Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Article (758)
- Doctoral Thesis (97)
- Postprint (49)
- Monograph/Edited Volume (47)
- Review (18)
- Other (17)
- Part of a Book (6)
- Conference Proceeding (4)
- Preprint (4)
- Master's Thesis (3)
Language
- English (1006) (remove)
Keywords
- German (41)
- information structure (39)
- morphology (37)
- syntax (35)
- Syntax (31)
- Informationsstruktur (29)
- Morphologie (27)
- linguistics (26)
- Linguistik (24)
- Festschrift (23)
Institute
- Department Linguistik (1006) (remove)
The present study examines native and nonnative perceptual processing of semantic information conveyed by prosodic prominence. Five groups of German learners of English each listened to one of 5 experimental conditions. Three conditions differed in place of focus accent in the sentence and two conditions were with spliced stimuli. The experiment condition was presented first in the learners’ L1 (German) and then in a similar set in the L2 (English). The effect of the accent condition and of the length and position of the target in the sentence was evaluated in a probe recognition task. In both the L1 and L2 tasks there was no significant effect in any of the five focus conditions. Target position and target word length had an effect in the L1 task. Word length did not affect accuracy rates in the L2 task. For probe recognition in the L2, word length and the position of the target interacted with the focus condition.
Stop bashing givenness!
(2005)
Elke Kasimir’s paper (in this volume) argues against employing the notion of Givenness in the explanation of accent assignment. I will claim that the arguments against Givenness put forward by Kasimir are inconclusive because they beg the question of the role of Givenness. It is concluded that, more generally, arguments against Givenness as a diagnostic for information structural partitions should not be accepted offhand, since the notion of Givenness of discourse referents is (a) theoretically simple, (b) readily observable and quantifiable, and (c) bears cognitive significance.
In order to investigate the empirical properties of focus, it is necessary to diagnose focus (or: "what is focused") in particular linguistic examples. It is often taken for granted that the application of one single diagnostic tool, the so-called question-answer test, which roughly says that whatever a question asks for is focused in the answer, is a fool-proof test for focus. This paper investigates one example class where such uncritical belief in the question-answer test has led to the assumption of rather complex focus projection rules: in these examples, pitch accent placement has been claimed to depend on certain parts of the focused constituents being given or not. It is demonstrated that such focus projection rules are unnecessarily complex and in turn require the assumption of unnecessarily complicated meaning rules, not to speak of the difficulties to give a precise semantic/pragmatic definition of the allegedly involved givenness property. For the sake of the argument, an alternative analysis is put forward which relies solely on alternative sets following Mats Rooth's work, and avoids any recourse to givenness. As it turns out, this alternative analysis is not only simpler but also makes in a critical case the better predictions.
We present a system for the linguistic exploration and analysis of lexical cohesion in English texts. Using an electronic thesaurus-like resource, Princeton WordNet, and the Brown Corpus of English, we have implemented a process of annotating text with lexical chains and a graphical user interface for inspection of the annotated text. We describe the system and report on some sample linguistic analyses carried out using the combined thesaurus-corpus resource.
ANNIS
(2004)
In this paper, we discuss the design and implementation of our first version of the database "ANNIS" ("ANNotation of Information Structure"). For research based on empirical data, ANNIS provides a uniform environment for storing this data together with its linguistic annotations. A central database promotes standardized annotation, which facilitates interpretation and comparison of the data. ANNIS is used through a standard web browser and offers tier-based visualization of data and annotations, as well as search facilities that allow for cross-level and cross-sentential queries. The paper motivates the design of the system, characterizes its user interface, and provides an initial technical evaluation of ANNIS with respect to data size and query processing.
In this paper we review the current state of research on the issue of discourse structure (DS)/information structure (IS) interface. This field has received a lot of attention from discourse semanticists and pragmatists, and has made substantial progress in recent years. In this paper we summarize the relevant studies. In addition, we look at the issue of DS/ISinteraction at a different level - that of phonetics. It is known that both information structure and discourse structure can be realized prosodically, but the issue of phonetic interaction between the prosodic devices they employ has hardly ever been discussed in this context. We think that a proper consideration of this aspect of DS/IS-interaction would enrich our understanding of the phenomenon, and hence we formulate some related research-programmatic positions.
Prosody by phase
(2004)
Japanese wh-questions always exhibit focus intonation (FI). Furthermore, the domain of FI exhibits a correspondence to the wh-scope. I propose that this phonology-semantics correspondence is a result of the cyclic computation of FI, which is explained under the notion of Multiple Spell-Out in the recent Minimalist framework. The proposed analysis makes two predictions: (1) embedding of an FI into another is possible; (2) (overt) movement of a wh-phrase to a phase edge position causes a mismatch between FI and wh-scope. Both predictions are tested experimentally, and shown to be borne out.
We argue that there is a crucial difference between determiner and adverbial quantification. Following Herburger [2000] and von Fintel [1994], we assume that determiner quantifiers quantify over individuals and adverbial quantifiers over eventualities. While it is usually assumed that the semantics of sentences with determiner quantifiers and those with adverbial quantifiers basically come out the same, we will show by way of new data that quantification over events is more restricted than quantification over individuals. This is because eventualities in contrast to individuals have to be located in time which is done using contextual information according to a pragmatic resolution strategy. If the contextual information and the tense information given in the respective sentence contradict each other, the sentence is uninterpretable. We conclude that this is the reason why in these cases adverbial quantification, i.e. quantification over eventualities, is impossible whereas quantification over individuals is fine.
This paper investigates the nature of the attraction of XPs to clauseinitial position in German (and other languages). It argues that there are two different types of preposing. First, an XP can move when it is attracted by an EPP-like feature of Comp. Comp can, however, also attract elements that bear the formal marker of some semantic or pragmatic (information theoretic) function. This second type of movement is driven by the attraction of a formal property of the moved element. It has often been misanalysed as “operator” movement in the past. Japanese wh-questions always exhibit focus intonation (FI). Furthermore, the domain of FI exhibits a correspondence to the wh-scope. I propose that this phonology-semantics correspondence is a result of the cyclic computation of FI, which is explained under the notion of Multiple Spell-Out in the recent Minimalist framework. The proposed analysis makes two predictions: (1) embedding of an FI into another is possible; (2) (overt) movement of a wh-phrase to a phase edge position causes a mismatch between FI and wh-scope. Both predictions are tested experimentally, and shown to be borne out.
Results of a production experiment on the placement of sentence accent in German are reported. The hypothesis that German fulfills some of the most widely accepted rules of accent assignment— predicting focus domain integration—was only partly confirmed. Adjacency between argument and verb induces a single accent on the argument, as recognized in the literature, but interruption of this sequence by a modifier often induces remodeling of the accent pattern with a single accent on the modifier. The verb is rarely stressed. All models based on linear alignment or adjacency between elements belonging to a single accent domain fail to account for this result. A cyclic analysis of prosodic domain formation is proposed in an optimality-theoretic framework that can explain the accent pattern. Japanese wh-questions always exhibit focus intonation (FI). Furthermore, the domain of FI exhibits a correspondence to the wh-scope. I propose that this phonology-semantics correspondence is a result of the cyclic computation of FI, which is explained under the notion of Multiple Spell-Out in the recent Minimalist framework. The proposed analysis makes two predictions: (1) embedding of an FI into another is possible; (2) (overt) movement of a wh-phrase to a phase edge position causes a mismatch between FI and wh-scope. Both predictions are tested experimentally, and shown to be borne out.
Der vorliegende dritte Band der Serie "Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure" enthält sieben Beiträge aus verschiedenen Projekten des Sonderforschungsbereiches "Informationsstruktur: Die sprachlichen Mittel der Gliederung von Äußerung, Satz und Text" (SFB 632). Der Titel "Approaches and Findings in Oral, Written and Gestural Language" reflektiert die Bandbreite der Untersuchungen zum Thema Informationsstruktur. In ihrem Artikel hinterfragt Elke Kasimir die Zuverlässigkeit des sog. Frage-Antwort-Tests zur Bestimmung des fokussierten Elementes in Sätzen. Ihr alternativer Lösungsvorschlag wird in dem Kommentar von Thomas Weskott kritisch diskutiert. Der Artikel von Paul Elbourne befasst sich mit Phänomenen der Ellipse und bietet eine neue semantische Analyse an. Spezielle morphologisch stark markierte Fokuskonstruktionen aus fünf verschiedenen afrikanischen Sprachen der Gur- und Kwa-Sprachgruppe werden von Ines Fiedler und Anne Schwarz analysiert und diachronisch interpretiert. Ebenfalls sprachhistorisch ausgerichtet ist der Artikel von Roland Hinterhölzl, Svetlana Petrova und Michael Solf, die Belege für die Interaktion von Wortstellung und Informationsstruktur bereits in der althochdeutschen Tatian-Übersetzung fanden. Anke Sennema, Ruben van de Vijver, Susanne E. Carroll und Anne Zimmer-Stahl diskutieren anhand einer Serie von Experimenten die Nutzung von Prosodie, Wortlänge und –Stellung für die semantischen Interpretation in der Erst- und Zweitsprache. Die besondere Rolle von Gestik in Verbindung mit Intonation für die Strukturierung des sprachlichen Diskurses wird von Stefanie Jannedy und Norma Mendoza-Denton hervorgehoben.
The papers in this volume were presented at the workshop Heterogeneity in Linguistic Databases', which took place on July 9, 2004 at the University of Potsdam. The workshop was organized by project D1: Linguistic Database for Information Structure: Annotation and Retrieval', a member project of the SFB 632, a collaborative research center entitled Information Structure: the Linguistic Means for Structuring Utterances, Sentences and Texts'. The workshop brought together both developers and users of linguistic databases from a number of research projects which work on an empirical basis, all of which have to cope with different sorts of heterogeneity: primary linguistic data and annotated information may be heterogeneous, as well as the data structures representing them. The first four papers (by Wagner, Schmidt, Lüdeling, and Witt) address aspects of heterogeneous data from the point of view of database developers; the remaining three papers (by Meyer, Smith, and Teich/Fankhauser) focus on data exploitation by the users.
Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632. - Vol. 1
(2004)
Contents: A1: Phonology and syntax of focussing and topicalisation: Gisbert Fanselow: Cyclic Phonology–Syntax-Interaction: Movement to First Position in German Caroline Féry and Laura Herbst: German Sentence Accent Revisited Shinichiro Ishihara: Prosody by Phase: Evidence from Focus Intonation–Wh-scope Correspondence in Japanese A2: Quantification and information structure: Cornelia Endriss and Stefan Hinterwimmer: The Influence of Tense in Adverbial Quantification A3: Rhetorical Structure in Spoken Language: Modeling of Global Prosodic Parameters: Ekaterina Jasinskaja, Jörg Mayer and David Schlangen: Discourse Structure and Information Structure: Interfaces and Prosodic Realization B2: Focussing in African Tchadic languages: Katharina Hartmann and Malte Zimmermann: Focus Strategies in Chadic: The Case of Tangale Revisited D1: Linguistic database for information structure: Annotation and retrieval: Stefanie Dipper, Michael Götze, Manfred Stede and Tillmann Wegst: ANNIS: A Linguistic Database for Exploring Information Structure
Connective ties in discourse: Three ERP studies on causal, temporal and concessive connective ties and their influence on language processing. Questions In four experiments the influence of lexical connectives such as " darum", therefore, " danach", afterwards, and " trotzdem", nevertheless, on the processing of short two-sentence discourses was examined and compared to the processing of deictical sentential adverbs such as " gestern", yesterday, and " lieber", rather. These latter words do not have the property of signaling a certain discourse relation between two sentences, as connective ties do. Three questions were central to the work: * Do the processing contrasts found between connective and non-connective elements extend to connective ties and deictical sentential adverbs (experiments 2 and 3)? * Does the semantic content of the connective ties play the primary role, i.e is the major distinction to be made indeed between connective and non-connective or instead between causal, temporal and concessive? * When precisely is the information provided by connective ties used? There is some evidence that connective ties can have an immediate influence on the integration of subsequent elements, but the end of the second sentences appears to play an important role as well: experiments 2, 3, and 4. Conclusions First of all, the theoretical distinction between connective and non-connective elements does indeed have " cognitive reality" . This has already been shown in previous studies. The present studies do however show, that there is also a difference between one-place discourse elements (deictical sentential adverbs) and two-place discourse elements, namely connective ties, since all experiments examining this contrast found evidence for qualitatively and quantitatively different processing (experiments 1, 2, and 3). Secondly, the semantic type of the connective ties also plays a role. This was not shown for the LAN, found for all connective ties when compared to non-connective elements, and consequently interpreted as a more abstract reflection of the integration of connective ties. There was also no difference between causal and temporal connective ties before the end of the discourses in experiment 3. However, the N400 found for incoherent discourses in experiment 2, larger for connective incoherent than non-connective incoherent discourses, as well as the P3b found for concessive connective ties in the comparison between causal and concessive connective ties gave reason to assume that the semantic content of connective ties is made use of in incremental processing, and that the relation signaled by the connective tie is the one that readers attempt to construct. Concerning when the information provided by connective ties is used, it appears as if connectivity is generally and obligatorily taken at face value. As long as the meaning of a connective tie did not conflict with a preferred canonical discourse relation, there were no differences found for varying connective discourses (experiment 3). However, the fact that concessive connective ties announce the need for a more complex text representation was recognized and made use of immediately (experiment 4). Additionally, a violation of the discourse relation resulted in more difficult semantic integration if a connective tie was present (experiment 2). It is therefore concluded here that connective ties influence processing immediately. This claim has to be modified somewhat, since the sentence-final elements suggested that connective ties trigger different integration processes than non-connective elements. It seems as if the answer to the question of when connective ties are processed is neither exclusively immediately nor exclusively afterwards, but that both viewpoints are correct. It is suggested here that before the end of a discourse economy plays a central role in that a canonical relation is assumed unless there is evidence to the contrary. A connective tie could have the function of reducing the dimensions evaluated in a discourse to the one signaled by the connective tie. At the end of the discourse the representation is evaluated and verified, and an integrated situation model constructed. Here, the complexity of the different discourse relations that connective ties can signal, is expressed.
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.
Distributed optimality
(2001)
In this thesis I propose a synthesis (Distributed Optimality, DO) between Optimality Theory (OT, Prince & Smolensky, 1993) and a morphological framework in a genuine derivational tradition, namely Distributed Morphology (DM) as developed by Halle & Marantz (1993). By carrying over the apparatus of OT to DM, phenomena which are captured in DM by language-specific rules or features of lexical entries, are given a more principled account in the terms of ranked universal constraints. On the other hand, also the DM part makes two contributions, namely strong locality and impoverishment. The first gives rise to a simple formal interpretation of DO, while the latter is shown to be indispensable in any theoretically satisfying account of agreement morphology. The empirical basis of the work is given by the complex agreement morphology of genetically different languages. Theoretical focus is mainly on two areas: First, so-called direction marking which is shown to be preferably treated in terms of constraints on feature realization. Second, the effects of precedence constraints which are claimed to regulate the status of agreement affixes as prefixes or suffixes and their respective order. A universal typology for the order of agreement categories by means of OT-constraints is proposed.