Abstract

This contribution is concerned with the morphosyntax and semantics of intensional verbs like vermuten, meinen, (sich) überzeugen, überzeugt sein, related -ung-nouns like Vermutung, Meinung, Überzeugung and periphrastic constructions like die {Vermutung, Meinung, Überzeugung} haben, der {Meinung, Überzeugung} sein, with their interrelations and with the question how these expressions combine with embedded clauses. On the basis of a lexicalist theory of morphology, the relatedness of these expressions is represented in the lexicon. The embedded clauses are shown to be integrated as propositional arguments of verbs and of the corresponding eventuality nominalizations or are shifted to predicates, which can function as explicative modifiers of content nouns and of cataphoric pronouns. The paper concentrates on the interrelation between homophonous content nouns and eventuality nouns like Überzeugung and on the morphosyntax and semantics of periphrastic constructions. It will be shown that periphrastic verbs like haben, machen and geben mirror some general semantic components of the related intensional verbs and to what extent periphrastic constructions with content nouns semantically coincide with the related intensional verbs, without being incorporated syntactically. The proposed analysis will be as explicit as possible and reckons with some fundamental semantic type shifts