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Erdvilas Jakulis’ thorough, detailed and comprehensive study (2004) is an important contribution to our reconstruction of the Balto-Slavic verbal system. The following remarks are intended to complement his findings from a Slavic perspective. Jakulis demonstrates that the type of Lith. tekèti, teka ‘flow’ is largely of East Baltic provenance. He finds it difficult to identify the same type in Old Prussian.
It is gratifying to see that Jay Jasanoff has now (2004) adopted my theory that "the Balto-Slavic acute was a kind of stød or broken tone" (p. 172), which I have been advocating since 1973. Unfortunately, his acceptance of my view is not based on an evaluation of the comparative evidence (for which see Kortlandt 1985a) but on his desire to derive Balto-Slavic “acute” and "circumflex" syllables from the "bimoric" and "trimoric" long vowels which he assumes for Proto-Germanic as the reflexes of the Indo-European "acute" and "circumflex" tones of the neogrammarians. Since the original "circumflex" was limited to Indo-European VHV-sequences, Jasanoff proposes a whole series of additional lengthenings yielding "hyperlong" vowels in Germanic, Baltic and Slavic, which still do not suffice to eliminate the counter-evidence (cf. Kortlandt 2004b: 14). The reason for this failure is his unwillingness to recognize that lengthened grade vowels are circumflex in Balto-Slavic (cf. Kortlandt 1997a).
The study offers a discourse-based account of the Spanish copula forms ser and estar, which are generally considered to be lexical exponents of the stage-level/individual-level contrast. It argues against the popular view that the distinction between SLPs and ILPs rests on a fundamental cognitive division of the world that is reflected in the grammar. As it happens, conceptual oppositions like “temporary vs. permanent” or “arbitrary vs. essential“ provide only a preference for the interpretation of estar and ser. In addition, the evidence for an SLP/ILP impact on the grammar turns out to be far less conclusive than is currently assumed. The study argues against event-based accounts of the ser/estar contrast in particular, showing that ser and estar pattern alike in failing all of the standard eventuality tests. The discourse-based account proposed instead assumes that ser and estar both display the same lexical semantics (which is identical to the semantics of English be, German sein, etc.); estar differs from ser only in presupposing a relation to a specific discourse situation. By using estar a speaker restricts his or her claim to a specific discourse situation, whereas by using ser, the speaker makes no such restriction. The preference for interpreting estar predications as denoting temporary properties and ser predications as denoting permanent properties follows from economy principles driving the pragmatic legitimation of estars discourse dependence. The analysis proposed in this paper can also account for the observation that ser predications do not give rise to thetic judgements. The proposal is couched in terms of the framework of DRT.
Dictionaries contain lexicographic data whose occurrence is restricted to certain geo-graphical areas, subject fields, professions, etc. It is part of the duties of the lexicographer to give an account of such deviations to ensure a successful retrieval of the information on the part of the user. This contribution presents a discussion on labelling issues in the Dictionnaire Français–Mpongwé. Although the main focus is on the presentation of different types of labelling as well as problems in labelling, textual condensation procedures and mediostructural representations (to-gether with some aspects of the user perspective) are also critically evaluated. It is shown that these procedures reveal some inconsistencies which are not accounted for in the outer texts (front matter and back matter texts) of the dictionary. Finally suggestions are made for the improvement of the access structure of this dictionary.
Wie formt sich die Sprache im Kopf? : Kognitive Linguistik: Sprache, Grammatik und die Wissenswelten
(2005)
At the same time that language is fundamental for establishing and maintaining social-cultural groups, it is also influenced by them to the extent that a number of social-cultural conventions are unconsciously mirrored in their members’ linguistic manifestations. Different expectations regarding conversational style in interactions between speakers from different cultural groups can lead to misunderstandings, conflicts or even to the creation and perpetuation of stereotypes. This paper will present some examples and considerations of conversational style and interculturality in general and about conversational style in German and Brazil in particular.
This article combines a brief introduction into a particular philosophical theory of "time" with a demonstration of how this theory has been implemented in a Literary Studies oriented Humanities Computing project. The aim of the project was to create a model of text-based time cognition and design customized markup and text analysis tools that help to understand ‘‘how time works’’: more precisely, how narratively organised and communicated information motivates readers to generate the mental image of a chronologically organized world. The approach presented is based on the unitary model of time originally proposed by McTaggart, who distinguished between two perspectives onto time, the so-called A- and B-series. The first step towards a functional Humanities Computing implementation of this theoretical approach was the development of TempusMarker—a software tool providing automatic and semi-automatic markup routines for the tagging of temporal expressions in natural language texts. In the second step we discuss the principals underlying TempusParser—an analytical tool that can reconstruct temporal order in events by way of an algorithm-driven process of analysis and recombination of textual segments during which the "time stamp" of each segment as indicated by the temporal tags is interpreted.
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].
DP is not a scope island
(2005)
Woher kommt das neuerwachte Interesse an Sprachrichtigkeit? Woher kommt die ausgeprägte sprachliche Unsicherheit, die auch bei vielen hochgebildeten Menschen den Wunsch entstehen lässt, von Sprachpflegern über ihr Ureigenstes, nämlich ihre Muttersprache, belehrt zu werden? Obwohl Antworten auf diese Fragen letztlich spekulativ bleiben, wage ich doch die These, dass eine Ursache hierfür die Rechtschreibreform ist, die von einem Großteil der Bevölkerung nach wie vor nicht angenommen wird, die insgesamt weder zur Vereinfachung noch zu einer höheren Einheitlichkeit geführt hat; die aber andererseits ein öffentliches Nachdenken und Diskutieren über Sprachrichtigkeit in Gang setzte. – Jedenfalls ist die Verunsicherung ein Faktum, das von Linguisten nicht ignoriert werden sollte.
Ausgangspunkt: Die Kritik am "Zwei-Welten-Modell": Die grundlegende linguistische Unterscheidung zwischen "Sprache" und "Sprechen" ist im Rahmen der neueren Debatten um Sprachmedialität wieder verstärkt thematisiert und kritisiert worden. Lässt sich dieses schulbildende, in der Linguistik geradezu eherne Begriffspaar überhaupt noch sinnvollerweise aufrechterhalten? Oder muss es mindestens umdefiniert, vielleicht sogar gänzlich verworfen werden? Hat sich insbesondere die auf Chomsky zurückgehende Unterscheidung von Sprachkompetenz und -performanz nicht von selbst ad absurdum geführt, nachdem der linguistische Kognitivismus chomskyscher Provenienz Sprache als lebendiges Phänomen, als Medium menschlicher Kommunikation, vollständig aus dem Blick verloren hat? Führt nicht schon die scheinbar harmlose linguistische Differenzierung zwischen einer Sprachregel und ihrer Anwendung zu einer irreführenden und unangemessenen Verdinglichung von Sprache? ...
The article presents an analysis of different speech styles used by participants of the German speech community in contrast to the Brazilian one, based on examples of interviews made in both cultures. After the illustration of the different language uses, the article’s focus will be on the communicative functions the styles in each community. So, we find the phatic, poetic and expressive function more dominant in the Brazilian speech, whereas the use of the referential and the metalinguistic function seem to be more common in the speech of the German respondents. It is therefore possible to establish the dichotomy between the actor and the spectator in a metaphorical sense to summarize these contrasting functions. Finally, the fact in which these results can in part be explicated by their embedding in different cultural and historical backgrounds, emphasizing the Brazilian speech community as a more heterogenous and baroque, compared with the German one which tends to be more homogenous and (self)-observing will be shown.
The purpose of this article is to report on the work carried out during the research project "O trabalho de tradutor como fonte para a constituição de base de dados" (The translator´s work as a source for the constitution of a database). Through the restoration, organization and digitalization of the personal glossary and part of the books containing the translations made by the deceased public translator Gustavo Lohnefink, this research project intends to construct a digital database of German – Portuguese technical terms (for the language pair), which could then be used by other translators. In order to achieve this purpose, a specific methodology had to be developed, which could be used as a starting-point for the treatment and recovery of other similarly organized data-collections.
Theories of cognition that are based on information processing and representation are reactive (Rosen, 1985) or backwards looking, not anticipatory. In a previous article (Thibault, 2005a), I looked at the reasons why humans and bonobos do not need an innate language faculty in order to be minded, languaging beings. The present article takes up some of the questions explored there, but, it asks, on the other hand, what sort of a minded agent has language and what kind of account of language and more broadly meaning do we need to explain minded, languaged agents and the activities they participate in? Following Rosen (1985), I also take up and further develop a point first raised in Thibault (2004a: 187) on language as an anticipatory system, rather than a reactively ‘representational’ one (see also Bickhard, 2005).
This paper discusses constructions like “We’ll have two beers and a coffee.” that are typically used for beverage orders in restaurant contexts. We compare the behaviour of nouns in these constructions in three Germanic languages, English, Icelandic, and German, and take a closer look at the correlation of the morpho-syntactic and semantic-conceptual changes involved here. We show that even within such a closely related linguistic sample, one finds three different grammatical options for the expression of the same conceptual transition. Our findings suggest an analysis of coercion as a genuinely semantic phenomenon, a phenomenon that is located on a level of semantic representations that serves as an interface between the conceptual and the grammatical system and takes into account inter- and intralinguistic variations.
Language planning for the Irish language in the Republic of Ireland has featured prominently in international language policy and planning literature over the years. Researchers in the field may not be up to date, however, with recent developments in the area of Irish language planning and their impact on the language ecology. This monograph describes the language planning situation in the Republic of Ireland in its historical and social contexts as well as delineating language policy and planning for the Irish language implemented over the past number of years, showing developments in education, community, media, religion and local politics.