Department Linguistik
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Human manual action exhibits a differential use of a non-dominant (typically, left) and a dominant (typically, right) hand. Human communication exhibits a pervasive structuring of utterances into topic and comment. I will point out striking similarities between the coordination of hands in bimanual actions, and the structuring of utterances in topics and comments. I will also show how principles of bimanual coordination influence the expression of topic/comment structure in sign languages and in gestures accompanying spoken language, and suggest that bimanual coordination might have been a preadaptation of the development of information structure in human communication.
Focus expressions in Foodo
(2007)
This paper aims at presenting different ways of expressing focus in Foodo, a Guang language. We can differentiate between marked and unmarked focus strategies. The marked focus expressions are first syntactically characterized: the focused constituent is in sentence-initial position and is second always marked obligatorily by a focus marker, which is nɩ for non-subjects and N for subjects. Complementary to these structures, Foodo knows an elliptic form consisting of the focused constituent and a predication marker gɛ́. It will be shown that the two focus markers can be analyzed as having developed out of the homophone conjunction nɩ and that the constraints on the use of the focus markers can be best explained by this fact.
The paper investigates focus marking devices in the scarcely documented North-Ghanaian Gur language Konkomba. The two particles lé and lá occur under specific focus conditions and are therefore regarded as focus markers in the sparse literature. Comparing the distribution and obligatoriness of both alleged focus markers however, I show that one of the particles, lé, is better analyzed as a connective particle, i.e. as a syntactic rather than as a genuine pragmatic marker, and that comparable syntactic focus marking strategies for sentence-initial constituents are also known from related languages.
The aim of this paper is to validate a dataset collected by means of production experiments which are part of the Questionnaire on Information Structure. The experiments generate a range of information structure contexts that have been observed in the literature to induce specific constructions. This paper compares the speech production results from a subset of these experiments with specific claims about the reflexes of information structure in four different languages. The results allow us to evaluate and in most cases validate the efficacy of our elicitation paradigms, to identify potentially fruitful avenues of future research, and to highlight issues involved in interpreting speech production data of this kind.
The aim of this paper is to outline the means for encoding information structure in Yucatec Maya. Yucatec Maya is a tone language, displaying a three-fold opposition in the tonal realization of syllables. From the morpho-syntactic point of view, the grammar of Yucatec Maya contains morphological (topic affixes, morphological marking of out-of-focus predicates) and syntactic (designated positions) means to uniquely specify syntactic constructions for their information structure. After a descriptive overview of these phenomena, we present experimental evidence which reveals the impact of the nonavailability of prosodic alternatives on the choice of syntactic constructions in language production.
Auszug: In der psycho- und neurolinguistischen Morphologieforschung wird die Frage behandelt, wie polymorphematische Wörter, d. h. Wörter, die aus mehr als einem Morphem bestehen (z. B. Apfel-baum; Be-mal-ung, mal-e), im mentalen Lexikon repräsentiert sind und wie sie verarbeitet werden. Spielt die interne morphologische Wortstruktur dabei überhaupt eine Rolle oder sind solche Wörter ganzheitlich repräsentiert? Die beiden großen konkurrierenden Theorien zur Verarbeitung polymorphematischer Wörter sind die Dekompositionshypothese und die Auflistungshypothese. Nach der Dekompositionshypothese werden morphologisch komplexe Wörter bei der rezeptiven Worterkennung in ihre Einzelteile aufgespalten (dekomponiert), beim expressiven Wortabruf müssen die zugrunde liegenden Morpheme einzeln vom Lexikon abgerufen und zu einer Vollform zusammengesetzt (komponiert) werden (z. B. Taft & Forster 1976). Im Unterschied dazu besagt die Auflistungshypothese, dass komplexe Wörter als Vollformen im Lexikon repräsentiert sind und abgerufen werden (Butterworth 1983). Wortbildungsregeln kommen nach der Dekompositionshypothese also grundsätzlich zum Einsatz, während nach der Auflistungshypothese morphologische Prozesse nur bei der Verarbeitung von unbekannten Vollformen oder bei der Bildung neuer Vollformen ablaufen. [...]
Semantik
(2008)
Auszug: In diesem Beitrag werden „von der Theorie zur Therapie“ aktuelle theoretische Annahmen über die Organisation semantischer Repräsentationen sowie der gegenwärtige Stand der Forschungsliteratur zur Behandlung semantischer Störungen vorgestellt. Zunächst gebe ich einen Einblick in die Fragestellungen meiner Dissertation, in der mit zwei Reaktionszeitexperimenten insbesondere die Frage überprüft wurde, ob für Konzepte aus biologischen semantischen Kategorien andere Organisationsprinzipien angenommen werden müssen als für Konzepte aus künstlichen, von Menschenhand geschaffenen semantischen Kategorien. Anschließend wird ein Einblick in die gegenwärtige Literatur zur Therapie semantischer Störungen und den zu erwartenden Generalisierungseffekten auf in der Therapie nicht behandelte Items gegeben. [...]
Face-to-face communication is multimodal. In unscripted spoken discourse we can observe the interaction of several "semiotic layers", modalities of information such as syntax, discourse structure, gesture, and intonation. We explore the role of gesture and intonation in structuring and aligning information in spoken discourse through a study of the co-occurrence of pitch accents and gestural apices. Metaphorical spatialization through gesture also plays a role in conveying the contextual relationships between the speaker, the government and other external forces in a naturally-occurring political speech setting.
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.