Language, Context and Cognition - Böcker

The first volume of the series is devoted to the subjects "information structure" and "contrast". The working hypothesis is that, apart from the use of lexical indication, the expression of contrast vs. correction is primarily carried by the intonation contour as a means for indicating scope and focus in negating constructions. The papers in this volume proceed from the premise that the information structure is preformed conceptually, and on articulation in the dynamic context is then portioned and linearized, mapped onto the syntactic representation via the semantic representation, and finally realized intonationally. The findings are partly based on neurolinguistic and psycholinguistic experiments.

Focusing on English and German examples, the study deals with the temporal interpretation of texts in non-aspect languages. The author presumes that a coherent interpretation of a text results from a complex interaction between linguistic and extra-linguistic information. The study presents a unified account of the semantics of temporality which treats the varying grammatical factors (aspectual classes, tense, and discourse structure) in a systematic way.

This book contains a collection of cutting-edge papers on methodological aspects of prosody research. Current approaches to the gathering, treatment, and interpretation of prosodic data are discussed by experts in the field, illustrated by their own empirical research. Contributions focus on the choice and measurement of prosodic parameters, the establishment of prosodic categories, annotation structures for spoken-language data, and experimental methods for production and perception studies (including the construction of materials, modes of presentation, online vs. offline tasks, judgement scales, data processing, and statistical evaluation). The volume will serve as a handbook linking data collection and interpretation, allowing researchers in linguistics and related fields to make more informed decisions concerning their empirical work in prosody.

The monograph explains how the lack of a ‘nominal article’ category in some Slavic languages influences nominal reference and textual coherence. The book demonstrates that the missing category cannot be represented by the absence of the functional category D0, but that a phonologically empty category with the meaning of the semantic default determiner must be assumed. Otherwise, syntactically and semantically well-formed sentences could not be generated. The semantic default determiner is only specified contextually when the DP with a fixed function in a sentence combines the aspect of the verb and a defined position within the information structure of the sentence. These factors establish the reference of the DPs as well as their discourse-pragmatic potential.The book follows the two-level semantic system of the modular grammars of the Slavic languages. The syntactic structures are mapped onto compositionally constructed semantic structures that are interpreted conceptually. This means that grammatical knowledge is strictly separated from extra-linguistic knowledge, which helps to interpret the utterance meanings in coherent texts.

This volume addresses the problem of how language expresses conceptual information on event structures and how such information can be reconstructed in the interpretation process. The papers present important new insights into recent semantic and syntactic research on the topic. The volume deals with the following problems in detail: event structure and syntactic construction, event structure and modification, event structure and plurality, event structure and temporal relation, event structure and situation aspect, and event structure and language ontology. Importantly, the topic is discussed not only on the basis of English and German but on the basis of other languages including Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, and Igbo as well. This volume thus provides solid evidence towards clarifying the empirical use of event based analyses.

The volume contains articles that focus on the interface between linguistic and conceptual knowledge. The issues addressed in the volume include the preconditions of every level of the language system that are required for the transformation of linguistic information into conceptual representations. In accordance with Chomsky’s Minimalist language model, the language system is embedded into the performative systems where language is a part of the cognitive competence of human beings, i.e. system of articulation and perception (A/P) and the conceptual-intentional system (C/I). During the formation of linguistic structures, every performative system obtains well-formed representations as its input information. The articles of the volume show how interface conditions determine the linguistic representations on each level of the linguistic system. Interface conditions result in requirements for the ordering of linguistic elements. The syntactic transformation achieves a point, where the linguistic structure formation branches to two distinct representational levels. Both levels deliver instructions for the systems of performance A/P and C/I. Linearization takes place on the syntactic surface of a sentence. The linearization of linguistic elements is manifest at the derivational point of Spell-out and also on the level of the phonological form (PF). This means that on the one hand, linearization is relevant to the phonetic aspect of linguistic expressions, and on the other hand, the interpretation of linguistic utterances is based on hierarchical structures. On the level of Logical Form (LF) all operations apply which don’t have any influence on the linear order in overt syntax. In addition they affect the generation of hierarchical structures. The structure obtained on LF is the representational format of the semantic form of a sentence.

The volume demonstrates the interdependence of man’s language capacity and his other conceptual capacities. This enables linguistic structures to be minimalised, and for extra-linguistic domains to provide much of the interpretations of sound and meaning. Underspecification is demonstrated in the word formation of Indo-European, Late Archaic Chinese and modern Khmer; on the word- and sentence levels by the event structures of German; and in the information structure predominantly of languages with the so-called free word order: German, Slavic languages, Arabic compared with English and the tone language Hausa. The volume is noteworthy due to the close cooperation between theoretical and experimental research. Within grammar, it has especially strengthened prosodic research and the syntax-phonology interrelations and their interpretations, and it has helped to create data bases for the relations within texts and to evaluate the findings.

In the last few years a lively discussion on information packaging has arisen, where traditional dichotomies Theme/Rheme, Topic/Comment and Focus/Background have been taken up again and partly reinterpreted. The discussion is mainly being held in syntax, but also in the fields of semantics and pragmatics. Some remarkable progress has been made especially in Focus phonology.Even if the role of information conveying and information packaging in the Indoeuropean languages was hinted at as early as in the classical studies of the Neogrammarians, this field has remained neglected in today's historical linguistics. This volume tries to partly cover this lack with a sample of papers which offer a various range of new empirical data analyzed from the point of view of information structure. The novelty of the papers consists in the modern theoretical perspective from which the data are analyzed and in the various phenomena considered, which range from the rise of clitic elements to word order change and verb movement.Editorial boardDr. habil. Kai Alter (Newcastle University Medical School)Prof. Dr. Ulrike Demske (Universität des Saarlandes)Prof. Dr. Ewald Lang (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)Prof. Dr. Rosemarie Lühr (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena)Prof. Dr. Thomas Pechmann (Universität Leipzig)Prof. em. Dr. Anita Steube (Universität Leipzig)

This book presents work on bridging inferences in discourse interpretation. It develops a formalization that permits integrating indirect anaphora in the construction of a structured discourse representation. From a broader perspective, it provides a suitable dynamic-logic framework which can account for underspecifications in cohesion and coherence of discourses by either inferentially resolving or contextually constraining them. Special attention is given to the resolution of bridging anaphora by means of integrating encyclopedic knowledge encoded in FrameNet into a formal theory of discourse structure as provided by Segmented Discourse Representation Theory. A second focus lies on the discourse effects of Clitic Left Dislocation in Spanish. In addition, the book provides a synopsis of the problems, methods, approaches, and desiderata of research on text, context, and discourse interpretation from formal, computational, cognitive, and psychological points of view. Central topics include pragmatic inferences and defeasible reasoning, the Common Ground, cohesion and anaphora resolution, coherence and discourse structure, and discourse interpretation. The volume may thus also serve as a reference book on text meaning and context.

This book investigates specific syntactic means of event elaborationacross seven Indo-European languages (English, German, Norwegian,French, Russian, Latin and Ancient Greek): bare and comitative smallclauses (“absolutes”), participle constructions and related clause-like butnon-finite adjuncts that increase descriptive granularity with respect toconstitutive parts of the matrix event (elaboration in the narrowestsense), or describe eventualities that are co-located and connectedwith but not part of the matrix event. The book falls in twoparts. Part I addresses central theoretical issues: How is the co-eventiveinterpretation of such adjuncts achieved? What is the internal syntax ofparticipial and converb constructions? How do these constructionsfunction at the discourse level, as compared to various finite structuresthat are available for co-eventive elaboration? Part II takes an empiricalcross-linguistic perspective. It consists of five self-contained chapters thatare based on parallel corpora and study either the use of a specificconstruction across at least two of the seven object languages, or how aspecific construction is rendered in other languages.

The volume represents a state-of-the-art snapshot of the research on prosody for phoneticians, linguists and speech technologists. It covers well-known models and languages. How are prosodies linked to speech sounds? What are the relations between prosody and grammar? What does speech perception tell us about prosody, particularly about the constituting elements of intonation and rhythm? The papers of the volume address questions like these with a special focus on how the notion of context-based coding, the knowledge of prosodic functions and the communicative embedding of prosodic elements can advance our understanding of prosody.

Currently, there is a great number of approaches to the semantics-pragmatics distinction on the market. This book is unique in that it offers a comprehensive overview, comparison and critical evaluation of these approaches. Taking as a starting point the notorious difficulty of differentiating so-called literal from non-literal (or figurative) meaning, it covers a wide range of the key current topics in semantics and pragmatics, e.g., the saying/meaning distinction, minimalism vs. contextualism, unarticulated constituents, indexicalism, (generalised) conversational implicatures, speech acts, levels of meaning in interpretation, the role of context in interpretation, the nature of lexical meaning. Notably, rather than taking a solely theoretical perspective, the book integrates psycho- and neurolinguistic perspectives, considering experimental results concerning the (differences in) processing of the various types of meaning covered. In terms of topics covered and perspectives taken, it is equally well suited for undergraduate as well as postgraduate students of linguistics and/or philosophy of language.

Beim Sprachverstehen wird auf phonologisches Wissen zugegriffen. Dieses umfasst nicht nur die Lautkategorien, sondern – als phonotaktisches Wissen – auch Prinzipien und Grenzen der sprachlautlichen Kombinatorik. Die kognitive Realität phonotaktischer Constraints ist in der empirischen Forschung jedoch umstritten und ihre Rolle im Sprachverstehen bisher nicht erschöpfend untersucht. Ziel dieses Buches ist es, mit elektrophysiologischen Verfahren Evidenz für einen automatischen Zugriff auf phonotaktisches Wissen in der Sprachverarbeitung beizusteuern. Hierzu werden theoretische Konstrukte der Phonologie innovativ mit methodologischen Paradigmen der Wahrnehmungspsychologie in Beziehung gebracht. In fünf Experimenten sind deutsche Probanden mit verschiedenen phonotaktisch legalen und illegalen Silben stimuliert worden, während ihre hirnelektrische Aktivität aufgezeichnet wurde. Die Ergebnisse bestätigen, dass phonotaktisches Wissen automatisch in den sublexikalischen Sprachverarbeitungsprozess involviert ist, und ermöglichen darüber hinaus eine kritische Evaluation der angewendeten Methodologie. Mit seinem interdisziplinären Ansatz richtet sich das Werk zugleich an Vertreter aus Phonologie, Phonetik und Psycholinguistik.

The present volume offers a selection of papers on current issues in Slavic languages. It takes stock of the past 20 years of linguistic research at the Department of Slavic Studies at Leipzig University. Within these two decades, the scientific writing, teaching, and organization done in this Department strengthened the mode of research in formal description of Slavic languages, formed another center for this kind of linguistic research in the world, and brought about a remarkable amount of scientific output. The authors of this volume are former or present members of the Department of Slavic studies or academic friends. Based on the data from East, West, and South Slavic languages, the papers tackle issues of all grammatical subdisciplines in current models of description, compare parts of the grammars of Slavic languages, explain categories and phrases in Slavic languages that do not exist in present-day Indogermanic languages of Western Europe, and propose ways how to update the standard of lexicography in still less described Slavic languages. A study of language competence is dedicated to the actual requests on heritage speakers and shows how their abilities can be evaluated.