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A two-week perturbation EMA-experiment was carried out with palatal prostheses. Articulatory effort for five speakers was assessed by means of peak acceleration and jerk during the tongue tip gestures from /t/ towards /i, e, o, y, u/. After a period of no change speakers showed an increase in these values. Towards the end of the experiment the values decreased. The results are interpreted as three phases of carrying out changes in the internal model. At first, the complete production system is shifted in relation to the palatal change, afterwards speakers explore different production mechanisms which involves more articulatory effort. This second phase can be seen as a training phase where several articulatory strategies are explored. In the third phase speakers start to select an optimal movement strategy to produce the sounds so that the values decrease.
Temporal development of compensation strategies for perturbed palate shape in German /S/-production
(2006)
The palate shape of four speakers was changed by a prosthesis which either lowered the palate or retracted the alveoles. Subjects wore the prosthesis for two weeks and were recorded several times via EMA. Results of articulatory measurements show that speakers use different compensation methods at different stages of the adaptation. They lower the tongue immediately after the insertion of the prosthesis. Other compensation methods as for example lip protrusion are only acquired after longer practising periods. The results are interpreted as supporting the existence of different mappings between motor commands, vocal tract shape and auditory-acoustic target.
Several articulatory strategies are available during the production of /u/, all resulting in a similar acoustic output. /u/ has two main constrictions, at the velum and at the lips. A perturbation of either constriction can be compensated at the other one, e.g wider constriction at the velum by more lip protrusion, wider lip opening by more tongue retraction. This study investigates whether speakers use this relation under perturbation. Six speakers were provided with palatal prostheses which were worn for two weeks. Speakers were instructed to make a serious attempt to produce normal speech. Their speech was recorded via EMA and acoustics several times over the adaptation period. Formant values of /u/-productions were measured. Velar constriction width and lip protrusion were estimated. For four speakers a correlation between constriction width and lip protrusion was found. A negative correlation between lip protrusion and F1 or F2 could sometimes be observed, but no correlation occurred between constriction size and either of the formants. The results show that under perturbation speakers use motor equivalent strategies in order to adapt. The correlation between constriction size and lip protrusion is stronger than in studies investigating unperturbed speech. This could be because under perturbation speakers are inclined to try out several strategies in order to reach the acoustic target and the co-variability might thus be greater.
Two hypotheses have been proposed in order to account for velar softening, i.e., a process through which /k/ changes to an affricate. Whereas one hypothesis states that for the process to apply the velar stop has to be realized as an (alveolo) palatal stop (articulation-based hypothesis), the other claims that velar softening is triggered by acoustic similarity between the input and output segments (acoustic equivalence hypothesis). The present paper investigates the acoustic equivalence hypothesis by comparing several acoustic properties of /k/ in various vowel contexts with those of /ts , ts , tc / for three languages differing in stop burst aspiration, i.e., German, Polish and Catalan. Results suggest that the acoustic equivalence hypothesis could account for velar softening in aspirated velar stops but not in unaspirated velar stops. The results also provide an explanation as to why aspirated velar stops are prone to undergo softening more easily when followed by front vocalic segments than in other contexts and positions
This paper shows that several typologically unrelated languages share the tendency to avoid voiced sibilant affricates. This tendency is explained by appealing to the phonetic properties of the sounds, and in particular to their aerodynamic characteristics. On the basis of experimental evidence it is shown that conflicting air pressure requirements for maintaining voicing and frication are responsible for the avoidance of voiced affricates. In particular, the air pressure released from the stop phase of the affricate is too high to maintain voicing, which in consequence leads to a devoicing of the frication part.
A model is proposed that interprets a variety of connected speech processes as resulting from prosodic modulations at different tiers of functional speech motor control along the hypo-hyper dimension [10]. The general background of the model is given by the trichotomy of A-, B- and C-prosodic phenomena [15] that together constitute the acoustic makeup of any speech utterance (with regard to their respective time domains at the uttarance/phrase level, the syllabic level and the segmental level).
Bilabial stops undergoing Surface Palatalization (SP) were analyzed in an EMMA/EPG study. Articulatorily, the point of maximal palatal contact and the labial opening movement were analyzed. The acoustic analysis pertained to stop related timing and the point of the highest F2-value. Results show (i) that SP yields a higher F2 at vowel onset and a lengthened opening gesture and (ii) that morphemeinduced palatalizations are distinguished from word initial ones and sandhi-palatalizations articulatorily and acoustically by a shorter delay of palatal target position with respect to stop production; (iii) no differences are found between ‘repalatalized’ and plain segments in case of sandhi palatalization.
Stellen wir uns vor, wir hätten im Jahre 1600 eine wissenschaftliche Kontroverse in deutscher Sprache zu führen, beispielsweise über die Frage, ob die Astrologie eine ernstzunehmende Wissenschaft ist – eine sehr aktuelle Debatte in dieser Zeit. In dieser Lage müssten wir natürlich den damaligen Fachwortschatz der Astronomie und Astrologie beherrschen, wir müssten beispielsweise wissen was eine Coniunction der Planeten Jupiter und Mars oder eine Zusammenfügung Saturni vnnd der Sonnen ist oder wie der Ausdruck newer Stern verwendet wird. Gleichzeitig müssten wir aber auch den nicht-fachspezifischen, allgemeinen wissenschaftlichen Sprachgebrauch der Zeit kennen, der für wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzungen verwendet wurde. Zumeist wurden Kontroversen zwischen Akademikern in dieser Zeit auf Latein geführt, der wissenschaftlichen lingua franca der Zeit. Wenn aber eine größere deutschsprachige Öffentlichkeit angesprochen werden sollte, wurde auch die deutsche Sprache verwendet, in der – wie ich zeigen möchte – für diesen Zweck schon sehr differenzierte sprachliche Mittel entwickelt waren.
Zur Beschreibung der Dialogdynamik : Plädoyer für eine kommunikationshistorische Betrachtungsweise
(1989)
Bei der Betrachtung längerer Gesprächsverläufe bietet sich uns oft das Bild einer sukzessiven Entfaltung der Dialogzusammenhänge, die teils schrittweise, teils sprunghaft verläuft. Es werden Themen eingeführt, durchgespielt und gewechselt. Manche Bemerkungen eröffnen ganze Zweige des Gesprächs, andere verschließen gewisse Entwicklungsmöglichkeiten, zumindest für eine bestimmte Zeit. Argumentative Passagen mit erhöhtem Anspruch an Strenge der Gedankenführung und Präzision der Redeweise lösen lockere Passagen mit geringer Ernsthaftigkeit ab. Ein Dialog beginnt als Vorwurfskommunikation und endet als allgemeiner Diskurs über die Geltung von Normen. Neue Redeweisen kommen auf, spielen sich ein und werden fallen gelassen. Mißverständnisse treten auf, werden geklärt oder auch nicht. Erst am Schluß eines Gesprächs versteht man so richtig, was der Gesprächspartner am Anfang gemeint hat usw. Derartige Erscheinungen möchte ich unter den Begriff der Dialogdynamik fassen. Eine Betrachtungsweise, die speziell die Entfaltung von Kommunikationszusammenhängen im eben erläuterten Sinne zu erfassen sucht, könnte man kommunikationshistorisch oder kommunikationsdynamisch nennen, je nachdem, ob eher der Verlauf konkreter Kommunikationen unter Aspekten der genannten Art analysiert werden soll oder ob eine systematische Analyse von Typen von Kommunikationsverläufen beabsichtigt ist.
Coherence in hypertext
(1999)
At first sight hypertext does not look !ike a good subject for research on coherence. Hypertext is non-linear text, and coherence is typically defined for linear text. So coherence does not seem to be involved in hypertext at all. But on closer inspection it emerges that some of the basic structural problems with hypertexts are classical problems of coherence.
Our study is concerned with the identification of ‘difficult’ structure s in the acquisition of a foreign language, which will shed light on theoretical considerations of L2 processing. We argue that – compared to simple vocabulary items or abstract syntactic patterns – structures that contain lexical material as well as categorial variables are especially difficult to acquire. The difficulty level for particular patterns is shown to depend on surface invariability but not on the syntactic categories within which target patterns are embedded. As an example we study the distribution of certain structures which are underused by L2 German learners.
Word formation in Distributed Morphology (see Arad 2005, Marantz 2001, Embick 2008): 1. Language has atomic, non-decomposable, elements = roots. 2. Roots combine with the functional vocabulary and build larger elements. 3. Roots are category neutral. They are then categorized by combining with category defining functional heads.
Thema dieses Aufsatzes sind die Methoden der Datenerhebung für syntaktische Untersuchungen und deren Auswirkungen auf die Ergebnisse dieser Untersuchungen. Die Wahl der Datenbasis ist selbst schon bestimmt durch bestimmte theoretische Positionen, Einstellungen gegenüber dem Forschungsgegenstand und durch bestimmte Erkenntnisinteressen. Es soll hier also nicht der Eindruck erweckt werden, als wäre die Datenbasis per se für die "Folgen" verantwortlich.
Redekommentierende Einschübe
(1996)
Das Thema dieses Aufsatzes sind redekommentierende Einschübe. Zunächst gilt es zu klären, was unter "Einschub" verstanden werden soll. Einschub verwende ich hier weitgehend gleichbedeutend mit Parenthese. Parenthesen werden jedoch manchmal als "Schaltsätze", also als eingeschobene Sätze, definiert. Einschub ist hier ein weniger vorbelasteter Terminus.
Valenz und Relevanz - eine informationsstrukturelle Erklärung für "obligatorische" Adverbiale
(1995)
Adverbiale stellen ein Problem fü r die Beschreibung der Valenz bzw. der Argumentstruktur von Verben dar, da sie sowohl als Ergänzungen (Argumente) wie auch als freie Angaben (Adjunkte) auftreten können. Die Obligatorik bietet keine Möglichkeit, Ergänzungen von Angaben zu unterscheiden, da Ergänzungen sowohl obligatorisch als auch fakultativ sein können.
Im folgenden Beitrag werden die Möglichkeiten der Bildung des Progressivs im Aja dargestellt sowie die zur Bildung des Progressivs verwendeten Formen in ihrer Grammatikalisierungskette vorgestellt. Das Aja gehört zu einer Gruppe von Sprachen/Dialekten, die lange Zeit unter dem Begriff "Ewe" zusammengefaßt wurden, in jüngster Zeit aber auch als Gbe(-Kontinuum) bezeichnet werden. Dabei ist "Gbe" ein in allen sprachlichen Einheiten des Kontinuums anzutreffendes Lexem mit der Bedeutung "Sprache".
This article discusses the divergent status of the two particles lé and lá in the grammar of Konkomba, a Gur language (Niger-Congo) of the Gurma subgroup. While previous studies claim that both particles are focus markers, this author argues that only the particle lá should be analyzed as a pure pragmatic device. Distributional studies suggest that the use of particle lé, on the other hand, is only required under specific focus conditions, and primarily represents a syntactic device.
0. Introduction 1. Observations concerning the structure of morphosyntactically marked focus constructions 1.1 First observation: SF vs. NSF asymmetry 1.2 Second observation: NSF-NAR parallelism 1.3 Affirmative ex-situ focus constructions (SF, NSF), and narrative clauses (NAR) 2. Grammaticalization 2.1 Cleft hypothesis 2.2 Movement hypothesis 2.3 Narrative hypothesis 2.3.1 Back- or Foregrounding? 2.3.2 Converse directionality of FM and conjunction 3. Language specific analysis 4. Conclusionary remarks References
Focus expressions in Yom
(2005)
In our presentation we will outline the verb system of Lelemi and concentrate on certain “focal” aspects which are of primary interest to us. Lelemi has two TAMP paradigms: one constituting the so-called “simple tenses”, the other the so-called “relative tenses” (Allan 1973), although not every “simple tense” has a counterpart in the “relative tenses”. The simple paradigm is formed by subject prefixes (prefixed pronouns for 1st or 2nd person and noun class pronouns for 3rd persons) and the verb form whereas the relative paradigm is build up by the obligatory use of an external subject noun, an invariable verb prefix, and the verb form. While the simple paradigm is used in quite a lot of syntactic environments the relative paradigm only shows up in relative clauses with the subject being the head as well as in subject and sentence focus constructions including questions concerning the subject. We will show some interesting interactions between the grammatical expression of focus and the verb system and sketch the grammaticalisation path of the morpheme nà.
Research on adverbials in sentence-medial position in the North- Ghanaian Gur language Buli suggests that the language offers two divergent slots for adverbials between subject and verb. Special attention is paid to the group of sentence-medial deictic temporal adverbials. While they have the potential to develop into tense markers, this process seems to depend on special information structural conditions.
Focus in Gur and Kwa
(2006)
The project investigates focus phenomena in the two genetically relatedWest African Gur and Kwa language groups of the Niger-Congo phylum. Most of its members are tone languages, they are similar with respect to word order typology (all are SVO languages), but of divergent morphological type (agglutinating Gur versus isolating Kwa).
Focus expressions in Foodo
(2006)
This talk concerns the copula system in Buli, a Ghanaian language which has also been attested in Bahia (Rodrigues 1935, Zwernemann 1968). Special focus will be put on the categorization of two copula-reminiscent elements for which I will propose a discoursepragmatic analysis.
Metaphern bestimmen nicht nur unser alltägliches Leben, etwa wenn wir vom Rad der Geschichte oder der Bühne des Lebens sprechen, sie geben auch nützliche Orientierung in vielen Bereichen der Wissenschaft, von den schwarzen Löchern der Physiker bis zur Computermetapher des Gehirns in der Kognitionswissenschaft. Eine solche Metapher ist auch die Deutung der Sprache als Werkzeug.
The present study poses the question on what phonetic and phonological grounds postalveolar fricatives in Polish can be analyzed as retroflex and whether postalveolar fricatives in other Slavic languages are retroflex as well. Velarization and incompatibility with front vowels are introduced as articulatory criteria for retroflexion, based on crosslinguistic data. According to these criteria, Polish and Russian have retroflex fricatives, whereas Bulgarian and Czech do not. In a phonological representation of these Slavic retroflexes, the necessity of perceptual features is shown. Lastly, it is illustrated that palatalization of retroflex fricatives both in Slavic languages and more generally causes a phonetic and phonological change to a non-retroflex sound.
On the basis of perceptual experiments we show that alveolo-palatal fricatives and palatalized post-alveolars are two separate sounds which are distinguished not only by Polish native speakers but also by German ones. This claim is partly attested by centre of gravity measurements of the two sibilants. In this paper we revise the claim made by Halle & Stevens [1] and Maddieson & Ladefoged [2] that the Polish alveolo-palatal fricatives [˛, ¸] are palatalized postalveolars [SJ, ZJ]. On the basis of perceptual experiments we show that alveolo-palatal fricatives and palatalized post-alveolars are two separate sounds which are distinguished not only by Polish native speakers but also by German ones. This claim is partly attested by centre of gravity measurements of the two sibilants.
Dutch has a three-way contrast in labiodental sounds, which causes problems for native speakers of German in their acquisition of Dutch, since German contrasts only two labiodentals. The present study investigates the perception of the Dutch labiodental fricative system by German L2 learners of Dutch and shows that native Germans with no or little knowledge of the Dutch language categorize the Dutch labiodental voiced fricative and approximant as their native voiced fricative. Advanced learners, however, succeed in acquiring a category for the voiced fricative, illustrating that plasticity in the perception of a second language develops with the amount of exposure to the language.
Experimental data shows that adult learners of an artificial language with a phonotactic restriction learned this restriction better when being trained on word types (e.g. when they were presented with 80 different words twice each) than when being trained on word tokens (e.g. when presented with 40 different words four times each) (Hamann & Ernestus submitted). These findings support Pierrehumbert’s (2003) observation that phonotactic co-occurrence restrictions are formed across lexical entries, since only lexical levels of representation can be sensitive to type frequencies.
A common topic in recent literature on phonology is the question of whether phonological processes and segments are licensed by prosodic position or by perceptual cues. The former is the traditional view, as represented by e.g. Lombardi (1995) and Beckman (1998), and holds that segments occur in specific prosodic positions such as the coda. In a licensing by cue approach, as represented by Steriade (1995, 1999), on the other hand, segments are assumed to occur in those positions only where their perceptual cues are prominent, independent of the prosodic position. In positions where the cues are not salient, neutralization occurs.
Die Orthographie ist ein wichtiger Baustein des Fremdsprachenunterrichts, in der Schreiberwerbsforschung im Fremdsprachenkontext konzentrierte man sich dagegen auf Phänomene der Textgestaltung (z.B. Portman 1991). Es wird eine korpusbasierte Untersuchung von Orthographiefehlern in Texten fortgeschrittener Lernender des Deutschen als Fremdsprache (DaF) vorgestellt. Als Datengrundlage dient das Lernerkorpus Falko (fehlerannotiertes Lernerkorpus), ein Gemeinschaftsprojekt der Freien Universität und der Humboldt Universität Berlin (http://www2.hu-berlin.de/korpling/projekte/falko/FalkoKernBeschreibung.pdf). In diesem Korpus werden sog. Wortschreibungsfehler (vgl. Eisenberg 2004) analysiert werden. Die Untersuchung geht von der Annahme aus, dass sich, abgesehen von direkten Übertragungen, die Beschaffenheit der Orthographie einer Muttersprache (L1) nicht signifikant auf die Lernerorthographie (die Orthographie der Zielsprache) auswirkt. Diese Annahme soll an ausgewählten Wortschreibungsfehlern überprüft werden, so z.B. an fehlerhaften Dehnungs- und Schärfungsmarkierungen englischer DaF-Lernender. Sollte die L1 einen nachweisbaren Einfluss auf die Lernerorthographie haben, so müssten bspw. signifikant mehr Fehler bei der dem Englischen unbekannten Dehnungsgraphie mit Dehnungs-h auftreten als bei der dem Englischen bekannten Schärfungsgraphie mithilfe von Konsonantendopplung im Silbengelenk. Die Ergebnisse der Korpusuntersuchung werden in einem spracherwerbstheoretischen Rahmen diskutiert werden.
Research on a variety of structurally different languages suggests that information is assigned to grammatical form in way of preferred representations of arguments. These preferences can be captured by four interacting constraints which are based on the analysis of spoken and written discourse. These constraints represent measurable discourse preferences: pragmatically unmarked utterances seem to follow them blindly and widely. Consequently, the preferences motivating these constraints seem to represent the default structuring of discourse in immediate relation to elementary grammatical form. Discourse is no longer viewed as acting upon grammatical form, but as being ‘grammatical’ itself.
The lemmings theory of case
(1995)
The epistemic step
(2005)
Guess how?
(1996)
This paper advances a purely presuppositional analysis of intonation. I first show that a inspiring recent article by Geurts and van der Sandt (Theoretical Linguistics, 2004) that pursues the same goal cannot account for multiple foci. Then, I show that if it is assumed that destressed rather than focussed material is semantically marked, multiple foci are accounted for correctly.
A new semantics for number
(2003)
In meinem Vortrag möchte ich Ihnen einige Überlegungen zu Fragen der vergleichenden Flexionsmorphologie vortragen und dabei wiederum speziell zur Kasusmarkierung an Substantiven. Ich werde mich dabei besonders auf das Polnische beziehen – eine Sprache, deren Kasusbildungen teils Charakteristika des fusionierenden oder flektierenden Typus zeigen, teils aber eher dem agglutinierenden Typ nahe kommen. Diese Mischung stellt, wie ich zeigen möchte, eine besondere Herausforderung für die morphologische Kasusanalyse dar. Ich werde dies im ersten Abschnitt meines Beitrags erläutern. Im zweiten Abschnitt greife ich einige bekannte Beobachtungen zu Kasussynkretismen auf, die für eine Analyse des polnischen Systems nützlich sind. Im dritten Abschnitt gebe ich für einen Ausschnitt des polnischen Deklinationssystems eine detaillierte Analyse.
Gegenstand der folgenden Überlegungen sind Strukturen, in denen Demonstrativa entweder als Antezedens eines restriktiven Relativsatzes oder als Determinativ eines solchen Antezedens auftreten. In solchen Strukturen hat das Demonstrativum weder eine deiktische noch eine anaphorische Bedeutung und damit keine der für Demonstrativa zentralen Funktionen. Aus sprachvergleichender Perspektive zeigt sich, dass manche Typen von Demonstrativa überhaupt nicht mit restriktiven Relativsätzen kombinieren können, andere wiederum den Relativsatz auf spezielle Lesarten beschränken. Ziel ist es, für die fraglichen Strukturen übereinzelsprachliche Beschränkungen aufzuzeigen und aus dem Sprachvergleich Rückschlüsse für das Deutsche zu gewinnen.
Evaluating phonological status : significance of paradigm uniformity vs. prosodic group effects
(2007)
A central concern of linguistic phonetics is to define criteria for determining the phonological status of sounds or sound properties observed in phonetic surface form. Based on acoustic measurements we show that the occurrence of syllabic sonorants vs. schwa-sonorant sequences in German is determined exclusively by segmental and prosodic structure, with no paradigm uniformity effects. We argue that these findings are consistent with a uniform representation of syllabic sonorants as schwa sonorant sequences in the lexicon. The stability of schwa in CVC-suffixes (e.g. the German diminutive suffix -chen), as opposed to its phonetic absence in a segmentally comparable underived context, is argued to be conditioned by the prosodic organisation of such suffixes external to the phonological word of the stem.
This paper provides an analysis of an alternative strategy to A´-movement in both German and Dutch where the extracted constituent is preceded by a preposition and a coreferential pronoun appears in the extraction site. The construction has properties of both binding and movement: Whereas reconstruction effects suggest movement out of the embedded clause, there is strong evidence that the operator constituent is linked to an A-position in the matrix clause; this paradox is resolved by assuming a Control-like approach that involves movement from the embedded clause into a theta-position in the matrix clause with subsequent short A´- movement. The coreferential pronoun is interpreted as a resumptive heading a Big-DP which hosts the antecedent in its specifier.
Der vorliegende kurze Beitrag [hat] das Ziel, im diskutierten Problemrahmen konstitutive Aspekte der Horizonte, Konturen und Fluchtlinien einer dezidiert inter- bzw. transkulturellen Ausrichtung der Sprachwissenschaft anzudeuten und zu hinterfragen, ihre disziplinären Wege und Blickfelder anzulegen sowie über ein inter- bzw.transkulturelles ,,Paradigma" als "interkulturelle Linguistik" im Hinblick auf Profil, Tragfähigkeit und Reichweite zu reflektieren. All das soll dann zu einer extensionalen und intensionalen Bestimmung einer "interkulturellen Linguistik" hinführen.
Freeze (1992) argued on the basis of data from several different languages that there is a close relationship between existential sentences (stating the existence of an entity) and locative sentences (stating the location of an entity). Freeze (1992) proposes that they are both derived from the same base structure and that the surface differences are rather due to the distinct information structures.This paper argues against this position with the data from Serbian existentials, which show clear syntactic differences from the locatives. Thus, the close relationship between existential and locative sentences that Freeze (1992) observes is conceptual, but not (necessarily) part of the syntax of the language. In order to account for the data, we propose that existential sentences originate from a different syntactic predication structure than the locative ones. The existential meaning arises, as we will show, from the interaction of this predication structure with the structure and meaning of the noun phrase.
Semantic research over the past three decades has provided impressive confirmation of Donald Davidsons famous claim that “there is a lot of language we can make systematic sense of if we suppose events exist” (Davidson 1980:137). Nowadays, Davidsonian event arguments are no longer reserved only for action verbs (as Davidson originally proposed) or even only for the category of verbs, but instead are widely assumed to be associated with any kind of predicate (e.g. Higginbotham 2000, Parsons 2000).1 The following quotation from Higginbotham and Ramchand (1997) illustrates the reasoning that motivates this move: "Once we assume that predicates (or their verbal, etc. heads) have a position for events, taking the many consequences that stem therefrom, as outlined in publications originating with Donald Davidson (1967), and further applied in Higginbotham (1985, 1989), and Terence Parsons (1990), we are not in a position to deny an event-position to any predicate; for the evidence for, and applications of, the assumption are the same for all predicates. (Higginbotham and Ramchand 1997:54)" In fact, since Davidson’s original proposal the burden of proof for postulating event arguments seems to have shifted completely, leading Raposo and Uriagereka (1995), for example, to the following verdict: "it is unclear what it means for a predicate not to have a Davidsonian argument (Raposo and Uriagereka 1995:182)" That is, Davidsonian eventuality arguments apparently have become something like a trademark for predicates in general. The goal of the present paper is to subject this view of the relationship between predicates and events to real scrutiny. By taking a closer look at the simplest independent predicational structure – viz. copula sentences – I will argue that current Davidsonian approaches tend to stretch the notion of events too far, thereby giving up much of its linguistic and ontological usefulness. More specifically, the paper will tackle the following three questions: 1. Do copula sentences support the current view of the inherent event-relatedness of predicates? 2. If not, what is a possible alternative to an event-based analysis of copula sentences? 3. What does this tell us about Davidsonian events? The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 first reviews current event-based analyses of copula sentences and then gives a brief summary of the Davidsonian notion of events. Section 3 examines the behavior of copula sentences with respect to some standard (as well as some new) eventuality diagnostics. Copula expressions will turn out to fail all eventuality tests. They differ sharply from state verbs like stand, sit, sleep in this respect. (The latter pass all eventuality tests and therefore qualify as true “Davidsonian state” expressions.) On the basis of these observations, section 4 provides an alternative account of copula sentences that combines Kim’s (1969, 1976) notion of property exemplifications with Ashers (1993, 2000) conception of abstract objects. Specifically, I will argue that the copula introduces a referential argument for a temporally bound property exemplification (= “Kimian state”). The proposal is implemented within a DRT framework. Finally, section 5 offers some concluding remarks and suggests that supplementing Davidsonian eventualities by Kimian states not only yields a more adequate analysis for copula expressions and the like but may also improve our treatment of events.
A pragmatic explanation of the stage level/individual level contrast in combination with locatives
(2004)
One important difference between stage level predicates (SLPs) and individual level predicates (ILPs) is their behavior with respect to locative modifiers. It is commonly assumed that SLPs but not ILPs combine with locatives. The present study argues against a semantic account for this behavior (as advanced by e.g. Kratzer 1995, Chierchia 1995) and proposes a genuinely pragmatic explanation of the observed stage level/individual level contrast instead. The proposal is spelled out using Blutners (1998, 2000) optimality theoretic version of the Gricean maxims. Building on the observation that the respective locatives are not event-related but frame-setting modifiers, the preference for main predicates that express temporary properties is explained as a side-effect of “synchronizing” the main predicate with the locative frame in the course of finding an optimal interpretation. By emphasizing the division of labor between grammar and pragmatics, the proposed solution takes a considerable load off of semantics.
This paper examines the development of periphrastic constructions involving auxiliary "have" and "be" with a past participle in the history of English, on the basis of parsed electronic corpora. It is argued that the two constructions represented distinct syntactic and semantic structures: while the one with have developed into a true perfect in the course of Middle English, the one with be remained a stative resultative throughout its history. In this way, it is explained why the be construction was rarely or never used in a number of contexts, including past counterfactuals, iteratives, duratives, certain kinds of infinitives and various other utterance types that cannot be characterized as perfects of result. When the construction with have became a true perfect, it was used in such contexts, regardless of the identity of the main verb, leading to the appearance of have with verbs like come which had previously only taken be. Crucially, however, have was not spreading at the expense of be, as the be perfect had never been used in such contexts, but rather at the expense of the old simple past. At least until the end of the Early Modern English period, the shift in the relative frequency of have and be perfects is to be explained in terms of the expansion of the former into new contexts, while the latter remained stable. A formal analysis is proposed, taking as its starting point a comparison with German which shows that the older English be perfect indeed behaves more like the German stative passive than its haben and sein perfects.
The paper is structured as follows. Section 2.1 introduces the basic classes of adjectives that constitute the factual core of the paper. Section 2.2 summarizes in greater detail the X° and the XP movement approaches to word order variation within the DP. Section 3 briefly discusses problems for both approaches. Sections 4.1, 5.1, and 5.2 draw from Alexiadou (2001) and contain a discussion of Greek DS and its relevance for a re-analysis of the word order variation in the Romance DP. Section 4.2 introduces refinements to Alexiadou & Wilder (1998) and Alexiadou (2001). Section 5.3. discusses certain issues that arise from the analysis of postnominal adjectives in Romance as involving raising of XPs. Section 6 discusses phenomena found in other languages, which at first sight seem similar to DS. However, I show that double definiteness in e.g. Hebrew, Scandinavian or other Balkan languages constitutes a different type of phenomenon from Greek DS, thus making a distinction between determiners that introduce CPs (Greek) and those that are merely morphological/agreement markers (Hebrew, Scandinavian, Albanian).
Expletives as features
(2000)
Expletives have always been a central topic of theoretical debate and subject to different analyses within the different stages of the Principles and Parameter theory (see Chomsky 1981, 1986, 1995; Lasnik 1992, 1995; Frampton and Gutman 1997; among others). However, most analyses center on the question how to explain the behavior of expletives in A-chains (such as there in English or Þad in Icelandic). No account relates wh-expletives (as one finds them in so-called partial wh-movement constructions in languages such as Hungarian, Romani, and German) to expletives in Achains. In this paper, I argue that the framework of the Minimalist Program opens up the possibility of accounting for expletive-associate relations in A-/A'-chains in a unified manner. The main idea of the unitary analysis is that an expletive is an overtly realized feature bundle that is (sub)extracted from its associate DP. There in an expletive-associate chain is a moved D-feature which orginates inside the associate DP. Similarily, in A'-chains, the whexpletive originates as a focus-/wh-feature in the wh-phrase with which it is associated. This analysis provides evidence for the feature-checking theory in Chomsky (1995). The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 contains the discussion of expletive there. In section 3 I suggest an analysis for whexpletives, and I also explore whether this analysis can be extended to relations between X°-categories such as auxiliary and participle complexes.
In this paper I show that Clitic Climbing (CC) in Spanish and Long Scrambling (LS) in German (and Polish) are (im-)possible out of the same environments. For an explanation of this fact I propose a feature-oriented analysis of incorporation phenomena. The idea is that restructuring is a phenomenon of syntactic incorporation. In German and Polish, Agro incorporates covertly into the matrix clause and licenses LS out of the infinitival into the matrix clause. Similarily the clitic in Spanish, which is analysed as an Agro-head, incorporates into the matrix clause. I argue that this movement is necessary for reasons of feature-checking, i. e. for checking of an [+R]- or Restructuring-feature. In section 2 I discuss several differences between CC and LS. For example, the proposed analysis correctly predicts that clitics in contrast to scrambled phrases are subject to several serialization restrictions. Throughout the paper I use the term restructuring only in a descriptive sense, in order to describe the phenomenon in question.
Protected Mode
(2005)
Innerhalb der Reihe "GrenzBereiche des Lesens" gehaltener Vortrag. "GrenzBereiche des Lesens" ist eine kulturwissenschaftliche Vortragsreihe, die 2003 und 2004 an der Universität Frankfurt stattfand. Gegenstand von Harald Hillgärtners Untersuchung ist die Frage nach der Lesbarkeit des Computers, vielmehr seiner System- und Programmcodes. Gilt der Computer einerseits als "Textmaschine", die endlose Schreib- und Leseakte prozessiert, so finden jene Programmabläufe doch zumeist jenseits der für alle zugänglichen Benutzeroberflächen statt, die ihrerseits in immer stärkerem Maß mit Icons – Bildern – arbeiten. Und selbst im Falle von frei zugänglichen Software-Codes ist zu fragen, um welche Art Text es sich hier handelt – ob in diesen Fällen gar von Literatur die Rede sein kann. Insofern ist die Frage nach der Lesbarkeit des Computers nicht nur eine Frage nach der Zukunft des Lesens (geht es um Sinn oder um Information?) sondern vielmehr nach dem (Zu-)Stand unserer Schriftkultur selbst.
Innerhalb der Reihe "GrenzBereiche des Lesens" gehaltener Vortrag. "GrenzBereiche des Lesens" ist eine kulturwissenschaftliche Vortragsreihe, die 2003 und 2004 an der Universität Frankfurt stattfand. Irene Pieper beschäftigt sich aus literaturdidaktischer und lesesoziologischer Perspektive mit der kulturellen Praxis des Lesens. Ihr Beitrag entwickelt systematisch, worin die "Kunst" des literarischen Lesens im Einzelnen besteht und wie diese Kompetenz methodisch in der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Gegenstand Literatur zu erwerben bzw. zu vermitteln ist. Ein kompetenter Leser zu werden heißt, ein breites Spektrum von Fähigkeiten zu erwerben, das vom Realisieren der poetischen Funktion der Literatur über die Empathiefähigkeit bis hin zur Lust am Text reicht. Der Beitrag lotet aus, in welcher Weise vor allem die Schule, die außerhalb der Familie Begegnungen mit und Kommunikationen über Literatur herbeiführt und anregt, an der Bildung solcher Leser und Leserinnen mitwirken kann.
The volume is a collection of papers given at the conference “sub8 -- Sinn und Bedeutung”, the eighth annual conference of the Gesellschaft für Semantik, held at the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt (Germany) in September 2003. During this conference, experts presented and discussed various aspects of semantics. The very different topics included in this book provide insight into fields of ongoing Semantics research.