On Sachverhalt, Tatsache and propositional proforms: a view of German and Romanian

Abstract

The paper proposes a simplified architecture for the inventory of propositional proforms of the two contrasted languages, German and Romanian. Basic elements of the system are the demonstratives das/asta, which represent the foundation for more complex ones, specifically for the so-called German pronominal adverbs and for the asta-embedding prepositional phrases in Romanian. The semantic interpretation of the proforms is componential, context-dependent and adds descriptive meaning to das and asta, therefore also to proforms embedding them. The paper then describes proforms in relation to content nouns, which offers the possibility of semantically interpreting these i. as nominal correlates, and ii. in their anaphoric function.