex-clauses
  • 3.Soex is not an anaphoric adverbial
  • 4.Another adverbial expletive?
    • 4.1Expletives in present-day German
    • 4.2Function and derivation of soex
    • 4.3Soex as an anchor to the context
    • 4.4The alternation of lexical and functional explicitation of elaboration/exemplification
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (75)
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