Verb-second as a reconstruction phenomenon

This investigation of V2-movement addresses the question which role the lexical content of the moved element plays during sentence processing. It draws on original theoretical arguments, empirical data and results from psycholinguistic experiments. The main finding is that the lexical content of the V2-verb is interpreted only at the end of the clause, i.e. at the base position of the finite verb

Verb-second as a reconstruction phenomenon

This investigation of V2-movement addresses the question which role the lexical content of the moved element plays during sentence processing. It draws on original theoretical arguments, empirical data and results from psycholinguistic experiments. The main finding is that the lexical content of the V2-verb is interpreted only at the end of the clause, i.e. at the base position of the finite verb

Intervention Effects in NPI-Environments: A Case of Scope Incompatibility?

Certain quantifiers have been suggested to be interveners in wh-questions and in NPI-licensing environments. The current study investigates NPI-licensing in German and presents evidence from acceptability judgments and self-paced reading which indicates that certain quantifiers indeed give rise to “intervention effects”. Surprisingly, however, the same effect was found in minimally different structures where the NPI was replaced by a non-NPI. We argue that these effects stem from scope incompatibilities of certain semantic operators and are independent of NPI-licensing

Powder blasting for the realisation of microchips for bio-analytic applications

We introduce powder blasting for the fabrication of glass microchips. Powder blasting is a fast and cheap technique with which we pattern channels in sodalime and pyrex glass with a width down to 100µm. We combine the technique with appropriate bonding procedures to realise sealed microchannel structures. We study the transport of fluorescent dye solutions and fluorescent beads within channels made by powder blasting and in "classical" channels made by HF-etching. We find a remarkable difference in sign of the electric field induced flow for both types of channels and explain the observed strong plug broadening effects in the powder blasted channels

Utilisation of the sol-gel technique for the development of novel stationary phases for capillary electrochromatography on a chip

Capillary electrochromatography (CEC) appears ideally suited for high performance separations at small scale, i.e. on a chip. Problems with the reproducible production of the required HPLC column, but also the lack of commercially available CEC instruments have prevented many putative applicants of this promising technique from entering the field. In this paper, a fast and easy way to produce self-containing open-tubular CEC columns (C8-moieties for reversed phase applications) by the sol-gel technique is described. The corresponding chips were designed to be compatible with a commercial system for capillary electrophoresis (namely a Beckman P/ACE 5500 system with diode array detection). Method development and application hence benefited from the injection and the detection options of this setup. The separation of a mixture of three uncharged analytes (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) by the chip is given as example. Under optimized conditions, the performance of the chip appeared to be comparable or better than that of capillary-based CEC columns of the same kind

Für | For Manfred from his Students

Dieses Buch enthält Beiträge von Personen, die ihre Magister- oder Doktorarbeit unter der Betreuung von Manfred Krifka geschrieben haben. Es ist als kleines Abschiedsgeschenk für Manfred Krifka zum Ende seiner Amtszeit als Direktor des Leibniz-Zentrums für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft gedacht. Die Herausgeberin und der Herausgeber haben Beiträge zu sprachwissenschaftlichen und nicht-sprachwissenschaftlichen Themen in einer Vielzahl von Genres gesammelt. Diese Vielfalt spiegelt die Interessen und Forschungsthemen von Manfred Krifka wider. Sie spiegelt auch die Vielfalt der Menschen wider, denen Manfred Krifka geholfen hat

Examining the generalizability of research findings from archival data

This initiative examined systematically the extent to which a large set of archival research findings generalizes across contexts. We repeated the key analyses for 29 original strategic management effects in the same context (direct reproduction) as well as in 52 novel time periods and geographies; 45% of the reproductions returned results matching the original reports together with 55% of tests in different spans of years and 40% of tests in novel geographies. Some original findings were associated with multiple new tests. Reproducibility was the best predictor of generalizability—for the findings that proved directly reproducible, 84% emerged in other available time periods and 57% emerged in other geographies. Overall, only limited empirical evidence emerged for context sensitivity. In a forecasting survey, independent scientists were able to anticipate which effects would find support in tests in new samples

Verb-second in grammar, processing, and acquisition : What you see is not what you get

The verb second (V2) phenomenon received a lot of attention in last decades. By now, it is widely accepted among syntacticians that the finite verb originates from a base position and is moved into the left periphery of the clause. However, it still remains to be resolved why the verb has to move. One particular aspect of V2-movement is that such a prominent formal transformation seems to be independent of the meaning of the moved element. V2- movement applies generally and affects only the finite verb irrespective of whether it is a lexical verb as in "Ich höre ein Lied" ‘I hear a song’, an auxiliary such as "habe" ‘have’ in "Ich habe ein Lied gehört" ‘I heard a song’, or a part of a particle verb such as "auf-hören" ‘stop, lit. up-hear’ in "Ich höre zu singen auf" ‘I stop singing’. The present work addresses the question which role the lexical content of the moved element plays during sentence processing. The main answer is that the lexical content of the V2-verb is interpreted only at the end of the clause, i. e. at the base position of the finite verb. The investigations are carried out on three levels: grammar, sentence processing, and language acquisition.publishe

How much verb moves to second position?

In this chapter, it is shown that finite verbs which are attracted by Verb-Second (V2) movement are reconstructed into their base position for interpretation. In fact, the lexical part of the finite verb is never interpreted in its fronted position. We present two groups of empirical findings which strongly support this conclusion. The first group provides grammar-internal evidence for reconstruction, the second group shows that the verb’s reconstruction can also be traced in the process of human sentence comprehension. The German verb brauchen, which happens to be a negative polarity item and thus needs to be interpreted in the scope of negation, provides evidence for the reconstruction process in on-line comprehension. Our discussion is embedded in a review of sentence processing in German. It is shown how processing can be efficient despite the fact that the verb’s semantic contribution may be delayed. Our account of V2 in grammar and parsing supports a rather tight link between the competence grammar and the dynamics of sentence processing.publishe