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In der arabischen Welt herrscht eine sehr alte und stabile Situation der Diglossie, d.h. des funktional geregelten Nebeneinanders von zwei historischen Entwicklungsstufen der gleichen Sprache. Das Moderne Hocharabisch ist eine konservierte Form des Klassischen Arabisch. Es genießt hohes Ansehen und dient als Schriftsprache, wird aber nicht muttersprachlich erworben, sondern durch Unterricht erlernt. Im mündlichen und informellen Bereich werden die jeweiligen Dialekte verwendet; sie sind die natürliche Muttersprache der Bevölkerung, genießen jedoch keinerlei Ansehen. Da die Hochsprache in ihrer äußeren Form nicht verändert werden darf, aber auch die Dialekte sich nicht zu modernen geschriebenen Volkssprachen entwickeln dürfen, scheint die Diglossiesituation für alle Zeit festgeschrieben. Dadurch ist das Überleben der Dialekte gesichert, obgleich sie sich untereinander stärker annähern. Die Geringschätzung der Dialekte in der arabischen Welt bedingt auch eine Ablehnung der Dialektologie. Deshalb war die arabische Dialektologie immer eine Domäne westlicher Forscher, doch nun deutet sich auch im Westen ihr Niedergang an.
Freeze (1992) argued on the basis of data from several different languages that there is a close relationship between existential sentences (stating the existence of an entity) and locative sentences (stating the location of an entity). Freeze (1992) proposes that they are both derived from the same base structure and that the surface differences are rather due to the distinct information structures.This paper argues against this position with the data from Serbian existentials, which show clear syntactic differences from the locatives. Thus, the close relationship between existential and locative sentences that Freeze (1992) observes is conceptual, but not (necessarily) part of the syntax of the language. In order to account for the data, we propose that existential sentences originate from a different syntactic predication structure than the locative ones. The existential meaning arises, as we will show, from the interaction of this predication structure with the structure and meaning of the noun phrase.
"Ich mag so Wasserpfeifeladen" : the interaction of grammar and information structure in Kiezdeutsch
(2008)
This talk concerns the copula system in Buli, a Ghanaian language which has also been attested in Bahia (Rodrigues 1935, Zwernemann 1968). Special focus will be put on the categorization of two copula-reminiscent elements for which I will propose a discoursepragmatic analysis.
Die Bezeichnung von Anzahlen durch Numeralia und andere sprachliche Mittel ist ein universelles Charakteristikum natürlicher Sprachen, ein Sachverhalt, der bereits auf die große Bedeutung des Zahlkonzepts für das menschliche Denken hinweist: Der Begriff der Zahl, der in der Auffassung diskreter Objekte wurzelt, bildet nach neueren kognitionswissenschaftlichen Ansätzen neben dem Begriff des Raumes - der kontinuierlichen Einheit - das grundlegende Mittel zur Erfassung der Wirklichkeit.
Seit Frege (1891, 1892) werden generelle Termini wie „Tisch“, „Einhorn“ u.ä. logisch als Prädikate analysiert, d.h. sie werden als Begriffswörter angesehen, deren wesentliches Merkmal ihr Status als ungesättigter Ausdruck ist. Als solcher eröffnen sie eine Leerstelle für einen Argumentausdruck. Dieser muß einen Gegenstand denotieren; der so gesättigte Begriffsausdruck bezeichnet dann einen Wahrheitswert. Nach dieser Analyse werden generelle Termini somit als Bezeichnungen für Funktionen analysiert, deren Definitionsbereich Gegenstände und deren Wertebereich Wahrheitswerte sind. Ebenso wie intransitive Verben gelten sie damit als Ausdrücke, die zusammen mit einem Eigennamen einen assertorischen Satz bilden.
Two hypotheses have been proposed in order to account for velar softening, i.e., a process through which /k/ changes to an affricate. Whereas one hypothesis states that for the process to apply the velar stop has to be realized as an (alveolo) palatal stop (articulation-based hypothesis), the other claims that velar softening is triggered by acoustic similarity between the input and output segments (acoustic equivalence hypothesis). The present paper investigates the acoustic equivalence hypothesis by comparing several acoustic properties of /k/ in various vowel contexts with those of /ts , ts , tc / for three languages differing in stop burst aspiration, i.e., German, Polish and Catalan. Results suggest that the acoustic equivalence hypothesis could account for velar softening in aspirated velar stops but not in unaspirated velar stops. The results also provide an explanation as to why aspirated velar stops are prone to undergo softening more easily when followed by front vocalic segments than in other contexts and positions
This paper shows that several typologically unrelated languages share the tendency to avoid voiced sibilant affricates. This tendency is explained by appealing to the phonetic properties of the sounds, and in particular to their aerodynamic characteristics. On the basis of experimental evidence it is shown that conflicting air pressure requirements for maintaining voicing and frication are responsible for the avoidance of voiced affricates. In particular, the air pressure released from the stop phase of the affricate is too high to maintain voicing, which in consequence leads to a devoicing of the frication part.
This paper is an inductive look at the constituents found in a randomly selected Tagalog text, Bob Ong’s Alamat ng Gubat (Makati City, MM: Visual Print Enterprises, 2004). The analysis is based on the full text, but we will only be able to go through the first few lines of the text here, which we will do one by one, and discuss the structures found in each line of the text in bullet format after the relevant line. At the end of the paper we will bring up some important questions about the structures found in Tagalog based on this text.
Rawang [...] is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by people who live in the far north of Kachin State in Myanmar (Burma), particularly along the Mae Hka ('Nmai Hka) and Maeli Hka (Mali Hka) river valleys; population unknown, although Ethnologue gives 100,000. In the past they had been called ‘Nung’, or (mistakenly) ‘Hkanung’, and are considered to be a sub-group of the Kachin by the Myanmar government. They are closely related to people on the other side of the Chinese border in Yunnan classified as either Dulong or Nu (see LaPolla 2001, 2003 on the Dulong language and Sun 1988, Sun & Liu 2005 on the Anong language). In this paper, I will be discussing a particular morphological phenomenon found in Rawang, using data of the Mvtwang (Mvt River) dialect of Rawang, which is considered the most central of those dialects in Myanmar and so has become something of a standard for writing and inter-group communication.
Questions on transitivity
(2008)
This handout (it isn’t a paper) presents phenomena and questions, rather than conclusions, related to the concept of transitivity. The idea is to return to these questions at the end of the Workshop to see if we can have a clearer consensus about the best general analysis of phenomena associated with transitivity. Section 2 presents alternative analyses of transitivity and questions about transitivity in three languages I have worked on. Section 3 discusses a few of the different conceptualisations of transitivity that might be relevant to our thinking about the questions related to these languages or that bring up further questions. Section 4 presents some general questions that might be asked of individual languages.
This paper is more about presenting phenomena and questions related to the concept of transitivity in Tibeto-Burman languages that I hope will stimulate discussion, rather than presenting strong conclusions. Sections 2 and 3 present alternative analyses of transitivity and questions about transitivity in two Tibeto-Burman languages I have worked on. In Section 4 I discuss some general issues about transitivity.
Die Entwicklung eines individuellen Standards „vom grünen Tisch“ führt selten zu zufriedenstellenden Ergebnissen. Bei der automatischen Prüfung stellt man schnell fest, dass die „ausgedachten“ Regeln einer systematischen Anwendung nicht standhalten. Bei der Implementierung solcher Richtlinien stellt man fest, dass sie oft zu wenig konkret formuliert sind, wie z.B. „formulieren Sie Handlungsanweisungen knapp und präzise“. Wie jedoch kann ein Standard entwickelt werden, der zu einem Unternehmen, seiner Branche und Zielgruppen passt und für die automatische Prüfung implementiert werden kann? Sprachtechnologie hilft effizient bei der Entwicklung individueller Richtlinien. Durch Datenanalyse, Satzcluster und Parametrisierung entsteht ein textspezifischer individueller Standard. Ist damit aber der Gegensatz von Kreativität und Standardisierung aufgehoben?
Several articulatory strategies are available during the production of /u/, all resulting in a similar acoustic output. /u/ has two main constrictions, at the velum and at the lips. A perturbation of either constriction can be compensated at the other one, e.g wider constriction at the velum by more lip protrusion, wider lip opening by more tongue retraction. This study investigates whether speakers use this relation under perturbation. Six speakers were provided with palatal prostheses which were worn for two weeks. Speakers were instructed to make a serious attempt to produce normal speech. Their speech was recorded via EMA and acoustics several times over the adaptation period. Formant values of /u/-productions were measured. Velar constriction width and lip protrusion were estimated. For four speakers a correlation between constriction width and lip protrusion was found. A negative correlation between lip protrusion and F1 or F2 could sometimes be observed, but no correlation occurred between constriction size and either of the formants. The results show that under perturbation speakers use motor equivalent strategies in order to adapt. The correlation between constriction size and lip protrusion is stronger than in studies investigating unperturbed speech. This could be because under perturbation speakers are inclined to try out several strategies in order to reach the acoustic target and the co-variability might thus be greater.
The study investigates the contribution of tactile and auditory feedback in the adaptation of /s/ towards a palatal prosthesis. Five speakers were recorded via electromagnetic articulography, at first without the prosthesis, then with the prosthesis and auditory feedback masked, and finally with the prosthesis and auditory feedback available. Tongue position, jaw position and acoustic centre of gravity of productions of the sound were measured. The results show that the initial adaptation attempts without auditory feedback are dependent on the prosthesis type and directed towards reaching the original tongue palate contact pattern. Speakers with a prosthesis which retracted the alveolar ridge retracted the tongue. Speakers with a prosthesis which did not change the place of the alveolar ridge did not retract the tongue. All speakers lowered the jaw. In a second adaptation step with auditory feedback available speakers reorganised tongue and jaw movements in order to produce more subtle acoustic characteristics of the sound such as the high amplitude noise which is typical for sibilants.
Our study is concerned with the identification of ‘difficult’ structure s in the acquisition of a foreign language, which will shed light on theoretical considerations of L2 processing. We argue that – compared to simple vocabulary items or abstract syntactic patterns – structures that contain lexical material as well as categorial variables are especially difficult to acquire. The difficulty level for particular patterns is shown to depend on surface invariability but not on the syntactic categories within which target patterns are embedded. As an example we study the distribution of certain structures which are underused by L2 German learners.
Du fait de la traite négrière qui a vu des millions d’Africains être déportés aux Amériques, les langues européennes (anglais, espagnol, français, néerlandais, portugais) des colons qui y étaient déjà installés et qui avaient un fort besoin en main-d’oeuvre africaine, ont eu à intégrer à des degrés divers de nombreux mots africains. Les chercheurs qui travaillent sur ces africanismes sont d’accord pour dire que ces mots ont deux grandes origines africaines : bantoue et non-bantoue.
Eine Einführung in eine Reihe von linguistischen Phänomenen von Phonetik bis Pragmatik, einige theoretische Ansätze zur Beschreibung/für diese Phänomene, mit einem Blick auf Phänomene und Ansätze, die für kognitive Linguisten und Neurologen interessant sind. Der Begriff "Schnittstelle" ist in der Linguistik ein technischer Terminus, der beschreibt, wie verschiedene Typen von Phänomenen miteinander in einer Beziehung stehen, aber der Terminus soll auch beschreiben, wie linguistische und außerlinguistische Phänomene ineinandergreifen.
Die Orthographie ist ein wichtiger Baustein des Fremdsprachenunterrichts, in der Schreiberwerbsforschung im Fremdsprachenkontext konzentrierte man sich dagegen auf Phänomene der Textgestaltung (z.B. Portman 1991). Es wird eine korpusbasierte Untersuchung von Orthographiefehlern in Texten fortgeschrittener Lernender des Deutschen als Fremdsprache (DaF) vorgestellt. Als Datengrundlage dient das Lernerkorpus Falko (fehlerannotiertes Lernerkorpus), ein Gemeinschaftsprojekt der Freien Universität und der Humboldt Universität Berlin (http://www2.hu-berlin.de/korpling/projekte/falko/FalkoKernBeschreibung.pdf). In diesem Korpus werden sog. Wortschreibungsfehler (vgl. Eisenberg 2004) analysiert werden. Die Untersuchung geht von der Annahme aus, dass sich, abgesehen von direkten Übertragungen, die Beschaffenheit der Orthographie einer Muttersprache (L1) nicht signifikant auf die Lernerorthographie (die Orthographie der Zielsprache) auswirkt. Diese Annahme soll an ausgewählten Wortschreibungsfehlern überprüft werden, so z.B. an fehlerhaften Dehnungs- und Schärfungsmarkierungen englischer DaF-Lernender. Sollte die L1 einen nachweisbaren Einfluss auf die Lernerorthographie haben, so müssten bspw. signifikant mehr Fehler bei der dem Englischen unbekannten Dehnungsgraphie mit Dehnungs-h auftreten als bei der dem Englischen bekannten Schärfungsgraphie mithilfe von Konsonantendopplung im Silbengelenk. Die Ergebnisse der Korpusuntersuchung werden in einem spracherwerbstheoretischen Rahmen diskutiert werden.
Evaluating phonological status : significance of paradigm uniformity vs. prosodic group effects
(2007)
A central concern of linguistic phonetics is to define criteria for determining the phonological status of sounds or sound properties observed in phonetic surface form. Based on acoustic measurements we show that the occurrence of syllabic sonorants vs. schwa-sonorant sequences in German is determined exclusively by segmental and prosodic structure, with no paradigm uniformity effects. We argue that these findings are consistent with a uniform representation of syllabic sonorants as schwa sonorant sequences in the lexicon. The stability of schwa in CVC-suffixes (e.g. the German diminutive suffix -chen), as opposed to its phonetic absence in a segmentally comparable underived context, is argued to be conditioned by the prosodic organisation of such suffixes external to the phonological word of the stem.
Der vorliegende kurze Beitrag [hat] das Ziel, im diskutierten Problemrahmen konstitutive Aspekte der Horizonte, Konturen und Fluchtlinien einer dezidiert inter- bzw. transkulturellen Ausrichtung der Sprachwissenschaft anzudeuten und zu hinterfragen, ihre disziplinären Wege und Blickfelder anzulegen sowie über ein inter- bzw.transkulturelles ,,Paradigma" als "interkulturelle Linguistik" im Hinblick auf Profil, Tragfähigkeit und Reichweite zu reflektieren. All das soll dann zu einer extensionalen und intensionalen Bestimmung einer "interkulturellen Linguistik" hinführen.
Rawang (Rvwàng) is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the far north of Myanmar (Burma), and is closely related to the Dulong language spoken in China. Rawang manifests a kind of hierarchical person marking on the predicate which marks first person primarily (in several different ways - suffixes, change of final consonant, vowel length - and up to five times within one verb complex), and second person indirectly with a sort of marking similar to the inverse marking found in some North American languages: it appears when there is a first person participant, but that referent is not the actor, and when the second person is a participant. This system is quite different from those that reflect semantic role (e.g. Qiang) or grammatical relations (e.g. English).
Rawang [...] is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by people who live in the far north of Kachin State in Myanmar (Burma), particularly along the Mae Hka ('Nmai Hka) and Maeli Hka (Mali Hka) river valleys (see map on back page); population unknown, although Ethnologue gives 100,000. In the past they had been called ‘Nung’, or (mistakenly) ‘Hkanung’, and are considered to be a sub-group of the Kachin by the Myanmar government. Until government policies put a stop to the clearing of new land in 1994, the Rawang speakers still practiced slash and burn farming on the mountainsides (they still do a bit, but only on already claimed land), in conjunction with planting paddy rice near the river. They are closely related to people on the other side of the Chinese border in Yunnan classified as either Dulong or Nu(ng) (see LaPolla 2001, 2003 on the Dulong language). In this paper, I will be discussing the word-class-changing constructions found in Rawang, using data of the Mvtwang (Mvt River) dialect of Rawang, which is considered the most central of those dialects in Myanmar and so has become something of a standard for writing and inter-group communication.
A two-week perturbation EMA-experiment was carried out with palatal prostheses. Articulatory effort for five speakers was assessed by means of peak acceleration and jerk during the tongue tip gestures from /t/ towards /i, e, o, y, u/. After a period of no change speakers showed an increase in these values. Towards the end of the experiment the values decreased. The results are interpreted as three phases of carrying out changes in the internal model. At first, the complete production system is shifted in relation to the palatal change, afterwards speakers explore different production mechanisms which involves more articulatory effort. This second phase can be seen as a training phase where several articulatory strategies are explored. In the third phase speakers start to select an optimal movement strategy to produce the sounds so that the values decrease.
Focus expressions in Foodo
(2006)
Research on adverbials in sentence-medial position in the North- Ghanaian Gur language Buli suggests that the language offers two divergent slots for adverbials between subject and verb. Special attention is paid to the group of sentence-medial deictic temporal adverbials. While they have the potential to develop into tense markers, this process seems to depend on special information structural conditions.
In our presentation we will outline the verb system of Lelemi and concentrate on certain “focal” aspects which are of primary interest to us. Lelemi has two TAMP paradigms: one constituting the so-called “simple tenses”, the other the so-called “relative tenses” (Allan 1973), although not every “simple tense” has a counterpart in the “relative tenses”. The simple paradigm is formed by subject prefixes (prefixed pronouns for 1st or 2nd person and noun class pronouns for 3rd persons) and the verb form whereas the relative paradigm is build up by the obligatory use of an external subject noun, an invariable verb prefix, and the verb form. While the simple paradigm is used in quite a lot of syntactic environments the relative paradigm only shows up in relative clauses with the subject being the head as well as in subject and sentence focus constructions including questions concerning the subject. We will show some interesting interactions between the grammatical expression of focus and the verb system and sketch the grammaticalisation path of the morpheme nà.
Focus in Gur and Kwa
(2006)
The project investigates focus phenomena in the two genetically relatedWest African Gur and Kwa language groups of the Niger-Congo phylum. Most of its members are tone languages, they are similar with respect to word order typology (all are SVO languages), but of divergent morphological type (agglutinating Gur versus isolating Kwa).
Gegenstand der folgenden Überlegungen sind Strukturen, in denen Demonstrativa entweder als Antezedens eines restriktiven Relativsatzes oder als Determinativ eines solchen Antezedens auftreten. In solchen Strukturen hat das Demonstrativum weder eine deiktische noch eine anaphorische Bedeutung und damit keine der für Demonstrativa zentralen Funktionen. Aus sprachvergleichender Perspektive zeigt sich, dass manche Typen von Demonstrativa überhaupt nicht mit restriktiven Relativsätzen kombinieren können, andere wiederum den Relativsatz auf spezielle Lesarten beschränken. Ziel ist es, für die fraglichen Strukturen übereinzelsprachliche Beschränkungen aufzuzeigen und aus dem Sprachvergleich Rückschlüsse für das Deutsche zu gewinnen.
In meinem Vortrag möchte ich Ihnen einige Überlegungen zu Fragen der vergleichenden Flexionsmorphologie vortragen und dabei wiederum speziell zur Kasusmarkierung an Substantiven. Ich werde mich dabei besonders auf das Polnische beziehen – eine Sprache, deren Kasusbildungen teils Charakteristika des fusionierenden oder flektierenden Typus zeigen, teils aber eher dem agglutinierenden Typ nahe kommen. Diese Mischung stellt, wie ich zeigen möchte, eine besondere Herausforderung für die morphologische Kasusanalyse dar. Ich werde dies im ersten Abschnitt meines Beitrags erläutern. Im zweiten Abschnitt greife ich einige bekannte Beobachtungen zu Kasussynkretismen auf, die für eine Analyse des polnischen Systems nützlich sind. Im dritten Abschnitt gebe ich für einen Ausschnitt des polnischen Deklinationssystems eine detaillierte Analyse.
Research on a variety of structurally different languages suggests that information is assigned to grammatical form in way of preferred representations of arguments. These preferences can be captured by four interacting constraints which are based on the analysis of spoken and written discourse. These constraints represent measurable discourse preferences: pragmatically unmarked utterances seem to follow them blindly and widely. Consequently, the preferences motivating these constraints seem to represent the default structuring of discourse in immediate relation to elementary grammatical form. Discourse is no longer viewed as acting upon grammatical form, but as being ‘grammatical’ itself.
Human communication takes place when one person does something that when seen or heard by another person is taken to be done with the intention to communicate, and the other person, having seen the communicator show his or her intention to communicate, then uses inference to determine what the communicator intends to communicate. This is possible because the addressee assumes that the communicator is a rational person, that is, acts with goals in mind (see Grice 1975), and so must be doing the act for a reason, and it is worth the addressee’s effort to try to determine what that reason is, that is, determine the relevance of the act.
As has been noted previously, speakers with coronally low "flat" palates exhibit less articulatory variability than speakers with coronally high "domeshaped" palates. This phenomenon is investigated by means of a tongue model and an EPG experiment. The results show that acoustic variability depends on the shape of the vocal tract. The same articulatory variability leads to more acoustic variability if the palate is flat than if it is domeshaped. Furthermore, speakers with domeshaped palates show more articulatory variability than speakers with flat palates. The results are explained by different control strategies by the speakers. Speakers with flat palates reduce their articulatory variability in order to keep their acoustic variability low.
This paper examines the development of periphrastic constructions involving auxiliary "have" and "be" with a past participle in the history of English, on the basis of parsed electronic corpora. It is argued that the two constructions represented distinct syntactic and semantic structures: while the one with have developed into a true perfect in the course of Middle English, the one with be remained a stative resultative throughout its history. In this way, it is explained why the be construction was rarely or never used in a number of contexts, including past counterfactuals, iteratives, duratives, certain kinds of infinitives and various other utterance types that cannot be characterized as perfects of result. When the construction with have became a true perfect, it was used in such contexts, regardless of the identity of the main verb, leading to the appearance of have with verbs like come which had previously only taken be. Crucially, however, have was not spreading at the expense of be, as the be perfect had never been used in such contexts, but rather at the expense of the old simple past. At least until the end of the Early Modern English period, the shift in the relative frequency of have and be perfects is to be explained in terms of the expansion of the former into new contexts, while the latter remained stable. A formal analysis is proposed, taking as its starting point a comparison with German which shows that the older English be perfect indeed behaves more like the German stative passive than its haben and sein perfects.
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.
Temporal development of compensation strategies for perturbed palate shape in German /S/-production
(2006)
The palate shape of four speakers was changed by a prosthesis which either lowered the palate or retracted the alveoles. Subjects wore the prosthesis for two weeks and were recorded several times via EMA. Results of articulatory measurements show that speakers use different compensation methods at different stages of the adaptation. They lower the tongue immediately after the insertion of the prosthesis. Other compensation methods as for example lip protrusion are only acquired after longer practising periods. The results are interpreted as supporting the existence of different mappings between motor commands, vocal tract shape and auditory-acoustic target.
Focus expressions in Yom
(2005)
This paper provides an analysis of an alternative strategy to A´-movement in both German and Dutch where the extracted constituent is preceded by a preposition and a coreferential pronoun appears in the extraction site. The construction has properties of both binding and movement: Whereas reconstruction effects suggest movement out of the embedded clause, there is strong evidence that the operator constituent is linked to an A-position in the matrix clause; this paradox is resolved by assuming a Control-like approach that involves movement from the embedded clause into a theta-position in the matrix clause with subsequent short A´- movement. The coreferential pronoun is interpreted as a resumptive heading a Big-DP which hosts the antecedent in its specifier.
This paper advances a purely presuppositional analysis of intonation. I first show that a inspiring recent article by Geurts and van der Sandt (Theoretical Linguistics, 2004) that pursues the same goal cannot account for multiple foci. Then, I show that if it is assumed that destressed rather than focussed material is semantically marked, multiple foci are accounted for correctly.
The epistemic step
(2005)
Innerhalb der Reihe "GrenzBereiche des Lesens" gehaltener Vortrag. "GrenzBereiche des Lesens" ist eine kulturwissenschaftliche Vortragsreihe, die 2003 und 2004 an der Universität Frankfurt stattfand. Irene Pieper beschäftigt sich aus literaturdidaktischer und lesesoziologischer Perspektive mit der kulturellen Praxis des Lesens. Ihr Beitrag entwickelt systematisch, worin die "Kunst" des literarischen Lesens im Einzelnen besteht und wie diese Kompetenz methodisch in der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Gegenstand Literatur zu erwerben bzw. zu vermitteln ist. Ein kompetenter Leser zu werden heißt, ein breites Spektrum von Fähigkeiten zu erwerben, das vom Realisieren der poetischen Funktion der Literatur über die Empathiefähigkeit bis hin zur Lust am Text reicht. Der Beitrag lotet aus, in welcher Weise vor allem die Schule, die außerhalb der Familie Begegnungen mit und Kommunikationen über Literatur herbeiführt und anregt, an der Bildung solcher Leser und Leserinnen mitwirken kann.
Protected Mode
(2005)
Innerhalb der Reihe "GrenzBereiche des Lesens" gehaltener Vortrag. "GrenzBereiche des Lesens" ist eine kulturwissenschaftliche Vortragsreihe, die 2003 und 2004 an der Universität Frankfurt stattfand. Gegenstand von Harald Hillgärtners Untersuchung ist die Frage nach der Lesbarkeit des Computers, vielmehr seiner System- und Programmcodes. Gilt der Computer einerseits als "Textmaschine", die endlose Schreib- und Leseakte prozessiert, so finden jene Programmabläufe doch zumeist jenseits der für alle zugänglichen Benutzeroberflächen statt, die ihrerseits in immer stärkerem Maß mit Icons – Bildern – arbeiten. Und selbst im Falle von frei zugänglichen Software-Codes ist zu fragen, um welche Art Text es sich hier handelt – ob in diesen Fällen gar von Literatur die Rede sein kann. Insofern ist die Frage nach der Lesbarkeit des Computers nicht nur eine Frage nach der Zukunft des Lesens (geht es um Sinn oder um Information?) sondern vielmehr nach dem (Zu-)Stand unserer Schriftkultur selbst.
Dutch has a three-way contrast in labiodental sounds, which causes problems for native speakers of German in their acquisition of Dutch, since German contrasts only two labiodentals. The present study investigates the perception of the Dutch labiodental fricative system by German L2 learners of Dutch and shows that native Germans with no or little knowledge of the Dutch language categorize the Dutch labiodental voiced fricative and approximant as their native voiced fricative. Advanced learners, however, succeed in acquiring a category for the voiced fricative, illustrating that plasticity in the perception of a second language develops with the amount of exposure to the language.
Seit der zweiten Hälfte des letzten Jahrhunderts zieht die Übersetzung im Fremdsprachenunterricht (FSU) das Interesse der Fremdsprachendidaktiker auf sich. In den anhaltenden Diskussionen über den Stellenwert der Übersetzung im FSU bestehen aber immer noch verschiedene Meinungen. Die Meinungsverschiedenheiten beruhen vor allem auf diversen miteinander konkurrierenden Lerntheorien und damit auch auf unterschiedlichen methodischen Prinzipien. Im Zusammenhang mit den herrschenden didaktischen Richtungen und mit den unterschiedlichen Lernzielen, die im Fremdsprachenunterricht verfolgt werden können, wird auch die Übersetzung unter mehreren Gesichtspunkten betrachtet und bewertet. Hinsichtlich der Funktion der Übersetzung ist es inzwischen üblich geworden, zwischen zwei Verwendungsweisen zu unterscheiden: Einerseits wird die Übersetzung als ein methodisches Mittel zur Festigung, Erweiterung und Prüfung sprachlicher Fertigkeiten angewendet, andererseits ist sie als eine eigene Fertigkeit selbst ein Übungs- und Unterrichtsziel.
This paper discusses the nature of habits in the use of languages. It is well-known that the habits of one's first language can influence the acquisition of a second language. This paper discusses the less well-known phenomenon of how an acquired second language can influence one's first language, and explains this influence by reference to the nature of communicative behavior.
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.
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.
0. Introduction 1. Observations concerning the structure of morphosyntactically marked focus constructions 1.1 First observation: SF vs. NSF asymmetry 1.2 Second observation: NSF-NAR parallelism 1.3 Affirmative ex-situ focus constructions (SF, NSF), and narrative clauses (NAR) 2. Grammaticalization 2.1 Cleft hypothesis 2.2 Movement hypothesis 2.3 Narrative hypothesis 2.3.1 Back- or Foregrounding? 2.3.2 Converse directionality of FM and conjunction 3. Language specific analysis 4. Conclusionary remarks References
A pragmatic explanation of the stage level/individual level contrast in combination with locatives
(2004)
One important difference between stage level predicates (SLPs) and individual level predicates (ILPs) is their behavior with respect to locative modifiers. It is commonly assumed that SLPs but not ILPs combine with locatives. The present study argues against a semantic account for this behavior (as advanced by e.g. Kratzer 1995, Chierchia 1995) and proposes a genuinely pragmatic explanation of the observed stage level/individual level contrast instead. The proposal is spelled out using Blutners (1998, 2000) optimality theoretic version of the Gricean maxims. Building on the observation that the respective locatives are not event-related but frame-setting modifiers, the preference for main predicates that express temporary properties is explained as a side-effect of “synchronizing” the main predicate with the locative frame in the course of finding an optimal interpretation. By emphasizing the division of labor between grammar and pragmatics, the proposed solution takes a considerable load off of semantics.
Research on dialectal varieties was for a long time concentrated on phonetic aspects of language. While there was a lot of work done on segmental aspects, suprasegmentals remained unexploited until the last few years, despite the fact that prosody was remarked as a salient aspect of dialectal variants by linguists and by naive speakers. Actual research on dialectal prosody in the German speaking area often deals with discourse analytic methods, correlating intonations curves with communicative functions (P. Auer et al. 2000, P. Gilles & R. Schrambke 2000, R. Kehrein & S. Rabanus 2001). The project I present here has another focus. It looks at general prosodic aspects, abstracted from actual situations. These global structures are modelled and integrated in a speech synthesis system. Today, mostly intonation is being investigated. However, rhythm, the temporal organisation of speech, is not a core of actual research on prosody. But there is evidence that temporal organisation is one of the main structuring elements of speech (B. Zellner 1998, B. Zellner Keller 2002). Following this approach developed for speech synthesis, I will present the modelling of the timing of two Swiss German dialects (Bernese and Zurich dialect) that are considered quite different on the prosodic level. These models are part of the project on the "development of basic knowledge for research on Swiss German prosody by means of speech synthesis modelling" founded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
The volume is a collection of papers given at the conference “sub8 -- Sinn und Bedeutung”, the eighth annual conference of the Gesellschaft für Semantik, held at the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt (Germany) in September 2003. During this conference, experts presented and discussed various aspects of semantics. The very different topics included in this book provide insight into fields of ongoing Semantics research.
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.
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.
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.
Seit der zweiten Hälfte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts sind im theoretischen Bereich der Übersetzungswissenschaft wichtige Veränderungen zu beobachten. Von Cicero bis zur zweiten Hälfte des letzten Jahrhunderts verlagerte sich die ausgangssprachenorientierte Übersetzungsauffassung auf die zielsprachenorientierten. Somit haben sich immer mehr die zielsprachenorientierte Forschungen im Bereich der Übersetzungstheorie als ein übersetzungsrelevantes Phänomen durchgesetzt. Insbesondere haben die nach den 70’er Jahren entworfenen Übersetzungstheorien, in denen der Übersetzer immer mehr in das Zentrum des Forschungsinteresse rückt und entsprechende übersetzungsprozessualorientierte Ansätze sich aufdrängen, an Wichtigkeit eingebüßt. Nach diesen Ansätzen rücken normative Belange in Bezug auf erfolgreiche Übersetzung in Form von Prinzipien und Regeln in den Vordergrund. Heutzutage ist das Interesse an theoretische Forschungen besonders auf deskriptive Beschreibungen des Übersetzungsphänomens gerichtet. Damit die Theorie mit der Praxis übereinstimmt, sollte man vor allem die allgemeinen Grundsätze der Übersetzungstheorien, die Grundlage zur Praxis bilden, explizit verarbeiten. Wenn man auch nicht erwartet, dass die Übersetzungstheorien alle in der Praxis der Übersetzung entstandenen Probleme bewältigen können, ist aber trotzdem davon auszugehen, dass der Übersetzer, welcher über die allgemeine theoretische Grundlage verfügt, in seiner Übersetzungstätigkeit mehr Erfolg haben wird, weshalb die Praxis und Theorie voneinander recht gering abweichen werden. Die Auseinandersetzung mit diesem Tatbestand, also mit der Theorie, kann die Lösung der probablen Fehler erleichtern. Außerdem besteht somit die Möglichkeit, die Effizienz der Theorie auf die Anwendung herauszufinden und demzufolge kann die durch praktische Ausführung ermittelten Ergebnisse eine ganzheitliche Präzisierung der theoretischen Beschreibungen nach sich ziehen.
Çeviribilimde Yöntem Sorunu
(2004)
Dieser Beitrag bearbeitet und behandelt die Funktion der Methodologie beim Erwerb wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse in Bezug auf das Verstehen des Übersetzungsvorgangs. Wie bekannt ist das Problem der Methodologie eines der meist diskutierten Themen in der Übersetzungswissenschaft. Obwohl inzwischen eine Reihe von wissenschaftlichen Ansätzen zu diesem Thema existiert, hat die Übersetzungswissenschaft noch keinen theoretischen Rahmen entwickelt, in dem der betreffende Forschungsgegenstand definiert wird. Aus diesem Grund unterscheiden sich die Arten der Angehensweise von übersetzungswissenschaftlichen Problemen. Außerdem scheinen die Definitionsbemühungen hinsichtlich des Forschungsgegenstandes der Übersetzungswissenschaft und der Methodenprobleme der übersetzungswissenschaftlichen Ansätze nicht unbedingt zufrieden stellende Antworten auf die Fragen in diesem Bereich zu liefern. Das Definitionsproblem der genauen theoretischen und methodologischen Orientierung der Übersetzungswissenschaft in der allgemeinen Wissenschaftswelt hängt neben ihrem strittigen Standort als einer neuen Disziplin auch von zwei weiteren Grundfaktoren ab: 1. Probleme, mit denen man bei der Festlegung einer vereinenden Übersetzungstheorie konfrontiert ist, da die Übersetzung einen vielseitigen und komplexen Objektbereich umfaßt; 2. ungenügende Forschungen in Bezug auf methodologische Ansätze in der Übersetzungswissenschaft. Wie bekannt profitiert man bei der Entwicklung einer Übersetzungstheorie auch von der Methodologie anderer Disziplinen. Diese Methoden sind wie vielseitige Mittel, die bei der Lösung von Problemen in Bereichen wie übersetzungswissenschaftliche Forschungen, Didaktik des Übersetzens und Übersetzungsprozess angewandt werden können. Diese Methoden werden außerdem einen Beitrag dazu leisten, definierende Übersetzungsmethoden hinsichtlich über-setzungswissenschaftlicher Ansätze für das Verstehen des Übersetzungsvor-ganges zu entwickeln.
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.
A common topic in recent literature on phonology is the question of whether phonological processes and segments are licensed by prosodic position or by perceptual cues. The former is the traditional view, as represented by e.g. Lombardi (1995) and Beckman (1998), and holds that segments occur in specific prosodic positions such as the coda. In a licensing by cue approach, as represented by Steriade (1995, 1999), on the other hand, segments are assumed to occur in those positions only where their perceptual cues are prominent, independent of the prosodic position. In positions where the cues are not salient, neutralization occurs.
A new semantics for number
(2003)
Semantic research over the past three decades has provided impressive confirmation of Donald Davidsons famous claim that “there is a lot of language we can make systematic sense of if we suppose events exist” (Davidson 1980:137). Nowadays, Davidsonian event arguments are no longer reserved only for action verbs (as Davidson originally proposed) or even only for the category of verbs, but instead are widely assumed to be associated with any kind of predicate (e.g. Higginbotham 2000, Parsons 2000).1 The following quotation from Higginbotham and Ramchand (1997) illustrates the reasoning that motivates this move: "Once we assume that predicates (or their verbal, etc. heads) have a position for events, taking the many consequences that stem therefrom, as outlined in publications originating with Donald Davidson (1967), and further applied in Higginbotham (1985, 1989), and Terence Parsons (1990), we are not in a position to deny an event-position to any predicate; for the evidence for, and applications of, the assumption are the same for all predicates. (Higginbotham and Ramchand 1997:54)" In fact, since Davidson’s original proposal the burden of proof for postulating event arguments seems to have shifted completely, leading Raposo and Uriagereka (1995), for example, to the following verdict: "it is unclear what it means for a predicate not to have a Davidsonian argument (Raposo and Uriagereka 1995:182)" That is, Davidsonian eventuality arguments apparently have become something like a trademark for predicates in general. The goal of the present paper is to subject this view of the relationship between predicates and events to real scrutiny. By taking a closer look at the simplest independent predicational structure – viz. copula sentences – I will argue that current Davidsonian approaches tend to stretch the notion of events too far, thereby giving up much of its linguistic and ontological usefulness. More specifically, the paper will tackle the following three questions: 1. Do copula sentences support the current view of the inherent event-relatedness of predicates? 2. If not, what is a possible alternative to an event-based analysis of copula sentences? 3. What does this tell us about Davidsonian events? The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 first reviews current event-based analyses of copula sentences and then gives a brief summary of the Davidsonian notion of events. Section 3 examines the behavior of copula sentences with respect to some standard (as well as some new) eventuality diagnostics. Copula expressions will turn out to fail all eventuality tests. They differ sharply from state verbs like stand, sit, sleep in this respect. (The latter pass all eventuality tests and therefore qualify as true “Davidsonian state” expressions.) On the basis of these observations, section 4 provides an alternative account of copula sentences that combines Kim’s (1969, 1976) notion of property exemplifications with Ashers (1993, 2000) conception of abstract objects. Specifically, I will argue that the copula introduces a referential argument for a temporally bound property exemplification (= “Kimian state”). The proposal is implemented within a DRT framework. Finally, section 5 offers some concluding remarks and suggests that supplementing Davidsonian eventualities by Kimian states not only yields a more adequate analysis for copula expressions and the like but may also improve our treatment of events.
The paper is structured as follows. Section 2.1 introduces the basic classes of adjectives that constitute the factual core of the paper. Section 2.2 summarizes in greater detail the X° and the XP movement approaches to word order variation within the DP. Section 3 briefly discusses problems for both approaches. Sections 4.1, 5.1, and 5.2 draw from Alexiadou (2001) and contain a discussion of Greek DS and its relevance for a re-analysis of the word order variation in the Romance DP. Section 4.2 introduces refinements to Alexiadou & Wilder (1998) and Alexiadou (2001). Section 5.3. discusses certain issues that arise from the analysis of postnominal adjectives in Romance as involving raising of XPs. Section 6 discusses phenomena found in other languages, which at first sight seem similar to DS. However, I show that double definiteness in e.g. Hebrew, Scandinavian or other Balkan languages constitutes a different type of phenomenon from Greek DS, thus making a distinction between determiners that introduce CPs (Greek) and those that are merely morphological/agreement markers (Hebrew, Scandinavian, Albanian).
On the basis of perceptual experiments we show that alveolo-palatal fricatives and palatalized post-alveolars are two separate sounds which are distinguished not only by Polish native speakers but also by German ones. This claim is partly attested by centre of gravity measurements of the two sibilants. In this paper we revise the claim made by Halle & Stevens [1] and Maddieson & Ladefoged [2] that the Polish alveolo-palatal fricatives [˛, ¸] are palatalized postalveolars [SJ, ZJ]. On the basis of perceptual experiments we show that alveolo-palatal fricatives and palatalized post-alveolars are two separate sounds which are distinguished not only by Polish native speakers but also by German ones. This claim is partly attested by centre of gravity measurements of the two sibilants.
Twenty years ago I discussed the oldest isoglosses in the South Slavic linguistic area (1982). Subscribing to Van Wijk’s view that the bundle of isoglosses which separates Bulgarian from Serbo-Croatian was the result of an early split in South Slavic and that the transitional dialects originated from a later mixture of Serbian and Bulgarian dialects when the contact between the two languages had been restored (1927), I argued that the shared innovations of Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian must be dated to a period when the dialects were still spoken in the original Trans-Carpathian homeland of the Slavs. I concluded that there is no evidence for common innovations of South Slavic which were posterior to the end of what I have called the Late Middle Slavic period, which I dated to the 4th through 6th centuries AD. At that time, the major dialect divisions of Slavic were already established.
Twenty years ago (1983), I severely criticized Halle and Kiparsky’s review (1981) of Garde’s history of Slavic accentuation (1976). I concluded that Halle and Ki-parsky’s theoretical framework “rests upon an unwarranted limitation of the available evidence, obscures the chronological perspective, and yields results which are partly not new and partly incorrect. It is harmful because it does not give the facts their proper due and thereby blocks the road to empirical study, giving a free hand to unrestrained speculation” (1983: 40). As Halle has recently returned to the subject (2001), it may be interesting to see if there has been some progress in his thinking over the last two decades. In the following I shall try to avoid repeating what I have said in my earlier discussion.
Bilabial stops undergoing Surface Palatalization (SP) were analyzed in an EMMA/EPG study. Articulatorily, the point of maximal palatal contact and the labial opening movement were analyzed. The acoustic analysis pertained to stop related timing and the point of the highest F2-value. Results show (i) that SP yields a higher F2 at vowel onset and a lengthened opening gesture and (ii) that morphemeinduced palatalizations are distinguished from word initial ones and sandhi-palatalizations articulatorily and acoustically by a shorter delay of palatal target position with respect to stop production; (iii) no differences are found between ‘repalatalized’ and plain segments in case of sandhi palatalization.
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.
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.
The present study poses the question on what phonetic and phonological grounds postalveolar fricatives in Polish can be analyzed as retroflex and whether postalveolar fricatives in other Slavic languages are retroflex as well. Velarization and incompatibility with front vowels are introduced as articulatory criteria for retroflexion, based on crosslinguistic data. According to these criteria, Polish and Russian have retroflex fricatives, whereas Bulgarian and Czech do not. In a phonological representation of these Slavic retroflexes, the necessity of perceptual features is shown. Lastly, it is illustrated that palatalization of retroflex fricatives both in Slavic languages and more generally causes a phonetic and phonological change to a non-retroflex sound.
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.
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.
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.
Wie in anderen Regionen ist auch in der Schweiz seit den 1950er Jahren eine Bewegung weg von der Untersuchung der 'reinen' Dialekte in ländlicher Umgebung hin zu einer Untersuchung von aktueller Sprachverwendung im urbanen Umfeld zu beobachten. Schweizer Dialektologie ist somit heute deutlich als 'social dialectology' zu verstehen. Die traditionelle Dialektologie hat sich an der sprachlichen Vielfalt der Städte gestört, weil diese dem Bemühen entgegenstanden, die diatopische Verteilung sprachlicher Varianten möglichst genau zu beschreiben. Die Sprache der Städte blieb deshalb am Rande des sprachwissenschaftlichen Interesses. Es zeigt sich jedoch deutlich (Siebenhaar i. Dr.), dass gerade in der Schweiz, wo die Mundarten auch in den Städten nicht durch die Standardsprachen verdrängt wurden, schon früh ein Interesse an der mundartlichen Variation aufgekommen ist.