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The left periphery has enjoyed extensive study over the past years, especially drawn against the framework of Rizzi (1997). It is argued that in this part of the clause, relations are licensed that have direct impact on discourse interpretation and information structure, such as topic, focus, clause type, and the like. I take this line of research up and argue in favour of a split CP on the basis of strictly left-peripheral phenomena across languages. But I also want to link the relation of articulated clause structure, syntactic derivations, and information structure. In particular, I outline the basics of a model of syntactic derivation that makes explicit reference to the interpretive interfaces in a cyclic, dynamic manner.
I suggest a return to older stages of generative grammar, at least in spirit, by proposing that clausal derivation stretches over three important areas which I call prolific domains: the part of the clause which licenses argument/thematic relations (V- or θ-domain), the part that licenses agreement/grammatica1 relations (T- or ϕ-domain), and the part that licenses discourse/information-relevant relations (C- or ω-domain). It is thus a rather broad and conceptual notion of "adding" and "omitting" that I am concerned with here, namely licensing of material to relate to information structure, and the desire to find an answer to the question which elements might be added or omitted across languages to establish such links.
We will see how it is reasonable to speak of a minimum distance that an element must cross in order to enter into a well-formed movement dependency. In the course of the discussion of this notion of anti-localiry, a theoretical framework unfolds which is compatible with recent thoughts on syntactic computation regarding local economy and phrase structure, as well as the view that certain pronouns are grammatical formatives, rather than fully lexical expressions. The upshot will be that if an element does not move a certain distance, the derivation crashes at PF, unless the lower copy is spelled out as a pronominal element. The framework presented has a number of implications for the study of clause-typing, of which some will be discussed towards the end.
Ausländische Studierende an deutschen Hochschulen haben mit dem traditionellen deutschen Tempussystem nach lateinischem Vorbild eine Reihe von Problemen, weil es nicht immer logisch nachvollziehbare Beziehungen zwischen einer grammatischen Tempusform und den Zeitbedeutungen gibt. Nach einer überblicksartigen kritischen Betrachtung der Darstellung des Tempussystems in einigen einschlägigen (Übungs-) Grammatiken und Lehrwerken stellt der Verfasser den Entwurf eines Tempussystems des Deutschen vor, bei dem die klassische Einteilung in 6 Tempusformen zugunsten eines nutzerfreundlicheren Tempussystems aufgegeben wird. Dann werden exemplarisch typischen kommunikativen Aufgaben von Studierenden Tempusformen in Form von Gebrauchsvorschriften, -präferenzen bzw. -möglichkeiten zugeordnet.
One of the most important insights of Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993) is that phonological processes can be reduced to the interaction between faithfulness and universal markedness principles. In the most constrained version of the theory, all phonological processes should be thus reducible. This hypothesis is tested by alternations that appear to be phonological but in which universal markedness principles appear to play no role. If we are to pursue the claim that all phonological processes depend on the interaction of faithfulness and markedness, then processes that are not dependent on markedness must lie outside phonology. In this paper I will examine a group of such processes, the initial consonant mutations of the Celtic languages, and argue that they belong entirely to the morphology of the languages, not the phonology.
Specifics
(2001)
In all these examples there appears to be mismatch between the position at which an indefinite appears and its preferred interpretation. Following many of the more recent contributions to the literature, I will assume that this is the hallmark of specificity (e.g. Ahusch 1994, Reinhart 1997, Winter 1997, van Geenhoven 1998). Such mismatches are not the norm: indefinites are often interpreted in situ, and there is some reason for taking this to be the default option. The reason is that comparatively 'neutral', i.e. semantically attenuate, indefinites have a preference for in situ readings [...].
The ultimate goal of this paper is to find a representation of modality compatible with some basic conditions on the syntax-semantic interface. Such conditions are anchored, for instance, in Chomsky's (1995) principle of full interpretation (FI). Abstract interpretation of modality is, however - be it "only" in semantic terms - already a hard nut to crack, way too vast to be dealt with in any comprehensive way here. What is pursued instead is a case-study-centered analysis. The case in point are the English modals (EM) viewed in their development through time - a locus classicus for a number of linguistic theories and frameworks. The idea will be to start out from two lines of research - continuous grammaticalization vs. cataclysmic change - and to explain some of their incongruities. The first non-trivial point here consists in deriving more fundamental questions from this research. The second, possibly even less trivial one consists in answering them. Specifically, I will argue that regardless of the actual numerical rate of change, there is an underlying and more structured way to account for the notions of change and continuity within the modal system, respectively.
In this paper we investigate the structure of specificational sentences like [Raskol'nikov]NP 1 - ėto [ubìjca staruxi]NP2 'Raskolnikov - that is the murderer of the old lady' in Russian and Polish, which - depending on the type of NP1 and NP2 - correspond to English pseudo-cleft-constructions (What Raskolnikov is is the murderer of the old lady) and specificational sentences (The person I like most is my father), respectively. We propose that the Slavic constructions can be analysed similarly to their English counterparts: the first fragment contains a semantic variable, which is specified in the second fragment.
We show that the pronouns "ėto" <Rus.> / "to" <Pol.>, which are obligatory in Slavic specificational sentences, have two functions. 1. the deictic function: "ėto/to" take an open proposition available in the discourse or reconstructed from it, and assign this open proposition to another proposition, which provides the value for the variable of the open proposition. 2. the operative function: "ėto/to" link two syntactically independent fragments, the first of which can be semantically interpreted as an indirect question comparable to the wh-clause in the English pseudo-clefts, and the second as an answer to this question.
This article discusses some syntactic peculiarities of Chinese yes/no questions. Starting from the observation that Standard Mandarin shares significant typological features with prototypical SOV languages, Chinese is treated as an underlyingly verb-final language. Based on this heuristic principle, A-not-AB, AB-not-A and AB-not questions are uniformly derived by means of one simple raising rule that operates within the sentence constituent V'. This novel idea is elaborated on in great detail in the first part of the article. In contrast to the prevailing trend, it is argued that the question operator contained in A-not-A and A-not sentences CANNOT be raised to "Comp". In consequence, A-not-A and A-not questions are "typed" in the head position of a sentence-internal functional phrase that we call Force2 Phrase (F2P) in the present paper. This position is not to be confused with Drubig's (1994) Polarity 1 Phrase (PollP), in the head position of which assertive negations and an abstract affirmative element are located. The existence of a head position F2° other than Poll° is supported by the fact that F2° can be occupied by certain overt question operators, such as assertive shi-bu-shi, which are compatible with negations. In contrast to the assertive question operator shi-bu-shi which is obligatorily associated with information focus, non-assertive shi-bu-shi serves as a compound focus and question operator whose focus feature is complex insofar as it is composed of two subfeatures: a contrastivity and an exhaustivity subfeature. Non-assertive shi-bu-shi is obligatorily associated with identificational focus in the sense of Kiss (1998). In accordance with some basic ideas of Chomsky's checking theory, the two subfeatures of the complex focus feature carried by the non-assertive shi-bu-shi operator check a correlating subfeature in the head position of a corresponding functional phrase (Contrastive Phrase and Focus Phrase, respectively). The question feature contained in the non-assertive shi-bu-shi operator is attracted by the head of Force1 Phrase (F1') at the level of LF. Due to the fact that F1° is sentence-final, the question feature of non-assertive shi-bu-shi must be Chomsky-adjoined to F1'. Unlike identificational focus phrases which are inherently contrastive, topics are non-contrastive in the default case. As separate speech acts, they are located in a c-commanding position outside the sentence structure. Semantically, there is a difference between Frame-Setting Topics and Aboutness Topics. As shown in the article, both A-not-A and A-not questions on the one hand and yes/no questions ending with ma on the other can be used in neutral and non-neutral contexts. The decisive advantage of mu questions, however, is that their question operator has scope over the whole sentence.
The study examines the hypotheses that the acquisition of the finite verb is an indispensable and linking constituent of the development of SVO utterances. Four apparently separate or at least separable processes are analysed over 6 months in one Russian and one German child: a) the emergence of verbs in the child’s utterances, b) the occurrence of correctly inflected (finite) verb forms, c) the development of multi-component utterances containing a verb, and c) the emergence of (potential) subjects and objects. Russian and German exhibit rich verb morphology, and in both languages finiteness is strongly correlated with inflectional categories like person, number and tense. With both children we find a correlation in the temporal order of these four processes and – what is more relevant for our study – a dependency of a certain development on the utterance level on the emergence of finite verbs. Further, our investigation shows that language-specific development comes in to play already when children start to acquire verb inflection and becomes more contrastive when we observe the onset of the production of the SVO utterances.
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.
Književnojezična norma franjevačkih pisaca 18. St. : sastavnica jezičnostandardizacijskih procesa
(2007)
Važnom sastavnicom hrvatskoga predstandardnoga jezika smatra se koine franjevačke književnosti 18. st. Izrasla iz pisane prakse bosanskih franjevaca 17. st., obogaćena u jeziku hrvatskih franjevaca izraznim sredstvima pučkeknjiževnosti, već je u 18. st. pokazivala obilježja standardiziranosti: polifunkcinonalnost, preskriptivnost i neovisnost o organskim idiomima. Koine je opisana u franjevačkim gramatikama, što je naznaka normativnih tendencija.
In what follows, I first briefly review Perlmutter (1968, 1970), in which it is argued that aspectual verbs are ambiguous between control and raising. I suggest that while the argument for the raising analysis is solid, the arguments supporting the control analysis of aspectual verbs are less so. As an alternative hypothesis to consider, I introduce the structural ambiguity hypothesis. In Section 3, I review three recent analyses of control and raising. Although there are important differences among them, they all share the basic assumption that the control/raising distinction is due to differences in selectional restrictions that the lexical items impose. Under such an assumption, the lexical ambiguity hypothesis is the only available option. In Section 4, I present evidence for the structural ambiguity hypothesis from studies concerning aspectual verbs in languages from four distinct families, German (Wurmbrand 2001), Japanese (Fukuda 2006), Romance languages (Cinque 2003), and Basque (Arregi Molina-Azaola 2004). These data strongly suggest that across languages aspectual verbs can appear in two different syntactic positions, either below or above vP, or the projection with which an external argument is introduced (Kratzer 1994, 1996, Chomsky 1995). Given these findings, I argue that it is the aspectual verbs' position with respect to vP which creates the control/raising ambiguity. When an aspectual verb appears in a position that is lower than vP, an external argument takes scope over the aspectual verb. Thus, it is interpreted as control. When an aspectual verb appears in a position that is higher than vP, on the other hand, it is the aspectual verb that takes scope over an entire vP, including the external argument. Thus, it is interpreted as raising. In section 5, I extend the scope of this study to include a discussion of want-type verbs in Indonesian, as analyzed in Polinsky & Potsdam (2006). Polinsky & Potsdam argue that the Indonesian want-type verbs must be raising in at least certain cases where they allow a rather peculiar interpretation. Although they assume that there are also control counterparts of the want-type verbs, I argue that applying the proposed analysis to the want-type verbs does away with the need for stipulating two distinct lexical entries for these verbs. Section 6 concludes the paper.
Das Partizip 1 im Deutschen
(2000)
It is controversial in the literature whether the First Participle in German ('Present Participle'; henceforth: Part I) is an adjective or a verbal form. Syntactically, it occurs exclusively in adjectival positions but it does not behave like an adjective in other respects. This paper provides an analysis of Part I starting from a diachronic perspective and arriving at a synchronic interpretation of its position in the field of 'finite verb + nonfinite verb constructions' in New High German. Against such positions as Paul's (1920), which regard Part I as an adjective only, it will be argued that, for an adequate description of its structural properties, its verbal character must be taken into account both diachronically and synchronically. It will be shown that Part I fits into and completes a paradigmatic structure together with other nonfinite verbal forms.
Wortformen wie Berliner und Potsdamer treten in pränominaler attributiver Funktion auf: eine Position, in der sowohl Adjektive als auch Substantive stehen können. Substantive kommen in der Position vor als sächsische Genitive (Leos Auto), als vorangestellte Genitivattribute (des Vaters Pflicht) oder als Bestandteile einer engen Apposition (Bundeskanzler Schröder). Adjektive stehen an dieser Stelle als adjektivische Attribute (rotes Auto). Gegen jede dieser Interpretationen von Berliner sprechen jeweils formale Argumente, die im wesentlichen darauf hinauslaufen, daß Berliner in Berliner Ballen niemals flektiert wird - weder wie ein Substantiv noch wie ein Adjektiv.
Welcher Wortart sind Wortformen wie Berliner in Berliner Ballen also zuzuordnen? Zur Beantwortung dieser Frage folgen zunächst einige (kommentierte) Literaturstellen, anschließend werde ich die Bezeichnung 'Stadtadjektive' einführen, ich nehme also zum Zwecke der Benennung eine Entscheidung vorweg. Darauf folgt die Untersuchung: das Verhalten der Stadtadjektive in Bezug auf Flexion, Derivation, Komposition und Syntax.
The paper characterizes three different domains in the German middle field which are relevant for the interpretation of an indefinite. It is argued that the so-called 'strong' reading of an indefinite is the basic one and that the 'weak' reading needs special licensing which is mirrored by certain syntactic requirements. Some popular claims about the relation between the position and the interpretation of indefinites as well as some claims about scrambling are discussed and rejected. From the findings also follows that the strong reading of an indefinite is independent of its information status.
Two main types of sentences are traditionally distinguished in the context of semantic theories of questions and answers: declarative sentences, corresponding to statements, and interrogative sentences, corresponding to questions. The interrogative forms can be further subdivided into dialectical ones (yes-no-questions) and non-dialectical ones (constituent questions). These distinctions are made for both root and embedded sentences. The predicates that select sentential complements fall into three classes: predicates that license only declaratives, those that allow only for interrogatives, and those that embed both types of sentences. In this connection, verbs of doubt are interesting in that they allow for declaratives as well as dialectical interrogatives, while non-dialectical interrogatives do not seem to be appropriate complements.
In what follows, our main concern will be with the German verb of doubt zweifeln and its possible sentential complements. Speaker intuitions as to which constructions are grammatical or acceptable vary, particularily with respect to rare expressions like zweifeln. Therefore, interviews and corpus analysis were applied as a means to acquire reliable linguistic data. These as well as data from historical sources and from some languages other than German (esp. English and Italian) are presented and analysed. In the last section, based on the notion of ‘subjective probability’, an attempt is made at explaining the observations.
Welchen Bedingungen unterliegt menschliche Kommunikation? Welche sprachlichen Mittel verwendet ein Sprecher um sicherzustellen, dass sein Zuhörer tatsächlich das versteht, was er kommunizieren möchte? Wie also »verpacken« wir wichtige und weniger wichtige Informationen im alltäglichen Diskurs? Diesen und anderen Fragen geht der SFB 632 »Informationsstruktur«, ein gemeinsames Forschungsunternehmen von Linguisten verschiedener Teildisziplinen der Universität Potsdam und der Humboldt-Universität, nach.
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 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).
Ziel dieses Artikels ist es, allgemeine Frage- und Problemstellungen bei der Untersuchung des Phänomens Fokus in ausgewählten Gur- und Kwasprachen vorzustellen, d.h. unsere Forschungsvorhaben kurz zu skizzieren, ohne dass wir bereits auf Ergebnisse eingehen können. Dieser Aufsatz gibt einen Überblick über das Forschungsfeld, damit verbundene Problemstellungen und die von uns anvisierten Aufgaben und Methoden: - Was verstehen wir unter Fokus? - Warum sind die Gur- und Kwasprachen für diese Untersuchung von Relevanz? - Welche Korrelationen lassen sich zwischen Struktur und semantisch/pragmatischen Merkmalen erkennen? - Welche Entwicklung haben Fokusstrukturen genommen? - Welche methodischen Grundlagen liegen unseren Untersuchungen zugrunde?
Focus expressions in Foodo
(2006)
Focus expressions in Yom
(2006)
This paper deals with the means for expressing the pragmatic category of focus in Yom, which is an Oti-Volta language of the Yom-Nawdem group spoken by about 74,000 people (Gordon 2005, online version) in the department of Donga in Northern Benin. The study is based on results of my field research carried out in March/April 2005 in Djougou (Benin), within the framework of the project “Focus in Gur and Kwa languages”. Main aim of this fieldwork was to study the expression of focus in Yom. Regarding the basic grammatical structure of the language, I mainly rely on various publications by Beacham (1969, 1991, and 1997).
Focus expressions in Yom
(2005)
Fokus im Aja
(1998)
Im folgenden Beitrag sollen die verschiedenen Möglichkeiten der Markierung von Fokus im Aja dargestellt werden. Das Aja, oder Ajagbe, umfaßt eine Gruppe von Varietäten, die zum Gbe-Kontinuum, von Westermann als Ewe bezeichnet, gehören. Die im Beitrag herangezogenen Daten stammen aus dem Hwe- sowie dem Dogbo-Dialekt (Daten von Tchitchi 1984) des Aja, die im Süden Benins und Togos gesprochen werden.
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".
Specificity distinction
(2001)
This paper is concerned with semantic noun phrase typology, focusing on the question of how to draw fine-grained distinctions necessary for an accurate account of natural language phenomena. In the extensive literature on this topic, the most commonly encountered parameters of classification concern the semantic type of the denotation of the noun phrase, the familiarity or novelty of its referent, the quantificational/nonquantificational distinction (connected to the weak/strong dichotomy), as well as, more recently, the question of whether the noun phrase is choice-functional or not (see Reinhart 1997, Winter 1997, Kratzer 1998, Matthewson 1999). In the discussion that follows I will attempt to make the following general points: (i) phenomena involving the behavior of noun phrases both within and across languages point to the need of establishing further distinctions that are too fine-grained to be caught in the net of these typologies; (ii) some of the relevant distinctions can be captured in terms of conditions on assignment functions; (iii) distribution and scopal peculiarities of noun phrases may result from constraints they impose on the way variables they introduce are to be assigned values.
Section 2 reviews the typology of definite noun phrases introduced in Farkas 2000 and the way it provides support for the general points above. Section 3 examines some of the problems raised by recognizing the rich variety of 'indefinite' noun phrases found in natural language and by attempting to capture their distribution and interpretation. Common to the typologies discussed in the two sections is the issue of marking different types of variation in the interpretation of a noun phrase. In the light of this discussion, specificity turns out to be an epiphenomenon connected to a family of distinctions that are marked differently in different languages.
Der Status der Satzadverbien
(2010)
Satzadverbien, auch Modalwörter genannt, sind Ausdrücke, mit denen der Sprecher oder die Sprecherin eines Satzes zum Geltungsgrad des geäußerten Satzes Stellung nimmt. Es handelt sich um Wörter wie tatsächlich, wahrscheinlich, leider, hoffentlich und andere. Mit ihnen wird der Satz, in dem sie vorkommen, bekräftigt oder abgeschwächt, bewertet und in bestimmter Weise kommentiert. Sie sind ein äußerst effektives Mittel, Sätze mit solchen Stellungnahmen und Bewertungen anzureichern und dadurch die Kommunikation kompakter und beweglicher zu machen. Für den Fremdsprachenunterricht ist die Kenntnis ihrer Funktionsweise unverzichtbar. Auch die Beobachtung ihres Stellungsverhaltens ist wichtig, vor allem, wenn sie in Kombination auftreten, was nicht selten der Fall ist.
In this paper, we deal with the semantic interaction between ung-nominalizations of different event types and temporal prepositions like wiihrend 'during', vor 'before', nach 'after', bis 'until' and seit 'since'. According to the two-level-approach to selnantics (Bierwisch 1983, Bierwisch / Lang 1989), we will argue that the meaning of ten~poral prepositions is determined on the level of semantic form (SF). When combined with an event nominal, the period in time required by the preposition has to be inferred on the level of conceptual structure (CS). Very often, the exact nature of the period in time is determined by pragmatic factors. There are, however, some important restrictions to this inference procedure which rely on the event noun's Aktionsart. In Ehrich/Rapp (2000), it was claimed that eventive ungnominals inherit the Aktionsart of their base verb. This assumption receives strong support by the data presented in this paper.
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.
This article provides an overview of valence lexicography and focuses especially on the Spanish-German case. Based on valence dictionaries and ongoing projects that describe the languages mentioned, this paper addresses the question of equivalence considering both quantitative and qualitative parameters and the various diffi culties found out through the process of description. A central role is ascribed to the problems surrounding the selection and description of equivalence in non-standard cases. Discussion of new theoretical and practical proposals is also included.
Recent work on argument selection couched in a lexical decomposition approach (Ehrich & Rapp 2000) postulates different linking properties for verbs and nouns, challenging current views on argument inheritance. In this paper, I show that the different behavior with respect to verbal and nominal linking observed for Present-Day German does not carry over to ung-nominals in Early New High German. Deverbal nouns and corresponding verbs rather behave alike with respect to argument linking. I shall argue that this change is motivated by the growing rift between ung-nominals and their verbal bases both focussing on different parts oftheir lexicosemantic structure in Present-Day German. Evidence for the verb-like behavior of ung-nominals in Early New High German comes from the regular meaning relation between verbs and corresponding derived nouns, the actional properties of event-denoting nouns, and the patterning of ung-nominals with nominalized infinitives. Even their syntactic behavior reflects the verbal character of ung-nominals during that period of the German language. The diachronic facts can be accounted for in a straightforward way once we adopt a lexical decomposition approach to argument selection.
We will argue that some seemingly adverbial free DPs in the instrumental in Russian which are traditionally termed measure instrumental are best understood as secondary predicates. We present the relevant syntactic assumptions and propose a semantics of this use of DPs in the instrumental. This proposal hears on the distinction between adjunct modification and secondary predication.
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, a class of sentences in German is discussed that are often called whexclamatives. […]
So called wh-exclamatives can be roughly characterized as wh-clauses that are embedded under exclamative predicates like erstaunt sein/to be amazed at [...] or that are used as the basis for an exclamation [...].
One can ask if wh-exclamatives are a clause-type of their own, in particular, whether they are different from wh-clauses in question environments, that is under question predicates like to ask or to wonder or used as questions. It is often assumed that wh-clauses in exclamative contexts, both embedded and unembedded, are indeed different from wh-clauses in interrogative or question environments [...], at least regarding their semantical type, see for example Elliot (1971, 1974), Grimshaw (1979, 1981), Zaefferer (1983, 1984), Altmann (1 987, 1993). […]
I assume with Grimshaw (1979) that so called wh-exclamatives and wh-interrogatives are alike with respect to their syntactical properties. In addition, I think that they are also alike semantically. So, what I like to do here is to evaluate the following hypothesis:
So-called wh-exclamatives are of the same semantical type as wh-interrogatives.
Este artigo apresenta um estudo quantitativo do uso dos modos Konjunktiv e Indikativ no discurso indireto no alemão. Através da análise de um corpus de 400 textos online do gênero notícia de jornal, descrevem-se fatores que influenciam a escolha do modo do discurso indireto. Para a realização deste estudo partiu-se das seguintes hipóteses: a escolha do modo do discurso indireto pode ser influenciada pelo tipo de verbo do discurso citante (sagen/dizer, erklären/explicar), pela posição deste (antes ou depois do discurso citado), pelo tempo verbal do verbo finito do discurso citante, tipo de verbo do discurso citado (regular, irregular, auxiliar), se a oração subordinada é introduzida ou não por conjunção, grau de inserção da oração subordinada e distância entre discurso citante e discurso citado.
In der Forschung zu Grammatikalisierungsphänomenen wurden die Untersuchungsergebnisse häufig in Form grafischer Schemata dargestellt. Die einschlägige Forschungsliteratur spricht daher von 'grammaticalization paths', 'chains' und 'channels'. Wir möchten in dieser Arbeit erstens einen Überblick darüber bieten, welche Grammatikalisierungspfade – und zu welchen traditionellen grammatischen Domänen – bisher vorgeschlagen wurden. Zweitens möchten wir mittels der Zusammmenstellung der Pfade in einem Gesamtbild veranschaulichen, wie ein Grammatik-Modell aussehen könnte, dem die Grammatikalisierungstheorie zugrunde liegt. Ein solcher Überblick ist aus mehreren Gründen problematisch: Zum einen liegen für einige Grammatikalisierungsentwicklungen verschiedene Vorschläge vor, von denen wir jeweils die auswählten, für die ausreichend Belegmaterial angeführt wurde. Ein anderes Problem stellt die Heterogenität der grafischen Schemata dar, für die wir versucht haben, ein einheitliches Format zu erarbeiten, um sie in unser Gesamtmodell zu integrieren. In gleicher Weise wurden die Vorschläge einbezogen, die nicht in grafischer Gestalt vorlagen. Ein grundlegendes Kriterium für die Auswahl aus der vielfältigen Literatur war, daß die Bewegung eines sprachlichen Elements entlang seines historisch belegten Pfades betrachtet wurde. Im ersten Teil der Arbeit wird die Gesamtgrafik in Bezug auf die von Himmelmann 1992 skizzierte Grammatikalisierungtheorie in einzelnen Aspekten erläutert. Der zweite Teil dient der Einordnung der historisch belegten Entwicklungen in das Gesamtschema, wobei zwei Pfade gesondert behandelt werden. Zum Abschluß möchten wir kurz auf die Möglichkeiten und die Mängel des Modells eingehen.
It has long been observed that subjects cross-linguistically have topic properties: they are typically definite, referential and/or generic (Givón 1976). Bantu languages are said to illustrate this generalization: preverbal position for NPs is equated with both subject and topic status and postverbal position with focus (and non-subject). However, there is a growing body of work showing that preverbal subjects are not necessarily syntactically or semantically equivalent to topics. For example, Zerbian’s (2006) careful study of preverbal position in Northern Sotho shows that preverbal subjects meet few of the semantic tests for aboutness topics. The study of restrictions on preverbal subjects in Durban Zulu presented in this paper builds on Zerbian (2006) and Halpert (2012). In particular, we investigate the interpretational properties of preverbal indefinite subjects. These subjects show us that preverbal subjects carry a presupposition of existence. We explore an analysis connecting the "strong reading" of preverbal subjects with how high the verb moves in Zulu (following Tsai’s 2001 work on Mandarin).
In his 1995 monograph, Apresyan suggests that it would be extremely interesting to investigate the means of expressing the definiteness/indefiniteness opposition in languages that do not have articles. In this paper, I will attempt to find possible correlations between the organization of discourse and the positions in which the (in)definite nominals may appear within a sentence of Russian. I will examine the information structure of Russian sentences and, based on the previous analyses, provide a new account of their organization with respect to information packaging. I will then look at various nominal elements contained in certain parts of a sentence and arrive at a system describing the distribution of NPs in Russian with respect to the information structure. The ultimate goal of this paper is to establish and motivate a system of correlations between various types of NPs and functions of information structure. This goal will be achieved by determining which characteristic of a NP may serve as a criterion allowing to provide a one-to-one mapping.
U radu se analiziraju definicije vrsta riječi u gramatici hrvatskoga kajkavskog književnog jezika Josipa Đurkovečkoga (Jezičnica horvatsko-slavinska, Pešta, 1826.). Razmatra se koje se vrste riječi opisuju u gramatici, koje hrvatske nazive autor upotrebljava pri njihovu imenovanju te se propituju načini opisa definicija vrsta riječi s posebnim obzirom na to temelje li se definicije na leksičko-semantičkome, morfološkome ili sintaktičkome planu. Analizom opisa vrsta riječi u gramatici J. Đurkovečkoga pokazuje se način promišljanja o jezičnim spoznajama i obilježja gramatičkoga diskursa u okviru povijesti hrvatske gramatikografije, posebice u domeni gramatika hrvatskoga kajkavskog književnog jezika.
Many authors who subscribe to some version of generative syntax account for the two readings of [...] sentences [...] in terms of LF-ambiguity. There is assumed to be covert quantifier raising (QR), which results in two distinct possibilities for the indefinite quantificational expressions involved to take scope over each other [...] In this paper, an alternative account is proposed which dispenses with the idea that there are different scope relations involved in the readings of […] sentences [...] and, consequently, with QR as the syntactic operation to be assumed for generating the respective LFs. I argue that it is rather focus structure in connection with type semantic issues pertaining to the indefinite quantificational expressions involved which result in the different readings associated with [...] sentences.
The aim of this article is to follow the changes that took place in the history of easy-to-please constructions. To fully apprehend that, we will begin by looking at Middle English infinitives and the change which affected them. Our attempt here is to prove that Early Middle English to was at its intermediate stage of development, i.e. it was neither a preposition nor inflection. In Late Middle English, to reached its final stage of a gradual evolution heading TR On account of the analysis of to and infinitives in Middle English, new constructions in which easv-to-please appear will be explained.
Explanations and "engineering solutions"? Aspects of the relation between Minimalism and HPSG
(2017)
It is not simple to compare Minimalism and HPSG, but it is possible to identify a variety of differences, some not so important but others of considerable importance. Two of the latter are: (1) the fact that Minimalism is a very lexically-based approach whereas HPSG is more syntactically-based, and (2) the fact that Minimalism uses Internal Merge in the analysis of unbounded dependencies whereas HPSG employs the SLASH feature. In both cases the HPSG approach seems to offer a better account of the facts. Thus, in two important respects it seems preferable to Minimalism.
In this study explanations are sought for the often reported associations in child language between tense/aspect morphology and situation type. The study is done on the basis of adult-adult data, child language and input language to the children. First of all it is shown that the associations are natural, since they are strong in adult-adult English as well. Only in the early stages does child language differ from this distribution, in that the associations are either stronger or different. Input data appear to account to a large extent for these differing patterns. An additional explanation is found in the discourse topics: within the context of talking about the here-and-now, the combinations of morphology and situation type that can be seen as unmarked suffice. In the context of talking about past events and of giving general comments about the world, marked combinations are necessary. It is shown that children in and their parents at the early ages mainly talk about the here-and-now, whereas adults among themselves hardly ever do so. Later, describing past events and commenting on the world becomes more frequent in child language and input, and, as a consequence, marked combinations of tense/aspect morphology and situation types increase in use.