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Balkan varieties of Turkic, particularly those on the periphery of the Turkic spread area in the region, such as Gagauz and West Rumelian Turkish, are commonly observed to have head-initial verb phrases. Based on a wide survey, this paper attempts a more precise description of the pattern of VP directionality across Balkan Turkic and shows that there is considerable variation in how prevalent VX order is, a pattern that turns out to be more complex than the previous descriptions suggest: Two spectrums of directionality can be discerned between XV and VX orders, contingent upon type of the dependent of the verb and dialect locale. The paper also explores the grammatical causes underlying this shift in constituent order. First, VX order seems to be dependent upon whether a clause is nominal or not. Nonfinite clauses of the nominal type have XV order across Balkan Turkic, while finite clauses and nonfinite clauses of the converbial type show differing degrees of VX order depending on type of dependent and geographical location. Second, VX order appears to be an outcome of verb movement to the left of the dependent in finite clauses and nonfinite clauses of the converbial type, rather than head parameter shift.
The role of case and animacy in biand monolingual children’s sentence interpretation in German
(2019)
German-speaking children appear to have a strong N1-bias when interpreting non-canonical OVSsentences. During sentence interpretation, especially unambiguous accusative and dative case markers (den ‘the-ACC’ and dem ‘the-DAT’) weaken the N1-bias and help building up sentence interpretation strategies on the basis of morphological cues. Still, the N1-bias prevails beyond the age of five (Brandt et al. 2016, Cristante 2016, Dittmar et al. 2008) and remains until puberty (Lidzba et al. 2013). This paper investigates whether prototypical case-animacy coalitions (denACC + N INANIMATE and demDAT + N ANIMATE ) strengthen a morphologically based sentence interpretation strategy in German. The experiment discussed in this paper tests for effects of such case-animacy coalitions in mono- and bilingual primary school children. 20 German monolinguals, 12 Dutch-German and 17 Russian-German bilinguals with a mean age of 9;6 were tested in a forced-choice off-line experiment. Results indicate that case-animacy coalitions weaken the N1-bias in OVS-conditions in German monolinguals and Dutch-German bilinguals, while no effects were found for Russian-German bilinguals. Together with an analysis of individual differences, these group-specific effects are discussed in terms of a developmental approach that represents a gradual cue strength adjustment process in mono- and bilingual children.
This article presents the results of a study on the interpretation and acceptance of adjectival resultatives of German children between 6 and 9 years of age and adults. These results brought to light significant differences, due to age, in the interpretation and acceptance of these resultatives, that is to say, sentences with an adjective in the final position. The youngest participants were prone to accept ungrammatical sentences by assigning a resultative meaning. The ungrammaticality of the sentences in question was not due to semantic inconsistencies but to violations of the selectional properties of verbs, as for instance in *die Kinder erschrecken die Katze ängstlich ‘the children frighten the cat scared’. In contrast, the adults rejected or amended those sentences. The conclusion is (a) that the children seemed to rely on the sentence structure as a primary cue to compute the meaning of an utterance and (b) that, in contrast with adults, the youngest children in particular had not yet learned the relevant semantic properties of verbs that determine the selectional restrictions and thus the syntactic options of verbs. This means that differences in interpretation and acceptance of sentences are due to differences in knowledge of semantic verb properties between adults and children. The relevant semantic knowledge increases in gradual stages during language acquisition.
This paper discusses a hitherto undescribed usage of the particle so as a dedicated focus marker in contemporary German. I discuss grammatical and pragmatic characteristics of this focus marker, supporting my account with natural linguistic data and with controlled experimental evidence showing that so has a significant influence on speakers’ understanding of what the focus expression in a sentence is. Against this background, I sketch a possible pragmaticalization path from referential usages of so via hedging to a semantically bleached focus marker, which, unlike particles such as auch ‘also’/‘too’ or nur ‘only’, does not contribute any additional meaning.
Content: 1. Introduction 2. The notion of speech style: from a dependent variable to contextualization cue 3. Speech styles in conversation from a German Sozialamt 3.1 Extracts from conversation 3.2 Speech style constituting cues 3.3 Choice and alternation of speech styles in conversation 4. Summary and conclusions
The role of intonation in the organization of repair and problem handling sequences in conversation
(1988)
Transcripts of repair and/or problem handling sequences from natural conversations are presented and analyzed with special reference to the role of intonation in the interactive organization of these sequences. It is shown that (a) in the initiation of so-called repair or local problem handling sequences, intonation is used as a type-distinctive device, and (b) in the handling of a global problem handling sequence, intonation is systematically used as a means to constitute and control participant cooperation. In general, intonation is analyzed as one contextualization cue cooccurring with specific syntactic, semantic and discourse organizational devices to signal the status of an utterance in conversational context. It is hypothesized that especially in the global problem handling sequence, different categories of intonation, i.e. different accent and contour types, are systematically used to signal and control participants' interactive problem handling in different, indexically relevant ways simultaneously.
A system of descriptive categories for the notation and analysis of intonation in natural conversation is presented and discussed in relation to other systems currently suggested for incorporation in discourse analysis, The categories are based on purely auditive criteria. They differ from e.g. tonetic approaches by relying more on transcribers' and analysts' perception of the form and internal cohesiveness of contours, especially with respect to rhythmicality and/or pitch contour (gestalt). Intonation is conceived of as a relational phenomenon; the role of intonation in conversational utterances can only be analyzed by considering its co-occurrence with other properties of utterances like syntactic, semantic and discourse organizational structures and devices. In general, intonation is viewed as one signalling system contributing to the contextualization of utterances in their conversational context. A broad functional differentiation between different types of intonation categories seems plausible: Local categories like accents might fulfill mainly semantic functions, while global categories like different contour types might fulfill primarily functions with respect to the interactive coordination of activities in conversation.
After a review of previous work on the prosody of emotional involvement, data extracts from natural conversations are analyzed in order to argue for the constitution of an 'emphatic (speech) style', which linguistic devices are used to signal heightened emotive involvement. Participants use prosodic cues, in co-occurrence with syntactic and lexical cues, to contextualize turn-constructional units as 'emphatic'. Only realizations of prosodic categories that are marked in relation to surrounding uses of these categories have the power to contextualize units as displaying 'more-than-normal involvement'. In the appropriate context, and in cooccurrence with syntactic and lexical cues and sequential position, the context-sensitive interpretation of this involvement is 'emphasis'. Prosodic marking is used in addition to various unmarked cues that signal and constitute different activity types in conversation. Emphatic style highlights and reinforms particular conversational activities, and makes certain types of recipient responses locally relevant. In particular, switches from non-emphatic to emphatic style are used to contextualize 'peaks of involvement' or 'climaxes' in story-telling. These are shown in the paper to be 'staged' by speakers and treated by recipients as marked activities calling for displays of alignment with respect to the matter at hand. Signals of emphasis are deployable as techniques for locally organizing demonstrations of shared understanding and participant reciprocity in conversational interaction.
This paper investigates speech styles and style-shifting in the speech of the moderator of a German radio participation programme. Style-shifting is shown to affect several distinct linguistic levels: phonetic, morphophonemic, syntactic, and lexical. The functions of style-shifting are related both to the discourse context and the broader institutional context. Relying on listeners' co-occurrence expectations with respect to language use in contexts and exploiting listeners' evaluations of processes of speech convergence and divergence, the moderator uses stereotypic markers at different style levels in locally strategic functions in discourse. On the one hand, thematic development is controlled by reinforcing obligations on the addressee. On the other hand, global social reciprocity patterns are constituted and secured. Patterns of reciprocity vary with different types of addressees. The conversational analysis of language variation shows that variation is not only a quantitative correlate of regional, social and contextual parameters as predominantly conceived of in sociolinguistics. Language variation is furthermore used as a means to signal social and interactive meaning in conversations.
My analysis of question-word questions in conversational question-answer sequences results in the decomposition of the conversational question into three systems of constitutive cues, which signal and contextualize the particular activity type in conversational interaction: (1) syntactic structure, (2) semantic relation to prior turn, and (3) prosody. These components are used and combined by interlocutors to distinguish between different activity types which (4) sequentially implicate different types of answers by the recipient in the next turn. Prosody is only one cooccurring cue, but in some cases it is the only distinctive one. It is shown that prosody, and in particular intonation, cannot be determined or even systematically related to syntactic sentence structure type or other sentence-grammatical principles, as most former and current theories of intonation postulate. Instead, prosody is an independent, autonomous signalling system, which is used as a contextualization device for the constitution of interactively relevant activity types in conversation.