Open Access

Lexicographers working with minority languages face many challenges. When the language in question is also a sign language, circumstances specific to the visual-spatial modality have to be taken into consideration as well. In this paper, we aim to show and discuss which challenges we encounter while compiling the Digitales Wörterbuch der Deutschen Gebärdensprache (DW-DGS), the first corpus-based dictionary of German Sign Language (DGS). Some parallel the challenges minority language lexicographers of spoken languages encounter, e. g. few resources, no written tradition, and having to create one dictionary for all potential user groups, while others are specific to sign languages, e. g. representation of visual-spatial language and creating access structures for the dictionary.

This paper focuses on so called syntactic projection phenomena in the German language. This term from the German Gesprächsforschung is used to define the fact that an utterance or part of it foreshadows another one. This paper aims at pointing out how such projection phenomena are consciously exploited for rhethorical purposes. This will be observed on the basis of excerpts from the Stuttgart 21 mediation talks. The linguistic analysis carried out in this paper will focus on syntactic projection phenomena involving the use of causal adverbial connectives deshalb and deswegen.

Post-field syntax and focalization strategies in National Socialist political speech. This paper deals with a syntactic feature of spoken German, i.e. post-field filling, and with its occurrence in one specific discourse type – political speech – throughout one significant period of the history of German language – National Socialism. This paper aims at pointing out the communicative pragmatic function of right dislocation in the NS political speech on the basis of some collected examples.

Dieser Beitrag möchte einen Überblick über die Rolle geben, die die Regionalsprache Lettgallisch im Bildungssektor im Baltikum spielt. Zum einen soll in groben Zügen die historische gesellschaftliche Entwicklung des Lettgallischen mit einem Schwerpunkt auf dem Bildungsbereich dargestellt werden, zum anderen werden Entwicklungen der letzten Jahre diskutiert, in denen Diskurse und Einstellungen zum Lettgallischen eine Wandlung durchlaufen. Der theoretische Rahmen dafür sind internationale Diskussionen zu Regional- und Minderheitensprachen sowie Debatten in der Bildungspolitik. Damit soll nicht zuletzt Aufmerksamkeit für das Lettgallische in der deutschsprachigen Wahrnehmung des Baltikums generiert werden, das in einem Kompendium zu Bildungsgeschichte(n) im Baltikum nicht fehlen darf. Nach einer kurzen Einführung in die Region Lettgallen (Latgale) und das Lettgallische folgen aktuelle Beispiele für den sich ändernden Gebrauch des Lettgallischen und seine Einordung in Diskurse zu Minderheitensprachen. Schließlich wird auf jüngste politische Entwicklungen eingegangen, etwa im Kontext der Ausarbeitung neuer Lehrstandards für die staatlichen Schulen in Lettland.

This paper focusss on the first Slavonic-Romanian lexicons, compiled in the second half of the 17th century and their use(rs), proposing a method of investigating the manner in which lexical information available in the above corpus relates, if at all, to the vocabulary of texts from the same period. We chose to investigate their relation to an anonymous Old Testament translation made from Church Slavonic, also from the second half of the 17th century, which was supposed to be produced in the same geographical area, in the same Church Slavonic school or even by the same author as the lexicons. After applying a lemmatizer on both the Biblical text (Books of Genesis and Daniel) and the Romanian material from the lexicons, we analyse the results and double the statistical analysis with a series of case studies, focusing on some common lexemes that might be an indicator of the relatedness of the texts. Even if the analysis points out that the lexicons might not have been compiled as a tool for the translation of religious texts, it proves to be a useful method that reveals interesting data and provides the basis for more extensive approaches.