420 Englisch
Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Article (22) (remove)
Keywords
- Deutsch (12)
- Englisch (11)
- Konversationsanalyse (3)
- Syntax (3)
- Adjektiv (2)
- Gesprochene Sprache (2)
- Interaktion (2)
- Mehrsprachigkeit (2)
- Verb (2)
- interaktionale Semanitik (2)
Publicationstate
- Postprint (5)
- Veröffentlichungsversion (4)
- Zweitveröffentlichung (2)
Reviewstate
- Peer-Review (8)
- (Verlags)-Lektorat (1)
Publisher
This article advocates an understanding of ‘positioning’ as a key to the analysis of identities in interaction within the methodological framework of conversation analysis. Building on research by Bamberg, Georgakopoulou and others, a performative, interaction-based approach to positioning is outlined and compared to membership categorization analysis. An interactional episode involving mock stories to reveal and reproach an inadequate identity-claim of a co-participant is analysed both in terms of practices of membership categorization and positioning. It is concluded that membership categorization is a core element of positioning. Still, positioning goes beyond membership categorization in a) revealing biographical dimensions accomplished by narration and b) by uncovering implicit performative claims of identity, which are not established by categorization or description.
Semantic theories based on predicate-argument structures have always acknowledged that lexical information associated with verbs is the basic source for the rudimentary semantic structure of sentences. The central role of verbs in sentence structure has become a major insight of modern syntactic theories since the lexical turn in linguistics, too. As a result of this development there has been an increasing interest in theories on the lexical representation of verbs. This paper will briefly review prevailing theories on verb semantics (section 1), showing that they can capture only a part of the wide range of syntactic and semantic phenomena dependent on verb meaning. For several of these phenomena (section 2) it will turn out that a theory based on highly structured events is more suitable for representing verb meaning. This theory is based on the idea that verbs refer to events that consist of several subevents which are temporally related, classified according to their duration, and whose event participants are connected to some but not necessarily all subevents by semantic relations (section 3).
Theories of aspectual composltlon assume that accomplishments arise when a transitive verb has an incremental theme argument which is realized as a quantized NP-foremost, an NP which is not a mass noun or a bare plural-in direct object position. A problem confronting this assumption is the large number of intransitive, unergative verbs in Getman and English that occur in accomplishment expressions. The paper argues that this problem can be solved within a Standard theory of aspectual composition if additional, independently motivated lexical assumptions about argmnent structure, the representation of implicit arguments and lexical presuppositions are made. It turns out that a distinction between lexically detennined definitcness versus non-definiteness of implicit arguments in particular plays a cmcial role, as weil as one between implicitly reflexive and non-reflexive arguments in that implicitly definite and implicitly reflexive arguments allow for accomplishment expressions. This is explained by the semantics of definiteness and refl.exivity, respectively. Apart from these verbs, there is another large group of unergatives which show that, in contrast to a common assumption in aspectual composition theory, verbs thermselves and not only VPs can be quantized. This leads to a lexical distinction between "mass" and "count" verbs.
In this paper I explore the theoretical significance of phonologically conditioned gaps in word formation. The data support the original approach to gaps in Optimality Theory proposed by Prince & Smolensky (1993), which crucially involves MPARSE as a ranked and violable constraint. The alternative CONTROL model proposed by Orgun & Sprouse (1999) is found to be inadequate because of lost generalisations and technical flaws. It is shown that a careful distinction between various morphophonological effects (e.g. paradigm uniformity effects, phonological repair and ‘stem selection’) is necessary to shed light on the morphology–phonology interface. The data investigated here support affixspecific constraint rankings, but argue against any stratal organisation of morphology.
In English and French relational adjectives occurring in construction with deverbal nominalizations can be thematically associated with subject as well as object arguments. By contrast, in German object-related readings of relational adjectives seem to be inadmissible. The greater flexibility of English and French in terms of the thematic interpretability of relational adjectives also shows up with respect to "circumstantial" thematic roles like directionals, locatives and instrumentals. It is arguably due to the common Latin heritage of English and French, since in Latin relational adjectives representing subject or object arguments of nominalizations are widely attested. However, even in English and French object-related readings are confined to result nominalizations, a restriction we suggest to account for in terms of the more "noun-like" character of result nominalizations in contrast to process nominalizations. Moreover, since argument-related interpretations of relational adjectives can always be overridden by appropriate agentive/ patientive phrases, relational adjectives cannot be analyzed as occupying an argument position, but rather as modifying the semantic role associated with it.
This paper presents the concept of the "participant perspective" as an approach to the study of spoken language. It discusses three aspects of this concept and shows that they can offer helpful tools in spoken language research. Employing the participant perspective provides us with an alternative to many of the approaches currently in use in the study of spoken language in that it favours small-scale, qualitative research that aims to uncover categories relevant for the participants. Its results can usefully complement large-scale studies of phenomena on all linguistic dimensions of talk.
As an Introduction to the Special Issue on "Formulation, generalization,
and abstraction in interaction,’’ this paper discusses key problems of a conversation
analytic (CA) approach to semantics in interaction. Prior research in CA and
Interactional Linguistics has only rarely dealt with issues of linguistic meaning in
interaction. It is argued that this is a consequence of limitations of sequential
analysis to capture meaning in interaction. While sequential analysis remains the
encompassing methodological framework, it is suggested that it needs to be complemented
by analyzing semantic relationships between choices of formulation in
the interaction, ethnography, and structural techniques of comparing selected
options with possible alternatives. The paper describes the methodological approach
taken to interactional semantics by the papers in the Special Issue, which analyse
practices of generalization and abstraction in interaction as they are accomplished
by formulations of prior versions of reference and description.