Description:
<jats:p>This paper seeks to find the best linguistic analysis of the German semispecified, productive pattern<jats:italic>N hin, N her</jats:italic>(for example,<jats:italic>Krieg hin, Krieg her, es muss eine gute Show werden</jats:italic>‘War or no war, it must be a good show’). The basic question is whether the properties of<jats:italic>N hin, N her</jats:italic>can be accounted for in a rule-based approach or whether they are to be regarded as idiosyncratic properties of this construction. One of the characteristic features of<jats:italic>N hin, N her</jats:italic>is the identity of the nouns. This raises the question of whether or not<jats:italic>N hin, N her</jats:italic>is an instance of syntactic reduplication. It is shown that rule-based copying accounts fail when they are applied to the case of<jats:italic>N hin, N her</jats:italic>. The paper argues for an alternative, constructionist account of<jats:italic>N hin, N her</jats:italic>, which is able to cover both regular and idiosyncratic aspects of the construction in a systematic fashion. However, the paper goes beyond a standard constructionist account by also arguing that the idiosyncratic features of the construction can be further explained if one takes into account general pragmatic principles. This requires a theory that incorporates a systematic interface with pragmatics.<jats:sup>*</jats:sup></jats:p>