German Polarity-Marking Strategies

[TBD14] [Hoh92] [RH04]

Lexical entries for how German marks polarity switches (negation → affirmation).

The key finding of [TBD14] is that German does NOT use sentence-internal particles for polarity switches. Instead, German relies on Verum focus: a pitch accent on the finite verb. The particle doch can appear pre-utterance in corrections but is not sentence-internal in the relevant sense.

This file is named "PolarityMarking" rather than "Particles" precisely because German's strategy is non-particulate.

Cross-Module Connections

• Semantics.Questions.VerumFocus: VERUM in questions — a different phenomenon from the declarative Verum focus encoded here
• German.Particles: German denn (question-flavoring)

@[reducible, inline]

abbrev German.PolarityMarking.verumFocus : Semantics.Polarity.Marking.Entry

Verum focus — pitch accent on the finite verb. Dominant strategy in German for neg→affirm switches in both contexts. Sentence-internal; available in both contrast and correction. [Hoh92], [TBD14]: ~82% in contrast, ~78% in correction.

Equations

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@[reducible, inline]

abbrev German.PolarityMarking.dochPreUtterance : Semantics.Polarity.Marking.Entry

doch — polarity-reversing correction particle ([Hol16]). Assigns [+Pol] while contradicting a negative context. Available only in corrections, NOT sentence-internal in the sense of [TBD14]: it precedes the utterance rather than appearing within the VP/middle field. Cross-linguistically the same class as Swedish jo and French si.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

def German.PolarityMarking.allPolarityMarkings : List Semantics.Polarity.Marking.Entry

Equations

• German.PolarityMarking.allPolarityMarkings = [German.PolarityMarking.verumFocus, German.PolarityMarking.dochPreUtterance]

theorem German.PolarityMarking.vf_prosodicTarget : verumFocus.prosodicTarget = some "finite verb"

theorem German.PolarityMarking.vf_sentenceInternal : Semantics.Polarity.Marking.Env.sentenceInternal ∈ verumFocus.environments

theorem German.PolarityMarking.vf_contrastOk : Semantics.Polarity.Marking.Env.contrast ∈ verumFocus.environments

theorem German.PolarityMarking.vf_correctionOk : Semantics.Polarity.Marking.Env.correction ∈ verumFocus.environments

theorem German.PolarityMarking.vf_strategy : verumFocus.strategy = Semantics.Polarity.Marking.Strategy.verumFocus

theorem German.PolarityMarking.doch_form : dochPreUtterance.form = some "doch"

theorem German.PolarityMarking.doch_not_sentenceInternal : Semantics.Polarity.Marking.Env.sentenceInternal ∉ dochPreUtterance.environments

theorem German.PolarityMarking.doch_not_contrastOk : Semantics.Polarity.Marking.Env.contrast ∉ dochPreUtterance.environments

theorem German.PolarityMarking.doch_correctionOk : Semantics.Polarity.Marking.Env.correction ∈ dochPreUtterance.environments

theorem German.PolarityMarking.doch_strategy : dochPreUtterance.strategy = Semantics.Polarity.Marking.Strategy.polarityReversal

German answer particles ([Hol16])

The response system in Features.AnswerParticle vocabulary. doch here is the answer-particle face of dochPreUtterance (the same item in the [TBD14] marking vocabulary above); its clause-internal modal-particle homonym lives in German/Particles.lean.

def German.PolarityMarking.jaAnswer : Features.AnswerParticle

ja — standard affirmative answer particle; positive contexts only (like Swedish ja). Distinct from the modal particle ja (German/Particles.lean).

Equations

• German.PolarityMarking.jaAnswer = { form := "ja", assigns := Features.Polarity.positive, respondsTo := [Features.Polarity.positive] }

def German.PolarityMarking.nein : Features.AnswerParticle

nein — standard negative answer particle.

Equations

• German.PolarityMarking.nein = { form := "nein", assigns := Features.Polarity.negative, respondsTo := [Features.Polarity.positive, Features.Polarity.negative] }

def German.PolarityMarking.dochAnswer : Features.AnswerParticle

doch — polarity-reversing answer particle: "Kommt er nicht?" → "Doch" = "he is coming".

Equations

• German.PolarityMarking.dochAnswer = { form := "doch", assigns := Features.Polarity.positive, respondsTo := [Features.Polarity.negative] }

theorem German.PolarityMarking.dochAnswer_is_reversal : dochAnswer.IsReversal

doch is a polarity-reversing particle — derived from its assign/respond profile.