Dr. Antonio Machicao y Priemer

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Institut für deutsche Sprache und Linguistik

Projects

A04 Building register into the architecture of language – an HPSG account

Contact

Dorotheenstr. 24, D-10117 Berlin

(030) 2093-9702

machicao.y.priemer@hu-berlin.deWebsite https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7321-0795

Publications & Presentations

    Publications

  • Deng, Chenyuan; Machicao y Priemer, Antonio; Varaschin, Giuseppe  (2025) Unifying modifiers, classifiers, and demonstratives  In: Empirical issues in syntax and semantics [ViVo]
  • Varaschin, Giuseppe; Machicao y Priemer, Antonio; Lu, Yanru  (2024) Topic drop in German: Grammar and usage  In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar [DOI] [ViVo]
    German topic drop clauses are a subtype of declarative clauses where the initial position (usually filled by an overt constituent) is left empty. It is often noted that topic drop appears mainly in specific registers (e.g. spoken dialogues), but this claim has neither been previously experimentally validated, nor formally implemented. In this paper, we report the results of a matched-guise study which indicate that the syntactic variation between topic drop and regular V2 declaratives in fact correlates with different social meanings, leading to the register variation postulated in the literature. In order to model German speakers' grammatical and register knowledge about topic drop in HPSG we propose, (i) a unified grammatical constraint that licenses topic drop structures, (ii) a formal theory of register that treats social meanings as a type of use-conditional content subject to compositional rules.
  • Machicao y Priemer, Antonio; Müller, Stefan  (2021) NPs in German: Locality, theta roles, possessives, and genitive arguments  In: Glossa: a journal of general linguistics [DOI] [ViVo]
    Since Abney (1987), the DP-analysis has been the standard analysis for nominal complexes, but in the last decade, the NP analysis has experienced a revival. In this spirit, we provide an NP analysis for German nominal complexes in HPSG. Our analysis deals with the fact that relational nouns assign case and theta role to their arguments. We develop an analysis in line with selectional localism (Sag 2012: 149), accounting for the asymmetry between prenominal and postnominal genitives, as well as for the complementarity between higher arguments and possessives, providing a syntactic and semantic analysis.
  • Machicao y Priemer, Antonio; Fritz-Huechante, Paola  (2020) Boundaries at play  In: Interfaces in Romance [DOI] [ViVo]
    Summary In this paper, we model the left-bounded state reading and the true reflexive reading of the se clitic in the Spanish psychological domain. We argue that a lexical analysis of se provides us with a more accurate description of the different classes of psychological verbs that occur with the clitic. We provide a unified analysis where the use of the two readings of se are modeled by means of lexical rules. We take the morphologically simple but semantically more complex basic items (e.g. asustar ‘frighten’) as input of the lexical rules, getting as the output a morphologically more complex but semantically simpler verb (e.g asustarse ‘get frightened’). The analysis for psych verbs correctly allows only those verbs assigning accusative to the experiencer or the stimulus to combine with se, hence preventing dative verbs from entering the lexical rules. The analysis also demonstrates how to account for punctual and non-punctual readings of psych verbs with se incorporating ‘boundaries’ into the type hierarchy of eventualities.

    • Presentations

  • Varaschin, Giuseppe; Machicao y Priemer, Antonio  (2022) Agreement mismatches and register-driven variation in Brazilian Portuguese  In: Oberseminar Syntax and Semantics, Institut für England- und Amerikastudien, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main [ViVo]