Abstract

Parenthetical constructions in German like der Minister des Inneren leidet, (so) sagt man/wie man sagt, an Paranoia are subject to certain restrictions if the host clause is an interrogative and the verb of the reduced parenthetical selects a declarative complement clause: ??wen hat, so glaubt Theo, Franz beleidigt?. According to a quite common conception, a requirement of sentence mood agreement is responsible for the distributional facts. It is the goal of this article to show that this condition fails to account for the facts. Insertion of a parenthetical into an interrogative host is constrained by conditions on reconstruction of the propositional content of the parenthetical's silent complement. In the case of non-agreement, three different types of reduced parentheticals have to be considered in German: verbfirst, so- and wie-parentheticals, which slightly differ with respect to their insertion into an interrogative host. The presuppositon of the interrogative host has to provide for the content of a V1-parenthetical's complement. In so-parentheticals the Adverb so introduces reference to the form of the host, which must be compatible with the canonical form of the verb's complement. wie-parentheticals function as free relative adverbial clauses that constitute a comparative modification of both the host and the parenthetical. Finally, person specification comes into play as an independent factor.