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Gestures can be brief and compact in their execution, but also elaborate and extended. One way to utilise this kinetic flexibility is to extend one’s gesture in time by holding it in its stroke position. This study explores the interactional function of gestural holds by investigating pointing gestures that are sustained beyond a sequence-initiating turn and into the responsive space following it. The study draws on video data from naturally occurring conversations in German and focuses on held pointing gestures after instructions and questions. It is shown that in both action environments, participants delay gestural closure to indicate that they still consider the addressee’s response to be insufficient.
The article deals with communicative failures of journalists in “YouTube” celebrity video interviews in the Ukrainian and German linguacultures from the point of view of social interaction and the theory of speech genres at all structural levels of the communicative genre construction, establishing common and distinctive features in both linguacultures. The analysis made it possible to conclude that behind a language (speech) failure there is a violation caused by a journalist, a respondent, or an external noise.
Der Beitrag setzt sich mit dem Problem der Ermahnung und ihrer Realisierungsmittel auseinander. Die Analyse verortet sich im Bereich der Pragmalinguistik. Es wird der Versuch unternommen, das spektrum an Ausdrucksmitteln festzustellen, das Sprecher in der Regel zum Ausdruck von Ermahnungen verwenden. Es handelt sich dabei um spezifische Mittel, durch die der sprecher seine Einstellung zum Adressaten zeigt, seine Position und Ermächtigung unterstreicht.
Ist Deutsch eigentlich die hässlichste Sprache Europas? Dieser Beitrag analysiert, wie die deutsche Sprache im europäischen Raum ästhetisch wahrgenommen wird und was hinter dieser Wahrnehmung sprachwissenschaftlich gesehen steckt.
Die Studie kombiniert qualitative und quantitative Forschungsmethoden miteinander. So werden auf der einen Seite Sprachurteile dokumentiert und analysiert. Auf der anderen Seite wird die durchgeführte europaweite Befragung mit über 2000 Proband*innen ausgewertet, was gleichzeitig einen methodischen Ausgangspunkt für weitere Erhebungen festlegt.
Überwiegt die Wahrnehmung des Deutschen als „harte“ Sprache wirklich? Ist „hart“ denn direkt „hässlich“? Und ist die Wahrnehmung mancher Sprachen als besonders reizlos tatsächlich nur gesellschaftlich konstruiert, wie der bisherige Stand der Forschung nahelegt, oder spielen universelle kognitive Prozesse doch eine größere Rolle als gedacht? Basierend auf einem beträchtlichen Datensatz wirft diese Studie neues Licht auf eine der umstrittensten und methodisch herausforderndsten Kontroversen der Linguistik.
Rejecting the validity of inferred attributions of incompetence in German talk-in-interaction
(2024)
This paper deals with pragmatic inference from the perspective of Conversation Analysis. In particular, we examine a specific variety of inferences - the attribution of incompetence which Self constructs on the basis of Other's prior action, hearable as positioning Self as incompetent (e.g., instructions, offers of assistance, advice); this attribution of incompetence concerns Self's execution of some practical task. This inference is indexed in Self's response, which highlights Self's expertise, or competence concerning the task at hand. We focus on two recurrent types of such responses in our data: (i) accounting for competence through formulations of prior experience with carrying out a practical action and (ii) explicit claims of competence for accomplishing this action. We analyze the interactional environments in which these responses occur, the ways in which the two practices index Self's understanding of being positioned as incompetent and the interactional work they do. Finally, we discuss how through rejecting and inferred attribution of incompetence, Self implicitly seeks to restore their face and defend their autonomy as an agent, yet, without entering an explicit identity-negotiation. Findings rest on the analysis of 20 cases found in video-recordings of naturally occurring talk-in-interaction in German from the corpus FOLK.
This presentation deals with collaborative turn-sequences (Lerner 2004), a syntactically coherent unit of talk that is jointly formulated by at least two speakers, in Czech and German everyday conversations. Based on conversation analysis (e.g., Schegloff 2007) and a multimodal approach to social interaction (e.g., Deppermann/Streeck 2018), we aim at comparing recurrent patterns and action types within co-constructional sequences in both languages. The practice of co-constructing turns-at-talk has been described for typologically different languages, especially for English (e.g., Lerner 1996, 2004), but also for languages such as Japanese (Hayashi 2003) or Finnish (Helasvuo 2004). For German, various forms and functions of co-constructions have already been investigated (e.g., Brenning 2015); for Czech, a detailed, interactionally based description is still pending (but see some initial observations in, e.g., Hoffmannová/Homoláč/Mrázková (eds.) 2019). Although the existence of co-constructions in different languages points to a cross-linguistic conversational practice, few explicitly comparative studies exist (see, e.g., Lerner/Takagi 1999, for English and Japanese). The language pair Czech-German has mainly been studied with respect to language contact and without specifically considering spoken language or complex conversational sequences (e.g., Nekula/Šichová/Valdrová 2013). Therefore, our second aim is to sketch out a first comparison of co-constructional sequences in German and Czech, thereby contributing to the growing field of comparative and cross-linguistic studies within conversation analysis (e.g., Betz et al. (eds.) 2021; Dingemanse/Enfield 2015; Sidnell (ed.) 2009). More specifically, we will present three main sequential patterns of co-constructional sequences, focusing on the type of action a second speaker carries out by completing a first speaker’s possibly incomplete turn-at-talk, and on how the initial speaker then responds to
this suggested completion (Lerner 2004). Excerpts from video recordings of Czech and German ordinary conversations will illustrate these recurrent co-constructional sequence types, i.e., offering help during word searches (see example 1 above), displaying understanding, or claiming independent knowledge. The third objective of this paper is to underline the participants’ orientation to similar interactional problems, solved by specific syntactic and/or lexical formats in Czech and German. Considering the more recent focus on the embodied dimension of co-constructional practices (e.g., Dressel 2020), we will also investigate the multimodal formatting of a started utterance as more or less “permeable” (Lerner 1996) for co-participant completion, the participants’ mutual embodied orientation, and possible embodied responses to others’ turn-completions (such as head nods or eyebrow flashes, cf. De Stefani 2021). More generally, this contribution reflects on the possibilities and challenges of a cross-linguistic comparison of complex multimodal sequences.
Seit einigen Jahren beschäftigt sich der sprachwissenschaftliche Ansatz der „Linguistic Landscapes“ mit der systematischen Erforschung von sprachlichen und anderen Zeichen in der Öffentlichkeit. Welche Sprachen sehen wir wo? Welche Zeichen drücken politische Meinungen aus? Wie schafft Werbung Realitäten? Wo gibt es Gegenreaktionen zu offiziell sanktionierten sprachlichen Ausdrucksweisen?
Diese Monografie setzt sich neu mit Laiengedanken zur deutschen Sprache auseinander. Mit einem kleinen, aber aussagekräftigen Korpus von rund 480 schriftlichen Äußerungen muttersprachlicher und nichtmuttersprachlicher Laien zwischen 1992 und 2023 fokussiert sie sich durch viele Detailanalysen erstens auf Themen, die Laien bewegen, zweitens auf Argumente, die Laien zur Bekräftigung ihrer Ansichten anführen, und drittens auf Ausdruckstopoi, mit denen Laien argumentieren.
Die Monografie ist Ideengeber vor allem für linguistische, soziolinguistische, psychologische und gesellschaftspolitische Projekte zum Laiendiskurs im öffentlichen Raum, speziell für Projekte zu brisanten, aktuell heftig diskutierten Themen wie Antirassismus und Gendern, für Projekte zu Anglizismen, für Projekte zu Sprachwandel, Sprachverfall, Sprachpflege und Sprachpurismus, für Projekte zu Jugendsprache und Generation sowie für Projekte zur Sprache als Herrschaftsinstrument.
Das Thema genderinklusive Sprache ist mittlerweile nicht nur Gegenstand regelmäßiger Umfragen, Presseartikel oder Talksendungen, sondern auch von Volksinitiativen. In Baden-Württemberg beispielsweise veranstaltet Klaus Hekking, Initiator des Volksbegehrens Stoppt Gendern in Baden-Württemberg, eine Radtour gegen Gendern, um Unterschriften zu sammeln (die Initiative wurde allerdings vom Innenministerium gestoppt). Auch in Hamburg lief 2023 eine Volksinitiative namens „Schluss mit Gendersprache in Verwaltung und Bildung“, die vom „Verein Deutsche Sprache“ initiiert und von der Hamburger CDU unterstützt wurde. Die Initiative hat fast 17.000 Unterschriften gesammelt und überregionale mediale Aufmerksamkeit bekommen.
Less than one percent of words would be affected by gender-inclusive language in German press texts
(2024)
Research on gender and language is tightly knitted to social debates on gender equality and non-discriminatory language use. Psycholinguistic scholars have made significant contributions in this field. However, corpus-based studies that investigate these matters within the context of language use are still rare. In our study, we address the question of how much textual material would actually have to be changed if non-gender-inclusive texts were rewritten to be gender-inclusive. This quantitative measure is an important empirical insight, as a recurring argument against the use of gender-inclusive German is that it supposedly makes written texts too long and complicated. It is also argued that gender-inclusive language has negative effects on language learners. However, such effects are only likely if gender-inclusive texts are very different from those that are not gender-inclusive. In our corpus-linguistic study, we manually annotated German press texts to identify the parts that would have to be changed. Our results show that, on average, less than 1% of all tokens would be affected by gender-inclusive language. This small proportion calls into question whether gender-inclusive German presents a substantial barrier to understanding and learning the language, particularly when we take into account the potential complexities of interpreting masculine generics.
Dieser Werkstattbericht zeigt anhand verschiedener korpusbasierter Ressourcen, wie Fragen zu sprachlichen Phänomenen, die für Sprachlernende nicht oder nur unzureichend dokumentiert sind, empirisch beantwortet werden können. Besonderes Augenmerk wird dabei auf OWIDplusLIVE gelegt. Hierbei handelt es sich um ein Werkzeug zur tagesaktuellen Analyse von Token (einzelne Wortformen/Lemmata) und Bi-/Trigrammen (zwei bzw. drei direkt aufeinander folgende Token). Über eine Anbindung an KorAP können zudem Belege aus dem DeReKo (Deutsches Referenzkorpus) abgerufen und analysiert werden.
It is a ubiquitous phenomenon of everyday interaction that participants confront their co-participants for behaviour that they assess as undesirable or in some other way untoward. In a set of video data of informal interaction from the PECII corpus (Parallel European Corpus of Informal Interaction), cases of such sanctions have been collected in English, German, Italian and Polish data. This study presents work in progress and focuses on interrogatively formatted sanctions, in particular on non-polar interrogatives. It has already been shown that interrogatives can do much more than ask questions (Huddleston 1994). They can also function as directives (Lindström et al. 2017) or, more specifically, as requests (Curl/Drew 2008), as invitations (Margutti/Galatolo 2018) or reproaches (Klattenberg 2021), among others. What makes them interesting for cross-linguistic comparison is that the four languages that are considered provide different morphological and (morpho-)syntactical ressources for the realization of interrogative phrases. For example, German provides the option of building in the modal particle denn that reveals a previous lack of clarity and obliges the co-participant(s) to deliver the missing information (Deppermann 2009). Of course, the other three languages have modal particles, too (e.g. allora in Italian or though in English), but they do not seem to convey the same semantic and interactional qualities as denn. From an interactional point of view, one could think that interrogatives are a typical and effective way of solliciting accounts, since formally they open up a conditionally relevant space for an answer or a
reaction. But as the data shows, this does not guarantee that they are actually responded to. Another relevant aspect in the context of sanctions is that the interrogative format seems to carry a certain ‚openness‘ that might be seen as a mitigating effect and thus provides an interesting point of comparison with other mitigating devices. This study uses the methods of conversation analysis and interactional linguistics. It is based on a collection of 148 interrogative sanctions (out of which 84 are non-polar interrogatives) covering the four languages. I draw on coded data from roughly 1000 cases to get a first overall idea of how the interrogative format might differ from other formats, and how it might interrelate with specific features – for example, if subsequently an account is delivered. Going more into depth, the interrogative sanctions will then be analyzed with respect to their formal design (e.g. polar questions vs. content questions vs. tag questions, Rossano 2010; Hayano 2013) and to their pragmatic implications. I also analyze reactions to such sanctions – both formally (cf. Enfield et al. 2019, 279) and, again, from an interactional perspective (e.g. acceptance/compliance vs. challenging/defiance; Kent 2012; Cekaite 2020). A more detailed zooming in on the sequential unfolding of some particularly interesting
instances of sanctioning interrogatives will make the picture complete.
Contrastive analysis of climate-related neologisms registered in GermanN and French Wikipedia
(2023)
Neologisms represent new social norms, tendencies, controversies and attitudes. They denote new or changed concepts which are constantly being negotiated between different members of the discourse community (Wodak 2022 and Catalano/Waugh (eds.) 2020). Neologisms help to identify new communicative patterns and narratives which illustrate different strings of discourse in everyday life. In recent years, many neologisms relating to the subject of the environment and climate have been emerging around the world mainly due to dominant discussions on climate change and the movement “Fridays for Future”. In German, for example, neologisms such as Klimakleber, klimaresilient and globaler Streik and in French neologisms such as éco-anxiété, justice climatique and écocitoyen could be observed. These neologisms occur in many domains of life, for example in politics, media and also in advertising, which means that “l’importance croissante des enjeux environnementaux dans les discours politiques, médiatiques et publicitaires” (Balnat/Gérard 2022, p. 22) can be identified. However, it is not only the occurrence of environment- or climate-related topics that is increasing, but also the rising polarisation of the public debate. The polarisation within public discourse is based on the fact that there are opposing positions which are represented by new or recently relevant terms such as activistes du climat (or Klimaaktivisten) and climatosceptiques (or Klimaskeptiker) (Balnat/Gérard 2022, p. 22). Due to different identifications with one or the other side, one can also speak of an “affrontement idéologique” (Balnat/Gérard 2022, p. 23). 1 The explosive nature and the high complexity of the debate on climate and the environmental issues mean that many words are naturally unfamiliar to people. This is especially true with regard to neologisms. In addition, it is often not only the new word itself but also the signified concept that is initially unknown. When people then look up words, they often do so on the Internet. Wikipedia as a “free encyclopedia” (Wikipedia 2023) is particularly well suited as an object of study with regard to neologisms, since factual knowledge is given special attention there. Furthermore, this reference guide is perceived as a regular source of agreed and common knowledge on all sorts of subjects. Hence, the descriptions found here represent social agreement on controversial terms and discussions to some degree. In this paper, German and French neologisms from the subject area of climate and environment will be examined primarily in Wikipedia, but also in the neighbouring resource Wiktionary,2 which is “a collaborative project to produce a free-content multilingual dictionary” (Wiktionary 2023). Since Wikipedia and Wiktionary are available in French and in German, 21010. International Contrastive Linguistics Conference (ICLC) both are equally suitable for the contrastive analysis. Thus, Wikipedia articles which are accessible in both languages (e.g. Klimanotstand and État d›urgence climatique) or Wikipedia articles about similar events and phenomena (e.g. Letzte Generation and Dernière Rénovation) will be compared. For example, we will have a closer look at other new terms specifying different thematic aspects of the discourse of climate and environment. We will mainly refer to those lexical items which can be found in the respective articles in both languages. Special emphasis will be on overlaps and differences, thematic foci, speaker’s positions and evaluative terms.
In G, E, I, and H there are constructions with accusative NPs being the external argument of an infinitival, (1) to (4). In P these accusative NPs can only co-occur with an adjectival participle, (5), a construction also occurring in E, (6). The talk compares the syntactic and semantic structure of these constructions focussing on the syntactic category of the nonfinite clause, the status of the accusative NP, the status of the infinitive, restructuring effects, and embedding predicates (including aspect).
i. As to G, E, I, and H, the infinitival clause is regarded as a TP, i.e., a small clause. Its accusative NP and infinitival predicate form a unit – [4], [12], [8]. The AcI denotes, according to [4], an eventuality, which prevents it from being negated. Its subject is case marked by the matrix predicate, either by ECM or subject-to-object raising – [9] and [10]. AcI-constructions can show clause union effects, (7). H additionally allows Dative subjects in infinitive clauses, the latter only being licensed by impersonal predicates and co-occurring with an agreeing infinitive, (8a), – [3]. In case there is no agreeing infinitive, the Dative NP is the experiencer of the matrix clause, (8b). As for Italian, it allows Nominative subject NPs in the infinitive clause, (9a, b).
ii. As to P, small clause constructions differ structurally from E, G, I and H ones – [6], [7]. P small clauses are realizable by copula constructions with verbal być ‘be’ pronominal to ‘it’, (10), or “dual” copula elements, (cooccurrence of a pronominal and a verbal element, [1]), varying with respect to selectional restrictions (part of speech or case within complement phrases, extraction possibilities, [1]). The P counterpart to the AcI-constructions is the secondary predication over an accusative object via an adjectival present participle, (5), (11) and (12). The adjectival participle construction is systematically paraphrasable via clauses introduced by jak ‘how’ (11’) and (12’). In Polish, adjectival phrases like recytującego wiersz ‘reciting’, (11), and wracającego z podróży ‘returning’, (12), clearly function as adjuncts of the accusative object go ‘him’. In our talk, we will compare this P view to languages with typical AcI-constructions, where the AcI-clause is standardly analyzed as a complement of a matrix verb.
This conversation analytic study compares the use of negation particles in spoken German and Persian, namely nein/nee and na. While these particles have a range of functions in both languages (Ghaderi 2022; Imo 2017), their use in response to news remains understudied. We focus on nein/nee and na in two sequential contexts: (i) after prior disconfirmations (Extract (a)) and (ii) in response to either solicited or unsolicited informings (see Extracts (b) and (c), respectively). In both contexts, nein/nee and na mark unexpectedness and open up an opportunity space for more, but they do so in different ways and with different outcomes. Nein/nee- and na-turns after disconfirming, often minimal responses to first-position confirmable turns mark the prior as unexpected (or even contrasting with the nein/nee/na-speaker’s expectations) and thus as expandable/accountable (cf. Ford 2001; Gubina/Betz 2021). Nein/nee/na-turns after informings (e.g., announcements that display a story teller’s negative emotional stance) differ not only in sequential position but also in prosodic realization. They can be either falling or rising, but all are characterized by marked prosody, i.e., lengthening, very low onset, smiling or breathy voice, or high overall pitch. Through position and turn design features, such nein/nee- and na-turns not only mark a prior turn as counter to (normative) expectations, but may also display the speaker’s affective stance and affiliate with the affective stance of the prior interactant. By comparing the use of nein/nee and na in German and Persian in the two functions illustrated in Extracts (a) and (b/c), we will show (i) how nein/nee- and na-turns shape interactional trajectories after responsive actions and (ii) what role the particles play in managing news and stance-taking as well as epistemic and affective positioning. Apart from revealing similarities in the use of German and Persian negation particles, the results of our crosslinguistic comparison will demonstrate that even if different languages have similar practices for specific actions, the use of these practices is language- and culture-specific. This means that even similar practices in different languages have their own “collateral effects” (Sidnell/Enfield 2012), linguistic and prosodic characteristic features, and, at least sometimes, consequences for social actions accomplished in the specific language (e.g., Dingemanse/Blythe/Dirksmeyer 2014; Evans/Levinson 2009; Floyd/Rossi/Enfield (eds.) 2020; Fox et al. 2009). Our study uses the method of Conversation Analysis (Sidnell/Stivers (eds.) 2013) and draws on more than 80 hours of audio and video recordings of spontaneous interactions (co-present, via video link, and on the telephone) in everyday and institutional contexts.
The issue: We discuss (declarative) prepositional object clauses (PO-clauses) in the West Germanic languages Dutch (NL), German (DE), and English (EN). In Dutch and German, PO-clauses occur with a prepositional proform (=PPF, Dutch: ervan, erover, etc.; German: drauf/darauf, drüber/darüber, etc.). This proform is optional with some verbs (1). In English, by contrast, P embeds a clausal complement in the case of gerunds or indirect questions (2), however, P is obligatorily absent when the embedded CP is a that-clause in its base positionv(3a). However, when the that-clause is passivized or topicalized, the stranded P is obligatory (3b). Given this scenario, we will address the following questions: i) Are there structural differences between PO-clauses with a P/PPF and those in which the P/PPF is optionally or obligatorily omitted? ii) In particular, do PO-clauses without P/PPF structurally coincide with direct object (=DO) clauses? iii) To what extent are case and nominal properties of clauses relevant? We use wh-extraction as a relevant test for such differences.
Previous research: Based on pronominalization and topicalization data in German and Dutch, PO-clauses are different from DO-clauses independent of the presence of the PPF (see, e.g., Breindl 1989; Zifonun/Hoffmann/Strecker 1997; Berman 2003; Broekhuis/Corver 2015 and references therein) (4,5). English pronominalization and topicalization data (3b) appear to point in the same direction (Fischer 1997; Berman 2003; Delicado Cantero 2013). However, the obligatory absence of P before that-clauses in base position indicates a convergence with DO-clauses.
Experimental evidence: To provide further evidence to these questions we tested PO-clauses in all three languages for long wh-extraction, which is usually possible for DO-clauses in English and Dutch, and in German for southern regional varieties. For German and Dutch we conducted rating studies using the thermometer method (Featherston 2008). Each study contained two sets of sentences: the first set tested long wh-extraction with regular DO-clauses (6). The second set tested wh-extraction from PO-clauses with and without PPFs (7), respectively. The results show no significant difference in extraction with PO-clauses whether or not the PPF was present even for those speakers who otherwise accept long-distance extraction in German. This supports a uniform analysis of PO-clauses with and without the PPF in contrast to DO-clauses. For English we tested extraction with verbs that select for PP-objects in two configurations: V+that-clause and V+P-gerund (8) in comparison to sentences without extraction. Participants rated sentences on a scale of 1 (unnatural) to 7 (natural). We included the gerund for English as this is a regular alternative for such objects. The results show that extraction is licit in both configurations. This suggests that English PO-clauses are different from German and Dutch PO-clauses: They rather behave as DO-clauses allowing for extraction. Note though, that the availability of extraction from P+gerund also shows that PPs are not islands for extraction in English. Overall, this shows that there is a split between English vs. German/Dutch PO-clauses when the P/PPF is absent. While these clauses behave like PO-clauses in the latter languages, extraction does not show a difference between DO- and PO-clauses in English. We will discuss the results in relation to the questions i)–iii) above.
Sprachliche Zweifelsfälle kommen auf allen linguistischen Ebenen vor. Ihre Einordnung erfolgt zumeist nach Systemebene, nach Entstehungsursache oder nach lexematischer Struktur. Sprachlicher Zweifel kann auch nach intra- und interlingualen Aspekten unterschieden werden. Stehen zwei oder mehrere lexikalische Varianten zur Verfügung, kann es zu Unsicherheiten bezüglich des angemessenen Gebrauchs kommen. Nicht nur Muttersprachler*innen sind mit Schwierigkeiten konfrontiert, Zweifelsfälle stellen auch ein Problem bei der Fremdsprachenproduktion dar.
Dieser Band beschränkt sich auf lexikalisch-semantische, flexivische und wortbildungsbedingte Zweifelsfälle und führt interessierte Leser*innen in Fachliteratur und Nachschlagewerke ein. Er streift Fragen der Sprachdidaktik, der Fehler- und Variationslinguistik, denn die Auseinandersetzung mit typischen Zweifelsfällen zeigt auch das Spannungsfeld zwischen allgemeinem Usus und kodifizierter Norm, zwischen Gegenwart und Wandel, zwischen Dynamik, sprachlichem Reichtum und erlernter Bildungstradition.
Ways out of the dictionary: hyperlinks to other sources in German and African online dictionaries
(2023)
This study examines a number of German and African online dictionaries to see how they make use of the possibility of linking to external sources (e.g. other dictionaries, encyclopaedias, or even corpus data). The article investigates which hyperlinks occur at which places in the word articles and how these are presented to the dictionary users. This is done against the background of metalexicographic considerations on the planning of outer features and the mediostructure in online dictionaries as well as different categorizations of hyperlinks in online reference works. The results show that retro-digitized dictionaries make virtually no use of hyperlinks to external sources. Genuine online dictionaries, on the other hand, do, but often in a form that needs improvement, since, for example, explanations of dictionary-external links are not always found in the user guide and their design is different even within a dictionary.
Introducing Interactive Grammar: How to Develop Language Competence with Research-based Learning
(2023)
We present the implementation of an interactive e-learning platform for both classroom study and self-study, that helps developing German language competence – vocabulary, spelling, and grammar – on various levels and for everyday life applications. The LernGrammis portal addresses school and highschool students, (prospective) teachers, and L2 learners of German equally, each with appropriate educational content and interactive components. It thus offers the digital networking infrastructure for education a unique, freely available and scientifically based learning resource. Applying the innovative concept of „Research-based Learning (RBL)“, LernGrammis provides teachers with ideas for lesson planning, and learners with dedicated modules to develop new skills through exploring authentic language resources and by this means answering customised low-threshold research questions. Using proven practical examples, we demonstrate the approach, its strengths and possibilities, as well as initial user feedback evaluation results.
Pseudo-coordinated sitzen and stehen in spoken German: a case of emergent progressive aspect?
(2023)
This paper investigates the aspectual potential of posture verb pseudocoordination in spoken German. In a corpus study of sitzen ‘sit’ and stehen ‘stand’, it is shown that despite a preference for activity verbs, verbs of all aspectual classes occur in the second conjunct. The posture verb imposes its durative meaning component on the second verb, thus making a progressive interpretation of the construction possible. Apart from this emergent aspectual function, German posture verb pseudocoordination has a subjective function (conveying the speaker’s beliefs about the subject referent’s stance), and a discourse pragmatic function (information packaging).
In social interaction, different kinds of word-meaning can become problematic for participants. This study analyzes two meta-semantic practices, definitions and specifications, which are used in response to clarification requests in German implemented by the format Was heißt X (‘What does X mean?’). In the data studied, definitions are used to convey generalizable lexical meanings of mostly technical terms. These terms are either unknown to requesters, or, in pedagogical contexts, requesters ask in order to check the addressee’s knowledge. Specifications, in contrast, clarify aspects of local speaker meanings of ordinary expressions (e.g., reference, participants in an event, standards applied to scalar expressions). Both definitions and specifications are recipient-designed with respect to the (presumed) knowledge of the addressee and tailored to the topical and practical relevancies of the current interaction. Both practices attest to the flexibility and situatedness of speakers’ semantic understandings and to the systematicity of using meta-semantic practices differentially for different kinds of semantic problems. Data are come from mundane and institutional interaction in German from the public corpus FOLK.
The NottDeuYTSch corpus is a freely available collection of YouTube comments written under German-speaking videos by young people between 2008 and 2018. The article uses the NottDeuYTSch corpus to investigate how YouTube comments can be used to produce learning materials and how corpora of Digitally-Mediated Communication can benefit intermediate learners of German. The article details the effects of authentic communication within YouTube comments on teenage learners, examining how they can influence the psycholinguistic factors of motivation, foreign language anxiety, and willingness to communicate. The article also discusses the benefits and limitations of using authentic corpus material for the development of teaching material.
This paper introduces the Nottinghamer Korpus deutscher YouTube-Sprache (‘The Nottingham German YouTube Language Corpus’ - or NottDeuYTSch corpus). The corpus comprises over 33 million words, taken from roughly 3 million YouTube comments published between 2008 and 2018, written by a young, German-speaking demographic. The NottDeuYTSch corpus provides an authentic and representative linguistic snapshot of young German speakers and offers significant opportunities for in-depth research in several linguistic fields, such as lexis, morphology, syntax, orthography, multilingualism, and conversational and discursive analysis.
In many European languages, propositional arguments (PAs) can be realized as different types of structures. Cross-linguistically, complex structures with PAs show a systematic correlation between the strength of the semantic bond and the syntactic union (cf. Givón 2001; Wurmbrand/Lohninger 2023). Also, different languages show similarities with respect to the (lexical) licensing of different PAs (cf. Noonan 1985; Givón 2001; Cristofaro 2003 on different predicate types). However, on a more fine-grained level, a variation across languages can be observed both with respect to the syntactic-semantic properties of PAs as well as to their licensing and usage. This presentation takes a multi-contrastive view of different types of PAs as syntactic subjects and objects by looking at five European languages: EN, DE, IT, PL and HU. Our goal is to identify the parameters of variation in the clausal domain with PAs and by this to contribute to a better understanding of the individual language systems on the one hand and the nature of the linguistic variation in the clausal domain on the other hand. Phenomena and Methodology: We investigate the following types of PAs: direct object (DO) clauses (1), prepositional object (PO) clauses (2), subject clauses (3), and nominalizations (4, 5). Additionally, we discuss clause union phenomena (6, 7). The analyzed parameters include among others finiteness, linear position of the PA, (non) presence of a correlative element, (non) presence of a complementizer, lexical-semantic class of the embedding verb. The phenomena are analyzed based on corpus data (using mono- and multilingual corpora), experimental data (acceptability judgement surveys) or introspective data.
Despite being an official language of several countries in Central and Western Europe, German is not formally recognised as the official language of the Federal Republic of Germany. However, in certain situations the use of the German language, including the spelling rules, is subject to state regulation (by acts of Federal Parliament orby administrative decisions). This article presents the content of this regulation, its scope, and the historical context in which it was adopted.
Our current era of globalization is characterized above all by increased mobility, namely by the increasing mobility of people and the development of new communication technologies, including the mobility of linguistic signs and resources. This process raises new theoretical and methodological questions in linguistics, which results in the development of a new sociolinguistics of globalization (Blommaert 2010) in recent years. One of the most obvious ways to trace this new and dynamic development is to analyze individual language repertoires, especially those of migrants. In this essay, I examine aspects of the communicative repertoire of a refugee who fled to Germany in 2015 to escape the civil war in Syria. I draw on two interviews I conducted with him (in the following I refer to him by the pseudonym „Baran“). The first interview with Baran was recorded in 2016, a few months after his arrival in Germany. The second interview is from 2023, seven years later. In both recordings, German was the dominant language of interaction. I will analyze and show the characteristics of his German at the beginning of his immigration, how he resorts to practices of language mixing between German, Turkish and English (which has recently also been referred to as translanguaging) and how his German has developed over the course of the past seven years.
Der deutschen Muttersprachen
(2023)
Warum gibt es Futur II?
(2023)
Unserdeutsch (Rabaul Creole German) ist nach heutigem Kenntnisstand die einzige deutschbasierte Kreolsprache der Welt. Sie entstand zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts an einer katholischen Missionsstation in der damaligen Kolonie Deutsch-Neuguinea im melanesischen Pazifik. Die Sprache selbst und ihre Entstehungsumstände sind in mehrfacher Hinsicht bemerkenswert. Trotzdem wäre die Chance zur Dokumentation und Erforschung von Unserdeutsch beinahe verpasst worden: Nur noch rund 100 Sprecher, alle in fortgeschrittenem Alter, leben heute verstreut in Ostaustralien und Papua-Neuguinea.
Der hier vorliegende Blickpunkt informiert über die Entstehung, Bedeutung, Forschung und Aktualität der Sprache „Unserdeutsch“ im Pazifik.
Der Beitrag widmet sich dem Thema der kommunikativen Deviationen in Interviews im Ukrainischen und Deutschen. Dabei werden die Deviationen sowohl in den Presseinterviews als auch in den populärsten Videointerviews auf YouTube untersucht. Die Deviationen werden in die von der Position des Adressanten, des Adressaten sowie des Zuschauers aufgeteilt. Die Aufmerksamkeit wird der Sprach- und der kommunikativen Kompetenz der Kommunikanten als der Hauptursache der Deviationen in den Interviews gelenkt. Die Deviationen werden als eine der Voraussetzungen der erfolgreichen Kommunikation bestimmt.
Статтю присвячено комунікативним девіаціям (невдачам) на матеріалі українських і німецьких телеінтерв’ю з П. Порошенком та А. Меркель. Встановлено, що спілкування осіб з різними комунікативними цілями і стратегіями – головні причини девіацій. Проаналізовано комунікативні невдачі, враховуючи позиції адресанта й адресата, а також глядача даних інтерв’ю, визначено спільні та відмінні стратегії у випадку комунікативних девіацій в українській і німецькій лінгвокультурах.
We introduce DeReKoGram, a novel frequency dataset containing lemma and part-of-speech (POS) information for 1-, 2-, and 3-grams from the German Reference Corpus. The dataset contains information based on a corpus of 43.2 billion tokens and is divided into 16 parts based on 16 corpus folds. We describe how the dataset was created and structured. By evaluating the distribution over the 16 folds, we show that it is possible to work with a subset of the folds in many use cases (e.g., to save computational resources). In a case study, we investigate the growth of vocabulary (as well as the number of hapax legomena) as an increasing number of folds are included in the analysis. We cross-combine this with the various cleaning stages of the dataset. We also give some guidance in the form of Python, R, and Stata markdown scripts on how to work with the resource.
KoMuX, der Kompositamuster-Explorer, (www.owid.de/plus/komux) ist eine Webanwendung, die es ermöglicht, mehr als 50.000 nominale Komposita des Deutschen gezielt nach abstrakten oder lexikalisch-teilspezifizierten Mustern zu durchsuchen. Unterschiedliche Visualisierungen helfen dabei, Strukturen und Zusammenhänge innerhalb der Ergebnismenge zu erfassen.
Developments within the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) have meant that scholars are increasingly engaging with corpora and corpus-based resources, providing a source of “‘authentic’ language” to learners and educators (Mitchell 2020: 254), and contributing to “state-of-the-art research methodologies” (Deshors and Gries 2023: 164). However, there are areas in which progress can still be made, particularly in the area of metadata, such as information about the speaker and contexts of the language use, as well as increased variety in the text types and genres of corpora used to develop SLA materials (Paquot 2022: 36). This post discusses one such possibility for increasing the variety of text types and providing a rich source of authentic language that can be used to create engaging SLA materials, particularly for young people learning German, namely the use of the NottDeuYTSch corpus (to download the corpus in a variety of formats, see Cotgrove 2018).
This paper describes general requirements for evaluating and documenting NLP tools with a focus on morphological analysers and the design of a Gold Standard. It is argued that any evaluation must be measurable and documentation thereof must be made accessible for any user of the tool. The documentation must be of a kind that it enables the user to compare different tools offering the same service, hence the descriptions must contain measurable values. A Gold Standard presents a vital part of any measurable evaluation process, therefore, the corpus-based design of a Gold Standard, its creation and problems that occur are reported upon here. Our project concentrates on SMOR, a morphological analyser for German that is to be offered as a web-service. We not only utilize this analyser for designing the Gold Standard, but also evaluate the tool itself at the same time. Note that the project is ongoing, therefore, we cannot present final results.
Corpus-based identification and disambiguation of reading indicators for German nominalizations
(2010)
Corpus data is often structurally and lexically ambiguous; corpus extraction methodologies thus must be made aware of ambiguities. Therefore, given an extraction task, all relevant ambiguities must be identified. To resolve these ambiguities, contextual data responsible for one or another reading is to be considered. In the context of our present work, German -ung-nominalizations and their sortal readings are under examination. A number of these nominalizations may be read as an event or a result, depending on the semantic group they belong to. Here, we concentrate on nominalizations of verbs of saying (henceforth: "verba dicendi"), identify their context partners and their influence on the sortal reading of the nominalizations in question. We present a tool which calculates the sortal reading of such nominalizations and thus may improve not only corpus extraction, but also e.g. machine translation. Lastly, we describe successful attempts to identify the correct sortal reading, conclusions and future work.
In diesem sprachwissenschaftlichen Projekt wurden Verfahren des Sprecherwechsels und der Bedeutungsaushandlung in authentischen, telefonisch gedolmetschten Beratungsgesprächen untersucht. Die Daten liegen als PDF (nach dem HIAT-Verfahren) und als bearbeitbare Rohdaten in einer .exb-Datei vor. Die Transkripte dokumentieren Beratungsgespräche zwischen arabischsprechenden Klienten und einer Migrations- und Sozialberaterin, zu denen verschiedene Dolmetscher via Telefon herangezogen werden. Die Dolmetscher befinden sich jeweils in einem anderen Raum als die Beraterin und die Klienten. Die Gespräche erfolgten nach vorheriger Anmeldung. Die Beraterin ruft den Dolmetscher jeweils zum vereinbarten Termin an. Die Klienten sind subsidiär geschützte syrische Geflüchtete mit sehr geringen Deutschkenntnissen, die Hilfe beim Familiennachzug, Spracherwerb oder anderen authentischen Anliegen benötigen. Die Dolmetscher sprechen verschiedene regionale Varietäten des Arabischen. Daten, die auf die beteiligten Personen sowie auf die Beratungsstelle schließen lassen, wurden anonymisiert. Technisch bedingte Übertönungen und andere Handlungen der Beteiligten, die wegen der mangelnden Kopräsenz nicht für alle Beteiligten in den beiden Interaktionsräumen hörbar oder in einem Interaktionsraum nur visuell wahrnehmbar sind, wurden in den jeweiligen Annotationsspuren durchgehend annotiert. Dagegen wurden non- und paraverbale Phänomene wie etwa die Atmung ausschließlich im Hinblick auf ihre kommunikative Bedeutung sowie Relevanz für den Sprecherwechsel transkribiert und bei eingeschränkter akustischen Wahrnehmung kenntlich gemacht. Natürliche Phänomene menschlichen Sprechens, wie das Einatmen, Schlucken und Schmatzen, mit denen keine turnbezogene Handlungen einhergehen, blieben unberücksichtigt. Die nonverbalen Handlungen der Aktanten und deren Prosodie werden nur ansatzweise und im Hinblick auf die Untersuchungsfrage angedeutet.
Es werden in Veröffentlichungen ein englisches oder ein deutsches Kürzel als Bezeichnung für das Korpus verwendet (TIGA und TeDo). Die Nummerierung der Dateien ist jedoch immer die selbe.
Weitere Sprachen in dieser Datensammlung sind verschiedene Varietäten des gesprochenen Arabisch. Die Datensammlung stammt aus dem DFG-Projekt ME 3439/3 "Turn-taking und Verständnissicherung beim Telefondolmetschen Deutsch-Arabisch".
Tollpatschig interviewen oder interviewt werden – Kurzvideos im ukrainischen und deutschen Fernsehen
(2016)
Kurzinterviews im Fernsehen stellen nicht nur für die kontrastive Medienlinguistik, sondern auch für die Gesprächsanalyse, Textsortenlinguistik und Pragmatik einen aufschlussreichen Gegenstand dar, besonders wenn es sich um kommunikative Abweichungen handelt. Der Beitrag stellt die Klassifizierung der Abweichungen bzw. der Deviationen in den Fernsehinterviews in Bezug auf die Kommunikation und die Sprache vor. Dabei werden die Kommunikationsdeviationen vom Standpunkt des Adressanten, des Kommunikationsprozesses, des gegenseitigen Verständnisses und des Adressaten sowie sprachliche Abweichungen betrachtet. Im Beitrag werden gemeinsame und unterschiedliche Merkmale der Deviationen in ukrainischen und deutschen Kurzinterviews im Fernsehen festgestellt, was zur Erarbeitung eines Modells der Deviationen und zu einer tieferen kontrastiven Untersuchung beider Sprachen verhilft.