Linguistik
Refine
Year of publication
- 2006 (15) (remove)
Document Type
- Part of a Book (8)
- Article (3)
- Preprint (2)
- Conference Proceeding (1)
- Report (1)
Has Fulltext
- yes (15)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (15)
Keywords
- Deutsch (15) (remove)
Institute
- Extern (3)
Die synchrone wie diachrone Untersuchung von vier Passivauxiliaren in der deutschen Standardsprache und in deutschen Dialekten, im Schwedischen und im Luxemburgischen liefert deutliche Evidenz dafür, dass Vollverben nicht direkt zu Passivauxiliaren grammatikalisieren, sondern dass dieser Pfad über die Inchoativkopula verläuft. Inchoativkopulas sind soweit grammatikalisiert (und damit reduziert), dass sie über den Weg einer Reanalyse zu Vorgangspassivauxiliaren mutieren können: Erst verbinden sie sich mit (prädikativen) Substantiven, dann mit Adjektiven und schließlich partizipialen Verben. Bereits im Kopulastadium haben sie sich (sofern vorhanden gewesen) ihres Dativ- und Akkusativobjekts entledigt (Intransitivierung). Das Subjekt ist nach seiner Entkoppelung mit dem Agens eine neue Koppelung mit dem Patiens eingegangen. Damit hat die einstige Handlungsperspektive eine Umkehr zur Geschehensperspektive erfahren. Diese Schritte dokumentiert die folgende Figur: .... Als weniger problematisch hat sich, bedingt durch die Ausgangssemantik, der Grammatikalisierungspfad bei nhd. werden, bair.lalem. kommen und schwed. bli erwiesen im Gegensatz zu lux. ginn 'geben', das in jeder Hinsicht die stärksten Reduktionen erfahren hat und einen besonders langen, verschlungenen und "steinigen" Weg absolviert hat. Mit Sicherheit kann geben nicht als Idealkandidat für Passivgrarnmatikalisierungen gelten. Nur so lässt sich erklären, weshalb diese Grarnmatikalisierung in anderen Sprachen der Welt bisher nicht beobachtet wurde.
The retreat of BE as perfect auxiliary in the history of English is examined. Corpus data are presented showing that the initial advance of HAVE was most closely connected to a restriction against BE in past counterfactuals. Other factors which have been reported to favor the spread of HAVE are either dependent on the counterfactual effect, or significantly weaker in comparison. It is argued that the effect can be traced to the semantics of the BE perfect, which denoted resultativity rather than anteriority proper. Related data from other older Germanic and Romance languages are presented, and finally implications for existing theories of auxiliary selection stemming from the findings presented are discussed.
Das bresilionische Deitsch unn die deitsche Bresilioner : en Hunsrickisch Red fo die Sprocherechte
(2006)
This paper is a contribution of the area of linguistic policies to the discussion of linguistic rights of speakers of minority languages in Brazil. The text, bilingual in Portuguese and Hunsrückisch, one of the varieties of German immigration languages spoken in Brazil, was presented by the authors (as native speakers and translators), in the Legislative Seminar on Creation of the Book of Language Registers, organized by the Institute of National Artistic Heritage (IPHAN), Institute of Investigation and Development in Linguistic Policies (IPOL) and Education and Culture Committee of the Chamber of Representatives, in Brasília, on March 2006. The idea of the Book of Languages contributes to the recognition of Brazilian linguistic diversity, represented by approximately 210 languages, from which 180 are autochthonous (indigenous) and around 30 are allochthonous (of immigration). Its recognition as an immaterial (virtual) cultural heritage is seem as an important act in favor of speakers’ linguistic rights and against linguistic prejudice that comes along with the use of minority languages in contact with the Portuguese language. This work is inserted in this perspective and it comes along with a supportive bibliography and a map of bilingual areas in the south of Brazil.
Die Erzählfähigkeit eines zweisprachig aufwachsenden Geschwisterpaares: eine exemplarische Analyse
(2006)
This paper describes the ability of German-Portuguese bilingual siblings to narrate in German. The paper deals with the underlying theory of 'Functional Pragmatics' and describes within this theory the complex verbal pattern of narration in everyday life. In order to do this, a selected corpus will be analysed focussing on the conditions and characteristics of narration.
It has often been noticed that one syntactic argument position can be realized by elements which seem to realize different thematic roles. This is notably the case with the external argument position of verbs of change of state which licenses volitional agents, instruments or natural forces/causers, showing the generality and abstractness of the external argument relation. (1) a. John broke the window (Agent) b. The hammer broke the window (Instrument) c. The storm broke the window (Causer) In order to capture this generality, Van Valin & Wilkins (1996) and Ramchand (2003) among others have proposed that the thematic role of the external argument position is in fact underspecified. The relevant notion is that of an effector (in Van Valin & Wilkins) or of an abstract causer/initiator (in Ramchand). In this paper we argue against a total underspecification of the external argument relation. While we agree that (1b) does not instantiate an instrument theta role in subject position, we argue that a complete underspecification of the external theta-position is not feasible, but that two types of external theta roles have to be distinguished, Agents and Causers. Our arguments are based on languages where Agents and Causers show morpho-syntactic independence (section 2.1) and the behavior of instrument subjects in English, Dutch, German and Greek (section 2.2 and 3). We show that instrument subjects are either Agent or Causer like. In section (4) we give an analysis how arguments realizing these thematic notions are introduced into syntax.
This paper investigates the semantic underpinnings of the distinction between two syntactic types of "manner of movement" verbs in Levin (1993), namely the RUN and ROLL classes. According to Levin's (1993) and Levin & Rappaport's (1995) work on unaccusativity, a semantic factor of "internal causation" should be the trigger for the classification of a movement verb as intransitive (=not-unaccusative), and hence for its belonging to the RUN class. We point out empirical problems for this characterisation, mainly coming from the different readings of the German verb fliegen (fly). From a comparison with other semantically similar verbs, we conclude that the semantic description which underlies the class distinction should be refined: instead of "internal causation", the crucial semantic factor is described here as "inherent specification for a momentum of movement". This result indicates that forces, and relations between forces, have to be part of the semantic description of the manner component in movement verbs.
In a recent contribution to a long-standing discussion in semantics as to whether the neo-Davidsonian analysis should be extended to stative predicates or not, Maienborn (2004, 2005) proposes to distinguish two types of statives; one of them is said to have a referential argument of the Davidsonian type, the other not. As one of her arguments for making such a distinction, Maienborn observes that manner modification seems to be supported only by certain statives but to be excluded by others (thus linking the issue to the use of manner modification as one major argument in favour of event semantics, cf. Parsons 1990). In this paper, it is argued that the absence of manner modification with Maienborn's second group of statives is actually due to a failure of conceptual construal: modification of a predicate is ruled out whenever its internal conceptual structure is too poor to provide a construal for the modifier; hence, the effects observed by Maienborn reduce to the fact that eventive predicates have a more complex conceptual substructure than stative ones. Hence, the issue of manner modification with statives is shown to be orthogonal to questions of logical form and event semantics. The explanatory power of the conceptual approach is demonstrated with a case study on predicates of light emission, adapting the representation format of Barsalou's (1992) frame model.
This paper examines the development of periphrastic constructions involving auxiliary "have" and "be" with a past participle in the history of English, on the basis of parsed electronic corpora. It is argued that the two constructions represented distinct syntactic and semantic structures: while the one with have developed into a true perfect in the course of Middle English, the one with be remained a stative resultative throughout its history. In this way, it is explained why the be construction was rarely or never used in a number of contexts, including past counterfactuals, iteratives, duratives, certain kinds of infinitives and various other utterance types that cannot be characterized as perfects of result. When the construction with have became a true perfect, it was used in such contexts, regardless of the identity of the main verb, leading to the appearance of have with verbs like come which had previously only taken be. Crucially, however, have was not spreading at the expense of be, as the be perfect had never been used in such contexts, but rather at the expense of the old simple past. At least until the end of the Early Modern English period, the shift in the relative frequency of have and be perfects is to be explained in terms of the expansion of the former into new contexts, while the latter remained stable. A formal analysis is proposed, taking as its starting point a comparison with German which shows that the older English be perfect indeed behaves more like the German stative passive than its haben and sein perfects.
This paper presents two experimental studies investigating the processing of presupposed content. Both studies employ the German additive particle auch (too). In the first study, participants were given a questionnaire containing bi-clausal, ambiguous sentences with 'auch' in the second clause. The presupposition introduced by auch was only satisfied on one of the two readings of the sentence, and this reading corresponded to a syntactically dispreferred parse of the sentence. The prospect of having the auch-presupposition satisfied made participants choose this syntactically dispreferred reading more frequently than in a control condition. The second study used the self-paced-reading paradigm and compared the reading times on clauses containing auch, which differed in whether the presupposition of auch was satisfied or not. Participants read the clause more slowly when the presupposition was not satisfied. It is argued that the two studies show that presuppositions play an important role in online sentence comprehension and affect the choice of syntactic analysis. Some theoretical implications of these findings for semantic theory and dynamic accounts of presuppositions as well as for theories of semantic processing are discussed.
Relative quantifier scope in German depends, in contrast to English, very much on word order. The scope possibilities of a quantifier are determined by its surface position, its base position and the type of the quantifier. In this paper we propose a multicomponent analysis for German quantifiers computing the scope of the quantifier, in particular its minimal nuclear scope, depending on the syntactic configuration it occurs in.