Re: German participles

Ray wrote:
mb wrote:
The simplification of the example intended to mark the fact that the
definite article there is optional. You'd be right if it weren't.

How about the "dog" example? It seems to me that the definite article
is not optional there. That would definitely serve as a counterexample
to the relative-clause analysis.
Consider it again:

i. *Der Junge, Hund getoetet, sah traurig aus.
*The boy, [whose] dog [was] killed, looked sad.

A good analysis should work like an algebra, if there is no other
consideration.

That's the theoretical part. With an if: If all the people who for so
long have worked at expliciting the exact conditioning of their
Sprachgefuehl had been able to do so, every language would be entirely
described.

It seems that cases like (i), which needs a definite article, should be
captured in a grammatical analysis whereas cases
like"Gesichter...versteckt", with no definite article, should be
considered as belonging to a small, limited set of nouns like "face",
"hand", etc and requiring a special treatment.

Something there. Perhaps the attributive has to be blatantly clear in a
language that is known for not using this kind of construction often
(and even then, as Pense says, it is something of a grey area). Also
(as an L2 who had to dig and try to explicit some rules while
learning), given that this kind of construction often feels too terse
in G. (as Neukum notes), it shocks when used in short sentences. This
kind of clause seems to be used to lighten up unusually involved
sentences (as with the 8 Gestalten, their shawls and woolcaps and their
sauntering and whatnot). Let's see what the L1 say.
What about a long sentence starting with something like the below:
"Der Junge, Jagdhund laengst an einer unbekannten Infektion gestorben,
hatte keine Lust, ohne eigenem Hund an etc. etc.... teilzunehmen"

.

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