09 Philosophisch-historische Fakultät
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Item Open Access Alternation preferences affect focus marking in German and English differently(2023) Schauffler, NadjaThis study investigates the interplay between alternation preferences and corrective focus marking in the production of German and English speakers. Both languages prefer an alternation of strong and weak, and both use pitch accenting to indicate focus structure. The objective of the study is to determine whether the preference for rhythmic alternation can account for variations in the prosodic marking of focus. Contrary to previous claims, the results obtained from three production experiments indicate that rhythmic adjustment strategies do occur during focus marking. However, despite the similarities between the two languages, they employ different strategies when alternation and focus marking work in opposite directions. German speakers often employ a melodic alternation of high and low by realizing the first of two adjacent focus accents with a rising pitch accent (L*H), while English speakers frequently omit the first focus accent in clash contexts. This finding is further supported by a second experiment that investigates pitch accent clashes in rhythm rule contexts under various focus environments. The findings suggest that the preference for alternation can influence the prosodic marking of focus and contributes to variation in the realization of information-structure categories.Item Open Access Adjektive zwischen Syntax, Semantik und Kognition : eine sprachvergleichende kognitive Analyse anhand des Deutschen und Türkischen(2018) Sauereisen, Britta; Pafel, Jürgen (Prof. Dr.)Item Open Access Clausal architecture and subject positions: impersonal constructions in the Germanic languages(2004) Mohr, Sabine; Alexiadou, Artemis (Prof. Dr.)This thesis consists of two major parts, a theoretical one and a practical one. In the theoretical part I suggest a universal, head-initial clausal architecture for both VO- and OV-languages, whose most important characteristics are the following. All direct objects are merged in SpecVP, there are at least two subject positions in the Split IP and definite subjects obligatorily have to move to the higher one, Verb Second clauses always involve the realisation of a phrase of the Split CP, different word orders are due to an interplay between different head- and XP-movements and checking conditions. Another central topic is the question of the status of the EPP (which was originally formulated as the requirement that every clause must have a subject) in a system with several subject positions. I argue that the EPP-feature’s only task is to make sure that every instance of head-movement is immediately followed by merge or move of an XP so that head-movement meets the New Extension Condition which reintroduces head-movement as a narrow syntactic operation. In the practical part I analyse thetic constructions (especially Transitive Expletive Constructions), impersonal passives, weather verb constructions and impersonal psych verb constructions in German, Dutch, English, Icelandic and the Mainland Scandinavian languages against the background of the theoretical framework developed in part 1. I argue that the differences in the distribution of the “expletive” elements in the impersonal constructions in the various languages – and the (un-)grammaticality of these constructions in the first place – is due to the fact that the languages employ different “expletive” elements. The latter include featureless pure expletives, event arguments which carry a [+specific] feature and quasi-arguments which are associated with a [+specific] feature and a Nominative Case feature but not expletive pro whose existence I contest. The different features require these elements to show up in or pass through different positions and therefore account for word order differences and correlations like the presence or absence of a Definiteness Effect.Item Open Access Französische Kollokationen diachron : eine korpusbasierte Analyse(2007) Bischof, Beatrice-Barbara; Stein, Achim (Prof. Dr.)Das Ziel der Arbeit ist eine diachrone korpusbasierte Analyse französischer Gefühls-Kollokationen. Auf der Grundlage von Korpora verschiedener Epochen wird untersucht, ob Kollokationen ein stabiles oder eher variables Phänomen darstellen und welche Veränderungen im kollokationellen Bereich stattfinden. Dazu wird einerseits die syntaktische und semantische Entwicklung der Kollokationen als komplette Einheiten verfolgt, andererseits steht die diachrone Analyse der Kollokationskonstituenten, besonders der Kollokatoren, im Mittelpunkt. Kollokatoren erhalten ihre vollständige Bedeutung erst durch die Basis der Kollokation, zeichnen sich synchron also durch ihre Abhängigkeit von der Basis ab, welche ihre volle Bedeutung beibehält und semantisch autonom ist. Daraus ergibt sich die Frage, ob Kollokatoren, um Kollokationskonstituenten zu werden, einen Bedeutungswandel in Abhängigkeit von der Basis erleben oder eher unabhängig davon, um erst später eine Kollokation mit Letzterer einzugehen. Anhand detaillierter Analysen wird überprüft, ob der Bedeutungswandel der Kollokatoren in direktem Zusammenhang mit der Kollokationsbildung steht oder nicht damit verknüpft ist. Um obige Fragestellungen zu beantworten, wird die Untersuchung einerseits auf der Basis der von I. A. Mel'cuk eingeführten Methode der lexikalischen Funktionen, durchgeführt. Da der Akzent auf der Analyse der Entwicklung der Semantik der Kollokatoren liegt, finden andererseits die Prinzipien des Bedeutungswandels von A. Blank Anwendung. Die Ergebnisse unterstreichen, dass die Bedeutungen der Kollokatoren vorwiegend auf Metaphern basieren, so dass es sich anbietet, in einem abschließenden Kapitel die Metaphorik in den Kollokationen auf der Grundlage der Prinzipien der kognitiven Linguistik zu analysieren. Die Dissertation ist in drei Teile gegliedert. Teil I bildet den theoretischen Rahmen für die angesetzte Analyse. Darin wird ein Überblick über die Forschungslage im Bereich der Kollokationen gegeben und die Rolle der Kollokationen in der Diachronie dargestellt. In Teil II werden die Methodik und das Vorgehen in der Untersuchung vorgestellt, was eine Voraussetzung für den dritten Teil der Dissertation, die Analyse der Kollokationen aus verschiedenen Perspektiven, ist.Item Open Access On the compatibility of the Braille code and universal grammar(2007) Lauenstein, Christine; Alexiadou, Artemis (Prof. Dr.)The central question of this work is to investigate whether there are structural elements of British Braille that are in conflict with language processes, i.e. whether the system of British Braille can be held responsible for poor spelling performance. Especially from the point of view of a print reader braille is a secondary system which requires many extra rules that have to be learnt. Thus it is easily considered more difficult. I do not wish to question the value of braille, whether it is used in contracted or uncontracted form. A detailed analysis of British Braille has shown that it is a seemingly arbitrary compilation of rules that is sensitive to language processes, the most important unit being the ortho-syllable as postulated by Primus (2003) and Weingarten (2004). In chapter 4 I have shown that the apparent compilation of arbitrary British Braille rules be restructured by the underlying implicit use it makes of word structure, most importantly the segmentation of ortho-syllables. This system is not a mere compilation of rules and lists that have to be learnt by rote. The analysis supports the assumption that cognitive processes are not the only possible route to contracted braille and that the way in which the rules of contracted braille have been compiled is far more problematic than the underlying system itself. Many braillists receive a dual education, learning to read and write contracted braille and use full spelling on computer keyboards. Millar (1997) argues that having two orthographic representations for the same letter groups may increase memory load in retrieval. This might indeed make spelling more difficult for braillists. I will focus on possible interferences from contracted braille with natural language without the additional difficulty of mastering full spelling on a computer keyboard. I adopt Millar's (1997) axiom that print and braille are identical in linguistics. Thus models and findings for print can be used for testing hypotheses in braille. Further support for access to language processes comes from a study on braille which I have developed to investigate whether there are structural elements of British Braille that inhibit writing performance. Thus the study is designed to reveal the interaction of braille contractions with natural language, in particular to investigate whether the bridging of syllable or morpheme boundaries by arbitrary contractions influences spelling performance. My study shows that former print readers have different error patterns with respect to both spelling errors and braille code errors than subjects who have no former functional use of print. Regarding the underlying linguistic processes, both groups of braillists show most errors in the categories gemination error and phonetic spelling. Whereas these errors are of equal frequency among the congenitally blind braillists, former print readers follow the pattern of the control group and produce approximately twice as many errors by phonetic spelling than gemination errors. The differing patterns in the group of spelling errors indicate that former knowledge of Standard English Orthography is a relevant factor in braille production. Former print readers have already established an orthographic system, which may interfere with contracted braille. Although there is a wide scope for individual variation within the data, some error patterns obtained in the data can only be explained as interference of those parts of British Braille which require an algorithmic process if the form is not already lexicalised. The resulting braille code errors show that print and braille operate with the same processes but use different underlying units at a subsyllabic level. Only former print readers are sensitive to characteristics of Standard English Orthography. However, both congenitally blind braillists and former print readers produce errors that show a stronger sensitivity for linguistic than for cognitive processes which contradicts the old saying that you need to be clever to learn braille! Both parts, the analysis of British Braille and the study, confirmed that there is an independent unit syllable in the writing system. Furthermore, braille and braillists are more sensitive to this unit than to phonological syllables and morphemes. Questioning the compatibility of braille and Universal Grammar, both the code analysis and the study show that braille takes linguistic units into account. There are very few instances in which braille prescribes rules that can only be accessed via cognitive processes. These rules tend to be ignored in favour of a form consistent with the linguistic structure of the target just as print reading children are insensitive to prescriptive rules in orthography (Weingarten 2004). Yet, there is an interference but it is not between linguistic principles and braille but between two orthographic systems: Standard English Orthography and contracted braille.Item Open Access Des accents, ou de l'intonation? : la prosodie au XVIe siècle selon Meigret(2021) Rainsford, ThomasItem Open Access Intonational features of spontaneous narrations in monolingual and heritage Russian in the U.S. : an exploration of the RUEG corpus(2023) Zerbian, Sabine; Zuban, Yulia; Klotz, MartinThis article presents RuPro, a new corpus resource of prosodically annotated speech by Russian heritage speakers in the U.S. and monolingually raised Russian speakers. The corpus contains data elicited in formal and informal communicative situations, by male/female and adolescent/adult speakers. The resource is presented with its architecture and annotation, and it is shown how it is used for the analysis of intonational features of spontaneous mono- and bilingual Russian speech. The analyses investigate the length of intonation phrases, types and number of pitch accents, and boundary tones. It emerges that the speaker groups do not differ in the inventory of pitch accents and boundary tones or in the relative frequency of these tonal events. However, they do differ in the length of intonation phrases (IPs), with heritage speakers showing shorter IPs also in the informal communicative situation. Both groups also differ concerning the number of pitch accents used on content words, with heritage speakers using more pitch accents than monolingually raised speakers. The results are discussed with respect to register differentiation and differences in prosodic density across both speaker groups.Item Open Access The structure of the DP and its reflex in Scandinavian(2010) Lohrmann, Susanne; Alexiadou, Artemis (Prof. Dr.)The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the structure of the DP and its reflex in Scandinavian. To this end I analysed the semantic contribution of the articles in Scandinavian modified definite DPs and their interaction with the adjectival inflection. I also considered other factors, such as the diachronic development of the respective morphemes. The DP structure put forth in this dissertation can account for the interaction of the functional morphemes involved in modified definite DPs as well as for the variation found regarding the marking of definiteness in the Scandinavian languages. In detail I claim that the notion of definiteness in Scandinavian is expressed by an interplay of three morphemes: the preadjectival article introduces a discourse referent that contains a new discourse variable; the suffixed article brings about specific reference; and the weak adjectival inflection identifies the members of the subset in the denotation of the modified noun.Item Open Access New insights into the typology of motion in the history of French: evidence from the manner verb lexicon(2024) Piccione, Mariapaola; Rainsford, ThomasOur study aims to investigate the Talmyan typology of motion encoding in the history of French focusing on testing Slobin’s (1997, 2004) hypothesis stating that the proportion of manner verbs is greater in s-framed languages and Schøsler’s (2008) hypothesis stating that the difference between s-framed and v-framed languages is to be found in the use of manner verbs and that the nature of the texts might play a role. Our study is methodologically innovative since it tests these hypotheses against a very large dataset using tailored measures. Our findings show an increase in manner saliency (as defined in Slobin 1997, 2004), contrary to what we would expect. This increase in the proportion of manner verbs might be explained by a more general increase in the overall lexical diversity of motion expression in French. Moreover, our results support Schøsler’s hypothesis, as textual factors affect the use of manner verbs.Item Open Access Old Gallo-Romance (OGR) Corpus : annotation phonologique et métrique des plus anciens textes gallo-romans(2022) Rainsford, ThomasThe goal of the Old Gallo-Romance (OGR) Corpus is to unite in a single corpus all Gallo-Romance texts copied before 1130 in a form as faithful as possible to the base manuscript and annotated in depth. In particular, the corpus contains both phonological and metrical layers of annotation. In this article, we present the main innovations implemented in the OGR corpus, with special focus on the creation of a technical infrastructure which assists in the creation of this annotation and exports it in an XML format.