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Seven experiments using self-paced reading and eyetracking suggest that omitting the middle verb in a double centre embedding leads to easier processing in English but leads to greater difficulty in German. One commonly accepted explanation for the English pattern-based on data from offline acceptability ratings and due to Gibson and Thomas (1999)- is that working-memory overload leads the comprehender to forget the prediction of the upcoming verb phrase (VP), which reduces working-memory load. We show that this VP-forgetting hypothesis does an excellent job of explaining the English data, but cannot account for the German results. We argue that the English and German results can be explained by the parser's adaptation to the grammatical properties of the languages; in contrast to English, German subordinate clauses always have the verb in clause-final position, and this property of German may lead the German parser to maintain predictions of upcoming VPs more robustly compared to English. The evidence thus argues against language- independent forgetting effects in online sentence processing; working-memory constraints can be conditioned by countervailing influences deriving from grammatical properties of the language under study.
This study assessed the extent to which second-language learners are sensitive to phonetic information contained in visual cues when identifying a non-native phonemic contrast. In experiment 1, Spanish and Japanese learners of English were tested on their perception of a labial/labiodental consonant contrast in audio (A), visual (V), and audio-visual (AV) modalities. Spanish students showed better performance overall, and much greater sensitivity to visual cues than Japanese students. Both learner groups achieved higher scores in the A V than in the A test condition, thus showing evidence of audio-visual benefit. Experiment 2 examined the perception of the less visually-salient /1/-/r/ contrast in Japanese and Korean learners of English. Korean learners obtained much higher scores in auditory and audio- visual conditions than in the visual condition, while Japanese learners generally performed poorly in both modalities. Neither. group showed evidence of audio-visual benefit. These results show the impact of the language background of the learner and visual salience of the contrast on the use of visual cues for a non-native contrast. Significant correlations between scores in the auditory and visual conditions suggest that increasing auditory proficiency in identifying a non-native contrast is linked with an increasing proficiency in using visual cues to the contrast.
The aim of the single case study was to evaluate two different treatment procedures to improve reading skills with a German-speaking deep dyslexic. Generally, in treatment studies for deep dyslexia, retraining of grapheme-phoneme correspondences is described, but hardly any treatment focuses on reactivating residual functions of the semantic- lexical route. This strategy was explored here with an experimentally presented priming paradigm, to implicitly strengthen residual skills of lexical access with semantically/phonologically related primes (lexically based treatment). In contrast, grapheme-phoneme associations and blending were explicitly relearned during a nonlexically based treatment. Stimuli were controlled for part of speech, word length, and frequency. A cross-over design to identify item- and treatment-specific effects for both procedures was applied. Results indicate positive outcomes with respect to treatment-specific effects for both procedures, generalization to untrained items, and a transfer task after the nonlexically based procedure. All effects remained stable in the follow-up assessment. Implications for theoretically/ empirically generated expectations about treatment outcomes are discussed
A series of studies have distinguished two types of but, namely, corrective and counterexpectational. The difference between these two types has been considered largely semantic/pragmatic. This article shows that the semantic difference also translates into a different syntax for each type of but. More precisely, corrective but always requires clause-level coordination, with apparent counterexamples being derived through ellipsis within the second conjunct. On the other hand, counterexpectational but is not restricted in this way, and offers the possibility of coordination of both clausal and subclausal constituents. From this difference, it is possible to derive a number of syntactic asymmetries between corrective and counterexpectational but.
Coherence relations are typically taken to link two clauses or larger units and to be signaled at the text surface by conjunctions and certain adverbials. Relations, however, also can hold within clauses, indicated by prepositions like despite, due to, or in case of, when these have an internal argument denoting an eventuality. Although these prepositions act as reliable cues to indicate a specific relation, others are lexically more neutral. We investigated this situation for the German preposition bei, which turns out to be highly ambiguous. We demonstrate the range of readings in a corpus study, proposing 6 more specific prepositions as a comprehensive substitution set. All these uses of bei share a common kernel meaning, which is missed by the standard accounts that assume lexical polysemy. We examine the range of coherence relations that can be signaled by bei and provide some factors here supporting the disambiguation task in a framework of discourse interpretation
Diagnosis and repair of negative polarity constructions in the light of symbolic resonance analysis
(2006)
in a post hoc analysis, we investigate differences in event-related potentials of two studies (Drenhaus et al., 2004, to appear; Saddy et al., 2004) by using the symbolic resonance analysis (Beim Graben & Kurths, 2003). The studies under discussion, examined the failure to license a negative polarity item (NPI) in German: Saddy et al. (2004a) reported an N400 component when the NPI was not accurately licensed by negation; Drenhaus et al. (2004, to appear) considered additionally the influence of constituency of the licensor in NPI constructions. A biphasic N400-P600 response was found for the two induced violations (the lack of licensor and the inaccessibility of negation in a relative clause). The symbolic resonance analysis (SRA) revealed an effect in the P600 time window for the data in Saddy et al., which was not found by using the averaging technique. The SRA of the ERPs in Drenhaus et al., showed that the P600 components are distinguishable concerning the amplitude and latency. It was smaller and earlier in the condition where the licensor is inaccessible, compared to the condition without negation in the string. Our findings suggest that the failure in licensing NPIs is not exclusively related to semantic integration costs (N400). The elicited P600 components reflect differences in syntactic processing. Our results confirm and replicate the effects of the traditional voltage average analysis and show that the SRA is a useful tool to reveal and pull apart ERP differences which are not evident using the traditional voltage average analysis.
Phonology and intonation
(2007)
Introduction
(2007)
This thesis investigates the processing of non-canonical word orders and whether non-canonical orders involving object topicalizations, midfield scrambling and particle verbs are treated the same by native (L1) and non-native (L2) speakers. The two languages investigated are Norwegian and German.
32 L1 Norwegian and 32 L1 German advanced learners of Norwegian were tested in two experiments on object topicalization in Norwegian. The results from the online self-paced reading task and the offline agent identification task show that both groups are able to identify the non-canonical word order and show a facilitatory effect of animate subjects in their reanalysis. Similarly high error rates in the agent identification task suggest that globally unambiguous object topicalizations are a challenging structure for L1 and L2 speakers alike.
The same participants were also tested in two experiments on particle placement in Norwegian, again using a self-paced reading task, this time combined with an acceptability rating task. In the acceptability rating L1 and L2 speakers show the same preference for the verb-adjacent placement of the particle over the non-adjacent placement after the direct object. However, this preference for adjacency is only found in the L1 group during online processing, whereas the L2 group shows no preference for either order.
Another set of experiments tested 33 L1 German and 39 L1 Slavic advanced learners of German on object scrambling in ditransitive clauses in German. Non-native speakers accept both object orders and show neither a preference for either order nor a processing advantage for the canonical order. The L1 group, in contrast, shows a small, but significant preference for the canonical dative-first order in the judgment and the reading task.
The same participants were also tested in two experiments on the application of the split rule in German particle verbs. Advanced L2 speakers of German are able to identify particle verbs and can apply the split rule in V2 contexts in an acceptability judgment task in the same way as L1 speakers. However, unlike the L1 group, the L2 group is not sensitive to the grammaticality manipulation during online processing. They seem to be sensitive to the additional lexical information provided by the particle, but are unable to relate the split particle to the preceding verb and recognize the ungrammaticality in non-V2 contexts.
Taken together, my findings suggest that non-canonical word orders are not per se more difficult to identify for L2 speakers than L1 speakers and can trigger the same reanalysis processes as in L1 speakers. I argue that L2 speakers’ ability to identify a non-canonical word order depends on how the non-canonicity is signaled (case marking vs. surface word order), on the constituents involved (identical vs. different word types), and on the impact of the word order change on sentence meaning. Non-canonical word orders that are signaled by morphological case marking and cause no change to the sentence’s content are hard to detect for L2 speakers.
In experiments investigating sentence processing, eye movement measures such as fixation durations and regression proportions while reading are commonly used to draw conclusions about processing difficulties. However, these measures are the result of an interaction of multiple cognitive levels and processing strategies and thus are only indirect indicators of processing difficulty. In order to properly interpret an eye movement response, one has to understand the underlying principles of adaptive processing such as trade-off mechanisms between reading speed and depth of comprehension that interact with task demands and individual differences. Therefore, it is necessary to establish explicit models of the respective mechanisms as well as their causal relationship with observable behavior. There are models of lexical processing and eye movement control on the one side and models on sentence parsing and memory processes on the other. However, no model so far combines both sides with explicitly defined linking assumptions.
In this thesis, a model is developed that integrates oculomotor control with a parsing mechanism and a theory of cue-based memory retrieval. On the basis of previous empirical findings and independently motivated principles, adaptive, resource-preserving mechanisms of underspecification are proposed both on the level of memory access and on the level of syntactic parsing. The thesis first investigates the model of cue-based retrieval in sentence comprehension of Lewis & Vasishth (2005) with a comprehensive literature review and computational modeling of retrieval interference in dependency processing. The results reveal a great variability in the data that is not explained by the theory. Therefore, two principles, 'distractor prominence' and 'cue confusion', are proposed as an extension to the theory, thus providing a more adequate description of systematic variance in empirical results as a consequence of experimental design, linguistic environment, and individual differences. In the remainder of the thesis, four interfaces between parsing and eye movement control are defined: Time Out, Reanalysis, Underspecification, and Subvocalization. By comparing computationally derived predictions with experimental results from the literature, it is investigated to what extent these four interfaces constitute an appropriate elementary set of assumptions for explaining specific eye movement patterns during sentence processing. Through simulations, it is shown how this system of in itself simple assumptions results in predictions of complex, adaptive behavior.
In conclusion, it is argued that, on all levels, the sentence comprehension mechanism seeks a balance between necessary processing effort and reading speed on the basis of experience, task demands, and resource limitations. Theories of linguistic processing therefore need to be explicitly defined and implemented, in particular with respect to linking assumptions between observable behavior and underlying cognitive processes. The comprehensive model developed here integrates multiple levels of sentence processing that hitherto have only been studied in isolation. The model is made publicly available as an expandable framework for future studies of the interactions between parsing, memory access, and eye movement control.
Referential Choice
(2016)
We report a study of referential choice in discourse production, understood as the choice between various types of referential devices, such as pronouns and full noun phrases. Our goal is to predict referential choice, and to explore to what extent such prediction is possible. Our approach to referential choice includes a cognitively informed theoretical component, corpus analysis, machine learning methods and experimentation with human participants. Machine learning algorithms make use of 25 factors, including referent’s properties (such as animacy and protagonism), the distance between a referential expression and its antecedent, the antecedent’s syntactic role, and so on. Having found the predictions of our algorithm to coincide with the original almost 90% of the time, we hypothesized that fully accurate prediction is not possible because, in many situations, more than one referential option is available. This hypothesis was supported by an experimental study, in which participants answered questions about either the original text in the corpus, or about a text modified in accordance with the algorithm’s prediction. Proportions of correct answers to these questions, as well as participants’ rating of the questions’ difficulty, suggested that divergences between the algorithm’s prediction and the original referential device in the corpus occur overwhelmingly in situations where the referential choice is not categorical.
Referential Choice
(2016)
We report a study of referential choice in discourse production, understood as the choice between various types of referential devices, such as pronouns and full noun phrases. Our goal is to predict referential choice, and to explore to what extent such prediction is possible. Our approach to referential choice includes a cognitively informed theoretical component, corpus analysis, machine learning methods and experimentation with human participants. Machine learning algorithms make use of 25 factors, including referent’s properties (such as animacy and protagonism), the distance between a referential expression and its antecedent, the antecedent’s syntactic role, and so on. Having found the predictions of our algorithm to coincide with the original almost 90% of the time, we hypothesized that fully accurate prediction is not possible because, in many situations, more than one referential option is available. This hypothesis was supported by an experimental study, in which participants answered questions about either the original text in the corpus, or about a text modified in accordance with the algorithm’s prediction. Proportions of correct answers to these questions, as well as participants’ rating of the questions’ difficulty, suggested that divergences between the algorithm’s prediction and the original referential device in the corpus occur overwhelmingly in situations where the referential choice is not categorical.
Intonation Units Revisited
(2016)
Intonation units have been notoriously difficult to identify in natural talk. Problems include fuzzy boundaries, lack of exhaustivity, and the potential circularity involved when studying their interface with other language-organizational dimensions. This volume advocates a way to resolve such problems: the cesura approach. Cesuras, or breaks in the flow of talk, are created by discontinuities in the prosodic-phonetic parameters of speech that cluster to various extents at certain points in time. Using conversation-analytic and interactional-linguistic methodology, the volume identifies the parameters creating cesuras in talk-in-interaction and proposes ways to notate them depending on the researcher s goal. It also offers a way to study the role of cesuras at the prosody-syntax interface non-circularly, which leads to new insights concerning language variation and change. The volume will thus be of major import to anyone working with natural spoken language, its chunks, its various dimensions, and its variation and change."
This dissertation examines the impact of the type of referring expression on the acquisition of word order variation in German-speaking preschoolers. A puzzle in the area of language acquisition concerns the production-comprehension asymmetry for non-canonical sentences like "Den Affen fängt die Kuh." (“The monkey, the cow chases.”), that is, preschoolers usually have difficulties in accurately understanding non-canonical sentences approximately until age six (e.g., Dittmar et al., 2008) although they produce non-canonical sentences already around age three (e.g., Poeppel & Wexler, 1993; Weissenborn, 1990). This dissertation investigated the production and comprehension of non-canonical sentences to address this issue.
Three corpus analyses were conducted to investigate the impact of givenness, topic status and the type of referring expression on word order in the spontaneous speech of two- to four-year-olds and the child-directed speech produced by their mothers. The positioning of the direct object in ditransitive sentences was examined; in particular, sentences in which the direct object occurred before or after the indirect object in the sentence-medial positions and sentences in which it occurred in the sentence-initial position. The results reveal similar ordering patterns for children and adults. Word order variation was to a large extent predictable from the type of referring expression, especially with respect to the word order involving the sentence-medial positions. Information structure (e.g., topic status) had an additional impact only on word order variation that involved the sentence-initial position.
Two comprehension experiments were conducted to investigate whether the type of referring expression and topic status influences the comprehension of non-canonical transitive sentences in four- and five-year-olds. In the first experiment, the topic status of the one of the sentential arguments was established via a preceding context sentence, and in the second experiment, the type of referring expression for the sentential arguments was additionally manipulated by using either a full lexical noun phrase (NP) or a personal pronoun. The results demonstrate that children’s comprehension of non-canonical sentences improved when the topic argument was realized as a personal pronoun and this improvement was independent of the grammatical role of the arguments. However, children’s comprehension was not improved when the topic argument was realized as a lexical NP.
In sum, the results of both production and comprehension studies support the view that referring expressions may be seen as a sentence-level cue to word order and to the information status of the sentential arguments. The results highlight the important role of the type of referring expression on the acquisition of word order variation and indicate that the production-comprehension asymmetry is reduced when the type of referring expression is considered.
Judging the animacy of words
(2016)
The age at which members of a semantic category are learned (age of acquisition), the typicality they demonstrate within their corresponding category, and the semantic domain to which they belong (living, non-living) are known to influence the speed and accuracy of lexical/semantic processing. So far, only a few studies have looked at the origin of age of acquisition and its interdependence with typicality and semantic domain within the same experimental design. Twenty adult participants performed an animacy decision task in which nouns were classified according to their semantic domain as being living or non-living. Response times were influenced by the independent main effects of each parameter: typicality, age of acquisition, semantic domain, and frequency. However, there were no interactions. The results are discussed with respect to recent models concerning the origin of age of acquisition effects.
Age of acquisition (AOA) is a psycholinguistic variable that significantly influences behavioural measures (response times and accuracy rates) in tasks that require lexical and semantic processing. Its origin is – unlike the origin of semantic typicality (TYP), which is assumed at the semantic level – controversially discussed. Different theories propose AOA effects to originate either at the semantic level or at the link between semantics and phonology (lemma-level).
The dissertation aims at investigating the influence of AOA and its interdependence with the semantic variable TYP on particularly semantic processing in order to pinpoint the origin of AOA effects. Therefore, three studies have been conducted that considered the variables AOA and TYP in semantic processing tasks (category verifications and animacy decisions) by means of behavioural and partly electrophysiological (ERP) data and in different populations (healthy young and elderly participants and in semantically impaired individuals with aphasia (IWA)).
The behavioural and electrophysiological data of the three studies provide evidence for distinct processing levels of the variables AOA and TYP. The data further support previous assumptions on a semantic origin for TYP but question the same for AOA. The findings, however, support an origin of AOA effects at the transition between the word form (phonology) and the semantic level that can be captured at the behavioural but not at the electrophysiological level.
Exploring generalisation following treatment of language deficits in aphasia can provide insights into the functional relation of the cognitive processing systems involved. In the present study, we first review treatment outcomes of interventions targeting sentence processing deficits and, second report a treatment study examining the occurrence of practice effects and generalisation in sentence comprehension and production. In order to explore the potential linkage between processing systems involved in comprehending and producing sentences, we investigated whether improvements generalise within (i.e., uni-modal generalisation in comprehension or in production) and/or across modalities (i.e., cross-modal generalisation from comprehension to production or vice versa). Two individuals with aphasia displaying co-occurring deficits in sentence comprehension and production were trained on complex, non-canonical sentences in both modalities. Two evidence-based treatment protocols were applied in a crossover intervention study with sequence of treatment phases being randomly allocated. Both participants benefited significantly from treatment, leading to uni-modal generalisation in both comprehension and production. However, cross-modal generalisation did not occur. The magnitude of uni-modal generalisation in sentence production was related to participants’ sentence comprehension performance prior to treatment. These findings support the assumption of modality-specific sub-systems for sentence comprehension and production, being linked uni-directionally from comprehension to production.
This article presents several acceptability rating experiments concerned with crossing wh-movement in German multiple questions. Our results show that there is no general superiority effect in German, thus refuting claims to the contrary by Featherston (2005). However, acceptability is reduced when a whphrase crosses a wh-subject with which it agrees in animacy. We explain this finding in terms of the availability of different sorting keys for the answers to the multiple questions.
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.
Swets et al. (2008. Underspecification of syntactic ambiguities: Evidence from self-paced reading. Memory and Cognition, 36(1), 201–216) presented evidence that the so-called ambiguity advantage [Traxler et al. (1998). Adjunct attachment is not a form of lexical ambiguity resolution. Journal of Memory and Language, 39(4), 558–592], which has been explained in terms of the Unrestricted Race Model, can equally well be explained by assuming underspecification in ambiguous conditions driven by task-demands. Specifically, if comprehension questions require that ambiguities be resolved, the parser tends to make an attachment: when questions are about superficial aspects of the target sentence, readers tend to pursue an underspecification strategy. It is reasonable to assume that individual differences in strategy will play a significant role in the application of such strategies, so that studying average behaviour may not be informative. In order to study the predictions of the good-enough processing theory, we implemented two versions of underspecification: the partial specification model (PSM), which is an implementation of the Swets et al. proposal, and a more parsimonious version, the non-specification model (NSM). We evaluate the relative fit of these two kinds of underspecification to Swets et al.’s data; as a baseline, we also fitted three models that assume no underspecification. We find that a model without underspecification provides a somewhat better fit than both underspecification models, while the NSM model provides a better fit than the PSM. We interpret the results as lack of unambiguous evidence in favour of underspecification; however, given that there is considerable existing evidence for good-enough processing in the literature, it is reasonable to assume that some underspecification might occur. Under this assumption, the results can be interpreted as tentative evidence for NSM over PSM. More generally, our work provides a method for choosing between models of real-time processes in sentence comprehension that make qualitative predictions about the relationship between several dependent variables. We believe that sentence processing research will greatly benefit from a wider use of such methods.
In this thesis sentence processing was investigated using a psychophysiological measure known as pupillometry as well as Event-Related Potentials (ERP). The scope of the the- sis was broad, investigating the processing of several different movement constructions with native speakers of English and second language learners of English, as well as word order and case marking in German speaking adults and children. Pupillometry and ERP allowed us to test competing linguistic theories and use novel methodologies to investigate the processing of word order. In doing so we also aimed to establish pupillometry as an effective way to investigate the processing of word order thus broadening the methodological spectrum.
TripleA is a workshop series founded by linguists from the University of Tübingen and the University of Potsdam. Its aim is to provide a forum for semanticists doing fieldwork on understudied languages, and its focus is on languages from Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania. The second TripleA workshop was held at the University of Potsdam, June 3-5, 2015.
It has been long agreed by formal and functional researchers (primarily based on English data) that contrastive topic marking, namely marking a constituent as a contrastive topic via the B-accent/the rising intonation contour) requires the co-occurrence of focus marking via the A-accent/the falling intonation contour (see Sturgeon 2006, and references therein). However, this consensus has recently been disputed by new findings indicating the occurrence of utterances with only B-accent, dubbed as lone contrastive topic (Büring 2003, Constant 2014). In this paper, I argue, based on the data in Vietnamese, that the presence of lone contrastive topic is just apparent, and that the focus that co-occurs with the seemingly lone contrastive topic is a verum focus.
This study presents new insights into null subjects, topic drop and the interpretation of topic-dropped elements. Besides providing an empirical data survey, it offers explanations to well-known problems, e.g. syncretisms in the context of null-subject licensing or the marginality of dropping an element which carries oblique case. The book constitutes a valuable source for both empirically and theoretically interested (generative) linguists.
Filling the Silence
(2016)
In a self-paced reading experiment, we investigated the processing of sluicing constructions (“sluices”) whose antecedent contained a known garden-path structure in German. Results showed decreased processing times for sluices with garden-path antecedents as well as a disadvantage for antecedents with non-canonical word order downstream from the ellipsis site. A post-hoc analysis showed the garden-path advantage also to be present in the region right before the ellipsis site. While no existing account of ellipsis processing explicitly predicted the results, we argue that they are best captured by combining a local antecedent mismatch effect with memory trace reactivation through reanalysis.
Filling the Silence
(2016)
In a self-paced reading experiment, we investigated the processing of sluicing constructions (“sluices”) whose antecedent contained a known garden-path structure in German. Results showed decreased processing times for sluices with garden-path antecedents as well as a disadvantage for antecedents with non-canonical word order downstream from the ellipsis site. A post-hoc analysis showed the garden-path advantage also to be present in the region right before the ellipsis site. While no existing account of ellipsis processing explicitly predicted the results, we argue that they are best captured by combining a local antecedent mismatch effect with memory trace reactivation through reanalysis.
Udmurt as an OV language
(2016)
This is the first study to investigate Hubert Haider's (2000, 2010, 2013, 2014) proposed systematic differences between OV and VO language in a family other than Germanic. Its aim is to gather evidence on whether basic word order is predictive of further properties of a language. The languages under investigation are the Finno-Ugric languages Udmurt (as an OV language) and Finnish (as a VO language). Counter to Kayne (1994), Haider proposes that the structure of a sentence with a head-final VP is fundamentally different from that of a sentence with a head-initial VP, e.g., OV languages do not exhibit a VP-shell structure, and they do not employ a TP layer with a structural subject position. Haider's proposed structural differences are said to result in the following empirically testable differences:
(a) VP: the availability of VP-internal adverbial intervention and scrambling only in OV-VPs;
(b) subjects: the lack of certain subject-object asymmetries in OV languages, i.e., lack of the subject condition and lack of superiority effects;
(c) V-complexes: the availability of partial predicate fronting only in OV languages; different orderings between selecting and selected verbs; the intervention of non-verbal material between verbs only in VO languages;
(d) V-particles: differences in the distribution of resultative phrases and verb particles.
Udmurt and Finnish behave in line with Haider's predictions with regard to the status of the subject, with regard to the order of selecting and selected verbs, and with regard to the availability of partial predicate fronting. Moreover, Udmurt allows for adverbial intervention and scrambling, as predicted, whereas the status of these properties in Finnish could not be reliably determined due to obligatory V-to-T. There is also counterevidence to Haider's predictions: Udmurt allows for non-verbal material between verbs, and the distribution of resultative phrases and verb particles is essentially as free as the distribution of adverbial phrases in both Finno-Ugric languages. As such, Haider's theory is not falsified by the data from Udmurt and Finnish (except for his theory on verb particles), but it is also not fully supported by the data.
Exhaustivity
(2016)
The dissertation proposes an answer to the question of how to model exhaustive inferences and what the meaning of the linguistic material that triggers these inferences is. In particular, it deals with the semantics of exclusive particles, clefts, and progressive aspect in Ga, an under-researched language spoken in Ghana. Based on new data coming from the author’s original fieldwork in Accra, the thesis points to a previously unattested variation in the semantics of exclusives in a cross-linguistic perspective, analyzes the connections between exhaustive interpretation triggered by clefts and the aspectual interpretation of the sentence, and identifies a cross-categorial definite determiner. By that it sheds new light on several exhaustivity-related phenomena in both the nominal and the verbal domain and shows that both domains are closely connected.
The present study addresses the question of how German vowels are perceived and produced by Polish learners of German as a Foreign Language. It comprises three main experiments: a discrimination experiment, a production experiment, and an identification experiment. With the exception of the discrimination task, the experiments further investigated the influence of orthographic marking on the perception and production of German vowel length. It was assumed that explicit markings such as the Dehnungs-h ("lengthening h") could help Polish GFL learners in perceiving and producing German words more correctly.
The discrimination experiment with manipulated nonce words showed that Polish GFL learners detect pure length differences in German vowels less accurately than German native speakers, while this was not the case for pure quality differences. The results of the identification experiment contrast with the results of the discrimination task in that Polish GFL learners were better at judging incorrect vowel length than incorrect vowel quality in manipulated real words. However, orthographic marking did not turn out to be the driving factor and it is suggested that metalinguistic awareness can explain the asymmetry between the two perception experiments. The production experiment supported the results of the identification task in that lengthening h did not help Polish learners in producing German vowel length more correctly. Yet, as far as vowel quality productions are concerned, it is argued that orthography does influence L2 sound productions because Polish learners seem to be negatively influenced by their native grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences.
It is concluded that it is important to differentiate between the influence of the L1 and L2 orthographic system. On the one hand, the investigation of the influence of orthographic vowel length markers in German suggests that Polish GFL learners do not make use of length information provided by the L2 orthographic system. On the other hand, the vowel quality data suggest that the L1 orthographic system plays a crucial role in the acquisition of a foreign language. It is therefore proposed that orthography influences the acquisition of foreign sounds, but not in the way it was originally assumed.
Breaking down complexity
(2015)
The unbounded expressive capacity of human language cannot boil down to an infinite list of sentences stored in a finite brain. Our linguistic knowledge is rather grounded around a rule-based universal syntactic computation—called Merge—which takes categorized units in input (e.g. this and ship), and generates structures by binding words recursively into more complex hierarchies of any length (e.g. this ship; this ship sinks…). Here we present data from different fMRI datasets probing the cortical implementation of this fundamental process. We first pushed complexity down to a three-word level, to explore how Merge creates minimally hierarchical phrases and sentences. We then moved to the most fundamental two-word level, to directly assess the universal invariant nature of Merge, when no additive mechanisms are involved. Our most general finding is that Merge as the basic syntactic operation is primarily performed by confined area, namely BA 44 in the IFG. Activity reduces to its most ventral-anterior portion at the most fundamental level, following fine-grained sub-anatomical parcellation proposed for the region. The deep frontal operculum/anterior-dorsal insula (FOP/adINS), a phylogenetically older and less specialized region, rather appears to support word-accumulation processing in which the categorical information of the word is first accessed based on its lexical status, and then maintained on hold before further processing takes place. The present data confirm the general notion of BA 44 being activated as a function of complex structural hierarchy, but they go beyond this view by proposing that structural sensitivity in BA 44 is already appreciated at the lowest levels of complexity during which minimal phrase-structures are build up, and syntactic Merge is assessed. Further, they call for a redefinition of BA 44 from multimodal area to a macro-region with internal localizable functional profiles
This thesis investigates temporal and aspectual reference in the typologically unrelated African languages Hausa (Chadic, Afro–Asiatic) and Medumba (Grassfields Bantu).
It argues that Hausa is a genuinely tenseless language and compares the interpretation of temporally unmarked sentences in Hausa to that of morphologically tenseless sentences in Medumba, where tense marking is optional and graded.
The empirical behavior of the optional temporal morphemes in Medumba motivates an analysis as existential quantifiers over times and thus provides new evidence suggesting that languages vary in whether their (past) tense is pronominal or quantificational (see also Sharvit 2014).
The thesis proposes for both Hausa and Medumba that the alleged future tense marker is a modal element that obligatorily combines with a prospective future shifter (which is covert in Medumba). Cross-linguistic variation in whether or not a future marker is compatible with non-future interpretation is proposed to be predictable from the aspectual architecture of the given language.
Learners' Little Helper
(2015)