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This paper revisits the question of whether propositions in situation semantics must be persistent (Kratzer (1989)). It shows that ignoring persistence causes empirical problems to theories which use quantification over minimal situations as a solution for donkey anaphora (Elbourne (2005)), while at the same time modifying these theories to incorporate persistence makes them incompatible with the use of situations for contextual restriction (Kratzer (2004)).
The ultimate goal of this paper is to find a representation of modality compatible with some basic conditions on the syntax-semantic interface. Such conditions are anchored, for instance, in Chomsky's (1995) principle of full interpretation (FI). Abstract interpretation of modality is, however - be it "only" in semantic terms - already a hard nut to crack, way too vast to be dealt with in any comprehensive way here. What is pursued instead is a case-study-centered analysis. The case in point are the English modals (EM) viewed in their development through time - a locus classicus for a number of linguistic theories and frameworks. The idea will be to start out from two lines of research - continuous grammaticalization vs. cataclysmic change - and to explain some of their incongruities. The first non-trivial point here consists in deriving more fundamental questions from this research. The second, possibly even less trivial one consists in answering them. Specifically, I will argue that regardless of the actual numerical rate of change, there is an underlying and more structured way to account for the notions of change and continuity within the modal system, respectively.
The left periphery has enjoyed extensive study over the past years, especially drawn against the framework of Rizzi (1997). It is argued that in this part of the clause, relations are licensed that have direct impact on discourse interpretation and information structure, such as topic, focus, clause type, and the like. I take this line of research up and argue in favour of a split CP on the basis of strictly left-peripheral phenomena across languages. But I also want to link the relation of articulated clause structure, syntactic derivations, and information structure. In particular, I outline the basics of a model of syntactic derivation that makes explicit reference to the interpretive interfaces in a cyclic, dynamic manner.
I suggest a return to older stages of generative grammar, at least in spirit, by proposing that clausal derivation stretches over three important areas which I call prolific domains: the part of the clause which licenses argument/thematic relations (V- or θ-domain), the part that licenses agreement/grammatica1 relations (T- or ϕ-domain), and the part that licenses discourse/information-relevant relations (C- or ω-domain). It is thus a rather broad and conceptual notion of "adding" and "omitting" that I am concerned with here, namely licensing of material to relate to information structure, and the desire to find an answer to the question which elements might be added or omitted across languages to establish such links.
This paper is a preliminary comparative study of the relation between word order and information structure in three Null Subject Languages ((NSLs) Spanish, Italian and Greek). The aim is twofold: first I seek to examine the differences and the similarities among these languages in this domain of their syntax. Secon, I investigate the possible derivations of the various patterns and attempt to localize the differences among these languages in different underlying syntactic structures.
In this paper we investigate the structure of specificational sentences like [Raskol'nikov]NP 1 - ėto [ubìjca staruxi]NP2 'Raskolnikov - that is the murderer of the old lady' in Russian and Polish, which - depending on the type of NP1 and NP2 - correspond to English pseudo-cleft-constructions (What Raskolnikov is is the murderer of the old lady) and specificational sentences (The person I like most is my father), respectively. We propose that the Slavic constructions can be analysed similarly to their English counterparts: the first fragment contains a semantic variable, which is specified in the second fragment.
We show that the pronouns "ėto" <Rus.> / "to" <Pol.>, which are obligatory in Slavic specificational sentences, have two functions. 1. the deictic function: "ėto/to" take an open proposition available in the discourse or reconstructed from it, and assign this open proposition to another proposition, which provides the value for the variable of the open proposition. 2. the operative function: "ėto/to" link two syntactically independent fragments, the first of which can be semantically interpreted as an indirect question comparable to the wh-clause in the English pseudo-clefts, and the second as an answer to this question.
The aim of this paper is to investigate Rizzi's (2001) recent claim that in combien constructions full movement correlates with a specific or D-linking interpretation of the nominal (see also Obenauer, 1994) while the in-situ option corresponds to focus of the noun. On the one hand, it is argued that the notion of specificity or D-linking for the raised nominal is too strong while on the other hand it is shown that the stranded nominal is not a focus, but a topic, albeit of a special kind. It is also argued that there is a dedicated postverbal position for this kind of topic and that the nominal has all the properties of an incorporated nominal: it is interpreted as an asserted background topic. In the final part of the article, some time is spent discussing the pragmatics and the modality involved in discontinous structures, and showing that the stranded nominal is interpreted inside the VP/below the event variable.
Speakers have a wide range of noncanonical syntactic options that allow them to mark the information status of the various elements within a proposition. The correlation between a construction and constraints on information status, however, is not arbitrary; there are broad, consistent, and predictive generalizations that can be made about the information-packaging functions served by preposing, postposing, and argument-reversing constructions. Specifically, preposed constituents are constrained to represent discourse-old information, postposed constituents are constrained to represent information that is either discourse-new or hearer-new, and argument-reversing constructions require that the information represented by the preposed constituent be at least as familiar as that represented by the postposed constituent (Birner & Ward 1998). The status of inferable information (Clark 1977; Prince 1981), however, is problematic; a study of corpus data shows that such information can be preposed in an inversion or a preposing (hence must be discourse-old), yet can also be postposed in constructions requiring hearer-new information (hence must be hearer-new). This information status – discourse-old yet hearer-new – is assumed by Prince (1992) to be non-occurring on the grounds that what has been evoked in the discourse should be known to the hearer. I resolve this difficulty by arguing for a reinterpretation of the term 'discourse-old' as applying not only to information that has been explicitly evoked in the prior discourse, but rather to any information that provides a salient inferential link to the prior discourse. Extending Prince’s notion in this manner allows us to account for the distribution of noncanonically positioned peripheral constituents in a principled and unified way.
Two diametrically opposed stances have emerged from recent theoretical debates on adverbial syntax. One approach, represented by Alexiadou (1997) and Cinque (1999), espouses a rigid hierarchy of functional projections hosting individual adverbs. The other, represented broadly by Jackendoff (1972), McConnell-Ginet (1982) and most recently Ernst (2002), takes adverb placement to be determined by the semantics of the adverbs themselves as opposed to the functional architecture of the clause. Under the latter view, adverbs may be divided into several categories based on their meaning with each category being licensed in a certain range within the sentence.
Here, I undertake a detailed examination of Tagalog adverbs and compare the predictions of the two best articulated recent theories of adverbs, that of Cinque (1999, 2004) and Ernst (2002). The results offer support for some of the basic predictions of the semantically based approach of Ernst. Particularly important are scopal facts which do not obtain a clear explanation under a functional projection-based theory such as Cinque's.
Diese Arbeit hat als übergeordnete und finale Zielsetzung das Bestreben eine systematische, effiziente und nachvollziehbare Bestimmung der lexikalisierten Zählbarkeit deutscher Substantive zu ermöglichen. Ein Unterfangen, das zu meinem Wissen bisher weder für Substantive des Deutschen, noch des Englischen, in einem größeren Maßstab unternommen wurde.
Es gibt zwar einige Lexika, die bereits Einträge für nur im Singular oder nur im Plural auftretende Substantive beinhalten, jedoch ist mir keine Ressource bekannt, die eine qualitativ und quantitativ hochwertige Klassifizierung der lexikalischen Zählbarkeit von Substantiven des Englischen oder des Deutschen bietet. Ein Hinweis auf einen ausschließlich verwendeten Numerus eines Substantivs ist hierbei keineswegs ein zuverlässiges Indiz auf die Zählbarkeit dieses Substantivs, sondern lediglich eines von vielem Merkmalen, dass in Summe das ergibt, was gemeinhin unter dem Begriff Zählbarkeit summiert wird.
Auch die Literatur zur Zählbarkeit selbst beschränkt sich fast durchgängig auf einige wenige Substantive, die wie auch bereits in dieser Einleitung geschehen, immer wieder und wieder diskutiert werden. Die Interpretation der Zählbarkeit von Hunden, Katzen und Kaninchen, sowie von Wein, Reis, Möbeln und Schmuck, wird auch in den Beispielen dieser Arbeit immer wieder von Bedeutung sein. Es ist allerdings offenkundig, dass das Deutsche oder Englische weitaus mehr Wörter als die soeben genannten beinhaltet und somit eine Betrachtung über diese Standardbeispiele hinaus sinnvoll ist.
Es ist daher mein Bestreben, Tests und Richtlinien zur Bestimmung der lexikalischen Zählbarkeit von Substantiven zu entwickeln, diese auf über 1.000 Lemmata des Deutschen anzuwenden und somit erstmals einen Gold-Standard zu etablieren, der neben qualitativen Betrachtungen auch eine quantitative Untersuchung der Zählbarkeit von Wörtern in einer großen deutschsprachigen Tageszeitung erlaubt.
This paper deals with the possessive constructions — either connective or relative — in Mbochi (C25), a Bantu language spoken in Congo-Brazzaville. In Mbochi, as in most languages of the same group (C20), the underlying /CV-/ form of nominal prefixes never surfaces as such but is targeted by two main processes: consonantal dissimilation and vowel elision. Both processes are in complementary distribution and the alternations triggered by them may explain the surface forms of both connective and relative constructions. In order to provide the necessary background for the study of Mbochi relative clauses, the three subject markers of Mbochi are introduced and the main verbal suffixes are also discussed. Thereafter, a detailed presentation and analysis of the relative constructions is given. Finally, we discuss the prosody of these constructions, showing that relative clauses in Mbochi have no particular tonal markers and we propose a model involving superimposed boundary tones to account for their intonation.
Die Hauptthese dieser Dissertation ist, dass Nord-Sotho keinen obligatorischen Gebrauch von grammatischen Mitteln zur Markierung von Fokus macht, weder in der Syntax noch in der Prosodie oder Morphologie. Trotzdem strukturiert diese Sprache eine Äußerung nach informationsstrukturellen Aspekten. Konstituenten, die im Diskurs gegeben sind, werden entweder getilgt, pronominalisiert oder an den rechten oder linken Satzrand versetzt. Diese (morpho-)syntaktischen Prozesse wirken so zusammen, dass die fokussierte Konstituente oft final in ihrem Teilsatz erscheint. Obwohl die finale Position keine designierte Fokusposition ist, ist das Wissen um diese Tendenz doch entscheidend für das Verständnis einer morphologischen Alternation, die in Nord-Sotho am Verb erscheint und die in der Literatur im Zusammenhang mit Fokus diskutiert wurde.
Obwohl also ein direkter grammatischer Ausdruck von formaler F(okus)-Markierung im Nord-Sotho fehlt, ist F-Markierung trotzdem entscheidend für die Grammatik dieser Sprache: Fokussierte logische Subjekte können nicht in kanonischer präverbaler Position erscheinen. Sie erscheinen stattdessen entweder postverbal oder in einem Spaltsatz, abhängig von der Valenz des Verbs. Obwohl Nord-Sotho bei Objekten im Gebrauch von Spaltsätzen eine Korrespondenz von komplexer Form mit komplexer Bedeutung zeigt, gilt diese Korrespondenz nicht für logische Subjekte.
Die vorliegende Dissertation modelliert die oben genannten Ergebnisse im theoretischen Rahmen der Optimalitätstheorie (OT). Syntaktischer in situ Fokus und die Abwesenheit von prosodischer Fokusmarkierung können mit unkontroversen Beschränkungen erfasst werden. Für die Ungrammatikaliät fokussierter logischer Subjekte in präverbaler Position schlägt die vorliegende Arbeit die Modifizierung einer in der Literatur vorhandenen Beschränkung vor, die in Nord-Sotho von entscheidener Bedeutung ist. Die Form-Bedeutungs-Korrespondenz wird, wie andere Phänomene pragmatischer Arbeitsteilung auch, innerhalb der schwach bidirektionalen Optimalitätstheorie behandelt.
How the left-periphery of a wh-relative clause determines its syntactic and semantic relationships
(2004)
This paper discusses a certain class of German relative clauses which are characterized by a wh-expression overtly realized at the left periphery of the clause. While investigating empirical and theoretical issues regarding this class of relatives, it argues that a wh-relative clause relates syntactically to a functionally complete sentential projection and semantically to entities of various kinds that are abstracted from the matrix clause. What is shown is that this grammatical behaviour clearly can be attributed to the properties of the elements positioned at the left of a wh-relative clause. Finally, a lexically-based analysis couched in the framework of HPSG is given that accounts for the data presented.
L'article étudie les diverses façons de poser des questions partielles en Embosi (C25). D'une part, la langue possède deux ensembles de pronoms/déterminants interrogatifs: 1) nda/nde, nda renvoyant aux animés et nde aux non-animés, 2) des mots interrogatifs en accord de classe avec le nom qu'ils déterminent ou qu'ils remplacent, segmentalement homophones des démonstratifs. Ces deux catégories de marqueurs appellent des réponses de nature différente. Par ailleurs, deux ensembles de constructions sont possibles pour les questions partielles portant sur le sujet, l'objet direct ou indirect: les constructions avec relatives et les constructions in situ. Les questions partielles sur le lieu, la cause, la manière se posent avec des adverbes et n'admettent que les constructions in situ. Sur le plan prosodique, il n'y a ni intonation ni groupement prosodique spécifique pour les questions partielles en Embosi. Leur seule caractéristique prosodique est un ton H facultatif (variable selon les locuteurs) sur la finale du mot qui précède le mot interrogatif.
Cet article propose une réflexion sur la manière dont la langue bàsàa (Bantu A 43 parlée au Cameroun) exprime la relativisation. En l’absence d’une classe grammaticale de pronoms relatifs la langue utilise la classe des démonstratifs. La stratégie démonstrative mise en place peut selon les cas, associer la classe des locatifs pour déterminer les degrés de définitude. La langue distingue également les relatives restrictives des relatives non-restrictives qui sont soit descriptives, soit emphatiques. Du point de vue prosodique, la fin de la relative en bàsàa coïncide avec une finale de Groupe Intonatif.
The syntax and semantics of the resumptive dependency in hungarian focus-raising constructions
(2004)
Previous work (Gervain, forthcoming) has established that focus-raising may be derived by two strategies in Hungarian. One of them is the traditional movement derivation, the other a resumptive dependency created between the focus constituent base-generated in its matrix focus position and a phonologically null resumptive pronoun in the corresponding argument position in the embedded clause. However, the previous account (Gervain, forthcoming) does not give a detailed description of the nature of this resumptive dependency. The present work aims to address this question. More specifically, by providing a series of empirical tests, it attempts to determine whether the dependency is purely syntactic in nature, i.e. obligatory variable binding, or whether a semantic option is also available, i.e. coreference between the focus constituent and the resumptive pronoun. Thus, it provides new insights into the ongoing debate about the nature of resumptive pronouns.
We focus in this paper on two prosodic phenomena in Chimwiini: vowel length and accent (or High tone). Vowel length is determined in part by a lexical distinction between long and short vowels, and also by various morphophonemic processes that derive long vowels. Accent is penult in the default case, but final under certain morphosyntactic conditions. In order to account for the distribution of vowel length and the location of accents in a Chimwiini sentence, it is necessary to segment sentences into a sequence of phonological phrases. This paper examines the phonological phrasing of both canonical relative clauses and what we refer to as "pseudo-relative" clauses. An account of relative clause phrasing is of critical importance in Chimwiini due to the extensive use of pseudo-relatives in the language. Close examination of the pseudo-relatives reveals that their phrasing is not exactly the same as the phrasing of canonical relative clauses.
Símákonde is an Eastern Bantu language (P23) spoken by immigrant Mozambican communities in Zanzibar and on the Tanzanian mainland. Like other Makonde dialects and other Eastern and Southern Bantu languages (Hyman 2009), it has lost the historical Proto-Bantu vowel length contrast and now has a regular phrase-final stress rule, which causes a predictable bimoraic lengthening of the penultimate syllable of every Prosodic Phrase. The study of the prosody / syntax interface in Símákonde Relative Clauses requires to take into account the following elements: the relationship between the head and the relative verb, the conjoint / disjoint verbal distinction and the various phrasing patterns of Noun Phrases. Within Símákonde noun phrases, depending on the nature of the modifier, three different phrasing situations are observed: a modifier or modifiers may (i) be required to phrase with the head noun, (ii) be required to phrase separately, or (iii) optionally phrase with the head noun.
This paper examines locative relatives in Durban Zulu. We show that locative relatives differ from nominal relatives crucially in prosodic phrasing as well as in resumptive pronoun marking. We propose that the best way to account for locative relatives in Zulu is to resort to the old style adjunction analysis of relative clauses, with an empty operator. The system we propose assumes that such an adjunction analysis co-exists with a head-raising analysis, which accounts for the nominal relative clauses.
The interaction between Syntax and Phonology has been one area of interesting empirical research and theoretical debate in recent years, particularly the question of the extent to which syntactic structure influences phonological phrasing. It has generally been observed that the edges of the major syntactic constituents (XPs) tend to coincide with prosodic phrase boundaries thus resulting in XPs like subject NPs, object NPs, Topic NPs, VPs etc. forming separate phonological phrases. Within Optimality Theoretic (OT) accounts, this fact has been attributed to a number of well-motivated general alignment constraints. Studies on relative clauses in Bantu and other languages have significantly contributed to this area of research inquiry where a number of parametric variations have been observed with regard to prosodic phrasing. In some languages, XPs which are heads of relatives form separate phonological phrases while in others they phrase with the relative clauses. This paper makes a contribution to this topic by discussing the phrasing of relatives in Ciwandya (a Bantu language spoken in Malawi and Tanzania). It shows that XPs which are heads of restrictive relative clauses phrase with their relative verbs, regardless of whether they are subjects, objects or other adjuncts. A variety of syntactic constructions are used to illustrate this fact. The discussion also confirms what has been generally observed in other Bantu languages concerning restrictive relatives with clefts and non-restrictive relative clauses. In both cases, the heads of the relatives phrase separately. The paper adopts an OT analysis which has been well articulated and defended in Cheng & Downing (2007, 2010, to appear) Downing & Mtenje (2010, 2011) to account for these phenomena in Ciwandya.
Símákonde is an Eastern Bantu language (P23) spoken by immigrant Mozambican communities in Zanzibar and on the Tanzanian mainland. Like other Makonde dialects and other Eastern and Southern Bantu languages (Hyman 2009), it has lost the historical Proto-Bantu vowel length contrast and now has a regular phrase-final stress rule, which causes a predictable bimoraic lengthening of the penultimate syllable of every Prosodic Phrase. The study of the prosody / syntax interface in Símákonde Relative Clauses requires to take into account the following elements: the relationship between the head and the relative verb, the conjoint / disjoint verbal distinction and the various phrasing patterns of Noun Phrases. Within Símákonde noun phrases, depending on the nature of the modifier, three different phrasing situations are observed: a modifier or modifiers may (i) be required to phrase with the head noun, (ii) be required to phrase separately, or (iii) optionally phrase with the head noun.
The morpho-syntax of relative clauses in Sotho-Tswana is relatively well-described in the literature. Prosodic characteristics, such as tone, have received far less attention in the existing descriptions. After reviewing the basic morpho-syntactic and semantic features of relative clauses in Tswana, the current paper sets out to present and discuss prosodic aspects. These comprise tone specifications of relative clause markers such as the demonstrative pronoun that acts as the relative pronoun, relative agreement concords and the relative suffix. Further prosodic aspects dealt with in the current article are tone alternations at the juncture of relative pronoun and head noun, and finally the tone patterns of the finite verbs in the relative clause. The article aims at providing the descriptive basis from which to arrive at generalizations concerning the prosodic phrasing of relative clauses in Tswana.
Relative clauses in Haya
(2010)
This paper gives an overview of the morphology and syntax of Haya relative clause constructions. It extends previous work on this topic (Duranti, 1977) by incorporating data from a number of different dialects and by introducing new data on locative relative clauses. The dialects discussed in addition to the Kihanja data from Byarushengo et al. (1977) include Kiziba, Muleba and Bugabo dialects. Nyambo data taken from Rugemalira (2005) is also compared to Haya in places. The focus of the discussion is on the grammaticality of pronominal elements attached to the verb that refer back to the relativized entity with different types of relativized constituents in Haya. It is shown that there are differences between subjects, objects and locatives in terms of this kind of morphology inside the relative clause, as well as differences between these kinds of morphemes and resumptive pronouns.
Introduction
(2011)
In spite of this long history, most work to date on the phonology-syntax interface in Bantu languages suffers from limitations, due to the range of expertise required: intonation, phonology, syntax. Quite generally, intonational studies on African languages are extremely rare. Most of the existing data has not been the subject of careful phonetic analysis, whether of the prosody of neutral sentences or of questions or other focus structures. There are important gaps in our knowledge of Bantu syntax which in turn limit our understanding of the phonology-syntax interface. Recent developments in syntactic theory have provided a new way of thinking about the type of syntactic information that phonology can refer to and have raised new questions: Do only syntactic constituent edges condition prosodic phrasing? Do larger domains such as syntactic phases, or even other factors, like argument and adjunct distinctions, play a role? Further, earlier studies looked at a limited range of syntactic constructions. Little research exists on the phonology of focus or of sentences with non-canonical word order in Bantu languages. Both the prosody and the syntax of complex sentences, questions and dislocations are understudied for Bantu languages. Our project aims to remedy these gaps in our knowledge by bringing together a research team with all the necessary expertise. Further, by undertaking the intonational, phonological and syntactic analysis of several languages we can investigate whether there is any correlation among differences in morphosyntactic and prosodic properties that might also explain differences in phrasing and intonation. It will also allow us to investigate whether there are cross-linguistically common prosodic patterns for particular morpho-syntactic structure.
Introduction
(2010)
The papers in this volume were originally presented at the Bantu Relative Clause workshop held in Paris on 8-9 January 2010, which was organized by the French-German cooperative project on the Phonology/Syntax Interface in Bantu Languages (BANTU PSYN). This project, which is funded by the ANR and the DFG, comprises three research teams, based in Berlin, Paris and Lyon. [...] This range of expertise is essential to realizing the goals of our project. Because Bantu languages have a rich phrasal phonology, they have played a central role in the development of theories of the phonology-syntax interface ever since the seminal work from the 1970s on Chimwiini (Kisseberth & Abasheikh 1974) and Haya (Byarushengo et al. 1976). Indeed, half the papers in Inkelas & Zec’s (1990) collection of papers on the phonology-syntax interface deal with Bantu languages. They have naturally played an important role in current debates comparing indirect and direct reference theories of the phonology-syntax interface. Indirect reference theories (e.g., Nespor & Vogel 1986; Selkirk 1986, 1995, 2000, 2009; Kanerva 1990; Truckenbrodt 1995, 1999, 2005, 2007) propose that phonology is not directly conditioned by syntactic information. Rather, the interface is mediated by phrasal prosodic constituents like Phonological Phrase and Intonation Phrase, which need not match any syntactic constituent. In contrast, direct reference theories (e.g., Kaisse 1985; Odden 1995, 1996; Pak 2008; Seidl 2001) argue that phrasal prosodic constituents are superfluous, as phonology can – indeed, must – refer directly to syntactic structure.
Khoekhoe syntax exhibits an unusually flexible constituent structure. Any constituent with a lexical head can be preposed into the focal initial slot immediately before the PGN-marker that marks the subject position. Two strategies of focalisation by foregrounding need to be distinguished: inversion and fronting. Inversion amounts to an inversion of subject and predicate in their entirety. Such sentences have two readings, though, according to their underlying constituent structure: "predicative" or "copulative". Fronting amounts to the preposing of a lexical constituent into the focal initial slot, with subsequent dislocation of the lexical specification of the subject from that slot.
The present analysis has wider implications, particularly: The generally accepted view that Khoekhoe has coreferential/equational "copulative" sentences of the type NPsubject = NPcomplement is a fallacy. Such sentences actually are sentences with their predicate fronted into the focal initial slot. They amount to cleft constructions.
The fact that the primary focal position is immediately before the PGNmarker of the subject is further independent evidence for the "desentential hypothesis", according to which subject and object NPs in the underlying matrix sentence consist of only an enclitic PGN-marker, and for the claim that Khoekhoe underlyingly is a SVO language, not a SOV language as generally held. By implication these findings affect the analysis of other Central Khoesaan languages.
In what follows, we will first put forward the claim that syntactic ergativity results from morphological ergativity by examining relativization and pea-coordination in Tongan (Section 2). In Sections 3 and 4, we compare 'O-constructions with pea-constructions to conclude a) that unlike pea, 'O should be regarded as a complementizer rather than a conjunction; and b) that the gap in 'O-clauses is not an outcome of deletion, but a null anaphor. We will then discuss a Minimalist approach to binding proposed by Reuland (2001) and see how it accounts for the distribution and behavior of proSE in Tongan. Some implications of the current proposal are discussed in Section 6, with section 7 in conclusion.
This study examines articulatory and acoustic inter-speaker variability in the production of the German vowels /i/, /u/ and /a/. Our subjects are 3 monozygotic twin pairs (2 female and 1 male pair) and 2 dizygotic female twin pairs. All of them were born, raised and are still living in Berlin and see their twin brother or sister regularly. We assume that monozygotic twins that are genetically identical and share the same physiology should be more similar in their articulation than dizygotic twins but that the shared time and social environment of twins, regardless of their genetic similarity, also plays a crucial role in the acoustic similarity of twins. Articulatory measurements were made with EMA (Electromagnetic Articulography) and the target positions of the produced vowels were analyzed. Additionally, the formants F1-F4 of each vowel were measured and compared within the twin pairs. Our data seems to point out the importance of a shared environment and the strong influence of learning over the anatomical identity of the monozygotic twins regarding the production of vowels. But, additional results suggest (1) the impact of physiology on the production of a vowel following a velar consonant and (2) the interaction of physiology and stress in inter-speaker variability.
This contribution is concerned with prefixed forms in western Austronesian languages which have been called a wide variety of names including 'stative', 'accidental', 'involuntary', 'potential', 'coincidence', 'momentary', and so on. Although widely neglected in the literature, these formations are of major import to the grammar of many western Austronesian languages, where for all event expressions there is an obligatory choice between a neutral form and a form marked for 'involuntariness', 'potentiality', 'coincidence', or the like. Furthermore, this distinction has implications for a wide range of theoretical issues, including the nature of unaccusativity and causativity, split-intransitivity, and the grammar of control and complementation.
The main goal of this contribution is to bring some basic order to the fairly broad and, on first sight at least, somewhat heterogeneous range of uses and meanings associated with these forms. I will argue that the different uses can be grouped into two semantically and morphosyntactically quite different construction types, which I will call STATIVE (proper) and POTENTIVE, respectively.
Section 2 presents the major uses of the 'stative' prefix ma- in Tagalog. In section 3, it is shown that despite superficial similarities the various examples with ma-marked predicates presented in section 2 involve two different constructions and that the prefix ma- belongs to two different morphological paradigms. Section 4, finally, provides a systematization of stative and potentive uses and discusses similarities and differences between the Tagalog system and superficially similar systems in so-called split-S languages.
Languages cross-linguistically differ with respect to whether they accept or ban True Negative Imperatives (TNIs). In this paper I show that this ban follows from three generally accepted assumptions: (i) the fact that the operator that encodes the illocutionary force of an imperative universally takes scope from C°; (ii) the fact that this operator may not be operated on by a negative operator and (iii) the Head Movement Constraint (an instance of Relativized Minimality). In my paper I argue that languages differ too with respect to both the syntactic status (head/phrasal) and the semantic value (negative/non-negative) of their negative markers. Given these difference across languages and the analysis of TNIs based on the three above mentioned assumptions, two typological generalisations can be predicted: (i) every language with an overt negative marker X° that is semantically negative bans TNIs; and (ii) every language that bans TNIs exhibits an overt negative marker X°. I demonstrate in my paper that both typological predictions are born out.
In this paper I discuss four type of bare nominal, and note that, in some sense, all of them appear to imply stereotypicality. I consider an account in terms of Bidirectional Optimality Theory: unmarked (bare) forms give rise to unmarked (stereotypical) interpretations. However, it turns out that, while the form of bare numerals is unmarked, the interpretation sometimes is not. I suggest that the crucial notion is not unmarkedness, but optimal inference: unmarked forms give rise to interpretations that are best used for drawing inferences. I propose a revision of Bidirectional Optimality Theory to reflect this.
Recent work on argument selection couched in a lexical decomposition approach (Ehrich & Rapp 2000) postulates different linking properties for verbs and nouns, challenging current views on argument inheritance. In this paper, I show that the different behavior with respect to verbal and nominal linking observed for Present-Day German does not carry over to ung-nominals in Early New High German. Deverbal nouns and corresponding verbs rather behave alike with respect to argument linking. I shall argue that this change is motivated by the growing rift between ung-nominals and their verbal bases both focussing on different parts oftheir lexicosemantic structure in Present-Day German. Evidence for the verb-like behavior of ung-nominals in Early New High German comes from the regular meaning relation between verbs and corresponding derived nouns, the actional properties of event-denoting nouns, and the patterning of ung-nominals with nominalized infinitives. Even their syntactic behavior reflects the verbal character of ung-nominals during that period of the German language. The diachronic facts can be accounted for in a straightforward way once we adopt a lexical decomposition approach to argument selection.
Within a minimalist framework of sound-meaning correlation, the present study concentrates on process nominalizations of Russian. It is shown how these constructions are built up syntactically and semantically and in which respects they differ from other types of nominalizations. The analysis follows a lexicalist conception of word formation and the differentiation of Semantic Form and Conceptual Structure.
We show that wh-words are a tool to investigate the prosodic structure of Bàsàa. Our claim is that the end of an Intonation Phrase (IP) can be identified by the presence of a long vowel on the wh-word. We propose that wh-words, which sometimes surface as C´V and sometimes as C´V´V, are underlyingly of the C´V form and they introduce a floating H. Whenever the association of this floating H with the first tone bearing unit that follows the wh-word is prevented by the presence of an IP boundary, a mora is created on the wh-word in order to realize the floating H. We briefly discuss the interface approach of Immediately After the Verb (IAV) focus (Costa and Kula, 2008) and we show that Bàsàa wh-questions and answers do not support this hypothesis. Finally, Bàsàa fronted whphrases, just like Hausa’s fronted foci (Leben et al., 1989), seem to provide support to the idea that intonational effects are also at play in the present tone language.
The claim advanced in this paper is that the presence of a left-dislocated element together with a resumptive clitic in Bulgarian is a special case of argument saturation with implications for the focus structure of the clause, while contrast involves discontinuous focus (contrastive topics/foci) with no clitics present in the derivation. Contrastive topic/focus constructions in Bulgarian can be united on the view that they involve (sets of) ordered pairs where the higher element is valuing a contrastive feature (cf. OCC in Chomsky 2001) while the element in the VP is a non-contrastive topic or focus. The contrastive feature participates in wh-structures but not in clitic-left-dislocated structures where pairing between arguments is 'accidental'.
In this work we examine several sentential particles, occurring in imperatives, main exclamative and interrogative sentences, which display a uniform syntactic behaviour. We analyse them as heads of high CP projections which require their specifier to be filled either by the wh-item (in sentences where there is one) or by the whole clause, yielding the sentence final position of the particle. The hypothesis that they are C°-heads accounts for their sensitivity to sentence type and for their occurrence only in matrix contexts. We also provide a first sketch of their semantic contribution, showing that they select ‘non standard’ contexts and interact with tense and modality of the verb when the whole CP has moved to their specifier.
Focus theories distinguish different types of focus according to the pragmatic conditions or communicative point on the one side and different scopes of focus on the other side. The assertion in term focus constructions (Dik 1989), called by others argument focus constructions or identificational sentences (Lambrecht 1994), has the purpose of establishing a relation between an argument and an open proposition. Kar, a north-eastern Senufo language of Burkina Faso, which has the basic word order S-Aux-O-V-other, has at its disposal different strategies to mark argument focus, among them fronting of the focused item. In many West African languages the displacement of the focused argument involves other devices, such as the use of special verb forms. In Kar fronting of a focused argument requires the use of special pronouns in the out-of-focus part of the sentence, called background subject pronouns. They are used in other backgrounded contexts, too, for example in relative clauses, adverbial clauses and constituent questions. Their inconsistent use is attributed to a particular sociolinguistic situation in which the data has been collected. The use of the same focus strategies for completive and contrastive focus suggests that Kar does not distinguish pragmatic conditions on the level of sentence grammar.
Since the advent of nonlinear phonology many linguists have either assumed or argued explicitly that many languages have words in which one or more segment does not belong structurally to the syllable. Three commonly employed adjectives used to describe such consonants are 'extrasyllabic', 'extrametrical' or 'stray'. Other authors refer to such segments as belonging to the 'appendix'. [...] Various non-linear representations have been proposed to express the 'extrasyllabicity' of segments [...]. The ones I am concerned with in the present article analyze [...] consonants [...] structurally as being outside of the syllable [...]. For transparency I ignore here both subsyllabic constituency as well as higher level prosodic constituents to which the stray consonants are sometimes assumed to attach. For reasons to be made clear below I refer to syllables [...] in which the stray consonant is situated outside of the syllable, as abstract syllables.
Predication and equation
(2001)
English is one language where equative sentences and non-equative sentences have a similar surface syntax (but see Heggie 1988 and Moro 1997 for a discussion of more subtle differences). In this paper we address the fact that many other languages appear to use radically different morphological means which seem to map to intuitive differences in the type of predication expressed. We take one such language, Scottish Gaelic, and show that the real difference is not between equative and non-equative sentences, but is rather dependent on whether the predicational head in the structure proposed above is eventive or not.
We show that the aparently odd syntax of “equatives” in this language derives from the fact that they are constructed via a non-eventive Pred head. Since Pred heads cannot combine with non-predicative categories, such as saturated DPs, “equatives” are built up indirectly from a simple predicational structure with a semantically bleached predicate. This approach not only allows us to maintain a strict one-to-one syntax/semantics mapping for predicational syntax, but also for the syntax of DPs. The argument we develop here, then, suggests that the interface between the syntactic and semantic components is maximally economical— one could say perfect.
The main purpose of this paper is to show that argument structure constructions like complex telic path of motion constructions (John walked to the store) or complex resultative constructions (The dog barked the chickens awake) are not to be regarded as "theoretical entities" (Jackendoff (1997b); Goldberg (1995)). As an alternative to these semanticocentric accounts, I argue that their epiphenomenal status can be shown iff we take into account some important insights from three syntactically-oriented works: (i) Hoekstra's (1988, 1992) analysis of S<mall>C<lause> R<esults>, (ii) Hale & Keyser's (1993f.) configurational theory of argument structure, and (iii) Mateu & Rigau’s (1999; i.p.) syntactic account of Talmy's (1991) typological distinction between 'satellite framed languages' (e.g., English, German, Dutch, etc.) and 'verb-framed languages' (e.g., Catalan, Spanish, French, etc.). In particular, it is argued that the formation of the abovementioned constructions involves a conflation process of two different syntactic argument structures, this process being carried out via a 'generalized transformation'. Accordingly, the so-called 'lexical subordination process' (Levin & Rapoport (1988)) is argued to involve a syntactic operation, rather than a semantic one. Due to our assuming that the parametric variation involved in the constructions under study cannot be explained in purely semantic terms (Mateu & Rigau (1999)), Talmy's (1991) typological distinction is argued to be better stated in lexical syntactic terms.
This paper discusses a semantic analysis of three syntactic types of English each, namely, floated each, binominal each, and prenominal each. It is argued that floated each consists of two parts, a quantifier and an inaudible element which functions as its restrictor, which together form a tripartite quantificational structure when they compose with the predicate. Binominal each and an associated NP such as two topics (which is generally called the 'distributive share') are syntactically analyzed as forming a subject-predicate relation within a DP in which the NP undergoes so-called 'predicate inversion'. Semantically, binominal each is analyzed as having the same semantic value as floated each, while prenominal each is shown to have a different logical type from floated and binominal each. As can be seen from analogous constructions in some Romance languages, it does not lexically contain its restrictor.
In this paper we focus on the similarities tying together the second segment of an onset cluster and a singleton coda segment. We offer a proposal based on Baertsch (2002) accounting for this similarity and show how it captures a number of observations which have defied previous explanation. In accounting for the similarity of patterning between the second member of an onset and a coda consonant, we propose to augment Prince & Smolensky's (P&S, 1993/2002) Margin Hierarchy so as to distinguish between structural positions that prefer low sonority and those that prefer high sonority. P&S's Margin Hierarchy, which gives preference to segments of low sonority, applies to singleton onsets; this is our M1 hierarchy. Our proposed M2 hierarchy applies both to the second member of an onset and to a singleton coda. The M2 hierarchy differs from the M1 hierarchy in giving preference to consonants of high sonority. Splitting the Margin Hierarchy into the M1 and M2 hierarchies allows us to explain typological, phonotactic, and acquisitional observations that have defied previous explanation. In Section 2 of this paper, we briefly provide background on the links that tie together the second member of an onset and a singleton coda. In Section 3, we review P&S's Margin Hierarchy, showing that it becomes problematic when extended to coda consonants. We then offer our proposal for a split margin hierarchy. Section 4 extends the split margin approach to complex onsets. We then show how it is able to account for various typological, phonotactic, and acquisitional observations. In Section 5, we will conclude the paper by briefly sketching how the split margin approach enables us to analyze syllable contact phenomena without requiring a specific syllable contact constraint (or additional hierarchy) or reference to an external sonority scale.
In this paper I put forward and justify a syntactic configuration that I call Complex Small Clause-structure. I show that this single syntactic structure can explain both the semantic value and the syntactic behavior of a range of constructions that up to now have been explored separately and, hence, proposed divergent analyses among them.
This paper deals with spelling normalization of historical texts with regard to further processing with modern part-of-speech taggers. Different methods for this task are presented and evaluated on a set of historical German texts from the 15th–18th century, and specific problems inherent to the processing of historical data are discussed. A chain combination using word-based and character-based techniques is shown to be best for normalization, while POS tagging of normalized data is shown to benefit from ignoring punctuation marks. Using these techniques, when 500 manually normalized tokens are used as training data for the normalization, the tagging accuracy of a manuscript from the 15th century can be raised from 28.65% to 76.27%.
Internals from elaboration
(2001)
Elaboration or Narration, as so-called discourse relations (or rhetorical relations), are modelled in Segmented Discourse Structure Theory (SDRT) as relations between discourse constituents (or constituents for short). These are either propositions that come into being by interpretation of sentences occurring in a text; the propositions then have the status of DRSes. Or, constituents are compounds of such DRSes, constructed from DRSes (or compounds of them) by discourse relations. Elaboration and Narration in that sense, rather than referring to text types, provide links between constituents that allow them to combine in ways that, for a recipient, a resulting text is coherent and has (some) elaborative or narrative properties.
The effects of different forms of predication have been insightfully (and almost exclusively) studied for 'simple' cases of predication, of which the 'presentational sentence' is maybe the paradigm instantiation. It is the aim of this paper to show that thc same kind of effects as well as in fact the same kind of structures are present at embedded levels in thematically and otherwise more complex structures. Beyond presentational sentences, 'unaccusative' experiencing constructions involving a dative subject, 'double object constructions' and - to a lesser extent - spraylload constructions are discussed. For all of these, it is argued that they comprise a predication encoding the ascription of a transient temporal property to a location. On this basis, a proposal is made as to how the scope asymmetry between the two arguments involved in the colistructions can be explained. Furthermore, a proposal is made as to how what has been called 'argument shift' is motivated.
In this paper, focusing on the relevance-theoretic view of cognition, I discuss the idea that what is communicated through an utterance is not merely an explicature upon which implicature(s) are recovered, but rather a propositional complex that contains both explicit and implicit information. More specifically, I propose that this information is constructed on the fly as the interpreter processes every lexical item in its turn while parsing the utterance in real time, in this way creating a string of ad hoc concepts. While hearing an utterance and incrementally constructing a context, the propositional complex communicated by an utterance is pragmatically narrowed and simultaneously pragmatically broadened in order to incorporate only the set of optimally relevant propositions with respect to a specific point in the interpretation. The narrowing of propositions from the initial context at each stage allows relevant propositions to be carried on to the new level, while their broadening adds to the communicated propositional complex new propositions that are linked to the lexical item that is processed at every step of the interpretation process.
All of the papers in the volume except one (Kaji) take up some aspect of relative clause construction in some Bantu language. Kaji’s paper aims to account for how Tooro (J12; western Uganda) lost phonological tone through a comparative study of the tone systems of other western Uganda Bantu languages. The other papers examine a range of ways of forming relative clauses, often including non-restrictive relatives and clefts, in a wide range of languages representing a variety of prosodic systems.
The contribution of von Kempelen's "Mechanism of Speech" to the 'phonetic sciences' will be analyzed with respect to his theoretical reasoning on speech and speech production on the one hand and on the other in connection with his practical insights during his struggle in constructing a speaking machine. Whereas in his theoretical considerations von Kempelen's view is focussed on the natural functioning of the speech organs – cf. his membraneous glottis model – in constructing his speaking machine he clearly orientates himself towards the auditory result – cf. the bag pipe model for the sound generator used for the speaking machine instead. Concerning vowel production his theoretical description remains questionable, but his practical insight that vowels and speech sounds in general are only perceived correctly in connection with their surrounding sounds – i.e. the discovery of coarticulation – is clearly a milestone in the development of the phonetic sciences: He therefore dispenses with the Kratzenstein tubes, although they might have been based on more thorough acoustic modelling.
Finally, von Kempelen's model of speech production will be discussed in relation to the discussion of the acoustic nature of vowels afterwards [Willis and Wheatstone as well as von Helmholtz and Hermann in the 19th century and Stumpf, Chiba & Kajiyama as well as Fant and Ungeheuer in the 20th century].
The argument-modifier distinction is less clear in NPs than in VPs; nouns do not typically take arguments. The clearest cases of arguments in NPs are in certain kinds of nominalizations which retain some "verbal" properties (Grimshaw 1990). The status of apparent arguments of non-deverbal relational nouns like sister is more controversial.
Genitive constructions like 'John's teacher', 'team of John's' offer a challenging testing ground for the argument-modifier distinction in NPs, both in English and cross-linguistically. On the analyses of Partee (1983/97) and Barker (1995), the DP in a genitive phrase (i.e. 'John' in 'John's') is always an argument of some relation, but the relation does not always come from the head noun. On those "ambiguity" analyses, some genitives are argument-like and some are modifier-like. Recent proposals by Jensen and Vikner and by Borschev and Partee analyze all genitives as argument-like, a conclusion we are no longer sure of.
In this paper we explore a range of possible analyses: argument-only, modifier-only, and ambiguity analyses, and consider the kinds of semantic evidence that suggest that different analyses may be correct for different genitive or possessive constructions in different languages.
The purpose of this dissertation is to defend the idea that the empirical responsibilities of binding theory can be handled in a more psychologically and historically realistic way when assigned to the field of pragmatics. In particular, I wish to show that Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince & Smolensky, 1993), the stochastic OT and Gradual Learning Algorithm of Boersma (1998), the Recoverability of OT of Wilson (2001) and Buchwald et al. (2002), and the bidirectional OT of Blutner (2000b) and Bidirectional Gradual Learning Algorithm of Jäger (2003a) can all participate in a formal framework in which one can formally spell out and justify the idea that the distributional behavior of bound pronouns and reflexivs is a pragmatic phenomenon.
In what follows, I first briefly review Perlmutter (1968, 1970), in which it is argued that aspectual verbs are ambiguous between control and raising. I suggest that while the argument for the raising analysis is solid, the arguments supporting the control analysis of aspectual verbs are less so. As an alternative hypothesis to consider, I introduce the structural ambiguity hypothesis. In Section 3, I review three recent analyses of control and raising. Although there are important differences among them, they all share the basic assumption that the control/raising distinction is due to differences in selectional restrictions that the lexical items impose. Under such an assumption, the lexical ambiguity hypothesis is the only available option. In Section 4, I present evidence for the structural ambiguity hypothesis from studies concerning aspectual verbs in languages from four distinct families, German (Wurmbrand 2001), Japanese (Fukuda 2006), Romance languages (Cinque 2003), and Basque (Arregi Molina-Azaola 2004). These data strongly suggest that across languages aspectual verbs can appear in two different syntactic positions, either below or above vP, or the projection with which an external argument is introduced (Kratzer 1994, 1996, Chomsky 1995). Given these findings, I argue that it is the aspectual verbs' position with respect to vP which creates the control/raising ambiguity. When an aspectual verb appears in a position that is lower than vP, an external argument takes scope over the aspectual verb. Thus, it is interpreted as control. When an aspectual verb appears in a position that is higher than vP, on the other hand, it is the aspectual verb that takes scope over an entire vP, including the external argument. Thus, it is interpreted as raising. In section 5, I extend the scope of this study to include a discussion of want-type verbs in Indonesian, as analyzed in Polinsky & Potsdam (2006). Polinsky & Potsdam argue that the Indonesian want-type verbs must be raising in at least certain cases where they allow a rather peculiar interpretation. Although they assume that there are also control counterparts of the want-type verbs, I argue that applying the proposed analysis to the want-type verbs does away with the need for stipulating two distinct lexical entries for these verbs. Section 6 concludes the paper.
This paper will examine the role of various factors in affecting the salience, and hence the accessibility to pronominal reference, of entities introduced into a discourse by a full clause. We begin with the premise that the possibility of pronominal reference with it versus that depends on the cognitive status of the referent, in the sense of Gundel, Hedberg and Zacharski (1993). This formulation of the problem provides grounds for an explanation of the data presented above, and provides a framework within which we examine the role of various other factors in promoting the salience of a clausally introduced entity, including the information structure of the utterance in which the entity is introduced. For entities introduced by clausal complements to bridge verbs, we show that the information structure of the utterance introducing the entity has a partial, or one-sided, effect on the salience of the entity. When the complement clause is focal, the salience of the entity depends only on its referential givenness-newness (in the sense of Gundel 1988, 1999b), as we would expect. But when the complement clause is ground material, the salience of an entity introduced by the clause is enhanced. Other factors, including the presuppositionality of factive and interrogative complements, also serve to enhance the salience of entities introduced by complement clauses.
Starting from the basic observation that, across languages, the anticausative variant of an alternating verb systematically involves morphological marking that is shared by passive verbs, the goal of this paper is to provide a uniform and formal account of these arguably two different construction types. The central claim that I put forward is that passives and anticausatives differ only with respect to the event-type features of the verb but both arise through the same operation, namely suppression by special morphology of a feature in v that encodes the ontological event type of the verb. Crucially, I argue for two syntactic primitives, namely act and cause, whereto I trace the passive/anticausative distinction. Passive constructions across languages are made compatible by relegating the differences to simple combinatorial properties of verb and prepositional types and their interactions with other event functors, which are in turn encoded differently morphologically across languages. New arguments are brought forward for a causative analysis of anticausatives. Agentive adverbials are examined, and doubt is cast on the usefulness of by-phrases as a diagnostic for argumenthood.
This volume represents a collection of papers that present some of the results of two projects on control: on the one hand, the project Typology of complement control directed by Barbara Stiebels and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG STI 151/2-2), and on the other hand the project Variation in control structures directed by Maria Polinsky and Eric Potsdam and funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF grants BCS-0131946, BCS-0131993; website http://accent.ucsd.edu/). Whereas the first project pursued a lexical approach to control with a semantic definition of obligatory control, the second project has mainly pursued a syntactic approach to control – with special emphasis on less studied control structures (such as adjunct control, backward control, finite control, etc.). Both projects have aimed at extending the research on complement control to structures that differ from the prototypical cases of infinitival complements with empty subjects found in many Indo-European languages; their common interest was to bring in new empirical data, both primary and experimental.
The 48th volume of the ZAS Papers in Linguistics presents selected papers from the conference on Intersentential pronominal reference in child and adult language held at the ZAS in December, 2006. The conference, organized by the project Acquisition and disambiguation of intersentential pronominal reference, brought together leading researchers dealing with anaphora resolution in diverse theoretical approaches and the acquisition perspective on pronominal reference taken by the ZAS project.
It is well known that English children between the age of 4 and 6 display a so-called Delay of Principle B Effect (DPBE) in that they allow pronouns to refer to a local c-commanding antecedent. Their guessing pattern with pronouns contrasts with their adult-like interpretation of reflexives. The DPBE has been explained as resulting from a lack of pragmatic knowledge or insufficient cognitive resources. However, such extra-grammatical accounts cannot explain why the DPBE only shows up in particular languages and in particular syntactic environments. Moreover, such accounts fail to explain why the DPBE only emerges in comprehension and not in production. This paper hypothesizes that the presence or absence of the DPBE can be explained from the properties of the grammar. Fischer's (2004) optimality-theoretic analysis of binding, explaining cross-linguistic variation, and Hendriks and Spenader's (2005/6) optimality-theoretic account of the acquisition of pronouns and reflexives are combined into a single model. This model yields testable predictions with respect to the presence or absence of the DPBE in particular languages, in particular syntactic environments, and in comprehension and/or production.
This 18th issue of ZAS-Papers in Linguistics consists of papers on the development of verb acquisition in 9 languages from the very early stages up to the onset of paradigm construction. Each of the 10 papers deals with first-Ianguage developmental processes in one or two children studied via longitudinal data. The languages involved are French, Spanish, Russian, Croatian, Lithuanien, Finnish, English and German. For German two different varieties are examined, one from Berlin and one from Vienna. All papers are based on presentations at the workshop 'Early verbs: On the way to mini-paradigms' held at the ZAS (Berlin) on the 30./31. of September 2000. This workshop brought to a close the first phase of cooperation between two projects on language acquisition which has started in October 1999:
a) the project on "Syntaktische Konsequenzen des Morphologieerwerbs" at the ZAS (Berlin) headed by Juergen Weissenborn and Ewald Lang, and financially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and
b) the international "Crosslinguistic Project on Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition" coordinated by Wolfgang U. Dressler in behalf of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
This paper studies the acquisition process of Spanish verbal morphology in a monolingual child. The study focuses on the period of the first 50 verb lemmas. This covers the period from age 1;7 till 1;10.
The data shows that the verb acquisition process of this Spanish child follows three main stages:
1. A lexical stage in which verbs are only acquired as a lexical element.
2. A syntactic stage in which the verb, still contemplated as a non-split word, becomes the main element in the development of thematic and semantic relations.
3. A morphological stage in which verb suffixes begin to be analysed separately. At this stage, the relationship between form and meaning starts and the functional categories linked to the verb (tense, aspect, agreement, mood... ) begin to be acquired. Just at this moment, the first miniparadigms appear, which suggests that the acquisition process of verb morphology has started.
The first two stages are premorphological and cover in our child the period till 1;9. In the last stage, which begins at 1;10, the child enters the protomorphological stage.
Horn's division of pragmatic labour (Horn, 1984) is a universal property of language, and amounts to the pairing of simple meanings to simple forms, and deviant meanings to complex forms. This division makes sense, but a community of language users that do not know it makes sense will still develop it after a while, because it gives optimal communication at minimal costs. This property of the division of pragmatic labour is shown by formalising it and applying it to a simple form of signalling games, which allows computer simulations to corroborate intuitions. The division of pragmatic labour is a stable communicative strategy that a population of communicating agents will converge on, and it cannot be replaced by alternative strategies once it is in place.
This paper presents the results of Open Quotient measurements in EGG signals of young (18 to 30 year old) and elderly (59 to 82 year old) male and female speakers. The paper further presents quantitative results on the relation between the OQ and the perception of a speaker's age. Higgins & Saxman (1991) found a decreased OQEGG with increasing age for females, whereas the OQEGG in sustained vowel material increased for males as the speakers age increased. In Linville (2002), however, the spectral amplitudes in the region of F0 (obtained by LTAS-measurements of read speech material) increased with increasing age independent of gender; this could be interpreted indirectly as an increasing OQ. We measured the OQEGG not only for sustained vowels, but also in vowels taken from isolated words. In order to analyse the relation between breathiness in terms of an increased OQ and the mean perceived age per stimulus a perception test was carried out in which listeners were asked to estimate speaker's age based on sustained /a/-vowel stimuli varying in vocal effort (soft - normal - loud) during production. The results indicated the following: (i) The decreased OQ for elderly females originally found by Higgins & Saxman is not apparent in our data for sustained /a/-vowels. For our female speakers no significant difference between the OQ of young and old speakers was found; for elderly males, however, we also found an increasing OQ with increasing age.(ii) In addition, a statistically significant increased OQEGG occurs for the group of the elderly males for the vowels from the word material. (iii) Our results show a strong positive relation between perceived age and OQ in male voices. Regarding (i) and (ii), at least the male speaker's voice becomes more breathy as age increases. Considering (iii), increased breathiness may contribute to the listener’s perception of increased age.
In order to understand the functional morphology of the human voice producing system, we are in need of data on the vocal tract anatomy of other mammalian species. The larynges and vocal tracts of four species of Artiodactyla were investigated in combination with acoustic analyses of their respective calls. Different evolutionary specializations of laryngeal characters may lead to similar effects on sound production. In the investigated species, such specializations are: the elongation and mass increase of the vocal folds, the volume increase of the laryngeal vestibulum by an enlarged thyroid cartilage and the formation of laryngeal ventricles. Both the elongation of the vocal folds and the increase of the oscillating masses lower the fundamental frequency. The influence of an increased volume of the laryngeal vestibulum on sound production remains unclear. The anatomical and acoustic results are presented together with considerations about the habitats and the mating systems of the respective species.
This paper argues for non-primary c- and s-selectional restrictions of verbs in computing nonprimary predicatives such as resultatives, depictives, and manners. Our discussion is based both on the selection violations in the presence of nonprimary predicates and on the cross-linguistic and language-internal variations of categorial and semantic constraints on nonprimary predicates. We claim that all types of thematic predication are represented by an extended projection, and that the merger of lexical heads with another element, regardless of the type of the element, consistently has c- and s-selectional restrictions.
We measure face deformations during speech production using a motion capture system, which provides 3D coordinate data of about 60 markers glued on the speaker's face. An arbitrary orthogonal factor analysis followed by a principal component analysis (together called a guided PCA) of the data has showed that the first 6 factors explain about 90% of the variance, for each of our 3 speakers. The 6 derived factors, therefore, allow us to efficiently analyze or to reconstruct with a reasonable accuracy the observed face deformations. Since these factors can be interpreted in articulatory terms, they can reveal underlying articulatory organizations. The comparison of lip gestures in terms of data derived factors suggests that these speakers differently maneuver the lips to achieve contrast between /s/ and /R/. Such inter-speaker variability can occur because the acoustic contrast of these fricatives is shaped not only by the lip tube but also by cavities inside the mouth such as the sublingual cavity. In other words, these tube and cavity can acoustically compensate each other to produce their required acoustic properties.
This paper compares secondary predication constructions (including small clause complements, resultatives, and/or depictives) in English and Korean and argues that these two typologically different languages employ different modes of satisfying the Case Filter (Chomsky 1981) with regard to the Case of the subjects of secondary predication constructions. More specifically, we argue that the subject of the secondary predicate in English is Accusative Case-marked by the higher governing verb, while that in Korean is Nominative Case-marked by default. Evidence for default Nominative Case will be provided from Korean and other languages.
The complexity of human languages has always inspired research for some human faculty that makes language learning possible. The system that generates the complexity of human languages, ideally, is simple and effective. Recent developments of the generative grammatical theory explore deeper into the issue of simplicity or economy. The Minimalist Program developed in Chomsky (1991, 1993, 1995) tries to provide contents to such notions. What does it mean to be more economic or least effort? An important instantiation of such notions is the proposal that movement is the last resort assuming that movement is more costly than non-movement. Processes occur only because they are necessary. The definition of necessity generally is cast in morphological terms. Moreover, the notion of "economy" or "least effort" is deterministic of the appropriate derivations for sentences: a shorter derivation is better than a longer one. In this work, we show that the notion of "least effort," - do minimally if possible - is manifested not only in derivations but also in other aspects of the grammar. We take Chinese as an example and show that this language exhibits the properties manifesting some "least effort" guidelines in the area of movement and reconstruction, and in the projection of syntactic positions: when there is a choice, non-application of moyement/reconstruction and non-projection of a position are adopted. These phenomena essentially are attested in topic structures. The question arises as to why topic structures exhibit such minimal effort effects. We suggest that this is due to the fact that topic structures can be derived by movement or base-generation. When there are morpho-syntactic clues that reconstruction is necessary, the structure is a movement structure. Otherwise, the less costly non-movement structure is assumed. Moreover, because of the possibility of assuming a topic NP to be base-generated, bearing a predication (or aboutness) relation with the comment clause, the argument position which otherwise would be related to the topic (conveniently termed the trace position) is not projected when there is a choice of projecting or not projecting it.
This volume comprises papers that were given at the workshop Information Structure and the Referential Status of Linguistic Expressions, which we organized during the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS) Conference in Leipzig in February 2001. At this workshop we discussed the connection between information structure and the referential interpretation of linguistic expressions, a topic mostly neglected in current linguistics research. One common aim of the papers is to find out to what extent the focus-background as well as the topic-comment structuring determine the referential interpretation of simple arguments like definite and indefinite NPs on the one hand and sentences on the other.
Introduction
(2000)
Editorial preface
(2000)
The present issue grew out of two sources. The main one was the workshop on Adding and Omitting (A & 0) held during the DGfS Conference organized in Konstanz at the beginning of 1999 by our ZAS project on Syntax der Fokusbildung. The purpose of the workshop was to bring together people working on topicalization (addition of expressions, in a sense) and ellipsis (omission, i.e. deletion of linguistic material) and their relations and interaction. Since the workshop was very successful and met with a great deal of interest on the part of both participants and outsiders, we decided to collect and publish the papers that were presented. Towards the end of 1999, a follow-up workshop on Ellipsis and Information Structure was organized by Kerstin Schwabe and Susanne Winkler (Tübingen). The papers given at this second meeting were supposed to be an integral part of the publication as well. More and more people got involved, further developing our common understanding of the topic phenomenon, so that there was too much material for a single volume. We therefore decided to split the enterprise into two volumes. The ellipsis papers are to be published by 'Benjamins' this year in Interpreting Omitted Structures.
Data on lingual movement, dorsopalatal contact and F2 frequency presented in previous papers of ours (Recasens, 2002; Recasens and Pallarès, 2001; Recasens, Pallarès and Fontdevila, 1997) suggest that the degree of articulatory constraint (DAC) model accounts to a large extent for the extent and direction of tongue dorsum coarticulation in VCV and CC sequences. A goal of this investigation is to verify the predictions of this model with respect to jaw V-to-V effects in VCV sequences using articulatory movement data collected with electromagnetic articulometry (EMA).
Arguing against Bhat’s (1974) claim that retroflexion cannot be correlated with retraction, the present article illustrates that retroflexes are always retracted, though retraction is not claimed to be a sufficient criterion for retroflexion. The cooccurrence of retraction with retroflexion is shown to make two further implications; first, that non-velarized retroflexes do not exist, and second, that secondary palatalization of retroflexes is phonetically impossible. The process of palatalization is shown to trigger a change in the primary place of articulation to non-retroflex. Phonologically, retraction has to be represented by the feature specification [+back] for all retroflex segments.
The author presents MASSY, the MODULAR AUDIOVISUAL SPEECH SYNTHESIZER. The system combines two approaches of visual speech synthesis. Two control models are implemented: a (data based) di-viseme model and a (rule based) dominance model where both produce control commands in a parameterized articulation space. Analogously two visualization methods are implemented: an image based (video-realistic) face model and a 3D synthetic head. Both face models can be driven by both the data based and the rule based articulation model.
The high-level visual speech synthesis generates a sequence of control commands for the visible articulation. For every virtual articulator (articulation parameter) the 3D synthetic face model defines a set of displacement vectors for the vertices of the 3D objects of the head. The vertices of the 3D synthetic head then are moved by linear combinations of these displacement vectors to visualize articulation movements. For the image based video synthesis a single reference image is deformed to fit the facial properties derived from the control commands. Facial feature points and facial displacements have to be defined for the reference image. The algorithm can also use an image database with appropriately annotated facial properties. An example database was built automatically from video recordings. Both the 3D synthetic face and the image based face generate visual speech that is capable to increase the intelligibility of audible speech.
Other well known image based audiovisual speech synthesis systems like MIKETALK and VIDEO REWRITE concatenate pre-recorded single images or video sequences, respectively. Parametric talking heads like BALDI control a parametric face with a parametric articulation model. The presented system demonstrates the compatibility of parametric and data based visual speech synthesis approaches.
It is argued that there is a surprising gap in the distribution of adverbial modifiers, namely that there are (practically) no adverbs that modify exclusively stative verbs. Given the general range of selectional restrictions associated with adverb/verb modification, this comes as a surprise. It is argued that this gap cannot be the result of standard selectional restrictions. An independently motivated account of the state-event verb contrast, in which state verbs are proposed to lack Davidsonian arguments is presented and argued to account for this stative adverb gap. Some apparent and real problems with the analysis are discussed.
The present article illustrates that the specific articulatory and aerodynamic requirements for voiced but not voiceless alveolar or dental stops can cause tongue tip retraction and tongue mid lowering and thus retroflexion of front coronals. This retroflexion is shown to have occurred diachronically in the three typologically unrelated languages Dhao (Malayo-Polynesian), Thulung (Sino-Tibetan), and Afar (East-Cushitic). In addition to the diachronic cases, we provide synchronic data for retroflexion from an articulatory study with four speakers of German, a language usually described as having alveolar stops. With these combined data we supply evidence that voiced retroflex stops (as the only retroflex segments in a language) did not necessarily emerge from implosives, as argued by Haudricourt (1950), Greenberg (1970), Bhat (1973), and Ohala (1983). Instead, we propose that the voiced front coronal plosive /d/ is generally articulated in a way that favours retroflexion, that is, with a smaller and more retracted place of articulation and a lower tongue and jaw position than /t/.
Studying kinematic behavior in speech production is an indispensable and fruitful methodology in order to describe for instance phonemic contrasts, allophonic variations, prosodic effects in articulatory movements. More intriguingly, it is also interpreted with respect to its underlying control mechanisms. Several interpretations have been borrowed from motor control studies of arm, eye, and limb movements. They do either explain kinematics with respect to a fine tuned control by the Central Nervous System (CNS) or they take into account a combination of influences arising from motor control strategies at the CNS level and from the complex physical properties of the peripheral speech apparatus. We assume that the latter is more realistic and ecological. The aims of this article are: first, to show, via a literature review related to the so called '1/3 power law' in human arm motor control, that this debate is of first importance in human motor control research in general. Second, to study a number of speech specific examples offering a fruitful framework to address this issue. However, it is also suggested that speech motor control differs from general motor control principles in the sense that it uses specific physical properties such as vocal tract limitations, aerodynamics and biomechanics in order to produce the relevant sounds. Third, experimental and modelling results are described supporting the idea that the three properties are crucial in shaping speech kinematics for selected speech phenomena. Hence, caution should be taken when interpreting kinematic results based on experimental data alone.
This paper looks at sentences with "quantificational indefinites," discussed by Diesing (1992) and others. I propose that these sentences generate sets of alternatives of the form {p, not p and it's possible that p}, which restrict the quantification by an extension of familiar focus principles. For example, in the sentence "I usually read a book about slugs" (on the relevant reading), "usually" quantifies over pairs <x,t> such that x is a book about slugs, t is a time interval, and one alternative is true from the set {I read x at t, I can but do not read x at t}. In addition to accounting for a well-known contrast between creation and non-creation verbs, this also explains a second contrast that Diesing’s analysis cannot account for.
This paper employs empirical methods to examine verbs such as seem, for which the traditional raising to subject analysis relates pairs of sentences which differ by taking an infinitival or sentential complement. A corpus-driven investigation of the verbs seem and appear demonstrates that information structure and evidentiality both play a determinate role in the choice between infinitival or sentential complementation. The second half of the paper builds upon the corpus results and examines the implications for the standard claims concerning these constructions. First, pairs of sentences related by the subject-to-subject raising analysis of verbs are often viewed as equivalent. New evidence from indefinite generic subjects shows that whether an indefinite generic subject occurs in the infinitival or sentential complement construction leads to truth-conditional differences. Further implications are explored for the claim that subjects of the infinitival variant may take narrow-scope: once various confounds are controlled for, the subject of the infinitival construction is shown to most naturally take wide-scope.
In this paper, we outline the foundations of a theory of implicatures. It divides into two parts. The first part contains the base model. It introduces signalling games, optimal answer models, and a general definition of implicatures in terms of natural information. The second part contains a refinement in which we consider noisy communication with efficient clarification requests. Throughout, we assume a fully cooperative speaker who knows the information state of the hearer. The purpose of this paper is not the study of examples. Our concern is the framework for doing these studies.
The main concern of this article is to discuss some recent findings concerning the psychological reality of optimality-theoretic pragmatics and its central part – bidirectional optimization. A present challenge is to close the gap between experimental pragmatics and neo-Gricean theories of pragmatics. I claim that OT pragmatics helps to overcome this gap, in particular in connection with the discussion of asymmetries between natural language comprehension and production. The theoretical debate will be concentrated on two different ways of interpreting bidirection: first, bidirectional optimization as a psychologically realistic online mechanism; second, bidirectional optimization as an offline phenomenon of fossilizing optimal form-meaning pairs. It will be argued that neither of these extreme views fits completely with the empirical data when taken per se.
A fundamental question in the study of speech is about the invariance of the ultimate percepts, or features. The present paper gives an overview of the noninvariance problem and offers some hints towards a solution. Examination of various data on place and voicing perception suggests the following points. Features correspond to natural boundaries between sounds, which are included in the infant's predispositions for speech perception. Adult percepts arise from couplings and contextual interactions between features. Both couplings and interactions contribute to invariance. But this is at the expense of profound qualitative changes in perceptual boundaries implying that features are neither independently nor invariantly perceived. The question then is to understand the principles which guide feature couplings and interactions during perceptual development. The answer might reside in the fact that: (1) adult boundaries converge to a single point of the perceptual space, suggesting a context-free central reference; (2) this point corresponds to the neutral vocoïd, suggesting the reference is related to production; (3) at this point perceptual boundaries correspond to the natural ones, suggesting the reference is anchored in predispositions for feature perception. In sum, perceptual invariance seems to be grounded on a radial representation of the vocal tract around a singular point at which boundaries are context-fee, natural and coincide with the neutral vocoïd.
In this paper the issue of the nature of the representations of the speech production task in the speaker's brain is addressed in a production-perception interaction framework. Since speech is produced to be perceived, it is hypothesized that its production is associated for the speaker with the generation of specific physical characteristics that are for the listeners the objects of speech perception. Hence, in the first part of the paper, four reference theories of speech perception are presented, in order to guide and to constrain the search for possible correlates of the speech production task in the physical space: the Acoustic Invariance Theory, the Adaptive Variability Theory, the Motor Theory and the Direct-Realist Theory. Possible interpretations of these theories in terms of representations of the speech production task are proposed and analyzed. In a second part, a few selected experimental studies are presented, which shed some light on this issue. In the conclusion, on the basis of the joint analysis of theoretical and experimental aspects presented in the paper, it is proposed that representations of the speech production task are multimodal, and that a hierarchy exists among the different modalities, the acoustic modality having the highest level of priority. It is also suggested that these representations are not associated with invariant characteristics, but with regions of the acoustic, orosensory and motor control spaces.
Consonants exhibit more variation in their phonetic realization than is typically acknowledged, but that variation is linguistically constrained. Acoustic analysis of both read and spontaneous speech reveals that consonants are not necessarily realized with the manner of articulation they would have in careful citation form. Although the variation is wider than one would imagine, it is limited by the phoneme inventory. The phoneme inventory of the language restricts the range of variation to protect the system of phonemic contrast. That is, consonants may stray phonetically into unfilled areas of the language's sound space. Listeners are seldom consciously aware of the consonant variation, and perceive the consonants phonemically as in their citation forms. A better understanding of surface phonetic consonant variation can help make predictions in theoretical domains and advances in applied domains.
In the research field initiated by Lindblom & Liljencrants in 1972, we illustrate the possibility of giving substance to phonology, predicting the structure of phonological systems with nonphonological principles, be they listener-oriented (perceptual contrast and stability) or speaker-oriented (articulatory contrast and economy). We proposed for vowel systems the Dispersion-Focalisation Theory (Schwartz et al., 1997b). With the DFT, we can predict vowel systems using two competing perceptual constraints weighted with two parameters, respectively λ and α. The first one aims at increasing auditory distances between vowel spectra (dispersion), the second one aims at increasing the perceptual salience of each spectrum through formant proximities (focalisation). We also introduced new variants based on research in physics - namely, phase space (λ,α) and polymorphism of a given phase, or superstructures in phonological organisations (Vallée et al., 1999) which allow us to generate 85.6% of 342 UPSID systems from 3- to 7-vowel qualities. No similar theory for consonants seems to exist yet. Therefore we present in detail a typology of consonants, and then suggest ways to explain plosive vs. fricative and voiceless vs. voiced consonants predominances by i) comparing them with language acquisition data at the babbling stage and looking at the capacity to acquire relatively different linguistic systems in relation with the main degrees of freedom of the articulators; ii) showing that the places “preferred” for each manner are at least partly conditioned by the morphological constraints that facilitate or complicate, make possible or impossible the needed articulatory gestures, e.g. the complexity of the articulatory control for voicing and the aerodynamics of fricatives. A rather strict coordination between the glottis and the oral constriction is needed to produce acceptable voiced fricatives (Mawass et al., 2000). We determine that the region where the combinations of Ag (glottal area) and Ac (constriction area) values results in a balance between the voice and noise components is indeed very narrow. We thus demonstrate that some of the main tendencies in the phonological vowel and consonant structures of the world’s languages can be explained partly by sensorimotor constraints, and argue that actually phonology can take part in a theory of Perception-for-Action-Control.
The present paper offers evidence that there are two variants of adverbial modification that differ with respect to the way in which a modifier is linked to the verb's eventuality argument. So-called external modifiers relate to the full eventuality, whereas internal modifiers relate to some integral part of it. The choice between external and internal modification is shown to be dependent on the modifier's syntactic base position. External modifiers are base-generated at the VP periphery, whereas internal modifiers are base generated at the V periphery. These observations are accounted for by a refined version of the standard Davidsonian approach to adverbial modification according to which modification is mediated by a free variable. In the case of external modification, the grammar takes responsibility for identifying the free variable with the verb's eventuality argument, whereas in the case of internal modification, a value for the free variable is determined by the conceptual system on the basis of contextually salient world knowledge.
The present study offers the analysis of the role of adverbials in the semantic structure of a sentence. To clarify this role new notions "Adverbials with floating and fixed semantic scope" are proposed. This classification also can clarify the role of adverbials from the point of view of the division into arguments vs. adjuncts.
With the rise of minimalism, many concepts related to the geometrical relations of phrase structure held fast to in earlier approaches have been reconsidered. This article deals with distinguishing (relational and technical) properties of specifiers and adjuncts in a Bare Phrase Structure framework (X'-Theory). I extend specific aspects of X-structure relevant to the discussion of specifiers vs. adjuncts. I argue that unique specifiers can be derived from the system and that adjunction, possibly multiple, results from Direct Merge only. The final product is a series of relationships in line with recent thoughts and minimalist premises, but formally more similar to earlier conceptions of the X'-schema.
I address conceptual, empirical and theoretical arguments against multiple specifiers and related issues next, that is beyond the predictions immediately following from the tripartitional view of clause structure proposed in Grohmann (2000). After laying out my motivations to critically consider the issue, I present a set of data that casts serious doubt over the justifications offered to replace Agr with v as the accusative casemarker. Having conceptual and empirical back-up, I then tackle the theoretical validity of specifiers, and ways to distinguish unique specifiers from (multiple) adjuncts. I introduce a version of Bare Phrase Structure that does so, yet keeps the spirit of defining structural identification over relational rather than categorial properties.
I argue in this study that consonantal strength shifts can be explained through positional bans on features, expressed over positions marked as weak at a given level of prosodic structure, usually the metrical foo!. This approach might be characterized as "templatic" in the sense it seeks to explain positional restrictions and distributional patterns relative to independently motivated, fixed prosodic elements. In this sense, it follows Dresher & Lahiri's (1991) idea of metrical coherence in phonological systems, namely, "[T]hat grammars adhere to syllabic templates and metrical patterns of limited types, and that these patterns persist across derivations and are available to a number of different processes ... " (251). [...] The study is structured as follows: section 1 presents a typology of distributional asymmetries based on data from unrelated languages, demonstrating that the stress foot of each of these languages determines the contexts of neutralization and weakening of stops. Section 2 elaborates the notion of a template, exploring some of its formal properties, while section 3 presents templatic analyses of data from English and German. Section 4 explores the properties of weak positions, especially weak onsets, in more detail, including discussion of templates in phonological acquisition. Section 5 summarizes and concludes the study.
The papers in this volume were originally presented at the Workshop on Bantu Wh-questions, held at the Institut des Sciences de l’Homme, Université Lyon 2, on 25-26 March 2011, which was organized by the French-German cooperative project on the Phonology/Syntax Interface in Bantu Languages (BANTU PSYN). This project, which is funded by the ANR and the DFG, comprises three research teams, based in Berlin, Paris and Lyon. The Berlin team, at the ZAS, is: Laura Downing (project leader) and Kristina Riedel (post-doc). The Paris team, at the Laboratoire de phonétique et phonologie (LPP; UMR 7018), is: Annie Rialland (project leader), Cédric Patin (Maître de Conférences, STL, Université Lille 3), Jean-Marc Beltzung (post-doc), Martial Embanga Aborobongui (doctoral student), Fatima Hamlaoui (post-doc). The Lyon team, at the Dynamique du Langage (UMR 5596) is: Gérard Philippson (project leader) and Sophie Manus (Maître de Conférences, Université Lyon 2). These three research teams bring together the range of theoretical expertise necessary to investigate the phonology-syntax interface: intonation (Patin, Rialland), tonal phonology (Aborobongui, Downing, Manus, Patin, Philippson, Rialland), phonology-syntax interface (Downing, Patin) and formal syntax (Riedel, Hamlaoui). They also bring together a range of Bantu language expertise: Western Bantu (Aboronbongui, Rialland), Eastern Bantu (Manus, Patin, Philippson, Riedel), and Southern Bantu (Downing).
Ever since the discovery of neural networks, there has been a controversy between two modes of information processing. On the one hand, symbolic systems have proven indispensable for our understanding of higher intelligence, especially when cognitive domains like language and reasoning are examined. On the other hand, it is a matter of fact that intelligence resides in the brain, where computation appears to be organized by numerical and statistical principles and where a parallel distributed architecture is appropriate. The present claim is in line with researchers like Paul Smolensky and Peter Gärdenfors and suggests that this controversy can be resolved by a unified theory of cognition – one that integrates both aspects of cognition and assigns the proper roles to symbolic computation and numerical neural computation.
The overall goal in this contribution is to discuss formal systems that are suitable for grounding the formal basis for such a unified theory. It is suggested that the instruments of modern logic and model theoretic semantics are appropriate for analyzing certain aspects of dynamical systems like inferring and learning in neural networks. Hence, I suggest that an active dialogue between the traditional symbolic approaches to logic, information and language and the connectionist paradigm is possible and fruitful. An essential component of this dialogue refers to Optimality Theory (OT) – taken as a theory that likewise aims to overcome the gap between symbolic and neuronal systems. In the light of the proposed logical analysis notions like recoverability and bidirection are explained, and likewise the problem of founding a strict constraint hierarchy is discussed. Moreover, a claim is made for developing an "embodied" OT closing the gap between symbolic representation and embodied cognition.
To monitor one's speech means to check the speech plan for errors, both before and after talking. There are several theories as to how this process works. We give a short overview on the most influential theories only to focus on the most widely received one, the Perceptual Loop Theory of monitoring by Levelt (1983). One of the underlying assumptions of this theory is the existence of an Inner Loop, a monitoring device that checks for errors before speech is articulated. This paper collects evidence for the existence of such an internal monitoring device and questions how it might work. Levelt's theory argues that internal monitoring works by means of perception, but there are other empirical findings that allow for the assumption that an Inner Loop could also use our speech production devices. Based on data from both experimental and aphasiological papers we develop a model based on Levelt (1983) which shows that internal monitoring might in fact make use of both perception and production means.
This paper follows a new perspective on speech errors within the framework of Articulatory Phonology, as proposed by Goldstein et al. (in prep.). On the basis of kinematic evidence, their work has demonstrated that speech errors are not restricted to categorical exchanges of position of segmental units, but rather gestures that compose segments can exhibit errors that vary from zero to maximal in magnitude.
Here we report results from two perceptual experiments which use stimuli selected on the basis of their articulatory properties only, covering a range of errorful gestural activations. The outcome of the perceptual experiments suggests that different segments show different degrees of vulnerability to (subsegmental) speech errors: While listeners detected errors reliably for some segments, for other segments the reaction to errorful and non-errorful tokens was not distinct. The data suggest that at least for some error types an asymmetric error distribution arises due to perception, while production itself is not asymmetric. However, for error types involving segments whose gestural compositions stand in a subset relationship to each other (as described below), asymmetries may indeed originate in production due to the overall dominance of a gestural intrusion bias observed in the production data of Goldstein et al. (in prep.).
This paper describes the processing of MRI and CT images needed for developing a 3D linear articulatory model of velum. The 3D surface that defines each organ constitutive of the vocal and nasal tracts is extracted from MRI and CT images recorded on a subject uttering a corpus of artificially sustained French vowels and consonants. First, the 2D contours of the organs have been manually extracted from the corresponding images, expanded into 3D contours, and aligned in a common 3D coordinate system. Then, for each organ, a generic mesh has been chosen and fitted by elastic deformation to each of the 46 3D shapes of the corpus. This has finally resulted in a set of organ surfaces sampled with the same number of 3D vertices for each articulation, which is appropriate for Principal Component Analysis or linear decomposition. The analysis of these data has uncovered two main uncorrelated articulatory degrees of freedom for the velum's movement. The associated parameters are used to control the model. We have in particular investigated the question of a possible correlation between jaw / tongue and velum's movement and have not find more correlation than the one found in the corpus.
This paper contributes to the understanding of vocal folds oscillation during phonation. In order to test theoretical models of phonation, a new experimental set-up using a deformable vocal folds replica is presented. The replica is shown to be able to produce self sustained oscillations under controlled experimental conditions. Therefore different parameters, such as those related to elasticity, to acoustical coupling or to the subglottal pressure can be quantitatively studied. In this work we focused on the oscillation fundamental frequency and the upstream pressure in order to start (on-set threshold) either end (off-set threshold) oscillations in presence of a downstream acoustical resonator. As an example, it is shown how this data can be used in order to test the theoretical predictions of a simple one-mass model.
Maligne Tumore der Mundhohle und der Zunge stehen weltweit an sechster Stelle aller Krebserkrankungen (Becker, 1997; Werner, 2000). Neben einer Reihe therapeutischer Behandlungsmöglichkeiten nimmt die chirurgische Resektion der Tumore eine wichtige Stellung ein. Auf Grund der häufig sehr ausgedehnten Befunde führt der resektionsbedingte Verlust anatomischer Strukturen im Bereich des Kiefers, des Mundbodens oder der Zunge oft zu Störungen aller oraler Funktionen und Funktionsabläufe. Bei vielen Patienten sind das Kauvermögen, das Schlucken, das Sprechen; die Sensibilität, die Geschmacksempfindung, aber auch die Ästhetik im Kopf- und Halsbereich betroffen (Schroder, 1985; Grimm, 1990; Panje &. Morris, 1995; Reuther & Bill, 1998; Lenarz & Lesinski-Schiedat, 2001). Orale Tumore haben daher einen massiven Einfluss auf die postoperative Lebensqualität der betroffenen Patienten. Neben dem Bemühen das Überleben der Patienten zu sichern, nimmt daher das Bestreben die Lebenssituation der Patienten zu verbessern einen zunehmend wichtigeren Platz ein. Hierzu gehört zum einen, das medizinische Vorgehen so zu planen, dass ein maximaler Funktionserhalt angestrebt wird. Zum anderen ist postoperativ das gezielte sprachtherapeutische Vorgehen wichtig um funktionelle und artikulatorische Fähigkeiten gezielt schulen zu können (Stadtler, 1989). Dies ist jedoch nur möglich, wenn die postoperativen funktionellen Veränderungen bekannt sind. Um eine Prüfung der oralen Fähigkeiten zu ermöglichen, wurde am Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft ein Motorischer Bogen entwickelt, der eine gezielte und systematische Überprüfung ermöglicht.
In order to investigate the articulatory processes of the hasty and mumbled speech of clutterers, the kinematic variability was analysed by means of electromagnetic midsagittal articulography (EMMA). In contrast to stutterers, clutterers improve their intelligibility by concentrating on their speech task. Variability is an important criterion in comparable studies of stuttering and is discussed in terms of the stability of the speech motor system. The aim of the current study was to analyse the spatial and temporal variability in the speech of three clutterers and three control speakers. All speakers were native speakers of German. The speech material consisted of repetitive CV-syllables and foreign words, because clutterers have the most severe problems with long words which have a complex syllable structure. The results showed a higher quotient of variation for clutterers in the foreign word production. For the syllable repetition task, no significant differences between clutterers and controls were found. The extremely large and variable displacements were interpreted as a strategy that helps clutterers to improve the intelligibility of their speech.
Specificity distinction
(2001)
This paper is concerned with semantic noun phrase typology, focusing on the question of how to draw fine-grained distinctions necessary for an accurate account of natural language phenomena. In the extensive literature on this topic, the most commonly encountered parameters of classification concern the semantic type of the denotation of the noun phrase, the familiarity or novelty of its referent, the quantificational/nonquantificational distinction (connected to the weak/strong dichotomy), as well as, more recently, the question of whether the noun phrase is choice-functional or not (see Reinhart 1997, Winter 1997, Kratzer 1998, Matthewson 1999). In the discussion that follows I will attempt to make the following general points: (i) phenomena involving the behavior of noun phrases both within and across languages point to the need of establishing further distinctions that are too fine-grained to be caught in the net of these typologies; (ii) some of the relevant distinctions can be captured in terms of conditions on assignment functions; (iii) distribution and scopal peculiarities of noun phrases may result from constraints they impose on the way variables they introduce are to be assigned values.
Section 2 reviews the typology of definite noun phrases introduced in Farkas 2000 and the way it provides support for the general points above. Section 3 examines some of the problems raised by recognizing the rich variety of 'indefinite' noun phrases found in natural language and by attempting to capture their distribution and interpretation. Common to the typologies discussed in the two sections is the issue of marking different types of variation in the interpretation of a noun phrase. In the light of this discussion, specificity turns out to be an epiphenomenon connected to a family of distinctions that are marked differently in different languages.
In this squib, I want to argue that the morphological structure of words is, at least to some extent, motivated. As an example I have choosen the partonomic (and for the less part taxonomic) nomenclature of the human body. While important work by Brown et alii (1973), Anderson (1978) and Schladt (1997) exists on this topic, these analyses focus on the conceptualization of body-parts and their semantics, but not on their morphological representation.
In the following, I want to check two predictions about the morphological complexity of lexical items denoting parts of the human body. The first assumption is that the most canonical body-parts are always expressed by mono-lexematic items. The second one consists in the assumption that body-parts of the lowest levels in the hierarchy are always morphologically complex. A set of six body-parts has been analysed in 27 languages. The set consists of two canonical (HEAD and EAR) and of one from the lowest level of the hierarchy (TOENAIL). For this I have adopted a sample from Schladt (1997) and a small one compiled by myself
Table of Contents:
T. A. Hall (Indiana University): English syllabification as the interaction of markedness constraints
Antony D. Green: Opacity in Tiberian Hebrew: Morphology, not phonology
Sabine Zerbian (ZAS Berlin): Phonological Phrases in Xhosa (Southern Bantu)
Laura J. Downing (ZAS Berlin): What African Languages Tell Us About Accent Typology
Marzena Zygis (ZAS Berlin): (Un)markedness of trills: the case of Slavic r-palatalisation
Laura J. Downing (ZAS Berlin), Al Mtenje (University of Malawi), Bernd Pompino-Marschall (Humboldt-Universitat Berlin): Prosody and Information Structure in Chichewa
T. A. Hall (Indiana University). Silke Hamann (ZAS Berlin), Marzena Zygis (ZAS Berlin): The phonetics of stop assibilation
Christian Geng (ZAS Berlin), Christine Mooshammer (Universitat Kiel): The Hungarian palatal stop: phonological considerations and phonetic data
This article examines the motivation for phonological stop assibilations, e.g. /t/ is realized as [ts], [s] or [tʃ] before /i/, from the phonetic perspective. Hall & Hamann (2003) posit the following two implications: (a) Assibilation cannot be triggered by /i/ unless it is also triggered by /j/, and (b) Voiced stops cannot undergo assibilations unless voiceless ones do. In the following study we present the results of three acoustic experiments with native speakers of German and Polish which support implications (a) and (b). In our experiments we measured the friction phase after the /t d/ release before the onset of the following high front vocoid for four speakers of German and Polish. We found that the friction phase for /tj/ was significantly longer than that of /ti/, and that the friction phase of /t/ in the assibilation context is significantly longer than that of /d/.