TY - JOUR A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Wird Schon Stimmen! BT - A Degree Operator Analysis of Schon JF - Journal of semantics N2 - The article puts forward a novel analysis of the German modal particle schon as a modal degree operator over propositional content. The proposed analysis offers a uniform perspective on the semantics of modal schon and its aspectual counterpart meaning ‘already’: Both particles are analyzed as denoting a degree operator, expressing a scale-based comparison over relevant alternatives. The alternatives are determined by focus in the case of aspectual schon (Krifka 2000), but are restricted to the polar alternatives p and ¬p in the case of modal schon. Semantically, modal schon introduces a presupposition to the effect that the circumstantial conversational background contains more factual evidence in favor of p than in favor of ¬p⁠, thereby making modal schon the not at-issue counterpart of the overt comparative form eher ‘rather’ (Herburger & Rubinstein 2014). The analysis incorporates basic insights from earlier analyses of modal schon in a novel way, and it also offers new insights as to the underlying workings of modality in natural language as involving propositions rather than possible worlds (Kratzer 1977, 2012). Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffy010 SN - 0167-5133 SN - 1477-4593 VL - 35 IS - 4 SP - 687 EP - 739 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zimmermann, Malte A1 - De Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P. A1 - Tönnis, Swantje A1 - Onea, Edgar T1 - (Non-)exhaustivity in focus partitioning across languages JF - Approaches to Hungarian N2 - We present novel experimental evidence on the availability and the status of exhaustivity inferences with focus partitioning in German, English, and Hungarian. Results suggest that German and English focus-background clefts and Hungarian focus share important properties, (É. Kiss 1998, 1999; Szabolcsi 1994; Percus 1997; Onea & Beaver 2009). Those constructions are anaphoric devices triggering an existence presupposition. EXH-inferences are not obligatory in such constructions in English, German, or Hungarian, against some previous literature (Percus 1997; Büring & Križ 2013; É. Kiss 1998), but in line with pragmatic analyses of EXH-inferences in clefts (Horn 1981, 2016; Pollard & Yasavul 2016). The cross-linguistic differences in the distribution of EXH-inferences are attributed to properties of the Hungarian number marking system. KW - clefts KW - definite pseudoclefts KW - Hungarian focus KW - exhaustivity KW - experimental evidence KW - semantics-pragmatics interface Y1 - 2020 VL - 16 PB - John Benjamins CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Hartmann, Katharina A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Morphological focus marking in Gùrùntùm (West Chadic) N2 - The paper presents an in-depth study of focus marking in Gùrùntùm, a West Chadic language spoken in Bauchi Province of Northern Nigeria. Focus in Gùrùntùm is marked morphologically by means of a focus marker a, which typically precedes the focus constituent. Even though the morphological focus-marking system of Gùrùntùm allows for a lot of fine-grained distinctions in information structure (IS) in principle, the language is not entirely free of focus ambiguities that arise as the result of conflicting IS- and syntactic requirements that govern the placement of focus markers. We show that morphological focus marking with a applies across different types of focus, such as newinformation, contrastive, selective and corrective focus, and that a does not have a second function as a perfectivity marker, as is assumed in the literature. In contrast, we show at the end of the paper that a can also function as a foregrounding device at the level of discourse structure. KW - morphological focus marking KW - focus ambiguity KW - focus types KW - foregrounding Y1 - 2006 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19525 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Contrastive focus N2 - The article puts forward a discourse-pragmatic approach to the notoriously evasive phenomena of contrastivity and emphasis. It is argued that occurrences of focus that are treated in terms of ‘contrastive focus’, ‘kontrast’ (Vallduví & Vilkuna 1998) or ‘identificational focus’ (É. Kiss 1998) in the literature should not be analyzed in familiar semantic terms like introduction of alternatives or exhaustivity. Rather, an adequate analysis must take into account discourse-pragmatic notions like hearer expectation or discourse expectability of the focused content in a given discourse situation. The less expected a given content is judged to be for the hearer, relative to the Common Ground, the more likely a speaker is to mark this content by means of special grammatical devices, giving rise to emphasis. KW - contrastive focus KW - emphasis KW - discourse expectability Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19688 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ronasi, Golnoush A1 - Fischer, Martin H. A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Language and Arithmetic BT - a failure to find cross cognitive domain semantic priming between exception phrases and subtraction or addition JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - We examined cross-domain semantic priming effects between arithmetic and language. We paired subtractions with their linguistic equivalent, exception phrases (EPs) with positive quantifiers (e.g., "everybody except John") while pairing additions with their own linguistic equivalent, EPs with negative quantifiers (e.g., "nobody except John"; Moltmann, 1995). We hypothesized that EPs with positive quantifiers prime subtractions and inhibit additions while EPs with negative quantifiers prime additions and inhibit subtractions. Furthermore, we expected similar priming and inhibition effects from arithmetic into semantics. Our design allowed for a bidirectional analysis by using one trial's target as the prime for the next trial. Two experiments failed to show significant priming effects in either direction. Implications and possible shortcomings are explored in the general discussion. KW - cross-domain priming KW - language KW - arithmetic KW - information integration KW - cognitive module Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01524 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 9 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - De Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P. A1 - Toennis, Swantje A1 - Onea, Edgar A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - That’s not quite it BT - an experimental investigation of (non‑)exhaustivity in clefts JF - Semantics and pragmatics N2 - We present a novel empirical study on German directly comparing the exhaustivity inference in es-clefts to exhaustivity inferences in definite pseudoclefts, exclusives, and plain intonational focus constructions. We employ mouse-driven verification/falsification tasks in an incremental information-retrieval paradigm across two experiments in order to assess the strength of exhaustivity in the four sentence types. The results are compatible with a parallel analysis of clefts and definite pseudoclefts, in line with previous claims in the literature (Percus 1997, Buring & Kriz 2013). In striking contrast with such proposals, in which the exhaustivity inference is conventionally coded in the cleft-structure in terms of maximality/homogeneity, our study found that the exhaustivity inference is not systematic or robust in es-clefts nor in definite pseudoclefts: Whereas some speakers treat both constructions as exhaustive, others treat both constructions as non-exhaustive. In order to account for this unexpected finding, we argue that the exhaustivity inference in both clefts and definite pseudoclefts-specifically those with the compound definite derjenige - is pragmatically derived from the anaphoric existence presupposition that is common to both constructions. KW - experimental study KW - exhaustivity KW - es-clefts KW - definite pseudoclefts KW - anaphoric existence presupposition Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.11.3 SN - 1937-8912 VL - 11 PB - Linguistic Society of America CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hartmann, Katharina A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Morphological focus marking in Gùrùntùm (West Chadic) N2 - The paper presents an in-depth study of focus marking in Guruntum, a West Chadic language spoken in Bauchi State in Nigeria. Focus in Guruntum is marked morphologically by means of a focus marker a, which typically precedes the focused constituent. Even though the morphological focus-marking system of Guruntum allows for a lot of fine-grained distinctions in information structure (IS), the language is not entirely free of focus ambiguities that are the result of conflicting IS- and syntactic requirements governing the placement of focus markers. We show that morphological focus marking with a applies across different types of focus, such as new-information, contrastive, selective and corrective focus, and that a does not have a second function as a perfective marker, as is assumed in the literature. In contrast, we argue that sentence-final occurrences of a in perfective sentences are markers of sentential focus and have additional functions at the level of discourse structure. Y1 - 2009 UR - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00243841 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2009.02.002 SN - 0024-3841 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zimmermann, Malte A1 - Féry, Caroline T1 - Introduction Y1 - 2010 SN - 978-0-19-957095-9 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fiedler, Ines A1 - Hartmann, Katharina A1 - Reineke, Brigitte A1 - Schwarz, Anne A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Subject focus in West African languages Y1 - 2010 SN - 978-0-19-957095-9 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hartmann, Katharina A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Focus marking in Bura - semantic uniformity matches syntactic heterogeneity JF - Natural language & linguistic theory N2 - The present article introduces a theory of (morpho-)syntactic focus marking on nominal categories in Bura, a Central Chadic SVO language spoken in the northeast of Nigeria. Our central claim is that the particle an plays a crucial role in the marking of subject and non-subject focus. We put forward a uniform analysis of an as a focus copula that selects for syntactic predicates of type < e,t > and a focused constituent of type < e >. This uniform semantic representation is transparently mapped onto different syntactic structures: In a clause with a focused subject, the focus copula appears between the subject in SpecTP and the predicative VP. On the other hand, syntactically focused non-subjects are fronted and appear in a bi-clausal cleft structure that contains the focus copula and a relative cleft-remnant. The non-uniform analysis of focus marking is further supported by the structure of predicative constructions, in which the focus copula separates the focused subject and the adjectival or nominal predicate. It is also shown that alternative unified analyses fail to account for the full range of Bura data. The latter part of the article provides an analysis of the Bura cleft construction. Based on syntactic and semantic evidence, we come to the conclusion that the clefted constituent is base-generated in its initial surface position, and that an empty operator moves within the relative clause. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the potential conceptual reasons behind the observed subject/non-subject asymmetry in Bura. KW - Focus KW - Focus marking KW - Cleft structure KW - Focus copula KW - Focus asymmetries KW - Chadic languages Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-012-9174-4 SN - 0167-806X VL - 30 IS - 4 SP - 1061 EP - 1108 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Chiarcos, Christian A1 - Fiedler, Ines A1 - Grubic, Mira A1 - Hartmann, Katharina A1 - Ritz, Julia A1 - Schwarz, Anne A1 - Zeldes, Amir A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Information structure in African languages corpora and tools JF - Language resources and evaluation N2 - In this paper, we describe tools and resources for the study of African languages developed at the Collaborative Research Centre 632 "Information Structure". These include deeply annotated data collections of 25 sub-Saharan languages that are described together with their annotation scheme, as well as the corpus tool ANNIS, which provides unified access to a broad variety of annotations created with a range of different tools. With the application of ANNIS to several African data collections, we illustrate its suitability for the purpose of language documentation, distributed access, and the creation of data archives. KW - African language resources KW - Pragmatics KW - Corpus search infrastructure Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10579-011-9153-0 SN - 1574-020X VL - 45 IS - 3 SP - 361 EP - 374 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zimmermann, Malte A1 - Onea, Edgar T1 - Focus marking and focus interpretation JF - LINGUA N2 - The languages of the world exhibit a range of formal phenomena (e.g. accenting, syntactic reordering and morphological marking) that are commonly linked to the information-structural notion of focus. Crucially, there does not seem to be a one-to-one mapping between particular formal features (focus marking devices) and focus, neither from a cross-linguistic perspective, nor within individual languages. This raises the question of what is actually being expressed if we say that a constituent is focused in a particular language, and whether, or to what extent, the same semantic or pragmatic content is formally expressed by focus-marking across languages. This special issue addresses the question of focus and its grammatical realization from a number of theoretical and empirical perspectives. In this introductory article we elaborate on this question by making an explicit proposal about what we take to be the correct way of thinking about the information-structural category of focus and its formal realization. In the first part, we introduce a unified semantico-pragmatic perspective on focus in terms of alternatives and possible worlds. In the second part, we present a cursory cross-linguistic overview of focus marking strategies as found in the languages of the world. Finally, in the third part, we discuss the connection between the notion of focus, different pragmatic uses of focus and different focus marking strategies employed in the grammars of natural languages. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. KW - Focus KW - Alternatives KW - Contrast KW - Information structure Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2011.06.002 SN - 0024-3841 VL - 121 IS - 11 SP - 1651 EP - 1670 PB - ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV CY - AMSTERDAM ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - On the functional architecture of DP and the feature content of pronominal quantifiers in Low German JF - The journal of comparative Germanic linguistics N2 - The article investigates the functional architecture of complex pronominal quantifying expressions (PQEs) in Low German, such as jeder-een 'everyone' and keen-een 'no-one', which provide overt evidence for a Num-projection, situated between the NP- and DP-layer. The feature specification of Num as [+lattice] or [-lattice] is responsible for whether the DP denotes into the domain of atomic or mass/plural entities, respectively. In the case of complex PQEs, the syntactic Num-head hosts the overt element een 'a, one', which carries a [-lattice] feature, thus ensuring that the PQE ranges exclusively over the domain of atomic entities, but not mass or plural entities. The Num-head een differs from its simplex counterpart wat 'something', which is analyzed as an NP-proform with an underspecified [lattice]-feature. As a result, wat can range over atomic and mass domains alike. In the final part of the article, it is argued that wat is also underspecified for the operator feature [rel/wh], for which reason it can also function as an interrogative expression (what) and as a relative pronoun (which), respectively, depending on the syntactic context. Throughout the article, the Low German data are compared with relevant data from other German dialects and Germanic and Romance languages, pointing out similarities and differences in the syntactic structure and feature content of PQEs across these languages and dialects. KW - DP structure KW - NumP KW - Low German KW - Complex quantifiers KW - Lattice features KW - Interrogative/relative operator Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-011-9046-z SN - 1383-4924 VL - 14 IS - 3 SP - 203 EP - 240 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - The grammatical expression of focus in West Chadic variation and uniformity in and across languages JF - Linguistics : an interdisciplinary journal of the language sciences N2 - The article provides an overview of the grammatical realization of focus in four West Chadic languages (Chadic, Afro-Asiatic). The languages discussed exhibit an intriguing crosslinguistic variation in the realization of focus, both among themselves as well as compared to European intonation languages. They also display language-internal variation in the formal realization of focus. The West Chadic languages differ widely in their ways of expressing focus, which range from syntactic over prosodic to morphological devices. In contrast to European intonation languages, the focus marking systems of the West Chadic languages are inconsistent in that focus is often not grammatically expressed, but these inconsistencies are shown to be systematic. Subject foci (contrastive or not) and contrastive nonsubject foci are always grammatically marked, whereas information focus on nonsubjects need not be marked as such. The absence of formal focus marking supports pragmatic theories of focus in terms of contextual resolution. The special status of focused subjects and contrastive foci is derived from the Contrastive Focus Hypothesis, which requires unexpected foci and unexpected focus contents to be marked as such, together with the assumption that canonical subjects in West Chadic receive a default interpretation as topics. Finally, I discuss certain focus ambiguities which are not attested in intonation languages, nor do they follow on standard accounts of focus marking, but which can be accounted for in terms of constraint interaction in the formal expression of focus. Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/LING.2011.032 SN - 0024-3949 VL - 49 IS - 5 SP - 1163 EP - 1213 PB - De Gruyter Mouton CY - Berlin ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gueldemann, Tom A1 - Zerbian, Sabine A1 - Zimmermann, Malte ED - Liberman, M ED - Partee, BH T1 - Variation in information structure with special reference to Africa JF - Annual review of linguistics JF - Annual Review of Linguistics N2 - Information structure has been one of the central topics of recent linguistic research. This review discusses a wide range of current approaches with particular reference to African languages, as these have been playing a crucial role in advancing our knowledge about the diversity of and recurring patterns in both meaning and form of information structural notions. We focus on cross-linguistic functional frameworks, the investigation of prosody, formal syntactic theories, and relevant effects of semantic interpretation. Information structure is a thriving research domain that promises to yield important advances in our general understanding of human language. KW - contrast KW - focus KW - formal syntax KW - prosody KW - theticity KW - topic KW - semantics KW - focus sensitivity Y1 - 2015 SN - 978-0-8243-4201-2 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguist-030514-125134 SN - 2333-9691 VL - 1 SP - 155 EP - 178 PB - Annual Reviews CY - Palo Alto ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Predicate focus JF - The Oxford handbook of information structure Y1 - 2016 SN - 978-0-19-964267-0 SP - 314 EP - 335 PB - Oxford University Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Im Korpus gibt’s keine Vögel nicht BT - A corpus study on Negative Concord in Eastern German dialects 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-opus4-432541 SN - 978-3-86956-457-9 SP - 287 EP - 306 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ronasi, Golnoush A1 - Fischer, Martin H. A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Language and Arithmetic BT - A Failure to Find Cross Cognitive Domain Semantic Priming Between Exception Phrases and Subtraction or Addition JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - We examined cross-domain semantic priming effects between arithmetic and language. We paired subtractions with their linguistic equivalent, exception phrases (EPs) with positive quantifiers (e.g., “everybody except John”) while pairing additions with their own linguistic equivalent, EPs with negative quantifiers (e.g., “nobody except John”; Moltmann, 1995). We hypothesized that EPs with positive quantifiers prime subtractions and inhibit additions while EPs with negative quantifiers prime additions and inhibit subtractions. Furthermore, we expected similar priming and inhibition effects from arithmetic into semantics. Our design allowed for a bidirectional analysis by using one trial's target as the prime for the next trial. Two experiments failed to show significant priming effects in either direction. Implications and possible shortcomings are explored in the general discussion. KW - cross-domain priming KW - language KW - arithmetic KW - information integration KW - cognitive module Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01524 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 9 SP - 1 EP - 12 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - GEN A1 - Ronasi, Golnoush A1 - Fischer, Martin H. A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Language and Arithmetic BT - A Failure to Find Cross Cognitive Domain Semantic Priming Between Exception Phrases and Subtraction or Addition T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - We examined cross-domain semantic priming effects between arithmetic and language. We paired subtractions with their linguistic equivalent, exception phrases (EPs) with positive quantifiers (e.g., “everybody except John”) while pairing additions with their own linguistic equivalent, EPs with negative quantifiers (e.g., “nobody except John”; Moltmann, 1995). We hypothesized that EPs with positive quantifiers prime subtractions and inhibit additions while EPs with negative quantifiers prime additions and inhibit subtractions. Furthermore, we expected similar priming and inhibition effects from arithmetic into semantics. Our design allowed for a bidirectional analysis by using one trial's target as the prime for the next trial. Two experiments failed to show significant priming effects in either direction. Implications and possible shortcomings are explored in the general discussion. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 469 KW - cross-domain priming KW - language KW - arithmetic KW - information integration KW - cognitive module Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-417278 IS - 469 ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Renans, Agata A1 - Zimmermann, Malte A1 - Greif, Markus T1 - Questionnaire on focus semantics N2 - This is the 15th issue of the working paper series Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS) of the Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 632. This online version contains the Questionnaire on Focus Semantics contributed by Agata Renans, Malte Zimmermann and Markus Greif, members of Project D2 investigating information structural phenomena from a typological perspective. The present issue provides a tool for collecting and analyzing natural data with respect to relevant linguistic questions concerning focus types, focus sensitive particles, and the effects of quantificational adverbs and presupposition on focus semantics. This volume is a supplementation to the Reference manual of the Questionnaire on Information Structure, issued by Project D2 in ISIS 4 (2006). T3 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 - 15 KW - focus sensitive expressions KW - semantic fieldwork KW - methodology Y1 - 2010 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-36826 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hartmann, Katharina A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Focus strategies in chadic BT - the case of tangale revisited JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - We argue that the standard focus theories reach their limits when confronted with the focus systems of the Chadic languages. The backbone of the standard focus theories consists of two assumptions, both called into question by the languages under consideration. Firstly, it is standardly assumed that focus is generally marked by stress. The Chadic languages, however, exhibit a variety of different devices for focus marking. Secondly, it is assumed that focus is always marked. In Tangale, at least, focus is not marked consistently on all types of constituents. The paper offers two possible solutions to this dilemma. KW - tone languages KW - focus marking KW - focus movement Y1 - 2004 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-8423 SN - 1866-4725 SN - 1614-4708 IS - 1 SP - 207 EP - 243 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Zimmermann, Malte A1 - De Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P. A1 - Tönnis, Swantje A1 - Onea, Edgar T1 - (Non-)exhaustivity in focus partitioning across languages T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - We present novel experimental evidence on the availability and the status of exhaustivity inferences with focus partitioning in German, English, and Hungarian. Results suggest that German and English focus-background clefts and Hungarian focus share important properties, (É. Kiss 1998, 1999; Szabolcsi 1994; Percus 1997; Onea & Beaver 2009). Those constructions are anaphoric devices triggering an existence presupposition. EXH-inferences are not obligatory in such constructions in English, German, or Hungarian, against some previous literature (Percus 1997; Büring & Križ 2013; É. Kiss 1998), but in line with pragmatic analyses of EXH-inferences in clefts (Horn 1981, 2016; Pollard & Yasavul 2016). The cross-linguistic differences in the distribution of EXH-inferences are attributed to properties of the Hungarian number marking system. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 724 KW - clefts KW - definite pseudoclefts KW - Hungarian focus KW - exhaustivity KW - experimental evidence KW - semantics-pragmatics interface Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-524677 SN - 1866-8364 VL - 16 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hohaus, Vera A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Comparisons of equality with German so ... wie, and the relationship between degrees and properties JF - Journal of semantics N2 - We present a compositionally transparent, unified semantic analysis of two kinds of so ... wie-equative constructions in German, namely degree equatives and property equatives in the domain of individuals or events. Unlike in English and many other European languages (Haspelmath & Buchholz 1998, Rett 2013), both equative types in German feature the parameter marker so, suggesting a unified analysis. We show that the parallel formal expression of German degree and property equatives is accompanied by a parallel syntactic distribution (in predicative, attributive, and adverbial position), and by identical semantic properties: Both equative types allow for scope ambiguities, show negative island effects out of context, and license the negative polarity item uberhaupt 'at all' in the complement clause. As the same properties are also shared by German comparatives, we adopt the influential quantificational analysis of comparatives in von Stechow (1984ab), Heim (1985, 2001, 2007), and Beck (2011), and treat both German equative types in a uniform manner as expressing universal quantification over sets of degrees or over sets of properties (of individuals or events). Conceptually, the uniform marking of degree-related and property-related meanings is expected given that the abstract semantic category degree (type ) can be reconstructed in terms of equivalence classes, i.e., ontologically simpler sets of individuals (type ) or events (type ). These are found in any language, showing that whether or not a language makes explicit reference to degrees (by means of gradable adjectives, degree question words, degree-only equatives) does not follow on general conceptual or semantic grounds, but is determined by the grammar of that language. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffaa011 SN - 0167-5133 SN - 1477-4593 VL - 38 IS - 1 SP - 95 EP - 143 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hartmann, Katharina A1 - Jacob, Peggy A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Focus asymmetries in Bura N2 - (Chadic), which exhibits a number of asymmetries: Grammatical focus marking is obligatory only with focused subjects, where focus is marked by the particle án following the subject. Focused subjects remain in situ and the complement of án is a regular VP. With nonsubject foci, án appears in a cleft-structure between the fronted focus constituent and a relative clause. We present a semantically unified analysis of focus marking in Bura that treats the particle as a focusmarking copula in T that takes a property-denoting expression (the background) and an individual-denoting expression (the focus) as arguments. The article also investigates the realization of predicate and polarity focus, which are almost never marked. The upshot of the discussion is that Bura shares many characteristic traits of focus marking with other Chadic languages, but it crucially differs in exhibiting a structural difference in the marking of focus on subjects and non-subject constituents. KW - Afro-Asiatic KW - focus asymmetries KW - argument/adjunct focus KW - predicate focus KW - polarity focus KW - cleft KW - focus copula Y1 - 2008 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19381 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Blaszczak, Joanna A1 - Dipper, Stefanie A1 - Fanselow, Gisbert A1 - Ishihara, Shinishiro A1 - Petrova, Svetlana A1 - Skopeteas, Stavros A1 - Weskott, Thomas A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Syntax JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS N2 - The guidelines for syntactic annotation contain the layers that are especially relevant for queries related to the interaction of information structure with syntax. The layers of this level are constituent structure, grammatical functions, and semantic roles. Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-22253 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 7 SP - 95 EP - 133 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Blaszczak, Joanna A1 - Dipper, Stefanie A1 - Fanselow, Gisbert A1 - Ishihara, Shinishiro A1 - Petrova, Svetlana A1 - Skopeteas, Stavros A1 - Weskott, Thomas A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Morphology JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS N2 - The guidelines for morphological annotation contain the layers that are necessary for understanding the structure of the words in the object language: morphological segmentation, glossing, and annotation of part-of-speech. Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-22247 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 7 SP - 55 EP - 94 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - GEN A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - The grammatical expression of focus in West Chadic BT - Variation and uniformity in and across languages N2 - The article provides an overview of the grammatical realization of focus in four West Chadic languages (Chadic, Afro-Asiatic). The languages discussed exhibit an intriguing crosslinguistic variation in the realization of focus, both among themselves as well as compared to European intonation languages. They also display language-internal variation in the formal realization of focus. The West Chadic languages differ widely in their ways of expressing focus, which range from syntactic over prosodic to morphological devices. In contrast to European intonation languages, the focus marking systems of the West Chadic languages are inconsistent in that focus is often not grammatically expressed, but these inconsistencies are shown to be systematic. Subject foci (contrastive or not) and contrastive nonsubject foci are always grammatically marked, whereas information focus on nonsubjects need not be marked as such. The absence of formal focus marking supports pragmatic theories of focus in terms of contextual resolution. The special status of focused subjects and contrastive foci is derived from the Contrastive Focus Hypothesis, which requires unexpected foci and unexpected focus contents to be marked as such, together with the assumption that canonical subjects in West Chadic receive a default interpretation as topics. Finally, I discuss certain focus ambiguities which are not attested in intonation languages, nor do they follow on standard accounts of focus marking, but which can be accounted for in terms of constraint interaction in the formal expression of focus. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 298 Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-93617 SP - 1163 EP - 1213 ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Renans, Agata A1 - Zimmermann, Malte A1 - Greif, Markus T1 - Questionnaire on focus semantics. - 2nd edition N2 - This is the 15th issue of the working paper series Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS) of the Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 632. This online version contains the Questionnaire on Focus Semantics contributed by Agata Renans, Malte Zimmermann and Markus Greif, members of Project D2 investigating information structural phenomena from a typological perspective. The present issue provides a tool for collecting and analyzing natural data with respect to relevant linguistic questions concerning focus types, focus sensitive particles, and the effects of quantificational adverbs and presupposition on focus semantics. This volume is a supplementation to the Reference manual of the Questionnaire on Information Structure, issued by Project D2 in ISIS 4 (2006). T3 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 - 15, 2nd E. KW - focus sensitive expressions KW - semantic fieldwork KW - methodology Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-50359 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fanselow, Gisbert A1 - Zimmermann, Malte A1 - Philipp, Mareike T1 - Assessing the availability of inverse scope in German in the covered box paradigm JF - Glossa : a journal of general linguistics N2 - This paper presents the results of a novel experimental approach to relative quantifier scope in German that elicits data in an indirect manner. Applying the covered-box method (Huang et al. 2013) to scope phenomena, we show that inverse scope is available to some extent in the free constituent order language German, thereby validating earlier findings on other syntactic configurations in German (Rado & Bott 2018) and empirical claims on other free constituent order languages (Japanese, Russian, Hindi), as well as recent corpus findings in Webelhuth (2020). Moreover, the results of the indirect covered-box experiment replicate findings from an earlier direct-query experiment with comparable target items, in which participants were asked directly about the availability of surface scope and inverse scope readings. The configuration of interest consisted of canonical transitive clauses with deaccented existential subject and universal object QPs, in which the restriction of the universal QP was controlled for by the context. KW - inverse scope KW - covered-box KW - free constituent order KW - German KW - experimental semantics Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5766 SN - 2397-1835 VL - 7 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 24 PB - Open Library of Humanities CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Drenhaus, Heiner A1 - Zimmermann, Malte A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - Exhaustiveness effects in clefts are not truth-functional JF - Journal of neurolinguistics : an international journal for the study of brain function in language behavior and experience N2 - While it is widely acknowledged in the formal semantic literature that both the truth-functional focus particle only and it-clefts convey exhaustiveness, the nature and source of exhaustiveness effects with it-clefts remain contested. We describe a questionnaire study (n = 80) and an event-related brain potentials (ERP) study (n = 16) that investigated the violation of exhaustiveness in German only-foci versus it-clefts. The offline study showed that a violation of exhaustivity with only is less acceptable than the violation with it-clefts, suggesting a difference in the nature of exhaustivity interpretation in the two environments. The ERP-results confirm that this difference can be seen in online processing as well: a violation of exhaustiveness in only-foci elicited a centro-posterior positivity (600-800ms), whereas a violation in it-clefts induced a globally distributed N400 pattern (400-600ms). The positivity can be interpreted as a reanalysis process and more generally as a process of context updating. The N400 effect in it-clefts is interpreted as indexing a cancelation process that is functionally distinct from the only case. The ERP study is, to our knowledge, the first evidence from an online experimental paradigm which shows that the violation of exhaustiveness involves different underlying processes in the two structural environments. KW - ERP KW - It- clefts KW - Only-foci KW - Information structure KW - German Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2010.10.004 SN - 0911-6044 VL - 24 IS - 3 SP - 320 EP - 337 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Olsen, Susan A1 - Stiebels, Barbara A1 - Bierwisch, Manfred A1 - Zimmermann, Ilse A1 - Cavar, Damir A1 - Georgi, Doreen A1 - Bacskai-Atkari, Julia A1 - Alexiadou, Artemis A1 - Błaszczak, Joanna A1 - Müller, Gereon A1 - Šimík, Radek A1 - Meinunger, André A1 - Thiersch, Craig A1 - Arnhold, Anja A1 - Féry, Caroline A1 - Bayer, Josef A1 - Titov, Elena A1 - Fominyam, Henry A1 - Tran, Thuan A1 - Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, Ina D. A1 - Schlesewsky, Matthias A1 - Zimmermann, Malte A1 - Häussler, Jana A1 - Mucha, Anne A1 - Schmidt, Andreas A1 - Weskott, Thomas A1 - Wierzba, Marta A1 - Stede, Manfred A1 - Skopeteas, Stavros A1 - Gafos, Adamantios I. A1 - Haider, Hubert A1 - Wunderlich, Dieter A1 - Staudacher, Peter A1 - Rauh, Gisa ED - Brown, Jessica M. M. ED - Schmidt, Andreas ED - Wierzba, Marta T1 - Of Trees and Birds BT - A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow N2 - Gisbert Fanselow’s work has been invaluable and inspiring to many ­researchers working on syntax, morphology, and information ­structure, both from a ­theoretical and from an experimental perspective. This ­volume comprises a collection of articles dedicated to Gisbert on the occasion of his 60th birthday, covering a range of topics from these areas and beyond. The contributions have in ­common that in a broad sense they have to do with language structures (and thus trees), and that in a more specific sense they have to do with birds. They thus cover two of Gisbert’s major interests in- and outside of the linguistic world (and ­perhaps even at the interface). KW - Festschrift KW - Linguistik KW - Syntax KW - Morphologie KW - Informationsstruktur KW - festschrift KW - linguistics KW - syntax KW - morphology KW - information structure Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-426542 SN - 978-3-86956-457-9 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER -