Linguistik-Klassifikation
Refine
Year of publication
- 2004 (83) (remove)
Document Type
- Part of a Book (48)
- Conference Proceeding (24)
- Working Paper (5)
- Preprint (4)
- Article (1)
- Report (1)
Has Fulltext
- yes (83)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (83)
Keywords
- Syntax (24)
- Generative Transformationsgrammatik (23)
- Wortstellung (21)
- Deutsch (11)
- Optimalitätstheorie (9)
- Relativsatz (9)
- Thema-Rhema-Gliederung (8)
- Topikalisierung (8)
- Formale Semantik (7)
- Informationsstruktur (7)
- Englisch (6)
- Extraposition (6)
- Oberflächenstruktur <Linguistik> (6)
- Phonologie (6)
- Tiefenstruktur (6)
- Grammatische Kategorie (5)
- Intonation <Linguistik> (5)
- Malagassi-Sprache (5)
- Pragmatik (5)
- Pronomen (5)
- Spracherwerb (5)
- Genus verbi (4)
- Japanisch (4)
- Klitisierung (4)
- Linguistik (4)
- Morphonologie (4)
- Russisch (4)
- Thematische Relation (4)
- Adverbiale (3)
- Austronesische Sprachen (3)
- Chewa-Sprache (3)
- Französisch (3)
- Funktionale Kategorie (3)
- Interrogativsatz (3)
- Kasus (3)
- Kontrastive Grammatik (3)
- Kontrastive Syntax (3)
- Negation (3)
- Ungarisch (3)
- Adverb (2)
- Aspekt <Linguistik> (2)
- Aufsatzsammlung (2)
- Bulgarisch (2)
- Diskontinuität (2)
- Ellipse <Linguistik> (2)
- Ergativ (2)
- Experiment (2)
- Grammatiktheorie (2)
- Herausstellung (2)
- Kongress (2)
- Kontrastive Phonologie (2)
- Koordination <Linguistik> (2)
- Morphosyntax (2)
- Norwegisch (2)
- Pro-Form (2)
- Prosodie (2)
- Satz (2)
- Satzanalyse (2)
- Satzglied (2)
- Semantik (2)
- Skopus (2)
- Sprachstatistik (2)
- Tagalog (2)
- Transitivität (2)
- Verb (2)
- Affix (1)
- Allomorph (1)
- Anapher <Syntax> (1)
- Argument linking (1)
- Asymmetrie (1)
- Aufforderungssatz (1)
- Ausrufesatz (1)
- Bestimmter Artikel (1)
- Bindungstheorie <Linguistik> (1)
- Chomsky (1)
- Dialektologie (1)
- Diskursanalyse (1)
- Diskursrepräsentationstheorie (1)
- Ditransitives Verb (1)
- Doppelter Akkusativ (1)
- Epenthese (1)
- Finite Verbform (1)
- Fokus <Linguistik> (1)
- Freier Relativsatz (1)
- Galloitalienisch (1)
- Gebundenes Morphem (1)
- Generalisierte Phrasenstrukturgrammatik (1)
- Generative Grammatik (1)
- Genitiv (1)
- Grammatikalität (1)
- Hebräisch (1)
- Immediate Dominance/Linear Precedence (1)
- Impersonale (1)
- Indefinitpronomen (1)
- Indirekter Interrogativsatz (1)
- Infix (1)
- Inkorporation <Linguistik> (1)
- Italienisch (1)
- Kindersprache (1)
- Komparation (1)
- Konfiguration <Linguistik> (1)
- Kongressbericht (1)
- Konsekutivsatz (1)
- Kontrastive Linguistik (1)
- Koreanisch (1)
- Korrelativsatz (1)
- Lexikologie (1)
- Logische Form <Linguistik> (1)
- Mittelenglisch (1)
- Modalität (1)
- Modifikation <Linguistik> (1)
- Modifikator (1)
- Morphologie (1)
- Mündlichkeit (1)
- Neugriechisch (1)
- Nicht-restriktiver Relativsatz (1)
- Niue-Sprache (1)
- Noam (1)
- Nomen agentis (1)
- Nominalphrase (1)
- Nungisch (1)
- Paiwan (1)
- Palaung (1)
- Parametrisierung (1)
- Parasitic gap (1)
- Persisch (1)
- Phonetik (1)
- Phrasenstrukturgrammatik (1)
- Phraseologie (1)
- Polnisch (1)
- Proportionalsatz (1)
- Prädikat (1)
- Prädikation (1)
- Präposition (1)
- Qiang-Sprache (1)
- Quantor (1)
- Raising (1)
- Rattenfängerkonstruktion (1)
- Reduplikation (1)
- Resultativ (1)
- Richtungsangabe (1)
- Robust Minimal Recursion Semantics (1)
- Satzadverb (1)
- Satzsemantik (1)
- Satztyp (1)
- Schriftlichkeit (1)
- Scrambling (1)
- Sinotibetische Sprachen (1)
- Spezifität (1)
- Sprachgeschichte (1)
- Sprachtheorie (1)
- Spurtheorie (1)
- Stochastik (1)
- Strukturelle Grammatik (1)
- Taiwan-Austronesisch (1)
- Tibetobirmanische Sprachen (1)
- Tongaisch (1)
- Tukangbesi (1)
- Umgangssprache (1)
- Unterspezifikation (1)
- Valenz <Linguistik> (1)
- Venetisch (1)
- Wortbildung (1)
- Xhosa (1)
- acceptability (1)
- also (1)
- gradience grammar (1)
- grammaticality (1)
- long wh-movement (1)
- phonology (1)
- question formation (1)
- stress patterns (1)
- syntax (1)
- tones (1)
- word order variation (1)
Institute
- Extern (6)
The principal aim of this paper is to present a comprehensive theory of coordination of unlikes, i.e., a theory that is capable of dealing with every phenomenon resulting from coordination of unlikes. The proposed theory accounts not just for standard cases of coordination of unlike arguments and coordination of unlike functors but also for cases involving single-conjunct agreement and what will be called each-conjunct agreement. In the course of the argumentation, it is also shown that, even in a language like English, predicate-argument agreement needs to be described in terms of a relational constraint that is not simply an identity requirement.
To model the pied piping in interrogative and exclamative clauses Ginzburg & Sag (2000) proposes a nonlocal head-driven treatment, thus emphasizing the resemblances with extraction. This treatment has a number of drawbacks: it relies on poorly motivated lexical rules and nonbranching phrase structure rules, it makes false predictions about pied piping in PPs, and it presupposes an implausible structure for NPs with predeterminers. To solve these problems I propose an alternative in which pied piping is treated as a local functor-driven dependency. Technically, the WH feature is integrated in the CATEGORY objects, and the propagation of its values is modeled by constraints which are independently needed for the treatment of other phenomena.
This paper focuses on aspects of the licensing of adverbial noun phrases (AdvNPs) in the HPSG grammar framework. In the first part, empirical issues will be discussed. A number of AdvNPs will be examined with respect to various linguistic phenomena in order to find out to what extent AdvNPs share syntactic and semantic properties with non-adverbial NPs.Based on empirical generalizations, a lexical constraint for licensing both AdvNPs and non-adverbial NPs will be provided. Further on, problems of structural licensing of phrases containing AdvNPs that arise within the standard HPSG framework of Pollard and Sag (1994) will be pointed out, and a possible solution will be proposed. The objective is to provide a constraint-based treatment of NPs which describes non-redundantly both their adverbial and non-adverbial usages. The analysis proposed in this paper applies lexical and phrasal implicational constraints and does not require any radical modifications or extensions of the standard HPSG geometry of Pollard and Sag (1994).
Relative clauses (RCs) in Persian are head-modifying constituents, all typically introduced by the invariant complementizer ke. Persian RCs are Unbounded Dependency Constructions (UDCs), containing either a gap or a resumptive pronoun (RP). In some positions only gaps are allowed, and in other positions only RPs. There are also some positions where both gaps and RPs are alternatively allowed. Illustrating the striking similarities between Persian gaps and RPs, I will provide an HPSG unified approach to take care of the dependency between the licensing structure and the gap/RP with a single mechanism, using only the SLASH feature. Similar to Pollard and Sag s (1994) approach to the bottom of the dependency, I will assume a special sign at the bottom. However, my sign may have a nonempty PHON value. I will introduce a feature called GAPTYPE which is a NONLOCAL feature whose value can be either trace or rp. I will introduce two constraints to capture the pattern of distribution of RPs and traces. At the top of the dependency, I will bind the nonempty SLASH at the complementizer point. I will propose a lexical entry for the complementizer ke that will account for the binding of SLASH by the feature BIND, which has a nonempty set as value.
In this contribution we propose a new module for handling idioms and distributional idiosyncrasies. Based on the concept by Richter/Sailer (1999) the new feature COLL (context of lexical licensing) plays the central role in our approach. We provide a way to handle decomposable and nondecomposable idioms and idioms containing bound words. Our module guarantees the co-occurrence of all idiom parts and of bound word and licensing context, respectively. A prerequisite for our analysis is a means to select for particular elements in the lexicon. We introduce another feature, LISTEME, which gives each lexical item its unique identifier andmakes it possible to select for a particular lexical word or phrase. Finally, we compare our proposal with alternative approaches and give some ideas regarding further applications beyond idiomaticity.
Japanese is often taken to be strictly head-final in its syntax. In our work on a broad-coverage, precision implemented HPSG for Japanese, we have found that while this is generally true, there are nonetheless a few minor exceptions to the broad trend. In this paper, we describe the grammar engineering project, present the exceptions we have found, and conclude that this kind of phenomenon motivates on the one hand the HPSG type hierarchical approach which allows for the statement of both broad generalizations and exceptions to those generalizations and on the other hand the usefulness of grammar engineering as a means of testing linguistic hypotheses.
This paper discusses a special kind of syntax-semantics mismatch: a noun with a relative clause is interpreted as if it were a complement clause. An analysis in terms of Lexical Resource Semantics is developed which provides a uniform account for ''normal'' relative clauses and for the discussed type of relative clause.
In Müller, 2005 I provide evidence that suggests that linearization approaches that analyze German clause structure with discontinuous constituents cannot account for the German clause structure in an insightful way. In order to eliminate the very powerful concept of linearization domains and discontinuous constituents from the grammar, analyses of other phenomena which also rely on discontinuous constituents should therefore be revised.
In this paper, I develop an analysis of German depictive secondary predicates that differs from the one suggested in Müller, 2002 by assuming binary branching structures, verb movment, and continuous constituents instead of a linearization approach. Some shortcomings of previous analyses are pointed out and it is shown how linearization constraints regarding depictive predicate and antecedent can be modeled.
In this study we show that constituency is of limited importance for a proper treatment of the interaction between the linear position of a wa-marked nominal in a Japanese sentence and possible domains of contrastive focus, and that constraints concerning contrastive focus should be represented in terms of linear order and not constituency. Linearisation HPSG, where linear order is independent from constituency, provides a good basis for an analysis. Some constraints are provided in terms of order domains, and it is shown that these constraints can deal with the phenomena in question, and that the cases problematic for the constituency-based analyses can also be accounted for by our analysis.
In this paper I present two classes of double object constructions in Modern Greek, i.e., the genitive, as well as the double accusative, ditransitive constructions. I show that these two classes differ from one another in that not both of them permit derivational processes such as the formation of adjectival passives. I also look at the case properties associated with the verbs which head Modern Greek genitive and double accusative ditransitive constructions. Finally, the analysis I propose for these constructions in Modern Greek are formalized using the Minimal Recursion Semantics (MRS) framework of Copestake et al. (2001) and Copestake et al. (2003).
The Russian data presented in Perlmutter and Moore (2002) seem to call into question the standard analysis of raising within Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG): In Russian, the case marking of the raising target and raising pivot does not seem to be shared. In this paper, we show that the phenomena described by Perlmutter and Moore can receive another analysis, fully compatible with HPSG's theory of raising. We argue in addition that our account leads to a slightly simpler model of the Russian data than Perlmutter and Moore's. Crucially, our analysis is only available if we avail ourselves of a rich network of language-specific constructional schemata, a stance recently advocated within HPSG, following the lead of Construction Grammar.
Linking in constructions
(2004)
In this paper I will make an attempt to show how the linking normally done in the lexicon also can be done in constructions. The motivation behind this is the flexibility it gives the grammar writer in underspecifying lexical entries. Being too rigid about linking in the lexicon may lead to unsatisfying results such as multiple lexical entries for what one intuitively feels is just one lexical entry, or alternatively, lexical rules which are not morphologically motivated. The aim is to show that this can be avoided by letting constructions introduce the linking information instead.
We present a constraint-based syntax-semantics interface for the construction of RMRS (Robust Minimal Recursion Semantics) representations from shallow grammars. The architecture is designed to allow modular interfaces to existing shallow grammars of various depth - ranging from chunk grammars to context-free stochastic grammars. We define modular semantics construction principles in a typed feature structure formalism that allow flexible adaptation to alternative grammars and different languages.
Recent analyses of mismatches at the syntax-semantics interface investigate e.g. modification of agentive nouns (Larson, 1998), modification of quantifying pronouns (Abney, 1987), or recursive modification (Kasper, to appear). Each of these analyses is tailored to a specific set of data, and it is not immediately obvious how they could be generalised to cover a larger set of data. I propose a unified analysis for these mismatches that attempts to bring out their common ground. This analysis shares some of its basic intuitions with the one of Kasper, but is more general because the mismatches are handled locally in the CONT feature. Its pivot is an elaborate syntax-semantics interface that is based on a surface-oriented syntactic analysis. This analysis generalises easily to the mismatches at the morphology-semantics interface for German separable-prefix verbs that were discussed in (Müller, 2003).
Negation and negative indefinites raise problems for the principle of compositionality of meaning, because we find both double and single negation readings in natural languages. De Swart and Sag (2002) solve the compositionality problem in a polyadic quantifier framework. The syntax-semantics interface exploits an extension of the Cooper storage mechanism that HPSG uses to account for scope ambiguities. In de Swart and Sag (2002), all negative quantifiers are collected into an N-store, and are interpreted by means of iteration (double negation) or resumption (negative concord) upon retrieval. This puts the ambiguity between single and double negation readings in the grammar, rather than in the lexical items. This paper extends the earlier analysis with a typology of negation and negative indefinites using bi-directional optimality theory (OT). The constraints defined are universal, but their ranking varies from one language to the next. In negative concord languages, the functional motivation for the marking of 'negative variables' wins out, so we use n-words. Double negation languages value first-order iteration, so we use plain indefinites or negative polarity items within the scope of negation. The bi-directional set-up is essential, for syntactic and semantic variation go hand in hand.
Linearization-based HPSG theories are widely used for analyzing languages with relatively free constituent order. This paper introduces the Generalized ID/LP (GIDLP) grammar format, which supports a direct encoding of such theories, and discusses key aspects of a parser that makes use of the dominance, precedence, and linearization domain information explicitly encoded in this grammar format. We show that GIDLP grammars avoid the explosion in the number of rules required under a traditional phrase structure analysis of free constituent order. As a result, GIDLP grammars supportmore modular and compact grammar encodings and require fewer edges in parsing.
In this paper, I shall discuss the semantic attachment of intersective modifiers in German coherent constructions. I shall show that a purely syntactic solution to the observable attachment ambiguity is undesirable for reasons of processing e ciency and/or massive spurious ambiguity. Instead, I shall follow Egg and Lebeth (1995) and propose an extension to Minimal Recursion Semantics, permitting the expression of underspecified semantic attachment. This rather trivial move, as we shall see, will not only be preferable for processing reasons, but it will also be more in line with the spirit of underspecified semantics, e ectively providing a compact representation of purely semantic distinctions, instead of unfolding these distinctions into a rain forest of tree representations and derivations. I will present an implementation of the underspecification approach integrated into the German HPSG developed at DFKI and compare its e ciency to an alternative implementation where semantic attachment is unfolded by means of retrieval rules.
Recent syntactic theory has highlighted the importance of peripheral constructions such as the comparative correlative construction. This construction involves a pair of filler-gap constructions with unusual properties. The first is a subordinate clause and the second a main clause. The construction has a number of related constructions. A version of HPSG, which assumes hierarchies of phrase types, can provide satisfactory analyses both for the comparative correlative constructions and for the related constructions. The two clauses in the comparative-correlative construction can be analysed as non-standard head-filler phrases differing from standard headfiller phrases in certain respects. The construction as a whole can be analyzed as a non-standard head-adjunct phrase, in which the head and the phrase have different categories.
This article proposes a semantics of directional expressions in Norwegian and German, regarded as VP modifiers. The analysis uses Minimal Recursion Semantics, as an integrated part of Matrix-based HPSG grammars. Directional expressions are analyzed as modifying an individual, the 'mover'. Context dependent directionals like here receive a decomposed analysis. Telicity values reflecting various types of directional and locative expressions are computed.
Within the tradition of Categorial Grammar, so-called 'non-constituent' coordination ('argument cluster' coordination and 'right node raising') has been analyzed in terms of the coordination of nonstandard constituents produced by the operations of type raising and composition. This highly successful research has expanded the domain of data that modern analyses of coordination must take into account. Recent HPSG work by Yatabe (2002) and Crysmann (2003) provides an interesting alternative approach to this problem in terms of the coordination of familiar, but 'elliptical' constituents. We argue that this approach is empirically superior to the Categorial Grammar analysis, both in terms of empirical coverage and cross-linguistic predictions. We reassess the relevant English data in small but important ways, and develop our own ellipsis analysis, building on Yatabe's and Crysmann's insights.
This paper presents an account of English non-restrictive ('appositive') relative clauses (NRCs) in the framework of 'construction based' HPSG. Specifically, it shows how the account of restrictive relative clause constructions presented in Sag (1997) can be extended to provide an account of the syntax and semantics of NRCs and of the main differences between NRCs and restrictive relatives. The analysis reconciles the semantic intuition that NRCs behave like independent clauses with their subordinate syntax. A significant point is that, in contrast with many other approaches, it employs only existing, independently motivated theoretical apparatus, and requires absolutely no new structures, features, or types.
Of all French functional elements, the form de has without question the widest variety of uses, and presents the greatest challenge for linguistic description and analysis. Historically a preposition, it still has a number of prepositional uses in modern French, but in many contexts it calls for an altogether different treatment. We begin by outlining a general distinction between oblique and non-oblique uses of de. We then develop a detailed account of constructions where de combines with an N'. We provide a unitary analysis of de in three constructions (quantifier extraction, "quantification at a distance", and negative contexts) which have been not been considered to be related in previous accounts.
The interpretation of traces
(2004)
This paper argues that parts of the lexical content of an A-bar moved phrase must be interpreted in the base position of movement. The argument is based on a study of deletion of a phrase that contains the base position of movement. I show that deletion licensing is sensitive to the content of the moved phrase. In this way, I corroborate and extend conclusions based on Condition C reconstruction by N. Chomsky and D. Fox. My result provides semantic evidence for the existence of traces and gives semantic content to the A/A-bar distinction.
Ziel der Untersuchung ist der Erwerb von aspektuellen Markierungen im Bulgarischen. Da Bulgarisch über ein nominales Artikelsystem und über eine verbale Aspektkategorie verfügt, liefert es eine ausgezeichnete Gelegenheit, die Verwendung von nominalen und verbalen Aspektmarkierungen im frühen Spracherwerb aufzuzeigen. Der Artikel präsentiert die Daten aus einer Langzeitstudie und einer experimentellen Testreihe. Die Ergebnisse belegen, dass die bulgarischen Kinder am Anfang vom Prinzip der Aspektkomposition Gebrauch machen. Aspektuell unmarkierte Verben werden durch definite Objekte ergänzt, um begrenzte Handlungen auszudrücken. Der schnelle Erwerb der Aspektmorphologie verschiebt die Gewichtung im Satz von den nominalen zu den verbalen Aspektmarkern. Im Alter von zweieinhalb Jahren beherrschen die bulgarischen Kinder die sprachspezifische syntaktische Anforderung, dass perfektiv markierte Prädikate quantitativ definite Argumente verlangen.
The paper explains the absence of resultative secondary predication in Russian as arising from a conflict of inferential interpretations. It formalises the framework necessary to express this proposal in terms of abductive reasoning with Poole systems in Gricean contexts. The conflict is shown to arise for default rules regulating alternative realisation of verb-internally specified consequent states. The paper thus indicates that typological variation may be due not only to different parameter values but to general inferential properties of the syntax-semantics mapping. The proposed theory also contradicts some widespread proposals that the absence of resultative secondary predication is due to the absence of some particular language feature.
On the syntax and pragmatics interface : Left-peripheral, medial and right-peripheral focus in greek
(2004)
The present paper explores the extent to which narrow syntax is responsible for the computation of discourse functions such as focus/topic. More specifically, it challenges the claim that language approximates ‘perfection’ with respect to economy, conceptual necessity and optimality in design by reconsidering the roles and interactions of the different modules of the grammar, in particular of syntax and phonology and the mapping between the two, in the representation of pragmatic notions. Empirical and theoretical considerations strongly indicate that narrow syntax is ‘blind’ to properties and operations involving the interpretive components — that is, PF and LF. As a result, syntax-phonology interface rules do not ‘see’ everything in the levels they connect. In essence, the architecture of grammar proposed here from the perspective of focus marking necessitates the autonomy of the different levels of grammar, presupposing that NS is minimally structured only when liberated from any non-syntactic/discourse implementations, i.e., movement operations to satisfy both interface needs. As a result, the model articulated here totally dispenses with discourse projections, i.e. FocusP.
Dislocation without movement
(2004)
This paper argues that French Left-Dislocation is a unified phenomenon whether it is resumed by a clitic or a non-clitic element. The syntactic component is shown to play a minimal role in its derivation: all that is required is that the dislocated element be merged by adjunction to a Discourse Projection (generally a finite TP with root properties). No agreement or checking of a topic feature is necessary, hence no syntactic movement of any sort need be postulated. The so-called resumptive element is argued to be a full-fledged pronoun rather than a true syntactic resumptive.
In this paper topic and focus effects at both left and right periphery are argued to be epiphenomena of general properties of tree growth. We incorporate Korean into this account as a prototypical verb-final language, and show how long- and short-distance scrambling form part of this general picture. Multiple long-distance scrambling effects emerge as a consequence of the feeding relationship between different forms of structural under-specification. We also show how the array of effects at the right periphery, in both verb-final and other language-types, can also be explained with the same concepts of tree growth. In particular the Right Roof Constraint, a well-known but little understood constraint, is an immediate consequence of compositionality constraints as articulated in this system.
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.
The bulk of this paper deals with an analysis of the voice system of Tukang Besi, which, has both a complex verbal agreement system as well as the last fully developed (and obligatory) case marking system among Austronesian languages with an increasingly head-marking trend to the east (case marking of core constituents only becomes functional again in Vanuatu and the Solomons, and is well-developed in Polynesia). For that reason, as well as personal acquaintance with the language, it is a sensible starting point.
We argue that Malagasy (and related W. Austronesian languages!) has a positive setting for a macro-parameter RICH VOICE MORPHOLOGY which builds complex predicates that code the theta role of their argument: S = [[PreN(6) + (X)] + DP]. Manifestations of this parameter are: (1) Case and theta role are assigned in situ in nuclear clauses with no movement or co-indexing to a topic position. (2) Relative Clauses (and other "extraction" structures) satisfy the "Subjects Only" constraint, again with no movement or indexing. (3) UTAH is freely violated, as theta role assignment derives from compositional semantic interpretation. Predicates resemble lexical Ns in assigning case directly to arguments without using Prepositions and in combining directly with Dets to form DPs that include tense and negation (Keenan 1995, 2000). The major Predicate-Argument type is modeled on the Noun+Possessor one, not the Verb+Object one.
The purpose of this research was to trace the developmental steps in the acquisition of aspectual oppositions in Russian and to examine the validity of the 'aspect before tense' hypothesis for L1-speaking children. Imperfective/perfective verbs and their inflections, as well as aspectual pairs, were analysed in the first five months of verb production (and the respective months in the input) in three children. Additionally, the first four months of verb production were investigated in one boy with less data. Verb forms marked for the past and for the present occur simultaneously in all children. These early forms relate to 'here and now' situations: verbs marked for the past denote 'resultative' events that are perceived by the children as occurring during the speech time or immediately before it, while verbs marked for the present typically denote on-going events. Thus, with early tense oppositions (or tense morphology) children mark aspectual contrasts in the moment of speech: evidence in favour of the 'aspect before tense' hypothesis.
A strong preference in using the perfective aspect for the past and the imperfective aspect for the present events has been found in both adults and children. Further, only very few aspectual pairs were documented within the analysed period (from the onset of verb production to the period when children produce rule-driven inflectional forms). The productive use of the finite forms of perfective and imperfective verbs doesn't concord with the ability of the productive use of the contrastive forms of one lemma. Data suggest that children (start to) learn aspectual forms in an item-based manner. The acquisition of aspectual oppositions (aspectual pairs) is lexically dependent and is guided by the contextual 'thesaurus'. Aspectual pairs are learned in a peace-meal way during much longer, than observed for this article, period of time. Generally, aspect is not learned as a rule, also because there are no (uniform) rules of forming of aspectual pairs, but as the 'satellite' of the inherent lexical meaning of verbs of diverse Aktionsarten.
The issues addressed here are relevant for other Slavic languages, exhibiting the morphological category of aspect.
This paper discusses critically a number of developments at the heart of current syntactic theory. These include the postulation of a rich sequence of projections at the left periphery of the sentence; the idea that movement is tied to the need to eliminate uninterpretable features; and the conception put forward by Chomsky and others that advances in the past decade have made it reasonable to raise the question about whether language might be in some sense ‘perfect’. However, I will argue that there is little motivation for a highly-articulated left-periphery, that there is no connection between movement and uninterpretable features, and that there is no support for the idea that language might be perfect.
This article analyses the German discourse particle wohl 'I suppose', 'presumably' as a syntactic and semantic modifier of the sentence types declarative and interrogative. It is shown that wohl does not contribute to the propositional, i.e. descriptive content of an utterance. Nor does it trigger an implicature. The proposed analysis captures the semantic behaviour of wohl by assuming that it moves to SpecForceP at LF, from where it can modify the sentence type operators in Force0 in compositional fashion. Semantically, a modification with wohl results in a weaker commitment to the proposition expressed in declaratives and in a request for a weaker commitment concerning the questioned proposition in interrogatives. Cross-linguistic evidence for a left-peripheral position of wohl (at LF) comes from languages in which the counterpart of wohl occurs in the clausal periphery overtly. Overall, the analysis sheds more light on the semantic properties of the left periphery, in particular of the functional projection ForceP.
[W]hy are not all Malagasy adverbs postverbal with reverse Cinque order? The predicate raising mechanism […] operates around heads, and this leads Rackowski & Travis (2000: 122) to suggest that preverbal adverbs are not heads, but are phrasal, and are located in the Specifier positions themselves. The crucial consequence of this is that the specifier position is blocked, thus effectively preventing further predicate raising. Given that the entire analysis crucially rests on the assumption that certain elements are heads and others are phrases, it would be an advantage if some independent evidence for the X I XP status of the elements could be unearthed. Unfortunately, such evidence is hard to come by in Malagasy. However, other Austronesian languages with similar word order patterns do display rather robust evidence for the head status of certain elements. One such language in the Formosan language Seediq.
This work examines English echo questions (EQs) against the background of Rizzi's (1997) analysis of split CP. It argues that EQs do not behave as the split CP analysis predicts that they should, and that their behavior can instead be straightforwardly explained within the classic CP analysis. Further, what are termed here 'echo negations' of negative inversion constructions are shown not to parallel EQs, a surprising result if negative inversion architecture parallels question architecture, as claimed by split CP proponents. In general, classic CP architecture is more appropriate for analysing this range of phenomena.
Band II von II
Band I von II
The papers in this volume were presented at the eleventh meeting of the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association (AFLA 11), held from April 23-25 at the Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin, Germany. The conference was organized by Hans-Martin Gärtner, Joachim Sabel, and myself, as part of the research project Clause Structure and Adjuncts in Austronesian Languages. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). We would like to thank Wayan Arka, Agibail Cohn, Laura Downing, Silke Hamann, S J Hannahs, Ray Harlow, Nikolaus Himmelmann, Yuchua E. Hsiao, Lillian Huang, Ed Keenan, Glyne Piggott, Charles Randriamasimanana, Joszef Szakos, Barbara Stiebels, Jane Tang, Lisa Travis, Noami Tsukido, Sam Wang, Elizabeth Zeitoun, Kie Ross Zuraw, and Marzena Zygis for reviewing the abstracts. We are thankful to Mechthild Bernhard, Jenny Ehrhardt, Fabienne Fritzsche, Theódóra Torfadóttir and Tue Trinh for their help during the conference. I would like to thank Theódóra for providing essential editorial assistance.
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.
As part of a major project on the syntactic organisation of written discourse in the recent history of the English language, this paper tackles the distribution of sentences comprising left-dislocated constituents in a corpus of texts from late Middle English onwards. Once the phenomenon of left dislocation has been properly defined, this investigation will concentrate on the analysis of the corpus in the following directions: (i) statistical evolution of left dislocation in the recent history of the English language; (ii) the influence of orality and genre on left dislocation; (iii) information conveyed by the left-dislocated material, that is, the discourse-based referentiality potential of the left-dislocated constituents in terms of recoverability, and its association with end-focus; and (iv) grammatical complexity of the left-dislocated material and its association with end-weight.
[V]oice in Malagasy is less like voice in English and more like wh-agreement, of the sort which Chung (1998) documents for Chamorro. In A' -extraction contexts in Chamorro, regular subject agreement […] is replaced by special morphology indicating whether the extracted element is a subject, object, or oblique […]. In Pearson (to appear) I suggested that Malagasy voice marking is a 'generalized' version of this type of marking: While in Chamorro wh-agreement is confined to questions, relative clauses, and the like, in Malagasy it appears in all clause types due to a requirement that the specifier of WhP be filled in every clause. [...]
In this paper I focus on the voice affixes themselves and propose an account of their distribution. Specifically, I argue that they are realizations of light verbs and Case-checking heads, which combine with the root through head-to-head movement. The distribution of the affixes is determined by the positions from which, and through which, the null operator […] moves on its way to the specifier of WhP. For example, the actor-topic prefix m- is treated as a nominative Casechecking head, which gets spelled out just in case the operator raises through its specifier. (My analysis is thus in the spirit of Guilfoyle, Hung, & Travis (1992), who also associate voice morphemes with Case licensing.)
The filling of the 'Vorfeld' in German sentences is basically obligatory; which constituent, however, actually moves to the Vorfeld is underdetermined by syntax and thus governed presumably by discourse factors. Coming from English, there are certain competing expectations one could have: either the topic — more specifically, the backward-looking center — of a sentence is moved to the Vorfeld, or an element in a poset relationship to a set mentioned in the previous discourse, or elements with other functions, such as the exposition of brand-new information or the setting of a scene. A study of a corpus of texts of different stylistic levels showed that indeed all elements expected to appear in the Vorfeld are eligible for Vorfeld-movement, but that there is a strict ranking. Preferred Vorfeld-fillers are phrases containing brand-new information as well as scene-setting elements; only if no such elements are present can elements in a poset relationship with some previously mentioned set be moved to the Vorfeld. Finally, if such elements are not present either, backward-looking centers can move to the Vorfeld. Backward-looking centers have, for this reason, a relatively poor quota among Vorfeld-fillers, namely around 50%.
In this paper, we investigate two pairs of structures in German and English: German Weak Pronoun Left Dislocation and English Topicalization, on the one hand, and German and English Hanging Topic Left Dislocation, on the other. We review the prosodic, lexical, syntactic, and discourse evidence that places the former two structures into one class and the latter two into another, taking this evidence to show that dislocates in the former class are syntactically integrated into their 'host' sentences while those in the latter class are not. From there, we show that the most straightforward way to account for this difference in 'integration' is to take the dislocates in the latter structures to be 'orphans', phrases that are syntactically independent of the phrases with which they are associated, providing additional empirical and theoretical support for this analysis — which, we point out, has a number of antecedents in the literature.
The phenomenon of phonological opacity has been the subject of much debate in recent years, with scholars opposed to the Optimality Theory (OT) research program arguing that opacity proves OT must be false, while the solutions proposed within OT, such as sympathy theory and stratal OT , have proved to be unsatisfying to many OT proponents, who have found these proposals to be inconsistent with the parallelist approach to phonological processes otherwise characteristic of OT. In this paper I reexamine one of the best known cases of opacity, that found in three processes of Tiberian Hebrew (TH), and argue that these processes only appear to be opaque, because previous analyses have treated them as pure phonology, rather than as an interaction between phonology and morphology. Once it is recognized that certain words of TH are lexically marked to end with a syllabic trochee, and that the goal of paradigm uniformity exerts grammatical pressure on phonology, the three processes no longer present a problem to parallelist OT. The results suggest the possibility that all crosslinguistic instances of apparent opacity can be explained in terms of the phonology-morphology interface and that purely phonological opacity does not exist. If this claim is true, then parallelist OT can be defended against its detractors without the need for additional mechanisms like sympathy theory and stratal OT.
This paper investigates how syntax and focus interact in deriving the phonological phrasing of utterances in Xhosa, a Bantu language spoken in South Africa. Although the influence of syntax on phrasing is uncontroversial, a purely syntactic analysis cannot account for all the data reported for Xhosa by Jokweni (1995). Focus influences the phrasing in that it inserts a phonological phrase-boundary after the focused constituent. This generalization can account for the variation found in the phrasing of adverbials.
The findings are dealt with in an OT-based framework following Truckenbrodt's work on Chichewa (1995, 1999) which is extended to the phrasing of adjuncts.
In this paper, I argue that this apparent problem is accounted for by the interaction of constraints. For the fixed segment [ɛ] in Cɛ-reduplication, I argue that [ɛ] is the second least marked vowel in Palauan, which appears when the default vowel [ǝ] cannot appear. I show that the Palauan facts are not only consistent with the proposals of Urbanczyk (1999) and Alderete et. al (1999), but they actually provide support of their claims. In the following section, I discuss Urbanczyk's (1999) arguments concerning ROOT faithfulness in reduplication and possible asymmetries between affix reduplicants and root reduplicants. In Section 3, I introduce Palauan reduplication and discuss Finer's (1986) observations on the resulting state verb (RSV) form. I show that the RSV forms support the classification that Cɛ-reduplicants are affixes, and CVCV -reduplicants are roots. In Section 4, I discuss the shape and vowel quality of the two reduplicants. The CVCV-reduplicant has three variants: CǝCǝ, CǝC and CV. I explain this variation, illustrating why [ǝ] appears in the first two variations. Then, I discuss the shape and vowel quality of the Cɛ-reduplicant, arguing that the fixed segment [ɛ] in Cɛ-reduplication is a special case of TETU. I show that root faithfulness constraints are crucial in determining the shape and vowel quality of the reduplicants. Section 5 is the conclusion.
Ida'an-Begak is a Western Malayo-Polynesian language spoken by approximately 6,000 people on the east coast of Sabah, Malaysia, Borneo and belongs to the Sabahan subgroup of the North Borneo subgroup (Blust 1998). Ida'an-Begak has three dialects, Ida'an, spoken in the villages of Segama to the west of Lahad Datu, Ida'an Sungai spoken in the Kinabatangan and Sandakan districts, and Begak spoken in Ulu Tungku, to the east of Lahad Datu (Banker 1984).1 Moody (1993) deals with Ida'an; this paper concentrates on the Begak dialect. In this paper I will present new data gathered in the field and provide an analysis of the allomorphy. The study is based on spontaneous data as well as examples elicited from my language informants.
This paper presents preliminary results of a phonetic and phonological study of the Ntcheu dialect of Chichewa spoken by Al Mtenje (one of the co-authors). This study confirms Kanerva's (1990) work on Nkhotakota Chichewa showing that phonological re-phrasing is the primary cue to information structure in this language. It expands on Kanerva's work in several ways. First, we show that focus phrasing has intonational correlates, namely, the manipulation of downdrift and pause. Further, we show that there is a correlation between pitch prominence and discourse prominence at the left and right periphery which conditions dislocation to these positions. Finally, we show that focus and syntax are not the only factors which condition phonological phrasing in Chichewa.