Determiner omission in PPs: where without differs from with

Tibor Kiss and Claudia Roch

In this paper, we address aspects of determiner omission in noun phrases contained in PPs

headed by the German prepositions mit and ohne (Dutch: met and zonder, English: with and

without). Based on a corpus-based analysis of these prepositions in terms of a generalized

linear mixed model, we note that ohne seems to trigger determiner omission to a much larger

degree than mit, and yet determiner omission with mit can be analysed in terms of grammati-

cal conditions, where the interpretation of the preposition and the complexity of the phrase

play a major role. We also note that certain regular omission patterns for ohne are not repeat-

ed (or repeated to a much lesser degree) with mit, which casts doubt on an analysis of the two

prepositions that employs a common semantic representation and derives the interpretations

of ohne by invoking (logical) negation. We will focus on instrumental interpretations of mit

and ohne, and finally will address the pivotal role of adjectival modification in determiner

omission.

0. Introduction

Preposition Noun Combinations (henceforth PNCs, sometimes called bare or determinerless

PPs) minimally consist of a preposition and a singular count noun, but do not contain a de-

terminer. Examples from English and German are given in (1) and (2).

(1) by train, under discussion, in hospital, on disc, after school, at local level, from close

range, in bed, in greater detail, on television, over dinner

(2) auf Anfrage (‘after being asked’), ohne Gewinnchance (‘without a chance to win’), un-

ter Androhung (‘under threat’), mit Vorbehalt (‘with reservation’)

We will restrict our attention to PNCs that can be turned into PPs by adding a determiner.

This is not always possible, as can be witnessed by example (3) with the preposition per (by)

in German:

(3) Wir fahren per (*dem) Bus.

We drive by thedat bus

‘We are going by bus.’

For quite some time, PNCs have been considered as exceptions. The Duden grammar for

German, e.g., includes a rule, which requires that singular count nouns have to be accompa-

nied by a determiner, and an additional rule, which acknowledges PNCs as exceptional and

assumes that they can be listed. As has been shown in Dömges et al. (2007), this is far from

correct. Similarly, Himmelmann (1998:316) has shown that PNCs are not a peculiarity of a

single language, but occur frequently among the languages of the world. The construction

seems to neglect the fact that the grammars of these languages require singular count nouns to

appear with a determiner.

Dömges et al. (2007) have shown that PNCs are productive in a statistical sense. Yet, speak-

ers of German (or other languages, this is once again not a language-specific property) are

reluctant to coin new PNCs or to judge existing PNCs in isolation. A reason for this might be

that PNCs have to be accounted for by multiple factors, and hence that PNCs do not exist as a

natural class from the perspective of the language user. Different rules may apply to different

prepositions, or may even be affected by either the preposition or the noun in a PNC. Stvan

(1998), e.g., assumes for English an N-based analysis: the nouns receive a stereotypical, en-

riched meaning in PNCs, as e.g. to be in jail, to go to school. Baldwin et al. (200x) assume

that English PNCs can be accounted for by selection restrictions imposed by the preposition.

In the following, we will be concerned with PNCs (and PPs) headed by the prepositions mit

(Dutch: met, English: with, French: avec) and ohne (Dutch: zonder, English: without, French:

sans) in German. We will focus on these two prepositions for a variety of reasons. A major

reason is that mit and ohne (or their respective counterparts in other languages) are often

characterized as antonyms, and hence, an analysis defined for one of the prepositions is ap-

plied to the other by assuming that the pertinent conditions interact with negation. Without

further consideration, the application of the term antonym neglects the meaning spectra of mit

and ohne. Yet, it is correct that these two prepositions share several senses, some of which

cannot be found with other prepositions. A second reason for focussing on mit and ohne is the

observation that determiner omission seems to have become the rule for ohne (and its pen-

dants in other languages), but clearly not yet for mit (nor for its pendants in other languages).

It is thus interesting to identify the pertinent factors in this process. Finally, the English coun-

terparts of mit and ohne have recently been the analysed as weakly referential, where weak

referentiality is seen as argument suppression. De Swart (2012) thus applies an analysis of

Espinal and McNally’s (2011) to PNCs. One of the major goals of the present study is to

compare de Swart’s analysis with findings from large annotated corpora, guided by classifica-

tion methods from machine learning.

With regard to the methodology employed, we do not rely (primarily) on speaker’s judge-

ments, but try to identify models for determiner omission and realisation by inducing rules

from large annotated corpora. This process is called annotation mining. Annotation mining

borrows from statistics/machine learning in terms of the algorithms and methods employed,

from theoretical linguistics, in terms of the basic annotations employed, and from corpus lin-

guistics in that large data sets are required to perform annotation mining.

The paper is structured as follows: Section 1 provides the background of our analysis, a lo-

gistic regression analysis of determiner omission based on annotated corpus data. Section 2

briefly recapitulates de Swart’s (2012) treatment of PNCs headed by with and without as be-

ing weakly referential. Section 3 deals with the respective syntactic differences of PNCs

headed by mit and ohne, if the phrase receives an instrumental sense. Finally, section 4 will

return to an observation made in comparing the models introduced in section 1: the presence

of an adjective seems to suggest the presence of a determiner with ohne, but provides a substi-

tute for determiners (and hence allows PNCs) with mit. A short recapitulation will be provid-

ed in section 5.

1. Logistic regression classification for determiner omission

The present analysis of determiner omission in PNCs headed by mit and ohne is based on a

methodology called Annotation Mining (Chiarcos et al. 2008, Kiss et al. 2010). Basically,

annotation mining consists of annotating large data sets by all available rule sets (annotation

schemes, tagsets), and applying classification methods from statistics/machine learning not to

the data sets but to the annotations.

Currently we use six different types of annotations:

• Ancillary features including a unique identifier for each sentence, information about

its annotation status, and about special habitats in which the example occurred, as e.g.

headlines. Sentences occurring in headlines and other special domains are not taken

into consideration for classification.

• Features describing lexical dependencies: target_noun_lemma, e.g., provides the lem-

ma of the noun within a PNC/PP. The dependencies are derived from syntactic parse

trees provided by the MaltParser (Nievre 2006), trained on German data.

• Features describing the structural complexity and syntactic embedding of the PNC/PP:

these features indicate whether the phrase is modified prenominally or postnominally,

whether the noun realizes a complement, the type of syntactic chunk occurring before

the phrase and the type of syntactic chunk occurring after the phrase. These feature are

provided by the MaltParser Nivre (2006) as well as by the TreeTagger (Schmid 1995)

(for the chunks); they are based on prior POS-tagging employing the STTS tagset

(Schiller et al. (1999).

• Features describing the semantics of the preposition: a detailed account of the annota-

tion scheme for preposition senses can be found in Müller et al. (2011, 2012).

• Features describing the semantics of the noun: while the semantics of (highly polyse-

mous) prepositions can be characterized in finite terms, the semantics of an open word

class requires a different approach. We employ the so-called unique beginners (UB)

from the German version of WordNet, GermaNet (Kunze and Lemnitzer 2002), as

well as the classification of nouns in the ontological dictionary HaGenLex (Hartrumpf

et al. 2003), as approximations for the meaning of the nouns. Each noun can belong to

one HaGenLex class (as polysemy is not accounted for here), but may belong to more

than one GermaNet UB, hence accounting for polysemy.

• Features pertaining to the derivational and inflectional morphology of the noun de-

rived from SMOR (Schmid and Laws 2008).

The features provide a 50-element vector description for each sentence. We are concerned

with which features are responsible for determiner omission or determiner realization. This

problem can be reformulated in terms of generalized linear modelling (GLM), where the link

function is the inverse logit (also known as logistic regression, cf. Kleinbaum and Klein

2010). In GLM, features of various types (particularly including categorical features) provide

a linear prediction between -∞ and +∞. This prediction is mapped to a probability space be-

tween 0 and 1, indicating whether the dependent feature is realized or not. The model thus

allows the specification of a probability, given the presence or absence of an independent fea-

ture in the observation to be classified. In the present setting, the model provides a set of fea-

tures responsible for determiner omission or realisation.

We extend GLM by distinguishing fixed effects from random effects. Fixed features are best

understood as formal characterizations of a given observation from a finite set of possible

values. Random features differ from fixed features in that they may not be drawn from a finite

set, or in that they introduce a latent nesting into the featural representation of the data. The

feature target_noun_lemma is considered a random feature in the present analysis. In an ideal

experiment, one would like to draw a sample that is balanced with respect to the nouns occur-

ring in the sample, so that each noun occurs equally often. But since our data are extracted

from corpora, the different frequencies and even more so the varying occurrences of the

nouns in the data for a given preposition are subject to randomness. Figure 1 illustrates the

situation: When we sample from a corpus, nouns will show up in skewed (Zipfian) distribu-

tions, so that a few nouns occur very often, while much more nouns occur only once (which

also means that many nouns do not occur in this sample, but might show up in another). Tak-

ing random effects into account allows us to gauge the influence of such random properties of

the data. In particular, we are able to amend our model with lexical preferences, as it turns out

that certain nouns prefer determiner omission even in the absence of the (fixed) features perti-

nent for determiner omission.

Figure 1: Frequency of nouns plotted against their rank in double logarithmic plane.

Hence the models provided for determiner omission in the present paper are instances of gen-

eralized linear mixed models (GLMMs), since the models mix fixed and random effects.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

01

23

log(rank)

log(Freq)

The general distribution of the data is represented in Table 1:

Preposition determiner realized determiner omitted Sum

mit 5.778 1.629 7.407

ohne 524 2.665 3.189

Table 1: Distribution of realized and omitted determiners in our sample of mit and ohne

A crucial fact is that determiner omission occurs more often than determiner realization with

ohne. The preposition ohne exhibits the peculiar property that determiner omission is more

frequent than determiner realization. For the other prepositions under investigation, deter-

miner omission always occurs (much) less often than determiner realization. For mit and ohne,

this is correct even if only the shared senses between these two prepositions are taken into

account. As will become clear in sections 3 and 4, ohne is more flexible in allowing PNCs

than mit. Clearly, this observation raises doubts on an analysis that basically assumes that

PNCs headed by mit and ohne derive from operations on semantics and argument structure,

which are taken to be uniform across the two prepositions. The GLMMs (generalized linear

mixed models) for ohne and mit are given in (4) and (5).

(4) GLMM for mit

AIC BIC logLik deviance

4528 4625 -2250 4500 Random effects: Groups Name Variance Std.Dev. target_noun_lemma (Intercept) 3.0282 1.7402 Number of obs: 7407, groups: target_noun_lemma, 1483 Fixed effects: Estimate Std. Error z value Pr(>|z|) (Intercept) 3.1294 0.1448 21.609 < 2e-16 *** adjectival modification -1.5646 0.1037 -15.087 < 2e-16 *** postnominal extension 1.0671 0.1108 9.633 < 2e-16 *** chunk_after is "vc" 0.2493 0.1235 2.019 0.043474 * prep_meaning is "presence" -3.2961 0.1200 -27.473 < 2e-16 *** TN_LEX_GN_group 0.5471 0.3290 1.663 0.096294 . TN_LEX_GN_form 0.8242 0.9370 0.880 0.379107 TN_LEX_GN_communication 0.6877 0.2690 2.556 0.010577 * TN_LEX_GN_body -0.9762 0.4933 -1.979 0.047833 * TN_LEX_GN_possession 1.6322 0.6328 2.579 0.009900 ** TN_LEX_GN_attribute -1.8831 0.5181 -3.635 0.000278 *** TN_LEX_GN_event 0.6471 0.2428 2.665 0.007688 ** TN_LEX_HL is "oa" 0.8033 0.4810 1.670 0.094875 . --- Signif. codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

(5) GLMM for ohne

AIC BIC logLik deviance 2032 2105 -1004 2008 Random effects: Groups Name Variance Std.Dev. target_noun_lemma (Intercept) 1.4086 1.1868 Number of obs: 3189, groups: target_noun_lemma, 755 Fixed effects: Estimate Std. Error z value Pr(>|z|) (Intercept) -2.8601 0.1716 -16.669 < 2e-16 *** adjectival modification 1.1103 0.1436 7.733 1.05e-14 *** chunk_before is "vc" 0.6851 0.2397 2.858 0.004262 ** chunk_after is "nc" 0.6551 0.1706 3.841 0.000122 *** external head is "VFIN“ 0.6774 0.1334 5.078 3.81e-07 *** postnominal extension 2.1905 0.1582 13.848 < 2e-16 *** prep_meaning is "conditional" 1.2842 0.1602 8.015 1.10e-15 *** TN_LEX_nominalization -1.2888 0.1959 -6.580 4.70e-11 *** TN_LEX_GN_attribute -1.4081 0.5549 -2.537 0.011169 * TN_LEX_GN_artefact -0.6256 0.2803 -2.232 0.025630 * TN_LEX_HL is "ta" 1.9267 0.8040 2.397 0.016552 * --- Signif. codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

The intercept term in (4) and (5) provides a base probability in the absence of any given fea-

ture. If this value is positive, it will be more likely that the dependent feature will be realized

(as for mit); if it is negative, it will be more likely that the feature is not realized (as for ohne).

All the estimates provided are the untransformed linear predictors. The inverse logit of the

intercept term of mit is 0.9581, which can be interpreted as a 95.81 % probability that a de-

terminer will be realized in the absence of any independent feature. For ohne, the inverse logit

of the intercept term will be 0.0542, indicating a 5.42 % probability that a determiner will be

realized.

Positive coefficients for a feature always increase the likelihood of feature (i.e. determiner)

realization, while negative coefficients lead to a decrease in likelihood.

The model for mit consists of 12 fixed features that refer to the structural complexity of the

phrase (adjectival modification, postnominal extension), the syntactic embedding of the

phrase (chunk_after), the semantics of the preposition (prep_meaning), and the semantics of

the noun (TN_LEX_GN, TN_LEX_HL). From this model, we can conclude that the preposi-

tion sense presence has a strong influence on determiner omission (it decreases the likelihood

of determiner realization by almost 50 %!), and that structural complexity in the right edge of

the phrase increases the likelihood of determiner realization, while it is decreased by the reali-

zation of an adjective. This last point is already quite puzzling, when the model is compared

to the model for ohne: In contrast to mit, we see that all features referring to structural com-

plexity lead to an increase in likelihood of determiner realization, particularly the feature ad-

jectival modification. This issue will be taken up in section 4. With regard to ohne we can

further observe that the preposition sense conditional increases the likelihood of determiner

realization, nouns resulting from nominalization decrease the likelihood, while some features

in the semantics of the noun lead to in increase or a decrease, respectively.

In summary, the models would allow the conclusion that determiner omission or realization

seems to depend on the interpretation of the preposition, on the interpretation of the noun, and

– if we leave the feature adjectival modification in the model for mit aside, on the structural

complexity of the phrase: more complex phrases, particularly phrases with postnominal com-

plementation of modification, favour determiner realization.

The random effects will be illustrated with the model for mit. In the models, we have speci-

fied that we are interested in how much (if at all) the random effects influence the intercept

term. In the present models, the nouns are considered as random effects. Their influence is

provided in terms of the variance expressed as standard deviation caused by them, which is on

the same scale as the intercept term. For mit, we find a value of 1.74, which means that for

95 % of the cases, the intercept for a particular noun can be located between 3.13±1.74×1.96.

The random effect thus expresses that the likelihood of determiner realization for mit may

decrease from 95.81 % to 43.03 % (but it may also increase from 95.81 % to 99.85 %). This

can best be illustrated by considering a small set of nouns that are influential in decreasing the

likelihood of determiner realization for mit. This observation can be interpreted as assuming

that these nouns exert a lexical influence to the effect that the determiner is dropped.

Figure 2: Predictions taking lexical preferences into account.

Figure 2 shows the realization or omission of examples with of four highly influential nouns

(Verweis, Bleistift, Akzent, Geste) by their respective first letter in green, blue, red, and violet.

The respective points are jittered to indicate their magnitude. If they were not jittered, they

would all show up on either 0 or 1, indicating whether a determiner has been realized or not.

The black line indicates the prediction without taking the random effect into account. For the

rightmost occurrences of Verweis, marked by green ‘v’, the prediction suggests that a deter-

miner be realized, and yet, the actual observation shows determiner omission. If the noun’s

influence on the intercept is taken into account, though, the predictor will not be the black line,

but instead the green one, which indicates a less than 40 % probability of determiner realiza-

tion, even though the fixed effects would suggest a 100 % probability of determiner realiza-

tion. Similarly, the red line shows the unbiased predictions taking the noun Akzent into ac-

-4 -2 0 2 4 6

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

P(det|mit)

Predictors

P(D

et|in

vers

e lo

git(P

redi

ctor

s))

v v

v

v

v

v

v

vv

v

vvvv

v

v

v

v

vv

v

v

vv

v

v

v

vv

v

vvv

v

v

v

v

v

vvv

vvvv

v

v

v

v

v

v

bb

b

b

bb

b

b

b

b

b

bb

ba

a

aa

a

a

a aa

a

a

a a

a

a

a

aaa

aaaa

a

a

a

a

aa

aa

a

a

aaaa

aaa

a

a

a

a

a

aa

aa

a

a

aaa

a

a

aa

a

a

aa

aa

a

a

aaa

a

a

g

g

g

g

g

ggggggg

g

g

g

g

gggggg

g

g

g

gg

ggg

g

g

g

gg

g

g

gg

g

g

g

g

g

g

g

g

g

g

g

g

g

g

g

g

gg

g

g g

count, the violet line the unbiased predictions for Geste, and the blue line the unbiased predic-

tion for Bleistift.

While the models provide insights with respect to the features responsible for determiner

omission (or realization), and also show the role of lexical influence of the individual, ran-

domly sampled nouns, they do not indicate whether determiner omission leads to interpreta-

tional changes. To illustrate this aspect, consider the following examples:

(6) Sie wohnen in einem Haus mit Garten / ohne Garten.

they reside in a house with garden / without garden

The sentences in (6) exemplify what is typically called the antonymic relation between the

prepositions mit and ohne: one of the basic interpretations of these prepositions is presence,

or in the case of ohne, lack of presence, i.e. absence. The determinerless complement of mit

and ohne however, does not refer in the same way as e.g. the NPs do in the parallel examples

in (7).

(7) Sie wohnen in einem Haus mit einem Garten / ohne einen Garten.

they reside in a house with a garden / without a garden

Here, the nouns receive a set-based or property interpretation. In (6) the garden must be inter-

preted as a property of the house that is present or lacking, depending on the preposition. The

property does not refer to a specific garden, and, hence, relative clause modification seems

rather odd:

(8) ??Sie wohnen in einem Haus mit Garten, der von Colen Campbell entworfen wurde.

they reside in a house with garden who by CC designed was

‘They reside in a house with a gardeni thati has been designed by Colen Campbell.’

The interpretations in (6) have been called weakly referential by de Swart (2012), and we will

turn to her analysis now.

2. De Swart (2012) on weakly referential interpretations of with and without

De Swart (2012) picks out the sense presence/lack of presence in her analysis of PNCs head-

ed by the English prepositions with and without. Her analysis is based on the treatment of bare

nominals in Spanish and Catalan (Espinal and McNally 2011). Espinal and McNally assume

that bare nominals should be treated as verbal modifiers. In addition, the predicates that are

affected by bare nominals require a semantic dependency to an abstract have-relation, and

their internal argument is suppressed. The basic tenets of Espinal and McNally’s analysis

(2011:110f.) are summarized in (9).

(9) In: λyλe[V(e) ∧ θ(e) = y ∧ ∃w[C(w)][∃e’[depend(e, e’, w) ∧ have(e’) ∧

havee(e’) = y]]]

Out: λe[V(e) ∧ ∃w[C(w)][∃e’[depend(e, e’, w) ∧ have(e’) ∧ havee(e’) = θ(e)]]]

If [[V]] = λe[V(e)] and θ is an implicit role function defined for V, and if [[N]] = N, a

property, then [[ [V N] ]] = λe[V(e) ∧ N(θ(e))].

The input of the lexical rule in (9) requires that the pertinent verbal predicate shows the nec-

essary have-relation, and hence must be transitive. The output of the lexical rule will be the

same predicate, but with the internal argument suppressed, so that the havee-relation is estab-

lished with the implicit role function θ(e). The output of this function will be an individual,

and hence the bare nominal can be treated as a property. The actual meaning composition is

carried out by applying the rule in the last line in (9), where N, the property, is applied to θ(e).

As the explicit role y is now suppressed, the property of weak referentiality is predicted.

De Swart (2012) applies this proposal to the prepositions with and without. She assumes that

both prepositions exemplify a sense called Accompany that is combined with sentential nega-

tion in the semantic representation of without. Although de Swart (2012) is not explicit about

this, it seems likely that the sense Accompany is very similar to the sense presence (cf. section

3) of our analysis. Her analysis (2012:8) of with is presented in (10).

(10) with: λyλPλx[P(x) ∧ ∃e[Accompany(e) ∧ EXT(e) = x ∧ INT(e) = y] ⇒

λPλx[P(x) ∧ ∃e[Accompany(e) ∧ EXT(e) = x ∧

∃w[C(w)][∃e’[depend(e, e’, w) ∧ have(e’) ∧ havee(e’) = INT(e)]]]]

It is an important asset of the analysis by Espinal and McNally, and also of its application to

with and without in de Swart (2012) that the resulting semantic representation is truth-

conditional equivalent to existential quantification of the internal argument, and differs from

the latter only in that no discourse referent for the internal argument is introduced (as the in-

ternal argument is suppressed), yielding weak referentiality.

The meaning of without only differs from with in (10) in that the second conjunct is explicitly

negated, yielding the output for without in (11).

(11) without: λPλx[P(x) ∧ ¬∃e[Accompany(e) ∧ EXT(e) = x ∧

∃w[C(w)][∃e’[depend(e, e’, w) ∧ have(e’) ∧ havee(e’) = INT(e)]]]]

We would like to note that de Swart (2012) uses an abbreviatory representation of without,

where she does not provide the conjunct introducing the depend-relation. It strikes us that the

negation also takes scope over this conjunct, and counter to Espinal and McNally’s initial idea,

we could make without in (11) true by negating this conjunct. This would lead to a rather

awkward and obviously undesirable semantics of without.

In addition to this problem, we note the following problems of the analysis. While it may

seem justified to treat bare nominals in Spanish and Catalan as modifiers, the same reasoning

does apply to bare nominal complements of prepositions. Assuming that the analysis will be

carried over to the German prepositions mit and ohne, we have to point out that modifiers of

P(P)s only appear at the left periphery of the phrase, and are typically adverbial, and never

nominal in nature. Furthermore, modifiers normally do not require case, or – in the case of

temporal NPs in German – bear the so-called temporal accusative. Bare nominals appearing

with mit, however, unequivocally show dative case that is governed by the preposition (just as

bare nominals appearing with ohne show the usual accusative case). Since nominal inflection

has been almost completely lost in German, case-marking can only be detected by adding an

adjective to the phrases, as can be witnessed in (12).

(12) a. Das ist ein Boot mit rostigem Anker.

this is a boat with rustydat anchor

b. Das ist ein Boot ohne rostigen Anker.

this is a boat without rustyacc anchor

Case-marking, and dative case-marking in particular, speaks against the modifier status of the

bare nominals in (12).

De Swart’s analysis is based on the assumption that the preposition with incorporates a have-

relation in the sense Accompany; the combination of this relation with logical negation pro-

vides the antonymic relationship between with and without. It strikes us, though, that this

analysis assumes that properties of with carry over to without. In the following sections, we

will identify two properties of mit that do not seem to apply to ohne in the same way: PNCs

with instrumental interpretations, and the role of the adjective in PNCs. Given the larger free-

dom and productivity of PNCs headed by ohne, when compared with mit, we will even con-

clude that an eventual analysis of PNCs headed by mit and ohne should presumably take ohne

as its starting point.

3. Instrumental senses of mit and ohne

The sense presence (called Accompany in de Swart 2012) is not the only sense expressed by

mit and ohne. In fact, mit exemplifies a broader range of senses than ohne. Müller and Roch

(2012) distinguish 12 different top level senses of mit: spatial, temporal, modal, conditional,

participation, point of reference, indicator, realization, restrictive, eventive, presence, and

assignment. Six of these 12 senses are also found with ohne: modal, conditional, participation,

restrictive, eventive, and presence. The sense instrumental, on which we will focus in this

section, is treated as a sub-sense of the modal sense.

All the shared senses of mit and ohne can be described in terms of an antonymic relationship

so that the sense expressed by ohne is somehow the negation of the sense expressed by mit.

This is further illustrated for the sense restrictive that describes inclusion or exclusion of its

internal argument in (13).

(13) a. Mit Abgeltung lagen sie bei 89,0, 80,9 und 51,3.

with compensation lay they at 89.0, 80.9 and 51.3

‘The rates lay at 89.0, 80.9, and 51.3 including compensation.’

b. Bei den SBB verringerte sich die Kostendeckung ohne Abgeltung

at the SBB decreased REFL the cost recovery without compensation

von 86,8 auf 84,3 Prozent.

from 86.8 to 84.3 %

‘The cost-recovery rate fell from 86.8 to 84.3 % excluding compensation.’

The antonymic relationship between the shared senses does not lead to an equal distribution

of determiner omission in constructions expressing these senses. The following Table 2 is a

cross-tabulation of the senses participation, conditional, modal, and presences, gauged for the

72 nouns that occur most frequently both with mit and ohne.

part (PNC)

part (PP)

cond (PNC) cond (PP)

mod (PNC)

mod (PP)

pres (PNC)

pres (PP)

ohne 1,18% 0,30% 10,49% 3,99% 50,66% 3,10% 28,66% 1,33% mit 1,75% 13,05% 0,78% 3,02% 15,09% 32,33% 27,26% 6,33% Table 2: Distribution of senses between PNCs and PPs for 72 high frequency nouns occur-

ring with mit and ohne

With regard to the sense presence, Table 2 indicates a strong similarity between the two prep-

ositions: the realization of the sense presence with bare nominals is very similar between mit

and ohne. But for the other senses, the similarities vanish. This is most striking for the sense

modal: For the preposition ohne, PNCs are strongly preferred, but for the preposition mit, it is

reversed. Similarly for conditional: the sense occurs in PNCs approximately three times as

often than in PPs headed by with, but with the reverse distribution occurs with mit. As the

distribution for mit and ohne diverges largely, the figures corroborates the assumption that

determiner omission with a specific sense does not necessarily license determiner omission

with the antonymic sense.

If we look more closely into the sub-sense instrumental (belonging to the sense modal), an

interesting picture emerges. The example of an instrumental mit-PP in (14) illustrates that the

sense instrumental recurs to a have-relation.

(14) Um die Entlegenheit von Fair Isle voll zu erfahren, sollte man nicht

to the remoteness of Fair Isle completely to experience, should one not

mit einem Flugzeug anreisen.

with an airplane arrive

‘One should not use an airplane to travel to Fair Isle in order to experience its re-

moteness in its entirety.’

But the general distribution (now taking all occurrences of nouns into consideration) of in-

strumental PNCs differs largely for mit and ohne, as can be summarized in the following Ta-

ble 3.

PNC PP Sum Preposition no adjective adjective no adjective adjective mit 29 55 164 96 444 ohne 10 1 0 2 13 Proportion (mit) 6.53 12.38 36.93 21.62 Proportion (ohne) 76.92 7.69 0.00 15.38 Table 3: Distribution of instrumental mit- and ohne-PPs and PNCs

Clearly, the magnitude of occurrences of instrumental PNCs/PPs differs for these two prepo-

sitions, but it does not seem to be an accidental property of the sample that instrumental

phrases headed by mit prefer a syntactic realization of its complement including a determiner

while instrumental phrases headed by ohne allow PNCs much more easily. In addition, we see

that completely bare PNCs occur more often with ohne than with mit – a point to which we

will return in section 4. If we compare instrumental PPs and PNCs, it becomes clear that PPs

headed by ohne can be turned into PNCs without problems while the same operation yields

ungrammaticality with mit.

Example (14) may serve as a first illustration here. This example can be turned into a near-

paraphrase if the negation is eliminated and mit replaced by ohne, as given in (15). Here,

however, we employ a PNC.

(15) Um die Entlegenheit von Fair Isle voll zu erfahren, sollte man

to the remoteness of Fair Isle completely to experience should one

ohne Flugzeug anreisen.

without airplane arrive

‘One should not use an airplane to travel to Fair Isle in order to experience its re-

moteness in its entirety.’

While an instrumental PNC can be used with ohne, the same does not hold for mit. There is

no variation between the indefinite determiner in (14) and no determiner in (16), since the

latter example is ungrammatical.

(16) *Um die Entlegenheit von Fair Isle voll zu erfahren, sollte man nicht

to the remoteness of Fair Isle completely to experience should one not

mit Flugzeug anreisen.

with airplane arrive

The instrumental sense is not retained if an indefinite determiner would be used together with

ohne, as illustrated in (17). In contrast to (15), the PP in (17) seems to express a sense of pres-

ence, thus giving the whole example the somewhat eerie ring that one should not bring an

airplane (as part of one’s luggage) when trying to experience the remoteness of Fair Isle.

(17) Um die Entlegenheit von Fair Isle voll zu erfahren, sollte man

to the remoteness of Fair Isle completely to experience should one

ohne ein Flugzeug anreisen.

without an airplane arrive

‘One should not carry an airplane to Fair Isle in to experience its remoteness in its

entirety.’

This latter aspect might be a peculiarity of example (14) since means of transportation (busses,

trains, planes, etc.) are usually expressed in full NPs with a definite determiner (they are the

counterparts of Baldwin et al.’s 200x P-based PNCs). But further examples show that the pat-

tern exemplified in (14) to (17) is fully productive in other cases. We find grammatical PPs

headed by mit that can be antonymically related to grammatical PNCs headed by ohne as well

as to grammatical PPs headed by ohne, while PNCs headed by mit yield ungrammaticality.

The data in (18) and (19) differ from (14) to (17) insofar as the examples with ohne are truly

antonymic to the examples with mit. While the latter express something like by using X, the

former express by not using X. The examples in (20) employ negation in the examples with

ohne, since they would sound rather peculiar without it.

(18) a. Die Kantonspolizei nimmt an, dass die Beute mit einem Fahrzeug

the canton police assumes SEPREF that the loot with a car

abtransportiert worden ist.

removed was is

‘The cantonal police assume that the loot has been carried away by using a car.’

b. Die Kantonspolizei nimmt an, dass die Beute ohne Fahrzeug

the canton police assumes SEPREF that the loot without car

abtransportiert worden ist.

removed was is

‘The cantonal police assume that the loot has been carried away without using a

car.’

c. Die Kantonspolizei nimmt an, dass die Beute ohne ein Fahrzeug

the canton police assumes SEPREF that the loot without a car

abtransportiert worden ist.

removed was is

‘The cantonal police assume that the loot has been carried away without using a

car.’

d. *Die Kantonspolizei nimmt an, dass die Beute mit Fahrzeug

the canton police assumes SEPREF that the loot with car

abtransportiert worden ist.

removed was is

(19) a. Ein amerikanisches Kampfflugzeug hat am Sonntag eine irakische Radaranlage

an American warplane has on.the Sunday an Iraqi radar device

südlich der Flugverbotszone über dem Nordirak mit einer Rakete zerstört.

south of.the no-fly zone over the North-Iraq with a rocket destroyed

‘On Sunday, an American warplane has destroyed an Iraqi radar device located

south of the northern Iraqi no-fly zone with a rocket.’

b. Ein amerikanisches Kampfflugzeug hat am Sonntag eine irakische Radaranlage

an American warplane has on.the Sunday an Iraqi radar device

südlich der Flugverbotszone über dem Nordirak ohne Rakete zerstört.

south of.the no-fly zone over the North-Iraq without rocket destroyed

‘On Sunday, an American warplane has destroyed an Iraqi radar device located

south of the northern Iraqi no-fly zone without using a rocket.’

c. Ein amerikanisches Kampfflugzeug hat am Sonntag eine irakische Radaranlage

an American warplane has on.the Sunday an Iraqi radar device

südlich der Flugverbotszone über dem Nordirak ohne eine Rakete zerstört.

south of.the no-fly zone over the North-Iraq without a rocket destroyed

‘On Sunday, an American warplane has destroyed an Iraqi radar device located

south of the northern Iraqi no-fly zone without using a rocket.’

d. *Ein amerikanisches Kampfflugzeug hat am Sonntag eine irakische Radaranlage

an American warplane has on.the Sunday an Iraqi radar device

südlich der Flugverbotszone über dem Nordirak mit Rakete zerstört.

south of.the no-fly zone over the North-Iraq with rocket destroyed

(20) a. So wie man eine Schraube mit einem Schraubenzieher eindrehen kann, so kann

so as one a screw with a screwdriver turn-in can so can

man einen Nagel mit einem Hammer einschlagen.

one a nail with a hammer drive

‘Using a screwdriver you can turn in a screw, and using a hammer you can ham-

mer down a nail.’

b. So wie man eine Schraube ohne Schraubenzieher nicht eindrehen kann, so

so as one a screw without screwdriver not turn-in can so

kann man einen Nagel ohne Hammer nicht einschlagen.

can one a nail without hammer not drive

‘Without a screwdriver, you cannot turn in a screw, and without a hammer you

cannot hammer down a nail.’

c. So wie man eine Schraube ohne einen Schraubenzieher nicht eindrehen kann, so

so as one a screw without a screwdriver not turn-in can so

kann man einen Nagel ohne einen Hammer nicht einschlagen.

can one a nail without a hammer not drive

‘Without a screwdriver, you cannot turn in a screw, and without a hammer you

cannot hammer down a nail.’

d. *So wie man eine Schraube mit Schraubenzieher eindrehen kann, so kann man

so as one a screw with screwdriver turn-in can so can one

einen Nagel mit Hammer einschlagen.

a nail with hammer drive

The examples in (18), (19), and (20) cast doubt on the analysis in (10), which is expressed in

terms of the interaction of an underlying have-relation with logical negation. But we have also

pointed out that a small subset of instrumental PNCs is headed by mit in Table 3. How do

these examples differ from the ones given above?

The majority of these examples involve the nouns that denote means for writing and paying,

Bleistift (pencil) and Kreditkarte (credit card) in particular. We will discuss the first semantic

class as the conclusions carry over to the other one. It seems that these examples typically

involve a contrast or a presupposed partition to the effect that the set of events denoted by the

predicated is restricted to or contrasted with the subset requiring the use of the nominal com-

plement of the instrumental preposition.

(21) Er hatte am Vortag seine Figuren mit Bleistift skizziert.

he had on.the previous.day his figures with pencil outlined

‘On the previous day, he had outlined his figures by using a pencil.’

One assumption could be that the pertinent verbs imply the use of an instrument, and that the

instrumental PNC is incorporated into the verb. The implication of an instrument in itself,

however, is not sufficient to licence such a construction. While unlocking doors typically re-

quires a means or instrument to unlock the door with, it is almost impossible to drop a deter-

miner in constructions like mit einem Schlüssel öffnen (to unlock with a key), as is illustrated

in (22).

(22) a. Er hatte die Tür mit einem Schlüssel geöffnet.

he had the door with a key opened

‘He had unlocked the door with a key.’

b. *Er hatte die Tür mit Schlüssel geöffnet.

he had the door with key opened

An incorporation analysis can also be supported by the observation that the order of the

verbs’s direct object (die Tür) and the instrumental PP can be reversed in (22), while this is

barely possible with the object of the verb and the PNC in (21).

(23) a. ??Er hatte am Vortag mit Bleistift seine Figuren skizziert.

he had on.the previous.day with pencil his figures outlined

b. Er hatte mit einem Schlüssel die Tür geöffnet.

he has with a key the door opened

And, as we already have mentioned, the broad majority of instrumental PNCs is lexically re-

stricted. The semantic classes of the predicates denote either writing or drawing with instru-

ments like Bleistift, Schreibmaschine (type writer), Pinsel (paint brush), or else denote modes

of payment with instruments (means) like Kreditkarte, Scheck (check), Schein (bill).

The observed contrast between (21) and (22) is even more striking as we do not see a compa-

rable contrast if we use ohne instead of mit, as is illustrated in (24).

(24) Und dass die Heckklappe nur in der edelsten Ghia-Ausführung auch

and that the boot.lid only in the most.classy Ghia edition also

ohne Schlüssel geöffnet werden kann, ist ebenfalls nicht sehr praktisch.

without key opened PASS can is again not very convenient

‘In addition, it is not very convenient that the boot lid can be opened without a key

only in the most classy Ghia edition.’

In sum, it seems evident that for the sense instrumental, the preposition mit strongly prefers

syntactic realization of a full PP, while the preposition ohne allows (or even prefers) the reali-

zation of PNCs.

4. Adjectives and omission

We will now return to the conspicuous contrast between the two GLMMs for mit and ohne

already mentioned in section 1: while the presence of a prenominal modifier (an adjective) is

an indicator for determiner realization with ohne, adjectival modification speaks in favour of

determiner omission in the case of mit. In the foregoing discussion, we have not taken into

consideration the syntactic context within the PP, apart from the presence of absence of a de-

terminer. We will distinguish completely bare PNCs, i.e. PNCs that solely consist of P and N

from prenominally modified and postnominally extended PNCs. A closer look into the data

reveals that the internal structure of PNCs headed by ohne differs with respect to prenominal

modification, as well as to postnominal extension, from the internal structures typically found

with mit.

Table 4 lists the occurrence of prenominal and postnominal modification with 15 nouns that

occur most frequently in PNCs headed by mit and ohne, respectively. The first two columns

of the table provide the occurrences of the nouns within a PNC and within a PP. The remain-

ing four columns list whether a PNC occurs bare, prenominally modified, postnominally mod-

ified or both pre- and postnominally modified. For each noun, the highest figure is indicated

by boldface.

ohne PNC PP bare prenominal postnominal pre- and postno-

minal Niederlage 239 2 230 0 9 0 Genehmigung 74 6 23 24 23 4 Stelle 72 2 65 6 1 0 Vorbehalt 63 5 57 4 2 0 Gegentor 46 0 45 0 1 0 Umweg 44 24 20 3 20 1 Konzept 44 3 17 26 0 1 Warnung 39 1 30 8 1 0 Visum 38 0 33 5 0 0 Zwischenlandung 36 0 34 0 2 0 Medaille 35 3 32 0 3 0 Auftrag 35 1 18 13 3 1 Eingriff 33 5 6 17 8 2 Lehrstelle 30 0 29 0 1 0 Lizenz 26 2 20 6 0 0

mit PNC PP bare prenominal postnominal

pre- and postno-minal

Laufzeit 113 107 13 80 1 19 Akzent 65 6 3 45 5 12 Schwerpunkt 43 15 9 3 31 0 Geste 42 18 0 35 0 7 Verweis 41 10 12 0 27 2 Pensum 41 4 0 12 0 29 Zielsetzung 39 9 0 30 1 8 Kind 34 19 14 2 18 0 Kamera 22 32 0 16 0 6 Vorbehalt 21 7 11 3 7 0 Predigt 20 1 19 0 1 0 Bart 15 6 8 4 2 1 Wirkungsgrad 14 3 0 10 0 4 Kapuze 14 0 7 3 3 1 Feder 13 3 0 10 0 3 Table 4: Distribution of completely bare PNCs and internally extended PNCs for the 15

most frequent nouns occurring in PNCs headed by mit and ohne

The second half of Table 4 shows that the nouns embedded under mit in a PNC only reluc-

tantly occur completely bare. The nouns Laufzeit (term), Akzent (accent), Geste (gesture), and

Zielsetzung (objective) predominantly occur with prenominal modifiers – six of the 15 nouns

actually never occur bare in the corpus. The nouns Schwerpunkt (emphasis) and Verweis (ref-

erence) show a preference for postnominal extension. Once again this is strikingly different

for nouns occurring in PNCs headed by ohne, as the upper half of Table 4 indicates.

The example in (25) illustrates that the prenominal modifier is obligatory. The example be-

comes ungrammatical if the adjective is left out. The same condition can be illustrated for

postnominal genitive complements in (26). If the postnominal complement of Genehmigung

(approval) is left out, (26) becomes ungrammatical.

(25) Einen herbeigeeilten Helfer wies er mit resoluter Geste zurück.

A rushed over aide turned he with resolute gesture back

‘With a resolute gesture, he turned away an aide, who just rushed over.’

(26) Mit Genehmigung des Verbandes kehrt der Schwede im September vorübergehend

with approval of.the association goes the Swede in September temporarily

in seine Heimat zurück.

in his home country back.

‘With approval of the association the Swede will return temporarily to his home

country in September.’

It is unlikely that the PNCs receive generic or even weakly referential readings in the episodic

sentences in (25) and (26). In (26), we are talking about a specific approval, without which

the Swede could not return to his home country. In the same line of reasoning, it is a specific

gesture at the aide that turned him away.

We are dealing with referential interpretations despite the fact that a determiner is missing.

This assumption can be further corroborated by examples where the noun is taken up by a

relative clause, which is a clear indicator of the presence of a discourse referent:

(27) Seit Turnierbeginn spielt Fernandez mit einbandagiertem linkem

since start.of.tournament plays Fernandez with bandaged left

Oberschenkel, wo sie sich am French Open eine Zerrung zugezogen hatte.

thigh, where she REFL at.the French Open a strain incurred had

‘Fernandez is playing since the start of the tournament with a bandaged left thigh,

where she incurred a strain trauma at the French Open.’

It cannot be denied that completely bare PNCs may occur (and in fact do occur) with the

nouns listed in Table 4. To get a clearer picture of their distribution, Table 5 lists the preposi-

tion senses for completely bare PNCs in Table 4 – we have excluded the nouns that never

occur completely bare, and have focussed on the four senses modal, presence, participation,

and conditional.

mit bare modal presence participation conditional Laufzeit 13 0 13 0 0 Akzent 3 3 0 0 0 Schwerpunkt 9 2 7 0 0 Verweis 12 11 1 0 0 Kind 14 0 12 2 0 Vorbehalt 11 10 0 0 0 Predigt 19 0 19 0 0 Bart 8 0 8 0 0 Kapuze 7 0 7 0 0 Table 5: Senses of completely bare PNCs headed by mit

If PNCs headed by mit occur completely bare, the sense presence is most often either the pre-

dominant or even the only sense, and a weakly referential interpretation becomes obvious, as

is illustrated in (28).

(28) a. Im Prinzip muss in Japan jeder fremde Staatsbürger einen Ausländerausweis

in principle must in Japan every alien resident a alien.pass

mit Fingerabdruck bei sich tragen.

with finger.print at himself carry

‘As a rule, every alien resident must carry an alien identification card with a fin-

gerprint with him at all times in Japan.’

b. Andere Schmuckstücke der Kapelle sind die Seitenaltäre mit Bartholomäus,

other gems of.the chapel are the side.altars with Bartholomew

Barbara, Franz von Assisi und der Jungfrau mit Kind.

Barbara, St. Francis of Assissi and the virgin with child

‘Among the gems of the chapel, we find the side altars with pictures of Bartholo-

mew, St. Francis of Assissi, and Virgin Mary with child.’

The conspicuous difference between the two models in (4) and (5) with regard to the value

adjectival modification now receives a surprising explanation: For mit the presence of an ad-

jective (and also the presence of postnominal complements) provides a determiner-like func-

tion. PNCs with prenominal modifiers do not necessarily establish a weakly referential inter-

pretation, can be found in episodic sentences, as well as being modified by relative clauses.

Completely bare PNCs, on the other hand, do not allow relative clause modification, and typi-

cally describe properties of the external argument of the PNC. We may thus conclude that

many PNCs headed by mit are not licensed by a weakly referential interpretation (possibly

brought about by the lexical rule described in (10)) of the noun, but by the adjective that ful-

fils a determiner-like function. This assumption is further corroborated by the observation that

instrumental PNCs headed by mit, which have been described as ungrammatical in section 3,

drastically improve if a pronominally modified PNC is used instead of a bare PNC:

(29) a. Die Verkäuferin eines Sportgeschäfts in Winterthur ist am Mittwoch von

the salesperson of.a sports.outfitters in Winterthur is on.the Wednesday of

einem unbekannten Mann mit *(blutiger) Spritze bedroht worden.

an unknown man with bloody syringe threatened was

‘On Wednesday, the salesperson of a sports outfitters in Winterthur was attacked

by an unknown man using a bloody syringe as a weapon.’

b. Seine Forderung unterstrich der Räuber mit *(vorgehaltener automatischer)

his demands emphasized the robber with presented automatic

Pistole.

gun

‘The robber emphasized his demands by presenting an automatic gun at gun-

point.’

5. Some conclusions

Although mit and ohne share several senses, and both allow PNCs, it seems unlikely that their

behaviour can be fully accounted for in terms of a semantic operation on a sub-sense of mit

that also affects the argument structure of the preposition. The antonymic preposition ohne

shows a broader range of PNCs if one focuses on the sense instrumental. A range that as yet

eludes an account in terms of the analysis of de Swart (2012). We have also seen that adjec-

tival modification plays a rather different role in PNCs headed by mit and ohne: for the latter

preposition, we see that adjectival modification is taken to be an instance of sheer phrasal

complexity. Phrases containing APs are more complex than phrases that don’t. The less mate-

rial is actually contained in a PP, the more is the determiner omission if the preposition is

ohne. For mit, the situation is different: many instrumental PNCs headed by mit actually re-

quire the presence of adjectival modification, and the adjective seems to provide a – currently

only vaguely understood – function as a stand-in.

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