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In order to investigate the articulatory processes of the hasty and mumbled speech of clutterers, the kinematic variability was analysed by means of electromagnetic midsagittal articulography (EMMA). In contrast to stutterers, clutterers improve their intelligibility by concentrating on their speech task. Variability is an important criterion in comparable studies of stuttering and is discussed in terms of the stability of the speech motor system. The aim of the current study was to analyse the spatial and temporal variability in the speech of three clutterers and three control speakers. All speakers were native speakers of German. The speech material consisted of repetitive CV-syllables and foreign words, because clutterers have the most severe problems with long words which have a complex syllable structure. The results showed a higher quotient of variation for clutterers in the foreign word production. For the syllable repetition task, no significant differences between clutterers and controls were found. The extremely large and variable displacements were interpreted as a strategy that helps clutterers to improve the intelligibility of their speech.
This paper summarizes our research efforts in functional modelling of the relationship between the acoustic properties of vowels and perceived vowel quality. Our model is trained on 164 short steady-state stimuli. We measured F1, F2, and additionally F0 since the effect of F0 on perceptual vowel height is evident. 40 phonetically skilled subjects judged vowel quality using the Cardinal Vowel diagram. The main focus is on refining the model and describing its transformation properties between the F1/F2 formant chart and the Cardinal Vowel diagram. An evaluation of the model based on 48 additional vowels showed the generalizability of the model and confirmed that it predicts perceived vowel quality with sufficient accuracy.
We measure face deformations during speech production using a motion capture system, which provides 3D coordinate data of about 60 markers glued on the speaker's face. An arbitrary orthogonal factor analysis followed by a principal component analysis (together called a guided PCA) of the data has showed that the first 6 factors explain about 90% of the variance, for each of our 3 speakers. The 6 derived factors, therefore, allow us to efficiently analyze or to reconstruct with a reasonable accuracy the observed face deformations. Since these factors can be interpreted in articulatory terms, they can reveal underlying articulatory organizations. The comparison of lip gestures in terms of data derived factors suggests that these speakers differently maneuver the lips to achieve contrast between /s/ and /R/. Such inter-speaker variability can occur because the acoustic contrast of these fricatives is shaped not only by the lip tube but also by cavities inside the mouth such as the sublingual cavity. In other words, these tube and cavity can acoustically compensate each other to produce their required acoustic properties.
The contribution of von Kempelen's "Mechanism of Speech" to the 'phonetic sciences' will be analyzed with respect to his theoretical reasoning on speech and speech production on the one hand and on the other in connection with his practical insights during his struggle in constructing a speaking machine. Whereas in his theoretical considerations von Kempelen's view is focussed on the natural functioning of the speech organs – cf. his membraneous glottis model – in constructing his speaking machine he clearly orientates himself towards the auditory result – cf. the bag pipe model for the sound generator used for the speaking machine instead. Concerning vowel production his theoretical description remains questionable, but his practical insight that vowels and speech sounds in general are only perceived correctly in connection with their surrounding sounds – i.e. the discovery of coarticulation – is clearly a milestone in the development of the phonetic sciences: He therefore dispenses with the Kratzenstein tubes, although they might have been based on more thorough acoustic modelling.
Finally, von Kempelen's model of speech production will be discussed in relation to the discussion of the acoustic nature of vowels afterwards [Willis and Wheatstone as well as von Helmholtz and Hermann in the 19th century and Stumpf, Chiba & Kajiyama as well as Fant and Ungeheuer in the 20th century].
In order to understand the functional morphology of the human voice producing system, we are in need of data on the vocal tract anatomy of other mammalian species. The larynges and vocal tracts of four species of Artiodactyla were investigated in combination with acoustic analyses of their respective calls. Different evolutionary specializations of laryngeal characters may lead to similar effects on sound production. In the investigated species, such specializations are: the elongation and mass increase of the vocal folds, the volume increase of the laryngeal vestibulum by an enlarged thyroid cartilage and the formation of laryngeal ventricles. Both the elongation of the vocal folds and the increase of the oscillating masses lower the fundamental frequency. The influence of an increased volume of the laryngeal vestibulum on sound production remains unclear. The anatomical and acoustic results are presented together with considerations about the habitats and the mating systems of the respective species.
This paper employs empirical methods to examine verbs such as seem, for which the traditional raising to subject analysis relates pairs of sentences which differ by taking an infinitival or sentential complement. A corpus-driven investigation of the verbs seem and appear demonstrates that information structure and evidentiality both play a determinate role in the choice between infinitival or sentential complementation. The second half of the paper builds upon the corpus results and examines the implications for the standard claims concerning these constructions. First, pairs of sentences related by the subject-to-subject raising analysis of verbs are often viewed as equivalent. New evidence from indefinite generic subjects shows that whether an indefinite generic subject occurs in the infinitival or sentential complement construction leads to truth-conditional differences. Further implications are explored for the claim that subjects of the infinitival variant may take narrow-scope: once various confounds are controlled for, the subject of the infinitival construction is shown to most naturally take wide-scope.
This paper looks at sentences with "quantificational indefinites," discussed by Diesing (1992) and others. I propose that these sentences generate sets of alternatives of the form {p, not p and it's possible that p}, which restrict the quantification by an extension of familiar focus principles. For example, in the sentence "I usually read a book about slugs" (on the relevant reading), "usually" quantifies over pairs <x,t> such that x is a book about slugs, t is a time interval, and one alternative is true from the set {I read x at t, I can but do not read x at t}. In addition to accounting for a well-known contrast between creation and non-creation verbs, this also explains a second contrast that Diesing’s analysis cannot account for.
Russian and Spanish each have two variants of the predicational copular sentence. In Russian, the variation concerns the case of the predicate phrase, which can be nominative or instrumental, while in Spanish, the variation involves the choice of the copular verb, either ser or estar. It is shown that the choice of the particular variant of copular sentence in both languages depends on the speaker’s perspective, i.e., on whether or not the predication is linked to a specific topic situation.
This article aims to recast the properties of topic-prominent languages and their differences from subject-prominent languages as documented in the functionalist literature into the framework of the Principle-and-Parameter approach. It provides a configurational definition of the topic construction called Topic Phrase (TP), with the topic marker as its head. The availablity of TP enables topic prominent languages to develop various topic structures with properties such as morphological marking; cross-categorial realization of topics and comments; and mutiple application of topicalization. The article elaborates the notion of topic prominence. A topic prominent language is characterized as one that tends to activate the TP and to make full use of the configuration. Typically, it has a larger number and variety of highly grammaticalized topic markers in the Lexicon and permits a variety of syntactic categories to occur in the specifier position and the complement position of TP.
Mention some of all
(2006)
In the interpretation of natural language one may distinguish three types of dynamics: there are the acts or moves that are made; there are structural relations between subsequent moves; and interlocutors reason about the beliefs and intentions of the participants in a particular language game. Building on some of the formalisms developed to account for the first two types of dynamics, I will generalize and formalize Gricean insights into the third type, and show by means of a case study that such a formalization allows a direct account of an apparent ambiguity: the ‘exhaustive’ versus the ‘mention some’ interpretation of questions and their answers. While the principles which I sketch, like those of Grice, are motivated by assumptions of rationality and cooperativity, they do not presuppose these assumptions to be always warranted.
In this paper, focusing on the relevance-theoretic view of cognition, I discuss the idea that what is communicated through an utterance is not merely an explicature upon which implicature(s) are recovered, but rather a propositional complex that contains both explicit and implicit information. More specifically, I propose that this information is constructed on the fly as the interpreter processes every lexical item in its turn while parsing the utterance in real time, in this way creating a string of ad hoc concepts. While hearing an utterance and incrementally constructing a context, the propositional complex communicated by an utterance is pragmatically narrowed and simultaneously pragmatically broadened in order to incorporate only the set of optimally relevant propositions with respect to a specific point in the interpretation. The narrowing of propositions from the initial context at each stage allows relevant propositions to be carried on to the new level, while their broadening adds to the communicated propositional complex new propositions that are linked to the lexical item that is processed at every step of the interpretation process.
The complexity of human languages has always inspired research for some human faculty that makes language learning possible. The system that generates the complexity of human languages, ideally, is simple and effective. Recent developments of the generative grammatical theory explore deeper into the issue of simplicity or economy. The Minimalist Program developed in Chomsky (1991, 1993, 1995) tries to provide contents to such notions. What does it mean to be more economic or least effort? An important instantiation of such notions is the proposal that movement is the last resort assuming that movement is more costly than non-movement. Processes occur only because they are necessary. The definition of necessity generally is cast in morphological terms. Moreover, the notion of "economy" or "least effort" is deterministic of the appropriate derivations for sentences: a shorter derivation is better than a longer one. In this work, we show that the notion of "least effort," - do minimally if possible - is manifested not only in derivations but also in other aspects of the grammar. We take Chinese as an example and show that this language exhibits the properties manifesting some "least effort" guidelines in the area of movement and reconstruction, and in the projection of syntactic positions: when there is a choice, non-application of moyement/reconstruction and non-projection of a position are adopted. These phenomena essentially are attested in topic structures. The question arises as to why topic structures exhibit such minimal effort effects. We suggest that this is due to the fact that topic structures can be derived by movement or base-generation. When there are morpho-syntactic clues that reconstruction is necessary, the structure is a movement structure. Otherwise, the less costly non-movement structure is assumed. Moreover, because of the possibility of assuming a topic NP to be base-generated, bearing a predication (or aboutness) relation with the comment clause, the argument position which otherwise would be related to the topic (conveniently termed the trace position) is not projected when there is a choice of projecting or not projecting it.
The effects of different forms of predication have been insightfully (and almost exclusively) studied for 'simple' cases of predication, of which the 'presentational sentence' is maybe the paradigm instantiation. It is the aim of this paper to show that thc same kind of effects as well as in fact the same kind of structures are present at embedded levels in thematically and otherwise more complex structures. Beyond presentational sentences, 'unaccusative' experiencing constructions involving a dative subject, 'double object constructions' and - to a lesser extent - spraylload constructions are discussed. For all of these, it is argued that they comprise a predication encoding the ascription of a transient temporal property to a location. On this basis, a proposal is made as to how the scope asymmetry between the two arguments involved in the colistructions can be explained. Furthermore, a proposal is made as to how what has been called 'argument shift' is motivated.
This paper compares secondary predication constructions (including small clause complements, resultatives, and/or depictives) in English and Korean and argues that these two typologically different languages employ different modes of satisfying the Case Filter (Chomsky 1981) with regard to the Case of the subjects of secondary predication constructions. More specifically, we argue that the subject of the secondary predicate in English is Accusative Case-marked by the higher governing verb, while that in Korean is Nominative Case-marked by default. Evidence for default Nominative Case will be provided from Korean and other languages.
In this paper, I argue that this informally given list of characteristics covers only a certain subclass of specific indefinites. […] In particular, I dispute the definition of specific indefinites as "the speaker has the referent in mind" as rather confusing if one is working with a semantic theory. Furthermore, I discuss "relative specificity", it. cases in which the specific indefinite does not exhibit wide, but intermediate or narrow scope behavior. Based on such data, I argue that specificity expresses a referential dependency between introduced discourse items. Informally speaking, the specificity of the indefinite expression something [...] expresses that the reference of the expression depends on the reference of another expression, here, on the expression a monk, not the speaker.
This volume comprises papers that were given at the workshop Information Structure and the Referential Status of Linguistic Expressions, which we organized during the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS) Conference in Leipzig in February 2001. At this workshop we discussed the connection between information structure and the referential interpretation of linguistic expressions, a topic mostly neglected in current linguistics research. One common aim of the papers is to find out to what extent the focus-background as well as the topic-comment structuring determine the referential interpretation of simple arguments like definite and indefinite NPs on the one hand and sentences on the other.
Maligne Tumore der Mundhohle und der Zunge stehen weltweit an sechster Stelle aller Krebserkrankungen (Becker, 1997; Werner, 2000). Neben einer Reihe therapeutischer Behandlungsmöglichkeiten nimmt die chirurgische Resektion der Tumore eine wichtige Stellung ein. Auf Grund der häufig sehr ausgedehnten Befunde führt der resektionsbedingte Verlust anatomischer Strukturen im Bereich des Kiefers, des Mundbodens oder der Zunge oft zu Störungen aller oraler Funktionen und Funktionsabläufe. Bei vielen Patienten sind das Kauvermögen, das Schlucken, das Sprechen; die Sensibilität, die Geschmacksempfindung, aber auch die Ästhetik im Kopf- und Halsbereich betroffen (Schroder, 1985; Grimm, 1990; Panje &. Morris, 1995; Reuther & Bill, 1998; Lenarz & Lesinski-Schiedat, 2001). Orale Tumore haben daher einen massiven Einfluss auf die postoperative Lebensqualität der betroffenen Patienten. Neben dem Bemühen das Überleben der Patienten zu sichern, nimmt daher das Bestreben die Lebenssituation der Patienten zu verbessern einen zunehmend wichtigeren Platz ein. Hierzu gehört zum einen, das medizinische Vorgehen so zu planen, dass ein maximaler Funktionserhalt angestrebt wird. Zum anderen ist postoperativ das gezielte sprachtherapeutische Vorgehen wichtig um funktionelle und artikulatorische Fähigkeiten gezielt schulen zu können (Stadtler, 1989). Dies ist jedoch nur möglich, wenn die postoperativen funktionellen Veränderungen bekannt sind. Um eine Prüfung der oralen Fähigkeiten zu ermöglichen, wurde am Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft ein Motorischer Bogen entwickelt, der eine gezielte und systematische Überprüfung ermöglicht.
This paper pursues the question what the implications of the Anti-Locality Hypothesis could be for the syntax of secondary predication. Focus of the discussion will be an investigation of what their internal structure of small clause complements must look like, how these small clause complements connect to their matrix environments, and what the relevance could be for the formulation of anti-locality presented here. Anti-locality is defined over a tripartite clause structure (split into three Prolific Domains) and a PF-condition on the computation (the Condition on Domain-Exclusivity). The investigation revolves around two leading questions: (i) does the syntax of small clauses involve more structure than simply [SC DP XP] and (ii) do small clauses constitute their own Prolific Domain (or maybe even more)? The results, affirmative answers to both questions, are also relevant for other types of secondary predication.
Since the advent of nonlinear phonology many linguists have either assumed or argued explicitly that many languages have words in which one or more segment does not belong structurally to the syllable. Three commonly employed adjectives used to describe such consonants are 'extrasyllabic', 'extrametrical' or 'stray'. Other authors refer to such segments as belonging to the 'appendix'. [...] Various non-linear representations have been proposed to express the 'extrasyllabicity' of segments [...]. The ones I am concerned with in the present article analyze [...] consonants [...] structurally as being outside of the syllable [...]. For transparency I ignore here both subsyllabic constituency as well as higher level prosodic constituents to which the stray consonants are sometimes assumed to attach. For reasons to be made clear below I refer to syllables [...] in which the stray consonant is situated outside of the syllable, as abstract syllables.
Internals from elaboration
(2001)
Elaboration or Narration, as so-called discourse relations (or rhetorical relations), are modelled in Segmented Discourse Structure Theory (SDRT) as relations between discourse constituents (or constituents for short). These are either propositions that come into being by interpretation of sentences occurring in a text; the propositions then have the status of DRSes. Or, constituents are compounds of such DRSes, constructed from DRSes (or compounds of them) by discourse relations. Elaboration and Narration in that sense, rather than referring to text types, provide links between constituents that allow them to combine in ways that, for a recipient, a resulting text is coherent and has (some) elaborative or narrative properties.
The author presents MASSY, the MODULAR AUDIOVISUAL SPEECH SYNTHESIZER. The system combines two approaches of visual speech synthesis. Two control models are implemented: a (data based) di-viseme model and a (rule based) dominance model where both produce control commands in a parameterized articulation space. Analogously two visualization methods are implemented: an image based (video-realistic) face model and a 3D synthetic head. Both face models can be driven by both the data based and the rule based articulation model.
The high-level visual speech synthesis generates a sequence of control commands for the visible articulation. For every virtual articulator (articulation parameter) the 3D synthetic face model defines a set of displacement vectors for the vertices of the 3D objects of the head. The vertices of the 3D synthetic head then are moved by linear combinations of these displacement vectors to visualize articulation movements. For the image based video synthesis a single reference image is deformed to fit the facial properties derived from the control commands. Facial feature points and facial displacements have to be defined for the reference image. The algorithm can also use an image database with appropriately annotated facial properties. An example database was built automatically from video recordings. Both the 3D synthetic face and the image based face generate visual speech that is capable to increase the intelligibility of audible speech.
Other well known image based audiovisual speech synthesis systems like MIKETALK and VIDEO REWRITE concatenate pre-recorded single images or video sequences, respectively. Parametric talking heads like BALDI control a parametric face with a parametric articulation model. The presented system demonstrates the compatibility of parametric and data based visual speech synthesis approaches.
The goal of our current project is to build a system that can learn to imitate a version of a spoken utterance using an articulatory speech synthesiser. The approach is informed and inspired by knowledge of early infant speech development. Thus we expect our system to reproduce and exploit the utility of infant behaviours such as listening, vocal play, babbling and word imitation. We expect our system to develop a relationship between the sound-making capabilities of its vocal tract and the phonetic/phonological structure of imitated utterances. At the heart of our approach is the learning of an inverse model that relates acoustic and motor representations of speech. The acoustic to auditory mappings uses an auditory filter bank and a self-organizing phase of learning. The inverse model from auditory to vocal tract control parameters is estimated using a babbling phase, in which the vocal tract is essentially driven in a random manner, much like the babbling phase of speech acquisition in infants. The complete system can be used to imitate simple utterances through a direct mapping from sound to control parameters. Our initial results show that this procedure works well for sounds generated by its own voice. Further work is needed to build a phonological control level and achieve better performance with real speech.
This paper shows the early development of the first approximately 50 verbs found in the recorded speech production of one Croatian girl. The aim is to analyse and interpret the child's verb development in terms of the distinction of a pre- and a protomorphological phase before modularised morphology in language acquisition (Dressler & Karpf 1995). Furthermore, focus will be laid on the emergence of first verb paradigms.
The purpose of this dissertation is to defend the idea that the empirical responsibilities of binding theory can be handled in a more psychologically and historically realistic way when assigned to the field of pragmatics. In particular, I wish to show that Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince & Smolensky, 1993), the stochastic OT and Gradual Learning Algorithm of Boersma (1998), the Recoverability of OT of Wilson (2001) and Buchwald et al. (2002), and the bidirectional OT of Blutner (2000b) and Bidirectional Gradual Learning Algorithm of Jäger (2003a) can all participate in a formal framework in which one can formally spell out and justify the idea that the distributional behavior of bound pronouns and reflexivs is a pragmatic phenomenon.
In what follows, I first briefly review Perlmutter (1968, 1970), in which it is argued that aspectual verbs are ambiguous between control and raising. I suggest that while the argument for the raising analysis is solid, the arguments supporting the control analysis of aspectual verbs are less so. As an alternative hypothesis to consider, I introduce the structural ambiguity hypothesis. In Section 3, I review three recent analyses of control and raising. Although there are important differences among them, they all share the basic assumption that the control/raising distinction is due to differences in selectional restrictions that the lexical items impose. Under such an assumption, the lexical ambiguity hypothesis is the only available option. In Section 4, I present evidence for the structural ambiguity hypothesis from studies concerning aspectual verbs in languages from four distinct families, German (Wurmbrand 2001), Japanese (Fukuda 2006), Romance languages (Cinque 2003), and Basque (Arregi Molina-Azaola 2004). These data strongly suggest that across languages aspectual verbs can appear in two different syntactic positions, either below or above vP, or the projection with which an external argument is introduced (Kratzer 1994, 1996, Chomsky 1995). Given these findings, I argue that it is the aspectual verbs' position with respect to vP which creates the control/raising ambiguity. When an aspectual verb appears in a position that is lower than vP, an external argument takes scope over the aspectual verb. Thus, it is interpreted as control. When an aspectual verb appears in a position that is higher than vP, on the other hand, it is the aspectual verb that takes scope over an entire vP, including the external argument. Thus, it is interpreted as raising. In section 5, I extend the scope of this study to include a discussion of want-type verbs in Indonesian, as analyzed in Polinsky & Potsdam (2006). Polinsky & Potsdam argue that the Indonesian want-type verbs must be raising in at least certain cases where they allow a rather peculiar interpretation. Although they assume that there are also control counterparts of the want-type verbs, I argue that applying the proposed analysis to the want-type verbs does away with the need for stipulating two distinct lexical entries for these verbs. Section 6 concludes the paper.
Starting from the basic observation that, across languages, the anticausative variant of an alternating verb systematically involves morphological marking that is shared by passive verbs, the goal of this paper is to provide a uniform and formal account of these arguably two different construction types. The central claim that I put forward is that passives and anticausatives differ only with respect to the event-type features of the verb but both arise through the same operation, namely suppression by special morphology of a feature in v that encodes the ontological event type of the verb. Crucially, I argue for two syntactic primitives, namely act and cause, whereto I trace the passive/anticausative distinction. Passive constructions across languages are made compatible by relegating the differences to simple combinatorial properties of verb and prepositional types and their interactions with other event functors, which are in turn encoded differently morphologically across languages. New arguments are brought forward for a causative analysis of anticausatives. Agentive adverbials are examined, and doubt is cast on the usefulness of by-phrases as a diagnostic for argumenthood.
Starting from a consideration of the internal make-up of adverbial clauses this paper shows that the widespread assumption that fronted arguments in English and CLLD constituents in Romance occupy the same position leads to a number of problems. I will conclude that the position occupied by English topicalized arguments differs from that of the CLLD topics in Romance. In particular, English topics occupy a higher position in the left periphery. The final part of the paper compares three proposals for the lower topic position in Romance.
Dynamic semantic accounts of presupposition have proven to quite successful improvements over earlier theories. One great advance has been to link presupposition and anaphora together (van der Sandt 92, Geurts 95), an approach that extends to integrate bridging and other discourse phenomena (Asher and Lascarides 1998a,b). In this extended anaphoric account, presuppositions attach, like assertions, to the discourse context via certain rhetorical relations. These discourse attachments constrain accommodation and help avoid some infelicitous predictions of standard accounts of presupposition. Further, they have interesting and complex interactions with underspecified conditions that are an important feature of the contributions of most presupposition triggers.
Deictic uses of definites, on the other hand, seem at first glance to fall outside the purview of an anaphoric theory of presupposition. There seems to be little that a discourse based theory would have to say. I will argue, however, that a discourse based account can capture how these definites function in conversation. In particular such accounts can clarify the interaction between the uses of such deictic definites and various conversational moves. At least some deictic uses of definites generate presuppositions that are bound to the context via a rhetorical function that I'll call unchoring, which if successful entails a type of knowing how. If this anchoring function is accepted, then the acceptors know how to locate the referent of the definite in the present context. I'll concentrate here just on definites that refer to spatial locations, where the intuitions about anchoring are quite clear. But I think that this view extends to other deictic uses of definites and has ramifications for an analysis of de re attitudes as well.
All of the papers in the volume except one (Kaji) take up some aspect of relative clause construction in some Bantu language. Kaji’s paper aims to account for how Tooro (J12; western Uganda) lost phonological tone through a comparative study of the tone systems of other western Uganda Bantu languages. The other papers examine a range of ways of forming relative clauses, often including non-restrictive relatives and clefts, in a wide range of languages representing a variety of prosodic systems.
This paper deals with spelling normalization of historical texts with regard to further processing with modern part-of-speech taggers. Different methods for this task are presented and evaluated on a set of historical German texts from the 15th–18th century, and specific problems inherent to the processing of historical data are discussed. A chain combination using word-based and character-based techniques is shown to be best for normalization, while POS tagging of normalized data is shown to benefit from ignoring punctuation marks. Using these techniques, when 500 manually normalized tokens are used as training data for the normalization, the tagging accuracy of a manuscript from the 15th century can be raised from 28.65% to 76.27%.
The papers in this volume were originally presented at the Workshop on Bantu Wh-questions, held at the Institut des Sciences de l’Homme, Université Lyon 2, on 25-26 March 2011, which was organized by the French-German cooperative project on the Phonology/Syntax Interface in Bantu Languages (BANTU PSYN). This project, which is funded by the ANR and the DFG, comprises three research teams, based in Berlin, Paris and Lyon. The Berlin team, at the ZAS, is: Laura Downing (project leader) and Kristina Riedel (post-doc). The Paris team, at the Laboratoire de phonétique et phonologie (LPP; UMR 7018), is: Annie Rialland (project leader), Cédric Patin (Maître de Conférences, STL, Université Lille 3), Jean-Marc Beltzung (post-doc), Martial Embanga Aborobongui (doctoral student), Fatima Hamlaoui (post-doc). The Lyon team, at the Dynamique du Langage (UMR 5596) is: Gérard Philippson (project leader) and Sophie Manus (Maître de Conférences, Université Lyon 2). These three research teams bring together the range of theoretical expertise necessary to investigate the phonology-syntax interface: intonation (Patin, Rialland), tonal phonology (Aborobongui, Downing, Manus, Patin, Philippson, Rialland), phonology-syntax interface (Downing, Patin) and formal syntax (Riedel, Hamlaoui). They also bring together a range of Bantu language expertise: Western Bantu (Aboronbongui, Rialland), Eastern Bantu (Manus, Patin, Philippson, Riedel), and Southern Bantu (Downing).
This paper presents an analysis of secondary predicates as aspectual modifiers and secondary predication as a summing operation which sums the denotation of the matrix verb and the secondary predicate. I argue that, as opposed to the summing peration involved in simple conjunction, there is a constraint on secondary predication; in the 0 case of depictives, the event introduced by the matrix verb must be PART-OF the event introduced by the secondary predicate, where e1 is PART-OF e2 if the running time of e1 is contained in the running time of e2 and if e1 and e2 share a grammatical argument. I argue resultative predication differs from depictive predication in that the PART-OF constraint holds in resultative constructions between the event which is the culmination of e1 and e2: formally, while depictive predication introduces the statement PART-OF(e1,e2), resultative predication introduces the statement PART-OF(cul(e1),e2). I show that this is all that is necessary to explain the well-known properties of resultative predication.
The distinction between COMPLEMENTS and ADJUNCTS has a long tradition in grammatical theory, and it is also included in some way or other in most current formal linguistic theories. But it is a highly vexed distinction, for several reasons, one of which is that no diagnostic criteria have emerged that will reliably distinguish adjuncts from complements in all cases – too many examples seem to "fall into the crack" between the two categories, no matter how theorists wrestle with them.
In this paper, I will argue that this empirical diagnostic "problem" is, in fact, precisely what we should expect to find in natural language, when a proper understanding of the adjunct/complement distinction is achieved: the key hypothesis is that a complete grammar should provide a DUAL ANALYSIS of every complement as an adjunct, and potentially, an analysis of any adjunct as a complement. What this means and why it is motivated by linguistic evidence will be discussed in detail.
The comprehension and production of single words involve a variety of processing stages. Which stages need to be accessed differs depending on whether objects (pictures in an experimental environment) or words are supposed to be named. Naming tasks are often employed in psycholinguistic studies in order to provide an insight into the function of mental processes during word production. Differences in naming latencies and naming accuracy between words suggest that the retrieval of some lexical items is easier or more difficult in contrast to others. The relative ease of word retrieval has been found to be strongly influenced by properties of these words, such as familiarity and written or spoken frequency.
Exploring which variables affect naming speed and accuracy will allow gaining more information about the storage and processing of words in general. If a variable has a discernable effect on a specific experimental task, the localization of this effect is of interest for psycholinguistic research. This is because finding the locus of the effect can help specify models of speech production with respect to what processes occur at which stage of lexical retrieval. Additionally, identifying which variables influence language processing is inevitable in order to control for these variables when necessary. Otherwise variance in naming latencies could not be explained by the variable that was to be tested because other, uncontrolled variables could have altered the results.
This paper develops the formal foundations of semantic theories dealing with various kinds of nominalisations. It introduces a combination of an event-calculus with a type-free theory which allows a compositional description to be given of such phenomena like Vendler's distinction between perfect and imperfect nominals, iteration of gerunds and Cresswell's notorious non-urrival of'the train examples. Moreover, the approach argued for in this paper allows a semantic explanation to be given for a wide range of grammatical observations such as the behaviour of certain tpes of nominals with respect to their verbal contexts or the distribution of negation in nominals.
This paper discusses a semantic analysis of three syntactic types of English each, namely, floated each, binominal each, and prenominal each. It is argued that floated each consists of two parts, a quantifier and an inaudible element which functions as its restrictor, which together form a tripartite quantificational structure when they compose with the predicate. Binominal each and an associated NP such as two topics (which is generally called the 'distributive share') are syntactically analyzed as forming a subject-predicate relation within a DP in which the NP undergoes so-called 'predicate inversion'. Semantically, binominal each is analyzed as having the same semantic value as floated each, while prenominal each is shown to have a different logical type from floated and binominal each. As can be seen from analogous constructions in some Romance languages, it does not lexically contain its restrictor.
We will see how it is reasonable to speak of a minimum distance that an element must cross in order to enter into a well-formed movement dependency. In the course of the discussion of this notion of anti-localiry, a theoretical framework unfolds which is compatible with recent thoughts on syntactic computation regarding local economy and phrase structure, as well as the view that certain pronouns are grammatical formatives, rather than fully lexical expressions. The upshot will be that if an element does not move a certain distance, the derivation crashes at PF, unless the lower copy is spelled out as a pronominal element. The framework presented has a number of implications for the study of clause-typing, of which some will be discussed towards the end.
This study investigates supralaryngeal mechanisms of the two way voicing contrast among German velar stops and the three way contrast among Korean velar stops, both in intervocalic position. Articulatory data won via electromagnetic articulography of three Korean speakers and acoustic recordings of three Korean and three German speakers are analysed. It was found that in both languages the voicing contrast is created by more than one mechanism. However, one can say that for Korean velar stops in intervocalic position stop closure duration is the most important parameter. For German it is closure voicing. The results support the phonological description proposed by Kohler (1984).
In dieser Arbeit untersuchen wir, welche nicht-satzwertigen Einheiten 2- bis 3-jährige Kinder ins Nachfeld stellen und aus welchen Gründen sie dies tun. Kindliche Äußerungen können ab der Phase der 'item'-basierten Konstruktionen, in der sie die Satzklammer erwerben, mit dem topologischen Feldermodell analysiert werden. Wir argumentieren dafür, dass Kinder zunächst ein vorläufiges Nachfeld entwickeln, welches sich hinter infiniten Verben oder Verbpartikeln befindet. Am häufigsten finden sich Adverb-, Präpositional- und Nominalphrasen im Nachfeld. Adverbien zeigen Verfestigungstendenzen, sodass wir diese als Konstruktionen beschreiben mit der Funktion, die Äußerung im Kontext zu verorten und/oder dieser Nachdruck zu verleihen. Präpositional- und Nominalphrasen werden aus Gründen der Zeitlichkeit bzw. nicht ausreichender Planung ins Nachfeld gestellt. Die Häufigkeit der Nominalphrasen im Nachfeld nimmt mit zunehmendem Alter ab.
This paper is concerned with the fact that a number of adverbal modifications involve a systematic reinterpretation of at least one of the expressions connected by the operation in question. It offers an approach in which such transfers of meaning turn out to be a result of contextually controlled enrichments of an underspecified as well as a strictly compositionally structured semantic representation. The approach proposed is general for three reasons: First, it takes into account not only reinterpretations in temporal but also such in non-temporal modification. Second, it allows considering so-called secondary predications as a particular kind of adverbal modification. Third, it explains the respective reinterpretations within a uniform formal framework of meaning variation.
This paper deals with a series of semantic contrasts between the copula "be" and the preposition "as", two functional elements that both head elementary predication structures. It will be argued that the meaning of "as" is a type lowering device shifting the meaning of its complement NP from generalized quantifier type to property type (where properties are conceived as relations between individuals and situations), while the copula "be" induces a type coercion from (partial) situations to (total) possible worlds. Paired with van der Sandt's 1992 theory of presupposition accommodation, these assumptions will account for the observed contrasts between "as" and "be".
Einführung
(2000)
Der vorliegende Band setzt im Anschluss an den Band ZAS Papers in Linguistics 14 (1999) die Vorpublikation von Arbeiten fort, die innerhalb oder im Umkreis des von der DFG geförderten Projekts "Schnittstellen der Semantik: Kopula-Prädikativ-Konstruktionen" am ZAS entstanden sind. Das Rahmenthema, wie es in ZAS PIL 14 einleitend knapp umrissen wurde, wird derzeit im Projekt in drei Untersuchungssträngen bearbeitet.
Der vorliegende Band setzt im Anschluß an den Band ZAS Papers in Linguistics 14 (1999) die Vorpublikation von Arbeiten fort, die innerhalb oder im Umkreis des von der DFG geförderten Projekts "Schnittstellen der Semantik: Kopula-Prädikativ-Konstruktionen" am ZAS entstanden sind. Das Rahmenthema, wie es in ZASPiL 14 einleitend knapp umrissen wurde, wird derzeit im Projekt in drei Untersuchungssträngen bearbeitet. Sie beinhalten
(1) die Klärung der in der Literatur auch weiterhin häufig bemühten, aber keineswegs eindeutig verankerten, sondern auf mehrere Domänen zu verteilenden Distinktion von Stage Level Predicates vs. Individual Level Predicates (kurz: SLP/ILP-Problematik);
(2) die Klärung des Situationsbezugs von Kopula-Prädikativ-Konstruktionen (KPK) im Hinblick auf die ontologische Natur, die lexikalische Fundierung und die syntaktische Verwaltung des referentiellen Arguments von KPK (kurz: Argumentstruktur von KPK);
(3) die vertiefte Analyse der notorisch idiosynkratischen Kopulaverben in Prädikationsstrukturen, nicht zuletzt im Hinblick auf diejenigen Vorkommen solcher Verben, in denen sie gemeinhin als "Hilfsverben" gelten, was wiederum eine umfassende Analyse der infiniten Verbformen einschließt (kurz: lexical vs. functional category features).
The ultimate goal of the study is to examine the acquisition of intensifiers in English and German. In this paper an overview of the first results regarding four L1 English-speaking children will be given. Contrary to previous claims in the literature (e.g. Thomas 1990), it will be argued that intensifiers are used by children in early phases of language acquisition. Intensifiers play an important role in early phases of language acquisition since they can be used to express the wish either to be included or excluded in a certain action and thus contribute to structuring a central aspect of the child's discourse.
Obwohl wir bereits nachweisen konnten, dass Exklusionen nicht sprachlich verursacht sind, können sie doch experimentell durch sprachliche Reize, nämlich durch eine spezifische Benennung von Exemplaren ausgelöst werden. Aus diesem Grund soll hier der sprachliche Einfluß auf das Auftreten von Exklusionen und Reduktionen detaillierter untersucht werden. Dabei interessiert vor allem, welche sprachlichen Reize die Art Verarbeitung befördern, die auf der Verhaltensebene als Exklusion oder Reduktion in Erscheinung tritt.
Aus der Faktenlage ergeben sich folgende Probleme, die derzeit in der einschlägigen Literatur diskutiert werden bzw. bisher noch nicht zur Diskussion gelangt sind und die nun im vorliegenden Beitrag behandelt werden:
(i) Worauf sind Unterschiede in der Kodierung deontischer und epistemischer Lesarten von Modalverben durch (synthetische) Präsens- bzw. Präteritalformen und (analytische bzw. periphrastische) Perfekt- bzw. Plusquamperfektformen zurückzuführen? Worin liegt der genuine Beitrag des (periphrastischen) Perfekts/Plusquamperfekts bei der Manifestierung der kategorialen Funktion von Modalverben?;
(ii) Welches sind die Spezifika der Perfektformen von Modalverben in der Diachronie bzw.welchen kategorialen Wandel erfahren sie im Laufe ihrer Entwicklung?;
(iii) Wie ist die formale und funktionale Konstellation zwischen den Konstruktionen Modalverb + Infinitiv II und der Umschreibung würde + Infinitiv II synchron wie diachron zu beurteilen?;
(iv) Darf vor dem Hintergrund der Formenasymmetrie im Indikativ und Konjunktiv der Umschreibung werden + Inf. I/II (würde + Inf. I/II vs. *wurde + Inf. I/II) von einer "Lücke" im Verbalparadigma gesprochen werden?
Im folgenden wird zuerst das Modell vorgestellt, das als theoretische Grundlage für die Betrachtung der Semantik der Aspekt-Tempus-Formen dient (Abschnitt 2). Danach werden die syntagmatischen Markiertheitsrelationen der einzelnen aspektuell-temporalen Formen im Rahmen dieses Modells analysiert (Abschnitt 3). Im Abschnitt 4 werden die paradigmatischen Relationen zwischen den Aspekt-Tempus-Formen erörtert. Abschließend (Abschnitt 5) wird das Fazit aus der Untersuchung gezogen.
Der Umbau des Tempussystems und andere Veränderungen im russischen Verbalsystem wurden durch die Ausprägung der neuen slavischen Aspekte ausgelöst. Die Ausformung und die immer stärker werdende Einbeziehung der Aspekte in das gesamte Verbalsystem hat tiefgreifende Veränderungen der systemdefinierenden Struktureigenschaften des russischen Verbs hervorgerufen. Die Aspekte sind im Laufe der Sprachentwicklung zur eigentlichen Grundlage des gesamten russischen Verbalsystems geworden. Die Entwicklung der Tempora verläuft im präteritalen und im nichtpräteritalen Bereich gewissermaßen in entgegengesetzten Richtungen. Das Subsystem der Vergangenheitstempora wurde im Altrussischen maximal reduziert, während der Funktionsbereich der Nicht-Vergangenheit in Präsens und Futur aufgelöst wurde. Die beiden Entwicklungsrichtungen stehen in direktem Zusammenhang mit der Ausprägung der Aspekte. Ich betrachte deshalb die Entwicklung der Tempora und die Entwicklung der Aspekte parallel.