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This paper deals with left and right dislocation in Embɔsi, a Bantu language (C25) spoken in Congo-Brazzaville. The prosody of dislocation has gathered considerable attention, as it is particularly informative for the theories of the syntax-prosody mapping of Intonation Phrases (a.o. Selkirk, 2009, 2011; Downing, 2011). Concentrating on selected Bantu languages, Downing (2011) identifies two main phrasing patterns. She primarily distinguishes languages in which only right dislocated phrases display a lack of prosodic integration ("asymmetric" languages), from languages in which both left and right dislocations phrase separately ("symmetric" languages). Hiatus avoidance processes, boundary tones and register expansion/reduction indicate that Embɔsi displays a somewhat more intricate phrasing pattern. In this language, both left and right dislocated items sit outside of the Intonation Phrase formed by the core-clause, but only the latter form their own Intonation Phrase. We also discuss the prosody of multiple dislocations (i.e. with two dislocated arguments), which have not so far received all the attention they deserve. What we observe in Embɔsi is that either the two dislocated items phrase together and are not integrated to the core Intonation Phrase, or only the outermost dislocated element phrases separately.
Much discussion of the comparative correlative construction exemplified by The more I read, the more I understand has been concerned with how much cross–linguistic variation there is in this area. Culicover and Jackendoff (1999) suggest that there is considerable variation, but Den Dikken (2005) suggests with data from a variety of languages that the variation is quite limited. Modern Standard Arabic has a comparative correlative construction which is quite different from Engish and the other languages that Den Dikken considers, suggesting that there is more variation in this domain than he assumes. However, it is not difficult to provide an analysis of the construction and other related constructions within the HPSG framework.
So-called ''Exhaustive Conditionals'' (ECs, also known as ''Unconditionals'') have been an important focus of recent research. We develop an HPSG analysis of governed ECs (e.g. 'no matter how intelligent the students are ...'), sketch an approach to ungoverned ECs (e.g. 'however intelligent the students are...'), and evaluate three possible analyses of reduced ECs (e.g. 'no matter how intelligent the students ...', 'however intelligent the students...').
Der Aufsatz untersucht das syntaktische Verhalten nicht-satzförmiger Adverbialia im Deutschen und im brasilianischen Portugiesisch in vergleichender Perspektive. Behandelt werden Adverbialia aus sechs Klassen, deren semantische Funktionen von der Sachverhaltsbeschreibung bis zur Beschreibung von Handlungsabsichten des Sprechers reichen. Insgesamt zeigen sich große Ähnlichkeiten zwischen den Vergleichssprachen. Im Deutschen scheint eine etwas stärkere Tendenz zu bestehen, Adverbialia syntaktisch zu integrieren, während es im Portugiesischen mehr Möglichkeiten gibt, sie desintegriert zu verwenden.
It has long been observed that subjects cross-linguistically have topic properties: they are typically definite, referential and/or generic (Givón 1976). Bantu languages are said to illustrate this generalization: preverbal position for NPs is equated with both subject and topic status and postverbal position with focus (and non-subject). However, there is a growing body of work showing that preverbal subjects are not necessarily syntactically or semantically equivalent to topics. For example, Zerbian’s (2006) careful study of preverbal position in Northern Sotho shows that preverbal subjects meet few of the semantic tests for aboutness topics. The study of restrictions on preverbal subjects in Durban Zulu presented in this paper builds on Zerbian (2006) and Halpert (2012). In particular, we investigate the interpretational properties of preverbal indefinite subjects. These subjects show us that preverbal subjects carry a presupposition of existence. We explore an analysis connecting the "strong reading" of preverbal subjects with how high the verb moves in Zulu (following Tsai’s 2001 work on Mandarin).
I argue for a new type of non-standard constituent in German; a modifier-collocational-cluster. This type of cluster combines (i) a modifier and (ii) a PP from a light-verb construction (or a Funktionsverbgefüge (FVG) as they are known in German) or a bare noun. Such strings are found in German in initial (prefield) position in certain cases of apparent multiple fronting. We are dealing with a syntax-semantics mismatch here since the modifier does not semantically modify the element with which it can first syntactically combine. I show that the modifier is a collocate of both its co-prefield element but also of the verb. I propose a schema which lexically licenses the building of such clusters and I show how we can encode information about what I refer to as collocational selection in the lexical entries of the type of lexemes involved in these multi-word strings. The analysis can be seen as lexical but does not require lexical storage of phrasal elements.
The present study is concerned with the complex ways in which alternating relative complementisers in Coptic are employed as a morphological flagging device for unbounded dependencies in various types of relative clause constructions and wh questions. We shall argue in particular that the alternation in shape is locally conditioned by properties of the complement (TAME) and the antecedent noun (definiteness), which can be modelled via selectional features such as COMPS and MOD, plus the prosodic status of right-adjacent material (phrase vs. clitic). We shall show that all applicable conditions carry over from relatives to wh in-situ, suggesting to model the polyfunctionality of these complementisers in terms a systematic alternation between resumptive SLASH and in-situ QUE dependencies, modelled in terms of a lexical rule.
Furthermore, we shall discuss the status of unbounded dependencies and argue that the pervasiveness of resumption with relatives and ex-situ wh arguments can be attributed to the absence of gap-synsem on ARG-ST . We shall argue that apparent subject "gaps" in relative constructions are of a highly local nature, best to be understood in terms of subcategorisation for a finite VP complement. Finally, we shall show that the ban on argument gaps does not carry over to wh ex-situ adjuncts, providing additional motivation for maintaining a systematic distinction between these two types of extraction.
The present paper aims at describing different pre-verbal focus strategies in Kisikongo (H16a), spoken in the vicinity of Mbanza Kongo, northern Angola. This western Bantu language is part of the Kikongo Language Cluster (KLC), stretching from southern Gabon to northern Angola, including Cabinda and parts of Congo-Brazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa. Kikongo exhibits a clause-internal pre-verbal argument focus position, which has rarely been reported in Bantu languages, except in Mbuun (B87) (Bostoen and Mundeke 2012) and Nsong (B85d) (Koni Muluwa and Bostoen, this volume), both spoken in the neighboring Kwilu region of the DRC. The more extensively studied eastern and southern Bantu languages generally have a post-verbal argument focus position (cf. Watters 1979, Morimoto 2000, Creissels 2004, Güldemann 2007, Buell 2009, van der Wal 2009, among others). In addition to this mono-clausal argument focus strategy, Kisikongo also relies on different bi-clausal constructions to focus arguments, i.e. cleft-constructions.
In a most recent corpus study on Persian, Faghiri & Samvelian (2014) found a significant effect of relative length in the ordering preferences between the direct and indirect objects in the preverbal domain corresponding to "long-before-short". They furthermore showed that the position of the direct object mainly depends on its degree of determination, and put into question the broadly accepted dual view based solely on differential object marking. In this paper, we provide experimental evidence in support of these corpus findings and further propose a unified account of ordering preferences between the two objects on the basis of conceptual accessibility.