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Bestimmte seit den sechziger Jahren zur Analyse früher kindlicher Äußerungen benutzte Beschreibungsmodelle unterschätzen die sprachliche Kompetenz des Kindes, indem sie die Struktur seiner Äußerungen auf Distributionsphänomene der Oberflächenstruktur reduzieren, andere Modelle überschätzen diese Kompetenz, indem sie kindlichen Äußerungen mehr sprachliche Information zuschreiben, als sie enthalten. Wenn außersprachliche Information auf systematische Art und Weise in die Untersuchung der sprachlichen Kommunikation zwischen Kind und Erwachsenem einbezogen wird, findet einerseits die Tatsache eine Erklärung, daß diese Kommunikation in so erstaunlichem Maße erfolgreich ist, andererseits erlaubt diese Beschreibungsweise es aber, frühe kindliche Äußerungen als sprachlich so undeterminiert darzustellen, wie sie sind.
The speakers of the Paraná dialect of Kaingáng, from whom the data of this study were gathered, have lived in close contact with the Brazilians since before the turn of the century. Although many members of this group are still monolingual and Kaingáng is spoken in all the homes, the influence of Portuguese is making an impact on the language. This can be seen not only in isolated loan words, but it is slowly changing the time dimension of the language and the thinking of the Indians. The change seems to have come about first through loan words, but it is now also affecting the semantic structure of the language and is beginning to affect the grammatical structure as well. The study here presented deals with this change as it can be seen in relation to time expressions such as yesterday – today – tomorrow; units of time such as day – month – year; kinship terms; and finally aspect particles. In considering the time expressions the meaning of various paradigms will be discussed. The paradigms are related to the time when events took place, to sequence of events, and to the point of the action. No Brazilian influence can be observed here. In the discussion of the units of time the semantic area of these units before and after Brazilian influence will be explored. Through Brazilian influence vocabulary has been developed with which it is possible to accurately pinpoint events in time which was not possible before this. The time distinctions within the kinship system will be discussed, and how they change with the influence of Brazilian terms. A whole new generation distinction is added in the modified kinship system. Similary several new aspect particles are being created through contractions, which now contain a time element. The whole development shows an emphasis on fine distinctions in time depth which came about through the contact with Portuguese and which can be observed in several points of the structure of Kaingáng.
The aim of any Automatic Translation project is to give a mechanical procedure for finding an equivalent expression in the target language to any sentence in the source language. The aim of my linguistic translation project is to find the corresponding structures of the languages dealt with. The two main problems that have to be solved by such a project are the difference of word order between the source language and the target language and the ambiguous words of the source language for which the appropriate word in the target language has to be chosen. The first problem is of major linguistic interest: once the project has been worked out, it will give us the parallel sentence structures for the two languages in question. Since there is no complete analysis of any language that could be used for the purpose of automatic translation, we decided to build up our project sentence by sentence. The rules which are needed for translating each sentence will have to be included in the complete program anyway, and the translation may be checked and corrected immediately. The program is split up into subroutines for each word-class, so that a correction of the program in case of an unsatisfactory translation does not complicate the program unnecessarily.
It is my intention to make two major points in this paper: 1. The first has to do with finding a frame within which the modal expressions of one particular Ancient IE [Indoeuropean] language – I have chosen Classical Greek – can be best described. I shall try to point out that the regularities which we find in these expressions must depend on an underlying principle, represented by abstract structures. These structures are semanto-syntactic, which means that the semantic properties or bundles of properties are arranged not in a linear order but in a hierarchical order, analogous to a bracketing in a PS structure. The abstract structures we propose have, of course, a very tentative character. They can only be accepted as far as evidence for them can be furnished. 2. My second point has to do with the modal verb forms that were the object of the studies of most Indo-Europeanists. If in the innermost bracket of a semanto-syntactic structure two semantic properties or bundles of properties can be exchanged without any further change in the total structure, and if this change is correlated with a change in verbal mood forms and nothing else, then I think we are faced with a case where these forms can be said to have a meaning of their own. I shall also try to show how these meanings are to be understood as bundles of features rather than as unanalyzed terms. In my final remarks: I shall try to outline the bearing these views have on comparative IE linguistics.
Ehemals NABE news. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:hebis:30-1149654
Contributing to NABE News - Guidelines for Writers 2 ; Letter from the President 4 ; Academy for Teacher Excellence: Promoting Equity for the Preparation of Latino Teachers - Belinda Bustos Flores,
Lorena Claeys, and Ellen Riojas Clark 5 ; Asian and Pacific Islanders Learning Style Preferences of Asian Students - Clara C. Park 9 ; Using Culturally Relevant Spanish/English Bilingual Books with Emergent Bilinguals - Yvonne Freeman, David Freeman, and Ann Ebe 11 ; L2 Literacy Practice through Dialogue Journals - Deoksoon Kim 14 ; Indigenous Bilingual Education Forming the Forms of Higher Intelligence: Further than Standards Terese Fayden 16 ; Vocabulary Activities for English Learners Mira Pak, Ph.D. 20 ; Dar Luz — A Transformative Vision for Bilingual Education Teacher Preparation - Belinda Bustos Flores, Rosa Hernández Sheets, and Ellen Riojas Clark 23 ; Grayson Charter School’s Journey - Kathy Pon, Irma Bravo Lawrence, and Arturo Duran 25
Contributing to NABE News - Guidelines for Writers 2 ; Letter from the President 4 ; Tapping into the Funds of Knowledge of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students and Families - Carla Amaro-Jiménez and Peggy Semingson 5 ; A Recipe for Student Achievement: Successful and Appropriate Assessment for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Learners - Patricia Rice Doran and Amy Mazur 9 ; Understanding Misconceptions to Provide Effective Bilingual Education - Yvonne and David Freeman 13 ; Indigenous Bilingual Education: Native Perspectives On Education in Alaska - Jon Reyhner 17
Letter from the President 4 ; Contributing to Perspectives - Guidelines for Writers 2 ; Adaptation Pedagogy for English Learners in Multicultural Contexts - Jose W. Lalas and Marie Therese A. P. Bustos 5 ; Scientific Biliteracy: A New Perspective and Pedagogical Approach on Science Learning Esther Garza 12 ; Literacy/Learning Strategies for Teachers of American Indian Students - R. Timothy Rush 17 ; Struggling Learners & Language Immersion Education: Research-based, Practitioner-informed Responses to Educators’ Top Questions - Shogo Sakurai 19 ; From Enrichment to Immersion in Chinese/Mandarin – Transforming Public Education for the 21st Century - Sarah Rice Fox 20
Contents:
From Language Garden to Sustainable Languaging: Bilingual Education in a Global World
Ofelia García, Graduate Center, City University of New York 5 ; Language Lost & Found: A Family’s Full Circle : Mary Curtis 10 ; Language Variation from a Bilingual Perspective : Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth, New York University, Steinhardt 17 ; Letter from the President 4 ; Contributing to Perspectives - Guidelines for Writers 2.
The aim of this paper is to give the semantic profile of the Greek verb-deriving suffixes -íz(o), -én(o), -év(o), -ón(o), -(i)áz(o), and -ín(o), with a special account of the ending -áo/-ó. The patterns presented are the result of an empirical analysis of data extracted from extended interviews conducted with 28 native Greek speakers in Athens, Greece in February 2009. In the first interview task the test persons were asked to force(=create) verbs by using the suffixes -ízo, -évo, -óno, -(i)ázo, and -íno and a variety of bases which conformed to the ontological distinctions made in Lieber (2004). In the second task the test persons were asked to evaluate three groups of forced verbs with a noun, an adjective, and an adverb, respectively, by using one (best/highly acceptable verb) to six (worst/unacceptable verb) points. In the third task nineteen established verb pairs with different suffixes and the ending -áo/-ó were presented. The test persons were asked to report whether there was some difference between them and what exactly this difference was. The differences reported were transformed into 16 alternations. In the fourth task 21 established verbs with different suffixes were presented. The test persons were asked to give the "opposite" or "near opposite" expression for each verb. The rationale behind this task was to arrive at the meaning of the suffixes through the semantics of the opposites. In the analysis Rochelle's Lieber's (2004) theoretical framework is used. The results of the analysis suggest (i) a sign-based treatment of affixes, (ii) a vertical preference structure in the semantic structure of the head suffixes which takes into account the semantic make-up of the bases, and (iii) the integration of socioexpressive meaning into verb structures.
It has become commonplace to introduce works on aspect with the remark that there is hardly another field in linguistics so much plagued by terminological and notional confusion. [..] About 20 major books claiming a comprehensive treatment have come to my attention during little more than the past half decade […]. Among these books are five that form the subject of this paper in a narrower sense, given that the present article originally started out as a combined review of these five works: […] Even if one is not at all keen on monocultures, it is clear that the obvious disunity in fundamental points of view makes the situation increasingly difficult for the "ordinary working linguist". It is getting impossible to keep up with the many different issues raised in the theoretical literature when, for instance, writing a chapter on aspect for a descriptive grammar of a language. As a result, a tremendous gap between descriptive and theoretical work has arisen. This has not gone unnoticed in the literature. There are several recent publications in which explicit attempts are made to bridge this gap […], all of them trying to add a typological perspective to aspect theory and to free it from its purely truth-conditional embedding, which was the dominant paradigm in the 70ies and 80ies. But again, these works are often themselves cast into specific theoretical frameworks, more often than not ignoring other approaches to the field if they do not fit their persuasions. I will therefore avail myself of the opportunity of this review article by briefly sorting out the differences in the fundamental assumptions and theoretical primitives of the various approaches, in order to come to grips with the aspectological landscape. A general, chiefly historically oriented assessment is presented in the first part of this paper (see section 1). The second part is then devoted to a detailed discussion of the books under review against the background etablished in this survey (see section 2). At the end, I will try to draw some conclusions and hint at some directions for future work with aspect in a descriptive and/or typological context (see section 3).
Different languages employ different morphosyntactic devices for expressing genericity. And, of course, they also make use of different morphosyntactic and semantic or pragmatic cues which may contribute to the interpretation of a sentence as generic rather than episodic. [...] We will advance the strong hypo thesis that it is a fundamental property of lexical elements in natural language that they are neutral with respect to different modes of reference or non-reference. That is, we reject the idea that a certain use of a lexical element, e.g. a use which allows reference to particular spatio-temporally bounded objects in the world, should be linguistically prior to all other possible uses, e.g. to generic and non-specific uses. From this it follows that we do not consider generic uses as derived from non-generic uses as it is occasionally assumed in the literature. Rather, we regard these two possibilities of use as equivalent alternative uses of lexical elements. The typological differences to be noted therefore concern the formal and semantic relationship of generic and non-generic uses to each other; they do not pertain to the question of whether lexical elements are predetermined for one of these two uses. Even supposing we found a language where generic uses are always zero-marked and identical to lexical sterns, we would still not assume that lexical elements in this language primarily have a generic use from which the non-generic uses are derived. (Incidentally, none of the languages examined, not even Vietnamese, meets this criterion.)
In the present monograph, we will deal with questions of lexical typology in the nominal domain. By the term "lexical typology in the nominal domain", we refer to crosslinguistic regularities in the interaction between (a) those areas of the lexicon whose elements are capable of being used in the construction of "referring phrases" or "terms" and (b) the grammatical patterns in which these elements are involved. In the traditional analyses of a language such as English, such phrases are called "nominal phrases". In the study of the lexical aspects of the relevant domain, however, we will not confine ourselves to the investigation of "nouns" and "pronouns" but intend to take into consideration all those parts of speech which systematically alternate with nouns, either as heads or as modifiers of nominal phrases. In particular, this holds true for adjectives both in English and in other Standard European Languages. It is well known that adjectives are often difficult to distinguish from nouns, or that elements with an overt adjectival marker are used interchangeably with nouns, especially in particular semantic fields such as those denoting MATERIALS or NATlONALlTIES. That is, throughout this work the expression "lexical typology in the nominal domain" should not be interpreted as "a typology of nouns", but, rather, as the cross-linguistic investigation of lexical areas constitutive for "referring phrases" irrespective of how the parts-of-speech system in a specific language is defined.
This study examines the particularities of multilingual discourse, based on the example of recorded conversations in a trilingual family in Canada. It combines two different fields of linguistic research: multilingualism and conversation analysis. The study of multilingualism has developed into a popular field of linguistic research over the past two decades. In general, it focuses on bilingualism as a social and individual phenomenon, and in particular on the alternation between two languages in the speech of bilinguals. For this alternation, the term code-switching is widely used. Usually, the term refers to language alternation both between sentences and within sentence boundaries. From a sociolinguistic perspective code-switching is often interpreted as a means of signaling group membership in bilingual communities, whereas grammatical analyses examine how morphosyntactic units from different languages are combined (and can be combined) within one sentence. Auer (1998: 3) suggests the study of the conversational structure of code-switching as a third perspective on bilingual language usage, one that he claims has been widely neglected by linguistic research in the past. In particular, those cases of language alternation between utterances (sentences) but within the same conversation cannot be described adequately from either a macro-sociolinguistic or a morphosyntactic perspective.
In this paper we test previous claims concerning the universality of patterns of polysemy and semantic change in perception verbs. Implicit in such claims are two elements: firstly, that the sharing of two related senses A and B by a given form is cross-linguistically widespread, and matched by a complementary lack of some rival polysemy, and secondly that the explanation for the ubiquity of a given pattern of polysemy is ultimately rooted in our shared human cognitive make-up. However, in comparison to the vigorous testing of claimed universals that has occurred in phonology, syntax and even basic lexical meaning, there has been little attempt to test proposed universals of semantic extension against a detailed areal study of non-European languages. To address this problem we examine a broad range of Australian languages to evaluate two hypothesized universals: one by Viberg (1984), concerning patterns of semantic extension across sensory modalities within the domain of perception verbs (i .e. intra-field extensions), and the other by Sweetser (1990), concerning the mapping of perception to cognition (i.e. trans-field extensions). Testing against the Australian data allows one claimed universal to survive, but demolishes the other, even though both assign primacy to vision among the senses.
Theticity
(1996)
The subject matter of this chapter is the semantic, syntactic and discoursepragmatic background as well as the cross-linguistic behavior of types of utterance exemplified by the following English sentences […]: (1) My NECK hurts. […] (2) The PHONE's ringing. [...] Sentences such as […] are usually held to stand in opposition to sentences with a topical subject. The difference is said to be formally marked, for example, by VS order vs. topical SV order (as in Albanian po bie telefoni 'the PHONE is ringing' vs. telefoni po bie 'the PHONE is RINGING'), or by accent on the subject only vs. accent on both the subject and the verb (as in the English translations). The term theticity will be used in the following to label the specific phenomenological domain to which the sentences in (1) and (2) belong. It has long been commonplace that these and similar expressions occur at particular points in the discourse where "a new situation is presented as a whole". We will try to depict and classify the various discourse situations in which these expressions have been found in the different languages, and we will try to trace out areas of cross-linguistic comparability. Finally, we will raise the question whether or not there is a common denominator which would justify a unified treatment of all these expressions in functional/semantic terms.
[I]n its present form, the bibliography contains approximately 1100 entries. Bibliographical work is never complete, and the present one is still modest in a number of respects. It is not annotated, and it still contains a lot of mistakes and inconsistencies. It has nevertheless reached a stage which justifies considering the possibility of making it available to the public. The first step towards this is its pre-publication in the form of this working paper. […]
The bibliography is less complete for earlier years. For works before 1970, the bibliographies of Firbas and Golkova 1975 and Tyl 1970 may be consulted, which have not been included here.
The acquisition of Greek
(1995)
Studie zum Erwerb des Neugriechischen
A feature of the Northern Iroquoian languages is their especially rich inventory of particles. This paper is concerned with one particle in the Cayuga language which has a widespread distribution and performs a broad range of apparently unrelated functions. The particle ne:' is commonly .translated as 'it is/that is', 'this' or ' that'. In other instances it is translated as predominant stress, or is simply omitted in the translation. The particle can occur in almost any syntactic or semantic environment, but it is not obligatory in any context. The various functions that have been suggested in the literature include indication of declarative mood and assertion, marking of emphasis, focus or contrast, and expression of predicative and deictic force. I argue that the particle ne:' can be described successfully if its distribution is considered from a wider perspective, taking into account discourse structure and variation in scope. Its analysis as a focus marker can account for the variety of apparently unrelated functions. The analysis is based on a detailed study of the particle' s distribution in spoken language using a database of five Cayuga texts by four different speakers, including three narratives, one procedural text and a children 's version of a ceremonial text.
In the area of the Modern Greek verb, phenomena which consistently appear are headmarking, many potential slots before and/or after the verb root, noun and adverb incorporation, addition of adverbial elements by means of affixes, a large inventory of bound morphemes, verbal words as minimal sentences, etc. These features relate Modern Greek to polysynthesis. The main bulk of this paper is dedicated to the comparison of affixal and incorporation patterns between Modern Greek and the polysynthetic languages Abkhaz, Cayuga, Chukchi, Mohawk, and Nahuatl. Ultimately, a typological outlook for Modern Greek is proposed.
In the last two decades Philippine languages, and of these especially Tagalog, have acquired a prominent place in linguistic theory. A central role in this discussion was played by two papers written by Schachter (1976 and 1977), who was inspired by Keenan's artcle on the subject from 1976. The most recent contributions on this topic have been from de Wolff (1988) and Shibatani (1988), both of which were published in a collection of essays, edited by Shibatani, with the title Passive and Voice. These works, and several works in-between, deal with the focus system specific to Philippine languages. The main discussion centers around the fact that Philippine languages contain a basic set of 5 to 7 affix focus forms. Their exact number varies not only in the secondary literature, but in the primary sources, i.e. Tagalog grammars, as well, where considerable differences in the number of affix focus forms can be found. All of these works, however, do agree on one point: the Philippine focus system basica1ly consists of agent, patient (=goal or object), benefactive, locative, and instrumental affix forms. Schachter/Otanes (1972) list a number of further forms, and in Drossard (1983 and 1984) we tried to show (in an attempt similar to those of Sapir 1917 and Klimov 1977) that the main criterion for a systematization of the Philippine focus system consists in the difference between the active and stative domains, an attempt which in our opinion was largely misunderstood (cf. the brief remarks in Shibatani (1988) and de Wolff (1988). The present paper is thus, on the one hand, an attempt to repeat and clarify our earlier position, and on the other, a further step towards such a systematization. A first step in this direction was an article on resultativity in Tagalog from 1991. In the present paper this approach will be extended to reciprocity. In the process we will show that it is valid to make a distinction between an active (=controlled action) vs. a stative (=limited controlled action) domain. First, however, we will take a brief look at what makes up the active and stative voice systems.
This paper is concerned with developing Joan Bybee's proposals regarding the nature of grammatical meaning and synthesizing them with Paul Hopper's concept of grammar as emergent. The basic question is this: How much of grammar may be modeled in terms of grammaticalization? In contradistinction to Heine, Claudi & Hünnemeyer (1991), who propose a fairly broad and unconstrained framework for grammaticalization, we try to present a fairly specific and constrained theory of grammaticalization in order to get a more precise idea of the potential and the problems of this approach. Thus, while Heine et al. (1991:25) expand – without discussion – the traditional notion of grammaticalization to the clause level, and even include non-segmental structure (such as word order), we will here adhere to a strictly 'element-bound' view of grammaticalization: where no grammaticalized element exists, there is no grammaticalization. Despite this fairly restricted concept of grammaticalization, we will attempt to corroborate the claim that essential aspects of grammar may be understood and modeled in terms of grammaticalization. The approach is essentially theoretical (practical applications will, hopefully, follow soon) and many issues are just mentioned and not discussed in detail. The paper presupposes a familiarity with the basic facts of grammaticalization and it does not present any new facts.
Grammatical relations – in particular the relation 'subject of' – and voice are of central concern to any theory of universal grammar. With respect to these phenomena the analysis of Tagalog (and the Philippine languages in general) has turned out to be particularly difficult and continues to be a matter of debate. What traditionally has been called passive voice in these languages […] appears to be so different from voice phenomena in the more familiar Indo-European languages that the term 'focus' was introduced in the late 1950s to underscore its 'exceptional' nature [...]. Furthermore, […] an inflationary use has been made of the term 'ergative' in the last decade; it can thus no longer be assumed that it has an unequivocal and specific meaning in typologizing languages, apart from the technical definition it might be given within a particular framework. But if the Philippine 'focus' constructions are neither passive nor ergative, how else can they be analysed? [...] In this paper a ease will be made for the claim that 'focus' marking should be analysed in terms of orientation, a concept used […] for capturing the difference between English (and, more generally, Indo-European) orientated nominalisations such as 'employ-er' or 'employ-ee', and unorientated nominalisations such as 'employ-ing'. This approach implies that 'focus' marking is derivational rather than inflectional as often presumed in the literature. This is to say that what is typologically conspicuous in Tagalog is not the 'focus' phenomenon per se, since this is very similar to orientated nominalisations in many other languages, but rather the very prominent use of orientated formations (i.e., derivational morphology) in basic clause structure.
The most macabre of the numerous anthropomorphic metaphors linguists provide for their subject matter is that of language death. The extinction of a language is in fact a distressing matter, because the cultural tradition connected to it and the sociocultural or even ethnic independence of the group that speaks it very often perish together with it. Yet it is a very common phenomenon. [...] It would seem strange that such a frequent and well-known phenomenon has not been studied much earlier; nevertheless it is a fact that the investigation of language death is a new and developing field, which emerged as something like an independent subdiscipline of linguistics towards the end of the seventies. This comparatively embryonic stage of the field should be kept in mind throughout the following discussion.
This paper is concerned with anticausative verbs (or verb-forms), or shortly, anticausatives. [...] [C]ausative/non-causative pairs with a marked non-causative are quite frequent in the languages of the world. However, so far they have not received sufficient attention in general and typological linguistics, a fact which is also manifested in the absence of a generally recognized term for this phenomenon […]. This paper therefore deals with the most important properties of anticausatives (particularly semantic conditions on them), their relationship to other areas of grammar as well as their historical development in different languages. The grammatical domain of transitivity, valence and voice, where the anticausative belongs, takes up a central position in grammar and consequently the present discussion should be of considerable interest to general comparative (or typological) linguists.
It is the aim of this paper to present and elaborate a new solution to the old syntactic problems connected with the Latin gerundive and gerund, two verbal categories which have been interpreted variously either as adjective (or participle) or noun (or infinitive). These questions have been much discussed for quite a number of years […] but for the most part from a philological or purely diachronic point of view. All these linguists try to explain the peculiarities of these categories and their syntax by showing that the gerund is historically prior to the gerundive. [...] It is our thesis […] that in order to arrive at a unified account of gerundive and gerund we do not have to go back to prehistoric times. Even for the classical language gerund and gerundive represent the same category, in the sense that the gerund can be shown to be a special case of the gerundive. Additional evidence from a parallel construction in Hindi is adduced to make the Latin facts more plausible. It is only in the post-classical language that certain tendencies which had shown up already in Old Latin poetry become stronger and finally lead to a reanalysis of the gerundive and a split into two distinct syntactic constructions. The propositional meaning of the gerundive in its attributive use is explained with reference to a conflict between syntactic and cognitive principles. Special constructions which are the effects of such conflicts can be found in other parts of grammar. Languages differ with respect to the degree of syntacticization (or conventionalization) of these special constructions.
In this text, we describe the development of a broad coverage grammar for Japanese that has been built for and used in different application contexts. The grammar is based on work done in the Verbmobil project (Siegel 2000) on machine translation of spoken dialogues in the domain of travel planning. The second application for JACY was the automatic email response task. Grammar development was described in Oepen et al. (2002a). Third, it was applied to the task of understanding material on mobile phones available on the internet, while embedded in the project DeepThought (Callmeier et al. 2004, Uszkoreit et al. 2004). Currently, it is being used for treebanking and ontology extraction from dictionary definition sentences by the Japanese company NTT (Bond et al. 2004).
Das Problem des Transfers in der maschinellen Übersetzung von Japanisch nach Englisch ist fehlende Information über Numerus und Definitheit im Japanischen, die für die Wahl der englischen Artikel und die Nomenmarkierung gebraucht wird. Obwohl dieses Problem signifikant ist, beschäftigt sich die Forschungsliteratur kaum damit. [...] Wir bsaieren unsere Untersuchungen auf experimentell erhobenen Daten aus einem Experiment über deutsch-japanische gedolmetschte Terminaushandlungsdialoge [...]. Auf diese Weise können Phänomene bestimmt werden, die für die Domäne von VERBMOBIL relevant sind. Wir sehen unser Vorgehen in Übereinstimmung mit dem 'Sublanguage'-Ansatz [...].
Eins der signifikanten Probleme in der maschinellen Übersetzung japanische in deutsche Sprache ist die fehlende Information und Definitheit im japanischen Analyse-Output. Eine effiziente Lösung dieses Problems ist es, die Suche nach der relevanten Information in den Transfer zu integrieren. Transferregeln werden mit Präferenzregeln und Default-Regeln kombiniert. Dadurch wird Information über lexikalische Restriktionen der Zielsprache, über die Domäne und über den Diskurs zugänglich.
Japanese is often taken to be strictly head-final in its syntax. In our work on a broad-coverage, precision implemented HPSG for Japanese, we have found that while this is generally true, there are nonetheless a few minor exceptions to the broad trend. In this paper, we describe the grammar engineering project, present the exceptions we have found, and conclude that this kind of phenomenon motivates on the one hand the HPSG type hierarchical approach which allows for the statement of both broad generalizations and exceptions to those generalizations and on the other hand the usefulness of grammar engineering as a means of testing linguistic hypotheses.
We present a broad coverage Japanese grammar written in the HPSG formalism with MRS semantics. The grammar is created for use in real world applications, such that robustness and performance issues play an important role. It is connected to a POS tagging and word segmentation tool. This grammar is being developed in a multilingual context, requiring MRS structures that are easily comparable across languages.
Based on a detailed case study of parallel grammar development distributed across two sites, we review some of the requirements for regression testing in grammar engineering, summarize our approach to systematic competence and performance profiling, and discuss our experience with grammar development for a commercial application. If possible, the workshop presentation will be organized around a software demonstration.
This paper proposes an annotating scheme that encodes honorifics (respectful words). Honorifics are used extensively in Japanese, reflecting the social relationship (e.g. social ranks and age) of the referents. This referential information is vital for resolving zero
pronouns and improving machine translation outputs. Annotating honorifics is a complex task that involves identifying a predicate with honorifics, assigning ranks to referents of the
predicate, calibrating the ranks, and connecting referents with their predicates.
Some requirements for a VERBMOBIL system capable of processing Japanese dialogue input have been explored. Based on a pilot study in the VERBMOBIL domain, dialogues between 2 participants and a professional Japanese interpreter have been analyzed with respect to a very typical and frequent feature: zero pronouns. Zero pronouns in Japanese texts or dialogues as well as overt pronouns in English texts or dialogues are an important element of discourse coherence. As to translation, this difference in the use of pronouns is a case of translation mismatch: information not explicitly expressed in the source language is needed in the target language. (Verb argument positions, normally obligatory in English, are rather frequently omitted in Japanese. Furthermore, verbs in Japanese are not marked with respect to features necessary for pronoun selection in English.)
We present an architecture for the integration of shallow and deep NLP components which is aimed at flexible combination of different language technologies for a range of practical current and future applications. In particular, we describe the integration of a high-level HPSG parsing system with different high-performance shallow components, ranging from named entity recognition to chunk parsing and shallow clause recognition. The NLP components enrich a representation of natural language text with layers of new XML meta-information using a single shared data structure, called the text chart. We describe details of the integration methods, and show how information extraction and language checking applications for realworld German text benefit from a deep grammatical analysis.
Hybrid robust deep and shallow semantic processing for creativity support in document production
(2004)
The research performed in the DeepThought project (http://www.project-deepthought.net) aims at demonstrating the potential of deep linguistic processing if added to existing shallow methods that ensure robustness. Classical information retrieval is extended by high precision concept indexing and relation detection. We use this approach to demonstrate the feasibility of three ambitious applications, one of which is a tool for creativity support in document production and collective brainstorming. This application is described in detail in this paper. Common to all three applications, and the basis for their development is a platform for integrated linguistic processing. This platform is based on a generic software architecture that combines multiple NLP components and on robust minimal recursive semantics (RMRS) as a uniform representation language.
In this paper we show an approach to the customization of GermaNet to the German HPSG grammar lexicon developed in the Verbmobil project. GermaNet has a broad coverage of the German base vocabulary and fine-grained semantic classification; while the HPSG grammar lexicon is comparatively small und has a coarse-grained semantic classification. In our approach, we have developed a mapping algorithm to relate the synsets in GermaNet with the semantic sorts in HPSG. The evaluation result shows that this approach is useful for the lexical extension of our deep grammar development to cope with real-world text understanding.
Particles fullfill several distinct central roles in the Japanese language. They can mark arguments as well as adjuncts, can be functional or have semantic functions. There is, however, no straightforward matching from particles to functions, as, e.g., 'ga' can mark the subject, the object or the adjunct of a sentence. Particles can cooccur. Verbal arguments that could be identified by particles can be eliminated in the Japanese sentence. And finally, in spoken language particles are often omitted. A proper treatment of particles is thus necessary to make an analysis of Japanese sentences possible. Our treatment is based on an empirical investigation of 800 dialogues. We set up a type hierarchy of particles motivated by their subcategorizational and modificational behaviour. This type hierarchy is part of the Japanese syntax in VERBMOBIL.
Preferences and defaults for definiteness and number in japanese to german machine translation
(1996)
A significant problem when translating Japanese dialogues into German is the missing information on number and definiteness in the Japanese analysis output. The integration of the search for such information into the transfer process provides an efficient solution. General transfer includes conditions to make it possible to consider external knowledge. Thereby, grammatical and lexical knowledge of the source language, knowledge of lexical restrictions on the target language, domain knowledge and discourse knowledge are accessible.
A comprehensive investigation of Japanese particle was missing up to now. General implications were set up without the fact that a comprehensive analysis was carried out. [...] We offer a lexicalist treatment of the problem. Instead of assuming different phrase structure rules we state a type hierarchy of Japanese particles. This makes a uniform treatment of phrase structure as well as a differentiation of subcategorization patterns possible.
We present a solution for the representation of Japanese honorifical information in the HPSG framework. Basically, there are three dimensions of honorification. We show that a treatment is necessary that involves both the syntactic and the contextual level of information. The japanese grammar is part of a machine translation system.
The research performed in the DeepThought project aims at demonstrating the potential of deep linguistic processing if combined with shallow methods for robustness. Classical information retrieval is extended by high precision concept indexing and relation detection. On the basis of this approach, the feasibility of three ambitious applications will be demonstrated, namely: precise information extraction for business intelligence; email response management for customer relationship management; creativity support for document production and collective brainstorming. Common to these applications, and the basis for their development is the XML-based, RMRS-enabled core architecture framework that will be described in detail in this paper. The framework is not limited to the applications envisaged in the DeepThought project, but can also be employed e.g. to generate and make use of XML standoff annotation of documents and linguistic corpora, and in general for a wide range of NLP-based applications and research purposes.
In this paper we describe SOBA, a sub-component of the SmartWeb multi-modal dialog system. SOBA is a component for ontologybased information extraction from soccer web pages for automatic population of a knowledge base that can be used for domainspecific question answering. SOBA realizes a tight connection between the ontology, knowledge base and the information extraction component. The originality of SOBA is in the fact that it extracts information from heterogeneous sources such as tabular structures, text and image captions in a semantically integrated way. In particular, it stores extracted information in a knowledge base, and in turn uses the knowledge base to interpret and link newly extracted information with respect to already existing entities.
This demo abstract describes the SmartWeb Ontology-based Information Extraction System (SOBIE). A key feature of SOBIE is that all information is extracted and stored with respect to the SmartWeb ontology. In this way, other components of the systems, which use the same ontology, can access this information in a straightforward way. We will show how information extracted by SOBIE is visualized within its original context, thus enhancing the browsing experience of the end user.
Dialogue acts in Verbmobil 2
(1998)
This report describes the dialogue phases and the second edition dialogue acts which are used in the VERBMOBIL 2 project [...]. While in the first project phase the scenario was restricted to appointment scheduling dialogues, it has been extended to travel planning in the second phase with appointment scheduling being only a part of the new scenario.
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.
While the sortal constraints associated with Japanese numeral classifiers are well-studied, less attention has been paid to the details of their syntax. We describe an analysis implemented within a broad-coverage HPSG that handles an intricate set of numeral classifier construction types and compositionally relates each to an appropriate semantic representation, using Minimal Recursion Semantics.
While the sortal constraints associated with Japanese numeral classifiers are wellstudied, less attention has been paid to the details of their syntax. We describe an analysis implemented within a broadcoverage HPSG that handles an intricate set of numeral classifier construction types and compositionally relates each to an appropriate semantic representation, using Minimal Recursion Semantics.
We present an effort for the development of multilingual named entity grammars in a unification-based finite-state formalism (SProUT). Following an extended version of the MUC7 standard, we have developed Named Entity Recognition grammars for German, Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish, English, and Czech. The grammars recognize person names, organizations, geographical locations, currency, time and date expressions. Subgrammars and gazetteers are shared as much as possible for the grammars of the different languages. Multilingual corpora from the business domain are used for grammar development and evaluation. The annotation format (named entity and other linguistic information) is described. We present an evaluation tool which provides detailed statistics and diagnostics, allows for partial matching of annotations, and supports user-defined mappings between different annotation and grammar output formats.
Guidelines for Writers 2 ; Letter from the President 4 ; Poverty is the Problem that Must be Solved… Our Schools are not broken - Stephen Krashen 5 ; Is Multicultural Education Relevant Today? - Christine Sleeter 8 ; Revitalizing Indigenous Language Using Picture Books - Rita Scotti Juric & Nada Poropat 10 ; Success Without Bilingual Education? Acquisiton of Academic Language in English through Comprehensible Input - Francisco Ramos & Stephen Krashen 13 ; Becoming Transnational: Filipino ELL Youth’s School Adaptation - Jeom Ja Yeo, Ph.D. 15
In dyadic communication, both interlocutors adapt to each other linguistically, that is, they align interpersonally. In this article, we develop a framework for modeling interpersonal alignment in terms of the structural similarity of the interlocutors’ dialog lexica. This is done by means of so-called two-layer time-aligned network series, that is, a time-adjusted graph model. The graph model is partitioned into two layers, so that the interlocutors’ lexica are captured as subgraphs of an encompassing dialog graph. Each constituent network of the series is updated utterance-wise. Thus, both the inherent bipartition of dyadic conversations and their gradual development are modeled. The notion of alignment is then operationalized within a quantitative model of structure formation based on the mutual information of the subgraphs that represent the interlocutor’s dialog lexica. By adapting and further developing several models of complex network theory, we show that dialog lexica evolve as a novel class of graphs that have not been considered before in the area of complex (linguistic) networks. Additionally, we show that our framework allows for classifying dialogs according to their alignment status. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first approach to measuring alignment in communication that explores the similarities of graph-like cognitive representations. Keywords: alignment in communication; structural coupling; linguistic networks; graph distance measures; mutual information of graphs; quantitative network analysis
This paper proposes a new sound rule for Proto-Slavic, according to which *g (from PIE *g, *gw, *gh, and *gwh) was lost before *m. This development was posterior to Winter’s law and the merger of voiced and aspirated stop in Slavic. The operation of the rule is illustrated by new etymologies of four Slavic words: *ama, *jama ‘hole, pit’, *těmę ‘sinciput’, *mąžь ‘husband, man’, and *remy ‘leather belt’.
Elision of /h, ?/ in the Shirazi Dialect of Persian (SHDP) : an optimality theory based analysis
(2010)
Until recently, many researchers have shown interest in studying lenitions, which are examples of the most common universal types of phonological processes. Elision of laryngeals (glottal fricative /h/ and glottal stop /?/) is one of the most common phonological alternations exhibited in the Shirazi dialect of Persian (SHDP) which to the knowledge of the researchers, has not been studied to date. This paper seeks to provide a description of the facts about this common phonological alternation in the addressed regional dialect of Persian and points out some main differences between the behavior of these processes in SHDP and Standard Persian (SP). The analysis is cast in an Optimal Theoretic (OT) framework (McCarthy and Prince 1995, 2001), which holds that linguistic forms are the outcome of interaction among violable universal constraints. The present study shows that the addressed processes of consonant deletion in SHDP are restricted by syllabic position and are conditioned by coda position, intervocalic position or consonant clusters. They are usually blocked in the onset, but there are cases where reduction is allowed in the onset of the stressed syllable. Thus, the study adds SHDP to the list of languages which permit lenition in the onset of the stressed syllable. The addressed processes of elision are always blocked in word-initial position and laryngeal elision is always followed by Compensatory lengthening (CL), even after deletion from the onset of the stressed syllable.
Key words: lenition or weakening, laryngeal elision, phonological processes, Optimality Theory
Children […] growing up with highly inflected languages such as Modern Greek will frequently hear different grammatical forms of a given lexeme used in different grammatical and semantic-pragmatic contexts. In spite of the fact that the Greek noun is not as highly inflected as the verb, acquisition of nominal inflection of this inflecting-fusional language is quite complex, comprising the three categories of case, number, and gender. As is usual in this type of language, the formation of case-number forms obeys different patterns that apply to largely arbitrary classes of nominal lexemes partially based on gender. Further, frequency of the occurrence of the three gender classes and case-number forms of nouns greatly differs in spoken Greek, regarding both the types and tokens. […] [A] child learning an inflecting-fusional language like Greek must construct different inflectional patterns depending not only on parts of speech but also on subclasses within a given part of speech, such as gender classes of nouns and inflectional classes within or (exceptionally) across genders. It is therefore to be expected that the early development of case and number distinctions will apply to specific nouns and subclasses of nouns rather than the totality of Greek nouns. The two main theoretical approaches of morphological development that will be discussed in the present paper are the usage-based approach and the pre- and protomorphology approach.
In this paper I present five alternations of the verb system of Modern Greek, which are recurrently mapped on the syntactic frame NPi__NP. The actual claim is that only the participation in alternations and/or the allocation to an alternation variant can reliably determine the relation between a verb derivative and its base. In the second part, the conceptual structures and semantic/situational fields of a large number of “-ízo” derivatives appearing inside alternation classes are presented. The restricted character of the conceptual and situational preferences inside alternations classes suggests the dominant character of the alternations component.
Most systematic discussion of dyad morphemes has focussed on Australian languages, owing to a combination of their relative prevalence there, and the development of a descriptive tradition that investigates them in some depth. In the course of researching this paper, however, I became aware of functionally and semantically similar morphemes in many other parts of the world, almost invariably described in isolation from any typological reference point. I have incorporated such data as far as I am aware of it, in the hope that a systematic study will encourage other investigators to identify, and investigate in detail, similar constructions in a range of languages. The current state of our research, however, as well as some interesting geographical skewings that I discuss below, such that outside Australia dyad constructions almost exclusively employ reciprocal morphology, means that most of this paper will focus on Australian languages.
The Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) consists of Codes for the Human Analysis of Transcripts (CHAT), Computerized Language Analysis (CLAN), and a database. There is also an online manual which includes the CHILDES bibliography, the database, and the CHAT conventions as well as the CLAN instructions. The first three parts of this paper concern the CHAT format of transcription, grammatical coding, and analyzing transcripts by using the CLAN programs. The fourth part shows examples of transcribed and coded data.
MED (Media EDitor) is a program designed to facilitate the transcription of digitized soundfiles into textfiles. It was written by Hans Drexler and Daan Broeder, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. [...] The aim of MED is to facilitate the transcription of sound into text using a single program. It works on the principle of the coexistence and interaction of two basic elements, the waveform display window and the text window. [...] This means that you no longer need to use both a sound editor and a word processor at the same time in order to transcribe digitized speech files. Instead, you can directly type the sound you hear (and see) via MED into the text window. Furthermore, you can directly link sound portions of the waveform display window to text portions of the text window, so that you can easily locate and listen to the original source of your transcription once the links have been set. In this function the waveform display window and the text window virtually interact with each other.
Contributing to NABE News - Guidelines for Writers 2 ; Letter from the President 4 ; Words of the World: Will Globalization Hurt World Languages? - Mariella Espinoza-Herold & Navin Singh 5 ; Bilingual Education in Italian Schools in Croatia: Diachronic and Synchronic Official Position and the New Linguistic Situation - Rita Scotti Juric & Nada Poropat 9 ; Globalization and the Changing of Parental Perceptions towards Multilingualism - Navin Singh & Mariella Esppinoza-Herold 12 ; Asian and Pacific Islanders: How about a National Consortium to Prepare Asian Bilingual Teachers? Clara C. Park 14 ; Personal Privilege Statement Texas Representative - Ana Hernandez Luna 16 ; NABE 2011 Conference highlights 17 ; Outstanding Citizen of the Year Award 19 ; Outstanding Dissertation Winners 20 ; Student Essay Winners 22 ; Bilingual Teacher of the Year 25 ; El desarrollo del español para maestros en programas de educación dual- Luis A. Rosado, Lidia Morris & Kelly A. Rosado 26 ; Indigenous Bilingual Education Honoring Our Heritage - Jon Reyhne 29
Contributing to NABE News - Guidelines for Writers 2 ; Letter from the President 4 ; Bilingual Dyads
in the Science Classroom: Infusing the 5E Model with Student Talk - María G. Arreguín-Anderson and
Lynda Cavazos, University of Texas at San Antonio 5 ; Developing Science Bi-literacy: Maximizing Bilingual Students’ Learning - Zulmaris Diaz 8 ; Asian and Pacific Islanders Learning Style Preferences of Asian Students - Clara C. Park, California State University 13 ; Indigenous Bilingual Education Place-based Education - Jon Reyhner, Northern Arizona University 16 ; La Educaciõn Bilingüe o Multicultural en Centro America y La Republica Domicana 18
Contributing to NABE News - Guidelines 2 ; Letter from the President 4 ; NABE 2010 Conference Highlights 5 ; Student Essay Winners 7 ; Teacher of the Year 9 ; Dissertation Award Winners 10 ; Innovating Scholarship Through Technology, Social Networking and the Community Along the U.S. and Mexico Border - Dr. Edith Esparza-Young 11 ; Indigenous Bilingual Education Alaska Native Education: Views From Within - Navin Singh and Jon Reyhner 15 ; Asian and Pacific Islanders Working with Asian Immigrant Parents of Young Children - Kerry Lee 18
Letter from the President 4 ; Indigenous Bilingual Education in Vietnam: Initiatives and Lessons America’s Schools Can Learn From Eirini Gouleta 5 ; The Effects of Music on Spanish- Dominant Kindergarteners - Sandra B. Chong 10 ; Indigenous Bilingual Education “Essie’s Story” Insightful Words from an Old Teacher to Teachers Today - Chelsea Bergner, Northern Arizona University 14 ; Asian and Pacific Islanders Supporting Asian Immigrant Families of Children with Disabilities Effectively - Lusa Lo, Ed.D., University of
Massachusetts, Boston 16 ; Peace Corps, an undervalued source of bilingual support? - Brock Brady 19
Contributing to NABE News - Guidelines for Writers 2 ; Letter from the President 4 ; Conceptualizing a Schoolwide Bilingual Literacy Model: Closing the Achievement Gap through Systematic Formative Assessment - Doris Luft Baker 6 ; Asian and Pacific Islanders Asian American English Language Learners’ Identity Formation and Dynamic Transformation - Deoksoon Kim 10 ; Indigenous Bilingual Education Mother Tongue Education - Jon Reyhner, Northern Arizona University 12 ; Improving the Literacy Skills of Children and Young Adults - Leo Gómez 12
Contributing to NABE News - Guidelines for Writers 2 ; Letter from the President 4 ; Memories of Title VII - Dr. Josefina Villamil Tinajero 5 ; Asian and Pacific Islanders Developing a Chinese Dual Language Program in Elementary Schools: Be Responsive to Language Characteristics - Dr. Ping Liu 13 ; The State of ELLs Education NABE 2009 Conference Proceedings 16 ; Indigenous Bilingual Education BIE Leading Indian Students to Failure 20 ; Fact Sheet on Supreme Court’s Decision In HORNE V. FLORES - David Hinojosa 21 ; Reflections on a White House Visit - By Francisco Guajardo 22
The special issue of The Linguistic Review on "The Role of Linguistics in Cognitive Science" presents a variety of viewpoints that complement or contrast with the perspective offered in Foundations of Language (Jackendoff 2002a). The present article is a response to the special issue. It discusses what it would mean to integrate linguistics into cognitive science, then shows how the parallel architecture proposed in Foundations seeks to accomplish this goal by altering certain fundamental assumptions of generative grammar. It defends this approach against criticisms both from mainstream generative grammar and from a variety of broader attacks on the generative enterprise, and it reflects on the nature of Universal Grammar. It then shows how the parallel architecture applies directly to processing and defends this construal against various critiques. Finally, it contrasts views in the special issue with that of Foundations with respect to what is unique about language among cognitive capacities, and it conjectures about the course of the evolution of the language faculty.
This dissertation investigated the development of the complementiser that from the demonstrative pronoun in the Germanic languages; each chapter dealt with a different aspect. In the introduction, the terms ‘reanalysis’ and ‘analogy’ and their relevance for grammaticalisation were explained, and the issues of the chapters were presented. The second chapter introduced some information about the Germanic language family and the languages which were relevant for this investigation, namely Gothic, Old English, Old Icelandic, Old Saxon and Old High German. Previous assumptions about the diachrony of that were presented and discussed. One of these proposals which mainly draws on evidence from West Germanic involves the idea that the source construction contained two independent main clauses with a demonstrative pronoun (that) at the end of the first clause (cf. e.g. Paul 1962, § 248). In contrast to this, the Gothic evidence showed that the source construction of the reanalysis of ϸatei was not a proper paratactic construction (at least in Gothic) but already a complex construction which contained a complementiser (ei) in the appositional subordinate clause (cf. also e.g. Longobardi 1994 for the diachrony of ϸatei). This contradiction raised the question whether the analysis of the Gothic that-complementiser also applies to the diachrony of that in West Germanic. This issue was taken up in the third chapter which presented an overview of subordination and complementisers in Northwest Germanic. The aim was to show that the Northwest Germanic languages also show a subordinating particle, which functions like the Gothic ei, namely ϸe (OE), er/es (OI), the (OHG, OS). As a result, the subordinating particle could be observed in relative and adverbial clauses in all Northwest Germanic languages. In complement clauses, which are most crucial for the argumentation, the subordinating particle is found in Old English and Old Icelandic but not in Old Saxon. In Old High German, there are only combinations of the with a following pronoun, theih and theiz, in ‘Otfrids Evangelienbuch’ (see Wunder 1965). Consequently, the presence of a subordinating particle is confirmed in North and West Germanic. The fact that the patterns of subordination are quite similar in all Germanic languages suggested a unitary analysis of the development of that in Germanic was appropriate. In chapter four, the similarities and differences between the Germanic languages with respect to the development of that were explained. It was argued that the preconditions of the reanalysis were the same, whereas the consequences of the reanalysis are realised differently in each language. The most important precondition was that the appositional source construction (explained in more detail below) was generally available in Germanic. Since the demonstrative pronoun at the end of the matrix clause and the subordinating particle of the subordinate clause were adjacent, phonological combination might have been crucial for the subsequent reanalysis to take place. After reanalysis, however, different changes can be observed in the different languages. For instance, it appears that during the Old English period the final syllable of the form ϸætte was deleted (see chapter 4 for references), whereas the final –ei is still present in the Gothic ϸatei, and completely absent in Old High German and Old Saxon. The source structure of the reanalysis was discussed in detail in a separate subsection. The appositional source construction, which was already assumed for the reanalysis of Gothic ϸatei, was compared with analyses of clitic left dislocation which propose that two constituents with the same theta-role derive from a Big DP (see e.g. Grewendorf 2009, Belletti 2005). Based on the Big DP analysis of Grewendorf (2009), it was claimed that the appositional clause, introduced by the subordinating particle, is generated in the Spec of a DP, and adjoined to this DP on the surface. It was argued that this whole complement DP-node occurred in an extraposed position in OV-languages so that the verb, when it stays in-situ, does not appear between the demonstrative pronoun and the subordinating particle. The structure in (1) illustrates the syntactic source structure which is assumed to apply to the development of the complementiser that in Germanic. ...
The focus of this paper is the perspectivization of thematic roles generally and the recipient role specifically. Whereas perspective is defined here as the representation of something for someone from a given position (Sandig 1996: 37), perspectivization refers to the verbalization of a situation in the speech generation process (Storrer 1996: 233). In a prototypical act of giving, for example, the focus of perception (the attention of the external observer) may be on the person who gives (agent), the transferred object (patient) or the person who receives the transferred object (recipient). The languages of the world provide differing linguistic means to perspectivize such an act of giving, or better: to perspectivize the participants of such an action. In this article, the linguistic means of three selected continental West Germanic languages –German, Dutch and Luxembourgish– will be taken into consideration, with an emphasis on the perspectivization of the recipient role.
The Acadian population of the Atlantic provinces is located in a number of geographically separate areas. Existing phonological descriptions of specific varieties have shown the existence of a great deal of diversity, but also much common ground. Little comparative work has been conducted to assess the extent to which the various regional varieties share the characteristics described for individual communities. New data are here brought to bear on these issues, drawn from the material collected in the course of a research project which has as its general objective the systematic charting of the linguistic differences and similarities among the Acadian communities of Nova Scotia. Features common to all these communities and to previously described varieties are distinguished from those which show interdialectal differences, and the nature of these differences is analyzed.
This monograph describes the overall language situation in Luxembourg, a highly multilingual country in Western Europe, from a language policy and planning perspective. The first part discusses the social and historical contexts, including major societal changes and uncertainties about the future, which are bound up with Europeanisation and the accelerated processes of globalisation. It also deconstructs the notions of Luxembourgish as a 'minority language' and French as the 'language of prestige', and describes a two-pronged language ideology that allows for either monolingual identification with Luxembourgish or trilingual identification with the languages recognised by the language law of 1984 (Luxembourgish / German / French). The second part discusses the trilingual school-system, a system in which large numbers of romanophone students are forced to go through a German-language literacy programme. The third part provides an overview of language spread in the areas of the media and literary writing. The fourth part examines language purism and tensions concerning the standardisation of Luxembourgish, as well as the debates about language requirements for citizenship. The discussion shows how language policy scholarship needs to be approached from a multidimensional perspective, that is, by taking into account dynamics on the global, regional and local levels in addition to those at the state level.
"Ich mag so Wasserpfeifeladen" : the interaction of grammar and information structure in Kiezdeutsch
(2008)
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
In this article we examine and "exapt" Wurzel's concept of superstable markers in an innovative manner. We develop an extended view of superstability through a critical discussion of Wurzel's original definition and the status of marker-superstability versus allomorphy in Natural Morphology: As we understand it, superstability is - above and beyond a step towards uniformity - mainly a symptom for the weakening of the category affected (cf. 1.,2. and 4.). This view is exemplified in four short case studies on superstability in different grammatical categories of four Germanic languages: genitive case in Mainland Scandinavian and English (3.1), plural formation in Dutch (3.2), second person singular ending -st in German (3.3), and ablaut generalisation in Luxembourgish (3.4).
In order to understand the specific structures and features of the German surnames the most important facts about their emergence and history should be outlined and, at the same time, be compared with the Swedish surnames because there are considerable differences (for further details cf. Nubling 1997 a, b). First of all, surnames in Germany emerged rather early, with the first instances occurring in the 11th century in southern Germany; by the 16th century surnames were common all over Germany. Differences are related to geography (from south to north), social class (from the upper to the lower classes) und urban versus rural areas.
This article examines the expression of natural gender in Icelandic nouns denoting human beings. Particular attention will be paid to the system's symmetry with regards to nouns denoting women and men. Our society consists more or less exactly of half women and half men. One would therefore assume that systems for terms denoting persons would also be symmetrically organised. Yet this assumption could not be further from the truth, and not just in single isolated cases, but in many languages: I will attempt to show that Icelandic has numerous methods for referring to women, but also many barriers and idiosyncrasies.
Extremely short verbs can be found in various Genn::.,nic languages and dialects; the sterns of these verbs do not have a fInal consonant «C-)C-V), and they always have a monosyllabic infinitive and usually monosyllabic fInite forms as weIl. Examples for these 'kinds of short verbs are Swiss Gennan hä 'to have', gö 'to go', g~ 'to give', n~ 'to take' which correspond to the Swedish verbs ha, gä, ge and tao The last example shows that such short verb formations also occur with verbs having (nearly) identical meanings but which do not share the same etymology. Apart from their shortness, these verbs are characterized by a high degree of irregularity, often even by suppletion, which sometimes develops contrary to regular sound laws. Furthermore they are among the most-used verbs and often tend towards grammaticalization. The present paper compares the short verbs of seven Germanic languages; in addition, it describes their various ways of development and strategies of differentiation. Moreover, it examines the question of why some languages and dialects (e.g. Swiss German, Frisian, Swedish, Norwegian) have many short verbs while others (New High German, Icelandic, Faroese) only have few, the paper discusses the contribution of short verbs to questions concerning linguistic change and the morphological organization of languages.
German linking elements are sometimes classified as inflectional affixes, sometimes as derivational affixes, and in any case as morphological units with at least seven realisations (e.g. -s-, -es-, -(e)n-, -e-). This article seeks to show that linking elements are hybrid elements situated between morphology and phonology. On the one hand, they have a clear morphological status since they occur only within compounds (and before a very small set of suffixes) and support the listener in decoding them. On the other hand, they also have to be analysed on the phonological level, as will be shown in this article. Thus, they are marginal morphological units on the pathway to phonology (including prosodics). Although some alloforms can sometimes be considered former inflectional endings and in some cases even continue to demonstrate some inflectional behaviour (such as relatedness to gender and inflection class), they are on their way to becoming markers of ill-formed phonological words. In fact, linking elements, above all the linking -s-, which is extremely productive, help the listener decode compounds containing a bad phonological word as their first constituent, such as Geburt+s+tag ‘birthday’ or Religion+s+unterricht ‘religious education’. By marking the end of a first constituent that differs from an unmarked monopedal phonological word, the linking element aids the listener in correctly decoding and analysing the compound. German compounds are known for their length and complexity, both of which have increased over time—along with the occurrence of linking elements, especially -s-. Thus, a profound instance of language change can be observed in contemporary German, one indicating its typological shift from syllable language to word language.
Many Bantu languages have grammaticized one or both types of motion verb - COME and GO - as future markers. However, they may differ in the semantics of future temporal reference, in some cases referring to a "near" future, in others to a "remote" future. This paper explores how the underlying image-schemas of such verbs in several languages - Bamileke-Dschang, Bamun, and Larnnso' (Grassfields Bantu), Duala, Chimwera, Chindali, Kihunde, and Zulu (Narrow Bantu) - contribute to how the verbs become grammaticized in relation to the dual construals of linguistic time: ego-moving vs. moving-event.
The development of "junk" : irregularization strategies of HAVE and SAY in the Germanic languages
(2001)
Although it is a wellknown fact that the most frequent verbs are the most irregular ones (if not suppletive), it is rarely asked how they became irregular. This article deals with the irregularization process of two originally regular (weak) verbs, HAVE and SAY in the Germanic languages, e.g. have, but has/'s and had/'d (instead of regular *haves/*haved) or say [sei], but says [sez] and said [sed] in English. Other verbs, such as DO, GO, STAND, BE, COME, and so on, also tend to irregularizations again and again without any apparent reason. In contrast to HAVE and SAY these verbs have always been rather irregular, at least dating from their first written records.
Part of linguistic competence involves the ability to construct and interpret words. The average high school student knows about 60,000 words whose form and meaning are not derived from those of other words. Such words including read, language, on, cold, and if, to name but a few - must be learned and stored as separate items in the lexicon (or mental dictionary). However, countless other words can be constructed and comprehended by the application of quite general rules to more basic words. For example, any speaker of English who knows the meaning of the noun fax - and the verb derived from it - could form and interpret words such as faxable (for things that can be faxed) and fax machine (for the device that sends and receives faxes). The system of categories and rules involved in word formation and interpretation is called morphology. This chapter presents an introduction to the study of morphology, beginning with the inventory of notions relevant to the analysis of word structure.
In Belhare (Sino-Tibetan, Nepal), consonant prothesis at morpheme boundaries and deletion of stem "augments" is found if either metrical or morphological parsing would violate the bimoraic trochee pattern that underlies the stress system of the language. This finding corroborates Dresher & Lahiri’s (1991) "Principle of Metrical Coherence" and provides new evidence for the cross-linguistic applicability of Crowhurst’s (1994) "Tautomorphemic Foot" constraint. The data also support a view of the Prosodic Hierarchy as weakly layered, allowing consonants to be directly dominated by the foot or word node if they are prothetic and do not therefore need feature licensing within the syllable canon.
Languages vary in whether or not primary grammatical relations (PGRs) are sensitive to information from clause-level case or phrase structures. This variation correlates with a difference between verb agreement systems based on feature unification and systems based on feature composition. The choice between different PGR and agreement principles is found to be highly stable genetically and to characterize Indo-European as systematically different from Sino-Tibetan. Although the choice is partially similar to the Configurationality Parameter, it is shown that Indo-European languages of South Asia are nonconfigurational due to areal pressure but follow their European relatives in PGR and agreement principles.
Ever since Wilhelm von Humboldt’s (1836) pioneering study of Nahuatl, linguists have recurrently recognized that languages differ fundamentally in the syntactic weight they attribute to noun-phrases as the arguments of a verb. Currently, the most prominent attempts to turn this intuition into a precise hypothesis revolve around the notion of ‘configurationality’.
It is often assumed that the goal of typology is to define the notion ‘possible human language’. This view, which I call the Universalist Typology view is shared, for example, by virtually all contributors to Bynon & Shibatani’s 1995 volume Approaches to Language Typology, and by Moravscik in her review of this volume in Linguistic Typology 1 (p.105). In the following I claim that this assumption is fundamentally mistaken. To clarify the theoretical status of what is meant by ‘possible human language’, I argue here for a distinction between typological theory (theoretical typology) and grammatical theory (theoretical syntax and theoretical morphology) as distinct subdisciplines of linguistics.
The distribution of linguistic structures in the world is the joint product of universal principles, inheritance from ancestor languages, language contact, social structures, and random fluctuation. This paper proposes a method for evaluating the relative significance of each factor — and in particular, of universal principles — via regression modeling: statistical evidence for universal principles is found if the odds for families to have skewed responses (e.g. all or most members have postnominal relative clauses) as opposed to having an opposite response skewing or no skewing at all, is significantly higher for some condition (e.g. VO order) than for another condition, independently of other factors.
The present volume results from an initiative to foster cooperation between scholars of Himalayan languages in Europe. The initiative was launched five years ago and has brought about a series of annual workshop meetings and individual cooperative projects (cf. http://www.isw.unibe.ch/EuroHimal). The 1998 workshop, held in Heidelberg, was devoted to the role that notions of speech act participants play in the grammar of various Himalayan languages, and the present collection represents, with some additions and some subtractions, the proceedings of this workshop. In the following I will give some background on the rationale for the topics covered in this volume, especially on the ways in which the indexing of speech act participants is related in Himalayan languages to evidentials and other epistemological operators. I will close this introduction with a brief outline of the structure of the volume.
In the late seventies, Bernard Comrie was one of the first linguists to explore the effects of the referential hierarchy (RH) on the distribution of grammatical relations (GRs). The referential hierarchy is also known in the literature as the animacy, empathy or indexibability hierarchy and ranks speech act participants (i.e. first and second person) above third persons, animates above inanimates, or more topical referents above less topical referents. Depending on the language, the hierarchy is sometimes extended by analogy to rankings of possessors above possessees, singulars above plurals, or other notions. In his 1981 textbook, Comrie analyzed RH effects as explaining (a) differential case (or adposition) marking of transitive subject ("A") noun phrases in low RH positions (e.g. inanimate or third person) and of object ("P") noun phrases in high RH positions (e.g. animate or first or second person), and (b) hierarchical verb agreement coupled with a direct vs. inverse distinction, as in Algonquian (Comrie 1981: Chapter 6).
Recent research has adduced growing evidence for a distinct stratum of cultural practices that underlies various "tribal" traditions in the Himalayan region and that also seems to be characteristic of various local versions of the Bon tradition. Bon literature is not uncommonly embedded in cultural patterns that are more specifically Himalayan than belonging to the greater South Asian heritage. Two aspects of this that have received attention in Ramble's (1997) study of a Bon guide to the sacred Kong-po mountain (rKong-po bon- ri) are the symbolism of wild boar hunting involved in marriage rituals and poison cults with their corresponding beliefs about poisoning. Another pattern of cultoral organization that may help better understand the Bon tradition against its Himalayan background is spatial conceptualization.
Sino-Tibetan is a prime example of how strongly a language family can typologically diversify under the pressure of areal spread features (Matisoff 1991, 1999). One of the manifestation of this is the average length of prosodic words. In Southeast Asia, prosodic words tend to average on one or one-and-a-half syllables. In the Himalayas, by contrast, it is not uncommon to encounter prosodic words containing five to ten syllables. The following pair of examples illustrates this.
Verb agreement and epistemic marking : a typological journey from the Himalayas to the Caucasus
(2008)
Studies of the epistemic categories expressed in Tibetan auxiliaries and copulas have mostly compared the phenomena with mirativity marking, and this is no doubt the correct comparandum in diachronic research. However, synchronic descriptions are also often tempted to compare the relevant categories with agreement systems or similar reference-related structures, at least for expository purposes when explaining how the system works (e. g. Denwood 1999, Tournadre 1996, Goldstein et al. 1991).