This book presents an in-depth description of information structure in Isthmus Zapotec, an Otomanguean language spoken by around 50,000 people in southeastern Oaxaca, Mexico, and represents the first book-length treatment of information structure in a Mesoamerican language. Three main observations motivate the study: 1. Strong documentation and a relatively large and active speaker community create a unique opportunity to document information structure in Isthmus Zapotec and to study the language as it is used by speakers in everyday life; 2. As a tonal and verb-initial language, the examination of Isthmus Zapotec represents a chance to explore the possible combinations of tone, intonation, morphology and verb-initial syntax that may occur in the coding of information structure; and 3. The close analysis of spontaneous speech in an endangered language contributes to our theoretical understanding of information structure and informs our knowledge of language documentation practices and revitalization efforts. Overall, the analysis presented here demonstrates the value and need for information structure studies to document and analyze naturally-occurring data.

Companies and organisations are increasingly using machine translation to improve efficiency and cost-effectiveness, and then edit the machine translated output to create a fluent text that adheres to given text conventions. This procedure is known as post-editing.

Translation and post-editing can often be categorised as problem-solving activities. When the translation of a source text unit is not immediately obvious to the translator, or in other words, if there is a hurdle between the source item and the target item, the translation process can be considered problematic. Conversely, if there is no hurdle between the source and target texts, the translation process can be considered a task-solving activity and not a problem-solving activity.

This study investigates whether machine translated output influences problem-solving effort in internet research, syntax, and other problem indicators and whether the effort can be linked to expertise. A total of 24 translators (twelve professionals and twelve semi-professionals) produced translations from scratch from English into German, and (monolingually) post-edited machine translation output for this study. The study is part of the CRITT TPR-DB database. The translation and (monolingual) post-editing sessions were recorded with an eye-tracker and a keylogging program. The participants were all given the same six texts (two texts per task).

Different approaches were used to identify problematic translation units. First, internet research behaviour was considered as research is a distinct indicator of problematic translation units. Then, the focus was placed on syntactical structures in the MT output that do not adhere to the rules of the target language, as I assumed that they would cause problems in the (monolingual) post-editing tasks that would not occur in the translation from scratch task. Finally, problem indicators were identified via different parameters like Munit, which indicates how often the participants created and modified one translation unit, or the inefficiency (InEff) value of translation units, i.e. the number of produced and deleted tokens divided by the final length of the translation. Finally, the study highlights how these parameters can be used to identify problems in the translation process data using mere keylogging data.

This book is an introductory course on formal semantics written in Portuguese. It presents the basics of a compositional interpretive system, using tools taken from logic and mathematics. No previous knowledge about formal approaches to meaning is presupposed. The book can be used as a one-semester course for upper-level undergraduate or by beginning graduate students. It will be of interest not only to linguists and linguistics students, but also to researchers and students from related areas, such as philosophy, cognitive sciences, and artificial intelligence. All chapters end with suggested readings and exercises, making it also suitable for self-learners. The book is divided into 7 chapters. Starting with an introductory chapter on the basics of truth-conditional semantics and formal approaches to meaning (Chapter 1), the core of the book covers semantic phenomena related to predicate saturation (Chapter 2), coordination and negation (Chapter 3), reference (Chapter 4), modification (Chapter 5), quantification (Chapter 6), and binding (Chapter 7).

This book provides an introduction to the study of meaning in human language, from a linguistic perspective. It covers a fairly broad range of topics, including lexical semantics, compositional semantics, and pragmatics. The chapters are organized into six units: (1) Foundational concepts; (2) Word meanings; (3) Implicature (including indirect speech acts); (4) Compositional semantics; (5) Modals, conditionals, and causation; (6) Tense & aspect.

Most of the chapters include exercises which can be used for class discussion and/or homework assignments, and each chapter contains references for additional reading on the topics covered.

As the title indicates, this book is truly an INTRODUCTION: it provides a solid foundation which will prepare students to take more advanced and specialized courses in semantics and/or pragmatics. It is also intended as a reference for fieldworkers doing primary research on under-documented languages, to help them write grammatical descriptions that deal carefully and clearly with semantic issues. The approach adopted here is largely descriptive and non-formal (or, in some places, semi-formal), although some basic logical notation is introduced. The book is written at level which should be appropriate for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students. It presupposes some previous coursework in linguistics, but does not presuppose any background in formal logic or set theory.

This volume provides an up-to-date discussion of a foundational issue that has recently taken centre stage in linguistic typology and which is relevant to the language sciences more generally: To what extent can cross-linguistic generalizations, i.e. statistical universals of linguistic structure, be explained by the diachronic sources of these structures? Everyone agrees that typological distributions are the result of complex histories, as “languages evolve into the variation states to which synchronic universals pertain” (Hawkins 1988). However, an increasingly popular line of argumentation holds that many, perhaps most, typological regularities are long-term reflections of their diachronic sources, rather than being ‘target-driven’ by overarching functional-adaptive motivations. On this view, recurrent pathways of reanalysis and grammaticalization can lead to uniform synchronic results, obviating the need to postulate global forces like ambiguity avoidance, processing efficiency or iconicity, especially if there is no evidence for such motivations in the genesis of the respective constructions. On the other hand, the recent typological literature is equally ripe with talk of "complex adaptive systems", "attractor states" and "cross-linguistic convergence". One may wonder, therefore, how much room is left for traditional functional-adaptive forces and how exactly they influence the diachronic trajectories that shape universal distributions. The papers in the present volume are intended to provide an accessible introduction to this debate. Covering theoretical, methodological and empirical facets of the issue at hand, they represent current ways of thinking about the role of diachronic sources in explaining grammatical universals, articulated by seasoned and budding linguists alike.

This volume contains the complete collection of published and unpublished work on German grammar by Tilman N. Höhle. It consists of two parts. The first part is Topologische Felder, a book-length manuscript that was written in 1983 but was never finished nor published. It is a careful examination of the topological properties of German sentences, including a discussion of typological assumptions. The second part assembles all other published and unpublished papers by Höhle on German grammar.

All of these papers were highly influential in German linguistics, in theoretical linguistics in general, and in a specific variant of theoretical linguistics, Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Topics covered are clause structure, constituent order, coordination, (verum) focus, word structure, the relationship between relative pronouns and verbs in V2, extraction, and the foundations of a theory of phonology in constraint-based grammar.

Many descriptive grammars report the use of a linguistic pattern at the interface between discourse and syntax which is known generally as tail-head linkage. This volume takes an unprecedented look at this type of linkage across languages and shows that there exist three distinct variants, all subsumed under the hypernym bridging constructions. The chapters highlight the defining features of these constructions in the grammar and their functional properties in discourse. The volume reveals that: - Bridging constructions consist of two clauses: a reference clause and a bridging clause. Across languages, bridging clauses can be subordinated clauses, reduced main clauses, or main clauses with continuation prosody. - Bridging constructions have three variants: recapitulative linkage, summary linkage and mixed linkage. They differ in the formal makeup of the bridging clause. - In discourse, the functions that bridging constructions fulfil depend on the text genres in which they appear and their position in the text. - If a language uses more than one type of bridging construction, then each type has a distinct discourse function. - Bridging constructions can be optional and purely stylistic or mandatory and serve a grammatical purpose. - Although the difference between bridging constructions and clause repetition can be subtle, they maintain their own distinctive characteristics.

Pichi is an Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier Creole spoken on the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea. It is an offshoot of 19th century Krio (Sierra Leone) and shares many characteristics with West African relatives like Nigerian Pidgin, Cameroon Pidgin, and Ghanaian Pidgin English, as well as with the English-lexifier creoles of the insular and continental Caribbean. This comprehensive description presents a detailed analysis of the grammar and phonology of Pichi. It also includes a collection of texts and wordlists. Pichi features a nominative-accusative alignment, SVO word order, adjective-noun order, prenominal determiners, and prepositions. The language has a seven-vowel system and twenty-two consonant phonemes. Pichi has a two-tone system with tonal minimal pairs, morphological tone, and tonal processes. The morphological structure is largely isolating. Pichi has a rich system of tense-aspect-mood marking, an indicative-subjunctive opposition, and a complex copular system with several suppletive forms. Many features align Pichi with the Atlantic-Congo languages spoken in the West African littoral zone. At the same time, characteristics like the prenominal position of adjectives and determiners show a typological overlap with its lexifier English, while extensive contact with Spanish has left an imprint on the lexicon and grammar as well.

Le système "La Grammaire du FLE" , qui comprend 8 livres et un site Web, s’est construit par étapes de 2014 à 2019. Il couvre la totalité de la grammaire française, présentant certaines parties inédites, telle l’initiation à la phonétique et à la phonétique corrective y compris l’intonation marquée ou non-marquée, un approfondissement de la notion de valence verbale, une approche personnelle de l’emploi des temps simples du passé. En outre, il aborde d’une façon innovante l’emploi des temps grammaticaux en introduisant l’idée de traits pertinents temporels, censés remplacer les notions plus que fluctuantes d’un auteur à l’autre d’aspects et de modalités. Enfin, en utilisant les bases d’eGrammaire pour le français, la Grammaire du FLE explose les li-mites du français pour comparer l’emploi des temps du français, de l’anglais et de l’allemand Il repose sur le principe de la participation active de l'apprenant, en groupes, en plénum ou en travail individuel autonome sur ordinateur.

La valence verbale est le phénomène qui lie le verbe à ses compléments. Elle intervient sur la construction du groupe verbal, la formation du passif, l'accord du participe passé, le choix des pronoms relatifs, celui des démonstratifs, des possessifs, des indéfinis, des pronoms personnels, des pronoms interrogatifs, l'emploi de l'impératif en liaison avec les pronoms personnels et la mise en relief des principales. Étant donné l'importance de la valence, alors que ce concept est fort peu enseigné dans les écoles ou collèges de France, il est nécessaire de mettre au point un système permettant de l'enseigner, de préférence avec la participation active des apprenants.

African Linguistics on the Prairie features select revised peer-reviewed papers from the 45th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at the University of Kansas. The articles in this volume reflect the enormous diversity of African languages, as they focus on languages from all of the major African language phyla. The articles here also reflect the many different research perspectives that frame the work of linguists in the Association for Contemporary African Linguistics. The diversity of views presented in this volume are thus indicative of the vitality of current African linguistics research. The work presented in this volume represents both descriptive and theoretical methodologies and covers fields ranging from phonetics, phonology, morphology, typology, syntax, and semantics to sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, language acquisition, computational linguistics and beyond. This broad scope and the quality of the articles contained within holds out the promise of continued advancement in linguistic research on African languages.

This book introduces formal grammar theories that play a role in current linguistic theorizing (Phrase Structure Grammar, Transformational Grammar/Government & Binding, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Head-​Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Construction Grammar, Tree Adjoining Grammar). The key assumptions are explained and it is shown how the respective theory treats arguments and adjuncts, the active/passive alternation, local reorderings, verb placement, and fronting of constituents over long distances. The analyses are explained with German as the object language. The second part of the book compares these approaches with respect to their predictions regarding language acquisition and psycholinguistic plausibility. The nativism hypothesis, which assumes that humans posses genetically determined innate language-specific knowledge, is critically examined and alternative models of language acquisition are discussed. The second part then addresses controversial issues of current theory building such as the question of flat or binary branching structures being more appropriate, the question whether constructions should be treated on the phrasal or the lexical level, and the question whether abstract, non- visible entities should play a role in syntactic analyses. It is shown that the analyses suggested in the respective frameworks are often translatable into each other. The book closes with a chapter showing how properties common to all languages or to certain classes of languages can be captured. The book is a translation of the German book Grammatiktheorie, which was published by Stauffenburg in 2010. The following quotes are taken from reviews: With this critical yet fair reflection on various grammatical theories, Müller fills what was a major gap in the literature. Karen Lehmann, Zeitschrift für Rezen­sio­nen zur ger­man­is­tis­chen Sprach­wis­senschaft, 2012 Stefan Müller’s recent introductory textbook, Gram­matik­the­o­rie, is an astonishingly comprehensive and insightful survey for beginning students of the present state of syntactic theory. Wolfgang Sternefeld und Frank Richter, Zeitschrift für Sprach­wissen­schaft, 2012 This is the kind of work that has been sought after for a while [...] The impartial and objective discussion offered by the author is particularly refreshing. Werner Abraham, Germanistik, 2012

Synopsis This volume contains the complete collection of published and unpublished work on German grammar by Tilman N. Höhle. It consists of two parts. The first part is Topologische Felder, a book-length manuscript that was written in 1983 but was never finished nor published. It is a careful examination of the topological properties of German sentences, including a discussion of typological assumptions. The second part assembles all other published and unpublished papers by Höhle on German grammar. All of these papers were highly influential in German linguistics, in theoretical linguistics in general, and in a specific variant of theoretical linguistics, Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Topics covered are clause structure, constituent order, coordination, (verum) focus, word structure, the relationship between relative pronouns and verbs in V2, extraction, and the foundations of a theory of phonology in constraint-based grammar.

While there are languages that code a particular grammatical role (e.g. subject or direct object) in one and the same way across the board, many more languages code the same grammatical roles differentially. The variables which condition the differential argument marking (or DAM) pertain to various properties of the NP (such as animacy or definiteness) or to event semantics or various properties of the clause. While the main line of current research on DAM is mainly synchronic the volume tackles the diachronic perspective. The tenet is that the emergence and the development of differential marking systems provide a different kind of evidence for the understanding of the phenomenon. The present volume consists of 18 chapters and primarily brings together diachronic case studies on particular languages or language groups including e.g. Finno-Ugric, Sino-Tibetan and Japonic languages. The volume also includes a position paper, which provides an overview of the typology of different subtypes of DAM systems, a chapter on computer simulation of the emergence of DAM and a chapter devoted to the cross-linguistic effects of referential hierarchies on DAM.

Synopsis This book provides an introduction to the study of meaning in human language, from a linguistic perspective. It covers a fairly broad range of topics, including lexical semantics, compositional semantics, and pragmatics. The chapters are organized into six units: (1) Foundational concepts; (2) Word meanings; (3) Implicature (including indirect speech acts); (4) Compositional semantics; (5) Modals, conditionals, and causation; (6) Tense & aspect. Most of the chapters include exercises which can be used for class discussion and/or homework assignments, and each chapter contains references for additional reading on the topics covered. As the title indicates, this book is truly an INTRODUCTION: it provides a solid foundation which will prepare students to take more advanced and specialized courses in semantics and/or pragmatics. It is also intended as a reference for fieldworkers doing primary research on under-documented languages, to help them write grammatical descriptions that deal carefully and clearly with semantic issues. The approach adopted here is largely descriptive and non-formal (or, in some places, semi-formal), although some basic logical notation is introduced. The book is written at level which should be appropriate for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students. It presupposes some previous coursework in linguistics, but does not presuppose any background in formal logic or set theory.

The purpose of this volume is to present a snapshot of the state of the art of research on the languages of the Maltese islands, which include spoken Maltese, Maltese English and Maltese Sign Language. Malta is a tiny, but densely populated country, with over 422,000 inhabitants spread over only 316 square kilometers. It is a bilingual country, with Maltese and English enjoying the status of official languages. Maltese is a descendant of Arabic, but due to the history of the island, it has borrowed extensively from Sicilian, Italian and English. Furthermore, local dialects still coexist alongside the official standard language. The status of English as a second language dates back to British colonial rule, and just as in other former British colonies, a characteristic Maltese variety of English has developed. To these languages must be added Maltese Sign Language, which is the language of the Maltese Deaf community. This was recently recognised as Malta’s third official language by an act of Parliament in 2016. While a volume such as the present one can hardly do justice to all aspects of a diverse and complex linguistic situation, even in a small community like that of Malta, our aim in editing this book was to shed light on the main strands of research being undertaken in the Maltese linguistic context. Six of the contributions in this book focus on Maltese and explore a broad range of topics including: historical changes in the Maltese sound system; syllabification strategies; the interaction of prosody and gesture; the constraints regulating /t/-insertion; the productivity of derivational suffixes; and raising phenomena. The study of Maltese English, especially with the purpose of establishing the defining characteristics of this variety of English, is a relatively new area of research. Three of the papers in this volume deal with Maltese English, which is explored from the different perspectives of rhythm, the syntax of nominal phrases, and lexical choice. The last contribution discusses the way in which Maltese Sign Language (LSM) has evolved alongside developments in LSM research. In summary, we believe the present volume has the potential to present a unique snapshot of a complex linguistic situation in a geographically restricted area. Given the nature and range of topics proposed, the volume will likely be of interest to researchers in both theoretical and comparative linguistics, as well as those working with experimental and corpus-based methodologies. Our hope is that the studies presented here will also serve to pave the way for further research on the languages of Malta, encouraging researchers to also take new directions, including the exploration of variation and sociolinguistic factors which, while often raised as explanatory constructs in the papers presented here, remain under-researched.

Synopsis Die Artikulatorische Phonologie (Catherine Browman und Louis Goldstein) wurde als Alternative zu segmentalen Ansätzen entwickelt. So nimmt die segmentale Phonologie an, dass nur distinkte Information gespeichert wird, die dann mit Hilfe von Regeln und Rechenprinzipien von der kategorialen Welt der Symbole in die kontinuierliche Welt der physikalischen Repräsentation übersetzt wird. Die Artikulatorische Phonologie hingegen nimmt an, dass auch kontinuierliche Information wie beispielsweise sprecher- oder situationsbedingte Variationen als Teil des Sprachsystems gespeichert werden. Variabilität wird hier als Teil des linguistischen Systems betrachtet, das konkret Aufschluss über zugrundeliegende Strukturen gibt. Im Modell der Artikulatorischen Phonologie wird Sprache als dynamisches System betrachtet und somit phonetische und phonologische Information integriert. Die Grundeinheiten der Artikulatorischen Phonologie sind nicht Segmente oder Merkmale, sondern artikulatorische Gesten. Diese legen linguistische relevante Konstriktionen wie beispielsweise einen Vollverschluss der Zungenspitze an den Alveolen sowie eine glottale Öffnungsgeste für Stimmlosigkeit bei der Produktion von /t/. Die Einbeziehung der zeitlichen Domäne ermöglicht im Gegensatz zu segmentalen Ansätzen die Abbildung natürlicher Variabilität. So kann beispielsweise im Falle von /t/ der Grad der Aspiration direkt aus der zeitlichen Anordnung der glottalen und oralen Geste abgeleitet werden: Ist die glottale Geste länger als die Zungenspitzengeste aktiviert, so entsteht auf akustischer Oberfläche Aspiration. Artikulatorische Gesten enkodieren darüber hinaus den kontextuellen Einfluss (Koartikulation in Form von Synergien zwischen Organgruppen) und können direkt den Einfluss höhere linguistischer Strukturen wie der prosodischen Hierarchie abbilden. Das vorliegende Buch stellt eine Einführung in die Artikulatorische Phonologie dar. Es richtet sich an Leserinnen und Leser, die phonetische Grundkenntnisse besitzen und sich mit der Artikulatorischen Phonologie beschäftigen. Darüber hinaus werden neben einer Einführung in das Model auch neuere Arbeiten und aktuelle Weiterentwicklungen aufgezeigt, insbesondere die Implementierung prosodischer Aspekte in die Artikulatorische Phonologie. Somit eignet sich das Buch auch für Leserinnen und Leser, die bereits mit der Artikulatorischen Phonologie in Kontakt gekommen sind, aber ihr Wissen vertiefen möchten. Zur Veranschaulichung werden Beispiele aus verschiedenen Sprachen gegeben, darunter Deutsch, Katalanisch, Italienisch, Polnisch, Mandarin und Tashlhiyt Berber. This book is an introduction to Articulatory Phonology with a special focus on the interplay of articulation and prosody. Articulatory Phonology (Catherine Browman and Louis Goldstein) is a dynamic approach that fully integrates phonetics and phonology. It assumes that the basic units of speech production are dynamically defined articulatory gestures, which can be modelled as a constellation of invariant functional units of vocal tract constriction actions. Articulatory gestures do not directly correspond to traditional segments or features. Moreover, they are movements which extend over time and can temporally overlap with one another. Within this model, the continuous variation of a self-organised speech system can be modelled, constantly mediating between the demands of the physical control system and linguistic structure. The present book gives an introduction in German to the basic concepts of articulatory phonology for a German readership (e.g. task dynamics, definition of articulatory gestures, gestural scores, coupling graphs and parameter manipulation in mass-spring models). Furthermore, it discusses the implementation of prosodic structure in Articulatory Phonology (e.g. self-organisation of prosodic constituents, head and edge marking in the prosodic hierarchy and implementation of prosodic gestures and tone gestures in Articulatory Phonology). In every chapter, examples from different languages are given, such as German, Catalan, Italian, Polish, Mandarin und Tashlhiyt Berber. The book is written in the spirit that dynamic approaches offer a crucial alternative to the traditional symbol-based theories. The natural process of human communication constantly triggers and constrains variation in speech, often reaching deeply into human physiology, cognition and grammar. This variation is more than just noise in experimental data: It is a window to linguistic structure, which can be best modelled in terms of a dynamical system.

L’explication de l’emploi des temps grammaticaux du français fournie par les grammaires souffre généralement d’un manque de cohérence. On se perd dans les temps, les modes, les aspects et les modalités Ces derniers ne sont pas les mêmes selon les auteurs. Lorsqu’il s’agit d’expliquer les raisons du choix d’un mode et d’un temps, on rencontre des explications simplistes, ou au contraire à caractère littéraire, voire ésotérique. Pour mettre de l’ordre dans ce problème, nous partons des traits pertinents temporels (TPT), qui sont tous les traits grammaticaux qui interviennent dans le choix des modes et des temps.

Synopsis

This volume is the first in what hopefully will be a growing set of edited volumes and monographs concerning Niger-Congo comparative studies. This first volume addresses matters that are relevant to the entire East Benue-Congo family as well as the particular branches Kainji, Plateau, and Bantoid. In the case of Bantoid, the particular focus is on Grassfields and the Grassfields-Bantu borderland, though other Bantoid subgroups are referenced. The potential topics for comparative studies among these languages are numerous, but this volume is dedicated to presentations on nominal affixes, third person pronouns, and verbal extensions. A forthcoming volume will provide some results of reconstructions and lexicostatistics in Cross River, exploratory reconstructions in Southern Jukunoid, and reconstructions in Ekoid-Mbe and Mambiloid.