scholarly journals Deutsches auch und italienisches anche im Vergleich

2021 ◽  
Vol 111 (6) ◽  
pp. 187-208
Author(s):  
Manuela Caterina Moroni ◽  
Ermenegildo Bidese

The focus of our contribution is the German particle auch ‘also’ and its Italian counterpart anche. From a semantic point of view, auch and anche convey the same additive meaning in both languages: through them an element, called ‘domain of association’, is added to a list of further elements for which the auch/anche phrase applies. From a syntactical point of view, auch and anche can occupy different positions in the sentence by modifying the type and the scope of the domain of association. This results in four basic usage patterns which are similar in both languages and correspond to just as many functions of auch/anche: (i) additivity, (ii) sentence connection, (iii) focus domain, and (iv) modality. Despite these common functions, auch and anche interact with the syntax and the information structure of the sentence in German and in Italian differently. Furthermore, they are used in conversation contexts, which are distinctive in both languages. By starting from the current description of auch and anche in the literature, the first aim of our contribution is to provide evidence for the above-mentioned four basic functions despite their language-specific usage contexts. As a second aim, we want to validate our systematization through the analysis of spoken data for German and Italian, explaining why some functions are more likely to be found in the former than in the latter.

Morphology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rossella Varvara ◽  
Gabriella Lapesa ◽  
Sebastian Padó

AbstractWe present the results of a large-scale corpus-based comparison of two German event nominalization patterns: deverbal nouns in -ung (e.g., die Evaluierung, ‘the evaluation’) and nominal infinitives (e.g., das Evaluieren, ‘the evaluating’). Among the many available event nominalization patterns for German, we selected these two because they are both highly productive and challenging from the semantic point of view. Both patterns are known to keep a tight relation with the event denoted by the base verb, but with different nuances. Our study targets a better understanding of the differences in their semantic import.The key notion of our comparison is that of semantic transparency, and we propose a usage-based characterization of the relationship between derived nominals and their bases. Using methods from distributional semantics, we bring to bear two concrete measures of transparency which highlight different nuances: the first one, cosine, detects nominalizations which are semantically similar to their bases; the second one, distributional inclusion, detects nominalizations which are used in a subset of the contexts of the base verb. We find that only the inclusion measure helps in characterizing the difference between the two types of nominalizations, in relation with the traditionally considered variable of relative frequency (Hay, 2001). Finally, the distributional analysis allows us to frame our comparison in the broader coordinates of the inflection vs. derivation cline.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-170
Author(s):  
Ingo Fehrmann

Abstract Empirical findings in Second Language Acquisition suggest that the basic structure of German declarative sentences, described in terms of topological fields, poses certain challenges to learners of German as a foreign language. The problem of multiple prefield elements, resulting in ungrammatical verb-third sentences, figures most prominently in the literature. While the so-called V2 constraint is usually treated as a purely formal feature of German syntax both in the empirical as well as in the pedagogical literature, the present paper adopts a usage-based perspective, viewing language as an inventory of form-function mappings. Basic functions of prefield elements have already been identified in research on textual grammar and information structure. This paper presents results from a pilot study with Japanese elementary learners of German as a foreign language, where the form-function mapping of German prefield elements was explicitly taught following the guidelines of an approach called Concept-Based Instruction. The findings indicate that, with a focus on the function-function mapping, it is in fact possible to explicitly teach these rather abstract regularities of German to beginning learners. The participants’ language production exhibits a prefield variation pattern similar to that of L1 German speakers; at the same time the learners produce very few ungrammatical verb-third sentences.


Author(s):  
NARINE GISHYAN

NARINE GISHYAN - TRANSLATION OF HUMOR IN SUBTITLING. A CASE STUDY OF THE ARMENIAN FILM “LOST AND FOUND IN ARMENIA” The article touches upon the translation peculiarities of humor into Armenian and the ways of their preservation in English through the use of translation strategies. A contemporary Armenian movie “Lost and Found in Armenia” is selected to give the general insight of the transfer of Armenian humor in subtitling. As a result of the study, we can state that from a semantic point of view, the translator was able to convey the meaning, often through partial or complete loss of humor. Deviations were mainly associated with interjections, which were omitted in the English translation. In all the extracted examples, interjections and sound effects, partially providing the humor of the episodes, were omitted. However, their restoration did not create an additional technical obstacle, since it corresponded to the spatial and temporal standards of subtitling.


Author(s):  
Айгүл Турсунова

Баарыбызга маалым болгондой аркылуу мамиле этишке мүнөздүү категория. Мамиле категорияларынын эӊ негизги өзгөчөлүгү - кыймыл-аракеттин субъектиси менен объектисинин ортосундагы мамиле, б.а. сүйлөмдө ээлик милдет аткарган сөздүн же кыймыл-аракеттин чыныгы аткаруучусунун субъект же объект экендигин аныктайт. Алардын ичинен аркылуу мамиле кыймыл-аракеттин башка бирөө тарабынан иштелгенин билдирет. Биз бул эмгегибизде кыргыз тилиндеги мамиле категорияларынан - аркылуу мамилени тарыхый жана маанилик жактан анализдемекчибиз. Маанилерди аныктоодо бул мамиленин байыркы Көктүркчөдөн азыркы убакка чейинки басып өткөн жолу талданып, кандай лигвистикалык методдор менен түзүлөрүнө да кеӊири токтолдук. Макалабызда кыргыз тили менен түрк тили негизге алынды. Категория залога - есть необходимая категория языковой мысли, присущая общению. Важнейшей особенностью категорий залога является отношение между субъектом и объектом действия. В предложении данная категория определяет, является ли реальный исполнитель слова или действия, выполняющий функцию, субъектом или объектом, и означает ли что действие было разработано кем-то другим. В этой статье мы проанализируем категорию залога с исторической и семантической точек зрения в кыргызском языке. Определяя значения, мы будем анализировать историю этих залогов от древнего Коктюрского времени до наших дней и подробно обсуждать лингвистические методы, с помощью которых они сформированы. Наша статья основана на материале кыргызского и турецкого языков. The collateral category is a necessary category of linguistic thought inherent in communication. The most important feature of the categories of collateral is the relationship between the subject and the object of the action. In a sentence, this category determines whether the real performer of a word or action performing a function is a subject or an object, and means that the action was designed by someone else. In this article, we will analyze the category of collateral from a historical and semantic point of view in the Kyrgyz language. By defining the meanings, we will analyze the history of these pledges from ancient Cocturian times to the present day and discuss in detail the linguistic methods by which they were formed. Our article is based on the material of the Kyrgyz and Turkish languages.


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Hendrik Christiaan Walvoort

AbstractThis paper deals with the declension of the Latin present active participle (ppa), which shows several inconsistencies: the ablative singular for instance may end in -eor in -i(sapiente, sapienti) and the genitive plural may end in -umor -ium(sapientum, sapientium). Some grammarians, notably modern ones, assume that there are syntactico-semantic considerations or circumstances, leading to ablative -eending when verbal force is intended (such as in the ablative absolute) or substantival force, and to -iending when there is nominal, notably adjectival force. I have investigated whether ancient, medieval and modern grammarians treat such a phenomenon. In addition, I looked for inconsistencies in the grammarian’s own ppa declension from this syntactico-semantic point of view. It turns out that ancient and medieval grammarians do not formulate declension of the ppa according to its syntactico-semantic function, with the exception of the anonymous author of theArs Ambrosiana, nor do they decline their own ppa’s according to a conventional rule of this kind. This calls for other explanations regarding the declensional inconsistencies observed. Some of the ppa forms may reflect a temporary phenomenon which would have disappeared in due course through diachronic evolution and paradigm leveling. Some forms may have persisted because of their frequency and idiomatic force or because of the compelling analogy with other words and phrases. But these ppa declensional variations do not appear to conform to a syntactico-semantic rule.


Author(s):  
Phoevos Panagiotidis

Determiners are a nominal syntactic category distinct from both adjectives and nouns; they constitute a functional (aka closed or ‘minor’) category and they are typically located high inside the nominal phrasal structure. From a syntactic point of view, the category of determiners is commonly understood to comprise the word classes of article, demonstrative, and quantifier, as well as non-adjectival possessives and some nominal agreement markers. From a semantic point of view, determiners are assumed to function as quantifiers, especially within research informed by Generalized Quantifier Theory. However, this is a one-way entailment: although determiners in natural language are quantificational, their class contains only a subset of the logically possible quantifiers; this class is restricted by conservativity and other factors. The tension between the ‘syntactic’ and the ‘semantic’ perspective on determiners results to a degree of terminological confusion: it is not always clear which lexical items the Determiner category includes or what the function of determiners is; moreover, there exists a tendency among syntacticians to view ‘Determiner’ as naming not a class, but a fixed position within a nominal phrasal template. The study of determiners rose to prominence within grammatical theory during the ’80s both due to advances in semantic theorizing, primarily Generalized Quantifier Theory, and due to the generalization of the X' phrasal schema to functional (minor) categories. Some issues in the nature and function of determiners that have been addressed in theoretical and typological work with considerable success include the categorial status of determiners, their (non-)universality, their structural position and feature makeup, their role in argumenthood and their interaction with nominal predicates, and their relation to pronouns. Expectedly, issues in (in)definiteness, quantification, and specificity also figure prominently in research work on determiners.


2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimi Akita,

AbstractThis article presents empirical evidence of the high referential specificity of sound-symbolic words, based on a FrameNet-aided analysis of collocational data of Japanese mimetics. The definition of mimetics, particularly their semantic definition, has been crosslinguistically the most challenging problem in the literature, and different researchers have used different adjectives (most notably, “vivid,” since Doke 1935) to describe their semantic peculiarity. The present study approaches this longstanding issue from a frame-semantic point of view combined with a quantitative method. It was found that mimetic manner adverbials generally form a frame-semantically restricted range of verbal/nominal collocations than non-mimetic ones. Each mimetic can thus be considered to evoke a highly specific frame, which elaborates the general frame evoked by its typical host predicate and contains a highly limited set of frame elements, which correlate and constrain one another. This conclusion serves as a unified account of previously reported phenomena concerning mimetics, including the lack of hyponymy, the one-mimetic-per-clause restriction, and unparaphrasability. This study can be also viewed as a methodological proposal for the measurement of frame specificity, which supplements bottom-up linguistic tests.


1996 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Blakemore

This paper aims to re-assess the notion DISCOURSE MARKER as it is applied to a subset of so-called apposition markers. It is argued that the classification of markers of reformulation as discourse markers alongside expressions like but and so is incoherent from a semantic point of view, since this ignores the distinction between PROCEDURAL and CONCEPTUAL meaning. Moreover, this classification is based on an account of discourse which is not only based on an insufficiently general account of context, but which is also difficult to maintain in the light of the use of these expressions in parenthetical nominal appositions. An alternative account is developed in the framework of Sperber & Wilson's Relevance Theory building on recent work on the meaning of parentheticals and sentence adverbials.


ELT Journal ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Taylor

Abstract Stress in English compound words poses difficult problems for foreign learners. English does not seem to be at all consistent in the way it treats compounds, either from the point of view of writing or from the point of view of pronunciation and especially stress. If we look at how this uncertainty and inconsistency arises we can perhaps understand better the difficulties. And if we look beyond the principles of word stress to the principles of accent placement, and in so doing pay attention to the information structure of compounds, we can obtain valuable guidance about stress placement in these words.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document