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This article outlines a production-oriented imagology and equips the imagological toolkit with concepts and terminology from cultural memory studies, reception aesthetics, narratology, rhetoric, and text linguistics. It thereby presents the theoretical framework which makes it possible to analyse generic elements without a national connotation with regard to their function in generating a national image. Using as examples genres from English Romanticism and how they evoke Englishness, the article highlights the aesthetic complexity of national images and their range of variation. Simultaneously it paves the way for a more nuanced deconstruction of these images.
This monograph contributes to research in content and language integrated learning (CLIL). Amidst the absence of any educational standards as well as other research deficits, Chapter II sketches a conceptual framework with a competence model for multilingual CLIL classes in the social sciences. It develops a line of argument for the promotion of global discourse competence for democratic participation within a transnational civil society. The subsequent four chapters, comprising one conceptual, one methodological and two empirical contributions, look at different aspects of the conceptual framework. Chapter III defends the developed competence model and further specifies its idea of thought in proposing the construction of multilingual 'cosmopolitan classroom glocalities' for the genesis of 21st century skills. The example of #climonomics, a multilingual EU parliamentary debate about climate change, illustrates its practical realization within school education and exemplifies the contribution to education for sustainable development (ESD) and the value of democratic and participatory learning arrangements. Chapter IV introduces design-based action research (DBAR), the method used in Chapters V & VI. DBAR is a hybrid of action and design-based research and is thereby ideally suited for bridging the gap of theory and practice in educational research. Chapter IV argues for closer cooperation between academics and practitioners, along with pragmatic stakeholder participation by involving students and teachers into research, in a quest for inductively making practical knowledge scientific. Chapter V, more language-biased, draws on the notion of translanguaging and presents the concept of 'trans-foreign-languaging' as a multilingual approach to CLIL with first language (L1) use. During six weeks DBAR, a comprehensive CLIL teaching model with judicious and principled L1 use was designed together with the study group. The model offers affordance-based and differentiated methods for different learner types. Its genesis is reconstructed by a thick description of the natural classroom dynamics. Chapter VI, rather subjectbased, asks about the influence of such bilingual language use on emotions, in particular on the formation of political judgments. It suggests different ways to measure emotions during various natural classroom settings. The chapter concludes that CLIL with L1 use has the potential to engender a perfect equilibrium of emotional and rational learning, integrating emotions into learning and valuing its positive contribution towards appropriate and multilayered political judgments. The concluding Chapter VII binds the previous chapters together and discusses the results. Criteria for the generalization of the results are assessed, and limits demarcated. It highlights the contribution to CLIL research and looks into the future, suggesting further direct classroom interventions, also with the goal to prepare the research field for larger undertakings.
Die folgende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem Thema des Wortschatzerwerbs im Bereich Englisch als Fremdsprache. Die Relevanz und Notwendigkeit des Erlernens von Vokabular ist für den erfolgreichen Fremdsprachenerwerb unumstritten. Sprachen bauen auf Wörtern, sprich Bedeutungsträgern, auf, die es erst zulassen in einer Sprache miteinander kommunizieren zu können. Die Kommunikation kann mit mangelndem und unausreichendem Wortschatz nur begrenzt stattfinden und Missverständnisse können hervortreten. Daher wird in dieser Arbeit in der Einleitung betont, wie wichtig es ist, den Wortschatz von Studierenden zu fördern und je nach Niveau und Altersstufe die richtigen Methoden zur Vermittlung auszuwählen. Die Arbeit liefert dabei explizit ein Beispiel der Umsetzung. Diese findet im universitären Kontext in einer Vorbereitungsklasse einer privaten Universität (Nişantaşı Universität) in Istanbul statt. Die Student*innen der Vorbereitungsklasse befinden sich auf dem Niveau B1 und erwerben Englisch als Fremdsprache. Ein Teil dieser Arbeit zeigt, wie der Wortschatz zu einem bestimmten Thema, hier Beschreibung von Persönlichkeit/ Aussehen, vermittelt werden kann und geht dabei auf Materialien und Arbeitsvorgänge im Unterricht ein. Es werden ein Vortest und ein Nachtest zum Thema durchgeführt, die die Erfolgsquote vor und nach der Vermittlung messen sollen. Ein zweiter Teil der Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem Vergleich des im Englischen zusammengestellten Wortschatzes mit dem entsprechenden Wortschatz im Deutschen, um festzustellen, welche Gemeinsamkeiten und Diskrepanzen zwischen den beiden Sprachen existieren. Die Arbeit resultiert in einem Fazit, welches ein weiteres Mal die Relevanz von dem Wortschatzerwerb im Fremdsprachenunterricht betont.
Was man schon weiß, gibt jedem die Stärke, weiter zu lernen und höhere Erfolgsziele zu erreichen. Im Tertiärsprachenunterricht ergreift der Lerner im Kontext Deutsch als Fremdsprache nach Englisch (DaFnE) günstige Lerngelegenheiten aus der ersten Fremdsprache Englisch. Durch die Sensibilisierung des Sprachvergleichs und der Bewusstmachung von Sprachlernerfahrungen, können Lernende mit ihren vorhandenen Sprachkenntnissen sichere Lernerfolge im DaF-Unterricht erzielen. Um den Input der Lernenden aus dem Englischen bewusst zu aktivieren, müssen optimale Lernsituationen bereitgestellt werden. In diesem Zusammenhang soll im Tertiärsprachenunterricht ein interkultureller Raum geschaffen werden, wo die Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede zwischen dem Englischen und Deutschen bearbeitet werden können. Die Redewendungen können als soziokulturelle Kompetenz zu der Integrierung in den DaFnE-Unterricht bedeutend sein. Diese Arbeit konzentriert sich auf die Einbeziehung der Redewendungen in den Tertiärsprachenunterricht. Die englischen und deutschen Redewendungen wurden für den DaFnE-Unterricht analysiert und als Redewendungen mit absoluter Ähnlichkeit, Redewendungen mit teilweiser Ähnlichkeit und Redewendungen mit kontextueller Ähnlichkeit kategorisiert. Nach der Bestimmung der Redewendungen für den Tertiärsprachenunterricht DaFnE, war es wichtig, wie man diese Redewendungen als DaF-Lehrkraft im Tertiärsprachenunterricht in die Praxis umsetzen kann. Dazu wurden einige Einbeziehungswege mit Beispielen vorgeschlagen. Die Visualisierung der Redewendungen kann die Lehrkraft besonders beim Anfangsniveau effektiv einsetzen und damit einen wichtigen Antrieb zur Erweiterung des Wortschatzes geben. Die anderen zwei Einbeziehungsmöglichkeiten auf der Spur der Redewendungen und Kontextsituationen der Redewendungen können in weiteren Niveaus eingesetzt werden, nachdem sich die Lernenden an die Redewendungen gewöhnt haben. Mit dem interkulturellen Vergleich der Redewendungen können Lernmotivation, Sprachbewusstheit und zugleich Lernerautonomie gefördert werden.
Küreselleşen dünya göz önüne alındığında ortak dilin İngilizce olduğu görünmektedir. Bütün dünyada olduğu gibi ülkemizde de birinci yabancı dil olarak İngilizce öncelik kazanmıştır. Almanca, Fransızca, Rusça gibi diller ikinci yabancı dil olarak değerlendirilmiştir. Sanayi ülkesi olan Almanya'nın ekonomisinden aldığı güçle, dilini diğer ülkelere kabul ettirdiğini göz ardı etmemek gerekir. Bunun dışında Avrupa’da en çok konuşulan Anadili olma özelliği de Almancanın önemini arttırmıştır. Söz konusu özelliklerinden dolayı Almanca ikinci yabancı dil öğrenme sıralamasında üst sıralarda yer almaktadır. İkinci yabancı dili öğrenen bir öğrenci için birinci yabancı dil her zaman yardımcı dil görevi görmektedir. Öğrenci birinci yabancı dili öğrenirken edindiği tecrübeyi, belirlediği stratejiyi, ikinci yabancı dil için de kullanmaktan kaçınmamalıdır. Birinci yabancı dil olarak İngilizce öğrenen bir öğrenci, ikinci yabancı dil olarak Almancayı seçtiğinde, bu tecrübe ve stratejilerini kolaylıkla kullanabileceği bir ortamı yakalamış olmaktadır. Bunun sebebi ise Almanca ve İngilizcenin birçok ortak noktaya sahip olmasıdır. Ülkemizde bu önemli iki dili öğreten ve öğrenen kişinin fazla olması, bu çalışmayı yapmamızı teşvik etmiştir. Bu çalışmada doküman inceleme (analizi) yöntemi kullanılarak ikinci yabancı dil olarak Almanca dili eğitiminde birinci yabancı dil olan İngilizcenin köprü dil olarak kullanılıp, daha kolay bir şekilde öğrenilmesi ve anlaşılması incelenmiştir.
Neste artigo, trazemos algumas reflexões a respeito da influência exercida por línguas anteriormente aprendidas no processo de aprendizagem de alemão como L3 por aprendizes brasileiros. Essas influências podem operar tanto por meio de transferências linguísticas intencionais, controladas pelos próprios aprendizes, quanto por transferências não intencionais. Dependendo do referencial teórico adotado, essas transferências intencionais são consideradas estratégias de aprendizagem e/ou de comunicação. Com base em uma pesquisa empírica realizada em 2017 e em alguns debates na área acadêmica em torno do assunto (OXFORD 1990, 2011; BIMMEL e RAMPILLON 2000; SELINKER 1972, 2014; HUFEISEN 2010), este artigo tem como objetivo analisar as estratégias utilizadas por aprendizes de alemão como L3 em um chat online e refletir sobre as influências interlinguais exercidas sobre os aprendizes de forma não intencional. Os resultados obtidos apontam para contrastes (1) quanto ao tipo de estratégias utilizadas por aprendizes em diferentes níveis de aprendizagem e (2) quanto à língua da qual decorreram as influências não intencionais: aprendizes mais proficientes utilizaram estratégias que mobilizaram mais elementos da língua-alvo, como os circunlóquios, e não sofreram nenhuma influência exclusivamente da língua materna (apenas da L1 e da L2 concomitantemente ou apenas da L2), ao contrário de aprendizes menos proficientes.
Wissenschaft
(2018)
Das Wort 'Wissenschaft' markiert eine lexikalische Lücke - im Englischen. Es ist für diese Sprache ein 'intraduisible'. Mindestens zwei Wörter braucht das Englische, um das Gemeinte zu bezeichnen: 'science' für die Naturwissenschaften und - symptomatisch in Pluralform und Variabilität - 'arts' oder 'humanities' für die Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften. Die Einheit 'der Wissenschaft' lässt sich im Englischen und anderen Sprachen, die über das inklusive 'Wissenschaft' nicht verfügen, also nicht einfach ausdrücken.
Flashmob, App, E-Bike, Gendermainstreaming, bloggen, skypen, gefaked/gefakt, geliked/gelikt, Coffee-to-go, Latte macchiato, Gnocchi, Yallah, Shisha oder Sushi – die beherrschenden Fremdwörter aus Wissenschaft und Alltag der Gegenwartssprache im 21. Jahrhundert sind englischen Ursprungs, im letzten Jahrzehnt auch zunehmend aus anderen modernen europäischen und außereuropäischen Sprachen entlehnt. Die Entlehnungsbedingungen dieser Wörter unterscheiden sich damit grundsätzlich von den Gegebenheiten, die für die Integrationsentwicklungen bei Gräzismen und Latinismen sowie für Gallizismen bestimmend waren. Während die Fremdwörter aus den drei bis ins 20. Jahrhundert hinein wesentlichen Gebersprachen über Jahrhunderte hinweg in mehreren Phasen schrittweise Eingang in die deutsche Sprache fanden und dabei durch einen kontinuierlichen, wenn auch nicht immer widerspruchsfreien Prozess orthografischer Normierung begleitet wurden, erfolgte die Übernahme einer Vielzahl von Anglizismen und anderer Neologismen erheblich schneller im Rahmen umfassender Internationalisierung und Globalisierung von Sprache und Gesellschaft. Die entlehnten Wörter bezeichnen zum allergrößten Teil neue Phänomene, Wortbedeutungen oder Sachverhalte, sie sind Indizien für fundamentale gesellschaftliche Veränderungen, die einen grundlegenden Sprach- und schließlich auch Schreibwandel zur Folge haben. Im Gegensatz zum Umfeld früherer Entlehnungen bieten normierende Texte wie Grammatiken oder Wörterbücher daher zunächst noch keine orthografische Orientierung. Stattdessen gewinnt das Internet, bestimmt von professionellen wie auch informellen Schreibern, sowohl als Bezugsquelle von Informationen als auch als Orientierungsrahmen für die Schreibung neuer Wörter eine immer stärkere Bedeutung. Anglizismen spielen dabei eine Sonderrolle: Sie werden sowohl von englischen als auch von deutschen Quelltexten aus rezipiert und zum Teil in ihrem gebersprachlichen graphemischen Status übernommen, zum Teil modifiziert.
"Concordia domi, foris pax" : zur sprichwörtlichen Mehrsprachigkeit der Rhetorik Helmut Schmidts
(2016)
In den zahlreichen Büchern Helmut Schmidts, die in Sammelbänden auch seine Interviews, Reden und Aufsätze enthalten, spielen fremdsprachliche Phraseologismen eigentlich nur eine kleine Rolle. Dieser Beitrag enthält im Prinzip alle aufgefundenen Belege, was deutlich zu erkennen gibt, dass Helmut Schmidt im Vergleich zu Otto von Bismarck und Willy Brandt seine lateinischen und englischen Sprachkenntnisse weniger unter Beweis stellt. Französisch fehlt wegen seiner Unkenntnis der ehemals so bedeutenden Diplomatensprache fast völlig, während sich die beiden aussagekräftigen lateinischen Sprichwörter "Concordia domi, foris pax" und "Salus publica suprema lex" als gewichtige Leitmotive der politischen Rhetorik Schmidts erweisen. Erwartungsgemäß vertritt die moderne lingua franca des Angloamerikanischen die Mehrsprachigkeit Schmidts am deutlichsten. Zusätzlich zu englischen Zwillingsformeln und Redensarten kommt es hier in der Tat zu einer Reihe von englischen und amerikanischen Sprichwörtern, die eine erhebliche kommunikative Funktion übernehmen. Zweifelsohne hätte Schmidt deutschsprachige Äquivalente finden können, doch will er offensichtlich seine Betrachtungen zur politischen Situation in Deutschland, Europa und der Welt durch angloamerikanische Sprichwortweisheiten international untermauern. Dafür gab es vormals Latein und Französisch, doch hat nuneinmal die englische Weltsprache diese Rolle im modernen Zeitalter übernommen.
Im Welt-Raum des Gedichts : zu Rilkes Poetik des Bezugs mit (hauptsächlich) englischen Kontexten
(2016)
Welt ist das was man erkundet; oder das, aus dem heraus sich die Sinne sehnen, wie Rilke sein mönchisches Ich im Stunden-Buch sagen lässt. Dieses Ich konnte er sich als "Stimme einer stillen Zelle" vorstellen, "an der die Welt vorüberweht". Welt konnte für Rilke etwas Transitorisches sein oder ein Raum, angefüllt mit Städten, die ihre Bewohner der Natur entfremden; im Park sieht sie sich allenfalls zitiert, im Jardin du Luxembourg etwa. Zählt man Städtenamen auf, dann setzt man ihre magische Anziehungskraft frei; jedem Namen seine Aura, was auch für die Art zutraf, mit der Rilke Städtenamen nannte: Prag und Wien, Florenz und Rom, Moskau und Paris, Brügge und St. Petersburg. Aber London?
Textkompetenz in mehreren Sprachen : Forschungsergebnisse und weiterführende Forschungsansätze
(2014)
The article presents results of an empirical study which examines productive transfer in the area of text skills competence and the associated writing skill which could be attributed to the learners' contact with several languages. The research was conducted within the research project "Multilingualism in the Czech Republik: Learning and Teaching German after English." After a short presentation of the key concepts in the development of the study and a presentation of selected results, implications and a modell for further research in multilingual writing and on transfer processes between languages are introduced.
O objetivo principal deste artigo é apresentar uma visão geral dos resultados obtidos em uma pesquisa empírica envolvendo aprendizes adultos de alemão como língua estrangeira com conhecimentos prévios de inglês. O foco deste artigo recai sobre os processos envolvidos no ensino/aprendizagem de terceiras línguas, levando-se em consideração que a língua alemã é comumente aprendida como uma segunda língua estrangeira após o inglês. Os principais questionamentos da pesquisa estão baseados em processos de transferência positiva, bem como na interferência linguística observada em um grupo de 50 aprendizes de alemão dos níveis A1 a B1 do Quadro Europeu Comum de Referência para as Línguas. Ao que concerne a relação entre as línguas alemã e inglesa, a afirmação de que o inglês exerce um papel importante na aprendizagem de alemão pôde ser confirmada, sendo o parentesco etimológico entre as duas línguas um dos mais importantes fatores para se determinar a ocorrência de influência interlinguística. Por outro lado, a interferência linguística resultante da coexistência de ambas as línguas demanda o desenvolvimento de uma didática do plurilinguismo que compreenda métodos alternativos para o ensino/aprendizagem de alemão como segunda língua estrangeira no Brasil.
Alle germanischen Sprachen haben in den nachchristlichen Jahrhunderten eine phonologische Umlautphase durchlaufen, allerdings mit je unterschiedlichen Resultaten. Dieser Umgang mit den Umlautprodukten wurde bisher nie vergleichend in den Blick genommen; vielmehr bekommt man in jeder Einzelphilologie den Eindruck, als habe die Umlautentwicklung nur so und nicht anders verlaufen können. Erst die historisch-kontrastive Perspektive erweist, dass sich drei Pfade systematisieren lassen: Der Umlaut wird konserviert (Isländisch), er wird eliminiert (Englisch, Niederländisch) – Schwedisch nimmt hier eine Zwischenposition ein –, oder er wird funktionalisiert (grammatikalisiert) und damit morphologisch ausgedehnt (Deutsch, Luxemburgisch).
Im Folgenden werden diese drei Wege nicht nur beschrieben, sondern auch begründet. Der konsequente Sprachwandelvergleich ermöglicht dabei das Verständnis von Zusammenhängen und erlaubt es, aus den Einzelphilologien abgeleitete Annahmen zu revidieren.
Vestiges
(2013)
The poems in this collection are adequate, with great lines. The rhythm is stimulating to all the five senses thanks to the use of multiple images. A lot of imagery in Vestiges gives a picture of a war front after a ferocious battle. The objects, animals, and images in the poems disorient and lead the reader to focusing on putting flesh to the bones than just getting the juice of the poems... The rhythm more than anything else carries the reader through this chaotic tableau painted in Vestiges. In a way, this comes across as a substantiation of the poet's vision of our world and an explanation as to why he considers this collection as a skeleton; and precisely skeletons left by the ravages of war. Is the poet's world and ours a field of ruins and topsy-turvydom to which we are all blind? The answer is yours.
Verschiedene Gedichte Rilkes mit englischer Übersetzung, darunter "Poem of Capri I", "Der Ursprung der Chimäre" / "The Origin of the Chimera", "Lied" / "Song" und eine Auswahl der "Uncollected Poems".
The aim of this paper is to give a unified account of the way that German demonstrative pronouns (henceforth: D-pronouns) like der, die and das behave (a) in sentences where they receive a coreferential interpretation, and (b) in sentences where they receive a covarying interpretation because they are in some way dependent on a quantificational expression – either via direct binding or indirectly, because the value they receive varies with the value that is assigned to the variable bound by an indefinite determiner.
For reasons of space, we only discussed one text in which the metaphors used seem to take their root in the context in which it has been written. One text is definitely not enough to make any definite claims on how widespread this phenomenon is. Given what we know about the two domains - Food and taste - one has reasons to believe that when speakers/conceptualisers (e.g. journalists) describe something which stands in some relation to both, they may intuitively be reaching for taste metaphors of the kind described above on the premise that this kind of ‘ornamentation’ will add some spice to what the addressee might otherwise consider a trivial (and boring) topic. At the same time, taste is only one among many properties a particular item of food or a substance (e.g. sugar) has. In consequence, one may well imagine contexts in which it is not its taste, but other properties (e.g. what Harbottle [1997:183] refers to as its 'pure white and deadly’ image) that will make the conceptualiser reach for a particular linguistic or conceptual metaphor.
In this paper I tried to demonstrate that the British films depicting football hooliganism could be viewed as glorifying violence. A considerably great number of scenes and a great amount of time devoted to the presentation of violence, together with the unpunished, painless and heroic aspects of such presentations are just one side of the glorifying coin. The other side is occupied with the deeper meaning of particular scenes or the general overtones of the films which seem to develop a tendency to present a hooligan firm as a family-like community that offers happiness and produces a strong feeling of belonging and solidarity that adds spice to the boring working or middle class life. Violent confrontations are depicted as a source of pleasurable emotional arousal that surpass other forms of enjoyment. Moreover, confronting other hooligans helps hooligans to construct hard masculine identity based on physical prowess. Finally, being a good fighter is a fast track to earning a reputation that provides hooligans with a sense of power and importance. Real hooligans starring in the films, thus potentially encouraging viewers to become “wannabe warriors”, is also of great importance. However, the way the audiences react to the on-screen presentation of violence with all its aspects is a topic for much broader research.
This article will attempt to suggest translation procedures necessary to translate culturally bound items in the referential level of a literary work illustrated with examples from two novels: “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison and “Vineland” by Thomas Pynchon. First, the article will include a general description of the referential level in literary works offering possible avenues of 285 its rendition, then and finally suggest a translation methodology and techniques together with practical examples of the theory at work.
Several phenomena associated with the differences in the performance of novice interpreters and semi-professionals have been discussed in the paper. Particular emphasis was placed on the occurrence of imported cognitive load which strongly influenced the performance of the subjects also in places where no intrinsic difficulty had been detected. Nevertheless, too little evidence was provided to establish a more detailed pattern of imported cognitive load, which was due to the limited number of participants in the study. It would be possible to obtain more detailed data and comments from the participants by means of interviews conducted individually with the participants. It would allow asking detailed questions to the participants, which might be a more reliable method than the immediate retrospective accounts. Moreover, in the present study such variables as gender differences, age differences and the possible influence of other foreign languages were not taken into account. Perhaps these variables might shed some light on the issue of the management of cognitive resources. Also, the corpus gathered for the present study may be used for the investigation of other aspects of the SI performance.
The cognitive framework seems to comply with the need of interdisciplinary outlook on the issue of emotions, as it itself draws upon findings of psychological, anthropological and philosophical research. Along with undertaking further studies on the conceptualization of emotions in different languages, from the detailed analysis of the repertoire of linguistic means used for talking about emotions to investigation into tendencies to use metaphors or metonymies to talk about emotions, some broader conclusions could be drawn. The greatest challenge seems to be establishing whether there are any cultural (social, economical, conventional, political, religious) conditions that may influence the relevant changes in conceptualizing emotions in different languages and whether it is possible to point to any laws or regularities that would govern these changes.
Translation is a very broad, complex and multi-faceted phenomenon, encompassing much more factors than it seems at first glance. It is not just copying the words from the original work while changing the language, but it consists of a careful selection of appropriate phrases and expressions, combining them together in a skillful way while taking into consideration numerous aspects, one of them being the text type. The purpose of this article is, therefore, to present various text typologies and text types, specify their implications for translators and determine the role of the correct recognition of text type in producing a successful translation. This will be done on the assumption that a text type is one of the basic factors that allow the translator to recognise the function and purpose of the text as well as the author's intention. Thus, depending on the nature of these, the translator will inevitably resort to different techniques and strategies in order to successfully render the source text. Therefore, identifying the text type also helps the translator to select the appropriate translation strategy.
The aim of this article is to follow the changes that took place in the history of easy-to-please constructions. To fully apprehend that, we will begin by looking at Middle English infinitives and the change which affected them. Our attempt here is to prove that Early Middle English to was at its intermediate stage of development, i.e. it was neither a preposition nor inflection. In Late Middle English, to reached its final stage of a gradual evolution heading TR On account of the analysis of to and infinitives in Middle English, new constructions in which easv-to-please appear will be explained.
[Rezension zu:] Sabine Coelsch-Foisner u. Dorothea Flothow: High Culture and/versus Popular Culture
(2011)
Rezension zu Sabine Coelsch-Foisner u. Dorothea Flothow: High Culture and/versus Popular Culture. Heidelberg (Universitätsverlag Winter) 2009 (= Wissenschaft und Kunst; Bd. 12). 208 S.
Das Verhältnis von Hoch- und Populärkultur beschäftigt weder die Literaturwissenschaft noch die Kulturtheorie erst seit jüngster Zeit. Doch jenseits einer Wertungskritik a la Killy, Broch oder Adorno/Horkheimer einerseits und eines die Grenzüberwindung postulierenden Kulturoptimismus' im Sinne Susan Sontags oder Umberto Ecos Rechtfertigung der Massenkultur andererseits, bietet diese Distinktion immer noch genug Anlaß zur Diskussion und Auseinandersetzung, wie der die Beiträge der im Jahr 2007 in Salzburg stattgefundenen 18. 'British Cultural Studies Conference' in Auswahl umfassende Band belegt. Ziel der Konferenz war es, so die Herausgeberinnen, "to explore the relationship between high culture and popular culture in terms of dynamic processes." Im Band wird dieses Vorhaben mehr oder minder eingelöst durch 13 insgesamt recht blasse Fallstudien, denen zwei theoretische Beiträge vorangestellt sind.
In the sections that follow we shall be concerned with analyzing the semantic evolution of the noun cheek in the history of English. The semantics of the lexical item under scrutiny will be examined with reference to its two aspects, that is (1) the semantic potential of the analysed lexical unit in its primary, etymological sense (sense A) and its secondary senses (senses B > E), (2) as well as the secondary senses emerging from various phraseological units which echo the nominal sense B (henceforth B-related senses). The analysis proposed here continues the area of research initiated in Wieclawska (2009a, 2009b), Wieclawska 2010, Kleparski and Wieclawska (2010) and Wieclawska (2011), the target of which are semantic changes and phraseological productivity of lexical items variously related to the conceptual macrocategory BODY PARTS. The methodological apparatus employed here is the one that follows the theoretical frames developed by, among others, Kleparski (1996, 1997, 2002), Kieltyka (2008, 2010) that may be referred to as representing much cognitivistic spirit of semantic analysis.
'Dante and Ireland', or 'Dante and Irish Writers', is an extremely vast topic, and to cover it a book rather than an essay would be necessary. If the relationship between the poet and Ireland did not begin in the fourteenth century - when Dante himself may have had some knowledge of, and been inspired by, the "Vision of Adamnán", the "Vision of Tungdal", and the "Tractatus de purgatorio Sancti Patricii" - the story certainly had started by the eighteenth, when the Irish man of letters Henry Boyd was the first to produce a complete English translation of the "Comedy", published in 1802. Even if one restricts the field to twentieth-century literature alone, which is the aim in the present piece, the list of authors who are influenced by Dante includes Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, and Heaney - that is to say, four of the major writers not only of Ireland, but of Europe and the entire West. To these should then be added other Irish poets of the first magnitude, such as Louis MacNeice, Ciaran Carson, Eiléan Ní Cuilleanáin, and Thomas Kinsella. Therefore Piero Boitani treats this theme in a somewhat cursory manner, privileging the episodes he considers most relevant and the themes which he thinks form a coherent and intricate pattern of literary history, where every author is not only metamorphosing Dante but also rewriting his predecessor, or predecessors, who had rewritten Dante. Distinct from the English and American Dante of Pound and Eliot, an 'Irish Dante', whom Joyce was to call 'ersed irredent', slowly grows out of this pattern.
Um dicionário contribui para a permanência e a padronização duma língua. O desenvolvimento das línguas moçambicanas serve para enriquecer e fortalecer esta nação. Alem disso, facilita a transição do povo para a aprendizagem da língua portuguesa. A ortografia usada neste dicionário segue as recomendações de NELIMO, o Núcleo de Estudo de Línguas Moçambicanas. A única excepção é o uso da letra j para o som ‘dj’ ou ‘tj’: NELIMO recomenda que seja escrita com c. Estamos abertos para receber quaisquer sugestões que eventualmente surgirem pela parte dos prezados leitores.
This study examines intraoral pressure for English and German stops in bilabial and alveolar place of articulation. Our subjects are two speakers of American English and three speakers of German. VOICING is the main phonological contrast under evaluation in both word initial and word final position. For initial stops, a few of the pressure characteristics showed differences between English and German, but on the whole the results point to similar production strategies at both places of articulation in the two different languages. Analysis of the pressure trajectory differences between VOICING categories in initial position raises questions about articulatory differences. In the initial closing gesture, time from start of gesture to closure is roughly equivalent for both categories, but the pressure change is significantly smaller on average for VOICED stops. Final stops, however, present a more complicated picture. German final stops are neutralized to a presumed VOICELESS phonological state. English final /p/ is broadly similar to German /p/, but English /t/ often shows no pressure increase at all which is at odds with the conventional account of phonation termination via pressure increase and loss of pressure differential. The results raise the question of whether the German final stops should be considered VOICELESS or some intermediate form, at least as compared to English final stops.
It could be said that learner’s dictionaries are the most reliable expression of lexicography in terms of providing the necessary tools to help the learning process of a foreign language. This paper analyses three English learner’s dictionaries in order to establish its stylistic patterns as well as to compare them with four German learner’s dictionaries. Undoubtly, the lexicography of English learner’s dictionaries is a model. However, we argue that this model can not be transfered to German lexicography since each language has its own particularities which demand specific solutions.
Rezension zu Rainer Maria Rilke's The Book of Hours. A New Translation with Commentary. Translated by Susan Ranson. Edited with and Introduction and Notes by Ben Hutchinson. Camden House. Rochester New York. 2009. XLIV + 240 S.
The reason is not small
(2010)
"Don’t forget the sugar!" my husband called after our son who was already running down the road, hopping across puddles and skirting garbage mounds. He leaned back in his chair and sighed. The plastic covered wires were stretching to the point that they would break soon. We would get it restrung again. (...)
Iako se prevedenicama aktiviraju vlastite izražajne mogućnosti jezika, one su također predmet purističkih reakcija. Cilj je rada analizirati latentni utjecaj engleskoga jezika na različite jezične razine kao pojavu koja je prisutna u hrvatskome i u drugim europskim jezicima. Primjeri pokazuju da se radi o rasprostranjenoj pojavi koja proizlazi iz doslovnoga i nemarnoga prijevoda, nepoznavanja norme vlastitoga jezika i pomodnoga slijeda engleske jezične norme.
The flâneur has been depicted in several different ways in 19th as well as 20th and 21st century literature and criticism. The focus of this brief paper will be on the roles given him in English writings from or around the time of the 1848 revolutions in France and Germany, in which the flâneur comes to represent not only a street idler, but also a critical traveller to, and observer of, the continental city and its revolutionary activities.
Metaphorization and selected translation techniques : the case study of "National Geographic"
(2008)
Judging by appearances : a study of human-oriented metonymic developments in the domain of dress
(2008)
Previous work examining the role of antecedent accessibility in pronominal coreference has often linked coreference to prominent structural positions that in turn are linked to information structure statuses such as topic. Three experiments examine the influence of topichood independently of structural prominence by exploring the influence of the pragmatic notion of aboutness on the written production of pronominal coreferring expressions. The results show that being mentioned in an about-phrase increases the likelihood that a referent will be selected as the future topic of a following sentence as well as increasing the proportion of responses with early, pronominal coreference to that referent, at the expense of coreference with the subject. These results suggest that coreference is sensitive to the status of other, structurally non-prominent referents in discourse, and that the pragmatic notion of aboutness influences pronominal coreference.
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.
The causative/anticausative alternation has been the topic of much typological and theoretical discussion in the linguistic literature. This alternation is characterized by verbs with transitive and intransitive uses, such that the transitive use of a verb V means roughly "cause to Vintransitive" (see Levin 1993). The discussion revolves around two issues: the first one concerns the similarities and differences between the anticausative and the passive, and the second one concerns the derivational relationship, if any, between the transitive and intransitive variant. With respect to the second issue, a number of approaches have been developed. Judging the approach conceptually unsatisfactory, according to which each variant is assigned an independent lexical entry, it was concluded that the two variants have to be derivationally related. The question then is which one of the two is basic and where this derivation takes place in the grammar. Our contribution to this discussion is to argue against derivational approaches to the causative / anticausative alternation. We focus on the distribution of PPs related to external arguments (agent, causer, instrument, causing event) in passives and anticausatives of English, German and Greek and the set of verbs undergoing the causative/anticausative alternation in these languages. We argue that the crosslinguistic differences in these two domains provide evidence against both causativization and detransitivization analyses of the causative / anticausative alternation. We offer an approach to this alternation which builds on a syntactic decomposition of change of state verbs into a Voice and a CAUS component. Crosslinguistic variation in passives and anticausatives depends on properties of Voice and its combinations with CAUS and various types of roots.
It has often been noticed that one syntactic argument position can be realized by elements which seem to realize different thematic roles. This is notably the case with the external argument position of verbs of change of state which licenses volitional agents, instruments or natural forces/causers, showing the generality and abstractness of the external argument relation. (1) a. John broke the window (Agent) b. The hammer broke the window (Instrument) c. The storm broke the window (Causer) In order to capture this generality, Van Valin & Wilkins (1996) and Ramchand (2003) among others have proposed that the thematic role of the external argument position is in fact underspecified. The relevant notion is that of an effector (in Van Valin & Wilkins) or of an abstract causer/initiator (in Ramchand). In this paper we argue against a total underspecification of the external argument relation. While we agree that (1b) does not instantiate an instrument theta role in subject position, we argue that a complete underspecification of the external theta-position is not feasible, but that two types of external theta roles have to be distinguished, Agents and Causers. Our arguments are based on languages where Agents and Causers show morpho-syntactic independence (section 2.1) and the behavior of instrument subjects in English, Dutch, German and Greek (section 2.2 and 3). We show that instrument subjects are either Agent or Causer like. In section (4) we give an analysis how arguments realizing these thematic notions are introduced into syntax.
Rezension zu Annette Simonis: Grenzüberschreitungen in der phantastischen Literatur. Einführung in die Theorie und Geschichte eines narrativen Genres. Heidelberg (Winter) 2005. 312 S.
Annette Simonis macht in ihrem Einführungsbuch die kulturwissenschaftliche Modellierung des rituellen Übergangs für das Verständnis phantastischer Literatur fruchtbar. Deutlich ist dabei allerdings von Anfang an, dass es nicht darum gehen kann, phantastische Werke als bloße Illustrationen kulturwissenschaftlicher Thesen zu verstehen, sondern vielmehr darum, ein bereitgestelltes Modell in den Dienst genuin literaturhermeneutischer Interessen zu nehmen.
This paper investigates what factors make a particular referent a good antecedent for subsequent pronominal reference. In particular, it explores two seemingly conflicting claims in the literature regarding the effects of topicality and focusing on referent salience. In light of new experimental results combined with a review of existing work, I conclude that neither topicality nor focusing alone can explain referent salience as indicated by patterns of pronoun reference. Rather, the data provide support for a multiple-factor model of salience (e.g. Arnold 1999). More specifically, the results show that grammatical role has a striking effect: being a subject makes a referent more salient than either pronominalization/givenness or focusing alone. Furthermore, the results of the experiment suggest that the likelihood of subsequent pronominal reference is also influenced by structural focusing and pronominalization, but not as strongly as by subjecthood. I argue that these data are best captured by a multiple-factor model in which factors differ in how influential they are relative to one another, i.e. how heavily weighted they are. A single-factor system does not seem adequate for these data.
Dog after dog revisited
(2006)
This paper presents a compositional semantic analysis of pluractional adverbial modifiers like 'dog after dog' and 'one dog after the other'. We propose a division of labour according to which much of the semantics is carried by a family of plural operators. The adverbial itself contributes a semantics that we call pseudoreciprocal.
This paper investigates the semantic underpinnings of the distinction between two syntactic types of "manner of movement" verbs in Levin (1993), namely the RUN and ROLL classes. According to Levin's (1993) and Levin & Rappaport's (1995) work on unaccusativity, a semantic factor of "internal causation" should be the trigger for the classification of a movement verb as intransitive (=not-unaccusative), and hence for its belonging to the RUN class. We point out empirical problems for this characterisation, mainly coming from the different readings of the German verb fliegen (fly). From a comparison with other semantically similar verbs, we conclude that the semantic description which underlies the class distinction should be refined: instead of "internal causation", the crucial semantic factor is described here as "inherent specification for a momentum of movement". This result indicates that forces, and relations between forces, have to be part of the semantic description of the manner component in movement verbs.
Many analyses of existential sentences have focused attention on determining which of its elements constitutes the logical subject and predicate, and this has proven to be a not uncontroversial topic of research. Some, from both syntactic and semantic points of view, have argued that there is a subject (cf. Williams 1994) others that it is a predicate (cf. Moro 1997). Similarly, some have argued that the associate NP is a logical subject, others that it is apredicate (Higginbotham 1987).
One logical possibility that has not (to my knowledge) been pursued in the linguistics literature is that these statements are not of the form subject-predicate, a possibility that has been taken up in the philosophical literature by P.F. Strawson (1959). He claims that there are such statements and that their form is simpler than that of subject-predicate statements because it does not, and cannot, involve an expression that makes reference to an individual. Not involving reference to an individual, these sentences are therefore are made true by different means than a subject-predicate statement whose truth, in the simplest cases, depends on the denotation of the subject being a member of the denotation of the predicate. Of interest from the point of view of the present discussion is his claim that existential statements are examples of this kind of statement, which he calls a feature-placing statement. The truth of a statement of the form feature-placer requires that something with the set of features denoted by the associate NP exist at the location or coordinates expressed by the placer. In an existential sentence we can take the associate NP as the feature-denoting expression and the coda-XP as the placer.
There is an elegant account, proposed by Beaver and Condoravdi (2003), that assumes that the temporal connectives before and after are converses (i.e., they are analyzed by means of a unified lexical schema), and that explains away their different logical and veridical behavior appealing to other factors. There is an elegant explanation that connects the licensing of Polarity Items to informational strengthening requirements: Polarity Items are viewed as existentials that lead to a widening of the domain of quantification, and they are predicted to be legitimate only when this widening leads to a stronger statement (roughly, in downward monotone contexts). My plan is to connect these two approaches – by proposing an amendment in the definition Beaver and Condoravdi presented for before and after that is meant to account also for their Polarity Items licensing behavior.
Modifiability by almost has been used as a test for the quantificational force of a DP without stating the meaning of almost explicitly. The aim of this paper is to give a semantics for almost applying across categories and to evaluate the validity of the almost test as a diagnosis for universal quantifiers. It is argued that almost is similar to other cross-categorial modifiers such as at least or exactly in referring to alternatives ordered on a scale. I propose that almost evaluates alternatives in which the modified expression is replaced by a value close by on the corresponding Horn scale. It is shown that a semantics for almost that refers to scalar alternatives derives the correct truth conditions for almost and explains selectional restrictions. At the same time, taking the semantics of almost seriously invalidates the almost test as a simple diagnosis for the nature of quantifiers.
Functions of English "man"
(2006)
This paper discusses the semantics of the English particle man. It is shown that this particle does different things when used sentence-initially and sentence-finally. The sentenceinitial use is further shown to separate into two distinct intonational types with different semantic content. A formal semantics is proposed for these types.
We propose a compositional analysis for sentences of the kind "You only have to go to the North End to get good cheese", referred to as the Sufficiency Modal Construction in the recent literature. We argue that the SMC is ambiguous depending on the kind of ordering induced by only. So is the exceptive construction – its cross-linguistic counterpart. Only is treated as inducing either a 'comparative possibility' scale or an 'implication-based' partial order on propositions. The properties of the 'comparative possibility' scale explain the absence of the prejacent presupposition that is usually associated with only. By integrating the scalarity into the semantics of the SMC, we explain the polarity facts observed in both variants of the construction. The sufficiency meaning component is argued to be due to a pragmatic inference.
Multiple modals construction
(2006)
Modal items of different semantic types can only be combined in a specific order. Epistemic items, for instance, cannot be embedded under deontic ones. I'll argue that this fact cannot be explained by the current semantic theories of modality. A solution to this problem will be developed in an update semantics framework. On the semantic side, a distinction will be drawn between circumstantial information about the world and information about duties, whereas I'll use Nuyts' notion of m-performativity to account for certain use of the modal items.
The expressions few and a few are typically considered to be separate quantifiers. I challenge this assumption, showing that with the appropriate definition of few, a few can be derived compositionally as a + few. The core of the analysis is a proposal that few has a denotation as a one-place predicate which incorporates a negation operator. From this, argument interpretations can be derived for expressions such as few students and a few students, differing only in the scope of negation. I show that this approach adequately captures the interpretive differences between few and a few. I further show that other such pairs are blocked by a constraint against the vacuous application of a.
Kripke's "modal argument" uses consideration about scope within modal contexts to show that proper names and definite descriptions must be of two different semantic types. I reexamine the data that is used to motivate Kripke's argument, and suggest that it, in fact, indicates that proper names behave exactly like a certain type of definite description, which I call "particularized" descriptions.
This paper revisits the question of whether propositions in situation semantics must be persistent (Kratzer (1989)). It shows that ignoring persistence causes empirical problems to theories which use quantification over minimal situations as a solution for donkey anaphora (Elbourne (2005)), while at the same time modifying these theories to incorporate persistence makes them incompatible with the use of situations for contextual restriction (Kratzer (2004)).
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.
In this paper I discuss four type of bare nominal, and note that, in some sense, all of them appear to imply stereotypicality. I consider an account in terms of Bidirectional Optimality Theory: unmarked (bare) forms give rise to unmarked (stereotypical) interpretations. However, it turns out that, while the form of bare numerals is unmarked, the interpretation sometimes is not. I suggest that the crucial notion is not unmarkedness, but optimal inference: unmarked forms give rise to interpretations that are best used for drawing inferences. I propose a revision of Bidirectional Optimality Theory to reflect this.
The retreat of BE as perfect auxiliary in the history of English is examined. Corpus data are presented showing that the initial advance of HAVE was most closely connected to a restriction against BE in past counterfactuals. Other factors which have been reported to favor the spread of HAVE are either dependent on the counterfactual effect, or significantly weaker in comparison. It is argued that the effect can be traced to the semantics of the BE perfect, which denoted resultativity rather than anteriority proper. Related data from other older Germanic and Romance languages are presented, and finally implications for existing theories of auxiliary selection stemming from the findings presented are discussed.
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.
Trubetzkoy's recognition of a delimitative function of phonology, serving to signal boundaries between morphological units, is expressed in terms of alignment constraints in Optimality Theory, where the relevant constraints require specific morphological boundaries to coincide with phonological structure (Trubetzkoy 1936, 1939, McCarthy & Prince 1993). The approach pursued in the present article is to investigate the distribution of phonological boundary signals to gain insight into the criteria underlying morphological analysis. The evidence from English and Swedish suggests that necessary and sufficient conditions for word-internal morphological analysis concern the recognizability of head constituents, which include the rightmost members of compounds and head affixes. The claim is that the stability of word-internal boundary effects in historical perspective cannot in general be sufficiently explained in terms of memorization and imitation of phonological word form. Rather, these effects indicate a morphological parsing mechanism based on the recognition of word-internal head constituents. Head affixes can be shown to contrast systematically with modifying affixes with respect to syntactic function, semantic content, and prosodic properties. That is, head affixes, which cannot be omitted, often lack inherent meaning and have relatively unmarked boundaries, which can be obscured entirely under specific phonological conditions. By contrast, modifying affixes, which can be omitted, consistently have inherent meaning and have stronger boundaries, which resist prosodic fusion in all phonological contexts. While these correlations are hardly specific to English and Swedish it remains to be investigated to which extent they hold cross-linguistically. The observation that some of the constituents identified on the basis of prosodic evidence lack inherent meaning raises the issue of compositionality. I will argue that certain systematic aspects of word meaning cannot be captured with reference to the syntagmatic level, but require reference to the paradigmatic level instead. The assumption is then that there are two dimensions of morphological analysis: syntagmatic analysis, which centers on the criteria for decomposing words in terms of labelled constituents, and paradigmatic analysis, which centers on the criteria for establishing relations among (whole) words in the mental lexicon. While meaning is intrinsically connected with paradigmatic analysis (e.g. base relations, oppositeness) it is not essential to syntagmatic analysis.
War and death in business : some remarks on the nature of conceptualisation in the field economy
(2005)
Rezension zu Peter-Andre Alt: Der Tod der Königin. Frauenopfer und politische Souveränität im Trauerspiel des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin, New York (de Gruyter) 2004. 261 Seiten.
Der Würzburger Germanist Peter-Andre Alt hat mit 'Der Tod der Königin' eine Studie zur Literatur der Frühen Neuzeit vorgelegt, die weit mehr enthält und verhandelt, als es Titel und Untertitel anzudeuten vermögen. Es geht nicht allein um die theatralische Darstellung weiblicher Herrschaft in deutschen und englischen Trauerspielen des 17. Jahrhunderts, wobei auch Seitenblicke auf die französische Klassik geworfen werden, sondern um einen generellen Problemaufriss der politischen, sozialen und geschlechtsspezifischen Rollenzuweisungen im Rahmen präabsolutistischer Machtkonzepte sowie deren theologische und rechtliche Legitimationsmuster.
Rezension zu Ralf Hertel: Tanztexte und Texttänze. Der Tanz im Gedicht der europäischen Moderne, Eggingen (Edition Isele) 2002. 153 Seiten.
Ralf Hertel, freier Journalist und Mitglied des Graduiertenkollegs "Körperinszenierungen" an der Freien Universität Berlin, untersucht in dem vorliegenden Buch das Verhältnis von Tanz und Lyrik in der Literatur des beginnenden 20. Jahrhunderts.
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.
The interpretation of traces
(2004)
This paper argues that parts of the lexical content of an A-bar moved phrase must be interpreted in the base position of movement. The argument is based on a study of deletion of a phrase that contains the base position of movement. I show that deletion licensing is sensitive to the content of the moved phrase. In this way, I corroborate and extend conclusions based on Condition C reconstruction by N. Chomsky and D. Fox. My result provides semantic evidence for the existence of traces and gives semantic content to the A/A-bar distinction.
In this paper, we investigate two pairs of structures in German and English: German Weak Pronoun Left Dislocation and English Topicalization, on the one hand, and German and English Hanging Topic Left Dislocation, on the other. We review the prosodic, lexical, syntactic, and discourse evidence that places the former two structures into one class and the latter two into another, taking this evidence to show that dislocates in the former class are syntactically integrated into their 'host' sentences while those in the latter class are not. From there, we show that the most straightforward way to account for this difference in 'integration' is to take the dislocates in the latter structures to be 'orphans', phrases that are syntactically independent of the phrases with which they are associated, providing additional empirical and theoretical support for this analysis — which, we point out, has a number of antecedents in the literature.
The present study offers an Optimality-Theoretic analysis of the syllabification of intervocalic consonants and glides in Modern English. It will be argued that the proposed syllabifications fall out from universal markedness constraints – all of which derive motivation from other languages – and a language-specific ranking. The analysis offered below is therefore an alternative to the traditional rule-based analyses of English syllabification, e.g. Kahn (1976), Borowsky (1986), Giegerich (1992, 1999) and to the Optimality-Theoretic treatment proposed by Hammond (1999), whose analysis requires several language-specific constraints which apparently have no cross-linguistic motivation.
The current study focuses on the prosodic realization of negators in Saisiyat, an endangered aboriginal language of Taiwan, and compares its prosodic realization of negation with that of English. The results of this study indicate that sentential subjects are the most acoustically prominent items in the Saisiyat negative sentences measured. This contrasts sharply with the English experimental sentences, in which the negator itself was the most acoustically prominent item. These findings suggest that Saisiyat is a pitch-accent language; thus, the presence of negators does not significantly change the prosodic parameters of surrounding words. English, in contrast, is an intonation language, so the presence of negation results in substantial prosodic modification. This suggests that the phenomenon of negation is universally prominent; however, languages with different prosodic systems will adopt different strategies for realizing prominence.
Fronting a noun phrase changes the focus structure of a sentence. Therefore, it may affect truth conditions, since some operators, in particular quantificational adverbs, are sensitive to focus. However, the position of the quantificational adverb itself, hence its informational status, is usually assumed not to have any semantic effect. In this paper I discuss a reading of some quantificational adverbs, the relative reading, which disappears if the adverb is fronted. I propose that this reading relies not only on focus, but on B-accent (fall-rise intonation) as well. A fronted Q-adverb is usually pronounced with a B-accent; since only one element can be B-accented, this means that the scope of the adverb contains no B-accented material, hence no relative readings. Thus, the effects of fronting range more widely than is usually assumed, and quantificational adverbs are a useful tool with which to investigate these effects.
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.
Speakers have a wide range of noncanonical syntactic options that allow them to mark the information status of the various elements within a proposition. The correlation between a construction and constraints on information status, however, is not arbitrary; there are broad, consistent, and predictive generalizations that can be made about the information-packaging functions served by preposing, postposing, and argument-reversing constructions. Specifically, preposed constituents are constrained to represent discourse-old information, postposed constituents are constrained to represent information that is either discourse-new or hearer-new, and argument-reversing constructions require that the information represented by the preposed constituent be at least as familiar as that represented by the postposed constituent (Birner & Ward 1998). The status of inferable information (Clark 1977; Prince 1981), however, is problematic; a study of corpus data shows that such information can be preposed in an inversion or a preposing (hence must be discourse-old), yet can also be postposed in constructions requiring hearer-new information (hence must be hearer-new). This information status – discourse-old yet hearer-new – is assumed by Prince (1992) to be non-occurring on the grounds that what has been evoked in the discourse should be known to the hearer. I resolve this difficulty by arguing for a reinterpretation of the term 'discourse-old' as applying not only to information that has been explicitly evoked in the prior discourse, but rather to any information that provides a salient inferential link to the prior discourse. Extending Prince’s notion in this manner allows us to account for the distribution of noncanonically positioned peripheral constituents in a principled and unified way.
A new semantics for number
(2003)