It has been observed that sentences containing expressive adjectives modifying a DP can have diff... more It has been observed that sentences containing expressive adjectives modifying a DP can have different readings. In one reading it is the DP referent that is negatively evaluated (called "local interpretation"), while in another reading it is a different DP referent that is evaluated (called "argument hopping"), and in yet another reading it is the whole situation described in the sentence that is being evaluated (called "sentencelevel interpretation"). There are two opposing views on how to capture this ambiguity: pragmatic accounts arguing that the interpretation is governed by contextual factors (via inference) and a recent syntactic account (using an upward-looking version of Agree) arguing that expressive adjectives are scope-taking elements. The goal of the present paper is to clearly identify the different predictions and testing environments necessary to decide which account is more suitable to capture the data. While the results of an experiment designed to test these predictions show a lot of variation, they also suggest that the syntactic constraints proposed by the syntactic account are not responsible for the interpretation of expressive adjectives.
Scalar modifiers, such as the English at least, have been argued to have four different readings:... more Scalar modifiers, such as the English at least, have been argued to have four different readings: a neutral, an epistemic, a concessive, and a qualifying reading. This paper investigates the expression of these four readings in German Sign Language against the background of the Bodily Mapping Hypothesis. This hypothesis states that there is a systematic mapping between the position of an operator in the syntactic structure and the height of the articulator expressing it: the higher in the structure an operator is located, the higher the body part used for its expression will be. It will be shown that the readings of 'at least' encoding CP-functions are expressed using upper face non-manual markings, while the neutral reading is expressed manually without any additional non-manuals-in line with the Bodily Mapping Hypothesis.
This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the encoding strategies of different types of top... more This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the encoding strategies of different types of topics and foci in (the southern variant of) German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache, DGS). The discussion will be guided by two main hypotheses: (i) the existence of a strict, universal ordering of topic and focus projections in the tradition of Rizzi (1997) and (ii) the Bodily Mapping Hypothesis (Bross & Hole 2017; Bross 2020), i. e., the hypothesis that scope is expressed in a systematic way in sign languages: the higher an operator is located in the syntactic tree, the higher the articulator expressing it will be. As this study is concerned with very high CP categories, the Bodily Mapping Hypothesis predicts that the categories under discussion will be marked with the highest possible articulators, i.e., the eyebrows. Concerning topics, base-generated frame setters (epistemic, locative, and temporal frames) and moved aboutness topics will be discussed as well as structures resembling pseudo-clefts. Concerning focus, contrastive and mirative focus as well as regular cleft sentences will be examined.
This article discusses several arguments in favor of the hypothesis that the headshake as a gestu... more This article discusses several arguments in favor of the hypothesis that the headshake as a gesture for negation has its origins in early childhood experiences. It elaborates on Charles Darwin's observation that children inevitably shake their heads in order to stop food intake when sated, thereby establishing a connection between rejection and the head gesture. It is argued that later in life the semantics of the headshake extend from rejection to negation-just as it can be observed in the development of spoken language negation. While Darwin's hypothesis can hardly be tested directly, this paper takes a novel perspective and looks at the predictions it makes taking a plethora of sources of evidence into account. The question of how head gestures are used in cultures where the headshake is not a sign for negation or where other negative head gestures are in use will also be discussed.
It has been argued that negated how-questions are, in contrast to negated why-questions, ill-form... more It has been argued that negated how-questions are, in contrast to negated why-questions, ill-formed. Based on this generalization it was proposed that how is located in a structural position below negation. In this squib, I will show that negated how-questions exist and that they instantiate a case of sentential negation by using data from German and English. For this purpose, a new test for sentential negation that can be applied to questions is introduced. I will show that the reason why negated how-questions have been argued to be ill-formed is not necessarily syntactic, but pragmatic (or semantic) in nature. However, I will also show that negative contraction in English negated how-questions is blocked.
This article discusses differential object marking and object shift in German Sign Language (DGS)... more This article discusses differential object marking and object shift in German Sign Language (DGS). Although there is already some literature discussing the existence of differential object marking in sign languages, this article provides the first in-depth description of the phenomenon in a visual language. It will be shown that the sign PAM, previously categorized as an agreement auxiliary, is in fact a differential object marker with adposition-like properties—at least in the Southern variant of DGS with which this article is concerned. Additionally, it will be shown that definite objects move into a structurally higher position in DGS. This behavior is well-known from spoken languages, but is not well-documented for sign languages.
Contrastive focus reduplication and the modification puzzle, 2020
In this short paper we present a so far unnoticed syntactic constraint on contrastive focus redup... more In this short paper we present a so far unnoticed syntactic constraint on contrastive focus reduplication (CR), a phenomenon that restricts the semantics of the reduplicated element to a prototypical meaning (but has other uses as well): The CR construction cannot be modified. In the case of nominal CR, this means that adjectival modification is blocked, as in *black coffee-coffee. We present data from English and German to support our claim and highlight how earlier accounts fail to capture the syntactic restriction. We then provide a sketch of an analysis couched with a Cartographic framework, tentatively proposing that CR results either (i) from cyclical movement of phrasal material through the specifiers of functional projections into the specifier of a focus phrase or (ii) by directly moving phrasal material into the specifier of a focus phrase.
Cognitive associations between vowel length and object size: A new feature contributing to a bouba/kiki effect, 2018
Previous studies on sound symbolism have found evidence for the existence of an association betwe... more Previous studies on sound symbolism have found evidence for the existence of an association between certain speech sounds and physical properties like shape or size: a phenomenon usually called bouba/kiki effect. Additionally, more and more experiments have attempted to find out exactly which phonetic features contribute to this effect. The present paper reports two experiments on a previously uninvestigated feature. The experiments show that short vowels are associated with small/short objects and long vowels with large/long objects for speakers of a language exhibiting a vowel length contrast (German). While the association between vowel length and object length seems to be very strong, the association between vowel length and object size seems to be weaker.
The scope order of clausal categories has been claimed to be universal. In this paper we adopt a ... more The scope order of clausal categories has been claimed to be universal. In this paper we adopt a universalist cartographic approach to clausal syntax. By discussing the categories of speech acts, evaluation, epistemic modality, scalarity, volition and deontic, as well as other kinds of modality, we illustrate a striking regularity in strategies of scope-taking in German Sign Language (DGS): the wider/higher the scope of a clausal operator, the more likely its expression will occur with a high body part by way of layering; namely, descending from the eyebrows to the lower face, tentatively to the shoulders, and finally switching to manual expressions. For intermediate operators a left-to-right concatenation strategy is employed, and low categories are expressed by way of a manual right-to-left concatenation strategy. Hence, we propose a highly regular natural mapping of the scope-order of clausal categories onto the body. This sort of mapping can also be observed in other sign languages and may turn out to be universal.
A feature that is believed to be common to all natural languages is called 'double articulation',... more A feature that is believed to be common to all natural languages is called 'double articulation', which means that the morphemes of a language are built through a combination of smaller units which do not mean anything by themselves (MARTINET 1949; HOCKETT 1960). In other words, every language consists of a given set of meaningless units (i.e. phonemes), which can be combined to bigger units having a meaning (i.e. morphemes). Until the 1960s it was generally believed that sign languages do not exhibit this feature. Manual signs were considered to be holistic units, resembling pantomime rather than being composed like words or morphemes in spoken languages (e.g. BLOOMFIELD 1933). This view changed dramatically when the US-American linguist William STOKOE (1960) demonstrated in his seminal work that the manual signs in American Sign Language (ASL) could be segmented into a given subset of smaller units sharing all the defining features of spoken languages' phonemes—with the obvious exception that they are produced with the signer's fingers, hands, and body. STOKOE called these units 'cheremes', derived from the Ancient Greek word kheír for 'hand' (STOKOE, CASTERLINE & CRONENBERG 1965). STOKOE distinguished between three classes of distinctive features used to build up a sign: handshape, location, and movement. Changing one feature, which is meaningless alone, can lead to the formation of a minimal pair. BATTISON (1978) added hand orientation as a fourth parameter because he observed that there changes in the orientation of the hand can lead to minimal pairs, too. Like in spoken languages, each sign language has its own sets of cheremes and like in spoken languages each sign language exhibit phonotactic rules, i.e. rules that constrain the combinations of cheremes. Fig. 1 shows the sign for PERSON and the sign for the modal verb MUST in German Sign Language (DGS) which only differ in handshape. Fig. 2 shows the signs for NEWSPAPER and COAT in DGS which only differ in (the direction of the) movement. Some researchers also suggest that non-manual markers produced with the face can be regarded as a fifth parameter. In some sign languages, mouthing, i.e. the silent production of visible syllables which broadly resemble those of the surrounding spoken language, are used to disambiguate signs which are otherwise similar. This is mainly the case in sign language which arose in countries where the use of sign language was suppressed by society. As can be seen in the figures mouthing is used in DGS. For example the signs GERMANY and POLICE can just be distinguished through the simultaneous mouthing. STOKOE (1960) suggested to call the study of sign language cheremes 'chereology' as a counterpart to spoken languages phonology. Today neither the term chereme nor the term chereology is used. Instead researchers agreed on talking about phonemes and phonology in sign languages too, although both terms are derived from the Greek word for sound. The reason for these terms is to stress the structural similarities in the organization between signed and spoken languages, instead of emphasizing the differences by terminology.
Sie sind ein altes und immer noch extrem weit verbreitetes Lehr-und Lernmaterial, das aus deutsch... more Sie sind ein altes und immer noch extrem weit verbreitetes Lehr-und Lernmaterial, das aus deutschen Klassenzimmern kaum wegzudenken ist: Anlauttabellen. Dabei handelt es sich um Tabellen, die auf einer Seite Buchstaben und auf einer anderen Seite Bilder von Wörtern enthalten, die mit demjenigen Laut beginnen, für welchen der Buchstabe tatsächlich oder vermeintlich steht. In den vergangenen Jahren sind Anlauttabellen im deutschen Sprachraum jedoch verstärkt in die Kritik geraten -nicht nur, weil viele Anlauttabellen teils gravierende Fehler enthalten und ein falsches Bild vom Zusammenhang zwischen Buchstaben und Lauten vermitteln, sondern auch, weil diese Mängel auf ein tieferliegendes Defizit im schriftlinguistischen Wissen vieler Lehrkräfte hinweisen, die diese Fehler nicht bemerken.
The German language makes use of many so called modal particles, noninflected words marking the s... more The German language makes use of many so called modal particles, noninflected words marking the speaker's mood or attitude towards the proposition expressed in the uttered sentence.
Dieser Artikel will einen Einblick in das Konzept von embodiment, bzw. embodied cognition geben, ... more Dieser Artikel will einen Einblick in das Konzept von embodiment, bzw. embodied cognition geben, also der Annahme, dass Intelligenz einen Körper benötigt bzw. dass das sensorische und motorische System im menschlichen Gehirn und die Interaktion mit der Umwelt eine tragende Rolle bei der Ausbildung der Intelligenz spielt. Zunächst wird ein kurzer historischer Abriss über die Entwicklung dieser Idee gegeben auf die eine Auswahl von Forschungsergebnissen folgt.
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