Affixoidhungrig? Skitbra! Comparing Affixoids in German and Swedish

In this article we offer a comparative survey of word-forming elements in German and Swedish known as “affixoids”. A highly controversial topic in German linguistics, the notion of “affixoid” does remain useful given the position of the elements in question midway along the cline between compounding and derivation – so useful in fact that we feel it ought to be adopted into Swedish linguistics, where it is as yet unknown. After an overview of the main positions and issues in the debate over affixoids in German, we survey the corresponding elements in Swedish, point out some convergent and divergent tendencies in the two languages, and then compare a few selected affixoids in more detail. We end with some wider issues, focusing mainly on the advantages of the crosslinguistic perspective and on the idea that the relationship of affixoids with their respective “parent morphs” can be described in terms of grammaticalization

Drug therapy of primary biliary diseases: classical and modern strategies

Definition: Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) and primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) are both cholestatic liver diseases. A common feature of these disorders is the accumulation of bile acids in the liver and blood, presumably because of decreased biliary secretion and reduced bile flow. Etiology: Etiology and pathogenesis of PBC and PSC are still unknown. PBC is considered to be an autoimmune disease. Immunological mechanisms may also be involved in PSC since there is an association with ulcerative colitis and autoantibodies can be detected. Furthermore, genetic factors seem to play an important role in both diseases. Therapy: Since the pathogenesis of both diseases is unclear, there is no definite causal treatment. However, ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) was shown to be highly effective. Other drugs which can be used alone or in combination with UDCA are promising and might further improve the outcome of the diseases

Asynchronous grammaticalization: V1-conditionals in present-day English and German

The present paper contrasts verb-first (= V1-)conditionals in written usage in present-day English and German. Based on the hypothesis that V1-protases originated in independent interrogatives and then grammaticalized as conditional subordinate clauses in an asynchronous fashion in both languages, we use data from the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Deutsches Referenzkorpus (DeReKo) to investigate the lexical overlap of V1-protases with interrogatives and their functional overlap with ‘if-/wenn’-conditionals. The results show, inter alia, that English V1-conditionals are highly divergent from polar interrogatives and occupy a functional niche with respect to ‘if-’conditionals, with their German counterparts showing more transitional characteristics in both respects; they also suggest a special role for V1-protases with ‘should/sollte’ in expressing a subtype of neutral, rather than tentative, conditionality. Finally, prospects are discussed for future research regarding possible synchronic (i.e. discourse-functional) and diachronic (i.e. systemic) motivations for the differences and similarites observed between V1-conditionals in the two present-day languages

Emergence phenomena in German W-immer/auch-subordinators

The present study is concerned with the distributional patterns of the irrelevance particles immer ‘ever’ and auch ‘also’ in German universal concessive conditionals and free relatives (e.g. was immer er auch sagt ‘whatever he says’). Whereas irrelevance is conveyed by a single element in a fixed position in languages like English (-ever), immer and auch occur in multiple positions and combinations. Following the example of Leuschner (2000), the distribution of particles and their combinations is documented and explained using functional motivations. Compared with Leuschner (2000), however, the present study is based on a much larger sample of 23,299 clauses with the W-words was and wer (incl. their inflected forms) from the DeReKo-corpus, allowing for a far more detailed statistical analysis. Special attention is devoted to the distribution of immer and auch (including their combinations) in full subordinate clauses vs. elliptically reduced forms, and to the nature of the resulting patterns as a case of emergent grammar

Can a Task-Based Approach Explain the Recent Changes in the German Wage Structure?

This paper investigates the changes in the German wage structure for full-time working males from 1999 to 2006. Our analysis builds on the task-based approach introduced by Autor et al. (2003), as implemented by Spitz-Oener (2006) for Germany, and also accounts for job complexity. We perform a Blinder-Oaxaca type decomposition of the changes in the entire wage distribution between 1999 and 2006 into the separate effects of personal characteristics and task assignments. In line with the literature, we find a noticeable increase of wage inequality between 1999 and 2006. The decomposition results show that the changes in personal characteristics explain some of the increase in wage inequality whereas the changes in task assignments strongly work towards reducing wage inequality. The coefficient effect for personal characteristics works towards an increase in wage inequality at the top of the wage distribution. The coefficient effect for the task assignments on the contrary shows an inverted U-shaped pattern. We conclude that altogether the task-based approach can not explain the recent increase of wage inequality in Germany.wage inequality, occupations, tasks, skill biased technical change, polarization

Can a Task-Based Approach Explain the Recent Changes in the German Wage Structure?

This paper investigates the changes in the German wage structure for fulltime working males from 1999 to 2006. Our analysis builds on the taskbased approach introduced by Autor et al. (2003), as implemented by Spitz-Oener (2006) for Germany, and also accounts for job complexity. We perform a BlinderOaxaca type decomposition of the changes in the entire wage distribution between 1999 and 2006 into the separate effects of personal characteristics and task assignments. In line with the literature, we find a noticeable increase of wage inequality between 1999 and 2006. The decomposition results show that the changes in personal characteristics explain some of the increase in wage inequality whereas the changes in task assignments strongly work towards reducing wage inequality. The coefficient effect for personal characteristics works towards an increase in wage inequality at the top of the wage distribution. The coefficient effect for the task assignments on the contrary shows an inverted Ushaped pattern. We conclude that altogether the taskbased approach can not explain the recent increase of wage inequality in Germany. --wage inequality,occupations,tasks,skill biased technical change,polarization

Does the Introduction of IFRS Change the Timeliness of Loss Recognition? Evidence from German Firms

In this paper, we re-evaluate the hypothesis that the introduction of the IFRS has an impact on the timeliness of loss recognition. We test this hypothesis in a data set of public German firms that report according to German-GAAP and IFRS, respectively. The parallel use of the two accounting standards in Germany provides a unique opportunity to contribute to the academic discussion, as well as to the current policy debate on regulatory reform in Germany. Starting from the standard time series concept of conditional conservatism that was initially proposed by Basu (1997), we implement a wide range of test specifications, including (i) a threshold unit-root test specification; (ii) a multivariate approach to outlier detection and (iii) various forms of controlling for fixed effects. We do not find evidence that IFRS and German-GAAP firms differ with respect to their timeliness of loss recognition in any of these specifications - a result that appears surprising in light of the more prudent regulation in the German-GAAP, but is consistent with some earlier findings in the literature.IFRS, German-GAAP, Timely loss recognition, Conservatism