Topiks im Deutschen und Italienischen

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.

Mothers’ Well-Being in Families and Family Structure: Examining Constellations of Stressors Across Life Domains

Identifying conditions under which parents thrive is a key concern of family research. Prior research often focused on mothers’ well-being in single life domains, yet it is more likely to be shaped by stressors that stem directly from the parenting role and related stressors emerging from spillover processes into other domains. We therefore examine how stressors concerning mothers’ subjective, relational, and financial well-being accumulate and combine within subgroups of mothers and whether the likelihood to belong to these multidimensional subgroups varies by family structure. Using representative German data ( N = 11,242), latent class analysis revealed four distinct subgroups of maternal well-being with varying exposure to financial, psychological, and relational stressors. Regression models showed that particularly single mothers were at risk to belong to the most vulnerable group with exposure to multiple stressors. Findings are discussed in light of persisting disparities among post-separation families despite demographic trends toward growing family diversity.

The Impersonal Use of German 1st Person Singular Ich

This paper replies to Ackema and Neeleman’s (2018) claim that 1st person singular pronouns are grammatically blocked from having impersonal uses. In connection with this claim, they argue that the impersonal use of German 1st person singular ich described in Zobel 2014 does not exist. I show that Ackema and Neeleman’s alternative analysis of the German data analyzed in Zobel 2014 is flawed, and that new considerations inspired by their proposal further support the claim that German ich has an impersonal use. This result not only has ramifications for Ackema and Neeleman’s account of the morphosyntax and semantics of (impersonally usable) personal pronouns, but for anyone researching the morphosyntax and semantics of pronominal expressions and how these interact.

Standardization of the psychometric hepatic encephalopathy score in a French population

The Psychometric Hepatic Encephalopathy Score (PHES) has previously been standardized in thirteen countries on three continents, confirming its status of gold standard test to detect minimal hepatic encephalopathy (MHE). In the meantime, performance has also been shown to vary with variables such as age, education, and barely sex. The present study aimed at standardizing the PHES in a French population. One hundred and ninety-six French healthy participants completed a French version of the paper-and-pencil PHES, involving five tests and six measures. Importantly, the balance was perfect between all levels of the three controlled factors, which were sex, age (seven decade-levels from 20–29 to 80–89 years), and education (two levels below or above 12 years of education). Raw measures were transformed to fit the normal distribution. ANOVAs on transformed variables showed no effect of sex, but an effect of age on all measures, and of education on five measures. Multiple or simple regressions were completed to build up normograms. Thorough analysis of variability within each test failed to find outliers that may bias the results. Comparison between French and seminal German data showed that they highly fitted though cultural and cognitive style specificities could be observed. This is the first study to standardize the PHES in a French population and to extensively explore the effects of sex, age and education using perfectly balanced samples. Subtle differences between countries of the same continent emphasize the need to build up normative data in each country to get accurate PHES in patients.

Experience of Groove Questionnaire

In recent empirical research, the experience of groove (i.e., the pleasant sense of wanting to move along with the music) has come into focus. By developing the new Experience of Groove Questionnaire (EGQ), Senn et al. (2020) have provided a standardized and validated research instrument for future studies, consisting of the two correlated factors Urge to Move and Pleasure. The present study reports the translation of the English version into German and a validation with a German sample (N = 455). The original version’s factor structure was confirmed by the German data. Test-retest reliability was found to be high (rtt > .85) for both factors. To determine convergent validity, two other scales were included: The Drum Pattern Quality Scale (Frühauf, Kopiez, & Platz, 2013) and the Aesthetic Emotions Scale (Schindler et al., 2017) showed high correlations (.78 < r < .87) with the two factors of the EGQ and therefore indicated convergent validity. We conclude that the German version shows good psychometric properties and recommend its use for future research on the experience of groove.

Cross corpus multi-lingual speech emotion recognition using ensemble learning

Receiving an accurate emotional response from robots has been a challenging task for researchers for the past few years. With the advancements in technology, robots like service robots interact with users of different cultural and lingual backgrounds. The traditional approach towards speech emotion recognition cannot be utilized to enable the robot and give an efficient and emotional response. The conventional approach towards speech emotion recognition uses the same corpus for both training and testing of classifiers to detect accurate emotions, but this approach cannot be generalized for multi-lingual environments, which is a requirement for robots used by people all across the globe. In this paper, a series of experiments are conducted to highlight an ensemble learning effect using a majority voting technique for cross-corpus, multi-lingual speech emotion recognition system. A comparison of the performance of an ensemble learning approach against traditional machine learning algorithms is performed. This study tests a classifier’s performance trained on one corpus with data from another corpus to evaluate its efficiency for multi-lingual emotion detection. According to experimental analysis, different classifiers give the highest accuracy for different corpora. Using an ensemble learning approach gives the benefit of combining all classifiers’ effect instead of choosing one classifier and compromising certain language corpus’s accuracy. Experiments show an increased accuracy of 13% for Urdu corpus, 8% for German corpus, 11% for Italian corpus, and 5% for English corpus from with-in corpus testing. For cross-corpus experiments, an improvement of 2% when training on Urdu data and testing on German data and 15% when training on Urdu data and testing on Italian data is achieved. An increase of 7% in accuracy is obtained when testing on Urdu data and training on German data, 3% when testing on Urdu data and training on Italian data, and 5% when testing on Urdu data and training on English data. Experiments prove that the ensemble learning approach gives promising results against other state-of-the-art techniques.

Gschmöis – Crowdsourcing grammatical data of Swiss German

In recent years, a number of applications on Swiss German have been released. They all crowdsource dialectological data, yet until recently their main focus has been on lexical and phonological features. In 2018, we launched the app gschmöis, an app designed to (1) give users an insight into dialectological research, and (2) collect Swiss German data on all linguistic levels, but with a strong emphasis on morphosyntactic phenomena. At the beginning, three rounds were published. Since then new rounds were published periodically. By including not only lexical and phonological features, we want speakers of Swiss German to become aware of differences in the grammar of various Swiss German dialects.The same linguistic phenomena are covered by multiple questions, and some of the questions are duplicated from more traditional projects, like atlas projects on Swiss German. This allows for comparison across different question types (i.e. translation tasks vs. multiple choice questions), different collection methods (fieldwork methods used in the SDS, written questionnaires used in the SADS, and crowdsourcing via the smartphone application gschmöis), and different groups of informants (NORMs vs. speakers of Swiss German of various gender and age groups). Furthermore, the older data of previous projects can directly be compared with the crowdsourced data, so that recent dialect change can be detected.

Mentoring reality: from concepts and theory to real expertise and the mentor’s point of view

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the reality of mentoring in higher education from the mentor’s point of view. The goal is to elaborate best practice of mentoring on issues such as advanced training, professionalization, experience exchange, networking, de facto tasks and levels of interaction with mentees. Design/methodology/approach This paper examines the gap between theoretical mentoring methods, for example, with regard to timely planning and the reality of being a mentor. Data were generated by qualitative interviews of up to 45 min with mentors with several years of experience. The qualitative findings will help interested people to get a feel for what it means to be a mentor. Findings The findings showed that each mentor found his or her individual way of mentoring and that each was eager to personally improve. The paper shows influencing factors beyond project planning, such as emotional involvement, dealing with student denial and the time it actually takes to be a good mentor beyond office hours. Research limitations/implications As matriculation numbers must not be documented due to German data protection law, the de facto effectiveness of mentoring was close to impossible to measure. Social implications Text. Originality/value This work is original because the Aachener Mentoring Modell entails 35 professional mentors working in all but one faculty of RWTH Aachen University; it is an entire schooling concept, with technical documentation especially implemented for this project.