The interface of lexical semantics and conceptual structure deverbal and denominal nominalizations

Nominalizations can refer to events, instances of events or participants in an event. The particular reference is determined by the lexical semantics of the base and the suffix, and by the conceptual structure of the base. The comparison between deverbal and denominal nominalization in -ata in Italian reveals that the conceptual structure plays a crucial role in determining the reference of a nominalization. Italian nominalizations of -ata are productively derived from verbal and nominal bases. Derivations from verbal bases refer to a single event denoted by the base. Derivations from a nominal base N denote events or results corresponding to a limited number of pattems, such as a hit by N, a characteristic action of N, a period of N, a quantity that is contained in N, etc. The paper argues that the function of the suffix operates on the lexical meaning of the base, but the con~positiono f the lexical meaning of the base with the lexical meaning of the suffix is restricted by the conceptual properties of the base

Specificity and definiteness in sentence and discourse structure

In this paper, I argue that this informally given list of characteristics covers only a certain subclass of specific indefinites. […] In particular, I dispute the definition of specific indefinites as "the speaker has the referent in mind" as rather confusing if one is working with a semantic theory. Furthermore, I discuss "relative specificity", it. cases in which the specific indefinite does not exhibit wide, but intermediate or narrow scope behavior. Based on such data, I argue that specificity expresses a referential dependency between introduced discourse items. Informally speaking, the specificity of the indefinite expression something [...] expresses that the reference of the expression depends on the reference of another expression, here, on the expression a monk, not the speaker

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

German Demonstrative Pronouns in Contrast

German has two demonstrative pronouns: the der, die, das paradigm and the dieser, diese, dies(es) paradigm. Previous studies mainly compared the anaphoric use of der with the personal pronoun er and observed that der refers to less prominent antecedents. However, there are only very few studies that have investigated the differences between these two demonstrative pronouns. We hypothesize that they differ in signaling topic persistence and in accessing contrastive antecedents. We tested these hypotheses in short texts that manipulated the contrast of the antecedent by inducing the expression ‘in contrast to’ vs. ‘together with’ (e.g., the cellist in contrast to the flautist vs. the cellist together with the flautist). Results from our eye-tracking reading Experiment (Experiment 1), in which participants’ eye- movements were monitored while reading sentences, show that (i) readers preferred dieser when referring to the topic of a sentence, and (ii) dieser caused less processing difficulties than der in both contrast and no-contrast contexts. Our sentence completion Experiment (Experiment 2) also confirmed that der and dieser are both used for anaphoric reference to a topical antecedent. Collectively, our experiments provide evidence that dieser functions as inducing topic persistence. These results suggest that there is a need for further experimental investigation into the semantic factors and informational structures influencing the usage of demonstrative pronouns in German.

The Discourse Structuring Potential of Definite Noun Phrases in Romanian

This paper investigates an alternation found with definite noun phrases in direct object position in Romanian that represents a theoretical puzzle for current theories of Differential Object Marking in this language (Gramatica Limbii Române 2005, Klein & de Swart 2011). When in direct object position and unmodified, definite noun phrases can be accompanied either by the differential object marker pe, or by the simple enclitic definite article-ul, but not by both at the same time. Based on the findings of a sentence continuation experiment, we show that pe-marking is used for noun phrases that show a high discourse structuring potential, which is reflected by their (i) likelihood of subsequent mention (Givón 1983, Arnold 2010) and (ii) topic shift potential (Givón 1983). Furthermore, this paper raises interesting questions about referent tracking in discourse, in particular whether or in what way different types of definite noun phrases contribute to the discourse structuring potential of their referents

German demonstrative pronouns differ in their sensitivity to discourse and sentence topics

German has two demonstrative pronoun series: the short form der, die, das, and the long form dieser, diese, dieses. Both forms can be used anaphorically, and they contrast with the personal pronouns er, sie, es in that they refer to an antecedent that is less prominent at that point in the discourse when the discourse provides different potential antecedents. Demonstrative pronouns are typically used in the preverbal position in a German sentence, i.e., the topic position. Thus, they are assumed to be topic shifters (from a non-topical antecedent to the topical argument in the current sentence). However, der can be repeated, yielding topic chains, thus referring back to a topical antecedent, while this is not the case for dieser. In this article, we argue that der and dieser both contribute to topic management, but they do this in different ways: der is a marker of a sentence topic, while dieser is a marker of discourse topic shift. We present the results of two experiments that compare the use of personal pronouns with either demonstrative pronoun manipulating sentence topic or discourse topic. First, both experiments show that the personal pronoun is not sensitive to either type of topichood of its antecedent. Second, Experiment 1 shows that both demonstrative pronouns prefer a context where discourse topic and sentence topic are shifted. Third, Experiment 2 shows that only dieser prefers a context with a shifted discourse topic, but der is not sensitive to discourse topichood alone. We take the results as supporting our claim that the two demonstratives have different discourse functions: der marks a sentence topic, while dieser is a shifter (and marker) of the discourse topic

Pe-marking and referential persistence in Romanian

The fact that in Romanian a direct object is sometimes morphologically marked by the particle pe and sometimes not is a long attested phenomenon. Diverse studies on Differential Object Marking (DOM) explained most occurrences of pe as a case marker by means of the features animacy, definiteness, and specificity. The only cases left unexplained are those in which a direct object realized as an unmodified definite or indefinite nominal phrase are optionally marked, whereby the difference in meaning between the two alternative constructions is subtle though significant. Post-verbal indefinite human direct objects are optionally pe-marked. Based on a synchronic study, we will show that besides specificity, discourse prominence also influences the case-marking of indefinite direct objects. Case marked indefinite direct objects show the property of “referential persistence”, i.e. a direct object introduced by an indefinite pe-marked nominal phrase will be more often taken up in the subsequent discourse than its unmarked counterpart. In conclusion, we will add another feature to the local parameters triggering DOM another feature, namely discourse prominence

Mismatching the first person in Romance

This paper looks at mismatching phenomena in Romance languages that appear between verbs and pronouns (or similarly used nouns) when expressing the first person (plural and singular). We examine some data of two types of mismatches and compare them. These arise as: (i) the mismatch between the morphological features of a third person singular indefinite pronoun used to express first person and the features of other constituents that (should) agree with the pronoun, and as (ii) the mismatch between the morphological features of a first person pronoun and its semantic function, more precisely when the value of the respective number feature of the pronoun is singular, while its interpretation is plural. The salient questions we address are: (i) what are the differences between these two types of mismatches, (ii) how can we account for them, and (iii) can we develop a unified account for both types