Differences between Russian and Czech in the Use of Aspect in Narrative Discourse and Factual Contexts

The aims of the paper are twofold. First, it provides a systematic qualitative corpus study into differences between Russian and Czech in the use of aspect in chains of single, episodic events, as well as in habitual contexts, which takes into account the role of verb class, aspectual affixes, discourse relations, and other factors contributing to the overall aspectual interpretation in a given sentence. The findings suggest that while Russian makes narrative progression and habituality visible already on the verb forms, by employing exclusively perfective and imperfective verb forms, respectively, Czech relies more heavily on the context itself and uses (im)perfective verb forms mostly to signal duration vs. change of state. The second part of the paper addresses differences in aspect use between the two languages in so-called general-factual contexts (presuppositional and existential). Against the background of the empirical findings of the corpus study, I argue against the received view that Czech makes use of imperfective verb forms to mark existential readings. The presuppositional reading of imperfective forms, which I assume to be related to the process/durative reading of imperfectives, is argued to exist in both languages

Aspects on Passives

In this paper, we propose that movement of the consequent state of a structurally complex event to a discourse-related position right about vP is the fundamental characteristic of passive constructions. This assumption is supported not only by the semantics of passives but also by the fact that it provides a natural account of many of their syntactic properties, some of which are left unaccounted for in previous approaches. More generally, we give a principled explanation, based on the availability of a consequent state reading, of why some predicates do not form good passives. Psycholinguistics data provide further arguments to support our hypothesis

Idioms and the syntax/semantics interface of descriptive content vs. reference

This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.The syntactic literature on idioms contains some proposals that are surprising from a compositional perspective. For example, there are proposals that, in the case of verb-object idioms, the verb combines directly with the noun inside its DP complement, and the determiner is introduced higher up in the syntactic structure, or is late-adjoined. This seems to violate compositionality insofar as it is generally assumed that the semantic role of the determiner is to convert a noun to the appropriate semantic type to serve as the argument to the function denoted by the verb. In this paper, we establish a connection between this line of analysis and lines of work in semantics that have developed outside of the domain of idioms, particularly work on incorporation and work that combines formal and distributional semantic modelling. This semantic work separates the composition of descriptive content from that of discourse referent introducing material; our proposal shows that this separation offers a particularly promising way to handle the compositional difficulties posed by idioms, including certain patterns of variation in intervening determiners and modifiers.Peer Reviewe

Frequency adjectives and assertions about event types

No abstract

Ethnic adjectives are proper adjectives

In this paper, we challenge the view that ethnic adjectives (EAs) are nouns in disguise. Instead, we propose a unified semantics of the thematic and classificatory uses of EAs that treats them as proper adjectives, but nonetheless accounts for the phenomena that led to their analysis as nouns.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Processing unambiguous verbal passives in German

Passivization played a central role in shaping both linguistic theory and psycholinguistic approaches to sentence processing, language acquisition and impairment. We present the results of two experiments that simultaneously test online processing (self-paced reading) and offline comprehension (through comprehension questions) of passives in German while also manipulating the event structure of the predicates used. In contrast to English, German passives are unambiguously verbal, allowing for the study of passivization independent of a confound in the degree of interpretive ambiguity (verbal/adjectival). In English, this ambiguity interacts with event structure, with passives of stative predicates naturally receiving an adjectival interpretation. In a recent study, Paolazzi et al. (2015, 2016) showed that in contrast to the mainstream theoretical perspective, passive sentences are not inherently harder to process than actives. Complexity of passivization in English is tied to the aspectual class of the verbal predicate passivized: With eventive predicates, passives are read faster (as hinted at in previous literature) and generate no comprehension difficulties (in contrast to previous findings with mixed predicates). Complexity effects with passivization, in turn, are only found with stative predicates. The asymmetry is claimed to stem from the temporary adjectival/verbal ambiguity of stative passives in English. We predict that the observed difficulty with English stative passives disappears in German, given that in this language the passive construction under investigation is unambiguously verbal. The results support this prediction: Both offline and online there was no difficulty with passivization, under either eventive or stative predicates. In fact, passives and their rich morphology eased parsing across both types of predicates

Oligocene niche shift, Miocene diversification – cold tolerance and accelerated speciation rates in the St. John’s Worts (Hypericum, Hypericaceae)

Background: Our aim is to understand the evolution of species-rich plant groups that shifted from tropical into cold/temperate biomes. It is well known that climate affects evolutionary processes, such as how fast species diversify, species range shifts, and species distributions. Many plant lineages may have gone extinct in the Northern Hemisphere due to Late Eocene climate cooling, while some tropical lineages may have adapted to temperate conditions and radiated; the hyper-diverse and geographically widespread genus Hypericum is one of these. Results: To investigate the effect of macroecological niche shifts on evolutionary success we combine historical biogeography with analyses of diversification dynamics and climatic niche shifts in a phylogenetic framework. Hypericum evolved cold tolerance c. 30 million years ago, and successfully colonized all ice-free continents, where today ~500 species exist. The other members of Hypericaceae stayed in their tropical habitats and evolved into ~120 species. We identified a 15–20 million year lag between the initial change in temperature preference in Hypericum and subsequent diversification rate shifts in the Miocene. Conclusions: Contrary to the dramatic niche shift early in the evolution of Hypericum most extant species occur in temperate climates including high elevations in the tropics. These cold/temperate niches are a distinctive characteristic of Hypericum. We conclude that the initial release from an evolutionary constraint (from tropical to temperate climates) is an important novelty in Hypericum. However, the initial shift in the adaptive landscape into colder climates appears to be a precondition, and may not be directly related to increased diversification rates. Instead, subsequent events of mountain formation and further climate cooling may better explain distribution patterns and species-richness in Hypericum. These findings exemplify important macroevolutionary patterns of plant diversification during large-scale global climate change

History and evolution of the afroalpine fora: in the footsteps of Olov Hedberg

The monumental work of Olov Hedberg provided deep insights into the spectacular and fragmented tropical alpine flora of the African sky islands. Here we review recent molecular and niche modelling studies and re-examine Hedberg’s hypotheses and conclusions. Colonisation started when mountain uplift established the harsh diurnal climate with nightly frosts, accelerated throughout the last 5 Myr (Plio-Pleistocene), and resulted in a flora rich in local endemics. Recruitment was dominated by long-distance dispersals (LDDs) from seasonally cold, remote areas, mainly in Eurasia. Colonisation was only rarely followed by substantial diversification. Instead, most of the larger genera and even species colonised the afroalpine habitat multiple times independently. Conspicuous parallel evolution occurred among mountains, e.g., of gigantism in Lobelia and Dendrosenecio and dwarf shrubs in Alchemilla. Although the alpine habitat was ~ 8 times larger and the treeline was ~ 1000 m lower than today during the Last Glacial Maximum, genetic data suggest that the flora was shaped by strong intermountain isolation interrupted by rare LDDs rather than ecological connectivity. The new evidence points to a much younger and more dynamic island scenario than envisioned by Hedberg: the afroalpine flora is unsaturated and fragile, it was repeatedly disrupted by the Pleistocene climate oscillations, and it harbours taxonomic and genetic diversity that is unique but severely depauperated by frequent bottlenecks and cycles of colonisation, extinction, and recolonisation. The level of intrapopulation genetic variation is alarmingly low, and many afroalpine species may be vulnerable to extinction because of climate warming and increasing human impact.publishedVersio

I Olov Hedbergs fotspor: Plantenes evolusjon i det afrikanske høyfjellet

Floraen i det tropiske afrikanske høyfjellet er spektakulær og rik på endemiske (stedegne) arter, og ikke minst er forekomstene av plantearter ekstremt fragmentert på grunn av lange avstander mellom de enkelte fjellene (fig. 1). Denne særegne floraen ble dyptpløyende analysert av Olov Hedberg i hans monumentale verk fra 1957 (Hedberg 1957) og i påfølgende arbeider (f.eks. Hedberg 1961, Hedberg 1969). Studier basert på molekylære data og nisjemodellering har senere gitt sterk støtte til flere av hans hypoteser, men også ledet til ny og overraskende innsikt. Plantenes innvandring til det afrikanske høyfjellet startet allerede da fjellhevingen skapte det spesielle tropisk-alpine døgnklimaet med frost hver natt og høye dagtemperaturer året rundt. Antallet arter økte deretter betydelig gjennom de siste 5 millioner år (plio-pleistocen) og faktisk helt fram til vår tid. En stor del av floraen oppstod etter langdistansespredning fra fjerne, kalde områder, hovedsakelig i Eurasia. Plantenes innvandring ble bare i noen få tilfeller fulgt av betydelig diversifisering (f.eks. hos marikåpe Alchemilla) – tvert imot har slekter som er artsrike i det afrikanske høyfjellet, ofte vist seg å ha spredt seg uavhengig dit gjentatte ganger (f.eks. starr Carex), noe til og med enkeltarter som vår egen fjellskrinneblom Arabis alpina har gjort. De nye studiene tyder på at den afrikanske høyfjellsfloraen har utvikletseg under et mye yngre og mer dynamisk øy-scenario enn det Hedberg så for seg: Den framstår som umettet og sårbar for framtidige klima- og arealendringer på grunn av katastrofale forstyrrelser under klimasvingningene gjennom de siste par millioner år. Den rommer artsmangfold og genetisk diversitet som er unikt, men sterkt svekket av genetiske «flaskehalser» og sykluser av innvandring, utdøing og gjeninnvandring. Det er usedvanlig lite genetisk variasjon i dagens populasjoner, noe som kan bety at mange arter står i fare for å dø ut på grunn av klimaoppvarming og økende menneskelig påvirkning