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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).
This chapter will present results of a linguistic landscape (LL) project in the regional centre of Rēzekne in the region of Latgale in Eastern Latvia. Latvia was de facto a part of the Soviet Union until 1991, and this has given it a highly multilingual society. In the essentially post-colonial situation since 1991, strict language policies have been in place, which aim to reverse the language shift from Russian, the dominant language of Soviet times, back to Latvian. Thus, the main interests of the research were how the complex pattern of multilingualism in Latvia is reflected in the LL; how people relate to current language legislation; and what motivations, attitudes and emotions inform their behaviour.
The establishment of Scottish Parliament: What difference does it make for the Gaelic language?
(2004)
After the Labour government takeover in Westminster in 1997, followed by the referendum on establishing a Scottish Parliament, hopes for more support for the Gaelic language in Scotland were nourished. In the election campaign to the Scottish Parliament in 1999, all parties which were elected to Parliament had mentioned Gaelic, and all parties except the Conservatives had promised an increase in support for Gaelic (cf. Scottish parties’ election manifestoes, obtainable from the parties or via their web sites). Now that the new Scottish Executive, formed by Labour and the Liberal Democrats, has been in power for some time, it is interesting to see if these hopes have been fulfilled.
The two core questions of this paper will thus be:
1. What is the status of Scottish Gaelic after the devolution process?
2. What difference does the existence of the Scottish Parliament make for the status of Gaelic?
It is important to note that this paper refers to language status and Gaelic’s position from a mere language policy perspective. The results are mostly based on an analysis of Parliament documents, the method of investigation being strictly philological. Empirical research has not yet been undertaken. The reference time of my paper will be the first year of Scottish Parliament and the new executive. Even though this is an arbitrary time break, the first year is a symbolic point of time. As the first legislation period as a possibly more natural reference point is not over yet, this choice seems legitimate.
This chapter analyses the impact of political decentralization in a state on the position of ethnic and linguistic minorities, in particular with regard to the role of parliamentary assemblies in the political system. It relates a number of typical functions of parliaments to the specific needs of minorities and their languages. The most important of these functions are the representation of the minority and responsiveness to the minority’s needs. The chapter then discusses six examples from the European Union (and Norway) which prototypically represent different types of parliamentary decentralization: the ethnically defined Sameting in Norway and its importance for the Sámi population, the Scottish Parliament and its role for speakers of Scottish Gaelic, the German regional parliaments of the Länder of Schleswig-Holstein and Saxony and their impact on the Frisian and Sorbian minorities respectively, the autonomy of predominantly German-speaking South Tyrol within the Italian state, and finally the situation of the speakers of Latgalian in Latvia, where a decentralized parliament is missing. The chapter also makes suggestions on comparisons of these situations with minorities in Russia. It finally argues that political decentralization may indeed empower minorities to gain a greater voice in their states, even if much ultimately depends on individual factors in each situation and the attitudes by the majority population and the political center.
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.
Studies on the Linguistic Landscapes (LLs) investigate frequencies, functions, and power relations between languages and their speakers in public space. Research on the LL thereby aims to understand how the production and perception of signs reflect and simultaneously shape realities. In this sense, the LL is one of the most dynamic places where processes of minoritization take place: the (in)visibility of minority languages and the functional and symbolic relationships to majority languages are in direct relationship with negotiations of minorities’ place in society. This chapter looks at minority languages in the LL from two major perspectives. Firstly, it discusses language policies, focussing on which policy categories and which domains of language use are of particular relevance for understanding minority languages in the LL. Then, it turns to issues of conflict, contestation, and exclusion by providing examples from a range of geographically and typologically prototypical case studies, including Israel, Canada, Belgium, the Basque Country, and Friesland.
This paper investigates synchronic variation in the lexical and grammatical environments of the German lexical verb verdienen ‘earn’, ‘deserve’. In its lexical uses, verdienen co-occurs with an object noun phrase whose head is either concrete (e.g. Geld ‘money’) or, more commonly, abstract (e.g. Beachtung ‘attention’). When it is used more grammatically with deontic modal meaning, verdienen is followed by a passive or active infinitive. This paper uses collostructional analyses to contrast lexical and grammatical uses in terms of the most strongly attracted lexical items, which are grouped into semantic classes. The results reflect different degrees of host-class expansion (cf. Himmelmann 2004), whereby the collexemes of verdienen expand from concrete to abstract and their morpho-syntactic contexts from nominal to infinitival complement and subsequently from passive to active. Synchronic distribution can thus serve as a window on diachronic development (Kuteva 2001), in this case the rise of a deontic modality marker.
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.
The chapter on formats and models for lexicons deals with different available data formats of lexical resources. It elaborates on their structure and possible uses. Motivated by the restrictions in merging different lexical resources based on widely spread formalisms and international standards, a formal lexicon model for lexical resources is developed which is related to graph structures in annotations. For lexicons this model is termed the Lexicon Graph. Within this model the concepts of lexicon entries and lexical structures frequently described in the literature are formally defined and examples are given. The article addresses the problem of ambiguity in those formal terms. An implementation based on XML and XML technology such as XQuery for the defined structures is given. The relation to international standards is included as well.
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.
Preface
(2010)
This paper deals with multiword lexemes (MWLs), focussing on two types of verbal MWLs: verbal idioms and support verb constructions. We discuss the characteristic properties of MWLs, namely nonstandard compositionality, restricted substitutability of components, and restricted morpho-syntactic flexibility, and we show how these properties may cause serious problems during the analysis, generation, and transfer steps of machine translation systems. In order to cope with these problems, MT lexicons need to provide detailed descriptions of MWL properties. We list the types of information which we consider the necessary minimum for a successful processing of MWLs, and report on some feasibility studies aimed at the automatic extraction of German verbal multiword lexemes from text corpora and machine-readable dictionaries.
This paper discusses the semi-formal language of mathematics and presents the Naproche CNL, a controlled natural language for mathematical authoring. Proof Representation Structures, an adaptation of Discourse Representation Structures, are used to represent the semantics of texts written in the Naproche CNL. We discuss how the Naproche CNL can be used in formal mathematics, and present our prototypical Naproche system, a computer program for parsing texts in the Naproche CNL and checking the proofs in them for logical correctness.
Introduction
(2010)
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.
Consistency of reference structures is an important issue in lexicography and dictionary research, especially with respect to information on sense-related items. In this paper, the systematic challenges of this area (e.g. ‘non-reversed reference’, bidirectional linking being realised as unidirectional structures) will be outlined, and the problems which can be caused by these challenges for both lexicographers and dictionary users will be discussed. The paper also discusses how text-technological Solutions may help to provide Support for the consistency of sense-related pairings during the process of compiling a dictionary.
This study examines what kind of cues and constraints for discourse interpretation can be derived from the logical and generic document structure of complex texts by the example of scientific journal articles. We performed statistical analysis on a corpus of scientific articles annotated on different annotations layers within the framework of XML-based multi-layer annotation. We introduce different discourse segment types that constrain the textual domains in which to identify rhetorical relation spans, and we show how a canonical sequence of text type structure categories is derived from the corpus annotations. Finally, we demonstrate how and which text type structure categories assigned to complex discourse segments of the type “block” statistically constrain the occurrence of rhetorical relation types.
Content analysis provides a useful and multifaceted, methodological framework for Twitter analysis. CAQDAS tools support the structuring of textual data by enabling categorising and coding. Depending on the research objective, it may be appropriate to choose a mixed-methods approach that combines quantitative and qualitative elements of analysis and plays out their respective advantages to the greatest possible extent while minimising their shortcomings. In this chapter, we will discuss CAQDAS speech act analysis of tweets as an example of software-assisted content analysis. We start with some elementary thoughts on the challenges of the collection and evaluation of Twitter data before we give a brief description of the potentials and limitations of using the software QDA Miner (as one typical example for possible analysis programmes). Our focus will lie on analytical features that can be particularly helpful in speech act analysis of tweets.
In spite of the obvious importance that is accorded to the notion grammatical construction in any approach that sees itself as a construction grammar (CxG), there is as yet no generally accepted definition of the term across different variants of the framework. In particular, there are different assumptions about which additional requirements a given structure has to meet in order to be recognized as a construction besides being a ‘form-meaning pair’. Since the choice of a particular definition will determine the range of both relevant phenomena and concrete observations to be considered in empirical research within the framework, the issue is not just a mere terminological quibble but has important methodological repercussions especially for quantitative research in areas such as corpus linguistics. The present study illustrates some problems in identifying and delimiting such patterns in naturally occurring text and presents arguments for a usage-based interpretation of the term grammatical construction.
The English language has taken advantage of the Digital Revolution to establish itself as the global language; however, only 28.6 %of Internet users speak English as their native language. Machine Trans-lation (MT) is a powerful technology that can bridge this gap. In devel-opment since the mid-20th century, MT has become available to every Internet user in the last decade, due to free online MT services. This paper aims to discuss the implications that these tools may have for the privacy of their users and how they are addressed by EU data protec-tion law. It examines the data-flows in respect of the initial processing (both from the perspective of the user and the MT service provider) and potential further processing that may be undertaken by the MT service provider.
Contemporary studies on the characteristics of natural language benefit enormously from the increasing amount of linguistic corpora. Aside from text and speech corpora, corpora of computer-mediated communication (CMC) Position themselves between orality and literacy, and beyond that provide in- sight into the impact of "new", mainly intemet-based media on language beha- viour. In this paper, we present an empirical attempt to work with annotated CMC corpora for the explanation of linguistic phenomena. In concrete terms, we implement machine leaming algorithms to produce decision trees that reveal rules and tendencies about the use of genitive markers in German.
Discourse parsing of complex text types such as scientific research articles requires the analysis of an input document on linguistic and structural levels that go beyond traditionally employed lexical discourse markers. This chapter describes a text-technological approach to discourse parsing. Discourse parsing with the aim of providing a discourse structure is seen as the addition of a new annotation layer for input documents marked up on several linguistic annotation levels. The discourse parser generates discourse structures according to the Rhetorical Structure Theory. An overview of the knowledge sources and components for parsing scientific joumal articles is given. The parser’s core consists of cascaded applications of the GAP, a Generic Annotation Parser. Details of the chart parsing algorithm are provided, as well as a short evaluation in terms of comparisons with reference annotations from our corpus and with recently developed Systems with a similar task.
Integrated Linguistic Annotation Models and Their Application in the Domain of Antecedent Detection
(2011)
Seamless integration of various, often heterogeneous linguistic resources in terms of their output formats and a combined analysis of the respective annotation layers are crucial tasks for linguistic research. After a decade of concentration on the development of formats to structure single annotations for specific linguistic issues, in the last years a variety of specifications to store multiple annotations over the same primary data has been developed. The paper focuses on the integration of the knowledge resource logical document structure information into a text document to enhance the task of automatic anaphora resolution both for the task of candidate detection and antecedent selection. The paper investigates data structures necessary for knowledge integration and retrieval.
Different Views on Markup
(2010)
In this chapter, two different ways of grouping information represented in document markup are examined: annotation levels, referring to conceptual levels of description, and annotation layers, referring to the technical realisation of markup using e.g. document grammars. In many current XML annotation projects, multiple levels are integrated into one layer, often leading to the problem of having to deal with overlapping hierarchies. As a solution, we propose a framework for XML-based multiple, independent XML annotation layers for one text, based on an abstract representation of XML documents with logical predicates. Two realisations of the abstract representation are presented, a Prolog fact base format together with an application architecture, and a specification for XML native databases. We conclude with a discussion of projects that have currently adopted this framework.
An approach to the unification of XML (Extensible Markup Language) documents with identical textual content and concurrent markup in the framework of XML-based multi-layer annotation is introduced. A Prolog program allows the possible relationships between element instances on two annotation layers that share PCDATA to be explored and also the computing of a target node hierarchy for a well-formed, merged XML document. Special attention is paid to identity conflicts between element instances, for which a default solution that takes into account metarelations that hold between element types on the different annotation layers is provided. In addition, rules can be specified by a user to prescribe how identity conflicts should be solved for certain element types.
This article introduces the topic of ‘‘Multilingual language resources and interoperability’’. We start with a taxonomy and parameters for classifying language resources. Later we provide examples and issues of interoperatability, and resource architectures to solve such issues. Finally we discuss aspects of linguistic formalisms and interoperability.
Researchers in many disciplines, sometimes working in close cooperation, have been concerned with modeling textual data in order to account for texts as the prime information unit of written communication. The list of disciplines includes computer science and linguistics as well as more specialized disciplines like computational linguistics and text technology. What many of these efforts have in common is the aim to model textual data by means of abstract data types or data structures that support at least the semi-automatic processing of texts in any area of written communication.
We report on finished work in a project that is concerned with providing methods, tools, best practice guidelines, and solutions for sustainable linguistic resources. The article discusses several general aspects of sustainability and introduces an approach to normalizing corpus data and metadata records. Moreover, the architecture of the sustainability platform implemented by the authors is described.
This article shows that the TEI tag set for feature structures can be adopted to represent a heterogeneous set of linguistic corpora. The majority of corpora is annotated using markup languages that are based on the Annotation Graph framework, the upcoming Linguistic Annotation Format ISO standard, or according to tag sets defined by or based upon the TEI guidelines. A unified representation comprises the separation of conceptually different annotation layers contained in the original corpus data (e.g. syntax, phonology, and semantics) into multiple XML files. These annotation layers are linked to each other implicitly by the identical textual content of all files. A suitable data structure for the representation of these annotations is a multi-rooted tree that again can be represented by the TEI and ISO tag set for feature structures. The mapping process and representational issues are discussed as well as the advantages and drawbacks associated with the use of the TEI tag set for feature structures as a storage and exchange format for linguistically annotated data.
The multiple gradations of German strong verbs are but manifestations of a rather uncomplicated system. There is a small number of ways to make up ablaut forms; these types of formation are identifiable in formal terms and, what is more, they have definite functions as morphological markers. Using classifications of stem forms according to quality, complexity and quantity of vowels, three types of operations involved in ablaut formation are identified. Ablaut always includes a change of quality type or a change of complexity type, and in addition it may include a change of quantity type. Ablaut forms are clearly distinguished as against bases (and against each other): their vocalism meets a defined standard of dissimilarity. On this basis, gradations are collected into inflectional classes that are defined in strictly synchronic terms. These classes continue the historical seven classes known from reference grammars. For the majority of strong verbs, membership in these classes (and thus ablaut) is predictable.
The paper gives an analysis of productively occurring dative constructions in German, attempting to unify what are known traditionally as Double Object and Experiencer Datives. The datives in question - cipients as we call them - are argued to be licensed under two conditions: One, predicates licensing cipients project a theme and a location argument internally; two, interpretation of the predication as a whole involves reference to two dissociated temporal intervals, or more generally, indexical truth intervals. It is argued that the location argument is needed because it provides the variable that is bound by the cipient argument - the variable in question ranges over superlocations of the location argument referent. Reference to two truth intervals is forced because interpreting the cipient structure involves evaluation of two propositional meanings that would contradict each other in a single context. The first propositional meaning is embedded in the predicate; it encodes that something is at a certain location (in quality space). The second propositional meaning is projected as a presupposition that corresponds just to the negation of the first one. The cipient, functioning as the logical subject of the construction, accommodates this second presuppositional meaning; this makes the construction as a whole interpretable. The analysis applies uniformly to what appear to be the two major contexts licensing cipients: ‘eventive’ and ‘foo-comparative’ predications, thereby accounting for some striking parallels between them.
Discourse segmentation is the division of a text into minimal discourse segments, which form the leaves in the trees that are used to represent discourse structures. A definition of elementary discourse segments in German is provided by adapting widely used segmentation principles for English minimal units, while considering punctuation, morphology, sytax, and aspects of the logical document structure of a complex text type, namely scientific articles. The algorithm and implementation of a discourse segmenter based on these principles is presented, as well an evaluation of test runs.
This paper analyses paramedic emergency interaction as multimodal multiactivity. Based on a corpus of video-recordings of emergency drills performed by professional paramedics during advanced training, the focus is on paramedics’ participation in multiple joint projects which become simultaneously relevant. Simultaneity and fast succession of multiactivity does not only characterise work on the team level, but also the work profile of the individual paramedic. Participants have to coordinate their own participation in more than one joint project intrapersonally. In the data studied, three patterns of allocating multimodal resources stood out as routine ways of coordinating participation in two simultaneous projects intrapersonally:
1. Talk and hearing vs. manual action monitored by gaze,
2. Talk and hearing vs. gazing (and pointing),
3. Manual action vs. gaze (and talk and hearing).