scholarly journals Topiks im Deutschen und Italienischen

2021 ◽  
Vol 111 (6) ◽  
pp. 89-104
Author(s):  
Federica Cognola ◽  
Manuela Caterina Moroni
Keyword(s):  
Initial Position ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Fixed Order ◽  
The Difference ◽  
German Data ◽  
Finite Verb

The aim of this paper is i) to investigate the distribution of different topic types in the highest portion (found above valutative adverbs such as glücklicherweise and leider, Cinque 1999) of the German Mittelfeld, i. e. the clause portion found between the finite and non-finite verb forms (Satzklammer), and ii) to compare it with the distribution of topics within the Italian left periphery, i. e. the area found above the finite verb where operators, focalised and topicalised constructions are hosted (Rizzi 1997; Benincà 1988, 2001). Based on a corpus of written and oral German data collected through the DeReKO and the FOLK Databases, we show that in German i) in both written and oral examples a single topic belonging to all topic classes can appear in the highest portion of the Mittelfeld (as proposed by Frascarelli/Hinterhölzl 2007), ii) and that multiple topics are restricted to written texts and appear with the fixed order “Aboutness Topic > Familiar Topic; Aboutness Topic > Contrast Topic”. We compare the distribution of topics above valutative adverbs in German with the distribution of topics in the Italian left periphery. We show that the two languages share the fact that multiple topics are possible, with the difference that i) three topics can appear in the Italian left periphery in the order Aboutness Topic > Contrast Topic > Familiar Topic whereas only sequences of two topics are attested in German; ii) the sentence-initial position functions as an “extra” position for topics in German but not in Italian due to the V2 nature of the former language; iii) the presence of multiple topics in the left periphery is restricted to oral or informal texts in Italian and it is a typical trait of colloquial/informal language, whereas the availability of multiple topics in the German Mittefeld is restricted to written/formal texts and can thus be seen as a written/formal trait.

scholarly journals W-Wort-Verdoppelung im Schweizerdeutschen

2005 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Natascha Frey
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Question Type ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Swiss German ◽  
German Dialects ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Normal Sentence ◽  
Rhetorical Questions ◽  
German Data

In some Swiss German dialects, wh-questions can show the wh-word at the end of the sentence in addition to its 'normal' sentence initial position. This phenomenon called wh-doubling raises some puzzling questions for linguistic theories, such as: what kind of processes are involved in wh-doubling (syntactic, phonological)? Does wh-doubling enrich the poor left periphery of Swiss German? Why do speakers use an additional wh-word that seems to be absolutely superfluous? I will argue that wh-doubling depends on the information structure of the question, more specifically on the function of the wh-word as a focus constituent. Wh-doubling is also used in a special type of rhetorical questions in Swiss High German where in addition to doubling wh-words undergo diminutive formation and reduplication. My paper pursues two main goals: (i) to give a detailed description of wh-doubling constructions with regard to geographical distribution and question type (rhetorical, alternative, echo etc.); (ii) to present syntactic analyses of similar wh-doubling phenomena in other languages considering their application to Swiss German data.

scholarly journals Reliance on Predicative Units as a Method of Analysing and Translating Amharic Written Texts

Aethiopica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iosif Fridman
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Students ◽  
The Other ◽  
Second Step ◽  
Detailed Knowledge ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
The Third ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Finite Verb

In analysing and translating Amharic texts, most foreign students have experienced major problems while trying to ‘redirect’ the rigidly leftbranching syntax of Amharic into the predominantly right-branching syntax of most European languages. The way out of this difficulty proposed by some teachers of Amharic consists in the so-called ‘translating from the end’ principle: the student begins to decipher the structure of an Amharic sentence from the finite verb form at its very end and gradually proceeds towards the beginning of the sentence, untangling—one by one—the syntactic structures involved. In the course of teaching Amharic, I have found this method largely inadequate for the purpose it is supposed to achieve. As an alternative to the ‘translating from the end’ method the author proposes another strategy which could be termed ‘reliance on predicative units’. In using this strategy, the student should, first of all, single out verb forms which are likely to perform the function of (final or dependent) predicates. The second step consists in delimiting groups, or units, headed by every such verb form. The third step is to provide a rough, working translation of every such unit without taking into consideration its relations to the other units in the sentence. The fourth, and final, step consists in joining the translations of the predicative units together; at this stage, detailed knowledge of Amharic morphosyntactic rules is very much required.

Preverbation and narrativity in Lithuanian. The distribution of finite simplex and compound verbs in narrative main clauses

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 167-192
Author(s):  
Lea Sawicki
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Text ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
The Past ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Compound Verbs ◽  
Finite Verb

The article deals with the use of simplex and compound (prefixed) verbs in narrative text. Main clauses comprising finite verb forms in the past and in the past habitual tense are examined in an attempt to establish to what extent simplex and compound verbs exhibit aspect oppositions, and whether a correlation exists between the occurrence of simplex vs. compound verbs and distinct textual units. The investigation shows that although simple and compound verbs in Lithuanian are not in direct aspect opposition to each other, in the background text portions most of the verbs are prefixless past tense forms or habitual forms, whereas in the plot-advancing text portions, the vast majority of verbs are compound verbs in the simple past tense.  

Zum Augment neuägyptischer Verbalformen

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 139-164
Author(s):  
Carsten Peust
Keyword(s):  
Initial Position ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Verb Forms

“On the Augment of Late Egyptian Verb Forms” -- It is shown that the augment which is characteristic of certain nominal verb forms of Late Egyptian – and survives in a few traces up until Coptic – contains none of those vowels that were regularly admitted at the beginning of Egyptian words. Rather, it must continue a wordinternal vowel /ǝ/ that moved into the initial position by a misdivision of the proclitic definite article, which frequently preceded participles and relative forms in speech. The same vowel [ǝ] occurred as an epenthetic sound before the preposition ‹r› /r/ ~ [ǝr], from which only ǝ remained after its consonantal body got lost. These phonetic insights prove that the Late Egyptian augment cannot derive from the Old Egyptian augment, as has been contended, but is a genuine innovation of Late Egyptian. Finally, the rise of unetymological initial vowels in various other nouns such as ⲉϭⲱϣ (“Nubian”) and ⲉϩⲟⲟⲩ (Bohairic for “day”) is explained.

The relative cycle in Hungarian declaratives

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Bacskai-Atkari
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Position ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Word Order Variation ◽  
Order Variation ◽  
Fixed Order ◽  
Embedded Clauses ◽  
Head Positions

This chapter examines word order variation and change in the high CP-domain of Hungarian embedded clauses containing the finite subordinating C head hogy ‘that’. It is argued that the complementizer hogy developed from an operator of the same morphophonological form, meaning ‘how’, and that its grammaticalization path develops in two steps. In addition to the change from an operator, located in a specifier, into a C head (specifier-to-head reanalysis), the fully grammaticalized complementizer hogy also changed its relative position on the CP-periphery, ultimately occupying the higher of two C head positions (upward reanalysis). Other complementizers that could co-occur with hogy in Old Hungarian eventually underwent similar reanalysis processes. Hence the possibility of accommodating two separate C heads in the left periphery was lost and variation in the relative position of complementizers was replaced by a fixed order.

Clause Structure and Word Order in the History of German

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Clause Structure ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Right ◽  
Theoretical Analyses

Over roughly the last decade, there has been a notable rise in new research on historical German syntax in a generative perspective. This volume presents a state-of-the-art survey of this thriving new line of research by leading scholars in the field, combining it with new insights into the syntax of historical German. It is the first comprehensive and concise generative historical syntax of German covering numerous central aspects of clause structure and word order, tracing them throughout various historical stages. Each chapter combines a solid empirical basis and valid descriptive generalizations with reference also to the more traditional topological model of the German clause with a detailed discussion of theoretical analyses couched in the generative framework. The volume is divided into three parts according to the main parts of the clause: the left periphery dealing with verbal placement and the filling of the prefield (verb second, verb first, verb third orders) as well as adverbial connectives; the middle field including discussion of pronominal syntax, order of full NPs and the history of negation; and the right periphery with chapters on basic word order (OV/VO), prosodic and information-structural factors, and the verbal complex including the development of periphrastic verb forms and the phenomena of IPP (infinitivus pro participio) and ACI (accusativus cum infinitivo). This book thus provides a convenient overview of current research on the major issues concerning historical German clause structure both for scholars interested in more traditional description and for those interested in formal accounts of diachronic syntax.

Two locations for negation

2009 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 205-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sadaf Munshi ◽  
Rajesh Bhatt
Keyword(s):  
Verb Second ◽  
High Position ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Finite Verb ◽  
Structural Positions

Kashmiri has two structural positions for negation: a high position associated with focus and a low position associated with tense. In verb second environments, the difference between these two positions is neutralized on the surface and irrespective of the location where negation is generated, it appears as a suffix on the finite verb. But in non-verb second environments such as conditionals and correlatives the two negations can be teased apart. In these environments, the high negation appears as a suffix on material such as relative phrases and the conditional marker while the low negation appears as a suffix on the finite verb. The high vs. low distinction has semantic implications: in certain environments where the negation is arguably ‘expletive’, negation can only be high.

scholarly journals Multimodal analysis of quotation in oral narratives

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kashmiri Stec ◽  
Mike Huiskes ◽  
Gisela Redeker
Keyword(s):  
Logistic Regression ◽  
Meaningful Use ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Sequence Type ◽  
Oral Narratives ◽  
Direct Speech ◽  
Left Boundary ◽  
Multimodal Analysis ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
The Difference

AbstractWe investigate direct speech quotation in informal oral narratives by analyzing the contribution of bodily articulators (character viewpoint gestures, character facial expression, character intonation, and the meaningful use of gaze) in three quote environments, or quote sequences – single quotes, quoted monologues and quoted dialogues – and in initial vs. non-initial position within those sequences. Our analysis draws on findings from the linguistic and multimodal realization of quotation, where multiple articulators are often observed to be co-produced with single direct speech quotes (e.g. Thompson & Suzuki 2014), especially on the so-called left boundary of the quote (Sidnell 2006). We use logistic regression to model multimodal quote production across and within quote sequences, and find unique sets of multimodal articulators accompanying each quote sequence type. We do not, however, find unique sets of multimodal articulators which distinguish initial from non-initial utterances; utterance position is instead predicted by type of quote and presence of a quoting predicate. Our findings add to the growing body of research on multimodal quotation, and suggest that the multimodal production of quotation is more sensitive to the number of characters and utterances which are quoted than to the difference between introducing and maintaining a quoted characters’ perspective.

scholarly journals The Laplacian Spread of Tricyclic Graphs

10.37236/169 ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanqing Chen ◽  
Ligong Wang
Keyword(s):  
Laplacian Matrix ◽  
Largest Eigenvalue ◽  
Smallest Eigenvalue ◽  
Fixed Order ◽  
Tricyclic Graphs ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Largest Eigenvalue

The Laplacian spread of a graph is defined to be the difference between the largest eigenvalue and the second smallest eigenvalue of the Laplacian matrix of the graph. In this paper, we investigate Laplacian spread of graphs, and prove that there exist exactly five types of tricyclic graphs with maximum Laplacian spread among all tricyclic graphs of fixed order.

scholarly journals “The Trout Breaks the Ice” by Mikhail Kuzmin: Verse and Grammar

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-116
Author(s):  
Marina Akimova
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
Long Poem ◽  
Complex Composition ◽  
The Past ◽  
Compositional Structure ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Astronomical Time ◽  
Mikhail Kuzmin ◽  
Iambic Pentameter ◽  
Finite Verb

The author explores various compositional levels of the Russian modernist author Mikhail Kuzmin’s long poem “The Trout Breaks the Ice”. The levels are: (1) the grammatical tenses vs. the astronomical time (non-finite verb forms (imperative) are also assumed to indicate time); (2) the meters of this polymetric poem; (3) realistic vs. symbolic and (4) static vs. dynamic narrative modes. The analysis is done by the chapter, and the data are summarized in five tables. It turned out that certain features regularly co-occur, thus supporting the complex composition of the poem. In particular, the present tense and time regularly mark the realistic and static chapters written in various meters, whereas the past tense and time are specific to the realistic and dynamic chapters written in iambic pentameter. The article sheds new light on the compositional structure of Kuzmin’s poem and the general principles of poetic composition.

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