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In many languages, a passive-like meaning may be obtained through a noncanonical passive construction. The get passive (1b) in English, the se faire passive (2b) in French and the kriegen passive (3b) in German represent typical manifestations. This squib focuses on the behavior of the get-passive in English and discusses a number of restrictions associated with it as well as the status of get.
Die Datenbank wird auf den Ergebnissen der Analyse einschlägiger umfangreicher Korpora des gesprochenen Deutsch basieren. Um jedoch große Korpora analysieren zu können, ist es notwendig, automatische Analyseverfahren der Variation zu entwickeln. Mit traditionellen manuellen Methoden kann der Aufbau einer korpusbasierten Datenbank kaum verwirklicht werden. Dem eigentlichen Variationsprojekt wurde daher eine kleine Pilotstudie vorgeschaltet, die die Möglichkeiten der automatischen Analyse prüfen sollte. Dabei wurde der Frage nachgegangen, ob es möglich ist, regionale Varianten des Deutschen mit Verfahren der automatischen Spracherkennung zu untersuchen, d.h., ob es möglich ist, eine verlässliche Transkription der regionalen Varianten automatisch herzustellen. Diese Pilotstudie zur automatischen Transkription stützte sich auf das im IDS bereits vorhandene System SPRAT (Speech Recognition and Alignment Tool), das zum Alignieren (Text-Ton-Synchronisation) verwendet wird. Im Rahmen der Pilotstudie wurde dieses System modifiziert und in einer Reihe von Tests dessen automatische Transkription evaluiert (vgl. Abschnitt 3). Das Ziel des vorliegenden Beitrags ist es, die Ergebnisse dieser Pilotstudie vorzustellen. Zunächst aber soll ein kurzer Exkurs verdeutlichen, um welches System es sich beim IDS-Aligner SPRAT handelt.
The Deep Linguistic Processing with HPSG Initiative (DELH-IN) provides the infrastructure needed to produce open-source semantic transfer-based machine translation systems. We have made available a prototype Japanese-English machine translation system built from existing resources include parsers, generators, bidirectional grammars and a transfer engine.
Articulatory token-to-token variability not only depends on linguistic aspects like the phoneme inventory of a given language but also on speaker specific morphological and motor constraints. As has been noted previously (Perkell (1997), Mooshammer et al. (2004)) , speakers with coronally high "domeshaped" palates exhibit more articulatory variability than speakers with coronally low "flat" palates. One explanation for that is based on perception oriented control by the speaker. The influence of articulatory variation on the cross sectional area and consequently on the acoustics should be greater for flat palates than for domeshaped ones. This should force speakers with flat palates to place their tongue very precisely whereas speakers with domeshaped palates might tolerate a greater variability. A second explanation could be a greater amount of lateral linguo-palatal contact for flat palates holding the tongue in position. In this study both hypotheses were tested.
The semantics of ellipsis
(2005)
There are four phenomena that are particularly troublesome for theories of ellipsis: the existence of sloppy readings when the relevant pronouns cannot possibly be bound; an ellipsis being resolved in such a way that an ellipsis site in the antecedent is not understood in the way it was there; an ellipsis site drawing material from two or more separate antecedents; and ellipsis with no linguistic antecedent. These cases are accounted for by means of a new theory that involves copying syntactically incomplete antecedent material and an analysis of silent VPs and NPs that makes them into higher order definite descriptions that can be bound into.
Focus expressions in Yom
(2005)
This paper investigates the structural properties of morphosyntactically marked focus constructions, focussing on the often neglected non-focal sentence part in African tone languages. Based on new empirical evidence from five Gur and Kwa languages, we claim that these focus expressions have to be analysed as biclausal constructions even though they do not represent clefts containing restrictive relative clauses. First, we relativize the partly overgeneralized assumptions about structural correspondences between the out-of-focus part and relative clauses, and second, we show that our data do in fact support the hypothesis of a clause coordinating pattern as present in clause sequences in narration. It is argued that we deal with a non-accidental, systematic feature and that grammaticalization may conceal such basic narrative structures.
Accusations are a very frequent type of speech act both in everyday life and in formal controversies, and answering accusations is a sophisticated type of linguistic practice well worth analysing from a pragmatic point of view. In my paper I shall first describe some basic properties of accusations and characteristic types of reactions to accusations, i. e. denying the alleged fact, making excuses, and giving justifications. I then go on to describe some fundamental functions of accusations in controversies. Using the basic patterns of accusations and reactions to accusations as an object of comparison, I then analyse some relevant exchanges from historical controversies (l6th to 18th century), among them famous polemical interactions like the Hobbes-Bramhall controversy, but also less well-known debates from the fields of medicine and theology. The present paper is both a contribution to the theory of controversy and to the pragmatic history of controversies. Keywords: historical pragmatics, theory of controversy, ad hominem moves, dynamics of controversy
This work investigates laryngeal and supralaryngeal correlates of the voicing contrast in alveolar obstruent production in German. It further studies laryngealoral co-ordination observed for such productions. Three different positions of the obstruents are taken into account: the stressed, syllable initial position, the post-stressed intervocalic position, and the post-stressed word final position. For the latter the phonological rule of final devoicing applies in German. The different positions are chosen in order to study the following hypotheses:
1. The presence/absence of glottal opening is not a consistent correlate of the voicing contrast in German.
2. Supralaryngeal correlates are also involved in the contrast.
3. Supralaryngeal correlates can compensate for the lack of distinction in laryngeal adjustment.
Including the word final position is motivated by the question whether neutralization in word final position would be complete or whether some articulatory residue of the contrast can be found.
Two experiments are carried out. The first experiment investigates glottal abduction in co-ordination with tongue-palate contact patterns by means of simultaneous recordings of transillumination, fiberoptic films and Electropalatography (EPG). The second experiment focuses on supralaryngeal correlates of alveolar stops studied by means of Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) simultaneously with EPG. Three German native speakers participated in both recordings. Results of this study provide evidence that the first hypothesis holds true for alveolar stops when different positions are taken into account. In fricative production it is also confirmed since voiceless and voiced fricatives are most of the time realised with glottal abduction. Additionally, supralaryngeal correlates are involved in the voicing contrast under two perspectives. First, laryngeal and supralaryngeal movements are well synchronised in voiceless obstruent production, particularly in the stressed position. Second, supralaryngeal correlates occur especially in the post-stressed intervocalic position. Results are discussed with respect to the phonetics-phonology interface, to the role of timing and its possible control, to the interarticulatory co-ordination, and to stress as 'localised hyperarticulation'.
Der Aufsatz diskutiert grammatische Aspekte von authentischen Sprachgebrauchsstrukturen in einem komplexen Kontakt- und Integrationsraum von mehreren Sprachen und Kulturen. Als empirisches Illustrationsmaterial dient ein umfangreiches kontaktlinguistisches Feldforschungsprojekt im ungarndeutschen Ort Hajosch/Hajós (Komitat Batsch-Kleinkumanien / Bács-Kiskun). Anhand von dort ermittelten Sprechprodukten zwei- bzw. mehrsprachiger Sprecher werden vielgestaltige sprachlich-kommunikative Kontakt-, Konvergenz- und Interaktionsphänomene grammatischer Natur identifiziert. Ihre Analyse ergab, dass die exemplarisch untersuchte Diskursgemeinschaft beim Umgang mit morphosyntaktischen Phänomenen zahlreiche und vor allem mannigfaltige Formen von Hybridität hervorbringt. Die erschlossenen Phänomenklassen und -typen scheinen für transkulturelle Zusammenhänge generell verallgemeinerbar zu sein.
Die moderne Gesellschaft ist von Veränderungen epistemischer und institutioneller Strukturmerkmale der Wissenschaft geprägt, die ihrerseits einen Wandel in anderen Bereichen der Gesellschaft auslösen. In diesem Zusammenhang – wie auch in der neuzeitlichen Wissenschaftsentwicklung überhaupt – kommt der Sprachlichkeit, dem Kulturphänomen "Wissenschaftssprache", eine eminente Rolle zu, etablierte sich doch in den letzten Jahrzehnten eine „linguistische Teildisziplin der Wissenschaftssprachforschung“ (vgl. KRETZENBACHER 1992: 1; HESS-LÜTTICH 1998). "Wissenschaft" scheint mir jedoch ein (interkultureller) Problembegriff zu sein, beispielsweise auch schon deswegen, da dieses Wort (samt seinen Ableitungen wie Wissenschaftler, wissenschaftlich, Wissenschaftlichkeit) stark kulturbedingt ist (vgl. CLYNE/KREUTZ 2003: 60); so korreliert etwa der deutsche Terminus Wissenschaft nicht mit dem englischen science etc. Das Englische kann zweifellos auf eine konkurrenzlose Karriere als wissenschaftliche Universalsprache zurückblicken: Wissenschaftler – auch deutschsprachige – bedienen sich bei der Veröffentlichung wichtiger Forschungsergebnisse zunehmend der englischen Sprache. Der Anteil der wissenschaftlichen Publikationen auf Englisch beträgt heute weltweit über 90 Prozent, während nur noch wenige Prozent des wissenschaftlichen Publikationsaufkommens deutschsprachig sind. Auch die Zahl der wissenschaftlichen Tagungen (selbst im deutschen Sprach- und Kulturraum), die ausschließlich Englisch als Konferenzsprache zulassen, nimmt stetig zu. Außerdem werden immer mehr Vorlesungen bzw. ganze Studiengänge an sonst deutschsprachigen Universitäten in Englisch angeboten. „Die Spitzenforschung spricht englisch“ – stellte der spätere Präsident der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Hubert Markl, bereits vor zwanzig Jahren lapidar fest (Quelle: DUZ, 22/2002, S. 12). Gleichwohl wird immer wieder – oft etwas euphorisch – auf Ostmittel-, Ost- und Südosteuropa verwiesen, die traditionell als ein Refugium des Deutschen u.a. auch als Wissenschaftssprache galten bzw. auf weiten Strecken nach wie vor gelten. So kann exemplarisch die „Physikalische Zeitschrift der Sowjetunion“ erwähnt werden, die von 1932 bis 1937 auf Deutsch erschien. In diesem interessanten und zugleich äußerst komplexen Spannungsfeld soll es sich im vorliegenden Beitrag um das Thema ‘Sprachen in den Wissenschaften’ als Denk- und Darstellungsmedia handeln. Dabei soll zum einen die Problematik der Mehrsprachigkeit der Wissenschaften (mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Deutschen) im mehrsprachigen, multikulturellen und kultursensiblen Kontaktraum Mittel- und Osteuropa angesprochen werden, zum anderen – weil ja auf unserer Tagung auch andere Teilareale, wie z.B. Rumänien, vertreten sind – soll der besondere Schwerpunkt auf Ungarn liegen. Hauptziel der Erörterungen besteht darin, die Entwicklung der in dieser Region wirksamen Wissenschaftssprachen diachron herauszuarbeiten, den derzeitigen Stand für die Bereiche Sprachen in der akademischen Lehre, Forschungssprachen (d.h. Sprachen der Forschungskommunikation) und Publikationssprachen – auch mit Hilfe empirischer Daten – mehrperspektivisch zu dokumentieren und aktuelle Tendenzen reflektorisch aufzuzeigen.
Der Beitrag geht davon aus, dass Phraseologismen zum einen als prototypische Verkörperung des ,,kulturellen Gedächtnisses" einer Diskursgemeinschaft, zum anderen als ein universelles, jeder Sprachkultur immanentes Kulturphänomen angesehen werden können. In diesem Zusammenhang setzt er sieh zum Ziel, das Spannungsfeld der Verflochtenheit von ,Kultur" und "Sprache" mit ihren Ausprägungen und Konsequenzen am Material der Phraseologie im Hinblick auf das Deutsche und das Ungarische analytisch herauszuarbeiten und mehrperspektivisch zu hinterfragen. Denn die - im Titel der Tagung hervorgehobene - Kulturgeschichte und die Phraseologie stellen eine äußerst facettenreiche Thematik dar, die eine Reihe kulturphilosophischer, kultursemiotischer, interkultureller, kognitiv-linguistischer u. a. Fragen aufwirft und sowohl einen synchronen als auch einen diachronen Betrachtungsrahmen effordert. Der vorliegende Aufsatz kann sich jedoch auf lediglich einige aktuelle theoretische, methodologische und empirische Aspekte konzentrieren und möchte in disziplinärer Hinsicht kontrastiv und kontaktlinguistisch - dabei methodologisch phänomen- bzw. belegorientiert und problernbezogen - vorgehen.
Son yıllarda Avrupa’daki toplumsal ve siyasal gelişmeler her alanda olduğu gibi eğitim alanında da köklü değişimleri beraberinde getirmiştir. Avrupa Birliğindeki bu gelişmeler, aynı zamanda birden çok yabancı dil öğrenme gereksiniminin artmasına da yol açmıştır. Böylece, yabancı dil öğretimi ve izlenecek yabancı dil politikası gittikçe önem kazanmaya başlamıştır. Bu bağlamda Avrupa Konseyi, yabancı dil öğretiminin daha etkin ve verimli olmasını sağlayacak yeni düzenlemeler yapmayı öncelikli görevleri arasına almıştır. Avrupa Birliği ülkelerinde dil ve kültür çeşitliliği korunması ve geliştirilmesi gereken bir zenginlik olarak değerlendirilmektedir. Bu düşünceye uygun olarak tüm Avrupa Birliği ülkelerinde “Avrupa Konseyi Yabancı Diller Eğitimi Ortak Kriterleri” çerçevesinde yabancı dil eğitim-öğretim izlencelerinin oluşturulmasına, ders araç-gereçleri geliştirilmesine, aynı zamanda bireylerin yabancı dil düzeylerinin saptanması ve belgelendirilmesinde ortak ölçütlerin belirlenmesine ve böylece bireylerde yaşam boyu yabancı dil öğrenme bilinci oluşturmaya çalışılmaktadır. Ne var ki, bu durum Avrupa Birliğine aday ülkeler arasında yer alan ülkemiz için geçerli değildir. Oysa, Avrupa Birliğine tam üyelik sürecinde değişen koşullarına uygun olarak yabancı dil eğitim politikamızın yeniden gözden geçirilmesi ve “Avrupa Konseyi Yabancı Diller Ortak Kriterleri”ne uygun izlencelerin geliştirilmesi kaçınılmaz görünmektedir. Bu bağlamda, ülkemizde yabancı dil olarak tek bir dilin egemenliğine dayalı yabancı dil öğretimi yerine, öğretim programlarında farklı dil seçeneklerine yer verilerek, her yaş grubuna ve toplumun her kesimine uygun programlarla yabancı dil öğretimi yaygınlaştırılmalı ve buna uygun yabancı dil politikaları geliştirilmelidir.
Seit der zweiten Hälfte des letzten Jahrhunderts zieht die Übersetzung im Fremdsprachenunterricht (FSU) das Interesse der Fremdsprachendidaktiker auf sich. In den anhaltenden Diskussionen über den Stellenwert der Übersetzung im FSU bestehen aber immer noch verschiedene Meinungen. Die Meinungsverschiedenheiten beruhen vor allem auf diversen miteinander konkurrierenden Lerntheorien und damit auch auf unterschiedlichen methodischen Prinzipien. Im Zusammenhang mit den herrschenden didaktischen Richtungen und mit den unterschiedlichen Lernzielen, die im Fremdsprachenunterricht verfolgt werden können, wird auch die Übersetzung unter mehreren Gesichtspunkten betrachtet und bewertet. Hinsichtlich der Funktion der Übersetzung ist es inzwischen üblich geworden, zwischen zwei Verwendungsweisen zu unterscheiden: Einerseits wird die Übersetzung als ein methodisches Mittel zur Festigung, Erweiterung und Prüfung sprachlicher Fertigkeiten angewendet, andererseits ist sie als eine eigene Fertigkeit selbst ein Übungs- und Unterrichtsziel.
The present study shows that though retroflex segments can be considered articulatorily marked, there are perceptual reasons why languages introduce this class into their phoneme inventory. This observation is illustrated with the diachronic developments of retroflexes in Norwegian (North- Germanic), Nyawaygi (Australian) and Minto-Nenana (Athapaskan). The developments in these three languages are modelled in a perceptually oriented phonological theory, since traditional articulatorily-based features cannot deal with such processes.
This paper addresses remarks made by Flemming (2003) to the effect that his analysis of the interaction between retroflexion and vowel backness is superior to that of Hamann (2003b). While Hamann maintained that retroflex articulations are always back, Flemming adduces phonological as well as phonetic evidence to prove that retroflex consonants can be non-back and even front (i.e. palatalised). The present paper, however, shows that the phonetic evidence fails under closer scrutiny. A closer consideration of the phonological evidence shows, by making a principled distinction between articulatory and perceptual drives, that a reanalysis of Flemming’s data in terms of unviolated retroflex backness is not only possible but also simpler with respect to the number of language-specific stipulations.
Dutch has a three-way contrast in labiodental sounds, which causes problems for native speakers of German in their acquisition of Dutch, since German contrasts only two labiodentals. The present study investigates the perception of the Dutch labiodental fricative system by German L2 learners of Dutch and shows that native Germans with no or little knowledge of the Dutch language categorize the Dutch labiodental voiced fricative and approximant as their native voiced fricative. Advanced learners, however, succeed in acquiring a category for the voiced fricative, illustrating that plasticity in the perception of a second language develops with the amount of exposure to the language.
Protected Mode
(2005)
Innerhalb der Reihe "GrenzBereiche des Lesens" gehaltener Vortrag. "GrenzBereiche des Lesens" ist eine kulturwissenschaftliche Vortragsreihe, die 2003 und 2004 an der Universität Frankfurt stattfand. Gegenstand von Harald Hillgärtners Untersuchung ist die Frage nach der Lesbarkeit des Computers, vielmehr seiner System- und Programmcodes. Gilt der Computer einerseits als "Textmaschine", die endlose Schreib- und Leseakte prozessiert, so finden jene Programmabläufe doch zumeist jenseits der für alle zugänglichen Benutzeroberflächen statt, die ihrerseits in immer stärkerem Maß mit Icons – Bildern – arbeiten. Und selbst im Falle von frei zugänglichen Software-Codes ist zu fragen, um welche Art Text es sich hier handelt – ob in diesen Fällen gar von Literatur die Rede sein kann. Insofern ist die Frage nach der Lesbarkeit des Computers nicht nur eine Frage nach der Zukunft des Lesens (geht es um Sinn oder um Information?) sondern vielmehr nach dem (Zu-)Stand unserer Schriftkultur selbst.
This paper profiles significant differences in syntactic distribution and differences in word class frequencies for two treebanks of spoken and written German: the TüBa-D/S, a treebank of transliterated spontaneous dialogs, and the TüBa-D/Z treebank of newspaper articles published in the German daily newspaper ´die tageszeitung´(taz). The approach can be used more generally as a means of distinguishing and classifying language corpora of different genres.
Diskurspragmatische Faktoren für Topikalität und Verbstellung in der ahd. Tatianübersetzung (9. Jh.)
(2005)
The paper presents work in progress on the interaction between information structure and word order in Old High German based on data from the Tatian translation (9th century). The examination of the position of the finite verb in correspondence with the pragmatic status of discourse referents reveals an overall tendency for verb-initial order in thetic/all-focus sentences, whereas in categorical / topic-comment sentences verb-second placement with an initial topic constituent is preferred. This conclusion provides support for the hypothesis stated in Donhauser & Hinterhölzl (2003) that the finite verb form in Early Germanic serves to distinguish the information-structural domains of Topic and Focus. Finally, the investigation sheds light on the process of language change that led to the overall spread of verb-second in main clauses of modern German.
Face-to-face communication is multimodal. In unscripted spoken discourse we can observe the interaction of several “semiotic layers”, modalities of information such as syntax, discourse structure, gesture, and intonation. We explore the role of gesture and intonation in structuring and aligning information in spoken discourse through a study of the co-occurrence of pitch accents and gestural apices. Metaphorical spatialization through gesture also plays a role in conveying the contextual relationships between the speaker, the government and other external forces in a naturally-occurring political speech setting.
Multicomponent Tree Adjoining Grammars (MCTAG) is a formalism that has been shown to be useful for many natural language applications. The definition of MCTAG however is problematic since it refers to the process of the derivation itself: a simultaneity constraint must be respected concerning the way the members of the elementary tree sets are added. Looking only at the result of a derivation (i.e., the derived tree and the derivation tree), this simultaneity is no longer visible and therefore cannot be checked. I.e., this way of characterizing MCTAG does not allow to abstract away from the concrete order of derivation. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an alternative definition of MCTAG that characterizes the trees in the tree language of an MCTAG via the properties of the derivation trees the MCTAG licences.
In order to investigate the empirical properties of focus, it is necessary to diagnose focus (or: “what is focused”) in particular linguistic examples. It is often taken for granted that the application of one single diagnostic tool, the so-called question-answer test, which roughly says that whatever a question asks for is focused in the answer, is a fool-proof test for focus. This paper investigates one example class where such uncritical belief in the question-answer test has led to the assumption of rather complex focus projection rules: in these examples, pitch accent placement has been claimed to depend on certain parts of the focused constituents being given or not. It is demonstrated that such focus projection rules are unnecessarily complex and in turn require the assumption of unnecessarily complicated meaning rules, not to speak of the difficulties to give a precise semantic/pragmatic definition of the allegedly involved givenness property. For the sake of the argument, an alternative analysis is put forward which relies solely on alternative sets following Mats Rooth´s work, and avoids any recourse to givenness. As it turns out, this alternative analysis is not only simpler but also makes in a critical case the better predictions.
A correct evaluation of the Slavic evidence for the reconstruction of the Indo- European proto-language requires an extensive knowledge of a considerable body of data. While the segmental features of the Slavic material are generally of corroborative value only, the prosodic evidence is crucial for the reconstruction of PIE. phonology. Due to the complicated nature of Slavic historical accentology, this has come to be realized quite recently.1 As a result, much of the earlier literature has become obsolete to the extent that it is based upon an interpretation which does not take the multifarious accentual developments into account. I shall give one example.
The history of Slavic accentuation is complex. As a result, the significance of the Slavic accentual evidence is not immediately obvious to the average Indo-Europeanist. In this contribution I intend to render the material more easily accessible to the non-specialist. I shall focus on the Serbo-Croatian dialectal area, where the Proto-Slavic accentual system is better preserved than elsewhere. The main point of reference will be the neo-Štokavian system which was codified in the 19th century as a basis for the standard languages.
Holger Pedersen’s "Études lituaniennes" reflects the issues under discussion at the time of its publication (1933). Its five unequal chapters deal with the following topics: I. The Lithuanian future and its Indo-European origins: the sigmatic formation, the 3rd person zero ending, the short root vowels e and a, the shortening and metatony in the 3rd person, and the future participle. II. The accentuation of nouns in Lithuanian: accentual mobility in the Indo- European consonant stems and its absence in the o-stems, the origins of accentual mobility in Lithuanian nominal paradigms, the accentuation of separate case forms, and accentual peculiarities of the adjective. III. The acute tone of the root in consonant stems. IV. The past active participle. V. Secondary vocalic alternations: new vowel length and new acute tone.
The highly successful conference on Balto-Slavic accentology organized by Mate Kapovic and Ranko Matasovic has given much food for thought. It has clarified the extent of fundamental disagreements as well as established areas of common interest where the evidence seems to be ambiguous. In the following I shall comment upon some of the papers presented at the conference which are directly relevant to my own research.
Hittite ammuk 'me'
(2005)
In the Indo-European department of Leiden University, Alwin Kloekhorst has initiated a discussion on Hittite ammuk ‘me’. The central question is: where did the geminate come from? This has led me to reconsider the origin of the Indo-European personal pronouns against the background of my reconstruction of Indo-Uralic (2002: 221-225). For the historical data I may refer to Schmidt (1978).
Erdvilas Jakulis’ thorough, detailed and comprehensive study (2004) is an important contribution to our reconstruction of the Balto-Slavic verbal system. The following remarks are intended to complement his findings from a Slavic perspective. Jakulis demonstrates that the type of Lith. tekèti, teka ‘flow’ is largely of East Baltic provenance. He finds it difficult to identify the same type in Old Prussian.
It is gratifying to see that Jay Jasanoff has now (2004) adopted my theory that "the Balto-Slavic acute was a kind of stød or broken tone" (p. 172), which I have been advocating since 1973. Unfortunately, his acceptance of my view is not based on an evaluation of the comparative evidence (for which see Kortlandt 1985a) but on his desire to derive Balto-Slavic “acute” and "circumflex" syllables from the "bimoric" and "trimoric" long vowels which he assumes for Proto-Germanic as the reflexes of the Indo-European "acute" and "circumflex" tones of the neogrammarians. Since the original "circumflex" was limited to Indo-European VHV-sequences, Jasanoff proposes a whole series of additional lengthenings yielding "hyperlong" vowels in Germanic, Baltic and Slavic, which still do not suffice to eliminate the counter-evidence (cf. Kortlandt 2004b: 14). The reason for this failure is his unwillingness to recognize that lengthened grade vowels are circumflex in Balto-Slavic (cf. Kortlandt 1997a).
In the last decade, the Penn treebank has become the standard data set for evaluating parsers. The fact that most parsers are solely evaluated on this specific data set leaves the question unanswered how much these results depend on the annotation scheme of the treebank. In this paper, we will investigate the influence which different decisions in the annotation schemes of treebanks have on parsing. The investigation uses the comparison of similar treebanks of German, NEGRA and TüBa-D/Z, which are subsequently modified to allow a comparison of the differences. The results show that deleted unary nodes and a flat phrase structure have a negative influence on parsing quality while a flat clause structure has a positive influence.
A survey of 170 Tibeto-Burman languages showed 69 with a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns, 18 of which also show inclusive- exclusive in Idual. Only the Kiranti languages and some Chin languages have inclusive-exclusive in the person marking. Of the forms of the pronouns involved in the inclusive-exclusive opposition, usually the exclusive form is less marked and historically prior to the inclusive form, and we find the distinction cannot be reconstructed to Proto-Tibeto-Burman or to mid level groupings. Qnly the Kiranti group has marking of the distinction that can be reconstructed to the proto level, and this is also reflected in the person-marking system.
Typology and complexity
(2005)
For the Workshop I was asked to talk about complexity in language from a typological perspective. My way of approaching this topic was to ask myself some questions, and then see where the answers led. The first one was of course, "What sort of system are we looking at complexity in - what kind of system is language?"
Chao Yuen Ren (1892–1982)
(2005)
Y. R. Chao is easily the most famous linguist to have come out of China. Born before the end of the last dynasty in China, he received a traditional Confucian education, but was also one of the first Chinese people to be sent to the West for training in modern Western science (under the Boxer Indemnity Fund). The remarkable breadth and scope of his studies included physics, mathematics, linguistics, musical and literary composition, and translation, and he was a pioneer in many of these fields.
Heterogeneity and standardization in data, use, and annotation : a diachronic corpus of German
(2005)
This paper describes the standardization problems that come up in a diachronic corpus: it has to cope with differing standards with regard to diplomaticity, annotation, and header information. Such highly heterogeneous texts must be standardized to allow for comparative research without (too much) loss of information.
The study offers a discourse-based account of the Spanish copula forms ser and estar, which are generally considered to be lexical exponents of the stage-level/individual-level contrast. It argues against the popular view that the distinction between SLPs and ILPs rests on a fundamental cognitive division of the world that is reflected in the grammar. As it happens, conceptual oppositions like “temporary vs. permanent” or “arbitrary vs. essential“ provide only a preference for the interpretation of estar and ser. In addition, the evidence for an SLP/ILP impact on the grammar turns out to be far less conclusive than is currently assumed. The study argues against event-based accounts of the ser/estar contrast in particular, showing that ser and estar pattern alike in failing all of the standard eventuality tests. The discourse-based account proposed instead assumes that ser and estar both display the same lexical semantics (which is identical to the semantics of English be, German sein, etc.); estar differs from ser only in presupposing a relation to a specific discourse situation. By using estar a speaker restricts his or her claim to a specific discourse situation, whereas by using ser, the speaker makes no such restriction. The preference for interpreting estar predications as denoting temporary properties and ser predications as denoting permanent properties follows from economy principles driving the pragmatic legitimation of estars discourse dependence. The analysis proposed in this paper can also account for the observation that ser predications do not give rise to thetic judgements. The proposal is couched in terms of the framework of DRT.
Das Zustandspassiv : grammatische Einordnung – Bildungsbeschränkungen – Interpretationsspielraum
(2005)
“Comments are very welcome!” This basic attitude and the many ways of implementing it contribute immensely to the fascination of engaging in scientific research. I am grateful to Theoretical Linguistics for providing a public platform for this kind of scholarly exchange and I thank all commentators for their thoughtful, stimulating, and often challenging contributions to my target article. My response will address two main issues that are raised by the commentaries. The first issue is shaped by a cluster of questions relating to ontology. The second issue concerns questions of methodology pertaining in particular to the problem of judging data.
Since Donald Davidson’s seminal work “The Logical Form of Action Sentences” (1967) event arguments have become an integral component of virtually every semantic theory. Over the past years Davidson´s proposal has been continuously extended such that nowadays event(uality) arguments are generally associated not only with action verbs but with predicates of all sorts. The reasons for such an extension are seldom explicitly justified. Most problematical in this respect is the case of stative expressions. By taking a closer look at copula sentences the present study assesses the legitimacy of stretching the Davidsonian notion of events and discusses its consequences. A careful application of some standard eventuality diagnostics (perception reports, combination with locative modifiers and manner adverbials) as well as some new diagnostics (behavior of certain degree adverbials) reveals that copular expressions do not behave as expected under a Davidsonian perspective: they fail all eventuality tests, regardless of whether they represent stage-level or individual-level predicates. In this respect, copular expressions pattern with stative verbs like know, hate, and resemble, which in turn differ sharply from state verbs like stand, sit, and sleep. The latter pass all of the eventuality tests and therefore qualify as true “Davidsonian state” expressions. On the basis of these empirical observations and taking up ideas of Kim (1969, 1976) and Asher (1993, 2000), an alternative account of copular expressions (and stative verbs) is provided, according to which the copula introduces a referential argument for a temporally bound property exemplification (= “Kimian state”). Considerations on some logical properties, viz. closure conditions and the latent infinite regress of eventualities, suggest that supplementing Davidsonian eventualities with Kimian states may yield not only a more adequate analysis of copula sentences but also a better understanding of eventualities in general.
Dictionaries contain lexicographic data whose occurrence is restricted to certain geo-graphical areas, subject fields, professions, etc. It is part of the duties of the lexicographer to give an account of such deviations to ensure a successful retrieval of the information on the part of the user. This contribution presents a discussion on labelling issues in the Dictionnaire Français–Mpongwé. Although the main focus is on the presentation of different types of labelling as well as problems in labelling, textual condensation procedures and mediostructural representations (to-gether with some aspects of the user perspective) are also critically evaluated. It is shown that these procedures reveal some inconsistencies which are not accounted for in the outer texts (front matter and back matter texts) of the dictionary. Finally suggestions are made for the improvement of the access structure of this dictionary.
Wie formt sich die Sprache im Kopf? : Kognitive Linguistik: Sprache, Grammatik und die Wissenswelten
(2005)
Fronting of an infinite VP across a finite main verb - akin to German "VP-topicalization" - can be found also in Czech and Polish. The paper discusses evidence from large corpora for this process and some of its properties, both syntactic and information-structural. Based on this case, criteria for more user-friedly searching and retrieval of corpus data in syntactic research are being developed.
In this paper I will discuss the formation of different types of yes/no questions in Serbian (examples in (1)), focusing on the syntactically and semantically puzzling example (1d), which involves the negative auxiliary inversion. Although there is a negative marker on the fronted auxiliary, the construction does not involve sentential negation. This coincides with the fact that the negative quantifying NPIs cannot be licensed. The question formation and sentential negation have similar syntactic effects cross-linguistically. This has led to various attempts to formulate a unifying syntactic account of the phenomena (ever since Klima 1964). One striking fact about the two syntactic contexts is that both license weak NPIs (Negative Polarity Items). It has been suggested (cf. Laka 1990, Culicover 1991) that the derivation of both interrogatives and negatives involves the same type of functional projection PolP (polarity phrase). One such account of the formation of negative interrogatives in Serbo- Croatian is offered by Progovac (2005). She proposes that there are two PolPs optionally cooccurring in the same clause, in which both positive and negative polarity items check their positive or negative features (following Haegeman and Zanuttini (1991) feature-checking account of negative structures, and the insights of Brown(1999) on the negation in Russian). On her account, the negative auxiliary question in (1d), is the case when both polarity phrases are present. The higher has [-pos +neg] features, and the lower one (below TP) is [-pos -neg]. Although her account correctly predicts the ungrammaticality of (2a) in contrast with (1c), it wrongly predicts the (2b) to be grammatical. I will argue that Progovac’s theory regarding the nature of the PolP is wrong. It employs both the binary feature valuation on the polarity head and the hierarchical ordering of the two polarity phrases, which eventually leads to overgeneration. On the account presented here the nature of the question marker (li vs zar) is highly relevant. Notice that (1b) and (1d) express presuppositions regarding the truth value of the propositions. In this way they contrast with (1a) and (1c). In addition, the type (1b) (with the question particle zar) can introduce both the positive and negative presupposition as shown in (3), which, semantically, makes this construction compatible with negative auxiliary questions in English (4a). The polarity items licensed in the relevant structures are also of the same type in both languages. The fronted-negative-auxiliary questions (1d) in Serbian are only possible with the particle li. In this case the presupposition is exclusively positive. The peculiar question/focus marking function of li (in Bulgarian and Russian) is well known. However, it is always assumed that its focus marking role is not relevant for the formation of yes/no questions. This I believe is not correct. The syntactic explanation of the interpretational facts points to the following: A) The possibility of the separate lexical encoding (particle zar) of the ‘rhetorical’ yes/no questions in Serbian allows the embedding of both positive and negated sentences, in which case the (weak) NPIs can remain in local relation with the negated verb. B) Recall that Serbian is an NC language, which requires local/c-command relation between the verbal negative marker and the NPI. With the negative inverted auxiliary questions this condition is not met, and the licensing of an n-word is not possible. C) The impossibility of licensing a weak NPI (i-words in the examples below) is due to the nature of the question marker li. (1) a. Da li je Vera videla ikoga / nekoga / *nikoga? DA Q aux Vera see.part.F.Sg anyone someone noone “Did Vera see anyone/someone/noone?” b. Zar je Vera videla ikoga / nekoga / *nikoga? ZAR aux Vera see.part.F.Sg anyone someone noone “Is it really the fact that Vera saw anyone/someone?” c. Je li Vera videla ikoga / nekoga /*nikoga? aux Q Vera see.part.F.Sg anyone someone noone “Did Vera see anyone/someone/noone?” d. Nije li Vera videla *ikoga / nekoga / *nikoga? neg+aux Q Vera see.part.F.Sg anyone someone noone “Didn’t Vera see someone?”/ “Vera saw someone, didn’t she?” (2) a. *Nije li Vera videla nikoga? neg+aux Q Vera see.part.F.Sg noone b. *Nije li Vera videla ikoga? neg+aux Q Vera see.part.F.Sg anyone (3) a. Zar je Vera videla nekoga / ikoga? ZAR aux Vera see.part.F.Sg someone/anyone b. Zar Vera nije videla nekoga/nikoga? ZAR Vera neg+aux see.part.F.Sg someone/anyone (4) a. Didn’t Vera (NOT) see someone/anyone? b. Vera saw someone, didn’t she?