The particulization of German complement-taking mental predicates

This paper deals with the phenomenon of German complement-taking mental predicates (CTMPs) evolving into particles. The goal is twofold: on the one hand, to get a better view of the situation in present-day German on the basis of a systematic corpus analysis, and on the other hand to discuss the status of the resulting forms. In both cases, the starting point is the analysis of Imo, 2006a and Imo, 2009a, who briefly deals with this phenomenon in analyzing the uses of the CTMP glauben. The present paper focuses on glauben as well, but other CTMPs, like denken and finden, are also taken into account.

► The study deals with German particles stemming from complement-taking predicates.
► Several verbs show this development, not just the typical example glauben.
► The particles do not qualify as typical instances of any common lexical category.
► Their meaning is best described in terms of a multidimensional continuous space.