TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ruberg, Tobias
A1  - Rothweiler, Monika
A1  - Veríssimo, João Marques
A1  - Clahsen, Harald
T1  - Childhood bilingualism and Specific Language Impairment
BT  - A study of the CP-domain in German SLI
JF  - Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
N2  - This study addresses the question of whether and how growing up with more than one language shapes a child's language impairment. Our focus is on Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in bilingual (Turkish-German) children. We specifically investigated a range of phenomena related to the so-called CP (Complementizer Phrase) in German, the hierarchically highest layer of syntactic clause structure, which has been argued to be particularly affected in children with SLI. Spontaneous speech data were examined from bilingual children with SLI in comparison to two comparison groups: (i) typically-developing bilingual children, (ii) monolingual children with SLI. We found that despite persistent difficulty with subject-verb agreement, the two groups of children with SLI did not show any impairment of the CP-domain. We conclude that while subject-verb agreement is a suitable linguistic marker of SLI in German-speaking children, for both monolingual and bilingual ones, 'vulnerability of the CP-domain' is not.
KW  - developmental language impairment
KW  - specific language impairment
KW  - child second language acquisition
KW  - syntax
KW  - agreement
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728919000580
SN  - 1366-7289
SN  - 1469-1841
VL  - 23
IS  - 3
SP  - 668
EP  - 680
PB  - Cambridge Univ. Press
CY  - Cambridge
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Yadav, Himanshu
A1  - Husain, Samar
A1  - Futrell, Richard
T1  - Do dependency lengths explain constraints on crossing dependencies?
JF  - Linguistics vanguard : multimodal online journal
N2  - In syntactic dependency trees, when arcs are drawn from syntactic heads to dependents, they rarely cross. Constraints on these crossing dependencies are critical for determining the syntactic properties of human language, because they define the position of natural language in formal language hierarchies. We study whether the apparent constraints on crossing syntactic dependencies in natural language might be explained by constraints on dependency lengths (the linear distance between heads and dependents). We compare real dependency trees from treebanks of 52 languages against baselines of random trees which are matched with the real trees in terms of their dependency lengths. We find that these baseline trees have many more crossing dependencies than real trees, indicating that a constraint on dependency lengths alone cannot explain the empirical rarity of crossing dependencies. However, we find evidence that a combined constraint on dependency length and the rate of crossing dependencies might be able to explain two of the most-studied formal restrictions on dependency trees: gap degree and well-nestedness.
KW  - crossing dependencies
KW  - dependency length
KW  - dependency treebanks
KW  - efficiency
KW  - language processing
KW  - syntax
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2019-0070
SN  - 2199-174X
VL  - 7
PB  - De Gruyter Mouton
CY  - Berlin ; New York, NY
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Barth-Weingarten, Dagmar
A1  - Küttner, Uwe-Alexander
A1  - Raymond, Chase Wesley
T1  - Pivots revisited
BT  - cesuring in action
JF  - Open linguistics
N2  - The term "pivot" usually refers to two overlapping syntactic units such that the completion of the first unit simultaneously launches the second. In addition, pivots are generally said to be characterized by the smooth prosodic integration of their syntactic parts. This prosodic integration is typically achieved by prosodic-phonetic matching of the pivot components. As research on such turns in a range of languages has illustrated, speakers routinely deploy pivots so as to be able to continue past a point of possible turn completion, in the service of implementing some additional or revised action. This article seeks to build on, and complement, earlier research by exploring two issues in more detail as follows: (1) what exactly do pivotal turn extensions accomplish on the action dimension, and (2) what role does prosodic-phonetic packaging play in this? We will show that pivot constructions not only exhibit various degrees of prosodic-phonetic (non-)integration, i.e., differently strong cesuras, but that they can be ordered on a continuum, and that this cline maps onto the relationship of the actions accomplished by the components of the pivot construction. While tighter prosodic-phonetic integration, i.e., weak(er) cesuring, co-occurs with post-pivot actions whose relationship to that of the pre-pivot tends to be rather retrospective in character, looser prosodic-phonetic integration, i.e., strong(er) cesuring, is associated with a more prospective orientation of the post-pivot's action. These observations also raise more general questions with regard to the analysis of action.
KW  - Conversation Analysis
KW  - Interactional Linguistics
KW  - syntax
KW  - talk-in-interaction
KW  - prosody
KW  - phonetics
KW  - cesuras
KW  - intonation units
KW  - social action
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2020-0152
SN  - 2300-9969
VL  - 7
IS  - 1
SP  - 613
EP  - 637
PB  - de Gruyter
CY  - Warsaw
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hein, Johannes
A1  - Murphy, Andrew
T1  - VP-nominalization and the Final-over-Final Condition
JF  - Linguistic inquiry
N2  - The Final-over-Final Condition has emerged as a robust and explanatory generalization for a wide range of phenomena (Biberauer, Holmberg, and Roberts 2014, Sheehan et al. 2017). In this article, we argue that it also holds in another domain, nominalization. In languages that show overt nominalization of VPs, one word order is routinely unattested, namely, a head-initial VP with a suffixal nominalizer. This typological gap can be accounted for by the Final-over-Final Condition, if we allow it to hold within mixed extended projections. This view also makes correct predictions about agentive nominalizations and nominalized serial verb constructions.
KW  - Final-over-Final Condition
KW  - nominalization
KW  - extended projections
KW  - word
KW  - order
KW  - serial verb constructions
KW  - syntax
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00407
SN  - 0024-3892
SN  - 1530-9150
VL  - 53
IS  - 2
SP  - 337
EP  - 370
PB  - MIT Press
CY  - Cambridge
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Barth-Weingarten, Dagmar
A1  - Ogden, Richard
T1  - “Chunking” spoken language
BT  - Introducing weak cesuras
JF  - Open linguistics
N2  - In this introductory paper to the special issue on “Weak cesuras in talk-in-interaction”, we aim to guide the reader into current work on the “chunking” of naturally occurring talk. It is conducted in the methodological frameworks of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics – two approaches that consider the interactional aspect of humans talking with each other to be a crucial starting point for its analysis. In doing so, we will (1) lay out the background of this special issue (what is problematic about “chunking” talk-in-interaction, the characteristics of the methodological approach chosen by the contributors, the cesura model), (2) highlight what can be gained from such a revised understanding of “chunking” in talk-in-interaction by referring to previous work with this model as well as the findings of the contributions to this special issue, and (3) indicate further directions such work could take starting from papers in this special issue. We hope to induce a fruitful exchange on the phenomena discussed, across methodological divides.
KW  - Conversation Analysis
KW  - Interactional Linguistics
KW  - prosody
KW  - phonetics
KW  - intonation units
KW  - talk-in-interaction
KW  - syntax
KW  - kinetics
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2020-0173
SN  - 2300-9969
VL  - 7
IS  - 1
SP  - 531
EP  - 548
PB  - De Gruyter
CY  - Berlin
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Wittenberg, Eva
A1  - Snedeker, Jesse
T1  - It takes two to kiss, but does it take three to give a kiss? Categorization based on thematic roles
JF  - Language, cognition and neuroscience
KW  - events
KW  - argument structure
KW  - conceptualization
KW  - sorting task
KW  - syntax
KW  - semantics
KW  - light-verb constructions
Y1  - 2014
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1080/01690965.2013.831918
SN  - 2327-3798
SN  - 2327-3801
VL  - 29
IS  - 5
SP  - 635
EP  - 641
PB  - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY  - Abingdon
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Höhle, Barbara
A1  - Fritzsche, Tom
A1  - Müller, Anja
T1  - Children’s Comprehension of Sentences with Focus Particles and the Role of Cognitive Control
BT  - An Eye Tracking Study with German-Learning 4-Year-Olds
JF  - PLoS one
N2  - Children’s interpretations of sentences containing focus particles do not seem adult-like until school age. This study investigates how German 4-year-old children comprehend sentences with the focus particle ‘nur’ (only) by using different tasks and controlling for the impact of general cognitive abilities on performance measures. Two sentence types with ‘only’ in either pre-subject or pre-object position were presented. Eye gaze data and verbal responses were collected via the visual world paradigm combined with a sentence-picture verification task. While the eye tracking data revealed an adult-like pattern of focus particle processing, the sentence-picture verification replicated previous findings of poor comprehension, especially for ‘only’ in pre-subject position. A second study focused on the impact of general cognitive abilities on the outcomes of the verification task. Working memory was related to children’s performance in both sentence types whereas inhibitory control was selectively related to the number of errors for sentences with ‘only’ in pre-subject position. These results suggest that children at the age of 4 years have the linguistic competence to correctly interpret sentences with focus particles, which–depending on specific task demands–may be masked by immature general cognitive abilities.
KW  - eyes
KW  - sentence processing
KW  - cognition
KW  - cognitive linguistics
KW  - human performance
KW  - syntax
KW  - cognitive psychology
KW  - working memory
Y1  - 2016
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0149870
SN  - 1932-6203
VL  - 11
IS  - 3
SP  - 1
EP  - 27
PB  - PLoS
CY  - Lawrence, Kan.
ER  -