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Im folgenden Beitrag werden die Möglichkeiten der Bildung des Progressivs im Aja dargestellt sowie die zur Bildung des Progressivs verwendeten Formen in ihrer Grammatikalisierungskette vorgestellt. Das Aja gehört zu einer Gruppe von Sprachen/Dialekten, die lange Zeit unter dem Begriff "Ewe" zusammengefaßt wurden, in jüngster Zeit aber auch als Gbe(-Kontinuum) bezeichnet werden. Dabei ist "Gbe" ein in allen sprachlichen Einheiten des Kontinuums anzutreffendes Lexem mit der Bedeutung "Sprache".
Current analyses of specificity are unable to provide an explanatory account for why specific and nonspecific uses of indefinites are available. While Abusch (1994), Reinhart (1997), and Kratzer (1998) provide successful mechanisms for deriving specific readings, they do not provide a fundamental explanation for the availability of this mechanism. This is due to the fact that specific indefinites are treated as involving an interpretive component or procedure unique to themselves: storage (Abusch) or choice function (Reinhart and Kratzer), for example. It would be preferable if specific indefinites could be understood as deriving from the use of independently motivated meaning components and interpretive mechanisms.
Here I will pursue the idea, building on Portner & Yabushita (1998), that specificity has to do with the indefinite's interaction with a topical domain (note similarities with the proposals of Enç 1991, Cresti 1995, and Schwarzschild 2000). In this conception, specificity is a matter of degree: the narrower the topical domain, the more specific the indefinite. More precisely, sentences containing specific indefinites will be understood as involving ordinary existential quantification in combination with a topical domain function.
In this paper topic and focus effects at both left and right periphery are argued to be epiphenomena of general properties of tree growth. We incorporate Korean into this account as a prototypical verb-final language, and show how long- and short-distance scrambling form part of this general picture. Multiple long-distance scrambling effects emerge as a consequence of the feeding relationship between different forms of structural under-specification. We also show how the array of effects at the right periphery, in both verb-final and other language-types, can also be explained with the same concepts of tree growth. In particular the Right Roof Constraint, a well-known but little understood constraint, is an immediate consequence of compositionality constraints as articulated in this system.
This talk concerns the copula system in Buli, a Ghanaian language which has also been attested in Bahia (Rodrigues 1935, Zwernemann 1968). Special focus will be put on the categorization of two copula-reminiscent elements for which I will propose a discoursepragmatic analysis.
Research on adverbials in sentence-medial position in the North- Ghanaian Gur language Buli suggests that the language offers two divergent slots for adverbials between subject and verb. Special attention is paid to the group of sentence-medial deictic temporal adverbials. While they have the potential to develop into tense markers, this process seems to depend on special information structural conditions.
Sentence mood in German is a complex category that is determined by various components of the grammatical system. In particular, verbal mood, the position of the finite verb and the wh-characteristics of the so called 'Vorfeld'-phrase are responsible for the constitution of sentence mood in German. This article proposes a theory of sentence mood constitution in German and investigates the interaction between the pronominal binding of indefinite noun phrases which are semantically analyzed as choice functions. It is shown that the semantic objects determined by sentence mood define different kinds of domains which have to be uniquely accessible as the range of the choice function. The various properties of the pronominal binding of indefinites can be derived by the interplay of the proposed theoretical notions.
Although the linear order of arguments (and adverbials) in German is relatively free, it underlies certain restrictions; these don’t apply to the so-called unmarked order for arguments (Lenerz 1977) and adverbials (Frey/Pittner 1998). It is a common assumption to take the unmarked order as basic and derive all other orders from it by scrambling, whatever its specific characteristics may be (cf., amongst others, Haider/Rosengren 1998). The observable restrictions obtaining for some linear ordering may then be considered as constraints on a movement operation (scrambling). [...] In the following, I will try to present the outlines of a possible explanation for the restriction, based on a proposal governing the proper referential interpretation of indefinite NPs.
This paper is about the semantics of wh-phrases. It is argued that wh-phrases should not be analyzed as indefinites as, for example, Karttunen (1977) and many others have done, but as functional expressions with an indefinite core -their function being to restrict possible focus/background structures in direct or congruent answers. This will be argued for on the basis of observations made with respect to the distribution of term answers in well-formed question/answer sequences. This claim having been established, it will be integrated in a categorial variant of Schwarzschild's (1999) information-theoretic approach to F-marking and accent placement, and – second – its consequences with respect to the focus/background structure of wh-questions will be outlined.
On the syntax and pragmatics interface : Left-peripheral, medial and right-peripheral focus in greek
(2004)
The present paper explores the extent to which narrow syntax is responsible for the computation of discourse functions such as focus/topic. More specifically, it challenges the claim that language approximates ‘perfection’ with respect to economy, conceptual necessity and optimality in design by reconsidering the roles and interactions of the different modules of the grammar, in particular of syntax and phonology and the mapping between the two, in the representation of pragmatic notions. Empirical and theoretical considerations strongly indicate that narrow syntax is ‘blind’ to properties and operations involving the interpretive components — that is, PF and LF. As a result, syntax-phonology interface rules do not ‘see’ everything in the levels they connect. In essence, the architecture of grammar proposed here from the perspective of focus marking necessitates the autonomy of the different levels of grammar, presupposing that NS is minimally structured only when liberated from any non-syntactic/discourse implementations, i.e., movement operations to satisfy both interface needs. As a result, the model articulated here totally dispenses with discourse projections, i.e. FocusP.
Low tone spreading in Buli
(2003)
In Buli, tone indicates lexical information as well as grammatical information. The changing of tone patterns regularly observed on lexemes is covered best by an autosegmental approach with autonomous tonal and segmental tiers. It reveals considerable deviations between underlying and surfacing tones at several morpho- yntactic points. Realization of tone is sometimes oppressed or delayed. Cause for such disturbances is in all cases a low tone which spreads to the right and affects following high tones with different results. The aim of this paper is to show how L spreading acts and how it is integrated in the system of tonal contrast.
Ziel dieses Artikels ist es, allgemeine Frage- und Problemstellungen bei der Untersuchung des Phänomens Fokus in ausgewählten Gur- und Kwasprachen vorzustellen, d.h. unsere Forschungsvorhaben kurz zu skizzieren, ohne dass wir bereits auf Ergebnisse eingehen können. Dieser Aufsatz gibt einen Überblick über das Forschungsfeld, damit verbundene Problemstellungen und die von uns anvisierten Aufgaben und Methoden: - Was verstehen wir unter Fokus? - Warum sind die Gur- und Kwasprachen für diese Untersuchung von Relevanz? - Welche Korrelationen lassen sich zwischen Struktur und semantisch/pragmatischen Merkmalen erkennen? - Welche Entwicklung haben Fokusstrukturen genommen? - Welche methodischen Grundlagen liegen unseren Untersuchungen zugrunde?
Welchen Bedingungen unterliegt menschliche Kommunikation? Welche sprachlichen Mittel verwendet ein Sprecher um sicherzustellen, dass sein Zuhörer tatsächlich das versteht, was er kommunizieren möchte? Wie also »verpacken« wir wichtige und weniger wichtige Informationen im alltäglichen Diskurs? Diesen und anderen Fragen geht der SFB 632 »Informationsstruktur«, ein gemeinsames Forschungsunternehmen von Linguisten verschiedener Teildisziplinen der Universität Potsdam und der Humboldt-Universität, nach.