Indefiniteness and Specificity in Old Italian Texts

Object of this study is the marking of nominal indefiniteness in Old Italian, more precisely Old Tuscan texts, in three collections of novellas

The German indefinite pronoun 'ein(er)'. Interpretation and discourse linking

This dissertation is an in depth investigation of structural, semantic, and pragmatic properties of the German indefinite pronoun 'ein(er)'. Focusing on the differentiation between an elliptic and a partitive interpretation, it illustrates the importance of investigating different types of discourse linking as well as brings together different topics and research questions, such as anaphoric reference, the structural makeup of pronouns, ellipsis, and partitivity, that previously have been mostly treated separately in the literature. The German pronoun 'ein(er)' shows a number of interesting semantic and pragmatic properties as it can be interpreted in many different ways, e.g. it can refer to an unknown human referent or to a member of a set that is present in the discourse. Importantly, some of these interpretations are anaphoric, the pronoun thus takes part in discourse linking. Taking formal considerations, semantic restrictions and discourse requirements into account, I propose a new classification of six different interpretations of the pronoun 'ein(er)': independent, impersonal, cataphoric, elliptic, partitive, and lexicalized. Importantly, I argue that there are two types of anaphoric interpretations of the indefinite pronoun 'ein(er)': a simple elliptic interpretation that is due to the ellipsis of a simple noun phrase, and a partitive interpretation which is based on a canonical partitive phrase. The dissertation furthermore presents new experimental evidence from three rating studies that concentrate on interpretational preferences in examples where 'ein(er)' is in principle ambiguous between an elliptic, a partitive, and an independent interpretation. It is shown that the different types of linking involved affect interpretational preferences and that the factor grammatical role interacts with it. The experimental data thus highlights the importance of investigating different types of discourse linking and the role of indefinite pronouns in discourse

Proceedings of the Conference "sub8 - Sinn und Bedeutung" : 8th annual meeting of the Gesellschaft für Semantik

The volume is a collection of papers given at the conference “sub8 -- Sinn und Bedeutung”, the eighth annual conference of the Gesellschaft für Semantik, held at the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt (Germany) in September 2003. During this conference, experts presented ­ and discussed ­ various aspects of semantics. The very different topics included in this book provide insight into fields of ongoing Semantics research.Mit dem vorliegenden Band halten Sie eine Sammlung von Aufsätzen in Händen, die bei "Sinn und Bedeutung VIII", der Jahrestagung der "Gesellschaft für Semantik" in der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt/Main, im September 2003 vorgestellt worden sind. Die Beiträge umfassen verschiedenste Aspekte aktueller Semantik-Forschung und lassen sich inhaltlich den folgenden Kategorien zuordnen: (i) Semantik von Topic und Focus [Ebert / Endriss, Gyuris, Kaiser / Trueswell, Lee, Umbach, Wedgewood]; (ii) Semantik und Pragmatik von Fragen [Beck, Benz, Dekker]; (iii) Semantik von Tense und Voice [Fernando, Lekaku, Sailer]; (iv) Das Syntax-Semantik Interface [Kobuchi-Philip, Stateva, Zeijlstra], (v) Modalität [van Rooy, Copley] und (vi) Semantik [Aksan, Nicolas, Schäfer, Schlücker, Seong, Zwarts]

What do articles mean – insights from Croatian learners of English

This thesis examines the use of articles by Croatian learners of English. The fact that Croatian language does not have an article system makes it more difficult for Croatian learners to master English articles. Our study is focused on difficulties Croatian learners encounter when acquiring English article system. We analysed essays written by high school graduates. The analysis is supported by the theoretical background given in the thesis

Information structure and the referential status of linguistic expression : workshop as part of the 23th annual meetings of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft in Leipzig, Leipzig, February 28 - March 2, 2001

This volume comprises papers that were given at the workshop Information Structure and the Referential Status of Linguistic Expressions, which we organized during the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS) Conference in Leipzig in February 2001. At this workshop we discussed the connection between information structure and the referential interpretation of linguistic expressions, a topic mostly neglected in current linguistics research. One common aim of the papers is to find out to what extent the focus-background as well as the topic-comment structuring determine the referential interpretation of simple arguments like definite and indefinite NPs on the one hand and sentences on the other

Aspects of Linguistic Variation

This volume brings together papers on linguistic variation. It takes a broad perspective, covering not only crosslinguistic and diachronic but also intralinguistic and interspeaker variation, and examines phenomena ranging from negation and TAM over connectives and the lexicon to definite articles and comparative concepts in well- and lesser-known languages. The collection thus contributes to our understanding of variation in general

Aspects of Linguistic Variation

This volume brings together papers on linguistic variation. It takes a broad perspective, covering not only crosslinguistic and diachronic but also intralinguistic and interspeaker variation, and examines phenomena ranging from negation and TAM over connectives and the lexicon to definite articles and comparative concepts in well- and lesser-known languages. The collection thus contributes to our understanding of variation in general

Understanding demonstrative reference in text: A new taxonomy based on a new corpus

Endophoric demonstratives such as this and that are among the most frequently used words in written texts. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how exactly they should be subdivided and classified in terms of their different types of use. Here, we develop a new taxonomy of endophoric demonstratives based on a large-scale corpus including three written genres: news items, encyclopedic texts, and book reviews. The taxonomy enables analysts to reliably code endophoric demonstratives based on objectively applicable criteria, while at the same time making them aware of many subtle borderline cases. We consider the taxonomy as a theoretical foundation for future theoretical and empirical work into endophoric demonstratives, and as an analytical tool allowing researchers to unify and compare the results of studies on endophoric demonstratives coming from different genres and languages

On Left and Right Dislocation: A Dynamic Perspective

The paper argues that by modelling the incremental and left-right process of interpretation as a process of growth of logical form (representing logical forms as trees), an integrated typology of left-dislocation and right-dislocation phenomena becomes available, bringing out not merely the similarities between these types of phenomena, but also their asymmetry. The data covered include hanging topic left dislocation, clitic left dislocation, left dislocation, pronoun doubling, expletives, extraposition, and right node raising, with each set of data analysed in terms of general principles of tree growth. In the light of the success in providing a characterisation of the asymmetry between left and right periphery phenomena, a result not achieved in more wellknown formalisms, the paper concludes that grammar formalisms should model the dynamics of language processing in time.Articl