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This paper describes a two-level formalism where feature structures are used in contextual rules. Whereas usual two-level grammars describe rational sets over symbol pairs, this new formalism uses tree structured regular expressions. They allow an explicit and precise definition of the scope of feature structures. A given surface form may be described using several feature structures. Feature unification is expressed in contextual rules using variables, like in a unification grammar. Grammars are compiled in finite state multi-tape transducers.
Against „Values“?
(2022)
Im Kontext fortschreitender Globalisierung, die sich durch zunehmende Migrationsbewegungen, weltweite Mobilität und globale Kommunikationsformen auszeichnet, ist es nicht länger möglich, ‚Kultur‘ nationalstaatlich im Sinne einer geteilten Sprache und homogen anerkannter Wertordnungen zu verstehen. Vielmehr sind Gemeinschaften unter Bedingungen der Globalisierung sprachlich und kulturell so heterogen geworden, dass Sprecher*innen, die die gleiche ‚Sprache‘ sprechen, nicht die gleichen objektiven Bedeutungen indizieren, sondern stattdessen auf subjektive Erinnerungen, unterschiedliche moralische Ordnungen, Wahrheiten und Überzeugungen verweisen.
Restrictions on addition
(2012)
Children up to school age have been reported to perform poorly when interpreting sentences containing restrictive and additive focus particles by treating sentences with a focus particle in the same way as sentences without it. Careful comparisons between results of previous studies indicate that this phenomenon is less pronounced for restrictive than for additive particles. We argue that this asymmetry is an effect of the presuppositional status of the proposition triggered by the additive particle. We tested this in two experiments with German-learning three-and four-year-olds using a method that made the exploitation of the information provided by the particles highly relevant for completing the task. Three-year-olds already performed remarkably well with sentences both with auch 'also' and with nur 'only'. Thus, children can consider the presuppositional contribution of the additive particle in their sentence interpretation and can exploit the restrictive particle as a marker of exhaustivity.
Restrictions on addition
(2012)
Children up to school age have been reported to perform poorly when interpreting sentences containing restrictive and additive focus particles by treating sentences with a focus particle in the same way as sentences without it. Careful comparisons between results of previous studies indicate that this phenomenon is less pronounced for restrictive than for additive particles. We argue that this asymmetry is an effect of the presuppositional status of the proposition triggered by the additive particle. We tested this in two experiments with German-learning three-and four-year-olds using a method that made the exploitation of the information provided by the particles highly relevant for completing the task. Three-year-olds already performed remarkably well with sentences both with auch 'also' and with nur 'only'. Thus, children can consider the presuppositional contribution of the additive particle in their sentence interpretation and can exploit the restrictive particle as a marker of exhaustivity.
Verbal or visual? : How information is distributed across speech and gesture in spatial dialog
(2006)
In spatial dialog like in direction giving humans make frequent use of speechaccompanying gestures. Some gestures convey largely the same information as speech while others complement speech. This paper reports a study on how speakers distribute meaning across speech and gesture, and depending on what factors. Utterance meaning and the wider dialog context were tested by statistically analyzing a corpus of direction-giving dialogs. Problems of speech production (as indicated by discourse markers and disfluencies), the communicative goals, and the information status were found to be influential, while feedback signals by the addressee do not have any influence.
Ein Blick zurück
(2016)
1 Einleitung, 2 Die Entstehung des organisierten Turnens in Deutschland, 3 Vom Turnen zum Sport, 4 Friedrich Ludwig Jahn und die Herausbildung der deutschen Turnersprache, 5 Sportsprache in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, 6 Didaktische Anregungen, 7 Materialien und Diskussionsanregungen, 8 Literatur
Mittelhochdeutsch
(2020)
Mundart und Umgangssprache
(2020)
Einleitung II
(2009)
„Die Beiträge in diesem Band beleuchten aus verschiedenen Perspektiven die (…) Veränderungen der Sprachwissenschaft im Zuge des linguistic turn. Sie gehen zurück auf ein Festkolloquium zu Ehren des 65. Geburtstages von Joachim Gessinger, das am 25. und 26. Juni 2010 in Potsdam stattgefunden hat. Ziel des Kolloquiums war es, Ansätze, Theoriebildungen und methodische Zugriffe in der Sprachwissenschaft seit dem linguistic turn in den Blick zu nehmen. Diese Frage nach einer Standortbestimmung der sprachwissenschaftlichen Forschung in Deutschland steht auch im Mittelpunkt der nun publizierten Fassung der Beiträge, die von Vertreterinnen und Vertretern ausgewählter Teildisziplinen stammen, die die inhaltliche, theoretische und methodische Ausrichtung ihres Forschungsfeldes reflektieren.“ (Manuela Böhm, Elisabeth Berner & Jürgen Erfurt, OBST 78: S. 13)
Inhalt:
Manuela Böhm, Elisabeth Berner & Jürgen Erfurt: Nach dem Turn ist vor dem Turn. Ein Prolog;
Michael Elmentaler: Zur Pragmatisierung der Sprachgeschichte. Eine Standortbestimmung anhand neuerer Sprachgeschichten des Deutschen;
Ingrid Schröder: Dialekte im Kontakt. Individuelle Ausformungen des Sprachrepertoires;
Bernd Pompino-Marschall: Die rezente Entwicklung in der Phonetik: Vom verbrannten Zeigefinger zu Praat;
Gisbert Fanselow: Kann die Linguistik das Jahr 2024 erleben? Und die Syntax das Jahr 2014?;
Elke Nowak: Nach dem linguistic turn – die neue Wissenschaft von der Sprache und die Sprachen;
Utz Maas: Linguistische Schattenspiele: sprachwissenschaftliche Arbeiten zur Schriftkultur;
Ulrich Schmitz: Linguistica ancilla mediorum? Sprachwissenschaft und Medien 1960-2010: Von kühler Distanz zu teilnehmender Beobachtung & von Textmaterial zu multimodaler Verblendung;
Eduard Haueis: Didaktik und Linguistik: Wie die Modellierung sprachlichen Wissens und Könnens mit dem Bestehenbleiben oder dem Überwinden von Bildungsschranken zusammenhängt;
Joachim Gessinger: Vor dem linguistic turn. Ein Epilog
Pattdeutsch gehört nicht nur in den äußersten Norden Deutschlands, es gehört auch zum Land Brandenburg. Die niederdeutsche Mundart bereichert unsere Geschichte und unsere Kultur bis in die Gegenwart – ist Teil unserer Heimat. In der Fibel sind zeitgemäße und kindgerechte Texte für die Jüngsten zusammengestellt worden. Eingearbeitet sind regionale Varianten, speziell aus der Prignitz und der Uckermark. Zusätzlich erklären und erleichtern die zusammengestellten Regeln mit einem kleinen Wörterverzeichnis den Umgang mit der Sprache und ihrem Verständnis. Mit den hier vorliegenden Texten, Übungen und Spielen verknüpft mit einer durchgängigen schwungvollen Illustration, macht das Erlernen der Niederdeutschen Sprache wieder Spaß und vielleicht sogar neugierig. Damit kann die Fibel einen kleinen aber beachtlichen Teil in der Verantwortung für das Kulturerbe im Land Brandenburg übernehmen.
Region – Sprache – Literatur
(2017)
Mit dem neuen Rahmenlehrplan für die Länder Brandenburg und Berlin wird der Kompetenzentwicklung der Schülerinnen und Schüler unter den Bedingungen lebensweltlicher Erfahrungen ein besonderer Stellenwert beigemessen. Der Sammelband enthält Beiträge, in denen den Lehrerinnen und Lehrern vielfältige Unterrichtsmaterialien und didaktische Anregungen für einen praxisnahen, entdeckenden Unterricht in der Primar- und Sekundarstufe für den Deutschunterricht vorgestellt werden. Diese reichen von theoretischen Grundlagen, über einzelne Unterrichtssequenzen und Projekte bis zur Darstellung einer Lernspirale für die Jahrgangsstufen 1 bis 10. Vielfältige, auch multimediale Zugänge bis zum spielerischen Umgang mit der Sprache zeigen, dass Sprache kein „trockener“ Lerngegenstand sein muss. Die Beiträge geben darüber hinaus Einblicke in die fachlichen Hintergründe, die helfen sollen, den Zugang zu den einzelnen Gegenständen zu erleichtern. Das thematische Zentrum „Region“ bildet den Ausgangspunkt für die Einbeziehung des Niederdeutschen, Sorbischen, Berlinischen, Kiezdeutschen sowie der Dialekte. Dabei werden sowohl literarische als auch Sachtexte berücksichtigt.
Ausgehend von den primärsensorischen Arealen verlaufen Verarbeitungswege nach anterior durch die Temporallappen, die der Objekterkennung dienen. Besonders die vorderste Spitze der Temporallappen, der anteriore Temporalkortex, wird mit Funktionen der Objektidentifizierung assoziiert. Es existieren jedoch mehrere Vermutungen, welcher Art die Objekte sind, die in dieser Region verarbeitet werden. Es gibt Annahmen über die Verarbeitung von Sprache, von menschlichen Stimmen, semantischen Informationen oder individuellen Konzepten. Um zwischen diesen Theorien zu differenzieren, wurden vier ereigniskorrelierte fMRT-Messungen an jungen gesunden Erwachsenen durchgeführt. Die Probanden hörten in drei Experimenten die Stimmen berühmter und unbekannter Personen und in einem der Experimente zusätzlich Geräusche von Tieren und Musikinstrumenten. Im vierten Experiment wurden Zeichnungen von Comicfiguren gezeigt sowie von Tieren und Obst- und Gemüsesorten. Die neuronale Aktivität bei der Verarbeitung dieser Reize im Vergleich zu Zeiten ohne Stimulation wurde mit Hilfe von Interesseregionen untersucht, die nahezu die gesamten Temporallappen abdeckten und diese in jeweils zwölf Areale untergliederten. In den anterioren Temporallappen waren sowohl mit auditiven als auch mit visuellen Stimuli deutliche Aktivierungsunterschiede in Abhängigkeit von der semantischen Kategorie festzustellen. Individuelle Konzepte (menschliche Stimmen und Zeichentrickfiguren) riefen eine signifikant stärkere Aktivierung hervor als kategoriale Konzepte (Tiere, Musikinstrumente, Obst- und Gemüse). Außerdem war das Signal, dass durch die Stimmen der bekannten Personen ausgelöst wurde, deutlich stärker als das Signal der unbekannten Stimmen. Damit sind die Daten am ehesten kompatibel mit der Annahme, dass die anterioren Temporallappen, bekannte individuelle Konzepte verarbeiten. Da die beschriebenen Signalunterschiede zwischen den verschiedenen Bedingungen ausgehend von den transversalen Temporalgyri nach anterior zum Temporalpol zunahmen, unterstützen die Ergebnisse zudem die Theorie von einem ventralen Verarbeitungsweg, der die Temporallappen nach anterior durchquert und zur Objekterkennung beiträgt. In Übereinstimmung mit den Annahmen der Konvergenzzonentheorie von A. R. Damasio scheint die spezifische Funktion dieses rostral gerichteten Verarbeitungsweges aus der sukzessiven Kombination immer mehr sensomotorischer Merkmale von Objekten zu bestehen. Da bekannte individuelle Konzepte eine besonders hohe Anzahl von Merkmalen aufweisen, ist eine weiter nach anterior verlaufende Verarbeitung zu beobachten als bei unbekannten oder kategorialen Konzepten.
Produktion von Eigennamen
(2011)
The term “bilateral deficit” (BLD) has been used to describe a reduction in performance during bilateral contractions when compared to the sum of identical unilateral contractions. In old age, maximal isometric force production (MIF) decreases and BLD increases indicating the need for training interventions to mitigate this impact in seniors. In a cross-sectional approach, we examined age-related differences in MIF and BLD in young (age: 20–30 years) and old adults (age: >65 years). In addition, a randomized-controlled trial was conducted to investigate training-specific effects of resistance vs. balance training on MIF and BLD of the leg extensors in old adults. Subjects were randomly assigned to resistance training (n = 19), balance training (n = 14), or a control group (n = 20). Bilateral heavy-resistance training for the lower extremities was performed for 13 weeks (3 × / week) at 80% of the one repetition maximum. Balance training was conducted using predominately unilateral exercises on wobble boards, soft mats, and uneven surfaces for the same duration. Pre- and post-tests included uni- and bilateral measurements of maximal isometric leg extension force. At baseline, young subjects outperformed older adults in uni- and bilateral MIF (all p < .001; d = 2.61–3.37) and in measures of BLD (p < .001; d = 2.04). We also found significant increases in uni- and bilateral MIF after resistance training (all p < .001, d = 1.8-5.7) and balance training (all p < .05, d = 1.3-3.2). In addition, BLD decreased following resistance (p < .001, d = 3.4) and balance training (p < .001, d = 2.6). It can be concluded that both training regimens resulted in increased MIF and decreased BLD of the leg extensors (HRT-group more than BAL-group), almost reaching the levels of young adults.
The term “bilateral deficit” (BLD) has been used to describe a reduction in performance during bilateral contractions when compared to the sum of identical unilateral contractions. In old age, maximal isometric force production (MIF) decreases and BLD increases indicating the need for training interventions to mitigate this impact in seniors. In a cross-sectional approach, we examined age-related differences in MIF and BLD in young (age: 20–30 years) and old adults (age: >65 years). In addition, a randomized-controlled trial was conducted to investigate training-specific effects of resistance vs. balance training on MIF and BLD of the leg extensors in old adults. Subjects were randomly assigned to resistance training (n = 19), balance training (n = 14), or a control group (n = 20). Bilateral heavy-resistance training for the lower extremities was performed for 13 weeks (3 × / week) at 80% of the one repetition maximum. Balance training was conducted using predominately unilateral exercises on wobble boards, soft mats, and uneven surfaces for the same duration. Pre- and post-tests included uni- and bilateral measurements of maximal isometric leg extension force. At baseline, young subjects outperformed older adults in uni- and bilateral MIF (all p < .001; d = 2.61–3.37) and in measures of BLD (p < .001; d = 2.04). We also found significant increases in uni- and bilateral MIF after resistance training (all p < .001, d = 1.8-5.7) and balance training (all p < .05, d = 1.3-3.2). In addition, BLD decreased following resistance (p < .001, d = 3.4) and balance training (p < .001, d = 2.6). It can be concluded that both training regimens resulted in increased MIF and decreased BLD of the leg extensors (HRT-group more than BAL-group), almost reaching the levels of young adults.
We present a new analysis of illocutionary forces in dialogue. We analyze them as complex conversational moves involving two dimensions: what Speaker commits herself to and what she calls on Addressee to perform. We start from the analysis of speech acts such as confirmation requests or whimperatives, and extend the analysis to seemingly simple speech acts, such as statements and queries. Then, we show how to integrate our proposal in the framework of the Grammar for Conversation (Ginzburg, to app.), which is adequate for modelling agents' information states and how they get updated.
Since Harris’ parser in the late 50s, multiword units have been progressively integrated in parsers. Nevertheless, in the most part, they are still restricted to compound words, that are more stable and less numerous. Actually, language is full of semi-fixed expressions that also form basic semantic units: semi-fixed adverbial expressions (e.g. time), collocations. Like compounds, the identification of these structures limits the combinatorial complexity induced by lexical ambiguity. In this paper, we detail an experiment that largely integrates these notions in a finite-state procedure of segmentation into super-chunks, preliminary to a parser.We show that the chunker, developped for French, reaches 92.9% precision and 98.7% recall. Moreover, multiword units realize 36.6% of the attachments within nominal and prepositional phrases.
Syntax
(2007)
Morphology
(2007)
Die vorliegende Arbeit stellt eine kritische Übersicht über den Forschungsstand zu multiplen Wh-Konstruktionen im Slavischen dar. Das Ziel ist es, die Unklarheit der Datenlage und die Widersprüchlichkeit der auf solchen "unklaren" Daten basierten Theorien aufzuzeigen. Inhalt: Historischer Hintergrund (Wachowicz 1974) Einige ältere Ansätze Höhepunkt: die folgenschwere Arbeit von Rudin (1988) Probleme: - Das Problem der Zuverlässlichkeit von Daten - Das Problem der Relevanz von Daten "Harte" Fakten: - Strikte Superioritätseffekte im Bulgarischen - Obligatorische Wh-Anhebung im Slavischen Neuere Ansätze: - "Qualitative" Ansätze - "Quantitative" Ansätze - Alternative Ansätze
Zur Interaktion von Verarbeitungstiefe und dem Wortvorhersagbarkeitseffekt beim Lesen von Sätzen
(2008)
Rhythm perception is assumed to be guided by a domain-general auditory principle, the Iambic/Trochaic Law, stating that sounds varying in intensity are grouped as strong-weak, and sounds varying in duration are grouped as weak-strong. Recently, Bhatara et al. (2013) showed that rhythmic grouping is influenced by native language experience, French listeners having weaker grouping preferences than German listeners. This study explores whether L2 knowledge and musical experience also affect rhythmic grouping. In a grouping task, French late learners of German listened to sequences of coarticulated syllables varying in either intensity or duration. Data on their language and musical experience were obtained by a questionnaire. Mixed-effect model comparisons showed influences of musical experience as well as L2 input quality and quantity on grouping preferences. These results imply that adult French listeners' sensitivity to rhythm can be enhanced through L2 and musical experience.
OCP-Place, a cross-linguistically well-attested constraint against pairs of consonants with shared [place], is psychologically real. Studies have shown that the processing of words violating OCP-Place is inhibited. Functionalists assume that OCP arises as a consequence of low-level perception: a consonant following another with the same [place] cannot be faithfully perceived as an independent unit. If functionalist theories were correct, then lexical access would be inhibited if two homorganic consonants conjoin at word boundaries-a problem that can only be solved with lexical feedback.
Here, we experimentally challenge the functional account by showing that OCP-Place can be used as a speech segmentation cue during pre-lexical processing without lexical feedback, and that the use relates to distributions in the input.
In Experiment 1, native listeners of Dutch located word boundaries between two labials when segmenting an artificial language. This indicates a use of OCP-Labial as a segmentation cue, implying a full perception of both labials. Experiment 2 shows that segmentation performance cannot solely be explained by well-formedness intuitions. Experiment 3 shows that knowledge of OCP-Place depends on language-specific input: in Dutch, co-occurrences of labials are under-represented, but co-occurrences of coronals are not. Accordingly, Dutch listeners fail to use OCP-Coronal for segmentation.
Finite state methods for natural language processing often require the construction and the intersection of several automata. In this paper, we investigate the question of determining the best order in which these intersections should be performed. We take as an example lexical disambiguation in polarity grammars. We show that there is no efficient way to minimize the state complexity of these intersections.
This study addresses the question of how age of acquisition (AoA) affects grammatical processing, specifically with respect to inflectional morphology, in bilinguals. We examined experimental data of more than 100 participants from the Russian/German community in Berlin, all of whom acquired Russian from birth and German at different ages. Using the cross-modal lexical priming technique, we investigated stem allomorphs of German verbs that encode multiple morphosyntactic features. The results revealed a striking AoA modulation of observed priming patterns, indicating efficient access to morphosyntactic features for early AoAs and a gradual decline with increasing AoAs. In addition, we found a discontinuity in the function relating AoA to morphosyntactic feature access, suggesting a sensitive period for the development of morphosyntax.
Parsing costs as predictors of reading difficulty: An evaluation using the Potsdam Sentence Corpus
(2008)
The surprisal of a word on a probabilistic grammar constitutes a promising complexity metric for human sentence comprehension difficulty. Using two different grammar types, surprisal is shown to have an effect on fixation durations and regression probabilities in a sample of German readers’ eye movements, the Potsdam Sentence Corpus. A linear mixed-effects model was used to quantify the effect of surprisal while taking into account unigram and bigram frequency, word length, and empirically-derived word predictability; the so-called “early” and “late” measures of processing difficulty both showed an effect of surprisal. Surprisal is also shown to have a small but statistically non-significant effect on empirically-derived predictability itself. This work thus demonstrates the importance of including parsing costs as a predictor of comprehension difficulty in models of reading, and suggests that a simple identification of syntactic parsing costs with early measures and late measures with durations of post-syntactic events may be difficult to uphold.
Eye fixation durations during normal reading correlate with processing difficulty but the specific cognitive mechanisms reflected in these measures are not well understood. This study finds support in German readers’ eyefixations for two distinct difficulty metrics: surprisal, which reflects the change in probabilities across syntactic analyses as new words are integrated, and retrieval, which quantifies comprehension difficulty in terms of working memory constraints. We examine the predictions of both metrics using a family of dependency parsers indexed by an upper limit on the number of candidate syntactic analyses they retain at successive words. Surprisal models all fixation measures and regression probability. By contrast, retrieval does not model any measure in serial processing. As more candidate analyses are considered in parallel at each word, retrieval can account for the same measures as surprisal. This pattern suggests an important role for ranked parallelism in theories of sentence comprehension.
Dutch allows for variation as to whether the first position in the sentence is occupied by the subject or by some other constituent, such as the direct object. In particular situations, however, this commonly observed variation in word order is ‘frozen’ and only the subject appears in first position. We hypothesize that this partial freezing of word order in Dutch can be explained from the dependence of the speaker’s choice of word order on the hearer’s interpretation of this word order. A formal model of this interaction between the speaker’s perspective and the hearer’s perspective is presented in terms of bidirectional Optimality Theory. Empirical predictions of this model regarding the interaction between word order and definiteness are confirmed by a quantitative corpus study.
Die moderne Kultur- und Sozialgeschichte lässt sich – auf den Ebenen des Transports, der Informationsübertragung und der interpersonellen Kommunikation – als ein sich permanent steigernder Beschleunigungsprozess beschreiben. Insbesondere neuartige Medientechnologien verkürzen die zeitlichen Intervalle der Kommunikation zunehmend. Es ist davon auszugehen, dass sich die dem Geschwindigkeitsimperativ unterliegenden neuen Kommunikationsbedingungen in sprachlichen Innovationen niederschlagen und diese wiederum Indikatoren für Sprachwandel sind. In der jüngsten linguistischen Forschung wird allerdings vielfach die These geäußert, der Sprachgebrauch in den neuen Medien indiziere fundamentale Veränderungen der Schriftlichkeit und führe zu einem sprachlichen Verfall besonderen Ausmaßes. Diese These soll am Beispiel schriftbasierter Alltagskommunikation – vom Telegramm über den Brief und der Internetkommunikation bis hin zur SMS-Kommunikation – in medien-, kultur- und texthistorischen Zusammenhängen überprüft werden. Es geht darum, die kulturhistorischen Modalitäten der Medien- und Beschleunigungsgenese aufzudecken und spezifische mediale und kontextuelle Bedingungen sprachlicher Veränderungen herauszustellen.
Previous studies on the acquisition of verb inflection in normally developing children have revealed an astonishing pattern: children use correctly inflected verbs in their own speech but fail to make use of verb inflections when comprehending sentences uttered by others. Thus, a three-year old might well be able to say something like ‘The cat sleeps on the bed’, but fails to understand that the same sentence, when uttered by another person, refers to only one sleeping cat but not more than one. The previous studies that have examined children's comprehension of verb inflections have employed a variant of a picture selection task in which the child was asked to explicitly indicate (via pointing) what semantic meaning she had inferred from the test sentence. Recent research on other linguistic structures, such as pronouns or focus particles, has indicated that earlier comprehension abilities can be found when methods are used that do not require an explicit reaction, like preferential looking tasks. This dissertation aimed to examine whether children are truly not able to understand the connection the the verb form and the meaning of the sentence subject until the age of five years or whether earlier comprehension can be found when a different measure, preferential looking, is used. Additionally, children's processing of subject-verb agreement violations was examined. The three experiments of this thesis that examined children's comprehension of verb inflections revealed the following: German-speaking three- to four-year old children looked more to a picture showing one actor when hearing a sentence with a singular inflected verb but only when their eye gaze was tracked and they did not have to perform a picture selection task. When they were asked to point to the matching picture, they performed at chance-level. This pattern indicates asymmetries in children's language performance even within the receptive modality. The fourth experiment examined sensitivity to subject-verb agreement violations and did not reveal evidence for sensitivity toward agreement violations in three- and four-year old children, but only found that children's looking patterns were influenced by the grammatical violations at the age of five. The results from these experiments are discussed in relation to the existence of a production-comprehension asymmetry in the use of verb inflections and children's underlying grammatical knowledge.
Connective ties in discourse: Three ERP studies on causal, temporal and concessive connective ties and their influence on language processing. Questions In four experiments the influence of lexical connectives such as " darum", therefore, " danach", afterwards, and " trotzdem", nevertheless, on the processing of short two-sentence discourses was examined and compared to the processing of deictical sentential adverbs such as " gestern", yesterday, and " lieber", rather. These latter words do not have the property of signaling a certain discourse relation between two sentences, as connective ties do. Three questions were central to the work: * Do the processing contrasts found between connective and non-connective elements extend to connective ties and deictical sentential adverbs (experiments 2 and 3)? * Does the semantic content of the connective ties play the primary role, i.e is the major distinction to be made indeed between connective and non-connective or instead between causal, temporal and concessive? * When precisely is the information provided by connective ties used? There is some evidence that connective ties can have an immediate influence on the integration of subsequent elements, but the end of the second sentences appears to play an important role as well: experiments 2, 3, and 4. Conclusions First of all, the theoretical distinction between connective and non-connective elements does indeed have " cognitive reality" . This has already been shown in previous studies. The present studies do however show, that there is also a difference between one-place discourse elements (deictical sentential adverbs) and two-place discourse elements, namely connective ties, since all experiments examining this contrast found evidence for qualitatively and quantitatively different processing (experiments 1, 2, and 3). Secondly, the semantic type of the connective ties also plays a role. This was not shown for the LAN, found for all connective ties when compared to non-connective elements, and consequently interpreted as a more abstract reflection of the integration of connective ties. There was also no difference between causal and temporal connective ties before the end of the discourses in experiment 3. However, the N400 found for incoherent discourses in experiment 2, larger for connective incoherent than non-connective incoherent discourses, as well as the P3b found for concessive connective ties in the comparison between causal and concessive connective ties gave reason to assume that the semantic content of connective ties is made use of in incremental processing, and that the relation signaled by the connective tie is the one that readers attempt to construct. Concerning when the information provided by connective ties is used, it appears as if connectivity is generally and obligatorily taken at face value. As long as the meaning of a connective tie did not conflict with a preferred canonical discourse relation, there were no differences found for varying connective discourses (experiment 3). However, the fact that concessive connective ties announce the need for a more complex text representation was recognized and made use of immediately (experiment 4). Additionally, a violation of the discourse relation resulted in more difficult semantic integration if a connective tie was present (experiment 2). It is therefore concluded here that connective ties influence processing immediately. This claim has to be modified somewhat, since the sentence-final elements suggested that connective ties trigger different integration processes than non-connective elements. It seems as if the answer to the question of when connective ties are processed is neither exclusively immediately nor exclusively afterwards, but that both viewpoints are correct. It is suggested here that before the end of a discourse economy plays a central role in that a canonical relation is assumed unless there is evidence to the contrary. A connective tie could have the function of reducing the dimensions evaluated in a discourse to the one signaled by the connective tie. At the end of the discourse the representation is evaluated and verified, and an integrated situation model constructed. Here, the complexity of the different discourse relations that connective ties can signal, is expressed.