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Empirical investigations on the uncanny valley have almost solely focused on the analysis of people?s noninteractive perception of a robot at first sight. Recent studies suggest, however, that these uncanny first impressions may be significantly altered over an interaction. What is yet to discover is whether certain interaction patterns can lead to a faster decline in uncanny feelings. In this paper, we present a study in which participants with limited expertise in Computer Science played a collaborative geography game with a Furhat robot. During the game, Furhat displayed one of two personalities, which corresponded to two different interaction strategies. The robot was either optimistic and encouraging, or impatient and provocative. We performed the study in a science museum and recruited participants among the visitors. Our findings suggest that a robot that is rated high on agreeableness, emotional stability, and conscientiousness can indeed weaken uncanny feelings. This study has important implications for human-robot interaction design as it further highlights that a first impression, merely based on a robot?s appearance, is not indicative of the affinity people might develop towards it throughout an interaction. We thus argue that future work should emphasize investigations on exact interaction patterns that can help to overcome uncanny feelings.
Advocating the inclusion of older adults in digital language learning technology and research
(2021)
The paper revisits Duffield's (2007) (Duffield, Nigel. 2007. Aspects of Vietnamese clausal structure: Separating tense from assertion. Linguistics 45(4). 765-814) analysis of the correlation between the position of a 'when'-phrase and the temporal reference of a bare sentence in Vietnamese. Bare sentences in Vietnamese, based on (Smith, Carlota S. & Mary S. Erbaugh. 2005. Temporal interpretation in Mandarin Chinese. Linguistics 43(4). 713-756), are argued to obtain their temporal interpretation from their aspectual composition, and the default temporal reference: bounded events are located in the past, unbounded events at present. It is shown that the correlation so observed in when-questions is superficial, and is tied to the syntax and semantics of temporal modification and the requirement that temporal adverbials denoting future time is base generated in sentence-initial position, and past time adverbials in sentence-final position. A 'when'-phrase, being temporally underspecified, obtains its temporal value from its base position. However, the correlation between word order and temporal reference in argument wh-questions and declaratives is factual, depending on whether the predicate-argument configuration allows for a telic interpretation or not. To be specific, it is dependent on whether the application of Generic Modification (Snyder, William. 2012. Parameter theory and motion predicates. In Violeta Demonte & Louise McNally (eds.), Telicity, change, and state. Acrosscategorial view of event structure, 279-299. Oxford: Oxford University Press) or accomplishment composition is realized. Canonical declaratives, and argument wh-questions, with telicity inducing material, license GM or accomplishment composition, yielding bounded events, hence past; by contrast, their noncanonical counterparts block GM or accomplishment composition, giving rise to unbounded event descriptions, hence non-past.
This paper intends to explore the interaction between aspect and lexical means, in this case temporal adverbials, in the bounding of representations of situations. First, the theoretical basis is outlined, followed by the results of a corpus analysis of coccurrences with adverbs that limit situations. The term situation encompasses all representable processes, states, events, or actions. Finally, some theoretical conclusions are drawn concerning the cognitive category of bounding, using the example of aspectuality. The imperfective verb forms maintain their aspectuality in delimiting connections with adverbs, resulting in a complex, multi-dimensional aspectuality. In nongrammaticalized forms, such as lexical markers, the speaker is free to make a temporal localization or an aspectual perspective. Lexical expressions can make temporal and aspect markings even more precisely and clearly than tenses. They can also limit or extend situations and thus express aspect. Aspectuality thus presents itself as a compositional category, in which external bounding and the internal representation of a course of action or development can interact.
Introduction
(2021)
The paper introduces the principle Maximise Presupposition and its cognates. The main focus of the literature and this article is on the inferences that arise as a result of reasoning with Maximise Presupposition ('anti-presuppositions'). I will review the arguments put forward for distinguishing them from other inference types, most notably presuppositions and conversational implicatures. I will zoom in on three main issues regarding Maximise Presupposition and these inferences critically discussed in the literature: epistemic strength(ening), projection, and the role of alternatives. I will discuss more recent views which argue for either a uniform treatment of anti-presuppositions and implicatures and/or a revision of the original principle in light of new data and developments in pragmatics.
Morphological variability in bilingual language production is widely attested. Producing inflected words has been found to be less reliable and consistent in bilinguals than in first-language (functionally monolingual) L1 speakers, even for bilingual speakers at advanced proficiency levels. The sources for these differences are not well understood. The current study presents a detailed investigation of morphological generalization processes in bilingual speakers' language production. We examined past participle formation of German using an elicited-production experiment containing nonce verbs with varying degrees of similarity to existing verbs testing a large group of bilingual Turkish/German speakers relative to L1 German speakers. We compared similarity-based lexical extensions with generalizations of morphological rules. The results show that rule-based generalizations are used less often and more variably within the bilingual group than within the L1 group. Our results also show a selective effect of age of acquisition on the bilingual speakers' morphological generalizations.
nà-cleft (non-)exhaustivity
(2021)
This paper presents two experimental studies on the exhaustive inference associated with focus-background na-clefts in Akan (among others, Boadi 1974; Duah 2015; Grubic & Renans & Duah 2019; Titov 2019), with a direct comparison to two recent experiments on German es-clefts employing an identical design (De Veaugh-Geiss et al. 2018). Despite the unforeseen response patterns in Akan in the incremental information-retrieval paradigm used, a post-hoc exploratory analysis reveals compelling parallels between the two languages. The results are compatible with a unified approach both (i) cross-linguistically between Akan and German; and (ii) cross-sententially between na-clefts (a na P, 'It is a who did P') and definite pseudoclefts, i.e., definite descriptions with identity statements (Nipa no a P ne a, 'The person who did P is a') (Boadi 1974; Ofori 2011). Participant variability in (non-)exhaustive interpretations is compatible with discourse pragmatic approaches to cleft exhaustivity (Pollard & Yasavul 2016; De Veaugh-Geiss et al. 2018; Titov 2019).
Prosodic boundaries can be used to disambiguate the syntactic structure of coordinated name sequences (coordinates). To answer the question whether disambiguating prosody is produced in a situationally dependent or independent manner and to contribute to our understanding of the nature of the prosody-syntax link, we systematically explored variability in the prosody of boundary productions of coordinates evoked by different contextual settings in a referential communication task. Our analysis focused on prosodic boundaries produced to distinguish sequences with different syntactic structures (i.e., with or without internal grouping of the constituents). In German, these prosodic boundaries are indicated by three major prosodic cues: f0-range, final lengthening, and pause. In line with the Proximity/Anti-Proximity principle of the syntax-prosody model by Kentner and Fery (2013), speakers clearly use all three cues for constituent grouping and prosodically mark groups within and at their right boundary, indicating that prosodic phrasing is not a local phenomenon. Intra-individually, we found a rather stable prosodic pattern across contexts. However, inter-individually speakers differed from each other with respect to the prosodic cue combinations that they (consistently) used to mark the boundaries. Overall, our data speak in favour of a close link between syntax and prosody and for situational independence of disambiguating prosody.
Fitts' law, perhaps the most celebrated law of human motor control, expresses a relation between the kinematic property of speed and the non-kinematic, task-specific property of accuracy. We aimed to assess whether speech movements obey this law using a metronome-driven speech elicitation paradigm with a systematic speech rate control. Specifically, using the paradigm of repetitive speech, we recorded via electromagnetic articulometry speech movement data in sequences of the form /CV.../ from 6 adult speakers. These sequences were spoken at 8 distinct rates ranging from extremely slow to extremely fast. Our results demonstrate, first, that the present paradigm of extensive metronome-driven manipulations satisfies the crucial prerequisites for evaluating Fitts' law in a subset of our elicited rates. Second, we uncover for the first time in speech evidence for Fitts' law at the faster rates and specifically beyond a participant-specific critical rate. We find no evidence for Fitts' law at the slowest metronome rates. Finally, we discuss implications of these results for models of speech.
Meaning and Function
(2021)
The use of the word functional in the most diverse theories and approaches has contributed in no small measure to the confusion in linguistics today. This article does not claim to give an overview of the different directions of functionalism in linguistics. Rather, the aim is to present what Coseriu‘s view characterised as functional in his time and to what extent his theory outlined a path that still makes sense in functional-cognitive linguistics today. This will involve an examination of Coseriu‘s difficult-to-identify concept of function. Furthermore, the article will also show that functional thinking is relevant for current grammatography.
Previous research has shown that heritage speakers struggle with inflectional morphology. 'Limitations of online resources' for processing a non-dominant language has been claimed as one possible reason for these difficulties. To date, however, there is very little experimental evidence on real-time language processing in heritage speakers. Here we report results from a masked priming experiment with 97 bilingual (Turkish/German) heritage speakers and a control group of 40 non-heritage speakers of Turkish examining regular and irregular forms of the Turkish aorist. We found that, for the regular aorist, heritage speakers use the same morphological decomposition mechanism ('affix stripping') as control speakers, whereas for processing irregularly inflected forms they exhibited more variability (i.e., less homogeneous performance) than the control group. Heritage speakers also demonstrated semantic priming effects. At a more general level, these results indicate that heritage speakers draw on multiple sources of information for recognizing morphologically complex words.
In dem vorliegenden Beitrag wird es um Metaphern und Phraseologismen gehen, in denen sich negative menschliche Eigenschaften wie z.B. Dummheit, Verrücktheit oder Unsauberkeit im Spiegel der Vogel-Metaphorik niederschlagen. Für die Metaphern wird ausgeführt, wie, vor dem Hintergrund der Metapherntheorie von Lakoff & Johnson (1980), Charakteristika der jeweiligen Vogelart semantisch auf Subfelder mangelnder menschlicher sozialer und kognitiver Kompetenzen bezogen sind. Welcher Bezug besteht zwischen einem Ursprungsbereich (source domain) und einem Zielbereich (target domain) wie in Pleitegeier? Wie motiviert oder motivierbar sind Metaphern und Phraseologismen wie Spinatwachtel oder eine Meise haben? In Bezug auf die Phraseologismen wird erörtert, welche struktursemantischen Klassen vertreten sind und welche semantischen Subfelder im Vergleich zu den Metaphern Verwendung finden.
Obituary: Pieter Muysken
(2021)
This book explores how capitalism shapes the formation of the economic subject in modern European writing. How are subject positions determined by the subject’s relationship to money and work? How fair is a society that predicates social inclusion upon employment? And what happens when full employment is impossible? The volume traces how literary authors and social theorists have answered these questions in different social and historical contexts from the nineteenth century to the present day. The contributions confront the imperatives of productivity, notions of success and failure, the construction of work cultures and environments, the (in)visibility of certain labour groups, and the implications of the body as a productive site.
An important aspect of aphasia is the observation of behavioral variability between and within individual participants. Our study addresses variability in sentence comprehension in German, by testing 21 individuals with aphasia and a control group and involving (a) several constructions (declarative sentences, relative clauses and control structures with an overt pronoun or PRO), (b) three response tasks (object manipulation, sentence-picture matching with/without self-paced listening), and (c) two test phases (to investigate test-retest performance). With this systematic, large-scale study we gained insights into variability in sentence comprehension. We found that the size of syntactic effects varied both in aphasia and in control participants. Whereas variability in control participants led to systematic changes, variability in individuals with aphasia was unsystematic across test phases or response tasks. The persistent occurrence of canonicity and interference effects across response tasks and test phases, however, shows that the performance is systematically influenced by syntactic complexity.
Coordinated subjects often show variable number agreement with the finite verb, but linguistic approaches to this phenomenon have rarely been informed by systematically collected data. We report the results from three experiments investigating German speakers' agreement preferences with complex subjects joined by the correlative conjunctions sowohl horizontal ellipsis als auch ('both horizontal ellipsis and'), weder horizontal ellipsis noch ('neither horizontal ellipsis nor') or entweder horizontal ellipsis oder ('either horizontal ellipsis or'). We examine to what extent conjunction type and a conjunct's relative proximity to the verb affect the acceptability and processibility of singular vs. plural agreement. Experiment 1 was an untimed acceptability rating task, Experiment 2 a timed sentence completion task, and Experiment 3 was a self-paced reading task. Taken together, our results show that number agreement with correlative coordination in German is primarily determined by a default constraint triggering plural agreement, which interacts with linear order and semantic factors. Semantic differences between conjunctions only affected speakers' agreement preferences in the absence of processing pressure but not their initial agreement computation. The combined results from our offline and online experimental measures of German speakers' agreement preferences suggest that the constraints under investigation do not only differ in their relative weighting but also in their relative timing during agreement computation.
Many children struggle with reading for comprehension. Reading is a complex cognitive task depending on various sub-tasks, such as word decoding and building connections across sentences. The task of connecting sentences is guided by referential expressions. References, such as anaphoric noun phrases (Minky/the cat) or pronouns (Minky/she), signal to the reader how the protagonists of adjacent sentences are connected. Readers construct a coherent mental model of the text by resolving these references. Personal pronouns (he/she) in particular need to be resolved towards an appropriate antecedent before they can be fully understood. Pronoun resolution therefore is vital for successful text comprehension. The present thesis investigated children’s resolution of personal pronouns during natural reading as a possible source of reading comprehension difficulty. Three eye tracking studies investigated whether children aged 8-9 (Grade 3-4) resolve pronouns online during reading and how the varying information around the pronoun region influences children’s eye movement behavior.
The first study investigated whether children prefer a pronoun over a noun phrase when the antecedent is highly accessible. Children read three-sentence stories that introduced a protagonist (Mia) in the first sentence and a reference to this protagonist in one of the following sentences using either a repeated name (Mia) or a pronoun (she). For proficient readers, it was repeatedly shown that there is a preference for a pronoun over the name in these contexts, i.e., when the antecedent is salient. The first study tested the repeated name penalty effect in children using eye tracking. It was hypothesized that in contrast to proficient readers, the fluency of children’s reading processing profits from an overlapping word form (i.e., the repeated noun phrase) compared to a pronoun. This is because overlapping word forms allow for direct mapping, whereas pronouns have to be resolved towards their antecedent first.
The second study investigated children’s online processing of pronominal gender in a mismatch paradigm. Children read sentences in which the pronoun either was a gender-match to the antecedent or a gender-mismatch. Reading skill and reading fluency were also tested and related to children’s ability to detect a mismatching pronoun during reading.
The third study investigated the online processing of gender information on the pronoun and whether disambiguating gender information improves the accuracy of pronoun comprehension. Offline comprehension accuracy, that is the comprehension of the pronoun, was related to children’s online eye movement behavior. This study was conducted in a semi-longitudinal paradigm: 70 children were tested in Grade 3 (age 8) and again in Grade 4 (age 9) to investigate effects of age and reading skill on pronoun processing and comprehension.
The results of this thesis clearly show that children aged 8-9, when they are in the second half of primary school, struggle with the comprehension of pronouns in reading tasks. The responses to pronoun comprehension questions revealed that children have difficulties with the comprehension of a pronoun in the absence of a disambiguating gender cue, that is when they have to apply context information. When there is a gender cue to disambiguate the pronoun, children’s accuracy improves significantly. This is true for children in Grade 3, but also in Grade 4, albeit their overall resolution accuracy slightly improves with age.
The results from the analyses of eye movements suggest that the discourse accessibility of an antecedent does play a role in children’s processing of pronouns and repeated names. The repetition of a name does not facilitate children’s reading processing like it was anticipated. Similar to adults, children showed a penalty effect for the repeated name where a pronoun is expected. However, this does not mean that children’s processing of pronouns is always adult-like. The results from eye movement analyses in the pronoun region during sentence reading revealed significant individual differences related to children’s individual reading skill and reading fluency.
The results from the mismatch study revealed that reading fluency is associated with children’s detection of incongruent pronouns. All children had longer gaze durations at mismatching than matching pronouns, but only fluent readers among the children followed this up with a regression out of the pronoun region. This was interpreted as an attempt to gain processing time and “repair” the inconsistency. Reading fluency was therefore associated with detection of the mismatch, while less fluent readers did not see any mismatch between pronoun and antecedent. The eye movement pattern of the “detectors” is more adult-like and was interpreted as reflecting successful monitoring and attempted pronoun resolution.
Children differ considerably in their reading comprehension skill. The results of this thesis show that only skilled readers among the children use gender information online for pronoun resolution. They took more time to read the pronoun when there was disambiguating gender information that was useful to resolve the pronoun, in contrast to the less skilled readers. Age was a less important factor in pronoun resolution processes and comprehension than were reading skill and reading fluency. Taken together, this suggests that the good readers direct cognitive resources towards pronoun resolution when the pronoun can be resolved, which is a successful comprehension strategy. Moreover, there was evidence that reading skill is a relevant factor in this task but not age.
The contribution of the present thesis is a depiction of the specific eye movement patterns that are related to successful and unsuccessful attempts at pronoun resolution in children. Eye movement behavior in the pronoun area is related to children’s reading skill and fluency. The results of this thesis suggest that many children do not resolve pronouns spontaneously during sentence reading, which is likely detrimental to their reading comprehension in more complex reading materials. The present thesis informs our understanding of the challenge that pronoun resolution poses for beginning readers, and gives new impulses for the study of higher-order reading processes in children’s natural reading.
Obwohl schon viel über kommerzielle Materialien gesagt und geschrieben wurde, ist unser Verständnis sehr begrenzt, wenn es um lokal produzierte (hauseigene, nicht-kommerzielle) Materialien geht, die oft verwendet werden, um bestehende veröffentlichte Materialien zu ersetzen oder zu ergänzen. In diesem Beitrag geben wir einen Überblick über die Literatur zur Darstellung von Geschlecht und Sexualität in kommerziellen Lehrmitteln und unsere Überlegungen zu lokal produzierten Unterrichtsmaterialien, die in einem Englisch-Intensivprogramm an einer Universität in der Türkei mit Englisch als Unterrichtsmedium (EMI) verwendet werden. Wir unterstreichen die Bedeutung von Materialien für die Handlungsfähigkeit von Lehrkräften bei der Schaffung eines sicheren und inklusiven Klassenzimmers und bei der Bekämpfung von systematischer Unterdrückung, Diskriminierung und Ungerechtigkeit im und ausserhalb des Klassenzimmers.
“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.
Der Artikel diskutiert den Roman „A jak królem, a jak katem będziesz“ (1968, „Und wenn du König und wenn du Henker bist“) von Tadeusz Nowak unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Frage, wie die – durch die Augenzeugenschaft der Shoah begründeten – Traumata des polnischen Dorfes in Nowaks Text sichtbar werden. Der Roman ist geprägt durch ein ambivalentes, zwischen Wunsch- und Schuldnarrativen pendelndes Erzählen. Der Protagonist verkörpert einen unbequemen Helden, der tief verwurzelt in den volkstümlichen Traditionen seiner bäuerlichen Herkunft ist. Als paternalistischer Beschützer und Rächer seines jüdischen Freundes erlebt er die Zerstörung der dörflichen Idylle. Taumelnd zwischen Rachegedanken und Schuldgefühlen gegenüber seiner Dorfgemeinschaft verfällt Piotr dem Wahnsinn. Ein Weiterleben nach Kriegsende ist für ihn nur durch Amnesie und kathartische Wiederaufnahme in das dörfliche Kollektiv möglich. Die Stärke von Nowaks Roman liegt nicht allein in der Rekonstruktion der polnischen volkstümlichen Kultur. Vielmehr zeigt der Roman den Versuch, die historischen und sozialen Traumata des polnischen Dorfes während der Jahre 1939–1945 – die in der direkten und unmittelbaren Augenzeugenschaft der Shoah begründet liegen – mit dem der ruralen Bevölkerung eigenen Wort-, Legenden- und Erfahrungsschatz wiederzugeben.
The present work deals with the variation in the linearisation of German infinitival complements from a diachronic perspective. Based on the observation that in present-day German the position of infinitival complements is restricted by properties of the matrix verb (Haider, 2010, Wurmbrand, 2001), whereas this appears much more liberal in older stages of German (Demske, 2008, Maché and Abraham, 2011, Demske, 2015), this dissertation investigates the emergence of those restrictions and the factors that have led to a reduced, yet still existing variability. The study contrasts infinitival complements of two types of matrix verbs, namely raising and control verbs. In present-day German, these show different syntactic behaviour and opposite preferences as far as the position of the infinitive is concerned: while infinitival complements of raising verbs build a single clausal domain with the with the matrix verb and occur obligatorily intraposed, infinitive complements of control verbs can form clausal constituents and occur predominantly extraposed. This correlation is not attested in older stages of German, at least not until Early New High German.
Drawing on diachronic corpus data, the present work provides a description of the changes in the linearisation of infinitival complements from Early New High German to present-day German which aims at finding out when the correlation between infinitive type and word order emerged and further examines their possible causes. The study shows that word order change in German infinitival complements is not a case of syntactic change in the narrow sense, but that the diachronic variation results from the interaction of different language-internal and language-external factors and that it reflects, on the one hand, the influence of language modality on the emerging standard language and, on the other hand, a process of specialisation.
This project describes the nominal, verbal and ‘truncation’ systems of Awing and explains the syntactic and semantic functions of the multifunctional l<-><-> (LE) morpheme in copular and wh-focused constructions. Awing is a Bantu Grassfields language spoken in the North West region of Cameroon. The work begins with morphological processes viz. deverbals, compounding, reduplication, borrowing and a thorough presentation of the pronominal system and takes on verbal categories viz. tense, aspect, mood, verbal extensions, negation, adverbs and triggers of a homorganic N(asal)-prefix that attaches to the verb and other verbal categories. Awing grammar also has a very unusual phenomenon whereby nouns and verbs take long and short forms. A chapter entitled truncation is dedicated to the phenomenon. It is observed that the truncation process does not apply to bare singular NPs, proper names and nouns derived via morphological processes. On the other hand, with the exception of the 1st person non-emphatic possessive determiner and the class 7 noun prefix, nouns generally take the truncated form with modifiers (i.e., articles, demonstratives and other possessives). It is concluded that nominal truncation depicts movement within the DP system (Abney 1987). Truncation of the verb occurs in three contexts: a mass/plurality conspiracy (or lattice structuring in terms of Link 1983) between the verb and its internal argument (i.e., direct object); a means to align (exhaustive) focus (in terms of Fery’s 2013), and a means to form polar questions.
The second part of the work focuses on the role of the LE morpheme in copular and wh-focused clauses. Firstly, the syntax of the Awing copular clause is presented and it is shown that copular clauses in Awing have ‘subject-focus’ vs ‘topic-focus’ partitions and that the LE morpheme indirectly relates such functions. Semantically, it is shown that LE does not express contrast or exhaustivity in copular clauses. Turning to wh-constructions, the work adheres to Hamblin’s (1973) idea that the meaning of a question is the set of its possible answers and based on Rooth’s (1985) underspecified semantic notion of alternative focus, concludes that the LE morpheme is not a Focus Marker (FM) in Awing: LE does not generate or indicate the presence of alternatives (Krifka 2007); The LE morpheme can associate with wh-elements as a focus-sensitive operator with semantic import that operates on the focus alternatives by presupposing an exhaustive answer, among other notions. With focalized categories, the project further substantiates the claim in Fominyam & Šimík (2017), namely that exhaustivity is part of the semantics of the LE morpheme and not derived via contextual implicature, via a number of diagnostics. Hence, unlike in copular clauses, the LE morpheme with wh-focused categories is analysed as a morphological exponent of a functional head Exh corresponding to Horvath's (2010) EI (Exhaustive Identification). The work ends with the syntax of verb focus and negation and modifies the idea in Fominyam & Šimík (2017), namely that the focalized verb that associates with the exhaustive (LE) particle is a lower copy of the finite verb that has been moved to Agr. It is argued that the LE-focused verb ‘cluster’ is an instantiation of adjunction. The conclusion is that verb doubling with verb focus in Awing is neither a realization of two copies of one and the same verb (Fominyam and Šimík 2017), nor a result of a copy triggered by a focus marker (Aboh and Dyakonova 2009). Rather, the focalized copy is said to be merged directly as the complement of LE forming a type of adjoining cluster.
The particle noch (‘still’) can have an additive reading similar to auch (‘also’). We argue that both particles indicate that a previously partially answered QUD is re-opened to add a further answer. The particles differ in that the QUD, in the case of auch, can be re-opened with respect to the same topic situation, whereas noch indicates that the QUD is re-opened with respect to a new topic situation. This account predicts a difference in the accommodation behavior of the two particles. We present an experiment whose results are in line with this prediction.
The particle noch (‘still’) can have an additive reading similar to auch (‘also’). We argue that both particles indicate that a previously partially answered QUD is re-opened to add a further answer. The particles differ in that the QUD, in the case of auch, can be re-opened with respect to the same topic situation, whereas noch indicates that the QUD is re-opened with respect to a new topic situation. This account predicts a difference in the accommodation behavior of the two particles. We present an experiment whose results are in line with this prediction.
The aim of the doctoral project was to answer the question of whether the structural word-initial noun capitalization, as it can otherwise only be found in Luxembourgish alongside German, has a function that is advantageous for the reader. The overriding hypothesis was that an advantage is achieved by activating a syntactic category, namely the core of a noun phrase, through the parafoveal perception of the capital letters. This perception from the corner of the eye should make it possible to preprocess the following noun. As a result, sentence processing should be facilitated, which should ultimately be reflected in overall faster reading times and fixation durations.
The structure of the project includes three studies, some of which included different participant groups:
Study 1:
Study design: Semantic priming using garden-path sentences should bring out the functionality of noun capitalization for the reader
Participant groups: German natives reading German
Study 2:
Study design: same design as study 1, but in English
Participant groups:
English natives without any knowledge of German reading English
English natives who regularly read German reading English
German with high proficiency in English reading English
Study 3:
Study design:
Influence of the noun frequency on a potential preprocessing using the boundary paradigm; Study languages: German and English
Participant groups:
German natives reading German
English natives without any knowledge of German reading English
German with high proficiency in English reading English
Brief summary: The noun capitalization clearly has an impact on sentence processing in both German and English. It cannot be confirmed that this has a substantial, decisive advantage.
In den letzten Jahren erlebte der Rechtspopulismus in Europa einen Aufstieg. Die ‚Alternative für Deutschland‘ (AfD) erhielt bei der deutschen Bundestagswahl 2017 beispielsweise 12,7 % der abgegebenen Stimmen und war darüber hinaus gerade im Osten des Landes erfolgreich. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wird vergleichend untersucht, welche sprachlichen Manipulationsstrategien der AfD dazu beitragen und wie sie wirken. Die Arbeit gliedert sich grob in zwei Teile: die Analyse des Sprachgebrauchs der AfD und schließlich der Vergleich mit jenem der Nationalsozialist:innen. Ziel der Arbeit ist es nicht, die AfD als Kopie der NSDAP zu entlarven, sondern ihre sprachlichen Manipulationsstrategien im historischen Kontext ergebnisoffen zu analysieren und so ein tieferes Verständnis dieser zu ermöglichen, um eine Grundlage für die zukünftige Erarbeitung möglicher Gegenstrategien zu schaffen.
Dabei stellt sich die Verwendung von diskriminierenden Sprechakten als wesentlicher Teilaspekt der Strategie heraus. So kann aus den Ergebnissen geschlussfolgert werden, dass die Polarisierung der Gesellschaft in zwei Teile (Ingroup und Outgroup) sowie die damit verbundene Diskriminierung der Outgroup als Ziel des Sprachgebrauchs der AfD bezeichnet werden können. Auf diesem Weg kann eine zunehmende Radikalisierung des Sprachgebrauchs innerhalb der letzten Jahre festgestellt werden.
Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit werden im Vergleich mit den Nationalsozialist:innen zahlreiche Parallelen deutlich: Über gemeinsame Stilmittel wie Metaphorik, Verwendung von Superlativen oder bestimmten Begrifflichkeiten hinaus ist hier vor allem die Diskriminierung eines konkreten Feindbildes sowie die angestrebte Spaltung der Bevölkerung zu nennen. Zugleich gilt es auch, die deutlichen Unterschiede zwischen dem Sprachgebrauch im Nationalsozialismus und jenem der AfD zu akzentuieren, um eine ebenso leichtfertige wie unangemessene Gleichsetzung zu verhindern. Zentral ist hier die Eindeutigkeit des Sprachgebrauchs. Die Vergleiche mit verschiedenen Quellen aus dem Dritten Reich verdeutlichen, dass der Sprachgebrauch im Nationalsozialismus direkter und viel radikaler war. Die AfD ist hingegen oftmals darauf bedacht, ihre Aussagen nur augenscheinlich eindeutig zu formulieren, sich insgesamt aber immer eine Möglichkeit des sprachlichen Zurückruderns offen zu halten. Ein offensichtlicher Grund dürften die unterschiedlichen gesellschaftlichen Bedingungen zu beiden Zeiten sein. Für die AfD ist es heute schwieriger, eine ausreichend große Masse an mindestens unsicheren Menschen zu mobilisieren. Begründet werden kann dies mit einer im Vergleich zur Weimarer Republik über Jahrzehnte hinweg gesetzlich, politisch und gesellschaftlich etablierten und sehr stabilen Demokratie. Deshalb ist die AfD darauf angewiesen, eine mehrdeutige Sprache zu verwenden, die ihnen im Bedarfsfall eine Rechtfertigung und somit einen Weg zurück ermöglicht. Darüber hinaus ermöglicht ihnen ein solcher Sprachgebrauch aber auch, sich einerseits gegenüber den Institutionen der Demokratie (beispielsweise dem Verfassungsschutz) zu rechtfertigen und andererseits insbesondere der konservativen Wählerschaft das Gefühl zu geben, dass sie keine rechtsextreme Partei wählen.
Aus den Ergebnissen der Arbeit lässt sich darüber hinaus die These ableiten, dass eine Veränderung des Sprachgebrauchs allein nicht dazu führt, dass Menschen einer Ideologie folgen. Der historische Vergleich deutet aber darauf hin, dass ein diskriminierender Sprachgebrauch zur Entstehung eines Nährbodens einer solchen Ideologie beitragen kann, wenn der gesellschaftliche und politische Rahmen es zulässt. Diesen Rahmen versucht die AfD Stück für Stück in ihrem Sinne zu verschieben. In den letzten Jahren gelang es ihr zunehmend, den öffentlichen Diskurs zu ihren Gunsten mitzubestimmen und zu verändern. Dafür ist der manipulative Gebrauch von Sprache entscheidend. Durch ihn sind sie in der Lage, die ›gefühlte‹ Wahrheit im Kampf gegen Fakten siegen zu lassen und Diskurse wie die Klima-Debatte oder die Diskussionen um Maßnahmen gegen die Coronapandemie zu beeinflussen.
Die Arbeit macht aber auch deutlich, wie kompliziert das Vorhaben der Polarisierung in einer heterogenen Gesellschaft wie der heutigen deutschen ist. Sogar innerhalb der AfD kommt es immer häufiger zu Uneinigkeiten.