Stop bashing givenness : a note on Elke Kasimir´s "questions-answers test and givenness"

Elke Kasimir´s paper (in this volume) argues against employing the notion of Givenness in the explanation of accent assignment. I will claim that the arguments against Givenness put forward by Kasimir are inconclusive because they beg the question of the role of Givenness. It is concluded that, more generally, arguments against Givenness as a diagnostic for information structural partitions should not be accepted offhand, since the notion of Givenness of discourse referents is (a) theoretically simple, (b) readily observable and quantifiable, and (c) bears cognitive significance

Information structure

The guidelines for Information Structure include instructions for the annotation of Information Status (or ‘givenness’), Topic, and Focus, building upon a basic syntactic annotation of nominal phrases and sentences. A procedure for the annotation of these features is proposed

Empirical Correlates of Narrative Closure

This paper presents an experimental investigation of the narratological concept of narrative closure. While narrative closure is a well-studied phenomenon in contemporary narratology, it still lacks a serious empirical foundation. In order to fill that lacuna, we performed a controlled rating experiment aimed at validating some of the properties of narrative closure proposed in the narratological literature. Our results suggest that narrative closure is closely related to two connected properties: to the completeness of the text and to questions left open by the text

Morphology

The guidelines for morphological annotation contain the layers that are necessary for understanding the structure of the words in the object language: morphological segmentation, glossing, and annotation of part-of-speech

Das Doppelperfekt: Theorie und Empirie

The article concentrates on the German double perfect forms and tries to find an answer to the following question: is it possible to show that – contrary to traditional assumptions – the German double perfect is a systematical and therefore acceptable verbal form of German? First, the question will be substantiated by four experiments and will get an empirical answer. Secondly, a syntactic and semantic analysis of the double forms will be proposed and the empirical data will be discussed in view of this proposal

Contextual versus inherent properties of entities in space

Skopeteas S, Hörnig R, Weskott T. Contextual versus inherent properties of entities in space. Linguistische Berichte. 2008;216:431-456

Empirical Correlates of Narrative Closure

This paper presents an experimental investigation of the narratological concept of narrative closure. While narrative closure is a well-studied phenomenon in contemporary narratology, it still lacks a serious empirical foundation. In order to fill that lacuna, we performed a controlled rating experiment aimed at validating some of the properties of narrative closure proposed in the narratological literature. Our results suggest that narrative closure is closely related to two connected properties: to the completeness of the text and to questions left open by the text

Does narrative perspective influence readers’ perspective-taking? An empirical study on free indirect discourse, psycho-narration and first-person narration

It is often assumed that narrating a story from the protagonist’s perspective increases the readers’ inclination to take over this perspective. In a questionnaire study, we examined to which degree different textual modes of narration (a) increase the degree to which the reader can generally relate to the protagonist (what we will call 'relatedness'), (b) make the reader prone to imagine the scene from the 'spatial point-of-view 'of the protagonist, and (c) enhance the psychological perspective-taking of the reader, measured as 'identification 'with the protagonist. We employed two different types of texts—one literary and one non-literary—and tested them in four different modes of narration: free indirect discourse, psycho-narration, first-person narration and external focalization. In terms of the 'relatedness 'between the reader and protagonist and 'spatial perspective-taking 'the largest differences (descriptively) occurred between external focalization and psycho-narration ('p'& .05 for 'relatedness', 'p'& .05 for 'spatial perspective-taking') and between external focalization and first-person narration ('p'& .05 for 'relatedness', for 'spatial perspective-taking p'& .1). 'Identification', measured with items from a questionnaire on reading experience (Appel et al. 2002), was highest for first-person narration. Here, the difference between first-person narration and external focalization turned out significant only after including dispositional empathy, thematic interest for the text and attention during reading as covariates. Results for the other two perspective-taking measures were unaffected by the inclusion of the same covariates. In conclusion, our data show that first-person and psycho-narration increased the tendency to take over the perspective of the protagonist, but FID did not.   This article is part of the special collection: Perspective Taking</a

Animacy effects on crossing wh-movement in German

Fanselow G, Schlesewsky M, Vogel R, Weskott T. Animacy effects on crossing wh-movement in German. Linguistics. 2011;49(4):657-683.This article presents several acceptability rating experiments concerned with crossing wh-movement in German multiple questions. Our results show that there is no general superiority effect in German, thus refuting claims to the contrary by Featherston (2005). However, acceptability is reduced when a wh-phrase crosses a wh-subject with which it agrees in animacy. We explain this finding in terms of the availability of different sorting keys for the answers to the multiple questions

IN THE RIGHT MOOD, IN THE RIGHT PLACE: ON MOOD AND VERB PLACEMENT IN OLD GERMANIC SUBORDINATE CLAUSES

The indicative/subjunctive mood alternations and differences in verb placement in Old Germanic subordinate clauses have received much attention in the literature and have been interpreted in different ways, for example as strategies for clause marking, for information structure, in order to fulfill semanto-pragmatic requirements of the clause, etc. This paper presents an empirical survey that sheds light on the interaction between mood alternations and verb placement in Old Germanic subordinate clauses. An innovative aspect is that the survey is conducted from a cross-linguistic perspective by comparing Old English and Old High German. The results show clearer interactions in the first language than in the latter, thus hinting at the possibility that the two languages reflect two different stages of one and the same process. These findings are discussed and accounted for theoretically in the last section of the paper