Abstract In this paper, we investigate the German word formation pattern X-Wort within the theoretical framework of discourse morphology. For this purpose, morphological, semantic, and pragmatic analyses are combined on the basis of the German reference corpus. It is shown that the word formation pattern is productive and extremely frequent. However, the meaning of the word formation product is not always clear, since only two X-Wörter ( N-Wort and F-Wort ) can be considered lexicalized. Instead of word meanings acquired through the formation, a common function of the X-Wörter can be identified: they are used in metalinguistic discourses to avoid and mask certain terms. In this context, X-Wörter differ with respect to the motivation of avoidance: (i) racist terms, (ii) vulgar terms, and (iii) politically and superstitiously explosive words are avoided and masked. Thus, X-Wörter are part of euphemistic language. As such, their use can also be enregistered, and acquire a social-symbolic function, which indicates moral-ethical ideas of the speaker or writer. Consequently, we describe the word formation pattern as a form-meaning/function-pair whose morphological structure perfectly fits its communicative needs to avoid and mask specific words in discourses.
{"title":"<i>X-Wörter</i> im Deutschen: Ein Wortbildungsmuster zur diskursiven Vermeidung von Begriffen","authors":"Jens Leonhard, Falko Röhrs","doi":"10.1515/zfs-2023-2007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2023-2007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this paper, we investigate the German word formation pattern X-Wort within the theoretical framework of discourse morphology. For this purpose, morphological, semantic, and pragmatic analyses are combined on the basis of the German reference corpus. It is shown that the word formation pattern is productive and extremely frequent. However, the meaning of the word formation product is not always clear, since only two X-Wörter ( N-Wort and F-Wort ) can be considered lexicalized. Instead of word meanings acquired through the formation, a common function of the X-Wörter can be identified: they are used in metalinguistic discourses to avoid and mask certain terms. In this context, X-Wörter differ with respect to the motivation of avoidance: (i) racist terms, (ii) vulgar terms, and (iii) politically and superstitiously explosive words are avoided and masked. Thus, X-Wörter are part of euphemistic language. As such, their use can also be enregistered, and acquire a social-symbolic function, which indicates moral-ethical ideas of the speaker or writer. Consequently, we describe the word formation pattern as a form-meaning/function-pair whose morphological structure perfectly fits its communicative needs to avoid and mask specific words in discourses.","PeriodicalId":43494,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift Fur Sprachwissenschaft","volume":"45 8","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135216555","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Christopher Saure, Stefan Hinterwimmer, Anna Pia Jordan-Bertinelli
Abstract In this paper, we present the results of an experiment investigating the effect of different narrative situations on the availability of locally prominent protagonists as anchor for Free Indirect Discourse (FID). We created items in three conditions: condition A featured a neutral third-person narrator, condition B a homodiegetic first-person narrator and condition C a prominent, evaluative third-person narrator. Participants read several short text segments all ending with FID and were asked to rate the acceptability of the FID sentence. The results revealed that condition B received significantly lower ratings than the other two conditions, whereas there was no significant difference between conditions A and C. An additional study, in which participants had to choose if the thought expressed by FID belonged to the narrator or the protagonist, showed that there was a strong tendency to choose the protagonist as perspectival center in all three conditions. The results from Exp. 1 prove that while the presence of a homodiegetic first-person narrator strongly constrains a locally prominent protagonist’s availability as anchor for FID, it is not similarly affected by the presence of a globally prominent third-person narrator. This further confirms that narrative texts possess an inherent potential for multiperspectivity.
{"title":"An experimental investigation of the interaction of narrators’ and protagonists’ perspectival prominence in narrative texts","authors":"Christopher Saure, Stefan Hinterwimmer, Anna Pia Jordan-Bertinelli","doi":"10.1515/zfs-2023-2009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2023-2009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this paper, we present the results of an experiment investigating the effect of different narrative situations on the availability of locally prominent protagonists as anchor for Free Indirect Discourse (FID). We created items in three conditions: condition A featured a neutral third-person narrator, condition B a homodiegetic first-person narrator and condition C a prominent, evaluative third-person narrator. Participants read several short text segments all ending with FID and were asked to rate the acceptability of the FID sentence. The results revealed that condition B received significantly lower ratings than the other two conditions, whereas there was no significant difference between conditions A and C. An additional study, in which participants had to choose if the thought expressed by FID belonged to the narrator or the protagonist, showed that there was a strong tendency to choose the protagonist as perspectival center in all three conditions. The results from Exp. 1 prove that while the presence of a homodiegetic first-person narrator strongly constrains a locally prominent protagonist’s availability as anchor for FID, it is not similarly affected by the presence of a globally prominent third-person narrator. This further confirms that narrative texts possess an inherent potential for multiperspectivity.","PeriodicalId":43494,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift Fur Sprachwissenschaft","volume":"42 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135365873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Martina Röthlisberger, Ladina Brugger, Britta Juska-Bacher
Abstract During the development of reading skills in primary school, children begin to make guesses about unfamiliar words when reading a text. This process of lexical inference is an important source of new vocabulary acquisition. In the present study, 55 children with a wide range of reading skills and vocabulary knowledge were asked to infer the meaning of unknown words (i.e., pseudowords) inserted into a short story and to provide insight into their inferencing processes. The results show that children use a variety of cues. While learners with higher reading skills and vocabulary knowledge tend to be more successful inferencers and rely more on contextual cues, the evidence for the use of phonological cues is limited. Furthermore, in 20 percent of the cases, children were able to recall the meaning of a pseudoword already mentioned in the text.
{"title":"What cues do children use to infer the meaning of unknown words while reading? Empirical data from German-speaking third graders","authors":"Martina Röthlisberger, Ladina Brugger, Britta Juska-Bacher","doi":"10.1515/zfs-2023-2008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2023-2008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract During the development of reading skills in primary school, children begin to make guesses about unfamiliar words when reading a text. This process of lexical inference is an important source of new vocabulary acquisition. In the present study, 55 children with a wide range of reading skills and vocabulary knowledge were asked to infer the meaning of unknown words (i.e., pseudowords) inserted into a short story and to provide insight into their inferencing processes. The results show that children use a variety of cues. While learners with higher reading skills and vocabulary knowledge tend to be more successful inferencers and rely more on contextual cues, the evidence for the use of phonological cues is limited. Furthermore, in 20 percent of the cases, children were able to recall the meaning of a pseudoword already mentioned in the text.","PeriodicalId":43494,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift Fur Sprachwissenschaft","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135992646","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In German, the social gender of the human referent matches the grammatical gender of the noun and pronoun in many cases. Nevertheless, those categories can also differ from each other. The indefinite pronoun jemand ‘someone’ prototypically exhibits masculine grammatical gender irrespective of its concrete referents. This paper addresses a special phenomenon that can occur with jemand , namely, the conceptual agreement of relative pronouns, i.e., the occurrence of feminine target forms that refer to the masculine indefinite pronoun jemand ( Sie ist jemand, die gerne Kaffee trinkt ‘She is someone m , who f likes to drink coffee’). Based on two empirical analyses that examine the phenomenon from different methodological perspectives, this article will demonstrate that the marked phenomenon is comparatively rare, but does occur nevertheless. The phenomenon cannot be fully explained by the loss of the genericity of indefinite pronouns. In fact, either semantic or pragmatic explanations can be applied. This phenomenon can especially be observed in specific types of contexts (or constructions) that lack the prototypical feature of indefinite pronouns: indefinite reference. Jemand increasingly seems to be emerging in non-prototypical contexts for indefinite pronouns, which to some extent override the morphosyntactic features of the (relevant) part of speech. This occurrence is a semantic explanation for conceptual agreement forms. Pragmatic explanations for variation in agreement forms can be applied in prototypical contexts of indefinite pronouns, for example when an effort to use gender-sensitive language is made. Based on the phenomenon of conceptual agreement, this article thus explores the functions and properties in the periphery of indefinite pronouns as a part of speech.
在德语中，人指称物的社会性别在很多情况下与名词和代词的语法性别相匹配。然而，这些类别也可以彼此不同。不定代词“某人”无论其具体指涉物如何，其语法性别都是男性化的。本文讨论了jemand可能出现的一个特殊现象，即关系代词的概念一致，即女性目标形式指代男性不定代词jemand (Sie ist jemand, die gerne Kaffee trinkt ' She is someone m, who f like to drink coffee ')。基于两种从不同方法论角度考察这一现象的实证分析，本文将证明这一显著现象相对罕见，但确实存在。这种现象不能完全用不定代词的一般性的丧失来解释。事实上，无论是语义解释还是语用解释都可以适用。这种现象在缺乏不定代词的典型特征:不定指称的特定类型的语境(或结构)中尤其明显。Jemand似乎越来越多地出现在不定代词的非原型语境中，这在一定程度上覆盖了(相关)词性的形态句法特征。这种现象是概念协议形式的语义解释。协议形式变化的语用解释可以应用于不定代词的典型语境中，例如在努力使用性别敏感的语言时。因此，本文以概念一致现象为基础，探讨了不定代词作为词性的外围功能和性质。
{"title":"In the periphery of an indefinite pronoun. Forms and functions of conceptual agreement with <i>jemand</i>","authors":"Sophie Ellsäßer","doi":"10.1515/zfs-2023-2006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2023-2006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In German, the social gender of the human referent matches the grammatical gender of the noun and pronoun in many cases. Nevertheless, those categories can also differ from each other. The indefinite pronoun jemand ‘someone’ prototypically exhibits masculine grammatical gender irrespective of its concrete referents. This paper addresses a special phenomenon that can occur with jemand , namely, the conceptual agreement of relative pronouns, i.e., the occurrence of feminine target forms that refer to the masculine indefinite pronoun jemand ( Sie ist jemand, die gerne Kaffee trinkt ‘She is someone m , who f likes to drink coffee’). Based on two empirical analyses that examine the phenomenon from different methodological perspectives, this article will demonstrate that the marked phenomenon is comparatively rare, but does occur nevertheless. The phenomenon cannot be fully explained by the loss of the genericity of indefinite pronouns. In fact, either semantic or pragmatic explanations can be applied. This phenomenon can especially be observed in specific types of contexts (or constructions) that lack the prototypical feature of indefinite pronouns: indefinite reference. Jemand increasingly seems to be emerging in non-prototypical contexts for indefinite pronouns, which to some extent override the morphosyntactic features of the (relevant) part of speech. This occurrence is a semantic explanation for conceptual agreement forms. Pragmatic explanations for variation in agreement forms can be applied in prototypical contexts of indefinite pronouns, for example when an effort to use gender-sensitive language is made. Based on the phenomenon of conceptual agreement, this article thus explores the functions and properties in the periphery of indefinite pronouns as a part of speech.","PeriodicalId":43494,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift Fur Sprachwissenschaft","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135790461","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This paper argues that indexation markers (i.e., argument-indexing agreement markers and/or pronouns) show a wider range of formal mismatches across languages than the exponents of other inflectional categories. These mismatches are defined in terms of mixed behavior with respect to different criteria of wordhood. The mismatches that the indexation markers (or “indexes”) show include extrametricality with respect to reduplication and “mobility” in that they can occur in different slots of otherwise identical word forms. Other indexes can freely occur on either member of a phrase-level construction or behave like full-fledged affixes in one context but like full-fledged words in another. The claim that the range of these traits is extraordinary is based on a larger project, (Zingler, Tim. 2020. Wordhood issues: Typology and grammaticalization . Albuquerque: University of New Mexico PhD dissertation), which in addition to indexes investigates mismatches among case, definiteness, and tense markers. The explanations offered for this behavior primarily rely on the manner in which reference is established in discourse and on the different diachronic pathways for which these usage patterns pave the way. Another major conclusion is that the indexes described here constitute a formally heterogeneous set that cannot be easily subsumed under the label of “clitics.”
{"title":"A functional approach to the formal mismatches of indexation markers","authors":"Tim Zingler","doi":"10.1515/zfs-2023-2005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2023-2005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper argues that indexation markers (i.e., argument-indexing agreement markers and/or pronouns) show a wider range of formal mismatches across languages than the exponents of other inflectional categories. These mismatches are defined in terms of mixed behavior with respect to different criteria of wordhood. The mismatches that the indexation markers (or “indexes”) show include extrametricality with respect to reduplication and “mobility” in that they can occur in different slots of otherwise identical word forms. Other indexes can freely occur on either member of a phrase-level construction or behave like full-fledged affixes in one context but like full-fledged words in another. The claim that the range of these traits is extraordinary is based on a larger project, (Zingler, Tim. 2020. Wordhood issues: Typology and grammaticalization . Albuquerque: University of New Mexico PhD dissertation), which in addition to indexes investigates mismatches among case, definiteness, and tense markers. The explanations offered for this behavior primarily rely on the manner in which reference is established in discourse and on the different diachronic pathways for which these usage patterns pave the way. Another major conclusion is that the indexes described here constitute a formally heterogeneous set that cannot be easily subsumed under the label of “clitics.”","PeriodicalId":43494,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift Fur Sprachwissenschaft","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135769644","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract With literature and empirical evidence, this article argues against the existing claim that what if-questions are idioms and proposes that they are the result of the syntactic and semantic combination of what and if-conditionals. With further evidence, it is argued that what can be a propositional anaphor which occurs in different contexts, rather than being restricted to what if-questions. A formal characterization of the syntactic and semantic properties of the propositional what is formulated in the framework of Dynamic Syntax, demonstrating how this word makes semantic and syntactic contributions to the interpretation of utterances in English as a mechanism of interaction between interlocutors.
{"title":"What is what if?","authors":"Wenshan Li, Jiang Liu","doi":"10.1515/zfs-2023-2004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2023-2004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract With literature and empirical evidence, this article argues against the existing claim that what if-questions are idioms and proposes that they are the result of the syntactic and semantic combination of what and if-conditionals. With further evidence, it is argued that what can be a propositional anaphor which occurs in different contexts, rather than being restricted to what if-questions. A formal characterization of the syntactic and semantic properties of the propositional what is formulated in the framework of Dynamic Syntax, demonstrating how this word makes semantic and syntactic contributions to the interpretation of utterances in English as a mechanism of interaction between interlocutors.","PeriodicalId":43494,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift Fur Sprachwissenschaft","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45798984","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This paper considers the commitments we make by our linguistic choices, and the things we are committed to by our uses of language; it also considers how these commitments can be avoided.
{"title":"Commitments: binding and being bound","authors":"E. McCready","doi":"10.1515/zfs-2023-2003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2023-2003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper considers the commitments we make by our linguistic choices, and the things we are committed to by our uses of language; it also considers how these commitments can be avoided.","PeriodicalId":43494,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift Fur Sprachwissenschaft","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46822663","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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