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This paper discusses results from a corpus study of German demonstrative and personal pronouns and from a reading time experiment in which we compared the interpretation options of the two types of pronouns (Bosch et al. 2003, 2007). A careful review of exceptions to a generalisation we had been suggesting in those papers (the Subject Hypothesis: "Personal pronouns prefer subject antecedents and demonstratives prefer non-subject antecedents") shows that, although this generalisation correctly describes a tendency in the data, it is quite wrong in claiming that the grammatical role of antecedents is the relevant parameter. In the current paper we argue that the generalisation should be formulated in terms of in-formation-structural properties of referents rather than in terms of the grammatical role of antecedent expressions.
Multiple modals construction
(2006)
Modal items of different semantic types can only be combined in a specific order. Epistemic items, for instance, cannot be embedded under deontic ones. I'll argue that this fact cannot be explained by the current semantic theories of modality. A solution to this problem will be developed in an update semantics framework. On the semantic side, a distinction will be drawn between circumstantial information about the world and information about duties, whereas I'll use Nuyts' notion of m-performativity to account for certain use of the modal items.
The expressions few and a few are typically considered to be separate quantifiers. I challenge this assumption, showing that with the appropriate definition of few, a few can be derived compositionally as a + few. The core of the analysis is a proposal that few has a denotation as a one-place predicate which incorporates a negation operator. From this, argument interpretations can be derived for expressions such as few students and a few students, differing only in the scope of negation. I show that this approach adequately captures the interpretive differences between few and a few. I further show that other such pairs are blocked by a constraint against the vacuous application of a.
Kripke's "modal argument" uses consideration about scope within modal contexts to show that proper names and definite descriptions must be of two different semantic types. I reexamine the data that is used to motivate Kripke's argument, and suggest that it, in fact, indicates that proper names behave exactly like a certain type of definite description, which I call "particularized" descriptions.
In this work we examine several sentential particles, occurring in imperatives, main exclamative and interrogative sentences, which display a uniform syntactic behaviour. We analyse them as heads of high CP projections which require their specifier to be filled either by the wh-item (in sentences where there is one) or by the whole clause, yielding the sentence final position of the particle. The hypothesis that they are C°-heads accounts for their sensitivity to sentence type and for their occurrence only in matrix contexts. We also provide a first sketch of their semantic contribution, showing that they select ‘non standard’ contexts and interact with tense and modality of the verb when the whole CP has moved to their specifier.
This paper presents results of corpus analytic investigations of children's use of referring expressions and considers possible implications of this work for questions relating to development of theory of mind. The study confirms previous findings that children use the full range of referring forms (definite and indefinite articles, demonstrative determiners, and demonstrative and personal pronouns) appropriately by age 3 or earlier. It also provides support for two distinct stages in mind-reading ability. The first, which is implicit and non-propositional, includes the ability to assess cognitive statuses such as familiarity and focus of attention in relation to the intended referent; the second, which is propositional and more conscious, includes the ability to assess epistemic states such as knowledge and belief. Distinguishing these two stages supports attempts to reconcile seemingly inconsistent results concerning the age at which children develop theory of mind. It also makes it possible to explain why children learn to use forms correctly be-fore they exhibit the pragmatic ability to consider and calculate quantity implicatures.
This paper investigates the semantic underpinnings of the distinction between two syntactic types of "manner of movement" verbs in Levin (1993), namely the RUN and ROLL classes. According to Levin's (1993) and Levin & Rappaport's (1995) work on unaccusativity, a semantic factor of "internal causation" should be the trigger for the classification of a movement verb as intransitive (=not-unaccusative), and hence for its belonging to the RUN class. We point out empirical problems for this characterisation, mainly coming from the different readings of the German verb fliegen (fly). From a comparison with other semantically similar verbs, we conclude that the semantic description which underlies the class distinction should be refined: instead of "internal causation", the crucial semantic factor is described here as "inherent specification for a momentum of movement". This result indicates that forces, and relations between forces, have to be part of the semantic description of the manner component in movement verbs.
This paper employs empirical methods to examine verbs such as seem, for which the traditional raising to subject analysis relates pairs of sentences which differ by taking an infinitival or sentential complement. A corpus-driven investigation of the verbs seem and appear demonstrates that information structure and evidentiality both play a determinate role in the choice between infinitival or sentential complementation. The second half of the paper builds upon the corpus results and examines the implications for the standard claims concerning these constructions. First, pairs of sentences related by the subject-to-subject raising analysis of verbs are often viewed as equivalent. New evidence from indefinite generic subjects shows that whether an indefinite generic subject occurs in the infinitival or sentential complement construction leads to truth-conditional differences. Further implications are explored for the claim that subjects of the infinitival variant may take narrow-scope: once various confounds are controlled for, the subject of the infinitival construction is shown to most naturally take wide-scope.
The paper investigates the origins of the German/Dutch particle toch/doch) in the hope of shedding light on a puzzle with respect to doch/toch and to shed some light on two theoretical issues. The puzzle is the nearly opposite meaning of the stressed and unstressed versions of the particle which cannot be accounted for in standard theories of the meaning of stress. One theoretical issue concerns the meaning of stress: whether it is possible to reduce the semantic contribution of a stressed item to the meaning of the item and the meaning of stress. The second issue is whether the complex use of a particle like doch/toch can be seen as an instance of spread or whether it has to be seen as having a core meaning which is differentiated by pragmatics operating in different contexts.
We use the etymology of doch and doch as to+u+h (that+ question marker+ emphatic marker) to argue for an origin as a question tag checking a hearer opinion. Stress on the tag indicates an opposite opinion (of the common ground or the speaker) and this sets apart two groups of uses spreading in different directions. This solves the puzzle, indicates that the assumption of spread is useful and offers a subtle correction of the interpretation of stress. While stress always means contrast with a contrasting item, if the particle use is due to spread, it is not guaranteed that the unstressed particle has a corresponding use (or inversely).
This paper looks at sentences with "quantificational indefinites," discussed by Diesing (1992) and others. I propose that these sentences generate sets of alternatives of the form {p, not p and it's possible that p}, which restrict the quantification by an extension of familiar focus principles. For example, in the sentence "I usually read a book about slugs" (on the relevant reading), "usually" quantifies over pairs <x,t> such that x is a book about slugs, t is a time interval, and one alternative is true from the set {I read x at t, I can but do not read x at t}. In addition to accounting for a well-known contrast between creation and non-creation verbs, this also explains a second contrast that Diesing’s analysis cannot account for.
Starting from the basic observation that, across languages, the anticausative variant of an alternating verb systematically involves morphological marking that is shared by passive verbs, the goal of this paper is to provide a uniform and formal account of these arguably two different construction types. The central claim that I put forward is that passives and anticausatives differ only with respect to the event-type features of the verb but both arise through the same operation, namely suppression by special morphology of a feature in v that encodes the ontological event type of the verb. Crucially, I argue for two syntactic primitives, namely act and cause, whereto I trace the passive/anticausative distinction. Passive constructions across languages are made compatible by relegating the differences to simple combinatorial properties of verb and prepositional types and their interactions with other event functors, which are in turn encoded differently morphologically across languages. New arguments are brought forward for a causative analysis of anticausatives. Agentive adverbials are examined, and doubt is cast on the usefulness of by-phrases as a diagnostic for argumenthood.
Russian and Spanish each have two variants of the predicational copular sentence. In Russian, the variation concerns the case of the predicate phrase, which can be nominative or instrumental, while in Spanish, the variation involves the choice of the copular verb, either ser or estar. It is shown that the choice of the particular variant of copular sentence in both languages depends on the speaker’s perspective, i.e., on whether or not the predication is linked to a specific topic situation.
Dieser Beitrag setzt sich zum Ziel, die Kurzwörter zu klassifizieren und statistisch auszuwerten. Die Belege, die beim Lesen der deutschen Alltagspresse gewonnen wurden, verglich die Autorin mit anderen Belegen aus der deutschen Fachpresse und der tschechischen Presse. Statistisch gesehen, bilden die partiellen Kurzwörter, die auch als gebundene Kurzwörter bezeichnet werden, die meist benutzte Kategorie der Kurzwörter in der deutschen Presse. Das deutsche und das tschechische Sprachsystem unterscheiden sich voneinander in der Flexion, was die Variabilität in der Position der gekürzten Form im deutschen Sprachsystem ermöglicht.
Der vorliegende Beitrag gibt zunächst einen Überblick über die sprachwissenschaftlichen Zugänge zur Onomatopöie und den derzeitigen Forschungsstand. Danach wird dargestellt, dass Onomatopoetika insbesondere für den Sprachvergleich ein lohnendes, aber bislang noch unzureichend behandeltes Forschungsthema darstellen. Dabei zeigen sich zahlreiche Fragestellungen, die auch für die Sprachdidaktik relevant sind. Auf dieser Grundlage zeigt der Beitrag, wie und warum Onomatopoetika sprachdidaktisch nutzbringend thematisiert werden können.
Neste trabalho são abordados aspectos históricos e semânticos dos termos "doutor" (port.) – "Doktor" (alem.), que apresentam matizes bastante diferenciados nas duas culturas respectivas. Primeiramente é considerado o desenvolvimento do termo "doutor", desde suas origens latinas até o seu uso hodierno em português, em que o termo passa a ser utilizado também como forma respeitosa de tratamento. O uso dessa forma de tratamento para certas categorias profissionais no Brasil é, então, contrastado com a situação vigente na Alemanha, levando-se em conta a legislação e a jurisprudência em ambos os países. As particularidades do tratamento de doutor em cada uma das duas culturas, sobretudo na área do direito, são ilustradas com exemplos. Ao final, são tecidos breves comentários sobre a relevância teórica e prática do assunto para a tradução.
This paper gives a survey over the forms that can be used as prepositions in contemporary German. Apart from prototypical prepositions such as an [at, by], auf [on] or in [in], there are prepositions with the form of a content word or the form of a syntactical structure. Prepositions with the form of a content word look like adverbs (e.g. abseits [away], außerhalb [outside]), verbs (entsprechend [corresponding], betreffend [concerning]), adjectives (nahe [near], seitlich [at the side]) or nouns (trotz [despite], kraft [by virtue]); prepositions with the form of a syntactical structure look like prepositional phrases (im Gefolge [in the wake], am Rande [on the brink]). These "atypical" prepositions are of special interest for two reasons: (1) they raise the question of the delimitation of the grammatical category "preposition"; (2) unlike prototypical prepositions, they are often characterized by semantically irrelevant variations in position (preposing vs postposing) and in the choice of the governed case (dative vs genitive). These synchronic variations are documented by authentic examples from a large corpus of written German of the 90s, and are explained on the basis of a diachronic gramrnaticalization rnodel.
The present paper deals with grammaticalization as a comprehensive model of erosive processes in the history of natural languages, exemplified in German and Brazilian Portuguese. Grammaticalization is conceived of as the reduction of pragmatic versatility, semantic concreteness, syntactic liberty and phonetic substance of linguistic elements. It is subdivided into the processes of lexicalization, which transforms polylexematic into monolexematic elements, and deslexicalization, which reduces lexematic to sublexematic elements. In the middle of these processes stands the lexicon, which is seen as the central stock of linguistic elements. Within the lexicon, the process of grammaticalization continues, from lexical word classes through intermediate classes to grammatical word classes. The lower boundary of the lexicon is critical threshold, down to which the process of grammaticalization is compensated for by linguistic recycling that leads lexematic elements back into the linguistic circuit, through the formation of new polylexematic units. Beyond this threshold, however, no recycling is possible any more, so that elements which have once lost their lexical character are condemned to disappear in the long run. The different stages of grammaticalization are introduced and illustrated by means of concrete examples, first from Brazilian Portuguese and afterwards from German.
The present paper deals with selected morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic characteristics of nominal totalizers in German and in Brazilian Portuguese. In particular, it analyzes the elements 'todo', 'cada', 'ambos' and 'os dois', as well as 'alle', 'jeder', 'der ganze' and 'beide'. In terms of morphology, it describes the formation of gender, number and case forms. In the field of syntax, it focuses on the position of totalizers in the nominal phrase, their relations to determiners and quantifiers, and the functional distribution of declension types. In terms of semantics and pragmatics, it investigates the codification of referential and quantificational information, definiteness and cumulative v distributive totalization. The epistemological interest is defined by the objectives of linguistic comparison between German and Brazilian Portuguese, including the analysis of typical errors committed by language learners in both directions.