Linguistik
Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Part of a Book (784) (remove)
Has Fulltext
- yes (784)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (784)
Keywords
- Syntax (94)
- Deutsch (89)
- Spracherwerb (67)
- Semantik (54)
- Phonologie (49)
- Englisch (41)
- Morphologie (36)
- Sprachtest (33)
- Thema-Rhema-Gliederung (32)
- Intonation <Linguistik> (27)
Institute
Fronting of an infinite VP across a finite main verb - akin to German "VP-topicalization" - can be found also in Czech and Polish. The paper discusses evidence from large corpora for this process and some of its properties, both syntactic and information-structural. Based on this case, criteria for more user-friedly searching and retrieval of corpus data in syntactic research are being developed.
Some kind of relative clause
(2018)
Amount Relatives (ARs) differ from restrictive relative clauses in that they do not refer to a particular object denoted by the head of the relative clause, but to an amount of such objects (Carlson, 1977a; Heim, 1987). Traditionally, ARs have been regarded as degree expressions.
In this paper I argue against this view and propose instead that amount interpretations of relative clauses are in fact a special case of kind interpretation.
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.
'Je-desto'-Sätze scheinen in struktureller Hinsicht Einzelgänger zu sein. Das Ungewöhnliche ist, dass sie wie eine obligatorische Verb-dritt-Konstruktion daherkommen: An erster Stelle steht scheinbar der durch je eingeleitete Nebensatz im linken Außenfeld bzw. Vor-vor-Feld, dann folgt die desto-Konstituente, die das Vorfeld einnimmt, und dann an dritter Stelle das finite Verb des Matrixsatzes. Angesichts der Semantik der involvierten Konstituenten ist diese Strukturbeschreibung ungewöhnlich und widerspricht plausiblen Erwartungen. Der Aufsatz bietet eine Analyse, nach der der 'je'-Satz und die 'desto'-Konstituente zusammen eine komplexe Konstituente bilden, die eine einzige, ganz reguläre Einheit konstituiert, was bedeutet, dass der Gesamtsatz eine ziemlich reguläre Verb-zweit-Struktur ist.
Das im vorliegenden Artikel untersuchte Phänomen im Deutschen ist in der Literatur bisher quasi unentdeckt geblieben. Die einzige Ausnahme bildet der Beitrag von Berg (2008). Die Beobachtung ist folgende: Unter bestimmten Bedingungen, die mit Emphase zu tun haben, kann die lexikalisch festgelegte Betonung, also der Wortakzent, verschoben werden. Im Normalfall betrifft dieser Prozess nicht-native lexikalische Einheiten, denn die Akzentverschiebung passiert in der Regel von hinten nach vorn. Da deutsche Erbwörter initial-, also erstbetont, sind, ist das schwer möglich (jedoch s.u.). Fremdwörter, die auf den hinteren Silben betont sind, sind deshalb prädestiniert. Die meisten Beispiele kommen aus dem Bereich der Wortklasse Adjektiv: spektakulär, skandalös, sensationell, optimal, ideal, brutal, fulminant, perfekt, gigantisch. Im angedeuteten expressiven Gebrauch kann der Wortakzent von der letzten auf die erste Silbe wandern [...].
Bulgarian belongs to the South Slavic language group but exhibits specific linguistic features shared with the non-Slavic languages of the Balkan Sprachbund. In this paper, we discuss linguistic and cultural aspects relevant for the Bulgarian adaptation of the revised English version of The Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN). We address typological properties of the verbal system pertaining to a differentiated aspectual system and to a paradigm of verbal forms for narratives grammaticalized as renarrative mood in Bulgarian. Further, we consider lexical, derivational and discourse cohesive means in contrast to the English markers of involvement and perspective taking in the MAIN stories.
While the perilinguistic child is endowed with predispositions for the categorical perception of phonetic features, their adaptation to the native language results from a long evolution from the end of the first year of age up to the adolescence. This evolution entails both a better discrimination between phonological categories, a concomitant reduction of the discrimination between within-category variants, and a higher precision of perceptual boundaries between categories. The first objective of the present study was to assess the relative importance of these modifications by comparing the perceptual performances of a group of 11 children, aged from 8 to 11 years, with those of their mothers. Our second objective was to explore the functional implications of categorical perception by comparing the performances of a group of 8 deaf children, equipped with a cochlear implant, with normal-hearing chronological age controls. The results showed that the categorical boundary was slightly more precise and that categorical perception was consistently larger in adults vs. normal-hearing children. Those among the deaf children who were able to discriminate minimal distinctions between syllables displayed categorical perception performances equivalent to those of normal-hearing controls. In conclusion, the late effect of age on the categorical perception of speech seems to be anchored in a fairly mature phonological system, as evidenced the fairly high precision of categorical boundaries in pre-adolescents. These late developments have functional implications for speech perception in difficult conditions as suggested by the relationship between categorical perception and speech intelligibility in cochlear implant children.
Chicheŵa, a Bantu language of East Central Africa, displays mixed properties of configurationality such as the existence of VP, on the one hand, and discontinuous constituents (DCs), on the other. In the present work we examine the discourse and syntactic properties of DCs, and show that DCs in Chicheŵa arise naturally from the discourse-configurational nature of the language. We argue that the fronted DCs in Chicheŵa are contrastive topics that appear in a leftdislocated external topic position, with the remnant part of the split NP in the right-dislocated topic position. Once the precise discourse functions of DCs are properly integrated into the syntactic analysis, all the facts and restrictions observed in Chicheŵa DCs can be explained in a straightforward fashion.
This paper focuses on restrictions on the ordering of internal constituents of noun phrases in Chichewa, especially when those constituents are discontinuous. The motivation for discontinuity of the NP constituents will be given, together with discussion of constructions that can be subsumed under this rubric but that do not really involve discontinuity in the canonical sense. These are constructions where a topic NP in a left periphery position is either linked anaphorically with a modifier "remnant" or semantically with its hyponym in post-verbal position. According to Guthrie's classification of Bantu languages, Chichewa is placed in zone N unit N31. It is regarded as a dialect of Nyanja, classified as belonging to unit N30 (Guthrie 1967-71).
The retreat of BE as perfect auxiliary in the history of English is examined. Corpus data are presented showing that the initial advance of HAVE was most closely connected to a restriction against BE in past counterfactuals. Other factors which have been reported to favor the spread of HAVE are either dependent on the counterfactual effect, or significantly weaker in comparison. It is argued that the effect can be traced to the semantics of the BE perfect, which denoted resultativity rather than anteriority proper. Related data from other older Germanic and Romance languages are presented, and finally implications for existing theories of auxiliary selection stemming from the findings presented are discussed.
This paper aims to work toward a proper understanding of the role of preverbal ge- in Old English (henceforth OE) and its disappearance in the course of Middle English. This prefix is reminiscent of its cognates in Modern German and Dutch (also written ge-) in its distribution, but even a cursory examination of the details reveals it to be quite distinct, as we will see. The proper characterization of that distribution, and of its diachronic development, has proven to be extremely difficult. I have thus carried out a large-scale corpus study using the York-Toronto-Helsinki parsed corpus of Old English prose (Taylor et al. 2003) and the Penn-Helsinki parsed corpus of Middle English, 2nd ed. (Kroch & Taylor 1999). This paper will report the results of the first phase of the project, involving patterns in the data that could be identified primarily on the basis of automatic searches in the corpora.
Functions of English "man"
(2006)
This paper discusses the semantics of the English particle man. It is shown that this particle does different things when used sentence-initially and sentence-finally. The sentenceinitial use is further shown to separate into two distinct intonational types with different semantic content. A formal semantics is proposed for these types.
Setswana distinguishes between conjunctive and disjunctive verb forms in the present positive tense. Creissels (1996) shows that this is also true of a number of other tenses (present negative, future positive and perfect positive). This work is used as a starting point to investigate the conjunctive/disjunctive distinction in my own Setswana data. Further to those presented in Creissels, there is data on the past and past progressive tenses, and environments such as relatives and subordinates. Creissels' analysis is supported by different examples, including those that do not utilise a frame intended to limit boundary effects. There are also examples not within this frame that raise questions about how flexible the conjunctive/disjunctive system can be. This paper is a work in progress.
This paper presents a short overview of Turkey and the Turkish language, and then outlines the process of adapting the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) to Turkish and how the Turkish MAIN has been used with monolingual and bilingual children. The grammatical features of Turkish, the critical points in the adaptation process of MAIN to Turkish and our experiences of extensive piloting of the Turkish MAIN with typically developing monolingual children are described.
This paper reports results from a series of experiments that investigated whether semantic and/or syntactic complexity influences young Dutch children’s production of past tense forms. The constructions used in the three experiments were (i) simple sentences (the Simple Sentence Experiment), (ii) complex sentences with CP complements (the Complement Clause Experiment) and (iii) complex sentences with relative clauses (the Relative Clause Experiment). The stimuli involved both atelic and telic predicates. The goal of this paper is to address the following questions.
Q1. Does semantic complexity regarding temporal anchoring influence the types of errors that children make in the experiments? For example, do children make certain types of errors when a past tense has to be anchored to the Utterance Time (UT), as compared to when it has to be anchored to the matrix topic time (TT)?
Q2. Do different syntactic positions influence children’s performance on past-tense production? Do children perform better in the Simple Sentence Experiment compared to complex sentences involving two finite clauses (the Complement Clause Experiment and the Relative Clause Experiment)? In complex sentence trials, do children perform differently when the CPs are complements vs. when the CPs are adjunct clauses? (Lebeaux 1990, 2000)
Q3. Do Dutch children make more errors with certain types of predicate (such as atelic predicates)? Alternatively, do children produce a certain type of error with a certain type of predicates (such as producing a perfect aspect with punctual predicates)? Bronckart and Sinclair (1973), for example, found that until the age of 6, French children showed a tendency to use passé composé with perfective events and simple present with imperfective events; we will investigate whether or not the equivalent of this is observed in Dutch.
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.
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.
Extreme nouns and maximizers
(2018)
Maximizers (completamente ‘completely’, totalmente ‘totally’) are degree modifiers restricted to maximum standard adjectives. Spanish adjectives of completeness [ACs] (completo ‘complete’, total ‘total’) display a behavior similar to that of their adverbial counterparts when they combine with nouns like idiot. This paper argues that ACs are maximality modifiers of idiot-like nouns, which are defended to be gradable and denote extreme degrees of properties.
Establishing a parallelism between adverbs and adjectives of completeness allows us to explore scalarity across categories and the relevance of scale structure in the nominal domain.
This paper deals with German 'wobei'-clauses and their Italian counterparts. Based on a corpus study of administrative texts, we identify the type and frequency of the Italian constructions that correspond to 'wobei'-clauses. In particular, we will assess to what extent the Italian converb construction gerundio correlates with 'wobei'-clauses. More specifically, we will focus on the thesis put forward by Haspelmath (1995) and Breindl (2014), according to which comitativity is expressed by converb constructions when it applies to state of affairs.
In this paper, I address verbal predicates of change in Southern Aymara, an understudied Andean language. I concentrate on verbs that are derived with the suffix -cha. This suffix derives degree achievements and creation predicates. I propose that they should be analyzed uniformly as degree achievements. The main empirical point of this paper is that there are two degree morphemes that combine with verbs with -cha, namely, a covert positive morpheme v.POS and an overt suffix -su. The latter is a degree morpheme that restricts the standard of comparison to lexical or contextual maximal degrees. I propose an analysis in terms of Maximize Presupposition: v.POS and -su constitute lexical alternatives where the latter is preferred over the former when maximal values are reached. v.POS is thus felicitous when no maximum is reached. The discussion bears on how telicity is achieved cross-linguistically when degree achievements are considered, thus enriching our typologies on the topic.
Our results indicate some differences in the use of aspect between French and Croatian speaking children. In Croatian language children always manage to keep the appropriate aspect, unlike French children. However, the imperfective aspect seems to be better acquired in French children than the perfective aspect. The perfective aspect, the marked form both in French as well as in Croatian, is related to the lexical meaning of the verbs. The acquisition of the Aktionsart in both languages seems to be more a matter of semantics than of morphology. Furthermore, our data suggest the existence of a specific developmental trend in the use of Aktionsart (intensive, iterative and inchoative), which is similar for children speaking Slavic and Romanic languages.
It is traditionally assumed that lexical causative verbs (e.g. kill) express direct causation only, while periphrastic (bi-clausal) causatives (e.g. cause to die) may also express indirect causation. In favour of this constraint, Fodor famously observed that the (change of) state introduced by lexical causative verbs is not accessible for separate adverbial modification by temporal (or manner) adverbials. In this paper, I present old and new arguments against the direct causation constraint under the definitions of directness of Fodor and Wolff. I then propose a new definition of directness in terms of ab-initio causal sufficiency framed in Kvart’s probabilistic account of singular causation. I argue that directness so redefined is an implicature rather than an entailment of lexical causative verbs, which enables me to account for old and new data. Furthermore, I account for why the constraint on separate modification by temporal adverbials can be relaxed with eventuality-denoting subjects.
This paper discusses locative inversion constructions in Otjiherero against the background of previous work by Bresnan and Kanerva (1989) on the construction in Chichewa, and Demuth and Mmusi (1997) on Setswana and related languages. Locative inversion in Otjiherero is structurally similar to locative inversion in Chichewa and Setswana, but differs from these languages in that there are fewer thematic restrictions on predicates undergoing locative inversion. As Otjiherero has a three-way morphological distinction of locative subject markers, this shows that there is no relation between agreement morphology and thematic restrictions in locative inversion, confirming the result of Demuth and Mmusi. The availability of transitive predicates to participate in locative inversion in Otjiherero furthermore raises questions about the relation between locative inversion, valency, and applicative marking, and these are addressed in the paper, although further research is needed for a full analysis. In terms of function of the locative subject markers, Otjiherero presents, like Chishona, a split system where all markers support locative readings, but where one of them is also used in expletive contexts. In contrast to Chishona, though, this is the class 16, rather than the class 17 marker.
Inversion constructions in Bantu have been discussed from a variety of perspectives over the last decades. Well-known construction types include locative inversion and subject-object reversal, while more recently semantic locative inversion and instrument inversion have been described. Theoretical studies of Bantu inversion constructions have focused on different aspects of the construction, including the licensing and grammatical function, information structure properties and the formal characteristics of pre- and postverbal NPs. With respect to the status of preverbal NPs in inversion constructions, different analyses have probed the status of the NP as subject or topic, or, more recently, as the subject of a Predication relation. The present paper summarises and compares different analyses of the preverbal domain in inversion constructions and brings out empirical and conceptual similarities and differences. In addition, different analyses are related to comparative studies of Bantu inversion constructions, so as to probe how attested variation across Bantu relates to findings of different formal accounts. The paper aims to summarise current research on the preverbal domain in inversion constructions and to indicate directions for future work.
The present study is concerned with Single Clitics, as weil as with Clitic Doubling and Clitic Left Dislocation constructions and will test the Uniformity Hypothesis (Sportiehe 1992), according to which all three constructions involve the same underlying structure. It will be shown that:
- acquisition data pose a problem for the Uniformity Hypothesis (Sportiche 1992) and support rather the idea that Single Clitic, Clitic Doubling and Clitic Left Dislocation constructions do not involve the same underlying structure,
- omission of definite articles in Clitic Doubling and Clitic Left Dislocation constructions parallels omission of definite articles in simple DPs,
- selective omission of some types of Determiners, i.e. definite articles and use of another type of Determiners, i.e. clitic pronouns, can be explained in terms of the different feature specification of words belonging to the category D and the different status of clitics vs. definite articles.
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.
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.
Wie Hashtags bei Twitter als Teile von Komposita verwendet werden, zeigt Markus Majewski in seinem Beitrag #Erdogan-Diktatur - Hashtags als Elemente von Substantivkomposita in politischen Tweets. Als Grundlage dient ihm das Korpus aus Tweets von SpitzenpolitikerInnen der großen Parteien während des Wahlkampfs, in dem er alle Substantivkomposita mit einem Hashtag als Bestandteil wie #Energiewende auf funktionale, graphematische und strukturelle Aspekte untersucht. Insbesondere bei der Schreibung der Komposita zeigt sich eine große Kreativität. Zudem lassen sich Twitter-spezifische Kommunikationsfunktionen der Hashtag-Erstglieder beobachten.
The article 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 verbs eventuality argument. So-called event-external modifiers relate to the full eventuality, whereas event-internal modifiers relate to some integral part of it. The choice between external and internal modification is shown to be dependent on the modifiers syntactic base position. Event-external modifiers are base-generated at the VP periphery, whereas event-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 verbs 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. For the intriguing problem that certain locative modifiers occasionally seem to have nonlocative (instrumental, positional, or manner) readings, the advocated approach can provide a rather simple solution.
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.
Within the Davidsonian paradigm copula-predicative constructions are commonly assumed to involve a state argument. Its source is taken to be either the copula 'be' (cf. e.g. Bierwisch 1988) or the predicative (cf. the ongoing stage level/individual level debate). Yet, a critical examination of copula-predicative constructions in contexts that call for Davidsonian arguments (locative modifiers, manner adverbials, perception verbs, etc.) reveals that they do not behave as expected. In fact, the data examined here do not support the assumption that copula-predicative constructions are equipped with a Davidsonian argument nor is there any evidence for a grammatically reflected distinction between temporary and permanent properties. The present paper argues alternatively for a grammatical distinction between states like' sit', 'stand', 'sleep', 'wait', 'live' and statives like 'resemble', 'know', 'hate', 'cost' which is invoked by the presence or absence of a Davidsonian argument. Copula-predicative constructions are shown to belong uniformly to the class of statives. The acceptability differences of copula-predicative constructions in combination with locative modifiers are accounted for pragmatically on the basis of conversational implicatures.
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.
Mediengestützter Deutschunterricht im türkischen universitären Bereich : eine Bestandsaufnahme
(2010)
A trend in nature of a permanent increase towards multimedia lifestyle has arisen in all stratas of the society. Thus, rather than using written course-books, publishing houses prefer to encourage use of multimedia which are dependent to course-book or which are independent of course-book and language learners prefer to learn with multimedia. Thus it is encouraged that courses are supported in that manner. This study aims to examine scope and limits of computer aided German teaching which is flourishing as a foreign language within Turkey university education recently. This study has been applied in preparatory classes of departments which provide four-year education. Results of a survey on use of multimedia dependent on course-book or independent of course-book within courses within Turkey university education has been given within scope of this study. Evidences on competence of German teachers and learners in use of multimedia has been given and have been visualized through use of graphics. Problems of multimedia aided German courses and solutions offers will be submitted.
The Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN) was developed to assess the narrative abilities of bi- and multilingual children in the various languages that they speak. This paper presents the details of the adaptation of MAIN to three Indian languages, Kannada, Hindi and Malayalam. We describe some typological features of these languages and discuss the challenges faced during the process of adaptation. Finally, we give an overview of results for narrative comprehension and production from Kannada-English and Hindi-English bilinguals aged 7 to 9.
Heterogeneity and standardization in data, use, and annotation : a diachronic corpus of German
(2005)
This paper describes the standardization problems that come up in a diachronic corpus: it has to cope with differing standards with regard to diplomaticity, annotation, and header information. Such highly heterogeneous texts must be standardized to allow for comparative research without (too much) loss of information.
Whether degrees should be modeled as simple semantic primitives or ontologically complex entities has been an issue in recent formal semantic research. This article aims to make a contribution to this scholarly enterprise by investigating the Differential Verbal Comparative (DVC) construction in Chinese. DVCs exhibit peculiar properties : (i) obligatory differentials, and (ii) DPs as differentials(e.g., liang ben xiaoshuo ‘two CL novel’).
We propose that a degree is the entity correlate of a property that is formed on the basis of a measure, akin to Chierchia-style kind. This new kind of degree, coupled with a difference function-based semantics for comparatives, correctly predicts the behaviors of DVCs which would otherwise remain formally inscrutable. This article’s contributions are twofold: (i) it provides direct support for the degree-as-kind analysis by extending its empirical scope; and (ii) by combining degrees as kinds with a difference function-based semantics, it represents an improvement over the previous degree-as-kind analysis based on linear ordering.
This paper introduces the Mandarin version of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN) and describes the adaptation process. The Mandarin MAIN not only extends the empirical coverage of MAIN by including one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, but also offers an important tool to assess the narrative abilities of monolingual and bi-/ multi- lingual children acquiring Mandarin as a first, heritage, second, or additional language across the globe.
This paper investigates the meaning adaptability of change of state (CoS) verbs. It
argues that both coercion and underspecification are necessary mechanisms in order to properly
account for the semantic adaptability observable for CoS verbs in combination with their
complements. This type of meaning adaptability has received little formal attention to date,
although some recent work has already led the way on this topic (Spalek, 2014; Lukassek and
Spalek, 2016; Asher et al., 2017). Our paper is part of a cross-linguistic case study of German
einfrieren and Spanish congelar (‘freeze’). We model the meaning adaptability of this test case
within Type Composition Logic (TCL) (Asher, 2011). We build on Asher’s coercion mechanism
and introduce an additional mechanism for underspecification that exploits the fine-grained type
system in TCL.
Sentence mood in German is a complex category that is determined by various components of the grammatical system. In particular, verbal mood, the position of the finite verb and the wh-characteristics of the so called 'Vorfeld'-phrase are responsible for the constitution of sentence mood in German. This article proposes a theory of sentence mood constitution in German and investigates the interaction between the pronominal binding of indefinite noun phrases which are semantically analyzed as choice functions. It is shown that the semantic objects determined by sentence mood define different kinds of domains which have to be uniquely accessible as the range of the choice function. The various properties of the pronominal binding of indefinites can be derived by the interplay of the proposed theoretical notions.
Identical topic (IT henceforth) was previously known as copying topic (Xu & Liu (1998:141-157). It is fully or partially identical to a corresponding element (CE henceforth) occurring in the following part of the clause. Broadly speaking, IT is semantically empty. Being an unusual type of adding, it properly falls into the central concern of this volume.
It seems IT can be attested in all Chinese dialects, though the phenomena in question have been poorly documented and have scarcely been studied under a unified category. IT seems to be a better candidate to characterise topic prominent languages than many other topic types including the non-gap topic, which has long been called "Chinese style topic" since Chafe (1976) and has been viewed as a major characteristic of topic prominent languages (e.g., Li & Thompson, 1976, Xu & Langendoen 1985, Gasde 1999). I believe the study of IT structure is necessary to obtain a clearer and more complete picture of topic structure in general. As far as I know, Wu dialects of Chinese, including Shanghainese, are the ones which have the richest IT types and the greatest text frequency of IT. Therefore, this study will be based on both Mandarin and Shanghainese data.
This paper takes a close look at the properties of Hungarian relative clauses that occur in the left periphery of the main clause, preceding a (pro)nominal associate. It will be shown that these left-peripheral relative clauses differ in many ways from relative clauses dislocated on the right periphery, as well as from relative clauses embedded under a (pro)nominal head. To capture the precise syntax of these left-peripheral clauses, these will be compared to ordinary left-dislocated items, with which they have some properties in common. Despite the surface similarities between the two, however, there are a few decisive aspects of behaviour, most notably, distributional properties and connectivity effects, which argue against taking left-peripheral relatives as cases of clausal left-dislocates in Hungarian. Instead, one is led to consider these as correlative clauses, on the basis of the properties they share with well-established correlatives in languages like Hindi.
This article adresses one function of dialects showing their importance of controlling everyday language. On the example of Low German, a vernacular spoken in Northern Germany, the function of identity is shown and explained. Firstly the understanding of biography is given, followed by an overview about the research undertaking about biographical studies in linguistics, especially in dialectology and Low German philology. The main part concerns the exemplary analysis of an interview of a dialect speaker. The aim of the article is to show in detail the identity function of dialects and the chances qualitive methods can contribute to linguistic researches.
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 paper presents the Italian version of the Multilingual Assessment tool for Narratives (MAIN), describes how it was developed and reports on some recent uses of MAIN within the Italian context. The Italian MAIN has been used in different research projects and for clinical purposes; results have been presented at conferences and in peer reviewed papers. The results indicate that MAIN is an appropriate assessment tool for evaluating children’s narrative competence, in production and comprehension from preschool age (5 years) to school age (8 years) in typical language development, bilingual development and language delay/disorders.
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.
Although the linear order of arguments (and adverbials) in German is relatively free, it underlies certain restrictions; these don’t apply to the so-called unmarked order for arguments (Lenerz 1977) and adverbials (Frey/Pittner 1998). It is a common assumption to take the unmarked order as basic and derive all other orders from it by scrambling, whatever its specific characteristics may be (cf., amongst others, Haider/Rosengren 1998). The observable restrictions obtaining for some linear ordering may then be considered as constraints on a movement operation (scrambling). [...] In the following, I will try to present the outlines of a possible explanation for the restriction, based on a proposal governing the proper referential interpretation of indefinite NPs.
MED (Media EDitor) is a program designed to facilitate the transcription of digitized soundfiles into textfiles. It was written by Hans Drexler and Daan Broeder, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. [...] The aim of MED is to facilitate the transcription of sound into text using a single program. It works on the principle of the coexistence and interaction of two basic elements, the waveform display window and the text window. [...] This means that you no longer need to use both a sound editor and a word processor at the same time in order to transcribe digitized speech files. Instead, you can directly type the sound you hear (and see) via MED into the text window. Furthermore, you can directly link sound portions of the waveform display window to text portions of the text window, so that you can easily locate and listen to the original source of your transcription once the links have been set. In this function the waveform display window and the text window virtually interact with each other.
Some conceptual and empirical issues in linguistic theory : an illustration with pronominal clitics
(2001)
I would like to discuss a few general conceptual issues in linguistic theory, and see how they bear on some empirical facts about pronominal clitics. In particular, I would like to show that the conception of linguistic theory, justified on independent grounds, limits the class of issues and possible explanations for grammatical properties of specific linguistic expressions. I argue that this is not simply a consequence of a specific conception of grammar, conceived of as a system of principles and rules governing language, but has non-trivial empirical ramifications. Pronominal clitics are a good case study, since their grammatical properties bear on a wide range of facts falling under the purview of principles of phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics.
Questioning speech acts
(2018)
The function of mapping from the semantic content of an utterance to its convention of use (a division of labor first made by Frege (1956)) has been attributed to abstract speech act operators (also known as force operators), such as ASSERT, QUESTION, and COMMAND. These operators have been traditionally assumed to occupy the highest echelons of the clausal periphery. The precise formulation of these operators has attracted a lot of attention from semanticists, as they are crucial for formalizing the diverse discourse functions of speech acts (Farkas and Bruce, 2009; Farkas and Roelofsen, 2017; Malamud and Stepheson, 2015; Krifka, 2015). These high operators usually come packaged with two assumptions: i) they are not embeddable under other elements, and ii) they belong to the realm of pure pragmatics and not compositional semantics. Recent research in both semantics and syntax have challenged these assumptions (Krifka, 2015; Davis, 2011; Wiltschko, 2017; Heim et al., 2016). Based on evidence from a language with a rich array of sentence-final particles (SFPs), Cantonese, we argue in this paper that not only are abstract speech operators embeddable, it is also the case that we need compositional mechanisms in these high regions of the clause. We will investigate the SFP stacking phenomenon, and argue that such grammaticalized operations on speech act operators reveal the need for a system that can compose the content of an utterance with multiple particles that update the discourse in a number of different, non-trivial ways.
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.