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The present paper examines the rise and fall of Modern High German loanwords in English from 1600 until 2000, principally making use of the record of borrowing documented by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in its Third Edition (online version, in revision 2000-). Groups of loanwords are analysed by century, with reference to the changing social and cultural landscape characterising relationships between the relevant nations over this period. This is not a simple picture: each language grows over the period in different ways, and the speakers of English look to German at different times for different types of borrowing, as the political and intellectual balance alters.
This chapter investigates policies which shape the role of the German language in contemporary Estonia. Whereas German played for many centuries an important role as the language of the economic and cultural elite in Estonia, it severely declined in importance throughout the twentieth century. Mirrored on this historical background, the paper provides an overview of the current functions of German and attitudes towards it and it discusses how these functions and attitudes are influenced by policies of various actors from inside and outside Estonia. The paper argues that German continues to play a significant role: while German is no longer a lingua franca, it still enjoys a number of functions and prestige in clearly defined niches involving communication within German-speaking circles or between Estonians and Germans. The interplay of language policies of the Estonian and the German-speaking states as well as by semi-state and private institutions succeed in maintaining German as an additional language in contemporary Estonia.
This chapter introduces readers to the context and concept of this volume. It starts by providing an historical overview of languages and multilingualism in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, highlighting the 100th anniversary of statehood which the three Baltic states are celebrating in 2018. Then, the chapter briefly presents important strands of research on multilingualism in the region throughout the past decades; in particular, questions about language policies and the status of the national languages (Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian) and Russian. It also touches on debates about languages in education and the roles of other languages such as the regional languages of Latgalian and Võro and the changing roles of international languages such as English and German. The chapter concludes by providing short summaries of the contributions to this book.
In the etymological information for a word in a dictionary, the first question to be answered is whether the word is a borrowing or the result of word formation. Here, we consider this question for internationalisms ending in -ation in German and in -ácia in Slovak. In German, -ation is a suffix that attaches to verbs in -ieren. For these verbs, it is in competition with -ung. In Slovak, -ácia is a suffix that attaches to bases of Latin or Greek origin. The corresponding verbs are often backformations. Most Slovak verbs also have a nominalization in -nie. In order to investigate to what extent the nouns in -ation or -ácia are borrowings or derived from the corresponding verbs in German and Slovak, we took a random sample of English nouns in -ation for which OED gives a corresponding verb. For this sample, we checked whether the cognate noun in -ation or -ácia is attested in standard dictionaries and in corpora. Then we did the same for the corresponding verbs and the nouns in -ung or -nie. Finally, we checked the frequency of these words in DeReKo for German and SNK for Slovak. On this basis, we found evidence that -ation in German has a slightly different status to -ácia in Slovak. This status affects the relationship to the corresponding verbs and to the nouns in -ung or -nie. Such generalizations are important as background information for specifying etymological information in dictionaries, especially for languages where first attestations dates are not readily available.
Identity effects in phonology are deviations from regular phonological form (i.e. canonical patterns) which are due to the relatedness between words. More specifically, identity effects are those deviations which have the function to enhance similarity in the surface phonological form of morphologically related words. In rule-based generative phonology the effects in question are described by means of the cycle. For example, the stress on the second syllable in cond[ɛ]nsation as opposed to the stresslessness of the second syllable in comp[ǝ]nsation is described by applying the stress rules initially to the sterns thereby yielding condénse and cómpensàte. Subsequently the stress rules are reapplied to the affixed words with the initial stress assignment (i.e. stress on the second syllable in condense, but not in compensate) leaving its mark in the output form (cf. Chomsky and Halle 1968). A second example are words like lie[p]los 'unloving' in German, which shows the effects of neutralization in coda position (i.e. only voiceless obstruents may occur in coda position) even though the obstruent should 'regularly' be syllabified in head position (i.e. bl is a wellformed syllable head in German). Here the stern is syllabified on an initial cycle, obstruent devoicing applies (i.e. lie[p]) and this structure is left intact when affixation applies (i.e. lie[p ]Ios ) (cf. Hall 1992). As a result the stern of lie[p]los is identical to the base lie[p].
Since Lerner coined the notion of delayed completion in 1989, this recurrent social practice of continuing one’s speaking turn while disregarding an intermediate co-participant’s utterance has not been investigated with regard to embodied displays and actions. A sequential approach to videotaped mundane conversations in German will explain the occurrence and use of delayed completions. First, especially in multi-party and multi-activity settings, delayed completions can result from reduced monitoring and coordinating activities. Second, recipients can use intra-turn response slots for more extended responsive actions than the current speaker initially projected, leading to delayed completion sequences. Finally, delayed completions are used for blocking possibly misaligned co-participant actions. The investigation of visible action illustrates that delayed completions are a basic practice for retrospectively managing co-participant response slots.
Concurrent standardization as a necessity: The genesis of the new official orthographic guidelines
(2009)
The new official orthographic guidelines were brought into force by the official state authorities on August 1st, 1998 and its principle goals were a standardized representation of the guidelines and a «gentle simplification in respect of content». This regulation was not supported by the public and in fact it was the starting point for a struggle for conceptual solutions and a quest for the achievement of' a consensus between different possible norms. Since orthography is an officially codified standard taking up a prominent position among linguistic standards, it is of particular socio-political importance. It was the foremost task of the Council for German Orthography (Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung), instituted in December 2004, to elaborate a compromise in order to bring the «Orthographical war» (Die Zeit) to an end, which was led enthusiastically for more than a decade. - The concern of this article is to classify historically the agreement reached in 2006. Against this background, it can be stated that official guidelines will only be accepted, if they are based upon the usage in writing and if they take into account the interests of the reader. Both principles are characterizing the proposal made by the Council for German Orthography. An outlook on the Council's activities concerning orthographic standardization expected in the future will conclude this article.
Dieser Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über CoDII, die Collection of Distributionally Idiosyncratic Items. CoDII ist eine elektronische Sammlung verschiedener Untergruppen lexikalischer Elemente, die sich durch idiosynkratische Distribution auszeichnen. Das bedeutet, dass sich die Verteilung dieser Lexeme im Text nicht alleine aufgrund ihrer syntaktischen Kategorie Vorhersagen lässt. Die Methoden, die in der Entwicklung von CoDII angewandt werden, greifen über traditionelle Fachgrenzen hinaus und umfassen Korpuslinguistik, Computerlinguistik, Phraseologie und theoretische Sprachwissenschaft. Ein wichtiger Schwerpunkt unserer Diskussion liegt auf der Darstellung, inwiefern die in CoDII gesammelten, annotierten und unter anderem mit Suchwerkzeugen abfragbaren Daten dazu beitragen können, die linguistische Theoriebildung durch die Bereitstellung sorgfältig aufbereiteter Datensammlungen bei der Überprüfung ihrer Datengrundlage zu unterstützen.
This study investigates the question of whether the processing of complex anaphors require more cognitive effort than the processing of NP-anaphors. Complex anaphors refer to abstract objects which are not introduced as a noun phrase and bring about the creation of a new discourse referent. This creation is called “complexation process”. We describe ERP findings which provide converging support for the assumption that the cognitive cost of this complexation process is higher than the cognitive cost of processing NP-anaphors.
This is a revised and translated version of my article "Die doppelte Wende - Zur Verbindung von Sprache, Sprachwissenschaft und zeitgebundener politischer Bewertung am Beispiel deutsch-deutscher Sprachdifferenzierung" which appeared in Politische Semantik - Bedeutungsanalytische und sprachkritische Beiträge zur politischen Sprachverwendung, ed. Josef Klein (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1989), pp. 297-326. I am indepted to Colin Good, Norwich, England, for having translated the text into English.
Departing from Rooth's focus interpretation theory the article discusses two types of (German) ellipsis phenomena: direct alternative and implicit alternative coordinative ellipsis. For the first type, which includes Stripping, Gapping, ATB, and RNR, it is characteristic that the semantic value of either conjunct instantiates the context variable of the respective focus operator in the other. For German Polarity ellipsis and Sluicing, which constitute the other type, it is characteristic that the semantic value, which instantiates the variable given by the focus operator in the second conjunct, must be derived from the semantic value of the first conjunct and that the second conjunct always hosts an alternative set inducing item which demands new information focus in the first conjunct.
Designed as a contribution to contrastive linguistics, the present volume brings up-to-date the comparison of German with its closest neighbour, Dutch, and other Germanic relatives like English, Afrikaans, and the Scandinavian languages. It takes its inspiration from the idea of a "Germanic Sandwich", i.e. the hypothesis that sets of genetically related languages diverge in systematic ways in diverse domains of the linguistic system. Its contributions set out to test this approach against new phenomena or data from synchronic, diachronic and, for the first time in a Sandwich-related volume, psycholinguistic perspectives. With topics ranging from nickname formation to the IPP (aka 'Ersatzinfinitiv'), from the grammaticalisation of the definite article to /s/-retraction, and from the role of verb-second order in the acquisition of L2 English to the psycholinguistics of gender, the volume appeals to students and specialists in modern and historical linguistics, psycholinguistics, translation studies, language pedagogy and cognitive science, providing a wealth of fresh insights into the relationships of German with its closest relatives while highlighting the potential inherent in the integration of different methodological traditions.
This English language version (translated by Martin Wynne) is a reworked and slightly abridged version of the paper given in Canterbury in February 1999. A German language version has appeared as Hellmann, Manfred W.: ‘Wörter in Texten der Wendezeit’ 1989-1990 - Ein Wörterbuch zur lexikographischen Erschließung des ‘Wendekorpus’ in Jordanova, Ljubima (edj: 10 godini promjana v Iztotschna Evropa (10 Jahre Wende in Osteuropa), (= Socio- linguistika Bd. 4), BULLEKS: Sofia (Bulgaria) 1999, S. 11-39.
The analysis which we present in this paper is part of an ethnographically based sociolinguistic study of various immigrant youth groups and their social style of communication. The study describes the wide variety of migrant groups and their socio-cultural orientation in relation to different migrant worlds as well as to different social worlds of the dominant German society. The development of a social style of communication is grounded in the groups’ socio-cultural orientation as well as in the perception of themselves in relation to relevant others. The main purpose of our study is to analyse the construction of the groups’ social identity in terms of their social style of communication.
The main point of this chapter is to demonstrate how a speaker’s concept of his/her professional role can be inferred from his/her perspectival work (perspective setting and relating different perspectives to one another) in professional encounters. Thereby some risks of complex perspectival work in discourse will become manifest which result - at one point in the talk - in perspectival inconsistency, revealing a deeply grounded social problem for the speaker. This will be examined in the framework of a rhetorical conversation analysis.
In this paper, I present some aspects of a youth group’s construction of a communicative style and show how the group’s stylistic repertoire changes over the course of their growing into adulthood. My paper is based on an ethnographic case study of a group of Turkish girls, the ‘Powergirls’, who grew up in a typical Turkish migrant neighborhood in the inner city of Mannheim, Germany. The aim of the case study was, on the basis of biographical interviews with group members and long-term observation of group interactions, to reconstruct the formation of an ethnically defined ‘ghetto’-clique and its style of communication and to describe the group’s development into educated, modern, German-Turkish young women. In this process, a change in the group’s stylistic repertoire could be observed.
Traditionally, research on language change has been a post-mortem activity, focused on isolated changes that are complete and often only documented in written texts. In the 1960s the field was advanced considerably by Labovian sociolinguistics and the investigation of “change in progress” adduced through patterns of community-internal linguistic variation correlated with external facts about speakers such as age and class (see Labov 1994 for an overview). However, despite the many benefits of such work on “dynamic synchrony,” we still know relatively little about how language change unfolds over the lifetimes of individual speakers, that is, in real time (cf. Bailey et al. 1991). The logistical challenges of such research are, of course, considerable. Whereas it is straightforward for psycholinguists to observe language development in children over the course of a few years, documenting changes in the verbal behavior of individuals over several decades is by contrast much less feasible. Nevertheless, present theoretical models of language change could be considerably improved by the results of real-time studies.
Repairs for Reasoning
(2013)
We describe and experimentally investigate phenomena of modal enrichment, that is, phenomena in which a recipient non-literally interprets an utterance by creating and applying a modal operator. We give competing explanations for these phenomena - namely an explanation according to which modal enrichment is a repair procedure for making the utterance match a script of information processing vs. an explanation according to which modal enrichment is triggered by rhetorical structure.
E-VALBU: Advanced SQL/XML processing of dictionary data using an object-relational XML database
(2008)
Contemporary practical lexicography uses a wide range of advanced technological aids,most prominently database systems for the administration of dictionary content. Since XML has become a de facto standard for the coding of lexicographic articles, integrated markup functionality – such as query, update, or transformation of instances – is of particular importance. Even the multi-channel distribution of dictionary data benefits from powerful XML database services. Exemplified by E-VALBU, the most comprehensive electronic dictionary on German verb valency, we outline an integrated approach for advanced XML storing and processing within an object-relational database, and for a public retrieval frontend using Web Services and AJAX technology.
In this contribution, we report on an effort to annotate German data with information relevant to opinion inference. Such information has previously been referred to as effect or couched in terms of eventevaluation functors. We extend the theory and present an extensive scheme that combines both approaches and thus extends the set of inference-relevant predicates. Using these guidelines to annotate 726 German synsets, we achieve good inter-annotator agreement.
Based on specific linguistic landmarks in the speech signal, this study investigates pitch level and pitch span differences in English, German, Bulgarian and Polish. The analysis is based on 22 speakers per language (11 males and 11 females). Linear mixed models were computed that include various linguistic measures of pitch level and span, revealing characteristic differences across languages and between language groups. Pitch level appeared to have significantly higher values for the female speakers in the Slavic than the Germanic group. The male speakers showed slightly different results, with only the Polish speakers displaying significantly higher mean values for pitch level than the German males. Overall, the results show that the Slavic speakers tend to have a wider pitch span than the German speakers. But for the linguistic measure, namely for span between the initial peaks and the non-prominent valleys, we only find the difference between Polish and German speakers. We found a flatter intonation contour in German than in Polish, Bulgarian and English male and female speakers and differences in the frequency of the landmarks between languages. Concerning “speaker liveliness” we found that the speakers from the Slavic group are significantly livelier than the speakers from the Germanic group.
This study investigates cross-language differences in pitch range and variation in four languages from two language groups: English and German (Germanic) and Bulgarian and Polish (Slavic). The analysis is based on large multi-speaker corpora (48 speakers for Polish, 60 for each of the other three languages). Linear mixed models were computed that include various distributional measures of pitch level, span and variation, revealing characteristic differences across languages and between language groups. A classification experiment based on the relevant parameter measures (span, kurtosis and skewness values for pitch distributions for each speaker) succeeded in separating the language groups.
This paper presents a thorough examination of the validity of three evaluation measures on parser output. We assess parser performance of an unlexicalised probabilistic parser trained on two German treebanks with different annotation schemes and evaluate parsing results using the PARSEVAL metric, the Leaf-Ancestor metric and a dependency-based evaluation. We reject the claim that the TüBa-D/Z annotation scheme is more adequate then the TIGER scheme for PCFG parsing and show that PARSEVAL should not be used to compare parser performance for parsers trained on treebanks with different annotation schemes. An analysis of specific error types indicates that the dependency-based evaluation is most appropriate to reflect parse quality.
In this paper, semantic aspects of P1N1P2 word sequences will be discussed. Based on syntactic analysis of Trawinski (2003), which assumes prepositions heading P1N1P2NP combinations to be able to raise and realize syntactically complements of their arguments, we will investigate whether semantic representation of these expressions can be considered as an instance of the combinatorics semantics. We will investigate three German PPs involving expressions under consideration with respect to two criteria of internal semantic regularity adopted from Sailer (2000) and we will observe that the discussed expressions are not uniform with regard to the semantic properties. While the logical form of some of them can be computed by means of ordinary translations and a set of standard derivational operations, the other require additional handling methods. However, there are approaches available within the HPSG paradigm that are suited to account for these data. Here, we will briefly present the external selection approach of Soehn (2003) and the phrasal lexical entries approach of Sailer (2000) and we will show how they interact with the syntactic approach of Trawinski (2003).
Many modern languages commonly use expressions that seem unpredictable regarding standard grammar regularities. Among these expressions, sequences consisting of a preposition, a noun, another preposition, and another noun are particularly frequent. The issue of these expressions, usually termed in linguistic literature as "complex prepositions", "phrasal prepositions" or "preposition-like word formations", can certainly be considered to be a cross-linguistic problem (On "complex prepositions" in German and in other languages see (Benes 1974), (Buscha 1984)}, (Lindqvist 1994), (Meibauer 1995), (Quirk and Mulholland 1964), (Wollmann 1996). In this paper, I will focus exclusively on German data, because they provide very explicit and convincing linguistic evidence which motivates and supports my approach. However, I assert that the analysis proposed here for German can also be applied to other languages such as Polish or English.
One of the most popular techniques used in HPSG-based studies to describe linguistic phenomena is the raising mechanism. Besides ordinary raising verbs or adjectives, this tool has been applied for handling verbal complexes and discontinuous constituents, among other phenomena. In this paper, a new application for raising within the HPSG paradigm will be discussed, thereby investigating data from the prepositional domain. We will analyze linguistic properties of word combinations in German consisting of a preposition, a noun, and another preposition (such as auf Grund von (‘by virtue of’)), thus arguing that raising is the most appropriate method for satisfactorily describing the crucial syntactic features which are typical for those expressions. The objective of this paper is thus to demonstrate the efficiency of the raising mechanism as used in HPSG, and therefore, to emphasize the importance of designing a satisfactory uniform theory of raising within this grammar framework.
In this paper, we will investigate a cross-linguistic phenomenon referred to as complex prepositions (CPs), which is a frequent type of multiword expressions (MWEs) in many languages. Based on empirical data, we will point out the problems of the traditional treatment of CPs as complex lexical categories, and, thus, propose an analysis using the formal paradigm of the HPSG in the tradition of (Pollard and Sag, 1994). Our objective is to provide an approach to CPs which (1) convincingly explains empirical data, (2) is consistent with the underlying formal framework and does not require any extensions or modification of the existing description apparatus, (3) is computationally tractable.
This paper discusses the behaviour of German particle verbs formed by two-way prepositions in combination with pleonastic PPs including the verb particle as a preposition. These particle verbs have a characteristic feature: some of them license directional prepositional phrases in the accusative, some only allow for locative PPs in the dative, and some particle verbs can occur with PPs in the accusative and in the dative. Directional particle verbs together with directional PPs present an additional problem: the particle and the preposition in the PP seem to provide redundant information. The paper gives an overview of the semantic verb classes influencing this phenomenon, based on corpus data, and explains the underlying reasons for the behaviour of the particle verbs. We also show how the restrictions on particle verbs and pleonastic PPs can be expressed in a grammar theory like Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG).
We present data-driven methods for the acquisition of LFG resources from two German treebanks. We discuss problems specific to semi-free word order languages as well as problems arising from the data structures determined by the design of the different treebanks. We compare two ways of encoding semi-free word order, as done in the two German treebanks, and argue that the design of the TiGer treebank is more adequate for the acquisition of LFG resources. Furthermore, we describe an architecture for LFG grammar acquisition for German, based on the two German treebanks, and compare our results with a hand-crafted German LFG grammar.
The paper contributes to the raising vs. control debate with respect to modals through (A) novel data; (B) the investigation of a domain in which it has proven particularly problematic: volitional modality. We analyze oblique arguments of experiencer verbs embedded under German wollen ‘want’ and propose that they support both generalized raising and the abandonment of the classical version of the Theta Criterion. Byproducts of the analysis include a syntactic account involved in a class of datives in the language together with the initial characterization of a related modal in German which is expressed through the same item as volition and which we term weak.
The main objective of this article is to describe the current activities at the Mannheim Institute for German Language regarding the implementation of a domain-specific ontology for German grammar. We differentiate ontology bases from ontology management Systems, point out the benefits of database-driven Solutions, and go Step by Step through all phases of the ontology lifecycle. In Order to demonstrate the practical use of our approach, we outline the interface between our ontology and the grammis web Information System, and compare the ontology-based retrieval mechanism with traditional full text search.
In the German language, there are two central ways of integrating spatial and temporal information by means of word-formation. Firstly, this type of information is typically located in the verbal phrase of sentences. As a consequence, it plays a major role in the area of word-formation of verbs too. The two major classes of such verbs found in German (“Partikelverben” and “Doppelpartikelverben”) are located in the transition zone between syntax and word-formation. The same adverbial relation is found in one type of nominal compounds (“Rektionskomposita”). On the other hand, space and time are prominent among the relations constituting the patterns of the prototypical type of noun compounds (“N+N-Komposita”). The integration of these relations into compounds involves some kind of functional interpretation.
This paper shows how corpora and related tools can be used to analyse and present significant colligational patterns lexicographically. In German, patterns such as das nötige Wissen vermitteln and sein Wissen unter Beweis stellen play a vital role when learning the language, as they exhibit relevant idiomatic usage and lexical and syntactic rules of combination. Each item has specific semantic and grammatical functions and particular preferences with respect to position and distribution. An analysis of adjectives, for example, identifies preferences in adverbial, attributive, or predicative functions.
Traditionally, corpus analyses of syntagmatic constructions have not been conducted for lexicographic purposes. This paper shows how to utilise corpora to extract and examine typical syntagms and how the results of such an analysis are documented systematically in ELEXIKO, a large-scale corpus-based Internet reference work of German. It also demonstrates how this dictionary accounts for the lexical and grammatical interplay between units in a syntagm and how authentic corpus material and complementary prose-style usage notes are a useful guide to text production or reception.
Incompatibility (or co-hyponymy) is the most general type of semantic relation between lexical items, the meaning of which entails exclusion. Such items fall under a superordinate term or concept and denote sets which have no members in common (e.g. animal: dog-cat-mouse-lion-sheep; example from Cruse 2004). Traditionally, these have been of interest to lexical semanticists for the description of the structure of the lexicon. However, incompatibility is not just a relation that signifies a difference of meaning. This paper is a critical corpus-assisted re-evaluation of the phenomenon of incompatibility which argues that the relation in question sometimes also functions as a discourse marker. Incompatibles indicate recurrent intertextual patterns. This holds particularly true for socially or politically controversial lexical items such as Flexibilität (flexibility), Mobilität (mobility) or Globalisierung (globalisation). Corpus investigations of such words have revealed that among other semantically related terms, incompatibles have a crucial discourse focussing function. For the German lexical item Globalisierung, I will show how its lexical usage can be studied through a corpus-driven analysis of corresponding incompatibles. Incompatible terms are not contingent co-words but often occur in close contextual proximity and participate in regular syntagmatic structures (e.g. Globalisierung und Rationalisierung; Globalisierung und Modernisierung; Neoliberalismus, Globalisierung und Kapitalismus). Hence, these are easily extracted by conducting a computational collocation analysis. Such significant collocates provide a good insight into the discursive and thematic contexts of the search word. Following Teubert (2004), I will demonstrate how the meaning of such lexical items is constituted in discourse and how the examination of these particular collocates reveals their sense-constructing function and their pragmatic-discursive force. I will provide a brief discussion of the methodology used for such analyses, and I will explain why the complex semantic-pragmatic and thematic-communicative patterns implied in sets of incompatibles should be given a stronger emphasis in lexicography.
The phonological word (henceforth pword) differs from lower units of the prosodic hierarchy (e.g. foot, syllable) in that its boundaries must align with morphological boundaries. While languages are claimed to differ w.r.t. the questions of whether and which word-internal constituents (e.g. stems, prefixes, suffixes, members of compounds) form a pword there is no consensus regarding the question of which diagnostics are relevant for determining pword structure. In this paper it is argued that systematic correlations between various suprasegmental properties (e.g. stress patterns, syllable structure) motivate the existence of word-internal pwords in German.