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Variation in enclitic possessive constructions in Southern Italian dialects: a syntactic analysis
(2019)
This thesis investigates enclitic possessive constructions (EPCs) that are a widespread and frequently used construction among Southern Italian dialects (SIDs). In general, EPCs display the structure N-EP where the N is a (singular) kinship noun and the EP the enclitic possessive directly attached to the kinship noun. However, there is a huge variation among SIDs as well as within the system of a specific dialect. The aim of the present work is twofold. The empirical part contributes new data to this topic as well as a detailed and organized overview of (micro-) variational observations from data of different sources including for example the linguistic maps of the AIS (Atlante Italo-Svizzero). The main aspects of variation are (a) the presence or absence of an obligatory article (D – N-EP vs. N-EP), (b) the possibility of plural kinship noun-EPCs and (c) the compatibility of a specific person-EP with a specific kinship noun within a dialect. Based on the empirical findings, the syntactic part proposes a syntactic analysis for EPCs focusing on the following research questions: 1) In some dialects, singular kinship noun-EPCs display an obligatory article with the 3SG.EP. What is the reason for this article-based person split (1st and 2nd vs. 3rd)? And further, how are both structures, with and without an article, represented in the syntax, i.e. in DP and PossP? 2) In some dialects, plural kinship nouns are allowed to occur in EPCs, and in others, they are disallowed. With respect to this dichotomy, what is the role of NumP? 3) Kinship nouns are relational and express inalienability. How can this property be captured in the syntax? I argue that the article-based person split is due to the deictic properties of the possessor-persons, meaning that 1SG.EPs and 2SG.EPs need to be bound by the speaker’s coordinates in the left periphery of the clause, whereas 3SG.EPs do not. As a consequence, 1SG and 2SG EPCs move to the highest position, i.e. to D°, and 3SG EPCs can stay lower in the structure, i.e. in Poss°. Based on this dichotomy, I argue that both D° and Poss° can host EPCs. In order to capture the (im)possibility of plural kinship nouns-EPCs, I argue that NumP, as a parametrised position, can block or allow further movement of the kinship noun to Poss° (and to D°). With respect to the relational nature of kinship nouns I propose that they are base-generated within the complement position of a relator phrase (RP), and EPs in Poss°. In order to derive EPCs, the kinship nouns must move out of their position. The kinship noun lands in NumP, the position where further movement is probably blocked. If further movement is allowed, the kinship noun merges to the left of the EP, resulting in a complete EPC in Poss°. The last leg of the movement to D° depends on the presence of absence of an obligatory article. The phenomenon of EPCs displays a huge variation among SIDs and needs to be investigated from different perspectives and different linguistic areas. The present work contributes to the puzzle of EPCs new data and a syntactic analysis.
Seit der Jahrtausendwende wird in den Kommunikations- und Kulturwissenschaften ein sogenannter pictorial turn bzw. eine ›visuelle Wende‹ diskutiert (vgl. Mirzoeff 1998; ders. 1999; Mitchell 2008). Inzwischen präzisiert Bucher:
»Der grundlegende Wandel der Kommunikationsverhältnisse besteht nicht darin, dass zunehmend Abbildungen die Textkommunikation ergänzen oder einschränken [...]. Der grundlegende Wandel besteht darin, dass neue und neuartige Mischformen der verschiedensten Kommunikationsmodi und Kanäle entstanden sind, die man als multimodale Kommunikationsformen bezeichnen kann.« (Bucher 2011, S. 123)
Gudrun Marci-Boehncke macht als wesentliche Ursache dieser Hybridisierungen die durch das Internet, den »Ort [...] der Medien schlechthin«, in immer umfassenderer Weise gegebene Medienkonvergenz aus (Marci-Boehncke 2013, S. 507)...
This thesis investigates the acquisition of compositional and lexical semantic properties of adjectives in German-speaking children between the age of two and five years.
According to formal semantic approaches, there are intersective and non-intersective adjectives, subsective and non-subsective adjectives as well as gradable and non-gradable adjectives. These properties concern the compositional mechanisms involved in nominal modification, i.e., the combination of adjectives and nouns. In addition, adjectives differ regarding lexical semantic properties that contribute to the adjectives' meaning. Differences in the adjectives' scale structure have led to the theoretical assumption that gradable adjectives should be distinguished into relative and absolute gradable adjectives. In addition, meaning components such as multidimensionality or subjectivity have led to the distinction between dimensional and evaluative gradable adjectives. These properties have been mostly investigated independently of each other in both theory and acquisition research. I suggest a classification system for adjectives that combines different semantic properties. This system results in six adjective classes constituting a Semantic Complexity Hierarchy. Assuming that these adjective classes differ in semantic complexity, I propose an operationalization of semantic complexity that takes into account the adjectives' length of description, their type complexity, and lexical properties that contribute to the adjectives' meaning.
Regarding the question of how monolingual German-speaking children acquire the semantics of adjectives, I hypothesize that the order of acquisition of adjectives is determined by their semantic complexity. This hypothesis is tested in a spontaneous speech study and a comprehension experiment.
The spontaneous speech study is a longitudinal investigation of the production of adjectives from 2;00 to 2;11 years based on transcripts from a dense data corpus. The results provide evidence that the mean age of acquisition for the adjective classes in the Semantic Complexity Hierarchy follows the order predicted by semantic complexity. The same order was observed for the age at which the number of types for each class increased most. A preliminary analysis of the input indicates that the frequency of parental adjective use is related to the order of acquisition, but it is unlikely that frequency determines the order completely.
The comprehension experiment focuses on two specific adjective classes. I examine children's and adults' interpretation of relative (big, small) and absolute (clean, dirty) gradable dimensional adjectives with a picture-choice task. These two classes are of the same semantic complexity because they are both gradable, but they have different scale structures. As a result, they must be interpreted differently due to lexical semantic properties. I investigate whether children calculate different standards of comparison for relative and absolute gradable adjectives and whether they distinguish between relative and absolute gradable adjectives regarding the relevance of the explicit comparison class. The results indicate that as of age 3, children distinguish between relative and absolute gradable adjectives with regard to the standard of comparison. However, with respect to the relevance of the comparison class, for 3-year-old children, unlike for 4- and 5-year-olds, changes in the noun, i.e., in the explicit comparison class, led to non-adult-like responses regarding both relative and absolute gradable adjectives.
On the basis of the empirical findings, I propose an acquisition path stating that children enter the acquisition process with inherent linguistic knowledge, the Semantic Complexity Hierarchy, and cognitive abilities to categorize their environment. I suggest that initially, children apply the least complex interpretation available in the Semantic Complexity Hierarchy to all adjectives: all adjectives are interpreted as properties of individuals that are not gradable. To access other levels of the Semantic Complexity Hierarchy and to establish more complex adjective classes, positive evidence from the input and conceptual properties of adjectives, e.g., COLOR, MENTAL STATE, PHYSICAL PROPERTY etc., can operate as triggers.
Cellular mobile networks, in which devices constantly relay their location and their movements, are formed by the motion of end devices in relation to the position of radio towers. As a matter of principle, it is this motion that allows the location of devices to be identified within the network. The article argues that the emergence of mobile media based on cellular triangulation has introduced an ontology in which, by technical necessity, the position of every object is constantly registered and objects that do not have an address do not exist. The location and movement of all participants are, at all times, a known technical variable. With Xeros PARC’s “ubiquitous computing” as a reference case, the article scrutinizes how movement triggers the process that registers the locations of mobile phones or smartphones, a development it situates against the cybernetic imagination of determining the location and the movement of an object at the same time.
This paper investigates multi-valuation, i.e. cases where one probe agrees with multiple goals thus obtaining multiple feature values. Focusing on number agreement, I look at the cross-linguistic patterns on multi-valued Ns in the nominal Right Node Raising construction (Nominal RNR) reported in Belyaev et al. (2015); Harizanov & Gribanova (2015); Shen (2016) as well as multi-valued Ts in TP RNR construction reported in Yatabe (2003); Grosz (2009; 2015); Kluck (2009). I show that three types of languages are attested: languages like Serbo-Croatian that show singular marking on both multi-valued Ns and Ts, languages like Russian that show plural marking on both multi-valued Ns and Ts, and languages like English that show singular marking on multi-valued Ns and plural marking on multi-valued Ts. No language is attested that shows plural marking on multi-valued Ns and singular marking on multi-valued Ts. I use this 3/4 pattern to argue that multi-valuation shows the effect of the Agreement Hierarchy discussed by Corbett (1979; 2006) among others.
Three experiments investigated the interpretation and production of pronouns in German. The first two experiments probed the preferred interpretation of a pronoun in contexts containing two potential antecedents by having participants complete a sentence fragment starting either with a personal pronoun or a d-pronoun. We systematically varied three properties of the potential antecedents: syntactic function, linear position, and topicality. The results confirm a subject preference for personal pronouns. The preferred interpretation of d-pronouns cannot be captured by any of the three factors alone. Although a d-pronoun preferentially refers to the non-topic in many cases, this preference can be overridden by the other two factors, linear position and syntactic function. In order to test whether interpretive preferences follow from production biases as proposed by the Bayesian theory of Kehler et al. (2008), a third experiment had participants freely produce a continuation sentence for the contexts of the first two experiments. The results show that personal pronouns are used more often to refer to a subject than to an object, recapitulating the subject preference found for interpretation and thereby confirming the account of Kehler et al. (2008). The interpretation results for the d-pronoun likewise follow from the corresponding production data.
In this paper, we investigate whether timing in monolingual acquisition interacts with age of onset and input effects in child bilingualism. Six different morpho-syntactic and semantic phenomena acquired early, late or very late are considered, with their timing in L1 acquisition varying between age 3 (subject-verb agreement) and after age 6 (case marking). Data from simultaneous bilingual children (2L1) whose mean age of onset to German was 3 months are compared with data from early second language learners of German (eL2) whose mean age of onset to German was 35 months as well as with data from monolingual children. To explore change over time, children were tested twice at the ages of 4;4 and 5;8 years. The main findings were that 2L1 children had an advantage over their eL2 peers in early acquired phenomena, which disappeared with time, whereas in late acquired phenomena 2L1 and eL2 children did not differ. Moreover, 2L1 children performed like monolingual children in early acquired phenomena but had a disadvantage in the late acquired phenomena with the amount of delay decreasing with time. We conclude that age of onset effects are modulated by effects of timing in monolingual acquisition. Contrary to expectation, input in terms of language dominance, measured as the dominant language used at home, did not affect simultaneous bilingual children’s performance in any of the phenomena. We discuss the implications of our findings for the hypothesis that acquisition of late phenomena is determined by input alone and suggest an alternative concept: the learner’s internal need for time to master a phenomenon, which is determined by its complexity and cross-linguistic robustness.