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Marie Wrona präsentiert in ihrem Beitrag "Ist das ein Komma oder kann das weg? - Topologische Felder und Kommasetzung. Erste empirische Befunde" ein Experiment zur Kommadidaktik. Sie untersucht, inwiefern sich die Kommasetzungskompetenz von SchülerInnen verbessert, wenn diese mithilfe des topologischen Feldermodells vermittelt wird, das auf der Verbklammer im Deutschen aufbaut, anstatt wie bei traditionellen Ansätzen mithilfe von Signalwörtern wie Subjunktionen. Die SchülerInnen lernten, das finite Verb zu bestimmen und so zu entscheiden, ob ein Komma gesetzt werden muss oder nicht. Nach der Unterrichtseinheit setzten die SchülerInnen v.a. deutlich weniger falsche Kommata
Carlotta J. Hübener diskutiert in ihrem Beitrag "Nicht/keinen/kein Fußball spielen? - Inkorporationsprozesse in Substantiv-Verb-Verbindungen" Inkorporationprozesse bei Substantiv-Verb-Verbindungen wie bspw. Fußball spielen. Hierbei fokussiert sie auf die Negation: Während kein(en) Fußball spielen einen Hinweis darauf gibt, dass Fußball noch als eigenständiges Substantiv interpretiert wird, ist nicht Fußball spielen ein Indiz dafür, dass Fußball und spielen als eine konzeptionelle Einheit wahrgenommen werden. Kein negiert nämlich Nomen (Ich mag keinen Spinat), während nicht Verben negiert (Ich hab‘ noch nicht gegessen). Hübener überprüft in ihrem Beitrag anhand des Deutschen Referenzkorpus, inwiefern Frequenz, Idiomatik und Individuiertheit Einfluss auf die Negation von Substativ-Verb-Verbindungen nehmen können.
Für den Wandel und die Variation der Präposition wegen interessieren sich Lea Heese und Fabiola Kaiser in ihrem Beitrag "Die menschliche Zunge ist faul. Assoziationen zu der Verwendungsweise der Präposition wegen mit dem Genitiv und dem Dativ". Wegen schwankt im Standard-deutschen zwischen Genitiv- und Dativrektion. Obwohl sie seit langem existiert, wird die Dativvariante von SprecherInnen oftmals als Zeichen für Sprachverfall gedeutet. Heese und Kaiser erhoben mithilfe einer Onlineumfrage Daten zum Gebrauch der Präposition in informellen und formellen Registern sowie Assoziationen zu den beiden Varianten. Wie bereits das Titelzitat des Beitrags zeigt, wird der Dativ unter anderem als Zeichen für Nachlässigkeit interpretiert.
Johanna Hartwig beschäftigt sich mit der Deklination entlehnter Farbadjektive wie lila, orange und rosa ("Gibt es denn jetzt lilane Kühe oder nicht? - Einflussfaktoren auf den Gebrauch indeklinabler Farbadjektive"). Diese Adjektive wurden ursprünglich nicht flektiert (das lila/rosa Haus). Hartwig führt ein Produktionsexperiment durch, um zu überprüfen, inwiefern die Frequenz und die Endung eines Adjektivs Einfluss auf dessen Flexion nehmen. Dabei stellt sie fest, dass frequente Adjektive zur Flexion neigen, jedoch auch die Endung eine Rolle spielt. So bleiben Adjektive auf [a] wie bspw. lila trotz hoher Frequenz unflektiert. Adjektive auf Frikativ weisen hingegen umso mehr Flexion auf, je frequenter sie sind. Für seltene Adjektive (creme) konnte Hartwig eine Vermeidungsstrategie feststellen: Creme wurde in ihrem Experiment am häufigsten in ein Derivat (cremefarben) umgewandelt, das eine Flexion des Adjektivs ermöglicht (das cremefarbene Haus).
Wie Hashtags bei Twitter als Teile von Komposita verwendet werden, zeigt Markus Majewski in seinem Beitrag #Erdogan-Diktatur - Hashtags als Elemente von Substantivkomposita in politischen Tweets. Als Grundlage dient ihm das Korpus aus Tweets von SpitzenpolitikerInnen der großen Parteien während des Wahlkampfs, in dem er alle Substantivkomposita mit einem Hashtag als Bestandteil wie #Energiewende auf funktionale, graphematische und strukturelle Aspekte untersucht. Insbesondere bei der Schreibung der Komposita zeigt sich eine große Kreativität. Zudem lassen sich Twitter-spezifische Kommunikationsfunktionen der Hashtag-Erstglieder beobachten.
In this paper I argue for a new constraint on questions, namely that a question denotation (a set of propositions) must map to a partition of a Stalnakerian Context-Set by point-wise exhaustification (point-wise application of the function Exh). The presupposition that Dayal attributes to an Answer operator follows from this constraint, if we assume a fairly standard definition of Exh (Krifka, 1995). But the constraint is more restrictive thereby deriving the sensitivity of higher order quantification to negative islands (Spector, 2008).
Moreover, when combined with recent proposals about the nature of Exh - designed primarily to account for the conjunctive interpretation of disjunction (e.g. Bar-Lev and Fox, 2017) - Dayal’s presupposition follows only in certain environments. This observation allows for an account of the "mention-some" interpretation of questions that makes specific distributional predictions.
This paper experimentally investigates presupposition projection from the scope of the quantifiers every and at least one, as triggered by the factive verb be aware and the iterative adverb again.
The first issue we are concerned with is whether presuppositions project universally or existentially from quantified sentences. Different theoretical accounts endorse opposing views here (e.g., Heim, 1983; Geurts, 1999; Beaver, 2001; Schlenker, 2008, 2009; Fox, 2012), while recent experimental work (Chemla, 2009; Tiemann, 2014) suggests that the force of the projected presupposition varies by quantifier.
The second issue we look at is how the descriptively observed readings arise—in particular, as a direct result output from the projection mechanism, or via additional, independent mechanisms such as domain restriction (e.g., Geurts and van Tiel, 2016): if the domain of the quantifier is restricted, this can yield what looks like non-universal inferences in light of the overall, unrestricted domain, even if the projection mechanism itself yields a universal presupposition. Finally, we test whether the presupposed content also forms part of the entailed content, at least for certain triggers (Sudo, 2012; Klinedinst, 2016; Zehr and Schwarz, 2016).
Our results yield clearly different patterns for every and at least one, with every giving rise to universal presuppositions, which, to a very limited extent, can be weakened by domain restriction, and at least one overwhelmingly giving rise to non-universal presuppositions. Our results also indicate the availability of presupposition-less readings for both triggers in the task at hand, apparently more prevalent than domain restriction. Thereby, we present novel evidence that helps to pinpoint which of the theoretical options can be substantiated experimentally.
Tiwa (Tibeto-Burman; India) has two series of epistemic indefinites: one whose epistemic effects arise via an anti-singleton constraint similar to Spanish alg´un (Alonso-Ovalle and Men´endez-Benito, 2010), and another, wide-scope indefinite whose epistemic effects must be derived differently. I propose that for these latter indefinites, ignorance arises not through domain constraints, but as a result of their choice functional nature through competition with other indefinites. Tiwa’s wide scope indefinites then constitute a new kind of epistemic indefinite, showing that ignorance implicatures for indefinites can arise through different sorts of competition.
This paper is an attempt to systematically investigate how contrastive focus interacts with various types of not-at-issue content (co-speech and post-speech gestures, lexical presuppositions, and appositives). I look, in particular, at when focus forces at-issue interpretations of typically not-at-issue content, when it does not, and when such at-issue interpretations are impossible even to satisfy focus-related requirements.
I conclude that the main factors affecting how a given type of content aligns along these dimensions are its prosodic (in)dependence and level of attachment in the syntax. The two factors also interact in a non-trivial way, in particular for gestures, which I use as a basis for an analysis of gestures that does not assume that their temporal alignment directly determines their semantics (contra Ebert and Ebert, 2014; Ebert, 2017; Schlenker, 2018), but instead relies on syntax/semantics and syntax/prosody interaction.
Reference of pronouns may be constrained via lexical presuppositions, including marked F-features, implicated presuppositions, and deictic center shifting in certain languages.
This paper explores the acquisition of personal reference terms in Thai, a language that has a highly complex personal reference system. The participants of the study were 67 typicallydeveloping children (TD) and 29 children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), a population which has long been observed to have difficulties with pronouns. The children were asked to complete simple production and comprehension tasks on personal reference terms. Overall, ASD children performed on par in production but significantly poorer in comprehension than TD children. Given the freedom of choice in the production task, ASD children preferred using fixed referential terms for self-reference, whereas TD children opted for personal pronouns. In terms of comprehension, ASD children were shown to generally be able to detect the person features but they seemed to struggle the most with the pragmatic aspects of personal reference terms. Our results support previous literature that lexical presuppositions are acquired earlier than implicated presuppositions. We add to the literature that the types or the amount of implicated presuppositions matter in acquisition
I present data that suggest the universal entailments of counterfactual donkey sentences aren’t as universal as some have claimed. I argue that this favors the strategy of attributing these entailments to a special property of the similarity ordering on worlds provided by some contexts, rather than to a semantically encoded sensitivity to assignment.
We bring experimental considerations to bear on the structure of comparatives and on our understanding of how quantifiers are processed. At issue are mismatches between the standard view of quantifier processing cost and results from speeded verification experiments with comparative quantifiers. We build our case in several steps:
1. We show that the standard view, which attributes processing cost to the verification process, accounts for some aspects of the data, but fails to cover the main effect of monotonicity on measured behavior. We derive a prediction of this view for comparatives, and show that it is not borne out.
2. We consider potential reasons - experimental and theoretical - for this theory-data mismatch.
3. We describe a new processing experiment with comparative quantifiers, designed to address the experimental concerns. Its results still point to the inadequacy of the standard view.
4. We review the semantics of comparative constructions and their potential processing implications. 5. We revise the definition of quantifier processing cost and tie it to the number of Downward Entailing (DE) operators at Logical Form (LF). We show how this definition successfully reconciles the theory-data mismatch. 6. The emerging picture calls for a distinction between the complexity of verified representations and the complexity of the verification process itself.
Experimental studies investigating logical reasoning performance show very high error rates of up to 80% and more. Previous research identified scalar inferences of the sentences of logical arguments as a major error source. We present new analytical tools to quantify the impact of scalar inferences on syllogistic reasoning. Our proposal builds on a new classification of Aristotelian syllogisms and a closely linked classification of reasoning behaviors/strategies.
We argue that the variation in error rates across syllogistic reasoning tasks is in part due to individual variation: reasoners follow different reasoning strategies and these strategies play out differently for syllogisms of different classes.
This paper argues that extant approaches to presupposition projection that either rely on strict linear order (Schlenker, 2009) or hierarchy (Romoli and Mandelkern, 2017) cannot provide a uniform account of data drawn from head-final languages. While building on Schlenker’s theory, this paper resolves the issues by restricting the calculation of local contexts to specific points in the parsing process. The consequence is that the theory makes a prediction robust to the head directionality parameter
The script of Caryl Churchill’s short play Hot Fudge (like several other plays by this author) contains detailed directions for overlapping conversation. At certain points in the play these may be contributing to a number of effects similar to those described for the naturally occurring ‘collaborative floor’, such as enthusiasm and mutual support. The importance of an interactive approach to constructed conversation is pointed out in the article, particularly that of analysing the overlapped speaker’s response to appreciate the discursive significance of the overlapping turn. For instance, acknowledging and/or reusing the other speaker’s overlapping formulations in a non-oppositional format can show an understanding of these contributions as collaboratively oriented. Therefore, such an interpretation of overlapping dialogue in a dramatic text will affect the reader’s understanding of the interpersonal context (e.g. dominance-seeking/mutual support/collaboration between pairs of speakers). In particular, this approach is taken to show how certain kinds of overlapping similar to those described for the naturally occurring conversation can be used dramatically to supportive rather than conflictive ends. Overall, it is shown how the dramatic characters’ interpersonal orientations become inferable from their use of certain dialogic options.
All linguistics should be media linguistics, but it is not. This thesis is presented by using linguistic landscapes as an example. LL research does not belong to the traditional core of either mainstream linguistics or media linguistics. This is why not everything within power has been done yet to make full use of their thematic, conceptual and methodological possibilities. Visible signs in public space, however, are an everyday phenomenon. You have to pull out all the stops to research them extensively. The distinction between linguistics and media linguistics turns out to be counterproductive. But this does not only apply to the case of linguistic landscapes. It also stands for any comprehensive investigation of language and language use. (Exceptions may be very narrow questions for specific purposes.) The above thoughts are supported by a database of the project „Metropolenzeichen“ with more than 25.000 systematically collected, geocoded and tagged photographs.
The aim of this paper is to present the results of an empirical analysis of the use of non-alphabetic graphic signs (e.g. asterisks, slashes, plus signs etc.) in the context of repairs in Russian and German informal electronic communication. The data for the analysis were taken from the “Mobile Communication Database MoCoDa” (http://mocoda.spracheinteraktion.de/), which contains Russian and German private electronic communication via SMS, WhatsApp and other short message services, and the “Dortmunder Chat-Korpus” (http://www.chatkorpus.tu-dortmund.de/korpora.html). This paper describes the functions of various graphic resources in the context of repairs in both data collections and compares the occurrences of these functions in current Russian and German computer-mediated communication. It concludes that particular signs in both data sets share the same subset of functions, but they differ in terms of how frequently these resources occur in each form of communication.
Çeviri faaliyeti, 18. yüzyılda Osmanlı Devleti'nin batılılaşması ve modernleşmesinde önemli bir yere sahipti. Bu amaca yönelik olarak çeviri eylemi, Osmanlı döneminde aydınlanma çağındaki fikirlerin yayılması ile birlikte siyasal ve bilimsel fikirlerin yerleşmesinde de çok etkili olmuştur. Bu durum Türkiye Cumhuriyeti'nin kuruluş yıllarında da devam etmiştir. Bu çeviri faaliyetini gerçekleştiren "gizli kahramanlar", yani çevirmenler, Türk diline ve edebiyatına yaptıkları katkılara nazaran pek tanınmazlar ve bilinmezler. Peki, bu çevirmenler kimlerdi? Kimlerin eserleri hangi dilden ve ne zaman çevrilip, hangi yayınevleri tarafından yayımlanmıştır? Türkçe Çevirmenler Sözlüğü'nde Türk edebiyatına katkıda bulunan ve Türk edebiyatının çeviri yoluyla zenginleşmesinde katkı sağlayan çevirmenlerin listelerini oluşturmak amaçlanmıştır. Ege Üniversitesi ile Johannes Gutenberg Üniversitesi Germersheim-Mainz (Almanya) mütercim tercümanlık bölümlerinin ortak yürüttükleri GIP (Germanistische Institutspartnerschaft) projesi bağlamında Türkçe Çeviriler Bibliyografyası kitap çalışması fikri de ortaya çıkmıştır. Uzun bir yöntem arayışından sonra başta Ege Üniversitesi Kütüphanesi, Hacettepe Üniversitesi Kütüphanesi, İstanbul Üniversitesi Kütüphanesi, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Kütüphanesi ve Milli Kütüphane kayıtlarını barındıran ve T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Kütüphaneler ve Yayımlar Genel Müdürlüğü ve TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM'in Ulusal Toplu Katalog veri tabanından yararlanılarak yabancı dilden Türkçeye aktarılan eserler ele alınmıştır. Çalışmada Cumhuriyetin ilk yıllarından 2016 yılına kadar Türkçeye aktarılan dil ve edebiyatların nesir, nazım ve tiyatro gibi edebi türlerine göre çevirileri incelenmiştir. Toplam 18.741 eser ve 6.006 çevirmen kaydına ulaşılmıştır.
Etwa seit dem Jahre 2000 lässt sich eine Tendenz an vielen portugiesischen und anderen Hochschulen feststellen: Sprachkurse finden regen Zulauf, aber die damit verbundenen Philologien klagen über einen Rückgang der Studierenden. Die Gründe dafür sind vielschichtig und nicht verallgemeinerbar, werden doch die Studiengänge sogar in demselben Land oft sehr unterschiedlich strukturiert, und dass es nicht eine Germanistik, Romanistik oder Anglistik gibt, ist gewiss zutreffend. Die siebte Ausgabe der portugiesischen Germanistikzeitschrift REAL nimmt sich dieses Themas aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln und Länderperspektiven an. Und auch wenn die Beiträge aus unterschiedlichen Ländern und Kontinenten stammen, wird doch deutlich, wie allgemein eine Reihe von Schwierigkeiten sind.
Depiction verbs such as paint license i(mage)- and p(ortrait)-readings; for instance, Ben painted a cow can convey that Ben produced an image of an unspecific cow or a portrait of a specific cow. This paper takes issue with a property-based intensional analysis of depiction verbs (Zimmermann, 2006b, 2016) and instead argues for an extensional account. Accordingly, the i-reading is rooted in the introduction of worldly representations by the explicit noun cow as such, whereas the p-reading is rooted in the interpolation of an implicit representation via coercion. This take on the ambiguity captures the following key traits. On i-readings, only representations are accessible to quantifiers and anaphors; moreover, intensional effects such as substitution failure disappear once ordinary objects and representations are adequately distinguished. P-readings, by contrast, involve representations that depend on the portrayed ordinary objects as particulars; correspondingly, only ordinary objects are accessible to quantifiers and anaphors. The proposal is spelled out in Asher’s (2011) Type Composition Logic.
The Wolof imperfective auxiliary di is compatible with event-in-progress, habitual and future readings. Furthermore, while varieties of all these readings are available for di when it sits in a syntactically low position, only future readings are available when it sits in a syntactically high position. We aim to account for this puzzle by combining several ingredients independently motivated in the literature: (i) event-relative circumstantial modality for event-in-progress, habitual, and a subset of future readings; (ii) metaphyisical modality for generalized future readings; (iii) the idea that syntactic height determines the type of modal anchor that projects a modal base. This study contributes to our understanding of the relation between syntactic height and modal flavor, as well as the nature of modal-aspectual interactions cross-linguistically.
Analyses of scope reconstruction typically fall into two competing approaches: 'semantic reconstruction', which derives non-surface scope using semantic mechanisms, and 'syntactic reconstruction', which derives it by positing additional syntactic representations at the level of Logical Form. Grosu and Krifka (2007) proposed a semantic-reconstruction analysis for relative clauses like the gifted mathematician that Dan claims he is, in which the relative head NP can be interpreted in the scope of a lower intensional quantifier. Their analysis relies on type-shifting the relative head into a predicate of functions. We develop an alternative analysis for such relative clauses that replaces type-shifting with syntactic reconstruction. The competing analyses diverge in their predictions regarding scope possibilities in head-external relative clauses. We use Hebrew resumptive pronouns, which disambiguate a relative clause in favor of the head-external structure, to show that the prediction of syntactic reconstruction is correct. This result suggests that certain type-shifting operations are not made available by Universal Grammar.
We present an experiment which tests children’s comprehension of the requirements of use of pronouns and definites. An adult-like use of definites and pronouns imposes different but related requirements. In the case of definites, a unique referent is required in the context, whereas in the case of a pronoun, the referent in the context has to be salient. In this experiment, we use a novel word task to test three-year-olds’ sensitivity to these requirements. Our results show that children are adult-like in their sensitivity to salience in their comprehension of pronouns, compared to definites. However, they failed to show sensitivity to the uniqueness requirement on the use of definites.
Miners and modals
(2018)
I generalise Kolodny and MacFarlane’s miners puzzle by showing epistemic analogues of their case exist. After motivating various conservative approaches to the original problem, I show how they fail to solve the problem in its epistemic guise. I argue that a probabilistic approach to information-sensitivity gives a general solution to the problem.
In recent years, experimental research has demontrated great variability in the rates of scalar inferences across different triggering expressions (Doran et al. 2009, 2012, van Tiel et al. 2016). These studies have been taken as evidence against the so-called uniformity assumption, which posits that scalar implicature is triggered by a single mechanism and that the behaviour of one scale should generalize to the whole family of scales. In the following, we present an experimental study that tests negative strengthening for a variety of strong scalar terms, following up on van Tiel et al. (2016). For example, we tested whether the statement John is not brilliant is strengthened to mean that John is not intelligent (see especially Horn 1989). We show that endorsement rates of the scalar implicature (e.g., John is intelligent but not brilliant) are anti-correlated with endorsements of negative strengthening. Further, we demonstrate that a modified version of the uniformity hypothesis taking into account negative strengthening is consistent with van Tiel et al.’s data. Therefore, variation across scales may be more systematic than suggested by the van Tiel et al. study.
Alternative Questions with "or not" (NAQ) convey a cornering effect, which is not found with they polar counterparts (PQ). This effect has been claimed to consist of two parts (Biezma 2009): NAQs (i) cannot be used discourse-initially and (ii) they do not license followup questions/subquestions.
In this paper, we ask the following: Are both parts of cornering linked to the same property of NAQs? Or do they reflect distinct linguistic phenomena? We explore the issue by comparing the behavior of NAQs to Complement Alternative Questions (CAQ), a type of question that, like NAQs, presents logically opposite alternatives but, unlike NAQs, fully spells out the second one. Results from two experiments suggest that both parts of cornering can instead be explained in terms of independent semantic and pragmatic principles, which operate beyond the domain of alternative questions.
Sentences containing subjective predicates - e.g., "The movie was awesome"” - are intuitively anchored to a particular perspective; this makes them different from sentences describing objective facts - e.g., "The movie was set in 1995".
While authors have long debated on whether this intuition tracks a lexical distinction between subjective and factual predicates, much remains to be explored on whether, and how, the difference between these two assertions is reflected at the illocutionary level. Relying on evidence from two experiments, we show that assertions containing subjective predicates display different discourse behavior from objective assertions. We take these findings to support the idea that SAs should be assigned a special illocutionary profile, unveiling a genuine empirical difference between subjective and factual speech.
Wie sich Konzessivkonnektoren im 18. und 19. Jh. entwickelt haben, untersuchen Lisa Bürgerhoff, Jana Giesenschlag, Linda Kunow und Alexandra Kern für ihren Beitrag "Von ob ich schon wanderte zu obschon ich wanderte?! - Eine Korpusuntersuchung zur Konzessivität von 1700-1900". Ihre Untersuchungen im Deutschen Textarchiv zeigen unter anderem einen Zusammenhang zwischen der Zusammenschreibung der Konnektoren und einer eindeutig konzessiven Lesart, der für obschon, obgleich, obwohl und obzwar allerdings unterschiedlich stark ist. Auch die Faktizität der Teilsätze und das Auftreten verstärkender Partikeln sind für die Entwicklung der ob-Gruppe von Bedeutung. Als eindeutigste und frequenteste Konzessivkonnektoren stellen sich insgesamt obwohl und vor allem obzwar heraus.
Lena Schnee analysiert in ihrem Beitrag "Eingenordet - Morphologische Assimilation mittelniederdeutscher Lehnwörter im Altnordischen" die Liste mittelniederdeutscher Entlehnungen im Altnordischen Etymologischen Wörterbuch und zeigt, wie die mittelniederdeutschen Wörter, die in der Hansezeit in die skandinavischen Sprachen entlehnt wurden, an das Altnordische angepasst wurden. Dabei wendet sie ein Transderivationsmodell an, um die morphologische Assimilation nicht nur von ganzen Lexemen, sondern auch von Affixen und Wortstämmen nachzuvollziehen. Schnees Untersuchung ergibt, dass bei der Entlehnung in das Altnordische hauptsächlich die Affixe adaptiert wurden. Die mittelniederdeutschen Affixe wurden überwiegend durch native oder entlehnte altnordische ersetzt, was darauf hinweist, dass die Morphemgrenzen und Wortbildungselemente bei der Entlehnung als solche erkannt wurden. Als Erklärung hierfür führt Schnee die typologische Ähnlichkeit der beiden Sprachen an.
Mit der mittelhochdeutschen Nebensilbenabschwächung beschäftigt sich Tanja Stevanovićs Beitrag "Wo sind die vollen Vokale geblieben? Eine Untersuchung möglicher Einflussfaktoren auf die Nebensilbenabschwächung". Dafür hat sie in einer Korpusuntersuchung im Referenzkorpus Mittelhochdeutsch schwache Verben analysiert, die trotz der fortschreitenden Nebensilbenabschwächung noch im Mittelhochdeutschen Vollvokale in Endsilben aufweisen.
Brit Schwerin nimmt sich in ihrem Artikel "die bisher jedermann unbekannt gewesen [ist/war/sei/wäre] -Zum Rückgang des ersparten Finitums in Nebensätzen des frühen Neuhochdeutsch" des Phänomens der afiniten Nebensätze an, die in der Frühen Neuzeit im deutschen Sprachraum weit verbreitet waren. Ihre Analyse von Nebensätzen mit und ohne finites Verb in Texten aus dem 17. und 18. Jh. ergibt, dass der Rückgang der afiniten Konstruktionen in Verbindung mit dem Bedürfnis nach eindeutiger Markierung grammatischer Kategorien wie Tempus und Modus steht. Die diachronen Studien decken somit Sprachwandel auf verschiedenen Ebenen ab.
Die audiovisuelle Übersetzung von Wortspielen am Beispiel der ecuadorianischen Webserie Enchufe.tv
(2018)
Die voranschreitende Internationalisierung audiovisueller Medien zieht die Notwendigkeit der Überbrückung sprachlicher Barrieren nach sich. In Deutschland, traditionell ein Synchronisationsland, werden dazu immer häufiger Untertitel herangezogen. Der vorliegende Beitrag setzt sich mit den Anwendungsmöglichkeiten dieser Form des audiovisuellen Übersetzens in Bezug auf humoristische Elemente auseinander. Dabei werden zwei theoretische Ansätze zur Übertragung des Komischen vorgestellt, die anschließend anhand des praxisnahen Beispiels dreier Sketche der ecuadorianischen Webserie Enchufe.tv auf die Probe gestellt werden. Den drei Sketchen ist gemein, dass sie sich auf Wortspiele, also auf eine Erscheinungsform des Komischen stützen, die sich der Wiedergabe in einer anderen Sprache in außergewöhnlichem Maße widersetzt. Auf diese Weise werden einerseits die Stärken der vorgestellten Methoden aufgezeigt, andererseits wird aber auch die Notwendigkeit ihrer Ausweitung auf die besonderen Eigenschaften audiovisueller Texte deutlich
In this article, we profile an empirically grounded, cognitive approach to immersion in digital fiction by combining text-driven stylistic analysis with insights from theories of cognition and reader-response research. We offer a new analytical method for immersive features in digital fiction by developing deictic shift theory for the affordances of digital media. We also provide empirically substantiated insights to show how immersion is experienced cognitively by using Andy Campbell and Judi Alston’s (2015) digital fiction piece WALLPAPER as a case study. We add ‘interactional deixis’ and ‘audible deixis’ to Stockwell’s (2002) model to account for the multimodal nature of immersion in digital fiction. We also show how extra-textual features can contribute to immersion and thus propose that they should be accounted for when analysing immersion across media. We conclude that the analytical framework and reader response protocol that we develop here can be adapted for application to texts across media.
In these volumes, we are very pleased to present a collection of papers based on talks and posters at Sinn und Bedeutung 22, which took place in Berlin and Potsdam on September 7-10, 2017, jointly organized by the Leibniz-Centre for General Linguistics (ZAS) and the University of Potsdam.
SuB22 received 183 submitted abstracts. Out of these, the organizing committee selected 39 oral presentations in the main session, 4 oral presentations in the special session ‘Semantics and Natural Logic’, and 24 poster presentations. There were an additional 6 invited talks. In total, 58 of these contributions appear in paper form in the present volumes.
This paper explores Turkish numeral constructions, which have typologically two interesting properties: (i) the existence of an optional classifier, (ii) the incompatibility of plurals with them. I argue that numerals are modifiers of type <<e,t>,<e,t>> defined only for atomic properties (Ionin and Matushansky 2006). The explanation rests on the semantics of bare singulars proposed to denote sets of atoms (contra Bale et al. 2010), and the semantics of the classifier claimed to be a partial identity function presupposing atomic properties.
This paper presents an exploratory production study of Bharatanatyam, a figurative (narrative) dance. We investigate the encoding of coreference vs. disjoint reference in this dance and argue that a formal semantics of narrative dance can be modeled in line with Abusch’s (2013, 2014, 2015) semantics of visual narrative (drawing also on Schlenker’s, 2017a, approach to music semantics). A main finding of our investigation is that larger-level group-boundaries (Charnavel, 2016) can be seen as triggers for discontinuity inferences (possibly involving the dynamic shift from one salient entity to another).
The verb ‘rise’ can be used both with property-denoting nouns like ‘temperature’ but also with NPs like ‘a Titan’ or ‘China’. Whereas in the former case the change triggered by a rising event is directly related to the subject (its current value increases), this does not hold for ‘a titan’ or ‘China’. In this case it is a property of these objects, say their height or their political power, which increases in value. Furthermore, ‘rise’ does not target a particular property as the examples above show. This data has led Cooper (2010) to the conclusion that it is presumably not possible (i) “to extract a single general meaning of words which covers all the particular meanings of the word in context”, and (ii) “to determine once and for all the set of particular contextually determined meanings of a word”. In this article we present a solution to the two problems raised by ‘rise’ in a frame theory. ‘Rise’ is analyzed as a scalar verb which does not lexicalize a complete scale in its meaning. Rather, it shows underspecification relative to the dimension (property) parameter of a scale. The set of admissible properties is determined by a constraint on the value ranges of properties. If the property is not uniquely determined by the subject, the comprehender uses probabilistic reasoning based on world knowledge and discourse information to defeasibly infer the most likely candidates from this set (2nd problem).
The first problem is solved not by simply introducing objects into the representation of a discourse but instead by pairs consisting of an object and an associated frame component which collects the object information contributed by the discourse. Changes triggered by events like the one denoted by ‘rise’ are modelled as update operations on the frame component while the object component is left unchanged.
This paper addresses the question of how to account for the semantic variability of weak free adjuncts. Weak free adjuncts are non-clausal adjuncts that associate with an argument of the main predicate, contribute propositional content, and can interact with temporal or modal operators, which leads to different, adverbial-clause-like interpretations. I focus on a specific type of weak adjuncts, non-clausal as-phrases, and propose a unified semantic analysis for the full range of interpretational possibilities that takes into account the interpretational contingency on different syntactic positions. I show that this analysis improves on Stump’s (1985) original analysis of weak adjuncts. I then go on to discuss the limitations of both Stump’s account and the unified account. Both accounts fail to capture that the interaction of weak adjuncts with modal operators underlies certain restrictions on the properties of the modal operators—an observation that has not been discussed in the literature so far.
This paper investigates the spelling of compound nouns in a corpus comprised of Early New High German protocols of witch trials from the 16th and 17th century. Previous studies on the spelling of compound nouns in printed texts have found that scribes increasingly write compound nouns as one word during the 16th century. However, this paper will show that there is still much variation in handwritten texts from that time. The study focusses on identifying factors that lead scribes to write compound nouns either as one word or two, such as linking elements and the use of upper case letters. I will argue that while there is more variation in the spelling of compound nouns in the handwritten corpus than in printed texts, there still is a strong tendency to line up the boundaries of the graphemic and syntactic words.
An inventory of the Middle High German word families is still missing wheras the Old High German and New High German word families are recorded by the dictionaries of J. Splett. In this paper a semi-automatic method is represented which can help to find and analyze the Middle High German word families. By several scripts a combined list of MHG and OHG lemmata is tranformed and expanded to a table containing among other things a column with a simplified variation of Splett's word formation formulas and a column with the common base of the word family the lemma probably belongs to. In a labour-intensive last step, these proposals have to be manually checked and corrected.
Besides some well-established forms like autoritär 'authoritarian'; humanitär 'humanitarian'; new coinages ending with -itär can be found in German. These adjectives are closely related to nouns ending with -ität. From an etymological point of view; these formations are morphologically transparent. Not only are the adjectives new; but -itär emerges as a new suffix.
This study explores four German nominalization patterns (-ung; -erei; Ge- -X-e; nominalized infinitives) using corpus and web data. We conclude that they can be considered a word formation paradigm, as some functions depend on paradigmatic oppositions. Our case study supports gradual differences between inflectional and word formation paradigmaticity.
Department of British and American Studies in cooperation with SKASE (The Slovak Association for the Study of English) organized the Word-Formation Theories III & Typology and Universals in Word-Formation IV Conference. The Conference took place at P.J. Šafárik University in Košice, Slovakia, from 27 June to 30 June 2018. The event was organized by Slávka Tomaščíková, Lívia Körtvélyessy and Pavol Štekauer (P.J. Šafárik University in Košice, Slovakia) and with the support of the APVV project No: APVV-16–0035 Research into extralinguistic factors of word-formation and word-interpretation. The program and the book of abstracts are available at the conference homepage http://kaa.ff.upjs.sk/en/alumni-club/33/word-formation-theories-iii-typology-and-universals-in-word-formation-iv.
In these volumes, we are very pleased to present a collection of papers based on talks and posters at Sinn und Bedeutung 22, which took place in Berlin and Potsdam on September 7-10, 2017, jointly organized by the Leibniz-Centre for General Linguistics (ZAS) and the University of Potsdam.
SuB22 received 183 submitted abstracts. Out of these, the organizing committee selected 39 oral presentations in the main session, 4 oral presentations in the special session ‘Semantics and Natural Logic’, and 24 poster presentations. There were an additional 6 invited talks. In total, 58 of these contributions appear in paper form in the present volumes.
Some kind of relative clause
(2018)
Amount Relatives (ARs) differ from restrictive relative clauses in that they do not refer to a particular object denoted by the head of the relative clause, but to an amount of such objects (Carlson, 1977a; Heim, 1987). Traditionally, ARs have been regarded as degree expressions.
In this paper I argue against this view and propose instead that amount interpretations of relative clauses are in fact a special case of kind interpretation.
This paper investigates the meaning adaptability of change of state (CoS) verbs. It
argues that both coercion and underspecification are necessary mechanisms in order to properly
account for the semantic adaptability observable for CoS verbs in combination with their
complements. This type of meaning adaptability has received little formal attention to date,
although some recent work has already led the way on this topic (Spalek, 2014; Lukassek and
Spalek, 2016; Asher et al., 2017). Our paper is part of a cross-linguistic case study of German
einfrieren and Spanish congelar (‘freeze’). We model the meaning adaptability of this test case
within Type Composition Logic (TCL) (Asher, 2011). We build on Asher’s coercion mechanism
and introduce an additional mechanism for underspecification that exploits the fine-grained type
system in TCL.
This paper presents the results of two experiments in German testing the acceptability of (non-)restrictive relative clauses (NRCs/RRCs) with split antecedents (SpAs). According to Moltmann (1992), SpAs are only grammatical if their parts occur within the conjuncts of a coordinate structure and if they have identical grammatical functions. Non-conjoined SpAs that form the subject and the object of a transitive verb are predicted to be ungrammatical. Our study shows that the acceptability of such examples improves significantly if the predicate that relates the parts of the SpA is symmetric. Moreover, it suggests that NRCs and RRCs behave differently in these cases with respect to the SpA-construal. We can make sense of this observation if we follow Winter (2016) in assuming that transitive symmetric predicates have to be analyzed as unary collective predicates and thus provide a collective antecedent for the RC at the semantic (not the syntactic) level. As we will argue, this accounts for some of the disagreement we found in the literature and gives us new insights into both the semantics of symmetric predicates and the semantics of NRCs.
This paper compares the modal particle fei (Schlieben-Lange, 1979; Thoma, 2009) with the modal particle/sentence adverb aber (not to be confused with the conjunction aber, ‘but’). Intuitively, both items express some form of contrast and correction. We will show that both are special among discourse particles in the following sense: They make a contribution that is interpreted at a level distinct from the level where at-issue content (Potts, 2005) is interpreted, as is standard for modal particles (see Gutzmann, 2015 and the references therein). But more interestingly, they exclusively relate to propositions that have not entered the Common Ground via being the at-issue content of an assertion made by the addressee.
This paper argues that traces only range over individual semantic types and cannot be type shifted into higher types to circumvent this restriction. The evidence comes from movement targeting positions where DPs must denote properties and the behavior of definite descriptions in these positions. These constraints on possible traces demonstrate that syntactic operations impose active restrictions on permissible semantic types in natural language.
Questioning speech acts
(2018)
The function of mapping from the semantic content of an utterance to its convention of use (a division of labor first made by Frege (1956)) has been attributed to abstract speech act operators (also known as force operators), such as ASSERT, QUESTION, and COMMAND. These operators have been traditionally assumed to occupy the highest echelons of the clausal periphery. The precise formulation of these operators has attracted a lot of attention from semanticists, as they are crucial for formalizing the diverse discourse functions of speech acts (Farkas and Bruce, 2009; Farkas and Roelofsen, 2017; Malamud and Stepheson, 2015; Krifka, 2015). These high operators usually come packaged with two assumptions: i) they are not embeddable under other elements, and ii) they belong to the realm of pure pragmatics and not compositional semantics. Recent research in both semantics and syntax have challenged these assumptions (Krifka, 2015; Davis, 2011; Wiltschko, 2017; Heim et al., 2016). Based on evidence from a language with a rich array of sentence-final particles (SFPs), Cantonese, we argue in this paper that not only are abstract speech operators embeddable, it is also the case that we need compositional mechanisms in these high regions of the clause. We will investigate the SFP stacking phenomenon, and argue that such grammaticalized operations on speech act operators reveal the need for a system that can compose the content of an utterance with multiple particles that update the discourse in a number of different, non-trivial ways.
This paper argues that Double Access sentences in English (Smith, 1978) are a kind of loose talk. When the meaning of a Double Access sentence is computed literally, the result is infelicity. Double Access sentences can be used meaningfully only when rescued by pragmatics which intervenes to interpret the embedded clause loosely. A formal model for loose interpretation, building on Klecha (2018), is provided.
Schlenker (2010) recently provided data from English and French suggesting that, contrary to standard assumptions (McCawley, 1982; Potts, 2005; Arnold, 2007; AnderBois et al., 2011), non-restrictive relative clauses (NRCs) can take narrow scope under operators of the sentence within which they are embedded. This paper presents three experiments in German confirming this claim. The results show that embedded readings are available with NRCs in German and give first insights into the puzzle under which conditions these embedded readings do or do not show up.
Schlenker (2012) proposes that when framed within a modern Stalnakerian view of presupposition and common ground (Stalnaker, 1998, 2002), Maximize Presupposition! (Heim, 1991; Sauerland, 2008) can be viewed as a special case of the maxim of Quantity (Grice, 1975).
We provide data suggesting that in some cases, Maximize Presupposition! applies even when speakers are not expected to use a presupposition as vectors of new information. We argue that these data support the view that Maximize Presupposition! is an independent pragmatic principle, distinct from Quantity.
Schwager (2011) and Sudo (2014) argued that there are cases of the so-called third readings of attitude reports, initially discovered by Fodor (1970), that cannot be accounted for in terms of a theory of indexed world variables (Percus, 2000), which is often referred to as the Standard Solution. More complicated alternatives to the Standard Solution have been recently formulated in the literature in a number of papers. We argue that all the seemingly problematic cases can be naturally accounted for in terms of the Standard Solution, if we take into account the existence of previously unrecognized elided material in these reports.
Extreme nouns and maximizers
(2018)
Maximizers (completamente ‘completely’, totalmente ‘totally’) are degree modifiers restricted to maximum standard adjectives. Spanish adjectives of completeness [ACs] (completo ‘complete’, total ‘total’) display a behavior similar to that of their adverbial counterparts when they combine with nouns like idiot. This paper argues that ACs are maximality modifiers of idiot-like nouns, which are defended to be gradable and denote extreme degrees of properties.
Establishing a parallelism between adverbs and adjectives of completeness allows us to explore scalarity across categories and the relevance of scale structure in the nominal domain.
The proper semantic treatment of the complements of Responsive Predicates (ResPs), those predicates which may embed either declarative or interrogative clauses, is a longstanding puzzle, given standard assumptions about complement selection. In order to avoid positing systematic polysemy for ResPs, typical treatments of ResP complements treat their arguments either as uniformly declarative-like (propositional) or interrogative-like (question).
I shed new light on this question with novel data from Estonian, in which there are verbs think-like meanings with declarative complements and wonder-like meanings with interrogative complements. I argue that these verbs’ meaning is fundamentally incompatible with a proposition-taking semantics for ResPs, and therefore a question-taking semantics is to be preferred.
In this paper, I address verbal predicates of change in Southern Aymara, an understudied Andean language. I concentrate on verbs that are derived with the suffix -cha. This suffix derives degree achievements and creation predicates. I propose that they should be analyzed uniformly as degree achievements. The main empirical point of this paper is that there are two degree morphemes that combine with verbs with -cha, namely, a covert positive morpheme v.POS and an overt suffix -su. The latter is a degree morpheme that restricts the standard of comparison to lexical or contextual maximal degrees. I propose an analysis in terms of Maximize Presupposition: v.POS and -su constitute lexical alternatives where the latter is preferred over the former when maximal values are reached. v.POS is thus felicitous when no maximum is reached. The discussion bears on how telicity is achieved cross-linguistically when degree achievements are considered, thus enriching our typologies on the topic.
Whether degrees should be modeled as simple semantic primitives or ontologically complex entities has been an issue in recent formal semantic research. This article aims to make a contribution to this scholarly enterprise by investigating the Differential Verbal Comparative (DVC) construction in Chinese. DVCs exhibit peculiar properties : (i) obligatory differentials, and (ii) DPs as differentials(e.g., liang ben xiaoshuo ‘two CL novel’).
We propose that a degree is the entity correlate of a property that is formed on the basis of a measure, akin to Chierchia-style kind. This new kind of degree, coupled with a difference function-based semantics for comparatives, correctly predicts the behaviors of DVCs which would otherwise remain formally inscrutable. This article’s contributions are twofold: (i) it provides direct support for the degree-as-kind analysis by extending its empirical scope; and (ii) by combining degrees as kinds with a difference function-based semantics, it represents an improvement over the previous degree-as-kind analysis based on linear ordering.
The paper proposes a new semantics for good-predications involving finite if -and that-clauses. The proposal combines a standard semantics for conditionals with a standard semantics for the positive form of gradable adjectives and a minimal semantics for modal good. The predicted truth-conditions and conditions of use solve the mood puzzle presented in the first part of the paper. The remainder of the paper defends the classical notion of comparative goodness in terms of a comparison between possible worlds against Lassiter (2017)’s challenge.
The meaning of counterfactual conditionals is standardly described using the similarity approach (Stalnaker, 1968; Lewis, 1973). This approach has recently been challenged by Ciardelli et al. (2018). They argue that the similarity approach is in principle unable to account for the meaning of counterfactuals with an antecedent consisting of a conjunction embedded under a negation (¬(p^q)). Ciardelli et al. (2018) dismiss the approach on these grounds and offer an alternative. The main goal of the present paper is to defend the similarity approach against this attack. I will argue that the problem that underlies the observations in Ciardelli et al. 2018 is more general and not solved by the solution they offer. I will furthermore argue, against Ciardelli et al. (2018), that the cause of the problem is not the similarity approach, but the interaction of negation with the meaning of counterfactual conditionals. The paper will conclude with a first outline of a solution for the problem, which still uses the similarity approach, but combines it with an alternative semantics for negation.
Shared mechanism underlying unembedded and embedded enrichments:
evidence from enrichment priming
(2018)
In this paper, we use a priming paradigm to explore the mechanisms underlying unembedded and embedded scalar enrichments. In particular, the aim is to see if local pragmatic enrichment could be a shared mechanism, involved in both. The two experiments presented adopt Bott & Chemla's (2016) enrichment priming paradigm and test whether unembedded and embedded enrichments could prime each other. The goal is to investigate whether local pragmatic enrichment is indeed being accessed for the interpretation of the unembedded scalar and whether local enrichments, like other lexical semantic phenomena, are susceptible to priming.
This paper investigates the interpretation of Japanese -toka and -tari, two nonexhaustive particles that receive conjunctive interpretations in upward-entailing environments, but disjunctive interpretations in downward-entailing and question contexts.
We analyze -toka and -tari as items that introduce unstructured sets of alternatives in a Hamblin-style alternative semantics (Hamblin, 1973; Kratzer and Shimoyama, 2002), and derive their conjunctive and disjunctive readings via an interaction between these sets and the semantics of the environment containing them.
Revising a proposal by Guerzoni (2003), we propose to derive universal projection of presuppositions in wh-questions, where attested, from a family of three felicity conditions on question use. Assuming that these felicity conditions can be violated under certain conditions, this proposal predicts a typology of contexts where universal projection can exceptionally be unattested. We propose that this prediction is correct, presenting a family of scenarios where the expected absence of universal projection is observed.
Generics and typicality
(2018)
Cimpian et al. (2010) observed that we accept generic statements of the form 'Gs are f' on relatively weak evidence, but that if we are unfamiliar with group G and we learn a generic statement about it, we still interpret it in a much stronger way: (almost) all Gs are f .
This paper makes use of notions like 'representativeness' and 'contingency' from (associative learning) psychology to provide a semantics of generics that explains why people accept generics based on weak evidence. We make use of the Heuristics and Biases approach of Tversky and Kahneman (1974) and the Associative Theory of Probability Judgements to explain pragmatically why people interpret generic statements in a much stronger way. The spirit of the approach has much in common with Leslie's (2008) cognition-based ideas about generics, but the semantics is grounded on Cohen's (1999) relative readings of generic sentences. The basic intuition is that a generic of the form 'Gs are f' is true, not because most Gs are (or tend to have) f , but because f is typical for G, which means that f is valuably associated with G.
This paper deals with topic markers interacting with discourse information in imperatives. It compares two topic markers from Slovenian (‘pa’) and Japanese (‘-wa’) and shows that while they mostly match in terms of the foci they associate with, their functions differ in imperatives: only ‘pa’ may yield a concessive imperative reading. It is shown that this reading can be derived while keeping a single entry for ‘pa’ by making attitudes of discourse participants part of the focus ‘pa’ associates with. The split between Slovenian and Japanese can then be attributed to minor differences in terms of which foci ‘pa’ and ‘-wa’ may associate with.
Based on a sample of seven languages, I show that the so-called modal inferences in ever free relatives (ignorance and indifference) are not universally available. The primary reading of ever free relatives crosslinguistically turns out to be a “non-modal” one, which is available to all languages under investigation. The implication is that if there is a modal inference triggered by the use of the ever-morpheme in FRs, the inference is likely to have a source external to the ever free relative (Lauer, 2009; Condoravdi, 2015; Hirsch, 2016). In line with this conclusion, I propose to generalize Hirsch’s (2016) analysis of ignorance ever free relatives, suggesting that all ever free relatives, no matter how they are ultimately interpreted, are instances of (un)conditionals + donkey-anaphoric definite descriptions.
'Enough'-/'too'-constructions (E/T constructions) have an implicative reading: e.g., "Mary was clever enough to leave early yesterday" entails Mary left early yesterday. I argue that this implicative reading is not due to the lexical semantics proper of 'enough'/'too', but due to its bi-clausal structure (e.g., the above-mentioned example is analyzed as "Mary left early yesterday because she was clever enough"). I analyze 'enough' and 'too' simply as degree modifiers that involve a comparison: 'enough' means reaching the lower bound of an interval, while 'too' means exceeding the upper bound of an interval. Then inspired by Schulz (2011), Baglini and Francez (2015), and Nadathur (2016), I relate the semantics of E/T constructions to causal dependence: due to some sufficiency/excess, the infinitival complement clause in E/T constructions is episodically or generically (depending on its aspect being perfective or imperfective) true/false. I also argue that this infinitive has its tense and aspect marked on the main predicate of sentences, resulting in the seeming correlation between aspect and implication in languages that overtly make a distinction between perfective and imperfective aspects (e.g., French).
Counteridenticals are counterfactual conditional sentences whose antecedent clauses contain an identity statement, e.g. "If I were you, I’d buy the blue dress". Here, we argue that counteridenticals are best analyzed along the lines of dream reports. After showing that counteridenticals and dream reports exhibit striking grammatical and perceptual parallels, we suggest an analysis of counteridenticals with Percus and Sauerland’s (2003) analysis of dream reports. Following their proposal, we propose to make use of concept generators, realized as centered worlds. To this end, we argue that the presence of 'if' licenses the presence of an 'imagine'-operator, which constitutes the attitude the antecedent clause "x be-PAST y" is taken under. The speaker predicates, in the imagine mode, the consequent property to his/her imagined self.
To capture the different degrees of identification between the subject and the predicate of the identity statement of counteridenticals’ antecedents observed in the literature, we incorporate Percus and Sharvit’s (2014) notion of asymmetric be into the analysis. This proposal has several advantages over existing analyses (Lakoff, 1996; Kocurek, 2016) of counteridentical meaning, as it both explains the different degrees of identification observed for counteridenticals and correctly predicts the parallels between counteridenticals and dream reports.
German "-isch" and English "-ish" share a common Germanic origin, which is evidenced by striking similarities concerning the derivation of ethnic adjectives "(englisch/English)" or property-denoting adjectives "(kindisch/childish)". However, after an initial period of parallel characteristics, the two languages display drastic changes, with English developing an approximative sense when attached to adjectival bases (e.g. "greenish") and expanding to a wide range of other word categories, while German "-isch" develops multiple functions and also comes to firmly occupy a morphological niche with non-native bases. The paper sheds light on the evolving divergence between German and English by presenting results from two diachronic corpus-based studies. Additionally, explanations with respect to the typological parameter of 'Boundary Permeability' are provided.
A typical characteristic of Central German dialects, especially of the Ripuarian dialect, is that it has collective nouns with ge- + -ze (cf. gesteinze) besides those with ge- + -e (cf. gesteine) corresponding to Dutch gesteente and gestene. A relationship between ge- + -ze and ge- + -te has been assumed for a long time. A corpus-based comparison is given in order to explain the genesis of these different formation types (ge- + -e, ge- + -ze, ge- + -te) and their relations. It seems likely that earlier Dutch formations influenced their Ripuarian counterparts. Rarely, the circumfix ge- + -te also occurs in Ripuarian texts and may be autochthone. One main result is that the suffic -ze in Ripuarian restores the collective formation in the circumfix ge- + -e when it was destroyed by the e-apokope. This is a rare instance where an element of word formation is replaced by another one in order to neutralize the isolation effect of sound change.
This paper provides an overview of the connection between word formation and text type linguistics. Following a brief outline of the current state of research, desiderata and weaknesses of previous research as well as perspectives of a text type oriented research on word formation will be introduced. Here, I advocate a stronger inclusion of oral (with regard to the medium) and conceptually spoken text types (cf. Koch/Oesterreicher 1985). The focus is on the analysis of word formations within the text type of battle rap, which can be classified as oral and conceptually spoken. The analysis gives an insight into my habilitation project outlined in the essay and shows how this project can be realized.
This paper studies the morphological productivity of German N+N compounding patterns from a diachronic perspective. It argues that the productivity of compounds increases due to syntactic influence from genitive constructions ("improper compounds") in Early New High German. Both quantitative and qualitative productivity measures are adapted from derivational morphology and tested on compound data from the Mainz Corpus of (Early) New High German (1500–1710).
The project WBLUX (Wortbildung des moselfränkisch-luxemburgischen Raumes) at the University of Luxembourg aims at the investigation of Luxembourgish word formation through different text sorts and genres. In order to achieve this goal the compilation of an annotated corpus is needed. This article gives an example for benefits of using a corpus with annotations like parts of speech, lemmata and word formation affixes in the analysis of productivity of some selected word formation affixes of Luxembourgish. Then it describes how one can achieve such a corpus from a technical point of view. This includes the choice of corpus format, of a database platform and the designing of programs needed for the annotation process of word formation itself. This article also suggests new corpus linguistic approaches for research of word formation like analyzing the usage of word formation bases in the entire corpus or performing context analysis in order to determine semantical functions of each suffix.
Die hier zu besprechende Dissertation des schwedischen Germanisten Nicolaus Janos Raag ist an der Universität Uppsala (Schweden) unter der Betreuung von Dessislava Stoeva-Holm entstanden. Die Arbeit will zeigen, welche Rolle Substantivkomposita im Rahmen der Wissensvermittlung und des Kulturtransfers spielen, wie deutsche Komposita lateinisch vermittelte Inhalte in die eigene frühmittelalterliche klösterliche Kultur der Rezipienten integrieren und welche Veränderungen sie dabei erfahren. Für die Untersuchung wurden Substantivkomposita ausgewählt, da sie prädestiniert für die Benennung von bisher Unbekanntem sind und durch ihre binäre Struktur die Fähigkeit besitzen, zwei Größen zueinander in Beziehung zu setzen, wobei die semantische Relation zwischen den Konstituenten eines Kompositums prinzipiell offen und auf morphologischer Ebene nicht ausgedrückt ist.
Morphology Days is a (nearly) biennial international meeting which deals with morphology within different frameworks and in various perspectives Previous editions of this conference have taken place in Leuven (2015), Leeuwarden (2013), Leiden (2012), Nijmegen (2011), Luik (2009) and Amsterdam (2007) While the first editions of the conference were mainly addressed to researchers working on morphology in the Netherlands and in Belgium, the last editions – including this one – included international contributions The programme and the book of abstract is available at the conference’s homepage at https://morphologydays2017.wordpress.com/program/. Organized by Philippe Hiligsmann, Kristel Van Goethem, Nikos Koutsoukos and Isa Hendrikx from the Université Catholique de Louvain, and Laurent Raiser from the Université de Liège, this edition of Morphology Days hosted more than 30 researchers, among which 3 plenary speakers, coming not only from Belgium but also from France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. Although both inflection and derivation (affixation) where dealt with in the talks, this conference report will only address the studies on derivation.
Phrasal compounding is a phenomenon illustrated by slept all day look. Prototypical examples are determinative compounds with a nominal head and a phrasal non-head. They raise interesting questions about the interaction of syntax and morphology and have been discussed in this context by Botha (1981) for Afrikaans and Lieber (1992) for English. Also in German and Turkish, they have received ample attention. This volume has as its main purpose to extend the range of languages for which phrasal compounds are discussed. It consists of a brief introduction (chapter 1), six chapters devoted to individual languages, and a final chapter with a more general outlook. The use of further in the title is perhaps surprising, in particular because the volume under review is the first of a new series. It is motivated by the fact that the papers are from “the second workshop on phrasal compounding”, held in Mannheim in 2015. In this review, I will first present and discuss each chapter, then consider some general points about the volume.
It is traditionally assumed that lexical causative verbs (e.g. kill) express direct causation only, while periphrastic (bi-clausal) causatives (e.g. cause to die) may also express indirect causation. In favour of this constraint, Fodor famously observed that the (change of) state introduced by lexical causative verbs is not accessible for separate adverbial modification by temporal (or manner) adverbials. In this paper, I present old and new arguments against the direct causation constraint under the definitions of directness of Fodor and Wolff. I then propose a new definition of directness in terms of ab-initio causal sufficiency framed in Kvart’s probabilistic account of singular causation. I argue that directness so redefined is an implicature rather than an entailment of lexical causative verbs, which enables me to account for old and new data. Furthermore, I account for why the constraint on separate modification by temporal adverbials can be relaxed with eventuality-denoting subjects.
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The Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) was designed in order to assess narrative skills in children who acquire one or more languages from birth or from early age. MAIN is suitable for children from 3 to 10 years and evaluates both comprehension and production of narratives. Its design allows for the assessment of several languages in the same child, as well as for different elicitation modes: Model Story, Retelling, and Telling. MAIN contains four parallel stories, each with a carefully designed six-picture sequence. The stories are controlled for cognitive and linguistic complexity, parallelism in macrostructure and microstructure, as well as for cultural appropriateness and robustness. The instrument has been developed on the basis of extensive piloting with more than 550 monolingual and bilingual children aged 3 to 10, for 15 different languages and language combinations. Even though MAIN has not been norm-referenced yet, its standardized procedures can be used for evaluation, intervention and research purposes. MAIN is currently available in the following languages: English, Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Bulgarian, Croatian, Cypriot Greek, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic, Italian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Standard Arabic, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Welsh.
With the demographic explosion of young people in major African cities, we are witnessing the emergence of youth languages and new speech forms. In search of well-being, these young people, plagued by poverty, social injustice, unemployment and idleness, invent linguistic codes that allow them to find themselves. The linguistic and sociolinguistic description of these youth languages is the object of this volume. The contributions inform on the statutes and functions of the youth languages of Africa, their forms and structures, their representations, and envisage perspectives and prospective didactics.
The aim of this paper is to analyse the development of narrative macrostructure and the impact of socio-economic status (SES) and home literacy environment (HLE) on the narrative macrostructure of monolingual preschoolers in Germany when retelling and telling a story. The analysis of narrative macrostructure includes three components: story structure, story complexity, and story comprehension. Oral narratives were elicited via Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN). 198 monolingual children between age 4;6 and 5;11 participated (M=63 months, SD=5 months). The comparison of narrative macrostructure in three age groups (4;6 to 4;11 years, 5;0 to 5;5 years, 5;6 to 5;11 years) illustrate significant age effects in story structure, story complexity and story comprehension skills. There were weak significant positive correlations of some of these skills with aspects of socio-economic status and home literacy environment, for example between story comprehension skills and the educational background, the frequency and duration of the child’s exposure to books and the number of books in the household.
This contribution aims to describe privacy, publicness and anonymity as essential analytic dimensions for media linguistic research. The dimensions are not inherent in and predetermined by the technical features and forms of communication provided by mobile devices, but are used by the participants as an orientation grid for shaping their online and offline practices in and with mobile media. Considering both mobile device use in the public realm and the dissemination of increasingly private content in social media (which is said to lead to ‘blurred boundaries’ between the private and the public), the paper provides a brief overview of the main developments in mobile media research: Studies adopting various approaches – e. g. sociological-ethnographic, linguistic and media studies – illustrate how publicness, privacy and anonymity are actively shaped and brought about by mobile media users in face-to-face and remote social encounters. As this shows that publicness, privacy and anonymity are still relevant concepts for users, future media linguistics studies should focus on the dynamic multimodal practices by which they are contextualized and accomplished.
This thesis investigates the acquisition of compositional and lexical semantic properties of adjectives in German-speaking children between the age of two and five years.
According to formal semantic approaches, there are intersective and non-intersective adjectives, subsective and non-subsective adjectives as well as gradable and non-gradable adjectives. These properties concern the compositional mechanisms involved in nominal modification, i.e., the combination of adjectives and nouns. In addition, adjectives differ regarding lexical semantic properties that contribute to the adjectives' meaning. Differences in the adjectives' scale structure have led to the theoretical assumption that gradable adjectives should be distinguished into relative and absolute gradable adjectives. In addition, meaning components such as multidimensionality or subjectivity have led to the distinction between dimensional and evaluative gradable adjectives. These properties have been mostly investigated independently of each other in both theory and acquisition research. I suggest a classification system for adjectives that combines different semantic properties. This system results in six adjective classes constituting a Semantic Complexity Hierarchy. Assuming that these adjective classes differ in semantic complexity, I propose an operationalization of semantic complexity that takes into account the adjectives' length of description, their type complexity, and lexical properties that contribute to the adjectives' meaning.
Regarding the question of how monolingual German-speaking children acquire the semantics of adjectives, I hypothesize that the order of acquisition of adjectives is determined by their semantic complexity. This hypothesis is tested in a spontaneous speech study and a comprehension experiment.
The spontaneous speech study is a longitudinal investigation of the production of adjectives from 2;00 to 2;11 years based on transcripts from a dense data corpus. The results provide evidence that the mean age of acquisition for the adjective classes in the Semantic Complexity Hierarchy follows the order predicted by semantic complexity. The same order was observed for the age at which the number of types for each class increased most. A preliminary analysis of the input indicates that the frequency of parental adjective use is related to the order of acquisition, but it is unlikely that frequency determines the order completely.
The comprehension experiment focuses on two specific adjective classes. I examine children's and adults' interpretation of relative (big, small) and absolute (clean, dirty) gradable dimensional adjectives with a picture-choice task. These two classes are of the same semantic complexity because they are both gradable, but they have different scale structures. As a result, they must be interpreted differently due to lexical semantic properties. I investigate whether children calculate different standards of comparison for relative and absolute gradable adjectives and whether they distinguish between relative and absolute gradable adjectives regarding the relevance of the explicit comparison class. The results indicate that as of age 3, children distinguish between relative and absolute gradable adjectives with regard to the standard of comparison. However, with respect to the relevance of the comparison class, for 3-year-old children, unlike for 4- and 5-year-olds, changes in the noun, i.e., in the explicit comparison class, led to non-adult-like responses regarding both relative and absolute gradable adjectives.
On the basis of the empirical findings, I propose an acquisition path stating that children enter the acquisition process with inherent linguistic knowledge, the Semantic Complexity Hierarchy, and cognitive abilities to categorize their environment. I suggest that initially, children apply the least complex interpretation available in the Semantic Complexity Hierarchy to all adjectives: all adjectives are interpreted as properties of individuals that are not gradable. To access other levels of the Semantic Complexity Hierarchy and to establish more complex adjective classes, positive evidence from the input and conceptual properties of adjectives, e.g., COLOR, MENTAL STATE, PHYSICAL PROPERTY etc., can operate as triggers.
Gegenstand aller natürlichen Sprachen, die Menschen hervorgebracht haben, ist das Sprechen. Die Schrift einer solchen Sprache kann insofern als sekundäre Errungenschaft bezeichnet werden. Sorten und Gattungen der menschlichen Sprachen und Schriften sind historisch wie auch heute von großer Vielfalt und krassen Gegensätzen geprägt: z.B. die indoeuropäischen Sprachen mit flektierendem Grammatikbau versus der vielen sinotibetischen Sprachen mit analytischem Bau oder das lateinische Alphabet versus die logographische chinesische Schrift. In dieser Arbeit wird gezeigt, welche Faktoren die Korrespondenz der schriftlichen Repräsentation auf eine Sprache entscheiden und in welcher Art und Weise die Schrift die sprachlichen Entwicklungen beeinflussen kann.
This article presents an analysis of the police television series A Touch of Frost (Yorkshire Television, 1992) and the crime novels by Rodney Wingfield upon which it is based.
In order to analyse the way the protagonist, Inspector Jack Frost, is characterised in either version, data is drawn from the pilot episode of the series and Wingfield’s debut novel Frost at Christmas (1984). Wingfield was less than impressed with television’s version of Frost, stating, ‘He just isn’t my Frost’. The rationale for this article is to apply established models in stylistics to investigate the differences between the original and the adaptation. A core motivation for stylistics is to ‘support initial impressions in various extracts’ readings’ and to ‘describe the readers’ response with some precision’ (Gregoriou 2007: 19); this article therefore offers a close linguistic explanation for an author’s dissatisfaction with the adaptation of his own work. The famously reticent Wingfield did not elaborate in detail on why he disapproved of the television version of Frost, although several critics observed that Wingfield felt television had ‘softened’ his creation. This article contends that ‘softness’ is represented in language through politeness strategies adopted by speakers whilst impoliteness represents the ‘tougher’ speech of Wingfield’s original iteration of Jack Frost. In order to demonstrate this contention, this study will analyse pragmatic elements of the dialogue of both novel and television versions of Frost through the analytical framework for impoliteness developed by Culpeper (1996; 2010). This framework will be integrated into the model for analysing the elements of narrative outlined by Simpson and Montgomery (1995), in turn suggesting an elaboration of this model. In investigating whether television’s Jack Frost is ‘softer’ than the character envisaged by Wingfield, free direct speech and accompanying physical behaviour in novel and television adaptation are analysed, focussing on whether the perceived softness of the latter has been partly achieved by making the speech of Frost less impolite on television.
Introduction
(2019)
This study explores the relation between the development of narrative skills at the macrostructural level and the productive lexical abilities (verbs) of German-Russian children. The narratives are elicited using the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) and the lexical abilities are assessed using different tests. Twenty-one preschoolers (mean age: 3;9), forty-four 1st graders (mean age: 6;11) and twenty-two 3rd graders (mean age: 9;3) were included in the study. Correlation analyses were performed between verb lexicon and the following macrostructural components: Story Structure, Structural Complexity and Internal State Terms. The analysis also targets cross-language effects. In addition, the production of verbs within the elicited narratives was taken into account. Some positive correlations were found; however, no clear pattern across age groups and languages was observed. It is suggested that cognitive abilities might be a more decisive factor than lexical abilities and/or that the verbs assessed via the vocabulary tests are more specific than the ones required to achieve high scores for macrostructure.
For this study one hundred sixty-seven Russian-/Turkish-German preschool children were tested with a battery of language proficiency tests in both languages. On the basis of 1.5 SD below monolingual norm for L2 German and 1.25 SD below bilingual mean for either home language, 9 children at risk of developmental language disorders (DLD) (mean age of 4 years and 5 months) were identified and 16 age-matched TD children were selected out of the cohort. All these children were tested with the LITMUS-MAIN and –SR tests in German. The results across TD and at risk of DLD group were compared. TD clearly outperformed at risk of DLD in SR. In elicited narratives, macrostructure and microstructure were scrutinized across groups. Similar to the previous findings, our results show significant differences between at risk of DLD und TD in the microstructure, e.g. total number of word tokens and verb-based communication units and SR. For the macrostructure, TD outperformed at risk children only for story complexity. The study expands our knowledge on the cut-off criteria for the identification of bilinguals at risk of DLD, scrutinized very early narratives for bilinguals at risk of DLD features and questions the similarity of cognitive skills in TD and at risk of DLD children.
This paper focuses on morphological verb errors in elicited narratives of Russian-German primary school bilinguals. The data was collected from 37 children who were separated into four groups according to the age and language acquisition type (simultaneous and successive). The Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) (Gagarina et al. 2012) was used for data collection. The narratives produced in mode telling after listening to a model story were analysed and morphological verb errors in Russian and German were classified. Therefore, the error classification of Gagarina (2008) for Russian monolingual children was expanded and for the classification of German errors an own classification was suggested. Errors in Russian typically produced by monolinguals and unique bilingual errors as well were documented. The results show that the language of the environment (German) increases with age. Older children make fewer errors than younger ones. Nevertheless, a strong heterogeneity between children within each group can be observed.
In this paper, data from a current study on bilingual language acquisition and language promotion of children is presented. 96 narratives from 32 Turkish-German and Russian-German bilingual children were examined with regard to the acquisition of narrative ability in three rounds of tests. The macrostructure of each narrative was evaluated based on the theories of Westby (2005), Stein and Glenn (1977) and Gagarina et al. (2012). In the quantitative analysis, the factor age of onset (AoO) was considered and therefore, two hypotheses were introduced: 1) There is an influence of AoO on the narrative ability of L2 German bilingual children. And 2) The narrative ability will converge over time and after three years there will be no difference between the groups. Neither of those hypotheses could be confirmed by the examined narrative data. Hence, other influences on narrative ability were discussed in the last chapter and prospects for further research were given. In sum, the article shows that more narrative data of these children should be collected to make a comprehensive conclusion about the influence of AoO on narrative ability.
This article investigates the influence of tense and aspect on the choice of verb forms in texts written by Russian-speaking learners of German. Through eight written narrations, each produced by advanced learners of German with L1-Russian and German native speakers, the use of verb forms and relevant linguistic means (perfect markers, temporal adverbs and temporal clauses) was compared and analysed.
The study shows that even very advanced Russian-speaking learners of German could not meet target language preferences in German. They tended to deploy a different temporal perspective than German native speakers (simple past instead of present tense) and they also showed an overuse of the perfect tense, especially when describing completed actions. These differences compared to the preferences of German native speakers can be explained as transfer effects from the L1 of Russian-speaking learners since – unlike in German – the grammatical aspect in Russian is obligatory and its perfective form offers an effective tool to express completeness.
This study investigates macrostructure in elicited narratives of 69 monolingual German-, Russian- and Swedish-speaking adults. Using the LITMUS-MAIN (Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives), and its Baby Goats and Baby Birds stories, story structure and story complexity, concerning episodic organization, were examined across the 3 languages. As theoretical underpinnings, a multidimensional model of macrostructure was used. This model includes analyses of story structure (SS), in which a narrative merits a maximum score of 17, based on the occurrence of five types of macrostructural components (Internal states as initiating event and as reaction, Goal, Attempt and Outcome), and of story complexity (SC), which measures combinations of Goals, Attempts and Outcomes within one episode. The highest attainable complexity is the GAO-sequence, when a Goal, Attempt and Outcome are produced within the same episode. The results for SS were similar for German, Russian and Swedish, where adults included 11-12 components per story. A more detailed analysis of the individual components revealed striking similarities across the 3 languages, both for frequently used and seldom occurring components. SC did not differ significantly across languages nor across stories, whilst for SS, a slight difference between the two stories was found. We interpret this finding as story complexity (a qualitative measure of macrostructure) being of a more universal nature. Furthermore, our results indicate that caution is warranted when conclusions about children’s narrative skills are to be drawn on the basis of the MAIN Baby Goats and Baby Birds stories.