Open Access

This paper demonstrates systematic cross-linguistic differences in the electrophysiological correlates of conflicts between form and meaning (“semantic reversal anomalies”). These engender P600 effects in English and Dutch (e.g. Kolk et al., 2003, Kuperberg et al., 2003), but a biphasic N400 – late positivity pattern in German (Schlesewsky and Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, 2009), and monophasic N400 effects in Turkish (Experiment 1) and Mandarin Chinese (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 revealed that, in Icelandic, semantic reversal anomalies show the English pattern with verbs requiring a position-based identification of argument roles, but the German pattern with verbs requiring a case-based identification of argument roles. The overall pattern of results reveals two separate dimensions of cross-linguistic variation: (i) the presence vs. absence of an N400, which we attribute to cross-linguistic differences with regard to the sequence-dependence of the form-to-meaning mapping and (ii) the presence vs. absence of a late positivity, which we interpret as an instance of a categorisation-related late P300, and which is observable when the language under consideration allows for a binary well-formedness categorisation of reversal anomalies. We conclude that, rather than reflecting linguistic domains such as syntax and semantics, the late positivity vs. N400 distinction is better understood in terms of the strategies that serve to optimise the form-to-meaning mapping in a given language.

This paper investigates evidence for linguistic coherence in new urban dialects that evolved in multiethnic and multilingual urban neighbourhoods. We propose a view of coherence as an interpretation of empirical observations rather than something that would be ‘‘out there in the data’’, and argue that this interpretation should be based on evidence of systematic links between linguistic phenomena, as established by patterns of covariation between phenomena that can be shown to be related at linguistic levels. In a case study, we present results from qualitative and quantitative analyses for a set of phenomena that have been described for Kiezdeutsch, a new dialect from multilingual urban Germany. Qualitative analyses point to linguistic relationships between different phenomena and between pragmatic and linguistic levels. Quantitative analyses, based on corpus data from KiDKo (www.kiezdeutschkorpus.de), point to systematic advantages for the Kiezdeutsch data from a multiethnic and multilingual context provided by the main corpus (KiDKo/Mu), compared to complementary corpus data from a mostly monoethnic and monolingual (German) context (KiDKo/Mo). Taken together, this indicates patterns of covariation that support an interpretation of coherence for this new dialect: our findings point to an interconnected linguistic system, rather than to a mere accumulation of individual features. In addition to this internal coherence, the data also points to external coherence: Kiezdeutsch is not disconnected on the outside either, but fully integrated within the general domain of German, an integration that defies a distinction of ‘‘autochthonous’’ and ‘‘allochthonous’’ German, not only at the level of speakers, but also at the level of linguistic systems.