Überzeugungs- und Überredungsmittel in mündlichen Aufforderungsakten im deutsch-italienischen Sprachvergleich

The purpose of this study is to draw a comparison between the realization of requestive speech acts in Italian and in German, and to investigate the different strategies of persuasion in the two speech communities, with a particular attention to the relationship between efficiency and politeness. The empirical part of the study consists in the comparison of 320 requests formulated by Italian and German speakers. Linguistic data were elicited by means of a discourse completion test containing four socio-pragmatic situations. Realizations of requests were analysed according to the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project’s (CCSARP) Coding Manual, reported in Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989), and discussed at two levels: the cross cultural variation and the situational variation. Results show that both groups of participants are perfectly aware of the differences between the situations proposed and tailor their requests according to the context. It is found that both groups of subjects rely heavily on conventionally indirect strategies. On the whole, German speakers appear to use more indirect request strategies than their Italian counterparts, and at the same time choose with a higher frequency phrasal, lexical and syntactical modificators. Italian speakers tend to select slightly lower levels of indirectness but compensate with a consistently larger use of external modificators. Moreover, both Italian and German speakers seem to recur more often to strategies of Überzeugung, probably because the most used modificator for both groups of respondents is the Grounder. Our results differ in interesting ways from general expectations in the situation in which the face threat is arguably the highest, calling for further investigation of the difference in the perception of the social parameters determining the rated face threat between the two speech communities. Deeper insights into the link between indirectness and politeness in the two cultures at issue are also needed in order to understand the reasons behind the pragmatic choices observed

Diskurspragmatische Faktoren für Topikalität und Verbstellung in der ahd. Tatianübersetzung (9. Jh.)

The paper presents work in progress on the interaction between information structure and word order in Old High German based on data from the Tatian translation (9th century). The examination of the position of the finite verb in correspondence with the pragmatic status of discourse referents reveals an overall tendency for verb-initial order in thetic/all-focus sentences, whereas in categorical / topic-comment sentences verb-second placement with an initial topic constituent is preferred. This conclusion provides support for the hypothesis stated in Donhauser & Hinterhölzl (2003) that the finite verb form in Early Germanic serves to distinguish the information-structural domains of Topic and Focus. Finally, the investigation sheds light on the process of language change that led to the overall spread of verb-second in main clauses of modern German

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

Decomposing V2

The paper outlines a new approach to the phenomenon of Verb Second (V2) in West Germanic that does better justice to the historical facts and also accounts for the variation between V2 and V3 orders in modern varieties like Kiezdeutsch and West Flemish. The account proposes a decomposition of the V2 rule, the core of which consists of (i) the Phase Condition, a lexicalization requirement on the phase head, and (ii) an interface condition that fixes the phase head in languages that allow for a flexible phase edge.Keywords: verb-second (V2), phase condition, EPP, V3 order, frame adverbials, interface condition

Complementizer Agreement and the Licensing of DPs: An Account in Terms of Referential Anchoring

In this paper, I argue that the phenomenon of complementizer agreement in West Germanic and the distribution of DPs in German can be given a common explanation in terms of an approach in which context values are not freely assigned via an interpretive function operation, as is assumed in standard accounts of formal semantics, but rather, they become accessible in a specific functional head in the C-domain

Mechanisms of origin and classification of out-of-plane fiber waviness in composite materials - a review

Out-of-plane fiber waviness, also referred to as wrinkling, is considered one of the most significant effects that occur in composite materials. It significantly affects mechanical properties, such as stiffness, strength and fatigue and; therefore, dramatically reduces the load-carrying capacity of the material. Fiber waviness is inherent to various manufacturing processes of fiber-reinforced composite parts. They cannot be completely avoided and thus have to be tolerated and considered as an integral part of the structure. Because of this influenceable but in many cases unavoidable nature of fiber waviness, it might be more appropriate to consider fiber waviness as effects or features rather than defects. Hence, it is important to understand the impact of different process parameters on the formation of fiber waviness in order to reduce or, in the best case, completely avoid them as early as possible in the product and process development phases. Mostly depending on the chosen geometry of the part and the specific manufacturing process used, different types of fiber waviness result. In this study, various types of waviness are investigated and a classification scheme is developed for categorization purposes. Numerous mechanisms of wrinkling were analyzed, leading to several recommendations to prevent wrinkle formation, not only during composite processing, but also at an earlier design stage, where generally several influence factors are defined