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Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden die Ergebnisse der kontrastiven Forschung von phraseologischen Neologismen im Deutschen und Ukrainischen gezeigt. Das Ziel dieses Beitrags besteht darin, die phraseologischen Neologismen, die in der Corona-Pandemie in Deutschland und in der Ukraine in digitalen Medien verwendet wurden, zu analysieren, die strukturell-semantischen Merkmale ausgewählter phraseologischer Einheiten in beiden Sprachen zu beschreiben, ihre konzeptuelle Analyse durchzuführen, die vorhandenen Neologismenpaare einander gegenüberzustellen sowie Äquivalenztypen zu untersuchen. Die Materialbasis bilden diesbezüglich 96 deutsche und 60 ukrainische phraseologische Neologismen der Jahre 2020–2021.
Die seit Jahren allmählich aber sukzessive ansteigende Digitalisierung bleibt nicht ohne Einfluss auf die Veränderungen in der Forschung, darunter auch in der Phraseologie. Den Möglichkeiten, die einem in diesem Kontext angeboten werden, scheinen keine Grenzen gesetzt zu werden. Das betrifft auch die Lexikographie - hier Phraseographie, die sich von der traditionellen Arbeitsweise und den Arbeitsmethoden immer mehr entfernt und Vorteile der digitalisierten Welt in zunehmendem Maße nutzt. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird zum einen das Potential der phraseologischen Online-Wörterbücher geprüft, das zum anderen mit den Möglichkeiten der Printwörterbücher verglichen wird. Das Ziel ist dabei, die Funktionalitäten der beiden Typen von phraseologischen Wörterbüchern miteinander zu vergleichen, um feststellen zu können, ob alle Vorteile der Digitalisierung von den Autoren der Online-Wörterbücher genutzt werden, um verschiedenen Erwartungen der Benutzer gerecht zu werden und ihre Bedürfnisse zu befriedigen. Die Grundlage der Analyse bilden auf der einen Seite sechs repräsentative phraseologische Printwörterbücher für Deutsch, vier für Polnisch, vier phraseologische deutsch-polnische Wörterbücher und zwei polnisch-deutsche und auf der anderen Seite drei Online-Wörterbücher für Deutsch, ein Online-Wörterbuch für Polnisch und zwei deutsch-polnische Online-Wörterbücher. Aus dem Vergleich der Mikrostruktur in den analysierten Wörterbüchern ergeben sich Schlussfolgerungen in Bezug auf die Empfehlungen und fertige Lösungen mancher Probleme lexikographischer Natur, die ihre Anwendung in der digitalen Phraseographie finden können.
In the context of the emergence of various online dictionaries and platforms that also address phraseological units, their usefulness is being questioned and their potential examined in order to illustrate new directions in the development of digital phraseography. The article shows special traits in the formation of lexicographical content in two selected online dictionaries, using the lemma “cat” as example.
This chapter makes the case for a literary history that accounts for the multilingual nature of medieval Denmark, giving particular attention to Danish, German, and Latin. It relates such a project to current research interests such as crossing the boundaries of national philologies; demonstrates the need for it by reviewing existing surveys of the period; and outlines some lines of enquiry, including the translation and transmission of texts, that it could pursue.
By focusing human factors by the phraseological nomination, it becomes possible to expose obvious cases as reflections of everyday collective observations, experiences and evaluations considering a certain behavior or action. The subject of this investigation is differently molded phraseological units that permit to be listed under the hypernym ‘THE END OF LIFE BY HUMAN BEINGS’. The execution follows up the role of the linguistic image by the constitution of a slice of reality and gives representative examples of the metaphorization of the concept ‚DECEASE‘ in German, Romanian and Swedish. Productive source domains for the conceptualization of this notion will be considered; this due to the insight that conceptual spheres give keys to thought models, values and ideals anchored in the language.
This paper deals with German and Serbian idioms which contain the numeral seven (germ. Sieben, serb. sedam) in order to determine and analyse the different types of equivalence that exist between these German and Serbian idiomatic expressions. It is also an aim of this paper to define the semantics of the numeral seven or sedam, as the similarities and differences between German and Serbian provide interesting results. The results of this paper are to the benefit of the students in German studies, but also students who study German as a foreign language.
: German in East Central and South East Europe is deeply rooted in the area’s multilingualism. It shows specific developments in different countries, though. In this article the examples Slovenia, Czech Republic, and Romania represent German in very different situations, historically as well as contemporary.
Da Freundschaften eine zentrale Rolle im Leben der Jugendlichen spielen und Schule nicht nur einen Bildungs-, sondern auch einen Erziehungsauftrag hat, ist es naheliegend, das Thema "Freundschaft" auch in den Deutschunterricht zu integrieren. [...] Die im schulischen Unterricht verwendeten Lehrwerke bieten zwar reichlich Material zum Thema "Freundschaft", der Einsatz von einem Spielfilm kann den Unterricht jedoch nicht nur medial bereichern, sondern auch die Schüler und Schülerinnen animieren, auf eine besondere Weise intensiv an ihren Sprachkompetenzen zu arbeiten und zugleich ihre interkulturellen und medialen Kompetenzen zu entwickeln.
Mapeamento de estudos da linguística contrastiva Português/Alemão : dados bibliográficos no Brasil
(2021)
Este trabalho tem como propósito relatar o desenvolvimento, a metodologia e os resultados de um Projeto de Iniciação Científica que propõe a construção de uma base de dados da bibliografia da linguística contrastiva Português/Alemão. De natureza documentalbibliográfica, a coletânea bibliográfica foi realizada em bases de dados brasileiras de publicações em português, e as referências compiladas no software Zotero. As buscas foram realizadas entre agosto e dezembro de 2019 e se utilizou as palavras-chave (Língua Alemã; Língua Portuguesa; Alemão; Português; Linguística; Linguística Contrastiva), assim como as grandes áreas da Linguística (Morfologia; Fonética; Fonologia; Semântica; Pragmática e Sintaxe). Foram identificadas ao todo 48 pesquisas, publicadas entre os anos de 1972 e 2019, classificadas entre Literatura Branca e Literatura Cinzenta. Os dados apontam uma prevalência de artigos publicados no periódico Pandaemonium Germanicum, da Universidade de São Paulo (USP), especialmente na década de 1990, assim como um grande número de pesquisas na área de semântica.
Die Übersetzung, insbesondere die literarische, ist vor allem eine Art Kulturübertragung. Neben der Beherrschung der Sprachen setzt sie die Kenntnis des Allgemeinen und Besonderen des Landes wie Kultur, Tradition, Glauben, geschichtliche und gesellschaftliche Begebenheiten und auch soziale Strukturen voraus. Wenn die Sprachen und Kulturen tiefgreifend wahrgenommen werden, können die übersetzten Texte die Adressaten erreichen, d.h., dass die Ausgangssprache und -kultur für die Zielrezipienten verständlich sein können. So wird der Übersetzer als Kulturträger angenommen. Cornelius Bischoff ist beispielsweise ein wohlbekannter Name für den deutschen und türkischen Literaturkreis. Er ist vor allem bekannt als "der deutscheste Türke und der türkischste Deutsche" sowie als eine Brücke zwischen Deutschland und der Türkei. Das Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist es, Cornelius Bischoff, einen Kulturträger zwischen der deutschen und türkischen Übersetzung, zu behandeln. Als ein "Haymatloser" fand er in der Türkei die Möglichkeit, die türkische Sprache und Kultur wesentlich kennenzulernen und viele türkische Werke ins Deutsche zu übersetzen. Als ein Übersetzer trug er zuallererst dazu bei, die türkische Literatur, die bedeutenden türkischen Schriftsteller, die türkische Kultur und Tradition sowie den türkischen Sprachgebrauch in Deutschland bekannt zu machen. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird die Besonderheit Bischoffs in der Übersetzungswelt im Hinblick auf drei Aspekte diskutiert: zuerst im Hinblick auf den Zusammenhang seiner Wurzeln in der Türkei und im Türkischen - schon in seinen Wurzeln, besonders mütterlicherseits, wurde das Türkische verinnerlicht -, dann auf die in der Türkei verbrachten Jahre - die Jahre, in denen er "haymatlos" genannt wurde - und zuletzt auf die Wahrnehmung und Aneignung der türkischen Sprache, Kultur und Gesellschaft - was auf ihn lebenslang einwirkte. In diesem Kontext wird versucht, sein Leben, seine Werke und seine Wirkung im Rahmen der übersetzerischen Tätigkeit zu analysieren.
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.
O Brasil, como um país colônia cuja parte considerável da população é formada por imigrantes vindos de várias partes do mundo, possui diversas comunidades em que tais imigrantes se concentram. A fim de preservar parte de suas culturas, esses imigrantes continuam comunicando-se com a língua do seu país de origem. Devido a isso, seus filhos acabam por desenvolver a língua dos pais, juntamente do português, constituindo assim, um ambiente bilíngue. Tendo essas comunidades em mente, pretende-se entender de que forma o desenvolvimento linguístico e pessoal de uma criança pode ser afetado na aquisição quase simultânea de duas línguas, por ocorrer em momentos distintos, mas ainda na infância, e se há interferência de um idioma no outro. Nesse contexto, mesmo que as características das línguas sejam diferentes, há uma competência linguística comum entre as linguagens, o que possibilita que algumas habilidades sejam transferidas de uma língua para outra. Além disso, sabe-se que no léxico de crianças que falam duas línguas, é possível acessar palavras de qualquer uma delas ao mesmo tempo, verificando a conexão entre os idiomas (SCHUETZE, 2001). Para a realização desta pesquisa, a comunidade bilíngue abordada foi no oeste de Santa Catarina, onde concentra-se uma grande população descendente de imigrantes alemães. Foi realizada uma entrevista com dois jovens falantes de português e alemão, junto de seus pais, buscando definir o processo de aquisição das duas línguas na infância e a interferência das mesmas entre si. A análise das informações obtidas teve a influência do conhecimento prévio de uma das autoras da pesquisa, devido à aquisição de linguagem similar. Nos casos investigados, as crianças adquiriram o alemão em casa como primeira língua e o português como segunda em ambiente escolar. Os resultados apontam que ocorre influência de um idioma em outro e que há troca de letras ou palavras, como justifica o code-switching. Pesquisas como esta se fazem necessárias tendo em vista o crescente número de imigrantes vindos ao Brasil, cujos filhos estarão em um ambiente bilíngue, tendo que desenvolver o português enquanto os pais possuem apenas a língua do seu país de origem.
In German, the subject usually precedes the object (SO order), but, under certain discourse conditions, the object is allowed to precede the subject (OS order). This paper focuses on main clauses in which either the subject or a discourse-given object occurs in clause-initial position. Two acceptability experiments show that OS sentences with a given object are generally acceptable, but the precise degree of acceptability varies both with the object‘s referential form (demonstrative objects leading to higher acceptability than other types of objects) and with formal properties of the subject (pronominal subjects leading to higher acceptability than non-pronominal subjects). For SO sentences, acceptability was reduced when the object was a d-pronoun, which contrasts with the high acceptability of OS sentences with a d-pronoun object. This finding was explored in a third acceptability experiment comparing d-pronouns in subject and object function. This experiment provides evidence that a reduction in acceptability due to a prescriptive bias against d-pronouns is suspended when the d-pronoun occurs as object in the prefield. We discuss the experimental results with respect to theories of German clause structure that claim that OS sentences with different information-structural properties are derived by different types of movement.
Der Aufsatz beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, ob im gegenwärtigen deutschen Sprachgebrauch ein übermäßiger Gebrauch von Anglizismen zu beobachten ist. Als entscheidender linguistischer Grund für die häufige Verwendung von Anglizismen wird ihre Eurysemie (semantische Vagheit) angesehen. Der digitale Wandel der Medienbranche wird als außerlinguistischer Faktor betrachtet. Diese Fragen werden im Rahmen einer Studie zur Semantik der in elektronischen und in Print-Medien am häufigsten verwendeten Anglizismen behandelt.
Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden die Ergebnisse einer Studie präsentiert, die in ausgewählten Märchen die Entwicklung der substantivischen Diminutiva im Deutschen und im Tschechischen von der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zur Gegenwart untersucht hat. Im Fokus der Analyse stand vor allem die Wortbildung, in Verbindung mit ihrem Kontext wurden gleichzeitig auch die Funktionen der Diminutiva im Untersuchungszeitraum verfolgt.
Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die lexikalisch-semantischen Charakteristika der passivischen und deagentiven Konstruktion "bleiben" + "zu"-Vollverbinfinitiv auf der Basis von Recherchen im Deutschen Referenzkorpus des Instituts für deutsche Sprache (DeReKo; TAGGED-T2-öffentlich). Aufgrund der Analyse wurden die in diese prädikative Konstruktion eintretenden Vollverben identifiziert und in Bezug auf ihre lexikalisch-semantischen Charakteristika erforscht. Daraus ergab sich ihre Gliederung in sechs lexikalische Felder, und zwar Einschätzung – "Wert", "Kommunikation", "Lösung", "unspezifische Aktivität", "Ziel" – "Endpunkt" und "Wunsch".
German authors considered easy comprehensibility of their architecture books very important and therefore they included in them a number of explanatory terminological notes of varying complexity. These notes gradually evolved into elaborate terminological glossaries. This paper explores the terminology and its presentation, as well as the authors' motivation.
Namen sind seit Jahrhunderten ein wichtiger Bestandteil des Lebens der Menschen. Die Auswahl eines geeigneten Namens spielt für viele Eltern eine große Rolle für ihr Kind. Infolgedessen ist die Benennung nach der Geburt für alle Kulturen ein äußerst wichtiges Ereignis. In der vorliegenden Arbeit werden Vornamen im Deutschen und im Türkischen untersucht, die aus Blumennamen stammen. Das Ziel ist es, herauszufinden, aus welchen Sprachen die Vornamen mit Blumennamen ins Türkische und Deutsche entlehnt worden sind, und ob es Parallelen und Unterschiede bei der Frequenz der entlehnten Vornamen aus unterschiedlichen Sprachen und beim Gebrauch von bestimmten Blumenarten gibt.
Die vorliegende Arbeit zielt darauf, den Einfluss der Verwendung von digitalen und gedruckten Wörterbüchern auf die Übersetzungskompetenzen der Studenten zu untersuchen und die am häufigsten verwendeten mobilen und gedruckten Wörterbücher quantitativ und qualitativ zu vergleichen. Die Forschungsgruppe besteht aus 42 Lehramtsstudenten, die in der Vorbereitungsklasse an der Hochschule für Fremdsprachen „Deutsch“ studieren. Die Ergebnisse der deskriptiven Analyse über den Wörterbuchgebrauch der Studenten haben ergeben, dass 95 % der Studenten den Gebrauch digitaler Wörterbücher bevorzugen. Es wurde auch auf die Frage eingegangen, welcher Wörterbuchtyp sich positiver auf die Übersetzungskompetenz der Studenten auswirkt. Um diese Frage zu beantworten, wurden aus der Forschungsgruppe per Zufallsprinzip 10 Studenten mit dem gleichen Sprachniveau ausgewählt und sie wurden gebeten, die ausgewählten authentischen Sätze zu übersetzen. Bei der Übersetzung der Sätze verwendete eine Gruppe ein digitales Wörterbuch (Aa Almanca - Türkçe Mobil Sözlük) während die zweite Gruppe ein gedrucktes Wörterbuch (TDK Almanca-Türkçe Sözlük) verwendete. Die Ergebnisse der Studie zeigen, dass Studenten, welche die gedruckten Wörterbücher konsultierten, akkuratere Sätze bildeten und weniger Fehler machten als Studenten, welche die digitalen Wörterbücher verwendeten. Im zweiten Teil der Studie wurden die ersten 100 Übersetzungen des gedruckten und digitalen Wörterbuches qualitativ und quantitativ verglichen. Dabei wurde festgestellt, dass das digitale Wörterbuch für die festgelegten 100 Wörter 170 Übersetzungen liefert, während das gedruckte Wörterbuch 304 Übersetzungen auflistet. Es ist deutlich erkennbar, dass das gedruckte Wörterbuch im Vergleich zum digitalen Wörterbuch viel umfassender ist. Weiterhin wurde festgestellt, dass das digitale Wörterbuch bei den 100 festgelegten Wörtern 11 falsche bzw. fehlerhafte Bedeutungen liefert, was die Vertrauenswürdigkeit des vorliegenden digitalen Wörterbuches erheblich in Frage stellt. Zugegebenermaßen sind die Geschwindigkeit der Wortübersetzung und die Benutzerfreundlichkeit erhebliche Vorteile des digitalen Wörterbuches, aber diese Arbeit zeigt, dass die Besonderheiten „Schnelligkeit“ und „Benutzerfreundlichkeit“ dieses Wörterbuches in diesem Fall nicht genügen und sich nicht positiv auf die Übersetzungskompetenz der Probanden ausgewirkt haben. Die oben aufgeführten Argumente weisen nach, dass die Bedeutungsbreite, Bedeutungsgenauigkeit sowie die Anzahl der zur Verfügung gestellten Bedeutungen des vorliegenden digitalen Wörterbuches, das momentan als digitales Wörterbuch am häufigsten verwendet wird, in deutlichem Maße unzureichend und verbesserungsbedürftig ist.
Yabancı dil öğrenimini etkileyen içsel faktörlerden biri de kaygıdır. Kaygı; genel manada, kötü bir şey olacağı endişesiyle yaşanan belirsizlik, huzursuzluk, sıkıntı kaynaklı duygu durumu olarak tanımlanmaktadır. Yabancı dil kaygısı ise araştırmacılar tarafından genel kaygının duruma özel türü olarak tanımlanır. Kaygının olumsuz etkilerine karşın dil öğrenme stratejileri, yabancı dil yeterliliğinin artırılmasında olumlu bir rol oynamaktadır. Dil öğrenme stratejileri, öğrenme sürecini organize eden farklı öğrenme teknikleri ile öğrencilerin kendi öğrenmelerini tasarlamalarını, öğrenme materyalini seçmelerini ve bağımsız olarak öğrenme sürecini düzenlemelerini sağlamaktadır. Bu çalışmada 2017-2018 öğretim yılında Almanca öğretmenliği hazırlık sınıflarında öğrenim gören 41 öğrencinin kullandıkları dil öğrenme stratejileri düzeyleri ve yabancı dil kaygıları tespit edilerek bu değişkenlerin akademik başarıyla ilişkilerinin incelenmesi amaçlanmıştır. Öğrencilerin dil öğrenme stratejilerini tespit etmek amacıyla Oxford (1990) tarafından geliştirilen "Dil Öğrenme Stratejileri Envanteri" (SILL), dil öğrenim süreçlerinde yaşadıkları kaygı oranları belirlemek için ise "Yabancı Dil Sınıf Kaygısı Ölçeği" (FLCAS) kullanılmıştır. Öğrencilerin akademik başarılarının belirlenmesinde 2017-2018 eğitim yılı sonunda elde ettikleri not ortalamaları kullanılmıştır. Araştırma sonuçlarına göre kaygı düzeyi düşük öğrencilerin yıl sonu başarı ortalamaları (M=78.1) kaygı düzeyi orta seviyedeki (M=68.96) ve yüksek seviyedeki (M=63.6) öğrencilerin başarı ortalamalarından daha yüksektir. Dil öğrenme stratejileri kullanımlarına bakıldığında, yüksek düzeyde strateji kullanan öğrencilerin başarı ortalamalarının (M=75.1), düşük (M=69.3) ve orta seviyede (M=67.5) strateji kullanan öğrencilerin ortalamalarından daha yüksek olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Bu verilere göre düşük kaygılı öğrenciler ve yüksek strateji kullanan öğrenciler diğer öğrencilerden daha başarılıdır. Ayrıca, yüksek düzeyde dil öğrenme stratejisi kullanan öğrencilerin yabancı dil kaygı seviyelerinin düşük olduğu belirlenmiştir. Bu açıdan, öğrencilerin dil öğrenme stratejilerinin öğretilmesi ve yüksek düzeyde kullanmasının sağlanması, dil öğrenme kaygısını azaltıcı sınıf içi aktivitelerin kullanılması, Almanca öğrenme sürecine olumlu katkılar yapacak, öğrencilerin başarısını artıracaktır.
The article presents a chronicle of the town of Kaaden (Kadaň) dating from the 16th century, currently held in Prague's Monastery of Our Lady of the Snows. It explores several aspects of Humanistic urban history writing, including the presence of the author in the text of the chronicle, the methodology of the author's historiographic work, and his choice and use of language (German, Latin). The study also presents this chronicle as an interesting and important source of information on writing practices in north-west Bohemia from a text-analytical perspective.
Pluralization strategies of monolingual German children aged 3-6, median 4;2 (N = 810), and adults aged 18-96, median 24;0 (N = 582), were compared on the basis of eight nonce nouns from the language test SETK 3-5. Differences between younger and older Germans resembled previously described differences between German and immigrant pre-schoolers for most aspects, e.g., use of fewer plural allomorphs (types), more errors in umlauting, and more avoidance strategies in the linguistically weaker groups. However, both German children and adults demonstrated the same universal frequency- and phonology-based pluralization patterns. Surprisingly, ungrammatical plural forms were equally frequent in both children’s and adults' answers.
In this article we present experimental findings on the acceptability of different argument orders in the German middle field. Our study pursues two goals: First, to evaluate a number of surface constraints on German argument order that have been proposed in the literature, and second, to shed new light on how gradient constraints jointly determine sentence acceptability. In four experiments, we investigated the impact of surface constraints relating to animacy, thematic roles, definiteness and case. While we are able to confirm an influence of most constraints under investigation, the resulting constraint hierarchy does not coincide with any hierarchy put forward so far in the literature, to the best of our knowledge. With regard to gradience, our results can be accounted for either by an OT variant incorporating a notion of markedness, or by a fully quantified model using constraint weights. For the latter, however, we provide evidence against uniform penalties associated with constraint violations.
Does linguistic rhythm matter to syntax, and if so, what kinds of syntactic decisions are susceptible to rhythm? By means of two recall-based sentence production experiments and two corpus studies – one on spoken and one on written language – we investigated whether linguistic rhythm affects the choice between introduced and un-introduced complement clauses in German. Apart from the presence or absence of the complementiser dass (‘that’), these two sentence types differ with respect to the position of the tensed verb (verb-final/verb-second). Against our predictions, that were based on previously reported rhythmic effects on the use of the optional complementiser that in English, the experiments fail to obtain compelling evidence for rhythmic/prosodic influences on the structure of complement clauses in German. An overview of pertinent studies showing rhythmic influences on syntactic encoding suggests these effects to be generally restricted to syntactic domains smaller than a clause. We assume that, in the course of language production, initially, clause level syntactic projections are specified; their specification is in fact the prerequisite for phonological encoding to start. Consequently, prosodic effects may only touch upon the lower level categories that are to be integrated into the clausal projection, but not upon the syntactic makeup of the higher order projection itself.
Despite a large body of research, the linguistic nature of exhaustivity in single wh-questions is unresolved. Moreover, little empirical evidence exists as to which related structures pattern with bare wh-questions regarding exhaustivity. This paper explores the felicity of various exhaustivity violations in unembedded single bare wh-questions in German and compares them to related structures. In two novel felicity judgment experiments, a total of 441 participants rated exhaustive as well as non-exhaustive plural and non-exhaustive singleton answers to wh-questions or statements in a questionnaire. Answers were based on picture stimuli depicting individuals performing various actions. The felicity of non-exhaustive answers was compared across four main test conditions: bare wh-questions (wer ‘who’), wh-questions with a lexical exhaustivity marker (wer alles ‘who all’), plural definite descriptions contained in a restrictive relative clause (e.g., “the people who are fishing in the garden”), and the scalar quantifier “some” (e.g., “some people who are fishing in the garden”).
We employ a novel methodological approach to improve the interpretability of statistical differences between experimental conditions by using the statistical measure of Minimal Important Difference (MID). Our results from estimated MIDs reveal that adults’ felicity judgments of non-exhaustive plural answers to bare wh-questions pattern with those to wer alles-questions and to plural definite descriptions: exhaustivity violations in the bare wh, the wer alles and the plural definite conditions were rated as less felicitous than exhaustivity violations in the some-condition.
Linguistic research and linguistic activism have resulted in key changes to official language use. However, revisions remain contested and many English and German speakers continue to employ male generic terms. In this article I explore whether the encounter with sex-/gender-neutral terminology in June Arnold's novel 'The Cook and the Carpenter' can prompt readers to review their language use and consider alternatives. Based on narrative research, my premise is that fiction can create familiarity with new terms, which is the first step toward wider linguistic change. I frame my investigation with Wittgenstein's notion that "to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life", and put it to the test with a discourse analysis of English and German reader responses. The results of my study show that Arnold's novel stimulates fruitful debate around the issue of linguistic representation. Based on my findings, I propose to integrate literary texts which engage with the issue of sex/gender and language into educational settings to further promote neutral/inclusive language use.
Sentences with doubly center-embedded relative clauses in which a verb phrase (VP) is missing are sometimes perceived as grammatical, thus giving rise to an illusion of grammaticality. In this paper, we provide a new account of why missing-VP sentences, which are both complex and ungrammatical, lead to an illusion of grammaticality, the so-called missing-VP effect. We propose that the missing-VP effect in particular, and processing difficulties with multiply center-embedded clauses more generally, are best understood as resulting from interference during cue-based retrieval. When processing a sentence with double center-embedding, a retrieval error due to interference can cause the verb of an embedded clause to be erroneously attached into a higher clause. This can lead to an illusion of grammaticality in the case of missing-VP sentences and to processing complexity in the case of complete sentences with double center-embedding. Evidence for an interference account of the missing-VP effect comes from experiments that have investigated the missing-VP effect in German using a speeded grammaticality judgments procedure. We review this evidence and then present two new experiments that show that the missing-VP effect can be found in German also with less restricting procedures. One experiment was a questionnaire study which required grammaticality judgments from participants without imposing any time constraints. The second experiment used a self-paced reading procedure and did not require any judgments. Both experiments confirm the prior findings of missing-VP effects in German and also show that the missing-VP effect is subject to a primacy effect as known from the memory literature. Based on this evidence, we argue that an account of missing-VP effects in terms of interference during cue-based retrieval is superior to accounts in terms of limited memory resources or in terms of experience with embedded structures.
Funktionsverbgefüge im Deutschen und Türkischen : eine Analyse in ausgewählten Zeitungstexten
(2017)
Der vorliegende Artikel beschäftigt sich mit der Untersuchung von Funktionsverbgefügen (FVG) in deutschen und türkischen Zeitungstexten im Rahmen der kontrastiven Linguistik. Die FVG, welche aus einem Funktionsverb und einem Substantiv bestehen, werden im Deutschen als eine grammatische Kategorie abgehandelt. Die für deutsche Sprache entwickelten Kriterien werden ins Türkische adaptiert. Es wurde festgestellt, dass FVG bzw. die Substantiv-Verb Verbindungen in beiden Sprachen hinsichtlich der morphologischen, syntaktischen und semantischen Kriterien über gemeinsame Merkmale verfügen. Da diese Strukturen meistens in der Schriftsprache verwendet werden, werden sie in dieser Arbeit in Zeitungstexten untersucht. Am Ende dieser Untersuchung wurde festgestellt, dass die betreffende Struktur in beiden Sprachen Anwendung findet und ähnliche Merkmale hat. Auch stellte sich heraus, dass die präpositionalen Strukturen im Deutschen mehr Anwendung finden, während im Türkischen Substantiv im Akkusativ mehr gebraucht wird.
This paper presents three acceptability experiments investigating German verb-final clauses in order to explore possible sources of sentence complexity during human parsing. The point of departure was De Vries et al.'s (2011) generalization that sentences with three or more crossed or nested dependencies are too complex for being processed by the human parsing mechanism without difficulties. This generalization is partially based on findings from Bach et al. (1986) concerning the acceptability of complex verb clusters in German and Dutch. The first experiment tests this generalization by comparing two sentence types: (i) sentences with three nested dependencies within a single clause that contains three verbs in a complex verb cluster; (ii) sentences with four nested dependencies distributed across two embedded clauses, one center-embedded within the other, each containing a two-verb cluster. The results show that sentences with four nested dependencies are judged as acceptable as control sentences with only two nested dependencies, whereas sentences with three nested dependencies are judged as only marginally acceptable. This argues against De Vries et al.'s (2011) claim that the human parser can process no more than two nested dependencies. The results are used to refine the Verb-Cluster Complexity Hypothesis of Bader and Schmid (2009a). The second and the third experiment investigate sentences with four nested dependencies in more detail in order to explore alternative sources of sentence complexity: the number of predicted heads to be held in working memory (storage cost in terms of the Dependency Locality Theory [DLT], Gibson, 2000) and the length of the involved dependencies (integration cost in terms of the DLT). Experiment 2 investigates sentences for which storage cost and integration cost make conflicting predictions. The results show that storage cost outweighs integration cost. Experiment 3 shows that increasing integration cost in sentences with two degrees of center embedding leads to decreased acceptability. Taken together, the results argue in favor of a multifactorial account of the limitations on center embedding in natural languages.
Konsonantencluster stellen eine besondere Herausforderung im Erstspracherwerb dar. Ihre Produktion erfordert die Ausdifferenzierung der natürlichsten Silbenstruktur CV. Für den Erwerb bedeutet dies, dass Kinder lernen müssen, dem Ansatz oder der Koda einer Silbe mehrere Konsonanten zuzuweisen. In der Spracherwerbsforschung nimmt daher die Untersuchung von Konsonantengruppen einen wichtigen Stellenwert ein...
The Intensifying Function of Modal Particles and Modal Elements in a Cross-Linguistic Perspective
(2015)
The aim of this paper is to analyze the intensifying function of German modal particles and equivalent modal expressions in Croatian and English. Our hypothesis is that some modal particles in German and their functional equivalents in Croatian and English can express different degrees of intensity and types of intensification. The presented study comprises two parts. First, the use of intensifying modal particles by a group of speakers of L1 Croatian and L2 German/English is investigated. On the basis of the results obtained, and by means of a previously conducted corpus analysis (cf. Kresić and Batinić 2014), an intensification scale with respect to the inventory of German modal particles and corresponding particles in Croatian as well as equivalent English expressions is suggested. Some German and Croatian modal particles and equivalent modal elements in English can be classified on the upper and partially on the lower part of the proposed intensification scale when compared to the norm, i.e. an utterance unmarked by a modal particle.
Reduction and deletion processes occur regularly in conversational speech. A segment that is affected by such reduction and deletion processes in many Germanic languages (e.g., Dutch, English, German) is /t/. There are similarities concerning the factors that influence the likelihood of final /t/ to get deleted, such as segmental context. However, speakers of different languages differ with respect to the acoustic cues they leave in the speech signal when they delete final /t/. German speakers usually lengthen a preceding /s/ when they delete final /t/. This article investigates to what extent German listeners are able to reconstruct /t/ when they are presented with fragments of words where final /t/ has been deleted. It aims also at investigating whether the strategies that are used by German depend on the length of /s/, and therefore whether listeners are using language-specific cues. Results of a forced-choice segment detection task suggest that listeners are able to reconstruct deleted final /t/ in about 45% of the times. The length of /s/ plays some role in the reconstruction, however, it does not explain the behavior of German listeners completely.
Manual development of deep linguistic resources is time-consuming and costly and therefore often described as a bottleneck for traditional rule-based NLP. In my PhD thesis I present a treebank-based method for the automatic acquisition of LFG resources for German. The method automatically creates deep and rich linguistic presentations from labelled data (treebanks) and can be applied to large data sets. My research is based on and substantially extends previous work on automatically acquiring wide-coverage, deep, constraint-based grammatical resources from the English Penn-II treebank (Cahill et al.,2002; Burke et al., 2004; Cahill, 2004). Best results for English show a dependency f-score of 82.73% (Cahill et al., 2008) against the PARC 700 dependency bank, outperforming the best hand-crafted grammar of Kaplan et al. (2004). Preliminary work has been carried out to test the approach on languages other than English, providing proof of concept for the applicability of the method (Cahill et al., 2003; Cahill, 2004; Cahill et al., 2005). While first results have been promising, a number of important research questions have been raised. The original approach presented first in Cahill et al. (2002) is strongly tailored to English and the datastructures provided by the Penn-II treebank (Marcus et al., 1993). English is configurational and rather poor in inflectional forms. German, by contrast, features semi-free word order and a much richer morphology. Furthermore, treebanks for German differ considerably from the Penn-II treebank as regards data structures and encoding schemes underlying the grammar acquisition task. In my thesis I examine the impact of language-specific properties of German as well as linguistically motivated treebank design decisions on PCFG parsing and LFG grammar acquisition. I present experiments investigating the influence of treebank design on PCFG parsing and show which type of representations are useful for the PCFG and LFG grammar acquisition tasks. Furthermore, I present a novel approach to cross-treebank comparison, measuring the effect of controlled error insertion on treebank trees and parser output from different treebanks. I complement the cross-treebank comparison by providing a human evaluation using TePaCoC, a new testsuite for testing parser performance on complex grammatical constructions. Manual evaluation on TePaCoC data provides new insights on the impact of flat vs. hierarchical annotation schemes on data-driven parsing. I present treebank-based LFG acquisition methodologies for two German treebanks. An extensive evaluation along different dimensions complements the investigation and provides valuable insights for the future development of treebanks.
As language rhythm relies partly on general acoustic properties, such as intensity and duration, mastering two languages with distinct rhythmic properties (i.e., stress position) may enhance musical rhythm perception. We investigated whether second language (L2) competence affects musical rhythm aptitude in Turkish early (TELG) and late learners (TLLG) of German in comparison to German monolingual speakers (GMC). To account for inter-individual differences, we measured participants’ short-term and working memory capacity, melodic aptitude, and time they spent listening to music. Both L2 speaker groups perceived rhythmic variations significantly better than monolinguals. No differences were found between early and late learners’ performances. Our findings suggest that mastering two languages with different rhythmic properties enhances musical rhythm perception, providing further evidence of cognitive share between language and music.
This article presents linguistic features of and educational approaches to a new variety of German that has emerged in multi-ethnic urban areas in Germany: Kiezdeutsch (‘Hood German’). From a linguistic point of view, Kiezdeutsch is very interesting, as it is a multi-ethnolect that combines features of a youth language with those of a contact language. We will present examples that illustrate the grammatical productivity and innovative potential of this variety. From an educational perspective, Kiezdeutsch has also a high potential in many respects: school projects can help enrich intercultural communication and weaken derogatory attitudes. In grammar lessons, Kiezdeutsch can be a means to enhance linguistic competence by having the adolescents analyse their own language. Keywords: German, Kiezdeutsch, multi-ethnolect, migrants’ language, language change, educational proposals
Evaluating phonological status : significance of paradigm uniformity vs. prosodic group effects
(2007)
A central concern of linguistic phonetics is to define criteria for determining the phonological status of sounds or sound properties observed in phonetic surface form. Based on acoustic measurements we show that the occurrence of syllabic sonorants vs. schwa-sonorant sequences in German is determined exclusively by segmental and prosodic structure, with no paradigm uniformity effects. We argue that these findings are consistent with a uniform representation of syllabic sonorants as schwa sonorant sequences in the lexicon. The stability of schwa in CVC-suffixes (e.g. the German diminutive suffix -chen), as opposed to its phonetic absence in a segmentally comparable underived context, is argued to be conditioned by the prosodic organisation of such suffixes external to the phonological word of the stem.
This paper provides an analysis of an alternative strategy to A´-movement in both German and Dutch where the extracted constituent is preceded by a preposition and a coreferential pronoun appears in the extraction site. The construction has properties of both binding and movement: Whereas reconstruction effects suggest movement out of the embedded clause, there is strong evidence that the operator constituent is linked to an A-position in the matrix clause; this paradox is resolved by assuming a Control-like approach that involves movement from the embedded clause into a theta-position in the matrix clause with subsequent short A´- movement. The coreferential pronoun is interpreted as a resumptive heading a Big-DP which hosts the antecedent in its specifier.
In this paper I argue in favor of a Matching Analysis for German relative clauses. The Head Raising Analysis is shown to fail to account for parts of the reconstruction pattern in German, especially cases where only the external head is interpreted and the absence of Principle C effects. I propose a Matching Analysis with Vehicle Change and make consistent assumptions about possible deletion operations in relatives so that the entire pattern can be captured by one analysis which therefore proves superior to previous ones.
The ACL 2008 Workshop on Parsing German features a shared task on parsing German. The goal of the shared task was to find reasons for the radically different behavior of parsers on the different treebanks and between constituent and dependency representations. In this paper, we describe the task and the data sets. In addition, we provide an overview of the test results and a first analysis.
Tree-local MCTAG with shared nodes : an analysis of word order variation in German and Korean
(2004)
Tree Adjoining Grammars (TAG) are known not to be powerful enough to deal with scrambling in free word order languages. The TAG-variants proposed so far in order to account for scrambling are not entirely satisfying. Therefore, an alternative extension of TAG is introduced based on the notion of node sharing. Considering data from German and Korean, it is shown that this TAG-extension can adequately analyse scrambling data, also in combination with extraposition and topicalization.
Existing analyses of German scrambling phenomena within TAG-related formalisms all use non-local variants of TAG. However, there are good reasons to prefer local grammars, in particular with respect to the use of the derivation structure for semantics. Therefore this paper proposes to use local TDGs, a TAG-variant generating tree descriptions that shows a local derivation structure. However the construction of minimal trees for the derived tree descriptions is not subject to any locality constraint. This provides just the amount of non-locality needed for an adequate analysis of scrambling. To illustrate this a local TDG for some German scrambling data is presented.