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This work deals with so-called wh-determination. The notion of D-linking (Discourse-linking) is used to uncover and explain properties of constructions involving wh-determiners. The central claim is that there are two types of wh-determination: Token-whs and Kind-whs. These two forms of wh-determination trigger different syntactic effects. Three structural triggers for the syntactic effects exhibited by D-linked wh-phrases (DWH) are discussed. DWH are argued to be instances of Token-whs since triggers for the syntactic effects of D-linking are identical to the once for the token-reading of a wh-phrase.
In chapter 2, which-phrases are shown to be canonical DWH with a special syntax labelled DL-S(yntax). The five most prominent and frequent DL-S effects are the absence of superiority-effects with DWH, the ability of DWH to be extracted out of weak islands, the fact that DWH licence resumptive elements, the obviation of WCO effects by DWH, and the possibility for DWH to stay in-situ. The syntax of Token-whs and Kind-whs are compared. It is demonstrated that regardless of the actual form of the wh-determiner, there are only these two types of wh-determination. These data support the idea that the DL-S effects observable with DWH are triggered by structural properties of the wh-determiners heading DWH.
In chapter 3, it is demonstrated that although presuppositions projected by the Nominal Restrictor are important for triggering DL-I(nterpretation), they do not directly influence DL-S. The ambiguity of Amount-whs is also examined and the conclusion reached is that there are two #P projections: A NumP and a CardP. The dissertation proceeds with the structurally represented notions of definiteness and specificity and examines how these can help capturing the wh-determiner typology proposed. The idea that D-linking can be explained by recourse to topicality is discussed in detail. Empirical evidence is provided for the existence of wh-topics in general and for the claim that many DWH can be construed as wh-topics.
In chapter 4, the general pattern on which wh-pronouns are built are examined, and it is argued that the results bear directly on the topic of this thesis since wh-determiners are universally derived from pronouns. Wh-pronouns are diachronically built out of an element indicating the function of the proform (wh-morpheme), and an element denoting the range of the proform (Range Restrictor). Among other things, it is argued that the wh-morpheme does not mark interrogativity, leading to the adoption of a version of Q-theory. It is also briefly discussed whether the results are compatible with the hypothesis that wh-determiner phrases are Small Clauses. One claim is that all wh-pronouns are fossilized interrogative sentences, lending further support to the parallelism between sentential and nominal structures. It is then argued that Morphological Restrictors can be subdivided into Formal Features and Functional Nouns (and that elements which can become Functional Nouns are taken from the pool of Basic Ontological Categories). The question answered is how these elements synchronically contribute to the meaning of the wh-determiners. After examining the role of the Nominal Restrictor to the syntax of wh-determiners, the thesis continues investigating how Nominal Restrictor are related to Functional Nouns. Finally, the discussion expands to the structural correlates for DL-S effects. It is demonstrated how the results can formally be applied to wh-split constructions in order to explain differences between empty categories. Then, the results of the section on partitivity support the idea that the occurrences of most of the DL-S effects seem to strongly depend on the presence of a second nominal constituent in the structure of wh-phrases. This second nominal can be either a Functional Noun inside the wh-item used as wh-pronoun or an overt second noun as in wh-partitive phrases.
The contribution of this thesis to linguistic theorizing is not a full-fledged technical analysis of every single DL-S effect, but rather the systemisation proposed. Although a lot of terminology is introduced, the outcome of this proliferation of terms is a sharper picture of the intricate relations between the constituents of the wh-items used as wh-determiners and the Nominal Restrictor. Another main conclusion is that the concept of D-linking is not a basic notion. It is comprised of four components (of which DL-Syntax and Morphological-DL have been scrutinized in this thesis). This assumption explains why DWH do not constitute a homogeneous class. The gradual character of D-linking (i.e. the fact that certain wh-determiner constructions show only a subset of DL-S effects even if they are headed by what could faithfully be classified as a/the Token-wh determiner of the respective language) is argued to be related to the fact that the Token-reading itself can have several triggers.
Nominal modification in language production: Extraposition of prepositional phrases in german
(2019)
In my dissertation, I investigate the phenomenon of extraposition of PP out of NP in German in language production. Four production experiments, using the method of production of memory, and three experiments testing the acceptability of extraposition were conducted. In extraposition, a constituent is realized in a position to the right of what would be considered the canonical position. A special case is extraposition out of a nominal phrase (NP), in which a constituent is moved out of NP to the end of the utterance. The example in (1a) illustrates the canonical version, in which a prepositional phrase (PP) is adjacent to its head noun. In (1b) the PP is extraposed out of NP to the right edge of the sentence.
(1) a. Gestern hat eine Frau mit einer lauten, schrillen Stimme angerufen.
b. Gestern hat eine Frau angerufen mit einer lauten, schrillen Stimme.
There are two main aspects to consider: the length of the extraposed constituent (the PP), and the length of the intervening material. Experiment 1 investigated the influence of constituent length on extraposition. The hypothesis is that longer and more complex constituents are harder to produce and are therefore produced towards the end of the utterance. In the experiment, PPs of three different lengths (2-3, 5-6, 9-11 words) had to be reproduced in either adjacent or extraposed position. As to the length of the intervening material, the hypothesis is that sentences with more intervening material between head noun and extraposed PP will tend to be reproduced with the PP in adjacent position to the head noun. In order to test this hypothesis, the length of the intervening material (1, 2 and 4 words) was manipulated in Experiment 2. The same material was used in an acceptability experiment, using the method of magnitude estimation (Experiment 5).
Previous studies found that extraposition is preferred over verbal material only, thus Experiment 3 investigated the influence of different lengths of purely verbal intervening material. Experiment 4 was concerned with the differences between PP and RC extraposition in production.
Experiment 6 and 7 used Likert scales to assess the acceptability of extraposition. Experiment 6 investigated whether the acceptability of extraposition is influenced by the definiteness status of the NP out of which is extraposed and if a soft constraint for definiteness can be found for PP extraposition in German. Experiment 7 asked if the inner structure of the extraposed constituent (PP only vs. PP+RC) influences its acceptability. An extraposed PP that includes an RC should be "heavier" than a PP without an RC, since the number of phrasal nodes is higher. If indeed heavier constituents are realized at the end of an utterance, the acceptability of an extraposed PP that includes an RC should be higher than that of an extraposed PP without one.
The results of the production experiments show that sentences are mostly reproduced in their original linear sequence, which suggests that extraposed position seems to be just as canonical as adjacent position, especially when extraposition takes place over verbal material only. With regard to constituent length, in extraposed position long PPs are shortened less often, supporting the hypothesis that longer and more complex constituents tend to be produced at the end of the utterance. Recency effects were found for intervening material as participants dropped intervening material rather than change syntactic position of constituents. The length and type of the intervening material is important with respect to how much intervening material is acceptable. Verb clusters were not shortened in sentences with extraposed PPs, however, 1⁄3 of adverbs and 1⁄2 of PP adverbials including a lexical NP were shortened to „verb only“. Extraposed PPs are more often reproduced in adjacent position than adjacent PPs are reproduced in extraposed position. However, the position of RCs is more often changed from adjacent to extraposed than from extraposed to adjacent.
While producing extraposed PPs seems not to be any more difficult than producing adjacent ones, adjacent constituents are consistently rated higher than extraposed constituents in grammaticality judgment tasks. This is in line with findings of Konieczny (2000) on German RC extraposition. The number of phrasal nodes, as suggested by Rickford et al. (1995), did not have an influence on the acceptability of extraposition, while the length of the constituent, measured in words, seems to play a role. Definiteness had no effect on adjacent PPs, but when the PP was extraposed, sentences with an indefinite antecedent were rated higher than sentences with a definite antecedent. This suggests that there is a "soft constraint" for definiteness with regard to PP extraposition out of NP in German.
This thesis investigated the acquisition of restrictive and appositive interpretations of relative clauses in German-speaking children between the age of 3 and 6 in three experiments.
The theoretical background shows that restrictive relative clauses are semantically less complex than appositive ones. This assumption is supported by observations from a typological overview on the semantic functions attested across languages. It is shown that the existence of appositive relative clauses implies the availability of restrictive readings in a given language. Furthermore, restrictive readings may be favored due to the functioning of general processing principles. Previous research on the acquisition of relative clauses demonstrates that the acquisition of the semantic functions of relative clauses is an understudied area. In contrast, the acquisition of syntactic aspects of relative clauses is well documented. Relative clauses start to be produced in the third year of life and can be interpreted target-like between the age of 4 and 8 depending on their structure. Which semantic interpretation children assign to relative clauses at this age, however, is still an open question.
Based on the formal background and insights from previous studies, three experiments were designed: two picture selection tasks and one acceptability task. The crucial aspect of the experimental design constitutes the interaction of an ordinal number word and the interpretation of the relative clause in sentences like “Take the third car(,) that/which is red”. The scope of the ordinal number reveals whether the relative clause had been attached restrictively at the NP-level or whether it had been attached higher up at the DP shell resulting in an appositive interpretation.
The results of the experiments demonstrate that 4- to 6-year-old German-speaking children and adults prefer restrictive readings over appositive ones. This preference is found within the group data and is mirrored by the results of an individual analysis. In addition, while the majority of children has acquired restrictive readings at the age of 4, appositive interpretations are mastered only by about half of the children between age 4 and 6. Interestingly, 3-year-old children show a different pattern than their older peers. Appositive but not restrictive interpretations seem to be available to these children. Although the results may be taken as evidence that appositivity is acquired before restrictivity in relative clauses by German-speaking children, I propose the contrary. Based on assumptions about the complexity of restrictive and appositive derivations, I argue that the appositive interpretations observed at the age of 3 do not result from a target-like syntactic and semantic representation. I propose that 3-year-old children do not yet identify relative clauses as nominal modifiers. Instead, they are derived from an incorrect attachment of the relative clause higher up in the syntactic tree.
The results of the three experiments are the first to show that neither a prototypical unintegrated prosodic contour nor the presence of a lexical marker, the discourse particle “ja”, or a visual context biasing for appositivity led to an increase of appositive interpretations in the children’s groups. Adults, in contrast, were sensitive to the presence of the discourse particle and the cues from the visual context. As for children, the prosodic format of the relative clauses did not systematically change the interpretation preferences of adults.
The proposed acquisition path may not be specific to German. Instead, it is predicted to hold cross-linguistically and may also be transferred to the interpretation of adjectives. Moreover, the assumptions on how children integrate relative clauses during comprehension may be generalized to other types of subordinate clauses.
In this paper, we investigate the question of whether and how perspective taking at the linguistic level interacts with perspective taking at the level of co-speech gestures. In an experimental rating study, we compared test items clearly expressing the perspective of an individual participating in the event described by the sentence with test items which clearly express the speaker’s or narrator’s perspective. Each test item was videotaped in two different versions: In one version, the speaker performed a co-speech gesture in which she enacted the event described by the sentence from a participant’s point of view (i.e. with a character viewpoint gesture). In the other version, she performed a co-speech gesture depicting the event described by the sentence as if it was observed from a distance (i.e. with an observer viewpoint gesture). Both versions of each test item were shown to participants who then had to decide which of the two versions they find more natural. Based on the experimental results we argue that there is no general need for perspective taking on the linguistic level to be aligned with perspective taking on the gestural level. Rather, there is clear preference for the more informative gesture.
The standard view of the form-meaning interfaces, as embraced by the great majority of contemporary grammatical frameworks, consists in the assumption that meaning can be associated with grammatical form in a one-to-one correspondence. Under this view, composition is quite straightforward, involving concatenation of form, paired with functional application in meaning. In this book, we discuss linguistic phenomena across several grammatical sub-modules (morphology, syntax, semantics) that apparently pose a problem to the standard view, mapping out the potential for deviation from the ideal of one-to-one correspondences, and develop formal accounts of the range of phenomena. We argue that a constraint-based perspective is particularly apt to accommodate deviations from one-to-many correspondences, as it allows us to impose constraints on full structures (such as a complete word or the interpretation of a full sentence) instead of deriving such structures step by step.
Most of the papers in this volume are formulated in a particular constraint-based grammar framework, Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar. The contributions investigate how the lexical and constructional aspects of this theory can be combined to provide an answer to this question across different linguistic sub-theories.
This introductory paper provides an overview of the main phenomena investigated in this Special Issue, such as the relation between the encoding of indefinites and the presence of genitive and definite markers, the relation between partitivity and indefiniteness and the distribution of these phenomena in minority, or “micro”, varieties – such as Italian dialects, Galloromance varieties, North and South Saami – compared to the distribution of the same phenomena in majority, or “macro”, varieties – such as French, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Estonian, Finnish, Czech and Serbian. The second part of the paper, then, provides an overview of the content of each original paper collected in the special issue.
Understanding a sentence and integrating it into the discourse depends upon the identification of its focus, which, in spoken German, is marked by accentuation. In the case of written language, which lacks explicit cues to accent, readers have to draw on other kinds of information to determine the focus. We study the joint or interactive effects of two kinds of information that have no direct representation in print but have each been shown to be influential in the reader's text comprehension: (i) the (low-level) rhythmic-prosodic structure that is based on the distribution of lexically stressed syllables, and (ii) the (high-level) discourse context that is grounded in the memory of previous linguistic content. Systematically manipulating these factors, we examine the way readers resolve a syntactic ambiguity involving the scopally ambiguous focus operator auch (engl. “too”) in both oral (Experiment 1) and silent reading (Experiment 2). The results of both experiments attest that discourse context and local linguistic rhythm conspire to guide the syntactic and, concomitantly, the focus-structural analysis of ambiguous sentences. We argue that reading comprehension requires the (implicit) assignment of accents according to the focus structure and that, by establishing a prominence profile, the implicit prosodic rhythm directly affects accent assignment.
In this work, we intend to investigate one fundamental aspect of language contact by comparing the distribution of subjects in German, Northern Italian dialects and Cimbrian. Here, we show that purely syntactic order phenomena are more prone to convergence, i.e., less resilient, while phenomena that have a clearly identifiable morphological counterpart are more resilient. The empirical domain of investigation for our analysis is the morphosyntax of both nominal and pronominal subjects, the agreement pattern and their position in Cimbrian grammar. While agreement patterns display a highly conservative paradigm, the syntax of nominal (vP-peripheral and topicalized) subjects is innovative and mimics the Italian linear word order.