Sprache, Linguistik
Refine
Document Type
- Part of a Book (6)
- Article (3)
Has Fulltext
- yes (9)
Keywords
- Akzent (9) (remove)
Publicationstate
- Veröffentlichungsversion (6)
- Postprint (1)
Reviewstate
- (Verlags)-Lektorat (5)
- Peer-Review (3)
Publisher
- Buske (4)
- Language Science Press (1)
- Narr (1)
- Schwann (1)
- de Gruyter (1)
Head alignment in German compounds: Implications for prosodic constituency and morphological parsing
(2022)
The notion of head alignment was introduced to account for the observation that in a word with multiple feet, one is more prominent than the others. In particular, this notion is meant to capture the characteristic edge-orientation of main stress by requiring the (left or right) word boundary and the respective (left or right) boundary of the head foot to coincide (McCarthy & Prince 1993). In the present paper the notion of head alignment will be applied to compounds, which are also characterized by the property that one of their members, located in a margin position, is most prominent.
The adequacy of an analysis in terms of head alignment hinges on the question of whether observable prominence peaks associate with the boundaries of independently motivated constituents. It will be argued that such links exist for German compounds, indicating reference to at least three distinct compound categories established on morphological grounds: copulative, phrasal, and a default class of “regular” compounds. The evidence for the relevant distinctions sheds light on morphological parsing, indicating that compound categories can be – and often are – determined by properties pertaining to their complete form, rather than by conditions affecting their (original) construction.
Most authors agree that modal particles - a dass of function words widely considered characteristic of Modem German - cannot receive prosodic stress, though the reasons for this restriction have not yet been satisfactorily explained. This paper argues that unstressability follows from the general contribution of modal particles to compositional utterance meaning, which requires them to take scope over focus-background structures. Form and function of modal particle meanings are modelled and illustrated for five representative examples - the particles wohl, ja, eigentlich, eben and halt. It is argued that these as well as other particles, whenever they occur under prosodic stress, cannot preserve the meaning nor the syntactic behaviour of modal particles. All instances of stressed particles in German must therefore be categorized in other functional classes.
Proceeding from the central ideas of the papers contained in this volume, the closing article sets out to achieve a unified theory of the syntax and semantics of verum focus, to be illustrated for the sentence and clause types of present day German. In German, verum focus is realized phonologically by means of pitch accents on morphosyntactic exponents of various classes: finite verb forms, complementizers and subordinators, interrogative and relative phrases, and modal particles. In the first half of the article, these constituents - most of which reside in the left periphery of the sentence or clause - are shown to share the gramma-tical function of distinguishing between sentence moods and other categories of clauses. This observation gives rise to the assumption that verum focus should be explicable as contrastive focus on semantically distinctive features or components of sentence mood and clause type. In the second half of the article this assumption is spelt out for the sentence and clause types of German. We propose a universal semantic structure of sentence meaning which makes it possible to reduce the most typical cases of verum focus and their diverse contextual interpretations to highlighting the connection between the sentence/clause and its textual or dis-course environment. This connection is syntactically implemented by an element occupying the head position of CP: either a finite verb form or a complementizer/subordinator. Realizations of verum focus on prefield constituents in wh- and relative clauses are explained as phonetic remedies deployed when a connecting element in C° is missing. Focusing of modal particles in the middle field and of verb forms in the right periphery of the clause are shown to differ semantically from verum focus stricto sensu, although they have similar pragmatic effects. The theory is built exclusively on assumptions needed for independent reasons and dispenses with the problematic verum operator assumed in most traditional accounts.
This article deals with three interrelated phenoma in the information structure of German sentences: the focusing of negative markers, of finite verb forms and of the particles ja, doch, wohl and schon. Focusing of the finite verb is the most important marker of verum focus, as described by Höhle (1988). Focusing of particles can be an alternative means for similar purposes, while focusing of negation seems to be the contradictory opposite of verum focus. It is shown that negation- independently of its information structural status - can be interpreted on three distinct levels of sentence meaning: as an indicator of the non-facticity of a state of affairs, the non-truth of a proposition, or the non-desirability of a speech act. Focusing of the negative marker puts contrastive emphasis on the negative value assigned to sentence meaning on one of these levels. Ve rum focus can be interpreted on the same three levels: as a marker of contrastive emphasis on a positive value of facticity, truth or desirability. The particles ja, doch, wohl and schon refer to sufficient epistemic or interactional conditions for the assignment of a positive or negative value. By focusing such a particle, the speaker indicates that (s)he believes the assigned value to be well justified and insists on establishing it as common ground for further interaction.
Einleitung
(2012)
Der Begriff Wortprosodie bezeichnet hier die Organisation von Segmenten in die hierarchisch geordneten Konstituenten Silbe, Fuß und phonologisches Wort. Evidenz für solch eine Organisation und die ihr zugrundeliegenden Regeln findet sich in gewissen distributioneilen sowie phonetischen Besonderheiten von Segmenten. In diesem Beitrag versuche ich eine Darstellung der wesentlichen Züge der deutschen Wortprosodie als Interaktion miteinander in Konflikt stehender Beschränkungen im Sinne der Optimalitätstheorie. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Herausarbeitung unmarkierter prosodischer Strukturen auf der phonologisch-lexikalischen Ebene, da unmarkierte Strukturen einen wichtigen Bezugspunkt für die Beurteilung von Varianten bilden. Zugleich ergibt sich eine neue Perspektive auf das Verhältnis von Norm und Regel.
Betontes "der"
(2006)
Dieser Aufsatz führt in Grundbegriffe der deutschen Intonation ein und diskutiert ihre Relevanz für den Unterricht des Deutschen als Fremdsprache, vor allem in Brasilien. Für Muttersprachler des Portugiesischen, die Deutsch lernen, ist die Intonation wahrscheinlich eine größere Herausforderung als die Phonetik der Einzellaute. Das System der Töne, Tonbewegungen und Äußerungsakzente sowie ihre Beiträge zur Äußerungsbedeutung werden am Beispiel von Aussage- und Fragesätzen dargestellt. Den Abschluss bilden konkrete Übungsvorschläge zur Intonation im DaF- Unterricht.