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Gegenstand dieser Arbeit sind sog. nicht-kanonische bzw. unintegrierte Nebensätze. Diese Nebensätze zeichnen sich dadurch aus, dass sie sich mittels gängiger Kriterien (Satzgliedstatus, Verbletztstellung) nicht klar als koordiniert oder subordiniert beschreiben lassen. Das Phänomen nicht-kanonischer Nebensätze ist ein Thema, welches in der Sprachwissenschaft generell seit den späten Siebzigern (Davison 1979) diskutiert wird und spätestens mit Fabricius-Hansen (1992) auch innerhalb der germanistischen Linguistik angekommen ist. Ein viel beachteter Komplex ist hierbei – neben der reinen Identifizierung nicht-kanonischer Satzgefüge – meist auch die Erstellung einer Klassifikation zur Erfassung zumindest einiger nicht-kanonischer Gefüge, wie dies etwa bei Fabricius-Hansen (1992) und Reis (1997) zu sehen ist. Das Ziel dieser Studie ist es, eine exhaustive Klassifikation der angesprochenen Nebensatztypen vorzunehmen. Dazu werden zunächst – unter Zuhilfenahme von Korpusdaten – alle potentiellen Subordinationsmerkmale genauer untersucht, da die meisten bisherigen Studien zu diesem Thema die stets gleichen Merkmale als gegeben voraussetzen. Dabei wird sich herausstellen, dass nur eine kleine Anzahl von Merkmalen sich wirklich zweifelsfrei dazu eignet, Aufschluss über die Satzverknüpfungsqualität zu geben. Die anschließend aufgestellte Taxonomie deutscher Nebensätze wird schließlich einzig mit der Postulierung einer nicht-kanonischen Nebensatzklasse auskommen. Sie ist darüber hinaus auch in der Lage, die zahlreich vorkommenden Ausnahmefälle zu erfassen. Dies heißt konkret, dass auch etwaige Nebensätze, die sich aufgrund bestimmter Eigenschaften teilweise idiosynkratisch verhalten, einfach in die vorgeschlagene Klassifikation übernommen werden können. In diesem Zuge werde ich weiterhin zeigen, wie eine Nebensatzklassifikation auch sog. sekundären Subordinationsmerkmalen gerecht werden kann, obwohl diese sich hinsichtlich der einzelnen Nebensatzklassen nicht einheitlich verhalten. Schließlich werde ich eine theoretische Modellierung der zuvor postulierten Taxonomie vornehmen, die auf Basis der HPSG mittels Merkmalsvererbung alle möglichen Nebensatztypen zu erfassen imstande ist.
Of Trees and Birds
(2019)
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).
The instrumental -er suffix
(2019)
This thesis investigates the comprehension of the passive voice in three distinct populations. First, the comprehension of passives by adult German speakers was studied, followed by an examination of how German-speaking children comprehend the structure. Finally, bilingual Mandarin-English speakers were tested on their comprehension of the passive voice in English, which is their L2. An integral part of testing the comprehension in all three populations is the use of structural priming. In each of the three distinct parts of the research, structural priming was used for a specific reason. In the study involving adult German speakers, productive and receptive structural priming was directly compared. The goal was to see the effect the two priming modalities have on language comprehension. In the study on German-acquiring children, structural priming was an important tool in answering the question regarding the delayed acquisition of the passive voice. Finally, in the study on the bilingual population, cross-linguistic priming was used to investigate the importance of word order in the priming effect, since Mandarin and English have different word orders in passive voice sentences.
Children’s interpretations of sentences containing focus particles do not seem adult-like until school age. This study investigates how German 4-year-old children comprehend sentences with the focus particle ‘nur’ (only) by using different tasks and controlling for the impact of general cognitive abilities on performance measures. Two sentence types with ‘only’ in either pre-subject or pre-object position were presented. Eye gaze data and verbal responses were collected via the visual world paradigm combined with a sentence-picture verification task. While the eye tracking data revealed an adult-like pattern of focus particle processing, the sentence-picture verification replicated previous findings of poor comprehension, especially for ‘only’ in pre-subject position. A second study focused on the impact of general cognitive abilities on the outcomes of the verification task. Working memory was related to children’s performance in both sentence types whereas inhibitory control was selectively related to the number of errors for sentences with ‘only’ in pre-subject position. These results suggest that children at the age of 4 years have the linguistic competence to correctly interpret sentences with focus particles, which–depending on specific task demands–may be masked by immature general cognitive abilities.
Children’s interpretations of sentences containing focus particles do not seem adult-like until school age. This study investigates how German 4-year-old children comprehend sentences with the focus particle ‘nur’ (only) by using different tasks and controlling for the impact of general cognitive abilities on performance measures. Two sentence types with ‘only’ in either pre-subject or pre-object position were presented. Eye gaze data and verbal responses were collected via the visual world paradigm combined with a sentence-picture verification task. While the eye tracking data revealed an adult-like pattern of focus particle processing, the sentence-picture verification replicated previous findings of poor comprehension, especially for ‘only’ in pre-subject position. A second study focused on the impact of general cognitive abilities on the outcomes of the verification task. Working memory was related to children’s performance in both sentence types whereas inhibitory control was selectively related to the number of errors for sentences with ‘only’ in pre-subject position. These results suggest that children at the age of 4 years have the linguistic competence to correctly interpret sentences with focus particles, which–depending on specific task demands–may be masked by immature general cognitive abilities.
Experimenting with Lurchi
(2019)
Der W-Fragen-Erwerb stellt einen Teilbereich der kindlichen Syntaxentwicklung dar, die sich maßgeblich innerhalb der ersten drei Lebensjahre eines Kindes vollzieht. Eine wesentliche Rolle spielen dabei zwei Bewegungsoperationen, die sich auf die Position des Interrogativpronomens an die erste Stelle der W-Frage sowie die Position des Verbs an die zweite Stelle beziehen. In drei Studien wurde einerseits untersucht, ob deutschsprachige Kinder, die noch keine W-Fragen produzieren können, in der Lage sind, grammatische von ungrammatischen W-Fragen zu unterscheiden und andererseits, welche Leistungen sprachunauffällige und sprachauffällige deutschsprachige Kinder beim Verstehen und Korrigieren unterschiedlich komplexer W-Fragen (positive und negative W-Fragen) zeigen. Die Ergebnisse deuten auf ein frühes syntaktisches Wissen über W-Fragen im Spracherwerb hin und stützen damit die Annahme einer Kontinuität der kindlichen Grammatik zur Standardsprache. Auch scheinen sprachauffällige Kinder sich beim Erwerb von W-Fragen nicht qualitativ von sprachgesunden Kindern zu unterscheiden, sondern W-Fragen lediglich später korrekt umzusetzen. In beiden Populationen konnte ein syntaktischer Ökonomieeffekt beobachtet werden, der für eine spätere Umsetzung der Verbbewegung im Vergleich zur Bewegung des W-Elementes spricht.
The Final-over-Final Condition has emerged as a robust and explanatory generalization for a wide range of phenomena (Biberauer, Holmberg, and Roberts 2014, Sheehan et al. 2017).
In this article, we argue that it also holds in another domain, nominalization.
In languages that show overt nominalization of VPs, one word order is routinely unattested, namely, a head-initial VP with a suffixal nominalizer.
This typological gap can be accounted for by the Final-over-Final Condition, if we allow it to hold within mixed extended projections.
This view also makes correct predictions about agentive nominalizations and nominalized serial verb constructions.
V3-Deklarativa – wie z.B. ‚Auf einmal der Hund hat sich mies erschrocken‘ – kommen sowohl bei bilingualen als auch bei monolingualen L1-Sprecher:innen des Deutschen vor. Im Rahmen einer korpuslinguistischen Analyse anhand des RUEG-Korpus (Wiese et al. 2021) untersucht diese Masterarbeit die folgende Fragestellung: In welchen Kontexten verwenden mono- und bilinguale Sprecher:innen des Deutschen genuines V3? Dabei bezieht sich der Begriff ‚Kontext‘ sowohl auf das Setting, in dem die V3-Deklarativa produziert werden (mediale und konzeptionelle Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit), als auch den linguistischen Kontext (syntaktische, semantische, informationsstrukturelle und phonologische Eigenschaften der präverbalen Konstituenten). Die Korpusuntersuchung ergibt, dass V3-Belege in allen Settings und in allen Sprecher:innengruppen auftreten. Die bilingualen Sprecher:innen verwenden insgesamt häufiger V3 als die monolingualen, wobei jedoch große Frequenzunterschiede je nach Heritage-Sprache vorliegen. Hinsichtlich der präverbalen Konstituenten bestätigt sich die bereits in der vorherigen Forschung identifizierte Tendenz zur syntaktischen Abfolge Adverbial-Subjekt und zur semantischen Abfolge Zeit-Person. Neben Temporaladverbialen erscheinen insbesondere Satzadverbiale als initiale Konstituente. Auf Ebene der Informationsstruktur kann den initialen Adverbialen zu fast 94% die Funktion eines Diskurslinkers oder Framesetters zugeschrieben werden, was die These einer informationsstrukturellen Motivation der V3-Stellung bekräftigt. Eine zweite Korpusanalyse anhand des Korpus Falko der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin zeigt, dass sich auch bei V3-Deklarativa fortgeschrittener DaF-Lernender eine informationsstrukturelle Motivation der Syntax geltend machen lässt. Insgesamt plädiert die Masterarbeit somit für einen ressourcenorientierten Blick auf V3-Strukturen.
Meter and syntax have overlapping elements in music and speech domains, and individual differences have been documented in both meter perception and syntactic comprehension paradigms. Previous evidence insinuated but never fully explored the relationship that metrical structure has to syntactic comprehension, the comparability of these processes across music and language domains, and the respective role of individual differences. This dissertation aimed to investigate neurocognitive entrainment to meter in music and language, the impact that neurocognitive entrainment had on syntactic comprehension, and whether individual differences in musical expertise, temporal perception and working memory played a role during these processes.
A theoretical framework was developed, which linked neural entrainment, cognitive entrainment, and syntactic comprehension while detailing previously documented effects of individual differences on meter perception and syntactic comprehension. The framework was developed in both music and language domains and was tested using behavioral and EEG methods across three studies (seven experiments). In order to satisfy empirical evaluation of neurocognitive entrainment and syntactic aspects of the framework, original melodies and sentences were composed. Each item had four permutations: regular and irregular metricality, based on the hierarchical organization of strong and weak notes and syllables, and preferred and non-preferred syntax, based on structurally alternate endings. The framework predicted — for both music and language domains — greater neurocognitive entrainment in regular compared to irregular metricality conditions, and accordingly, better syntactic integration in regular compared to irregular metricality conditions. Individual differences among participants were expected for both entrainment and syntactic processes.
Altogether, the dissertation was able to support a holistic account of neurocognitive entrainment to musical meter and its subsequent influence on syntactic integration of melodies, with musician participants. The theoretical predictions were not upheld in the language domain with musician participants, but initial behavioral evidence in combination with previous EEG evidence suggest that perhaps non-musician language EEG data would support the framework’s predictions. Musicians’ deviation from hypothesized results in the language domain were suspected to reflect heightened perception of acoustic features stemming from musical training, which caused current ‘overly’ regular stimuli to distract the cognitive system. The individual-differences approach was vindicated by the surfacing of two factors scores, Verbal Working Memory and Time and Pitch Discrimination, which in turn correlated with multiple experimental data across the three studies.
This is the 13th issue of the working paper series Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS) of the Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 632. It is the first part of a series of Linguistic Fieldnote issues which present data collected by members of different projects of the SFB during fieldwork on various languages or dialects spoken worldwide. This part of the Fieldnote Series is dedicated to data from African languages. It contains contributions by Mira Grubic (A5) on Ngizim, and Susanne Genzel & Frank Kügler (D5) on Akan. The papers allow insights into various aspects of the elicitation of formal correlates of focus and related phenomena in different African languages investigated by the SFB in the second funding phase, especially in the period between 2007 and 2010.
Parataxe et subordination, ces deux termes, parfois antithétiques, sont problématiques du fait même de leur extrême polysémie. C’est de cette ambiguïté que naît l’objet d’étude, les constructions asyndétiques, au statut incertain entre intégration et indépendance. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons de réinterroger ce phénomène ancien et déjà bien connu en ancien français, en le mettant en regard des remises en question et avancées des recherches actuelles sur le sujet. Pour cela, il nous faut tout d'abord poser une définition de ce qu'est la subordination. Nous montrons ensuite que les constructions asyndétiques sont bien des cas de subordination. Cette thèse établit enfin que ce phénomène constitue, en ancien français du moins, une variante libre en syntaxe. Sa répartition et sa présence dans les textes a cependant très tôt diminué, mais l’existence de phénomènes parallèles en français moderne, tout comme d’autres indices, nous permettent de faire l’hypothèse que cette évolution tient d’une alternance oral / écrit. Cette thèse montre ainsi que les problèmes, comme les enjeux, ne diffèrent finalement pas, quel que soit l’état de langue et que la parataxe constitue bien une construction dans le système de la langue.
This dissertation addresses the question of how linguistic structures can be represented in working memory. We propose a memory-based computational model that derives offline and online complexity profiles in terms of a top-down parser for minimalist grammars (Stabler, 2011). The complexity metric reflects the amount of time an item is stored in memory. The presented architecture links grammatical representations stored in memory directly to the cognitive behavior by deriving predictions about sentence processing difficulty.
Results from five different sentence comprehension experiments were used to evaluate the model's assumptions about memory limitations. The predictions of the complexity metric were compared to the locality (integration and storage) cost metric of Dependency Locality Theory (Gibson, 2000). Both metrics make comparable offline and online predictions for four of the five phenomena. The key difference between the two metrics is that the proposed complexity metric accounts for the structural complexity of intervening material. In contrast, DLT's integration cost metric considers the number of discourse referents, not the syntactic structural complexity.
We conclude that the syntactic analysis plays a significant role in memory requirements of parsing. An incremental top-down parser based on a grammar formalism easily computes offline and online complexity profiles, which can be used to derive predictions about sentence processing difficulty.
This article presents a situation description production experiment investigating the interaction between syntax and information structure in Akan, a tone language that belongs to the Kwa branch of the Niger- Congo family spoken in Ghana. Information structure was elicited via context questions that put the object in narrow informational focus or narrow corrective focus while controlling for the tonal structure of the target word. Contrary to the prediction that corrective focus is marked by fronting and morphological marking of the focused constituent the data suggest that the in-situ strategy is the preferred one.
Verum focus and negation
(2019)
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.
Preface
(2019)
Leben mit Paradoxien
(2019)
On uninterpretable features
(2019)
“Chunking” spoken language
(2021)
In this introductory paper to the special issue on “Weak cesuras in talk-in-interaction”, we aim to guide the reader into current work on the “chunking” of naturally occurring talk. It is conducted in the methodological frameworks of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics – two approaches that consider the interactional aspect of humans talking with each other to be a crucial starting point for its analysis. In doing so, we will (1) lay out the background of this special issue (what is problematic about “chunking” talk-in-interaction, the characteristics of the methodological approach chosen by the contributors, the cesura model), (2) highlight what can be gained from such a revised understanding of “chunking” in talk-in-interaction by referring to previous work with this model as well as the findings of the contributions to this special issue, and (3) indicate further directions such work could take starting from papers in this special issue. We hope to induce a fruitful exchange on the phenomena discussed, across methodological divides.
“Chunking” spoken language
(2021)
In this introductory paper to the special issue on “Weak cesuras in talk-in-interaction”, we aim to guide the reader into current work on the “chunking” of naturally occurring talk. It is conducted in the methodological frameworks of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics – two approaches that consider the interactional aspect of humans talking with each other to be a crucial starting point for its analysis. In doing so, we will (1) lay out the background of this special issue (what is problematic about “chunking” talk-in-interaction, the characteristics of the methodological approach chosen by the contributors, the cesura model), (2) highlight what can be gained from such a revised understanding of “chunking” in talk-in-interaction by referring to previous work with this model as well as the findings of the contributions to this special issue, and (3) indicate further directions such work could take starting from papers in this special issue. We hope to induce a fruitful exchange on the phenomena discussed, across methodological divides.
Pivots revisited
(2021)
The term "pivot" usually refers to two overlapping syntactic units such that the completion of the first unit simultaneously launches the second. In addition, pivots are generally said to be characterized by the smooth prosodic integration of their syntactic parts. This prosodic integration is typically achieved by prosodic-phonetic matching of the pivot components. As research on such turns in a range of languages has illustrated, speakers routinely deploy pivots so as to be able to continue past a point of possible turn completion, in the service of implementing some additional or revised action. This article seeks to build on, and complement, earlier research by exploring two issues in more detail as follows: (1) what exactly do pivotal turn extensions accomplish on the action dimension, and (2) what role does prosodic-phonetic packaging play in this? We will show that pivot constructions not only exhibit various degrees of prosodic-phonetic (non-)integration, i.e., differently strong cesuras, but that they can be ordered on a continuum, and that this cline maps onto the relationship of the actions accomplished by the components of the pivot construction. While tighter prosodic-phonetic integration, i.e., weak(er) cesuring, co-occurs with post-pivot actions whose relationship to that of the pre-pivot tends to be rather retrospective in character, looser prosodic-phonetic integration, i.e., strong(er) cesuring, is associated with a more prospective orientation of the post-pivot's action. These observations also raise more general questions with regard to the analysis of action.
Clause typing in Germanic
(2018)
The questionnaire investigates the functional left periphery of various finite clauses in Germanic languages, with particular attention paid to clause-typing elements and the combinations thereof. The questionnaire is mostly concerned with clause typing in embedded clauses, but main clause counterparts are also considered for comparative purposes. The chief aim was to achieve comparable results across Germanic languages, though the standardised questionnaire may also be helpful in the study of other languages, too. Most questions examine the availability of various complementisers and clause-typing operators, and in some cases the movement of verbs to the left periphery is also taken into account. The questionnaire is split into seven major parts according to the types of clauses under scrutiny.
All instructions were given in English and the individual questions either concern translations of given sentences from English into the target language, and/or they ask for specific details about the constructions in the target language.
The present document contains the questionnaire itself (together with the instructions given at the beginning of the questionnaire and at the beginning of the individual sections, as well as the questions asking for personal data), the sociolinguistic data of the speakers, and the actual results for the individual languages. Five Germanic languages are included: Dutch, Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish. For each language, two informants were recruited. Given the small number of informants, the present study serves as a qualitative investigation and as a basis for further, quantitative and experimental studies.
A form-function mismatch?
(2019)
This volume contains the proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Prosody, Syntax, and Information Structure (WPSI2), held at University of Potsdam on March 18, 2005. WPSI 2 was aimed to discuss issues on the interaction of prosody, syntax, and information structure, from interdisciplinary points of view. The contributors (Haruo Kubozono, Shinichiro Ishihara, Yoshihisa Kitagawa, and Satoshi Tomioka) have been recently working on relevant issues, especially looking at the phenomena related to the intonation of focus and (wh-)questions in Japanese.