400 Sprache, Linguistik
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Der vorliegende Text unternimmt den Versuch, einen Beitrag zur grammatischen Analyse von Ellipsen zu leisten, indem kontextkontrollierte Ellipsen und Strukturellipsen konstruktionsgrammatisch verortet und interpretiert werden. In diesem Zusammenhang soll vor allem die Frage nach ihrem eventuellen Konstruktionsstatus im Mittelpunkt stehen. Wie sich zeigen wird, werden die beiden markanten Vertreter der Ellipsenwelt (Analepse und Strukturellipse) diesbezüglich unterschiedlich bewertet. Da der Phänomenbereich in beiden Hauptklassen eine Menge unterschiedlicher Formate und Typen umfasst (zu einem Überblick vgl. Hennig 2013: 447-448), kann die vorgelegte Analyse nur exemplarisch erfolgen und erhebt somit keinen Anspruch auf Vollständigkeit. Dennoch soll sie der Bedingung der Generalisierbarkeit theoretischer Annahmen insofern gerecht werden, als die beiden Hauptklassen (Analepse und Strukturellipse) genauer untersucht werden, die m. E. zwei entgegengesetzte Eckpunkte des Spektrums möglicher Ellipsen darstellen und somit in analytischer Perspektive, so auch in der konstruktionsgrammatischen Theoriebildung aus meiner Sicht besondere Aufmerksamkeit verdienen.
We present a study on gaps in spoken language interaction as a potential candidate for syntactic boundaries. On the basis of an online annotation experiment, we can show that there is an effect of gap duration and gap type on its likelihood of being a syntactic boundary. We discuss the potential of these findings for an automation of the segmentation process.
The puzzle we consider in this paper is that Merchant (2004) judges certain elliptical utterances in context to be ungrammatical, while Culicover and Jackendoff (2005) judge similar examples to be grammatical. The main difference between the examples appears to be that Merchant’s are introduced by no, while Culicover and Jackendoff’s are introduced by yes. We propose that the different judgments do not reflect grammaticality, but complexity associated with ambiguity. First, there is an ambiguity with respect to the reference of noun phrases in discourse: the relationship of the fragment to the preceding discourse is ambiguous. Second, there is an ambiguity with respect to the discourse function of an utterance, and in particular, whether it is an affirmation triggered by yes or a denial triggered by no. In the case of the denial, it needs to be established, which part of the preceding statement has to be corrected, while in the case of the affirmation, no such ambiguity arises. The interactions between these two interpretive functions may under certain circumstances render particular sentences in discourse difficult to interpret. Interpretive difficulty has the subjective flavor of ‘ungrammaticality’; in the case that we discuss here, these judgments form the basis for a particular linguistic analysis. But, we argue, manipulation of the dis-course context can simplify discourse interpretation by resolving the ambiguity, which removes the interpretive difficulty. The conclusion that we draw is that the phenomenon in question is not a matter of linguistic structure, but of discourse interpretation.
Our corpus study is concerned with subject-verb agreement in contemporary German, more precisely the variation in verb number. We focus on subjects consisting of noun phrases coordinated by the conjunction und (‘and’). In our samples, both nouns are in singular. Number resolution – i.e., plural verb despite of the singular nouns – can be regarded as the default choice in contemporary German. However, our data show that eliding the second determiner in the subject enhances the probability of using the singular verb. This ellipsis effect is highly significant in German and Austrian texts. It seems to be weaker in Swiss texts. Regression analyses reveal that the ellipsis effect is stronger than both the highly significant influence of subject individuation and the significant effect of subject agentivity.