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Establishing coherent identity patterns for literary characters in novels is a difficult task. In this respect, we assume that readers rely on pre-stored cultural models in order to construct mental models of the text content, including character identity. By significantly extending the approach by Van Dijk and Kintsch and going beyond the related accounts of Schneider and of Culpeper, we aim to clarify the constitutive role of conceptual metaphor as proposed by Lakoff et al. in processes of literary identity construction. The analysis of a corpus of three contemporary novels supports our claim that conceptual metaphors and the mapping of domains involved interact with cultural models and connect text phenomena to such prior knowledge structures. On this basis, we provide an integrated model of literary identity construction which acknowledges the constitutive value of conceptual metaphors in literary identity construction.
German underwent a typological change from a syllable language in Old High German towards a word language today (Szczepaniak 2007). Proper names followed this development until the last century (cf. Christel, Gertrud, Klaus, Wolfgang). Some of the most popular German first names from 2010, however, such as Mia, Lea, Leon, Noah, show completely different structures compared to common nouns. In sharp contrast to common nouns, first names dispose of CV-structures, full vowels in unstressed syllables and different accent positions. Thus, there must have been a deep-rooted onomastic change. The most frequent baby names of 1945 were still in harmony with the usual word structures. This article shows that the decrease of transgenerational transmission of first names led to a departure fom native phonological structures. The following factors are analyzed: the number of syllables; accent position; and the number of consonant clusters, hiatuses, schwa and unstressed full vowels. It will be demonstrated that the phonological distance between first names (particularly female names) and common nouns has increased over time and that there is an increasing tendency for names to contain syllable language structures. Thus, a typological difference developed between these two nominal classes. The reason behind this change can be found in the individualizing function of proper names and social individualization over time.
In a recent article of major importance (2013), Tijmen Pronk has treated the accentuation of l-participles of the type neslъ in western South Slavic. Pronk points out correctly that Dybo’s law did not shift the accent onto final jers, e.g. in *kòņь, *bòbъ, and that the short vowel was preserved in Slovak osem < *òsmь, oheň < *ògņь, mohol < *mòglъ. Contrary to what Pronk claims, Slovene nę́sǝlis the phonetic reflex of *néslъ < *neslъ̀, Slovak niesol. The Slovene doublets (v)ǫ̑gǝl < *ǫ̀glь and (v)ózǝl < *ǫ̀zlъ suggest an earlier paradigm with vǫ̑- < ǫ̑- in the nom.sg. form and ó- < *ǫ̀- in the oblique cases. The vowel of ógǝnj < *ògņь also stems from the oblique cases. The expected neo-circumflex in the nom.sg. form is actually attested in rę̑bǝr < *rèbrь beside rę́bǝr with the reflex of Stang’s law from the oblique cases. There is no reason to assume that the accent was not retracted at an early stage in *neslъ̀, nor is there any reason to assume that Dybo’s law shifted the accent to the final jer in *dòbrъ and *sèdmь, as Pronk claims.
Although it is a generally acknowledged fact that Neo-Latin consists of a set of linguistic varieties, there is a short supply of research into its linguistic diversification, especially in non-literary texts. One of the characteristical text classes within Neo-Latin tradition are canonical visitations, a special type of ecclesiastical administrative texts, produced extensively after the Council of Trent in all parts of Europe that had Roman Catholic hierarchical structures. The present paper analyses the language of three canonical visitations written in 18th century Diocese of Senj and Modruš (Krbava) and tries to recognise linguistic peculiarities that could prove to be distinguishing properties for canonical visitations and similar texts.
Croatian negative indefinite expressions, or the so-called ni-words, are complex forms made by adding the prefix ni- to simple forms of indefinite pronouns. The Croatian standard norm prescribes that in prepositional phrases involving negative idefinite pronouns (the so-called ni-pronouns), the negative element ni should be separated from the pronoun and put in front of the preposition. However, in everyday communication one may often notice the use of the word order P + negative indefinite pronoun, and this word order has also made its way into newspapers and other media. This paper attempts to determine whether there is a significant difference in meaning between the order ni + P + indefinite pronoun and the order P + negative indefinite pronoun to account for such a change in language. We also analyze the frequency of use of these two different word orders in the Croatian National Corpus, examining eleven most frequent prepositions and six simple indefinite pronouns.
Obligatory control refers to the relation of obligatory coreference between one of the arguments in the matrix clause and an unexpressed argument of the subordinate infinitive. This paper provides examples of subject and object control in Croatian that reveal significant differences between these two constructions. Subject control is understood as a purely syntactic relation, while the analysis of object control requires the introduction of semantic macroroles. The two constructions are therefore based on different basic principles, which results in various asymmetries with regard to restrictions on possible syntactic realizations. Moreover, the limitations on scope interpretation of temporal adverbs resulting from word order changes in object control constructions suggest that the two verbs in object control might form a tighter unit than those in subject control constructions.
The paper considers the interdependence between word order, congruence and formal cases – the means which, together with lexical meaning and formal class markers, explicate the concrete syntactic relations in a sentence. There are languages (including the Slavic ones) in whose structure congruence is very important. They may or may not possess formal cases. Even if they have no formal cases their word order is relatively free due to the compensatory role of congruence, which is often, but not always, able to eliminate potential ambiguity in the sentence, assisted to a certain extent by animacy, definiteness, pronoun duplicates of the objects and extra-linguistic knowledge (and Modern Bulgarian is good enough to illustrate this). At the same time, even in congruence languages with formal cases there are strict word order rules. In both kinds of congruence languages the violation of these rules can make a sentence utterly unintelligible (the last is exemplified by a couple of lines from Spanish and Ukrainian poetry).
The article gives an overview of the most important linguistic publications on the Burgenland Croatian dialects so far and concludes that our picture of these dialects is still far from complete. Two examples are given of unsolved questions that illustrate why a more complete picture than we have at the moment is necessary. The author wishes to point out that good quality linguistic fieldwork in this region deserves higher priority than it is given now, especially since the dialects are dying out so fast.
The article analyzes the accentuation of western South Slavic l-participles of verbal stems ending in an occlusive that are formed by adding the formant *-l- directly to the stem, e.g. *nes-lъ, Croatian nȅsao, Slovene nesel. Data from Slovene, Čakavian, Kajkavian and Štokavian dialects are compared and discussed against the background of late Proto-Slavic and early dialectal accentual and phonological changes. The operation of accentological changes such as Dybo’s law, Stang’s law and the rise of the neocircumflex, as well as the reduction of weak jers caused alternations in tone, vowel-length and position of the ictus. These alterations could be analogically eliminated or extended at different times and in different areas during the linguistic history of western South Slavic, thus causing the rise of some of the earliest isoglosses in the area in which western South Slavic is spoken.
Decomposing coordination
(2014)
Natural languages display a surprising diversity of expression of elementary logical operations. The study of this variation is emerging as an important topic of cross-linguistic semantics. In this paper, we address the expression of coordination from this perspective, especially coordination of individual denoting expressions such as "John and Mary". We argue that there is an underlying universal structure for individual coordination, and that the cross-linguistic variation can be explained by assuming that languages pronounce different morphemes of this universal structure. In particular, we argue that there two main types of system for the expression of individual coordination: the J-type and the μ-type. In μ-type languages the morpheme used for individual coordination also has uses a quantificational or focus particle, while in the J-type languages it doesn't. Instead at least in many J-type languages the same morpheme is used for individual and propositional coordination. The evidence we present for our model comes from two sources: new data from specific data of the J-type and μ-type languages, and from a study of the historical development of the expression of individual coordination in Indo-European which switched from a μ-type to a J-type system.