General Linguistics Colloquium (SoSe 2024)

It has long been claimed for various levels of linguistic representation that change is essentially determined or at least confined by structure. While in phonology there is general agreement that structural constraints play a role but are by no means pervasive, work on modeling morphological change, especially analogy, often starts from the premise that structure is crucial. As for syntax, the general consensus is that structure is at the very core of change. See for grammaticalization e.g. Lehmann 2015; van Gelderen 2004, but also Eckardt 2012 for the role of compositionality in semantic reanalysis.

It is not the aim of this talk to dismiss the role of structure in language change. However, I intend to show that a-structural change based on the simple extension of surface patterns is equally important and that it occurs at all levels of linguistic representation. To push things one step further, I claim that analogical change may even be anti-structural. Anti-structural analogical change is a type of pattern extension which overrides structural requirements or constraints.The talk illustrates anti-structural change and discusses its consequences for the theory of language change.

In current classifications of semantic change, amelioration and pejoration are treated as major process types, along with generalization, specialization, metaphor, and metonymy. Amelioration and pejoration, however, pose a number of challenges which will be addressed in the paper: Both terms are notoriously ill-defined, there is a lack of sufficient empirical data, and it is not even clear whether both are semantic developments in their own right rather than mere by-products of other mechanisms such as metaphors or euphemisms. On the basis of historical dictionaries and corpora, it will be tried to provide some answers to these questions and to show how both phenomena fit into a broader picture of non-denotational meaning change.

The presentation departs from the observation that in expressing ideas, some languages encode more details than others. It investigates whether languages encode events and objects at a coarse-grained (e.g., put, glass) as opposed to a fine-grained (e.g., lay, wine glass) level systematically. The level of detail is termed granularity, which is viewed as a cline from fine-grained (semantic specificity) to coarse-grained meaning (semantic generality). Four languages are investigated: German, English, Greek, and Turkish. The study draws on elicited data from a naming task. The verbalization of events is based on event and object descriptions in selected semantic domains. The results reveal significant granularity effects between languages and language types (satellite-framed vs. verb-framed)..

In this paper we approach the study of topicalization in a corpus of medieval Spanish texts, with the challenge that prosodic clues are not available for the identification of different informational categories. In order to overcome this limitation, we have developed a diagnostic for the identification of sentence topics from their structural properties alone. This diagnostic allows us to distinguish between topicalization and similar structures that are not topics, such as fronted foci. Our results show that Medieval Castilian and present-day Spanish do not have the same topicalization strategies. Specifically, Medieval Castilian, like Latin, but unlike present-day Spanish, had the possibility of topicalizing the direct object and the indirect object without doubling by a pronominal clitic. The evidence that shows this crucial difference are peripheral sequences in which a direct or indirect object without duplication is the leftmost constituent of a sequence of different constituents and, consequently, cannot be a fronted focus.

A unique feature of Mauritian Creole's Serial Verb Constructions cited in recent literature is concordant subject marking. In Syea (2013), subject marking is shown to have different reflexes (single marking or concordant marking) depending on the status of the subject (referential, or pronominal). Muysken & Veenstra (2017) take it a step further and show that negation may be marked once or concordantly marked, and that this influences concordant subject marking. This work set out to establish more precisely the effects of concordant negation marking on concordant subject marking, both in the context of referential NPs and pronominals. Based on Muysken & Veenstra's (2017) work, as well as Syea's (2013) work, the grammaticality judgements obtained show a general weaking of rules towards consistent concordant marking, as well as a general preference against Serial Verb Constructions. Given the limited demographics of this study (three 25-year-old native speakers), this may show a development amongst the youth towards the non-use of Serial Verb Constructions in general.

This study aimed to generalize cognitive biases for homomorphism (the underlying hierarchical structure of elements in the noun phrase) and to test further typological predictions in syntactic models concerning noun phrase orders. Ten monolingually raised German speakers participated in an artificial language learning experiment. After a learning phase, participants performed a language perception task with the newly acquired artificial language where correctness and reaction times of their responses were recorded. Four distinct noun phrase orders were part of the experiment. They differed in four main factors which included homomorphism, similarity to German, allowed by Abels and Neeleman (no movements without affecting the noun) and allowed by Stabler (movements without affecting the noun allowed). The main hypotheses made the prediction to find less processing cost for homomorphic orders and orders allowed by Abels and Neeleman, while corresponding alternative hypotheses predicted orders that are more similar to German and orders allowed by Stabler to require fewer processing costs. Statistical analyses, however, do not yield significant results in correctness or reaction times. Exploratory analyses reveal individual differences attributable to language proficiency, differences throughout runs and varying item sets as well as significantly lower correctness rates for numerals and demonstratives as disambiguating elements in trials. This study contributes to psycholinguistic research on noun phrase processing by paving the way for further experimental research that explores differences between non-homomorphic, attested and unattested noun phrase orders, such as movement of subtrees that do or do not contain the noun, and for research that further illuminates the difference observed between noun modifiers as disambiguating elements.

In this talk, I am going to present my research in the field of lexical semantics. Contemporary dictionaries try to encapsulate the meaning of words and aim to make them easily available for both native and non-native speakers. But how accurate are these entries in relation to the actual usage of the word? The word in question is the German word "Melancholie", which translates as "melancholia". For my bachelor's thesis, I took a closer look at this exact word, its semantics and the attempts to define it in popular German dictionaries.

The Spanish pronoun usted ‘you (formal)’ is interpreted as second person but appears with third-person verb forms and pronominal clitics. In recent work, Arregi and Nevins (2018) claim that this pronoun is syntactically second person and that third-person agreement is due to postsyntactic impoverishment. Collins and Ordóñez (2021) challenge this analysis and instead defend the view that usted is an imposter like vuestra merced ‘your mercy’, its diachronic source. Based on novel diagnostics, including Person Case Constraint effects and pronoun-noun constructions, I argue in favour of Arregi and Nevin’s account. However, I consider there to be a more intuitive way to capture the interpretation of ustedes ‘you all’ in Latin American Spanish, which is used in both formal and informal contexts. This proposal can inform the analysis of lexicalized honorifics in other languages, such as Catalan vostè ‘you (formal)’ and Portuguese você ‘you’.

In this talk, I discuss the phenomenon where bare nouns (henceforth BNs) directly function as peripheral arguments, occupying the typical post-verbal object position in Mandarin Chinese, e.g., chi shitang (eat canteen) ‘eat at a/the canteen’, fei shanghai (fly Shanghai) ‘fly to Shanghai’. This structure exhibits the following properties: • The peripheral argument appears directly after the verb without any preposition, occupying the typical object position. • The peripheral argument is constituted by a bare noun, which cannot be modified by adjectives, and only in a few cases can it be modified by definite determiners. • The peripheral argumental BNs cannot co-occur with the object. • BNs are interpreted as locations or instruments, rather than direct objects. • This structure exclusively appears in verb projections without aspectual projections, and it is more commonly observed in non-finite contexts. These features are consistent with the view that BNs denote the name of kind, and that the verb+BN combination has a nominalizing tendency when lack context. Given the lack of spatial and temporal marker, it is argued that the formation of verb with a bare peripheral argument is also based on noun incorporation and the nominalization of the predicate. For transitive verbs, based on the covert dummy object, the peripheral argument serves as a modifier of the dummy object, semantically modifying the predicate event with the same intrepretation. Intransitive verbs can only receive locative case from the nominalization assigned by the event phrase level. Due to constraints of the non-marked form, BNs can only achieve the most blench and general locative interpretation, conveying either a dynamic "to" or a static "at" meaning. The occurrence of BNs as peripheral arguments of the predicate confirms the existence of a generic meaning for the BN. Without spatial restrictions from the definiteness layer and temporal restrictions from the aspectual layer, BNs lack instantation and individualization, referring to a name of kind within the encyclopedic system, thereby refining the name of event within the phrase. This verb+BN combination also receives a nominalizing interpretation at the event layer and refers to the name of a subkind event.

In this talk, I argue that there is a subclass of auxiliary verbs in Bokota. These verbs are used in auxiliary verb constructions (AVC) where they are grammaticalized to mark TAM informations. In the first part of this talk, I will show the evidence for the existence of a subclass of auxiliary verbs, as well as their characteristics and uses. This hypothesis has interesting implications from a typological point of view. Their distribution at the beginning of the VP is unexpected for an OV language, as these languages generally tend to prefer V Aux orders. I argue that this distribution, along with other unexpected word orders, is in fact consistent with Bokota's behaviour. I discuss these implications in the second part of this talk. In the last part of the talk, I will present two strategies for marking passive voice in Bokota. Both strategies use an auxiliary. This year's fieldwork has been the opportunity to test the passive interpretation of these constructions, and to observe the role of the auxiliaries.

It is a fundamental sociolinguistic insight that the ways we speak signal "who we are" and which social groups we (would like to) belong to. While this captures some of our identifications' fluidity and sensitivity to social context, linguistic ethnography enables a more finely grained account of positioning and identificatory sense-making in interaction. This is most evident in cases where language use and (ethno-national) self-identification do not conventionally match, such as for Georgia's Greek minority or self-identifying Germans in the post-Soviet space. While language competence and use are made relevant for multiple belongings, interviewees hold that membership in the central identificatory categories "Greek" and "German" is not necessarily indexed through language, but through ancestry, and often also through religion. For self-identifying Germans in post-Soviet countries, "being German" is furthermore shaped through and negotiated in the contexts of "self-organisations" that are funded by the German state.

In this talk,...

In this talk,...

Um eine Entität zu bezeichnen, die aus dem Kontext oder der Gesprächssituation bekannt ist, wird im Deutschen normalerweise ein Personalpronomen gebraucht. Eine solche Entität wird aber im Koreanischen gegebenfalls als Nomen realisiert (Was hast du zu ihm gesagt? vs. nwuna-nun mwue(s)-lako ha-ess-nuntey? ‘ältere.Schwester-TOP was-KONJ sag-PRÄT-Q’; Freuen Sie sich denn gar nicht? vs. thimcangnim-un kippu-cito anh-supni-kka? ‘Abteilungsleiter-TOP froh-ADVL nicht.sein-HON-Q’). In meinem Vortrag möchte ich also zeigen, welche nominalen Entsprechungen der deutschen Personalpronomina im Koreanischen zu finden sind, und in welchen kommunikativen Situationen bzw. unter welchen Bedingungen sie auftreten. Hierfür werden in deutschen und koreanischen Spielfilmen die Verwendung der deutschen Personalpronomina und deren nominalen Entsprechungen im Koreanischen verglichen. Dadurch lässt sich feststellen, dass im Koreanischen zum Ausdruck der bekannten Person in Bezug auf das soziale Verhältnis zum Sprecher ein Eigen- oder Gattungsname gebraucht werden kann.

My bachelor's thesis researches interferences that L1-German speakers experience with tense in conditional clause while using their L2 English, and does so by studying differences in speakers' perception and production of 4 error-prone features with an acceptance task and a translation task. The results of the study suggest that L1-German speakers often score higher on the perception task than on the production task, indicating that it seems to be easier for them to judge whether a given English structure is acceptable or not than to produce those acceptable structures.

In this talk, I discuss the split-ergativity in five Kurdic languages: Hewramî, Kurmancî, Lekî, Soranî and Zazakî. Ergative alignment of Kurdic languages will be compared with similar examples.

This talk is about the linguistic form of Greek-Arabic translations. The translation movement led to language change that will be explained by means of Greek names in Arabic, new phonetics and grammar, lexicographical examples, bilingualism and styles. A summary description can diachronically demonstrate how this transition had late antique influences on further linguistic developments in the history.