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.

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.

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.

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.

This book provides a new analysis for the syntax of comparatives, focusing on various deletion phenomena affecting the subclause. In particular, the proposed account shows that Comparative Deletion is merely a surface phenomenon that can be drawn back to the overtness of the comparative operator and the availability of lower copies of a movement chain, and it is thus subject to both language-internal and cross-linguistic variation. The main focus of the book is on English, yet other languages are also discussed for comparative purposes, with the aim of showing what the idiosyncratic properties of English comparatives are.

Multiword expressions (MWEs) are a challenge for both the natural language applications and the linguistic theory because they often defy the application of the machinery developed for free combinations where the default is that the meaning of an utterance can be predicted from its structure. There is a rich body of primarily descriptive work on MWEs for many European languages but comparative work is little. The volume brings together MWE experts to explore the benefits of a multilingual perspective on MWEs. The ten contributions in this volume look at MWEs in Bulgarian, English, French, German, Maori, Modern Greek, Romanian, Serbian, and Spanish. They discuss prominent issues in MWE research such as classification of MWEs, their formal grammatical modeling, and the description of individual MWE types from the point of view of different theoretical frameworks, such as Dependency Grammar, Generative Grammar, Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Lexicon Grammar.

Synopsis Historically a dubbing country, Germany is not well-known for subtitled productions. But while dubbing is predominant in Germany, more and more German viewers prefer original and subtitled versions of their favourite shows and films. Conventional subtitling, however, can be seen as a strong intrusion into the original image that can not only disrupt but also destroy the director’s intended shot composition and focus points. Long eye movements between focus points and subtitles decrease the viewer’s information intake, and especially German audiences, who are often not used to subtitles, seem to prefer to wait for the next subtitle instead of looking back up again. Furthermore, not only the placement, but also the overall design of conventional subtitles can disturb the image composition – for instance titles with a weak contrast, inappropriate typeface or irritating colour system. So should it not, despite the translation process, be possible to preserve both image and sound as far as possible? Especially given today’s numerous artistic and technical possibilities and the huge amount of work that goes into the visual aspects of a film, taking into account not only special effects, but also typefaces, opening credits and text-image compositions. A further development of existing subtitling guidelines would not only express respect towards the original film version but also the translator’s work. The presented study shows how integrated titles can increase information intake while maintaining the intended image composition and focus points as well as the aesthetics of the shot compositions. During a three-stage experiment, the specifically for this purpose created integrated titles in the documentary “Joining the Dots” by director Pablo Romero-Fresco were analysed with the help of eye movement data from more than 45 participants. Titles were placed based on the gaze behaviour of English native speakers and then rated by German viewers dependant on a German translation. The results show that a reduction of the distance between intended focus points and titles allow the viewers more time to explore the image and connect the titles to the plot. The integrated titles were rated as more aesthetically pleasing and reading durations were shorter than with conventional subtitles. Based on the analysis of graphic design and filmmaking rules as well as conventional subtitling standards, a first workflow and set of placement strategies for integrated titles were created in order to allow a more respectful handling of film material as well as the preservation of the original image composition and typographic film identity.

This book proposes the reconstruction of the Proto-Niger-Congo numeral system. The emphasis is placed on providing an exhaustive account of the distribution of forms by families, groups, and branches. The big data bases used for this purpose open prospects for both working with the distribution of words that do exist and with the distribution of gaps in postulated cognates. The distribution of filled cells and gaps is a useful tool for reconstruction.

Following an introduction in the first chapter, the second chapter of this book is devoted to the study of various uses of noun class markers in numeral terms. The third chapter deals with the alignment by analogy in numeral systems. Chapter 4 offers a step-by-step reconstruction of number systems of the proto-languages underlying each of the twelve major NC families, on the basis of the step-by-step-reconstruction of numerals within each family. Chapter 5 deals with the reconstruction of the Proto-Niger-Congo numeral system on the basis of the step-by-step-reconstructions offered in Chapter 4. Chapter 6 traces the history of the numerals of Proto-Niger-Congo, reconstructed in Chapter 5, in each individual family of languages.

This book deals with the effects of three different learning contexts mainly on adult, but also on adolescent, learners’ language acquisition. The three contexts brought together in the monograph include i) a conventional instructed second language acquisition (ISLA) environment, in which learners receive formal instruction in English as a Foreign Language (EFL); ii) a Study Abroad (SA) context, which learners experience during mobility programmes, when the target language is no longer a foreign but a second language learnt in a naturalistic context; iii) the immersion classroom, also known as an integrated content and language (ICL) setting, in which learners are taught content subjects through the medium of the target language—more often than not English, used as the Lingua Franca (ELF).

The volume examines how these contexts change language learners’ linguistic performance, and also non-linguistic, that is, it throws light on how motivation, sense of identity, interculturality, international ethos, and affective factors develop. To our knowledge, no publication exists which places the three contexts on focus in this monograph along a continuum, as suggested in Pérez-Vidal (2011, 2014), with SA as ‘the most naturalistic’ context on one extreme, ISLA on the other, and ICL somewhere in between, while framing them all as international classrooms. Concerning target languages, the nine chapters included in the volume analyze English, and one chapter deals with Spanish, as the target language. As for target countries in SA programmes, data include England, Ireland, France, Germany, and Spain in Europe, but also Canada, China, and Australia. While the main bulk of the chapters deal with tertiary level language learners, a language learning population which has received less attention by research thus far, one chapter deals with adolescent learners.

Carmen Pérez-Vidal, Sonia López, Jennifer Ament and Dakota Thomas-Wilhelm all served on the organizing committee for the EUROSLA workshop held at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, in May 2016. It is from this workshop that this monograph was inspired

Ce livre s'appuie sur la "Theorie des Temps grammaticaux fondée sur les Traits pertinents temporels" et le site "www.theorie-des-temps.com". Il s'adresse aux enseignants d'universités et à leurs apprenants. Il permet le travail en groupes, mais aussi en plenum ou individuellement. C'est par la participation active des apprenants que l'on implique dans leur apprentissage que l'on projette d'enseigner l'emploi des temps grammaticaux du français. Le site Web fournit la théorie, les exercices de recherche et ceux d'application, un cahier de l'apprenant et une méthode d'apprentissage en autonomie.

Many researchers assume that the relation between morphology and phonology is not a direct one but is modulated by prosodic constituents, particularly the phonological word. Despite the theoretical relevance of the phonological word in morphophonology, phonetic investigations of the realization of (complex) words are still rare. The book aims to shed some light on this issue. On the basis of about 3800 tokens from experimentally elicited and spontaneous speech, it investigates the prosodic boundary phenomena glottal stop insertion / glottalization and degemination, as well as durational reductions and /t/-deletions in the vicinity of a morphological and/or prosodic boundary. Informed by findings from usage-based accounts of language, it systematically introduces token frequency and other potentially influencing factors into the analysis. The results yield a rather complex picture that, on the whole, corroborates the relevance of the phonological word as an interface domain between morphology and phonology. At the same time, the results underline the necessity to consider usage-based factors such as frequency, thus all in all lending support to so-called hybrid models of language.

Synopsis

After being dominant during about a century since its invention by Baudouin de Courtenay at the end of the nineteenth century, morpheme is more and more replaced by lexeme in contemporary descriptive and theoretical morphology.

The notion of a lexeme is usually associated with the work of P. H. Matthews (1972, 1974), who characterizes it as a lexical entity abstracting over individual inflected words. Over the last three decades, the lexeme has become a cornerstone of much work in both inflectional morphology and word formation (or, as it is increasingly been called, lexeme formation). The papers in the present volume take stock of the descriptive and theoretical usefulness of the lexeme, but also adress many of the challenges met by classical lexeme-based theories of morphology.