German constructions with complex prepositional groups introduced by bis

Abstract

Starting from examples from the two German corpora DWDS and Cosmas II from the IDS-Mannheim the study describes the conceptual, semantic and syntactic variety of German constructions with the preposition bis followed by a second preposition. Such constructions best exemplify the syntax-semantic interface and the importance of postulating an autonomous level of constructions as a unit of its own in the various levels of grammatical organization. As with most alternations, the syntactic variation leads to a further morpho-syntactic framing and reflects diversity in construal.

Keywords

• complex prepositions
• constructions
• German
• syntax-semantics interface
• construction grammar
• acquisition