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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.
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.
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.
Rules of behavior are fundamental to human sociality. Whether on the road, at the dinner table, or during a game, people monitor one another’s behavior for conformity to rules and may take action to rectify violations. In this study, we examine two ways in which rules are enforced during games: instructions and reminders. Building on prior research, we identify instructions as actions produced to rectify violations based on another’s lack of knowledge of the relevant rule; knowledge that the instruction is designed to impart. In contrast to this, the actions we refer to as reminders are designed to enforce rules presupposing the transgressor’s competence and treating the violation as the result of forgetfulness or oversight. We show that instructing and reminding actions differ in turn design, sequential development, the epistemic stances taken by transgressors and enforcers, and in how the action affects the progressivity of the interaction. Data are in German and Italian from the Parallel European Corpus of Informal Interaction (PECII).
Close repetitions of lexical material can create an impression of clumsiness in the style of Italian prose, while they seem to be accepted with more ease in German. The present study shows that this traditional claim needs some further differentiation. The negative effects on style take place in Italian when informationally prominent words are repeated, while informational background material may - and in certain cases even must - be repeated for clarity. The comparative study investigates lexical, syntactic and prosodic resources for indicating adversative (contrast) relations in argumentative texts from the field of humanities, written in Italian and German. It shows that, for encoding this kind of relation, Italian depends very much on lexical resources, including repetitions of words, while German makes more use of syntactic and prosodic parallelism. As a consequence, German can often dispense with adversative connectives and allows to employ word repetitions for different purposes.
Adjektive und adjektivisch gebrauchte Partizipien als Konstituenten von Nominalgruppen werden in den Grammatiken des Deutschen und des Italienischen verallgemeinernd unter die Attribute zum Nomen gerechnet. Weithin gelten sie unter diesen sogar als prototypisch. Der vorliegende Aufsatz untersucht ihr Flexionsverhalten, ihre Linearstellung, ihre Bedeutungsbeiträge, ihren Konstituentenstatus und ihre informationeile Kennzeichnung. Er führt zu dem Ergebnis, dass die terminologische Tradition in beiden Sprachen grammatische Unterschiede verdeckt, die mehr Aufmerksamkeit verdienen würden. Die Funktionen von Adjektiven in der Nominalgruppe sind faktisch viel weniger einheitlich, als der Attributbegriff insinuiert. Unterschiede sollten in der Beschreibung differenzierter herausgearbeitet werden. Ihre kontrastive Untersuchung ist nicht nur für Grammatiker von Interesse, sondern auch fiir Lehrende des Deutschen und des Italienischen als Fremdsprache sowie der Übersetzung zwischen beiden Sprachen. Sie kann Schwierigkeiten, die im Sprach- und Übersetzungsstudium bekannt sind, systematisieren und erklären und ihre didaktische Bearbeitung erleichtern.
This paper investigates the use of linking adverbs in adversative constructions in German and Italian. In Italian those constructions are very frequently formulated with adverbs such as invece, while wordings without a lexical connective are more typical of German. Corpus data show that the syntactic und semantic conditions favouring the use of adversative adverbs are by and large the same in both languages. Lexical connectives can increase explicitness when the intended adversative interpretation is not obvious on other grounds. The higher frequency of adversative adverbs in Italian is shown to be a consequence of the more restrictive rules of the placement of prosodic accent.
In Abschnitt 1 wird das System der Personalpronomina im Deutschen mit seiner scheinbar paradoxen Ausnahme es dargelegt und in Abschnitt 2.1 durch den Vergleich mit dem entsprechenden System im Italienischen einer plausiblen Erklärung zugeführt, die in die Annahme von drei Pronominalklassen stark - schwach - klitisch mündet. In 2.2 werden einige Voraussagen aus dieser Dreiteilung diskutiert, in 2.3 werden die Eigenschaften der drei Klassen von Pronomina auf ihre jeweiligen (teils defizienten) syntaktischen Projektionseigenschaften zurückgeführt. Die Grundthese lautet, daß die Dreiteilung stark -schwach - klitisch universell angelegt ist und sich die Einzelsprachen typologisch nur in der Auswahl der jeweils lexikalisierten Pronomina unterscheiden.