Abstract The present paper argues that all kinds of verbal and adjectival instantiations of past participles have a common core: a participial head associated with an argument structural effect, on the one hand, and an aspectual contribution, on the other. The former amounts to the suppression of an external argument (if present), which existentially binds the semantic role associated with this argument, and the latter renders simple event structures with change-of-state semantics (and only those) perfective. Based on these ingredients (and the contribution of the auxiliary have, if present), it is not just possible to account for how past participles elicit periphrastic passive as well as perfect configurations, but crucially also for their bare (i. e. auxiliaryless) occurrences in a range of distributions: stative passives, stative perfects, absolute clauses, pre- and postnominal occurrences, and adverbial clauses. These, in turn, differ in their properties on the basis of (a) the presence of a stativising PredP, (b) the availability of an adjectival head that triggers λ-abstraction of an internal argument, and (c) the complexity of the underlying verbal structure in terms of the availability of vP. This eventually allows for a ‘holistic’ approach to the flexibility of past participles that delineates a common core supplemented by distinct functional surroundings.
{"title":"The categorial, argument structural and aspectual indeterminacy of past participles: A holistic approach","authors":"Dennis Wegner","doi":"10.1515/zfs-2021-2027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2021-2027","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The present paper argues that all kinds of verbal and adjectival instantiations of past participles have a common core: a participial head associated with an argument structural effect, on the one hand, and an aspectual contribution, on the other. The former amounts to the suppression of an external argument (if present), which existentially binds the semantic role associated with this argument, and the latter renders simple event structures with change-of-state semantics (and only those) perfective. Based on these ingredients (and the contribution of the auxiliary have, if present), it is not just possible to account for how past participles elicit periphrastic passive as well as perfect configurations, but crucially also for their bare (i. e. auxiliaryless) occurrences in a range of distributions: stative passives, stative perfects, absolute clauses, pre- and postnominal occurrences, and adverbial clauses. These, in turn, differ in their properties on the basis of (a) the presence of a stativising PredP, (b) the availability of an adjectival head that triggers λ-abstraction of an internal argument, and (c) the complexity of the underlying verbal structure in terms of the availability of vP. This eventually allows for a ‘holistic’ approach to the flexibility of past participles that delineates a common core supplemented by distinct functional surroundings.","PeriodicalId":43494,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift Fur Sprachwissenschaft","volume":"40 1","pages":"199 - 249"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/zfs-2021-2027","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49469341","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 German allows for topic drop (Fries 1988), the omission of a preverbal constituent from a V2 sentence. I address the underexplored question of why speakers use topic drop with a corpus study and two acceptability rating studies. I propose an information-theoretic explanation based on the Uniform Information Density hypothesis (Levy and Jaeger 2007) that accounts for the full picture of data. The information-theoretic approach predicts that topic drop is more felicitous when the omitted constituent is predictable in context and easy to recover. This leads to a more optimal use of the hearer’s processing capacities. The corpus study on the FraC corpus (Horch and Reich 2017) shows that grammatical person, verb probability and verbal inflection impact the frequency of topic drop. The two rating experiments indicate that these differences in frequency are also reflected in acceptability and additionally evidence an impact of topicality on topic drop. Taken together my studies constitute the first systematic empirical investigation of previously only sparsely researched observations from the literature. My information-theoretic account provides a unifying explanation of these isolated observations and is also able to account for the effect of verb probability that I find in my corpus study.
摘要德语允许主题省略(Fries 1988)，即从V2句中省略一个前语成分。我通过语料库研究和两个可接受性评级研究来解决演讲者为什么使用话题下降的问题。我提出了一个基于统一信息密度假设(Levy and Jaeger 2007)的信息理论解释，该假设解释了数据的全貌。信息论方法预测，当被省略的成分在上下文中是可预测的并且易于恢复时，话题删除更为有效。这将使听者的处理能力得到更优的利用。对FraC语料库(Horch and Reich 2017)的语料库研究表明，语法人物、动词概率和动词屈折变化影响话题下降的频率。两个评分实验表明，这些频率的差异也反映在可接受性上，另外也证明了话题性对话题下降的影响。综上所述，我的研究构成了第一个系统的实证调查，以前只从文献中进行了很少的研究。我的信息论解释为这些孤立的观察提供了一个统一的解释，也能够解释我在语料库研究中发现的动词概率的影响。
{"title":"Topic drop in German: Empirical support for an information-theoretic account to a long-known omission phenomenon","authors":"Lisa Schäfer","doi":"10.1515/zfs-2021-2024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2021-2024","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract German allows for topic drop (Fries 1988), the omission of a preverbal constituent from a V2 sentence. I address the underexplored question of why speakers use topic drop with a corpus study and two acceptability rating studies. I propose an information-theoretic explanation based on the Uniform Information Density hypothesis (Levy and Jaeger 2007) that accounts for the full picture of data. The information-theoretic approach predicts that topic drop is more felicitous when the omitted constituent is predictable in context and easy to recover. This leads to a more optimal use of the hearer’s processing capacities. The corpus study on the FraC corpus (Horch and Reich 2017) shows that grammatical person, verb probability and verbal inflection impact the frequency of topic drop. The two rating experiments indicate that these differences in frequency are also reflected in acceptability and additionally evidence an impact of topicality on topic drop. Taken together my studies constitute the first systematic empirical investigation of previously only sparsely researched observations from the literature. My information-theoretic account provides a unifying explanation of these isolated observations and is also able to account for the effect of verb probability that I find in my corpus study.","PeriodicalId":43494,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift Fur Sprachwissenschaft","volume":"40 1","pages":"161 - 197"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/zfs-2021-2024","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43075226","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 Bilingual settings are perceived as exemplary cases of linguistic diversity, and they are assumed to trigger cross-linguistic interaction. The rationale underlying this assumption is the belief that when more than one language is processed in a brain, this will inevitably affect the way in which linguistic knowledge is acquired, stored and used. However, this idea stands in conflict with results obtained by research on children acquiring two (or more) languages simultaneously. They have been demonstrated to be able to differentiate languages from early on and to develop competences qualitatively identical to those of monolinguals. These studies thus provide little evidence supporting the idea that bilingualism must lead to divergent grammatical development. The question then is what triggers alterations of bilinguals’ grammars, especially of the syntactic core, possibly resulting in non-native competences. This has been claimed to occur in the acquisition of second languages, weaker languages of simultaneous bilinguals, or heritage languages. These acquisition types differ from first language development in that onset of acquisition of one language is delayed or that the amount of exposure to one language is reduced. I will argue that age at onset and severely reduced amount of exposure are potential causal factors triggering divergent developments, whereas bilingualism on its own is not a sufficient cause of divergence.
{"title":"Diversity and divergence in bilingual acquisition","authors":"Jürgen M. Meisel","doi":"10.1515/zfs-2021-2025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2021-2025","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Bilingual settings are perceived as exemplary cases of linguistic diversity, and they are assumed to trigger cross-linguistic interaction. The rationale underlying this assumption is the belief that when more than one language is processed in a brain, this will inevitably affect the way in which linguistic knowledge is acquired, stored and used. However, this idea stands in conflict with results obtained by research on children acquiring two (or more) languages simultaneously. They have been demonstrated to be able to differentiate languages from early on and to develop competences qualitatively identical to those of monolinguals. These studies thus provide little evidence supporting the idea that bilingualism must lead to divergent grammatical development. The question then is what triggers alterations of bilinguals’ grammars, especially of the syntactic core, possibly resulting in non-native competences. This has been claimed to occur in the acquisition of second languages, weaker languages of simultaneous bilinguals, or heritage languages. These acquisition types differ from first language development in that onset of acquisition of one language is delayed or that the amount of exposure to one language is reduced. I will argue that age at onset and severely reduced amount of exposure are potential causal factors triggering divergent developments, whereas bilingualism on its own is not a sufficient cause of divergence.","PeriodicalId":43494,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift Fur Sprachwissenschaft","volume":"40 1","pages":"65 - 88"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/zfs-2021-2025","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41602031","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}
: A popular thesis in both traditional and also structural dialectology is that vowels of the same class change in the same manner – this is called “Reihen-schrittgesetz” ( = parallel movement law) (cf. Pfalz 1918). The aim of this paper is to re-examine this “law” by investigating recent reflexes of MHG ê – œ – ô in traditional rural South and South-Central Bavarian dialects. Based on a comprehensive dialectal survey, real-and apparent-time comparisons are applied. The re-sults of both qualitative and quantitative analysis (principal component analysis, cluster analysis) reveal that there is no clear evidence for the validity of the “Rei-henschrittgesetz”. Instead variety contact (horizontal and vertical convergence) provides a sufficient explanation for most of the occurring changes. As an internal factor lexical diffusion appears to be important.
{"title":"Reihenschritte im rezenten Lautwandel?","authors":"Philip C. Vergeiner, Lars Bülow, Dominik Wallner","doi":"10.1515/zfs-2021-2023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2021-2023","url":null,"abstract":": A popular thesis in both traditional and also structural dialectology is that vowels of the same class change in the same manner – this is called “Reihen-schrittgesetz” ( = parallel movement law) (cf. Pfalz 1918). The aim of this paper is to re-examine this “law” by investigating recent reflexes of MHG ê – œ – ô in traditional rural South and South-Central Bavarian dialects. Based on a comprehensive dialectal survey, real-and apparent-time comparisons are applied. The re-sults of both qualitative and quantitative analysis (principal component analysis, cluster analysis) reveal that there is no clear evidence for the validity of the “Rei-henschrittgesetz”. Instead variety contact (horizontal and vertical convergence) provides a sufficient explanation for most of the occurring changes. As an internal factor lexical diffusion appears to be important.","PeriodicalId":43494,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift Fur Sprachwissenschaft","volume":"40 1","pages":"31 - 64"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/zfs-2021-2023","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44358627","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}
Piotr Gulgowski, J. Błaszczak, Veranika Puhacheuskaya
Abstract The paper presents the results of a study investigating a possible influence of the viewpoint (perfective vs. imperfective) and lexical (telic vs. atelic) aspect of Polish verbs on the countability of eventive nominalizations (substantiva verbalia) derived from these verbs. Polish substantiva verbalia preserve many properties of the base verbs, including the eventive meaning and aspectual morphology. Native speakers of Polish rated the acceptability of nominalizations in count and mass contexts. An effect of both viewpoint and lexical aspect was found in mass contexts, where aspectually delimited (perfective, accomplishment) nominalizations were less acceptable than non-delimited (imperfective, state) nominalizations. In count contexts, only an effect of the lexical aspect was clearly present, with accomplishment nominalizations being more acceptable than state nominalizations. The nominalizations were overall rated as more natural in mass than count constructions, regardless of the aspect. The results indicate that aspect plays a role in establishing the countability of a word, but it does not fully determine it.
{"title":"The influence of aspect on the countability of Polish deverbal nominalizations: Evidence from an acceptability rating study","authors":"Piotr Gulgowski, J. Błaszczak, Veranika Puhacheuskaya","doi":"10.1515/zfs-2020-2014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2020-2014","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The paper presents the results of a study investigating a possible influence of the viewpoint (perfective vs. imperfective) and lexical (telic vs. atelic) aspect of Polish verbs on the countability of eventive nominalizations (substantiva verbalia) derived from these verbs. Polish substantiva verbalia preserve many properties of the base verbs, including the eventive meaning and aspectual morphology. Native speakers of Polish rated the acceptability of nominalizations in count and mass contexts. An effect of both viewpoint and lexical aspect was found in mass contexts, where aspectually delimited (perfective, accomplishment) nominalizations were less acceptable than non-delimited (imperfective, state) nominalizations. In count contexts, only an effect of the lexical aspect was clearly present, with accomplishment nominalizations being more acceptable than state nominalizations. The nominalizations were overall rated as more natural in mass than count constructions, regardless of the aspect. The results indicate that aspect plays a role in establishing the countability of a word, but it does not fully determine it.","PeriodicalId":43494,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift Fur Sprachwissenschaft","volume":"40 1","pages":"1 - 30"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/zfs-2020-2014","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47616919","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 discusses surface optionality in focus fronting in the Benue-Congo language Igbo. A focused XP can occur in-situ or ex-situ. We argue that the optionality does not have its origins in the syntax: in fact, exactly one focused XP has to move to the designated focus position in the left periphery in the syntax. The alternation between in-situ and ex-situ rather arises at PF: either the lowest or the topmost copy of the focus chain is pronounced. The choice is determined by semantic-pragmatic factors, i. e., we see an interaction between PF and LF. This constitutes a challenge for a strict version of the Y-model of grammar.
{"title":"On optional wh-/focus fronting in Igbo: A SYN-SEM-PHON interaction","authors":"M. Amaechi, Doreen Georgi","doi":"10.1515/zfs-2020-2017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2020-2017","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper discusses surface optionality in focus fronting in the Benue-Congo language Igbo. A focused XP can occur in-situ or ex-situ. We argue that the optionality does not have its origins in the syntax: in fact, exactly one focused XP has to move to the designated focus position in the left periphery in the syntax. The alternation between in-situ and ex-situ rather arises at PF: either the lowest or the topmost copy of the focus chain is pronounced. The choice is determined by semantic-pragmatic factors, i. e., we see an interaction between PF and LF. This constitutes a challenge for a strict version of the Y-model of grammar.","PeriodicalId":43494,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift Fur Sprachwissenschaft","volume":"39 1","pages":"299 - 327"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/zfs-2020-2017","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44123450","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 work examines the nature of the so-called “mid-level generalizations of generative linguistics” (MLGs). In 2015, Generative Syntax in the 21st Century: The Road Ahead was organized. One of the consensus points that emerged related to the need for establishing a canon, the absence of which was argued to be a major challenge for the field, raising issues of interdisciplinarity and interaction. Addressing this challenge, one of the outcomes of this conference was a list of MLGs. These refer to results that are well established and uncontroversially accepted. The aim of the present work is to embed some MLGs into a broader perspective. I take the Cinque hierarchies for adverbs and adjectives and the Final-over-Final Constraint as case studies in order to determine their experimental robustness. It is showed that at least some MLGs face problems of inadequacy when tapped into through rigorous testing, because they rule out data that are actually attested. I then discuss the nature of some MLGs and show that in their watered-down versions, they do hold and can be derived from general cognitive/computational biases. This voids the need to cast them as language-specific principles, in line with the Chomskyan urge to approach Universal Grammar from below.
{"title":"Mid-level generalizations of generative linguistics: Experimental robustness, cognitive underpinnings and the interdisciplinarity paradox","authors":"Evelina Leivada","doi":"10.1515/zfs-2020-2021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2020-2021","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This work examines the nature of the so-called “mid-level generalizations of generative linguistics” (MLGs). In 2015, Generative Syntax in the 21st Century: The Road Ahead was organized. One of the consensus points that emerged related to the need for establishing a canon, the absence of which was argued to be a major challenge for the field, raising issues of interdisciplinarity and interaction. Addressing this challenge, one of the outcomes of this conference was a list of MLGs. These refer to results that are well established and uncontroversially accepted. The aim of the present work is to embed some MLGs into a broader perspective. I take the Cinque hierarchies for adverbs and adjectives and the Final-over-Final Constraint as case studies in order to determine their experimental robustness. It is showed that at least some MLGs face problems of inadequacy when tapped into through rigorous testing, because they rule out data that are actually attested. I then discuss the nature of some MLGs and show that in their watered-down versions, they do hold and can be derived from general cognitive/computational biases. This voids the need to cast them as language-specific principles, in line with the Chomskyan urge to approach Universal Grammar from below.","PeriodicalId":43494,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift Fur Sprachwissenschaft","volume":"39 1","pages":"357 - 374"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/zfs-2020-2021","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41974199","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 introduction proposes to investigate mismatches and indeterminacies in languages much more than has hitherto been done. Such seemingly unruly aspects of language(s), it is argued, are interesting since they may help shed light on the internal make-up of grammatical systems. The question of the internal make-up of grammar(s), it is argued, cannot be addressed by the normal modus operandi of linguistic research, which is to find matches (rather than mismatches) between the observable (sound and meaning) interface systems, and to find how the interface representations map unto each other deterministically: It is only in the “lo-fi” aspects of mappings that the internal mechanisms of the overall grammatical architecture may reveal themselves. The introduction also points out that our concern is independent of the various theoretical orientations linguists may choose for their work, since the problem presents itself in all approaches to language research currently available, it seems – if in slightly different ways. We propose, in sum, that mismatches and indeterminacies are an extremely worthwhile field for future linguistic research, and one that should be on the agenda (or minimally, within the field of view) for linguists of all theoretical convictions.
{"title":"Indeterminacies and mismatches in grammatical systems","authors":"Volker Struckmeier, Andreas Pankau","doi":"10.1515/zfs-2020-2015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2020-2015","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This introduction proposes to investigate mismatches and indeterminacies in languages much more than has hitherto been done. Such seemingly unruly aspects of language(s), it is argued, are interesting since they may help shed light on the internal make-up of grammatical systems. The question of the internal make-up of grammar(s), it is argued, cannot be addressed by the normal modus operandi of linguistic research, which is to find matches (rather than mismatches) between the observable (sound and meaning) interface systems, and to find how the interface representations map unto each other deterministically: It is only in the “lo-fi” aspects of mappings that the internal mechanisms of the overall grammatical architecture may reveal themselves. The introduction also points out that our concern is independent of the various theoretical orientations linguists may choose for their work, since the problem presents itself in all approaches to language research currently available, it seems – if in slightly different ways. We propose, in sum, that mismatches and indeterminacies are an extremely worthwhile field for future linguistic research, and one that should be on the agenda (or minimally, within the field of view) for linguists of all theoretical convictions.","PeriodicalId":43494,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift Fur Sprachwissenschaft","volume":"39 1","pages":"237 - 274"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/zfs-2020-2015","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46869036","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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