Abstract This paper explores fronted verb phrases in German, drawing attention to the difference between passive/unaccusative VPs and fronted agentive vPs. While both kinds of verb phrases have been discussed in the literature as being frontable, it has been largely overlooked that fronted vPs typically come with a certain kind of post-fronting context and a rise-fall or bridge-contour intonation, which is characteristic of I-topicalization. We observe that, unlike VPs, agentive vPs essentially need to be I-topics, with a high tone at the right edge of the fronted domain, in order to be frontable. Given the special context required for fronted vPs, the situation described by the vP does not contain new information but must already have been under discussion and is now being commented on. We present the results of two experimental studies and appeal to the thetic/categorical distinction to offer a new angle on the definiteness effect that has been associated with fronted verb phrases. We propose that a subject-containing fronted vP is associated with a thetic rather than the default categorical judgment, which means that the fronted subject and predicate form only one information-structural unit (a topic) rather than two (topic and comment). Contributing to the literature on theticity, we observe that, unlike in non-fronting thetic statements, the subject in fronted vPs cannot be a true definite. We attribute this to clashing intonation restrictions on theticity in non-fronting constructions versus theticity in just the fronted portion of a sentence.

中文翻译：

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德语“ VP”开头的语法，信息结构和韵律

摘要本文探讨了德语中的前置动词短语，提请注意被动/无宾格副词和前置代理vP的区别。虽然两种动词短语在文献中都被认为是可动词，但很大程度上被忽略了，前置vP通常带有某种后动语境以及上升或下降或桥等高调，这是我主题化。我们观察到，与VP不同，代理vP本质上需要成为I主题，并且在前沿域的右边缘具有高调，以便具有可扩展性。鉴于前置vP所需的特殊上下文，vP所描述的情况不包含新信息，但必须已经在讨论中，并且正在接受评论。我们介绍了两个实验研究的结果，并呼吁区分主题/类别，以便为与前置动词短语相关的确定性效应提供新的角度。我们建议，包含主题的前沿vP与主题而非默认的分类判断相关联，这意味着前沿的主题和谓语仅形成一个信息结构单元（一个主题），而不是两个信息结构单元（主题和评论）。有助于文献研究神学，我们观察到，与非正面神学陈述不同，正面vP中的主题不能是真正的确定性。我们将其归因于语调上的限制，即非前置结构中的主题性与仅句子的前置部分中的主题性之间存在冲突。