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Ancient Chinese poetry is constituted by structured language that deviates from ordinary language usage; its poetic genres impose unique combinatory constraints on linguistic elements. How does the constrained poetic structure facilitate speech segmentation when common linguistic and statistical cues are unreliable to listeners in poems? We generated artificial Jueju, which arguably has the most constrained structure in ancient Chinese poetry, and presented each poem twice as an isochronous sequence of syllables to native Mandarin speakers while conducting magnetoencephalography (MEG) recording. We found that listeners deployed their prior knowledge of Jueju to build the line structure and to establish the conceptual flow of Jueju. Unprecedentedly, we found a phase precession phenomenon indicating predictive processes of speech segmentation—the neural phase advanced faster after listeners acquired knowledge of incoming speech. The statistical co-occurrence of monosyllabic words in Jueju negatively correlated with speech segmentation, which provides an alternative perspective on how statistical cues facilitate speech segmentation. Our findings suggest that constrained poetic structures serve as a temporal map for listeners to group speech contents and to predict incoming speech signals. Listeners can parse speech streams by using not only grammatical and statistical cues but also their prior knowledge of the form of language.
The project Referenzkorpus Altdeutsch (‘Old German Reference Corpus’) aims to es- tablish a deeply-annotated text corpus of all extant Old German texts. As the automated part-of-speech and morphological pre-annotation is amended by hand, a quality control system for the results seems a desirable objective. To this end, standardized inflectional forms, generated using the morphological information, are compared with the attested word forms. Their creation is described by way of example for the Old High German part of the corpus. As is shown, in a few cases, some features of the attested word forms are also required in order to determine as exactly as possible the shape of the inflected lemma form to be created.
Meaning in interaction
(2024)
This editorial to the Special Issue on “Meaning in Interaction” introduces to the approach of Interactional Semantics, which has been developed over the last years within the framework of Interactional Linguistics. It discusses how “meaning” is understood and approached in this framework and lays out that Interactional Semantics is interested in how participants clarify and negotiate the meanings of the expressions that they are using in social interaction. Commonalities and differences of this approach with other approaches to meaning are flagged, and the intellectual origins and precursors of Interactional Semantics are introduced. The contributions to the Special Issue are located in the larger field of research.
The availability of electronic corpora of historical stages of languages has been wel- comed as possibly attenuating the inherent problem of diachronic linguistics, i.e. that we only have access to what has chanced to come down to us - the problem which was memorably named by Labov (1992) as one of “Bad Data”. However, such corpora can only give us access to an increased amount ot historical material and this can essentially still only be a partial and possibly distorted picture of the actual language at a particular period of history. Corpora can be improved by taking a more representative sample of extant texts if these are available (as they are in significant number for periods after the invention of printing). But, as examples from the recently compiled GerManC corpus of seventeenth and eighteenth century German show, the evidence from such corpora can still fail to yield definitive answers to our questions about earlier stages of a language. The data still require expert interpretation, and it is important to be realistic about what can legitimately be expected from an electronic historical corpus.
Multi-faceted alignment. Toward automatic detection of textual similarity in Gospel-derived texts
(2015)
Ancient Germanic Bible-derived texts stand in as test material for producing computational means for automatically determining where textual contamination and linguistic interference have influenced the translation process. This paper reports on the results of research efforts that produced a text corpus; a method for decomposing the texts involved into smaller, more directly comparable thematically-related chunks; a database of relationships between these chunks; and a user-interface allowing for searches based on various referential criteria. Finally, the state of the product at the end of the project is discussed, namely as it was handed over to another researcher who has extended it to automatically find semantic and syntactic similarities within comparable chunks.
In this paper we present some preliminary considerations concerning the possibility of automatic parsing an annotated corpus for N-N compounds. This should in prin- ciple be possible at least for relational and stereotype compounds, if the lemmatization of the corpus connects the lemmata with lexical entries as described in Höhle (1982). These lexical entries then supply the necessary information about the argument structure of a relational noun or about the stereotypical purpose associated with the noun’s referent which can be used to establish a relation between the first and the head constituent of the compound.
The relative order of dative and accusative objects in older German is less free than it is today. The reason for this could be that speakers of the direct predecessor of Old High German organized the referents according to the Thematic Hierarchy. If one applies a Case Hierarchy Nom>Acc>Dat to this, the order Nom - Dat - Acc falls out. It becomes apparent that the status of the Thematic Hierarchy is not a factor governing underlying word order, but a factor inducing scrambling. Arguments from binding theory, whose validity is discussed, indicate that the underlying order is ‘accusative before dative’
Recent typological studies have shown that socio-linguistic factors have a substantial effect on at least certain structures of language. However, we are still far from understanding how such factors should be operationalized and how they interact with other factors in shaping grammar. To address both questions, this study examines the influence of socio-linguistic factors on the number of dedicated conditional constructions in a sample of 374 languages. We test the number of speakers, the degree of multilingualism, the availability of a literature tradition, the use of writing, and the use of the language in the education system. At the same time, we control for genealogical, contact, and bibliographical biases. Our results suggest that the number of speakers is the most informative predictor. However, we find that the association between the number of speakers and the number of dedicated conditional constructions is much weaker than assumed, once genealogical and contact biases are controlled for.
A constructicon, i.e., a structured inventory of constructions, essentially aims at documenting functions of lexical and grammatical constructions. Among other parameters, so-called constructional collo-profiles, as introduced by Herbst (2018, 2020), are conclusive for determining constructional meanings. They provide information on how relevant individual words are for construction slots, they hint at usage preferences of constructions and serve as a helpful indicator for semantic peculiarities of constructions. However, even though collo-profiles constitute an indispensable component of constructicon entries, they pose major challengers for constructicographers: For a constructicographic enterprise it is not feasible to conduct collostructional analyses for hundreds or even thousands of constructions. In this article, we introduce a procedure based on the large language model BERT that allows to predict collo-profiles without having to extensively annotate instances of constructions in a given corpus. Specifically, by discussing the constructions X macht Y ADJP (‘x makes Y ADJ’, e.g. he drives him crazy) and N1 PREP N1 (e.g., bumper to bumper, constructions over constructions), we show how the developed automated system generates collo-profiles based on a limited number of annotated instances. Finally, we place collo-profiles alongside other dimensions of constructional meanings included in the German Constructicon.
Latvia
(2019)
This chapter deals with current issues in bilingual education in the framework of language and educational policies in Latvia, and also outlines similarities or common tendencies in the two other Baltic states, Estonia and Lithuania. As commonly understood in the 21st century, the term ‘bilingual education’ includes ‘multilingual education, as the umbrella term to cover a wide spectrum of practice and policy’ (García, 2009: 9).
The idea of this article is to take the immaterial and somehow ethereal nature of aesthetic concepts seriously by asking how aesthetic concepts are negotiated and thus formed in communication. My examples come from theatrical production where aesthetic decisions naturally play a major role. In the given case, an aesthetic concept is introduced with which only the director, but none of the actors is familiar in the beginning of the rehearsals. The concept, Wabi Sabi, comes from Japanese culture. As the whole rehearsal process was video recorded, it is possible to track the process of how the concept is negotiated and acquired over time. So, instead of defining criteria what Wabi Sabi as an aesthetic concept “consists of,” this article seeks to show how the concept is introduced, explained and “used” within a practical context, in this case a theater rehearsal. In contrast to conventional models of aesthetic experience, I am interested in the ways in which an aesthetic concept is configured in and through socially organized interaction, and — vice versa — how that interaction contributes to the situational accomplishment of the same concept. In short: I am interested in the “doing” of aesthetic concepts, especially in “doing Wabi Sabi.”
In this article, we provide an insight into the development and application of a corpus-lexicographic tool for finding neologisms that are not yet listed in German dictionaries. As a starting point, we used the words listed in a glossary of German neologisms surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. These words are lemma candidates for a new dictionary on COVID-19 discourse in German. They also provided the database used to develop and test the NeoRate tool. We report on the lexicographic work in our dictionary project, the design and functionalities of NeoRate, and describe the first test results with the tool, in particular with regard to previously unregistered words. Finally, we discuss further development of the tool and its possible applications.
The ubiquity of smartphones has been recognised within conversation analysis as having an impact on conversational structures and on the participants’ interactional involvement. However, most of the previous studies have relied exclusively on video recordings of overall encounters and have not systematically considered what is taking place on the device. Due to the personal nature of smartphones and their small displays, onscreen activities are of limited visibility and are thus potentially opaque for both the co-present participants (“participant opacity”) and the researchers (“analytical opacity”). While opacity can be an inherent feature of smartphones in general, analytical opacity might not be desirable for research purposes. This chapter discusses how a recording set-up consisting of static cameras, wearable cameras and dynamic screen captures allowed us to address the analytical opacity of mobile devices. Excerpts from multi-source video data of everyday encounters will illustrate how the combination of multiple perspectives can increase the visibility of interactional phenomena, reveal new analytical objects and improve analytical granularity. More specifically, these examples will emphasise the analytical advantages and challenges of a combined recording set-up with regard to smartphone use as multiactivity, the role of the affordances of the mobile device, and the prototypicality and “naturalness” of the recorded practices.
Our paper discusses family language policies among multilingual families in Latvia with Russian as home language. The presentation is based on three case studies, i.e. interviews conducted with Russophones who have chosen to send their children to Latvian-medium pre-schools and schools. The main aim is to understand practices and regards among such families “from below,” i.e. which family-internal and family-external factors influenced the choice of Latvian-medium education and what impact this choice has on linguistic practices.
The paper shows that there have been critical events which both encouraged and discouraged the choice of Latvian-medium education. The wish to integrate into mainstream society has been met by obstacles both from ethnic Russians and Latvians. Yet, the three families consider their choices to be the right ones for the future development of their children in a multiethnic Latvia in which Latvian serves as the unifying language of society.
Aims and objectives:
Language debates in Latvia often focus on the role of Latvian as official and main societal language. Yet, Latvian society is highly multilingual, and families with home languages other than Latvian have to choose between different educational trajectories for their children. In this context, this paper discusses the results of two studies which addressed the question of why families with Russian as a home language choose (pre)schools with languages other than Russian as medium of instruction (MOI). The first study analyses family narratives which provide insight into attitudes and practices which lead to the decision to send children to Latvian-MOI institutions. The second study investigates language attitudes and practices by families in the international community of Riga German School.
Methodology:
The paper discusses data gathered during two studies: for the first, semi-structed interviews were conducted with Russian-speaking families who choose Latvian-medium schools for their children. For the second study, a survey was carried out in the community of an international school in Riga, sided by ethnographic observations and interviews with teachers and the school leadership.
Data and analysis:
Interviews and ethnographic observations were subjected to a discourse analysis with a focus on critical events and structures of life trajectory narratives. Survey data were processed following simple statistical analysis and qualitative content analysis.
Findings/conclusions:
Our data reveal that families highly embrace multilingualism and see the development of individual plurilingualism as important for integration into Latvian society as well as for educational and professional opportunities in the multilingual societies of Latvia and Europe. At the same time, multilingualism and multiculturalism, including Russian, are seen as a value in itself. In addition, our studies reflect the bidirectionality of family language policies in interplay with practices in educational institutions: family decisions influence children’s language acquisition at school, but the school also has an impact on the families’ language practices at home. In sum, we argue that educational policies should therefore pay justice to the wishes of families in Latvia to incorporate different language aspects into individual educational trajectories.
Originality:
Language policy is a frequent topic of investigation in the Baltic states. However, there has been a lack in research on family language policy and school choices. In this vein, our paper adds to the understanding of educational choices and language policy processes among Russian-speaking families and the international community in Latvia.
Introduction
(2023)
We argue that properties with a nominal origin get transferred regularly in certain Gentian particle verb constructions to properties that are propositional insofar as they characterize the temporal structure of eventualities, understood to be described by propositional (= truth-assessable) representations of state changes. Accordingly, the oft-noted perfectivizing function of certain verbal particles like ein- in einfahren ('pull in', cf. Kühnhold 1972) is the effect of redressing a conflict at the syntax-semantics interface: On the one hand, constructions like in [die Grube]acc einfahren ('pull into the mine’) exhibit transitive syntax (Gehrke 2008), requiring that the syntactic arguments be mapped onto well-distinguished or DIFFERENT referents in the semantics (Kemmer 1993). On the other hand, in/ein codes a spatio-temporal inclusion relation between its relata, contradicting the requirement imposed by the transitive syntax. Following Brandt (2019), we submit that the interface executes a manoeuvre that delays the interpretation of part of the contradiction-inducing DIFFERENCE feature. It is not locally interpreted (semantically represented) in toto but in part passed on to the next syntactic-semantic computational cycle. Here, the passed-on meaning is interpreted in the locally customary terms, in the case at hand, as a temporal index where the post-state of the depicted eventuality does not hold.
The internationally renowned conference of the European Association for Lexicography (EURALEX) has taken place every two years for the past 39 years. Last year’s conference, held July 12th–16th, 2022, marked EURALEX’s 20th edition, and more than 200 international participants gathered at Mannheim Palace to discuss current developments, learn about new projects, and present their own work — either in lexicography or in one of the many applied or neighboring disciplines such as corpus and computational linguistics.