TY - JOUR A1 - Petrova, Svetlana T1 - A discourse-based approach to verb placement in early West-Germanic N2 - The paper presents a novel approach to explaining word order variation in the early Germanic languages. Initial observations about verb placement as a device marking types of rhetorical relations made on data from Old High German (cf. Hinterhölzl & Petrova 2005) are now reconsidered on a larger scale and compared with evidence from other early Germanic languages. The paper claims that the identification of information-structural domains in a sentence is best achieved by taking into account the interaction between the pragmatic features of discourse referents and properties of discourse organization. KW - verb-second KW - early Germanic KW - discourse KW - information structure Y1 - 2006 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19540 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Alexiadou, Artemis T1 - A form-function mismatch? BT - The case of Greek deponents JF - Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow KW - Festschrift KW - Informationsstruktur KW - Linguistik KW - Morphologie KW - Syntax KW - festschrift KW - information structure KW - linguistics KW - morphology KW - syntax Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-432235 SN - 978-3-86956-457-9 SP - 107 EP - 117 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Thiersch, Craig T1 - A note on apparent sluicing in Malagasy JF - Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow KW - Festschrift KW - Informationsstruktur KW - Linguistik KW - Morphologie KW - Syntax KW - festschrift KW - information structure KW - linguistics KW - morphology KW - syntax Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-432341 SN - 978-3-86956-457-9 SP - 185 EP - 209 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Titov, Elena T1 - Accusative Unaccusatives BT - Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow KW - Festschrift KW - Informationsstruktur KW - Linguistik KW - Morphologie KW - Syntax KW - festschrift KW - information structure KW - linguistics KW - morphology KW - syntax Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-432515 SN - 978-3-86956-457-9 SP - 243 EP - 256 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - THES A1 - Chen, Hui Ching T1 - Acquisition of focus - in a cross-linguistic perspective T1 - Spracherwerb im Fokus - eine sprachübergreifende Perspektive N2 - In dieser Dissertation untersuchen wir, wie chinesischen Muttersprachler und deutschen Muttersprachler, sowohl die Erwachsenen als auch die Kinder, verschiedene linguistische Mittel, wie z. B. Wortstellungsinformationen, prosodische und lexikalische Mittel im Sprachverständnis korrekt interpretieren. N2 - Successful communication is often explored by people throughout their life courses. To effectively transfer one’s own information to others, people employ various linguistic tools, such as word order information, prosodic cues, and lexical choices. The exploration of these linguistic cues is known as the study of information structure (IS). Moreover, an important issue in the language acquisition of children is the investigation of how they acquire IS. This thesis seeks to improve our understanding of how children acquire different tools (i.e., prosodical cues, syntactical cues, and the focus particle only) of focus marking in a cross linguistic perspective. In the first study, following Szendrői and her colleagues (2017)- the sentence-picture verification task- was performed to investigate whether three- to five-year-old Mandarin-speaking children as well as Mandarin-speaking adults could apply prosodic information to recognize focus in sentences. More, in the second study, not only Mandarin-speaking adults and Mandarin-speaking children but also German-speaking adults and German-speaking children were included to confirm the assumption that children could have adult-like performance in understanding sentence focus by identifying language specific cues in their mother tongue from early onwards. In this study, the same paradigm- the sentence-picture verification task- as in the first study was employed together with the eye-tracking method. Finally, in the last study, an issue of whether five-year-old Mandarin-speaking children could understand the pre-subject only sentence was carried out and again whether prosodic information would help them to better understand this kind of sentences. The overall results seem to suggest that Mandarin-speaking children from early onwards could make use of the specific linguistic cues in their ambient language. That is, in Mandarin, a Topic-prominent and tone language, the word order information plays a more important rule than the prosodic information and even three-year-old Mandarin-speaking children could follow the word order information. More, although it seems that German-speaking children could follow the prosodic information, they did not have the adult-like performance in the object-accented condition. A feasible reason for this result is that there are more possibilities of marking focus in German, such as flexible word order, prosodic information, focus particles, and thus it would take longer time for German-speaking children to manage these linguistic tools. Another important empirical finding regarding the syntactically-marked focus in German is that it seems that the cleft construction is not a valid focus construction and this result corroborates with the previous observations (Dufter, 2009). Further, eye-tracking method did help to uncover how the parser direct their attention for recognizing focus. In the final study, it is showed that with explicit verbal context Mandarin-speaking children could understand the pre-subject only sentence and the study brought a better understanding of the acquisition of the focus particle- only with the Mandarin-speaking children. KW - information structure KW - language acquisition KW - Mandarin KW - German KW - Prosody KW - Informationsstruktur KW - Spracherwerb KW - Deutsch KW - Mandarin KW - Prosodie Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-553458 ER - TY - THES A1 - Engels, Eva T1 - Adverb placement : an optimality theoretic approach T1 - Adverbstellung : ein optimalitätstheoretischer Ansatz N2 - Adverb positioning is guided by syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic considerations and is subject to cross-linguistic as well as language-specific variation. The goal of the thesis is to identify the factors that determine adverb placement in general (Part I) as well as in constructions in which the adverb's sister constituent is deprived of its phonetic material by movement or ellipsis (gap constructions, Part II) and to provide an Optimality Theoretic approach to the contrasts in the effects of these factors on the distribution of adverbs in English, French, and German. In Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993), grammaticality is defined as optimal satisfaction of a hierarchy of violable constraints: for a given input, a set of output candidates are produced out of which that candidate is selected as grammatical output which optimally satisfies the constraint hierarchy. Since grammaticality crucially relies on the hierarchic relations of the constraints, cross-linguistic variation can be traced back to differences in the language-specific constraint rankings. Part I shows how diverse phenomena of adverb placement can be captured by corresponding constraints and their relative rankings: - contrasts in the linearization of adverbs and verbs/auxiliaries in English and French - verb placement in German and the filling of the prefield position - placement of focus-sensitive adverbs - fronting of topical arguments and adverbs Part II extends the analysis to a particular phenomenon of adverb positioning: the avoidance of adverb attachment to a phonetically empty constituent (gap). English and French are similar in that the acceptability of pre-gap adverb placement depends on the type of adverb, its scope, and the syntactic construction (English: wh-movement vs. topicalization / VP Fronting / VP Ellipsis, inverted vs. non-inverted clauses; French: CLLD vs. Cleft, simple vs. periphrastic tense). Yet, the two languages differ in which strategies a specific type of adverb may pursue to escape placement in front of a certain type of gap. In contrast to English and French, placement of an adverb in front of a gap never gives rise to ungrammaticality in German. Rather, word ordering has to obey the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic principles discussed in Part I; whether or not it results in adverb attachment to a phonetically empty constituent seems to be irrelevant: though constraints are active in every language, the emergence of a visible effect of their requirements in a given language depends on their relative ranking. The complex interaction of the diverse factors as well as their divergent effects on adverb placement in the various languages are accounted for by the universal constraints and their language-specific hierarchic relations in the OT framework. N2 - Die Positionierung von Adverbien wird von syntaktischen, semantischen und pragmatischen Erwägungen geleitet; sie unterliegt der zwischen-sprachlichen als auch der einzel-sprachlichen Variation. Ziel der Arbeit ist es, diejenigen Faktoren zu identifizieren, die ausschlaggebend sind für die Platzierung von Adverbien im allgemeinen (Teil I) sowie in speziellen Konstruktionen, in denen die Schwesterkonstituente eines Adverbs aufgrund von Bewegung oder Ellipse kein phonetisches Material enthält (Gap-Konstruktionen, Teil II). Des weiteren sollen die unterschiedlichen Ausprägungen dieser Faktoren in den distributionalen Mustern des Englischen, Französischen und Deutschen in einem optimalitätstheoretischen Rahmen erklärt werden. In der Optimalitätstheorie (Prince & Smolensky 1993) ist Grammatikalität als optimale Erfüllung einer Hierarchie von verletzbaren Constraints definiert: Für einen gegebenen Input wird eine Menge von Outputkandidaten bereitgestellt, aus der derjenige Kandidat als grammatischer Output gewählt wird, der die Constrainthierarchie am besten erfüllt. Da die hierarchischen Relationen der Constraints für die Ermittlung des grammatischen Outputs entscheidend sind, kann zwischen-sprachliche Variation auf Diskrepanzen in den einzel-sprachlichen Constrainthierarchien zurückgeführt werden. Der erste Teil der Arbeit zeigt, wie diverse Phänomene der Adverbstellung mit entsprechenden Constraints und ihren Anordnungen erfasst werden können: - Kontraste in der Linearisierung von Adverbien und Verben/Auxiliaren im Englischen und Französischen - Verbplatzierung im Deutschen und Vorfeldbesetzung - Platzierung von fokus-sensitiven Adverbien - Voranstellung von topikalen Argumenten und Adverbien Der zweite Teil der Arbeit spezialisiert sich auf ein bestimmtes Phänomen der Adverbpositionierung: das Meiden der Adverb-Adjunktion an eine phonetisch leere Konstituente (Gap). Englisch und Französisch ähneln sich insofern, als die Akzeptabilität der Adverbpositionierung vor einem Gap beeinflusst wird vom Typ des Adverbs, seinem Skopus und der syntaktischen Konstruktion (Englisch: wh-Bewegung vs. Topikalisierung / VP Voranstellung / VP Ellipse, invertierte vs. nicht-invertierte Sätze; Französisch: CLLD vs. Cleft, einfache vs. periphrastische Tempusformen). Die beiden Sprachen unterscheiden sich jedoch darin, ob - und falls ja - welche Strategie ein bestimmter Typ von Adverb verfolgen kann, um der Stellung vor einem speziellen Gap zu entkommen. Im Gegensatz zum Englischen und Französischen führt die Stellung eines Adverbs vor einem Gap im Deutschen nie zu Ungrammatikalität. Vielmehr hat die Adverbpositionierung den in Teil I diskutierten syntaktischen, semantischen und pragmatischen Prinzipien zu gehorchen; ob dies in der Adjunktion eines Adverbs an eine phonetisch leere Konstituente resultiert, scheint dabei irrelevant: Obwohl Constraints in jeder Sprache aktiv sind, hängt es von ihrer relativen Anordnung zueinander ab, ob sie einen sichtbaren Effekt in einer gegebenen Sprache hinterlassen. Die komplexe Interaktion der diversen Faktoren sowie deren divergierende Ausprägung auf die Adverbplatzierung in den unterschiedlichen Sprachen können in der Optimalitätstheorie auf die universalen Constraints und deren einzel-sprachliche Anordnung zurückgeführt werden. KW - Adverb KW - Syntax KW - Lesart KW - Variation KW - Informationsstruktur KW - Optimalitätstheorie KW - syntaktische Lücken KW - adverb KW - syntax KW - reading KW - variation KW - information structure KW - optimality theory KW - syntactic gaps Y1 - 2004 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-2453 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Haider, Hubert T1 - An anthropic principle in lieu of a “Universal Grammar” JF - Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow KW - Festschrift KW - Informationsstruktur KW - Linguistik KW - Morphologie KW - Syntax KW - festschrift KW - information structure KW - linguistics KW - morphology KW - syntax Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-432590 SN - 978-3-86956-457-9 SP - 363 EP - 381 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fominyam, Henry A1 - Tran, Thuan T1 - Beware of ‘discourse markers’ JF - Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow KW - Festschrift KW - Informationsstruktur KW - Linguistik KW - Morphologie KW - Syntax KW - festschrift KW - information structure KW - linguistics KW - morphology KW - syntax Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-432524 SN - 978-3-86956-457-9 SP - 257 EP - 272 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Stiebels, Barbara T1 - Bienenfresserortungsversuch BT - compounding with clause-embedding heads JF - Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow KW - Festschrift KW - Informationsstruktur KW - Linguistik KW - Morphologie KW - Syntax KW - festschrift KW - information structure KW - linguistics KW - morphology KW - syntax Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-431921 SN - 978-3-86956-457-9 SP - 15 EP - 26 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Müller, Gereon T1 - Can unaccusative verbs undergo passivization in German? JF - Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow KW - Festschrift KW - Informationsstruktur KW - Linguistik KW - Morphologie KW - Syntax KW - festschrift KW - information structure KW - linguistics KW - morphology KW - syntax Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-432257 SN - 978-3-86956-457-9 SP - 135 EP - 154 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER -