Morphology and Word Order in Germanic Languages

1996 ◽  
pp. 217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaume Solà
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Germanic Languages

The OV/VO alternation in early German

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Fuß
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Germanic Languages

This chapter discusses a set of theoretical approaches to the OV/VO alternation in Early German (with an emphasis on OHG), focusing on the question of whether it is possible to identify a basic serialization pattern that underlies the ‘mixed’ word order properties found at the syntactic surface. Based on a review of a set of OV/VO diagnostics, including for example the placement of elements that resist extraposition, properties of verbal complexes, and the significance of deviations from the source text in translations, it is argued that—despite some notable exceptions—OHG exhibits a more consistent verb-final nature than other Early Germanic languages (OE, in particular). This conclusion is supported by the observation that OV qualifies as the unmarked surface word order, which is compatible with a larger set of pragmatic contexts.

Word-order change in progress: the case of Slovene and Serbo-Croat and its relevance for Germanic

1987 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Related Language ◽  
Slavonic Language ◽  
History Of ◽  
Order Change ◽  
The One ◽  
Word Order Change ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Fresh Insight

It will be suggested in this article that Slovene, a South Slavonic language, is on the way to acquiring verb-second (V2) word order. In providing evidence in support of this view I shall compare Slovene, on the one hand, with the closely related language Serbo-Croat and, on the other hand, with relevant details from the history of the Germanic languages. The point of comparing it with Serbo-Croat is to discover the respects in which the word order of these two languages has diverged. Taken together with what is known about the word order of Common Slavonic, the facts emerging from this comparison allow us to identify one major respect in which Slovene has changed and two respects in which it is still changing. At the same time, they reveal a major respect in which Serbo-Croat word order is also changing. The point of comparing Slovene with the Germanic languages is twofold. First, since all the present-day Germanic languages either have or have had V2 word order (Haiman, 1974), it is possible that their history can help us to understand the changes currently taking place in Slovene and to predict how Slovene might change in the future. Secondly, where details of the history of the Germanic languages are poorly understood, the possibility exists of gaining fresh insight into them in the light of the changes that have taken place more recently, or indeed are still taking place, in Slovene. In this connection we shall assess the plausibility of two theories concerning the adoption of V2 word order by the Germanic languages, those of Vennemann (1975) and Wackernagel (1892).

UG or not UG, that is the question: a reply to Clahsen and Muysken

1987 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean duPlessis ◽  
Doreen Solin ◽  
Lisa Travis ◽  
Lydia White
Keyword(s):  
Adult Learners ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Additional Data ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
German Word ◽  
Germanic Languages

In a recent paper, Clahsen and Muysken (1986) argue that adult second lan guage (L2) learners no longer have access to Universal Grammar (UG) and acquire the L2 by means of learning strategies and ad hoc rules. They use evidence from adult L2 acquisition of German word order to argue that the rules that adults use are not natural language rules. In this paper, we argue that this is not the case. We explain properties of Germanic word order in terms of three parameters (to do with head position, proper government and adjunc tion). We reanalyse Clahsen and Muysken's data in terms of these parameters and show that the stages that adult learners go through, the errors that they make and the rules that they adopt are perfectly consistent with a UG incor porating such parameters. We suggest that errors are the result of some of the parameters being set inappropriately for German. The settings chosen are nevertheless those of existing natural languages. We also discuss additional data, from our own research on the acquisition of German and Afrikaans, which support our analysis of adult L2 acquisition of Germanic languages.

Syntactic and Prosodic Reflexes of Information Structure in Germanic

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gisbert Fanselow
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Acoustic Properties ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Left Edge ◽  
Word Order Variation ◽  
Order Variation ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Finite Verb

This chapter deals with syntactic and prosodic reflexes of information structure in the Germanic languages. It begins with an overview of givenness and word order variation in the TP, along with aboutness topics and the prosodic prominence of topics and foci. It then considers the postulation of a focus head in Germanic and how contrast seems to intensify the acoustic properties of topics and foci. It shows how the left edge of verb second clauses acts as a slot for placing contrastive elements in all Germanic languages, but that the position is also filled on purely formal grounds. The article also describes the conditions of information structure that decide whether an XP can go to the position preceding the finite verb/auxiliary in the verb second (V2) constructions. Finally, it discusses two types of V2 constructions: unrestricted V2 constructions and pragmatically restricted V2 constructions.

Against complementizers

2021 ◽  
pp. 370-403
Author(s):  
Cecilia Poletto ◽  
Emanuela Sanfelici
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Complement Clause ◽  
Complement Clauses ◽  
Relative Complement ◽  
Germanic Languages

In this paper we investigate the syntax of complement clauses in some Romance and Germanic languages by focusing on word order asymmetries and extraction phenomena. We argue that complement clauses are relative clauses, as proposed in Manzini & Savoia (2003, 2011) and Kayne (2010). However, differently from the previous proposals, we claim that as in relative clauses (see Poletto & Sanfelici 2018a), the ‘complementizer’ partially spells out either the nominal element internal to the relative/complement clause, resulting thus into a raising derivation of the relative/complement clause, or the external nominal modified by the relative/complement clause itself, leading to a matching derivation. This difference in the raising vs. matching derivation accounts for a series of well-known asymmetries between some Romance and Germanic languages. In addition, we show that this proposal may be suitable to derive the different extraction patterns exhibited in ‘traditional’ relative clauses and complement clauses.

scholarly journals Nordic Word Order Database: Motivations, methods, material and infrastructure

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Björn Lundquist ◽  
Ida Larsson ◽  
Maud Westendorp ◽  
Eirik Tengesdal ◽  
Anders Nøklestad
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
The North ◽  
Production Experiment ◽  
Verb Placement ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
University Of Oslo ◽  
The University ◽  
User Friendly ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Data Collection Procedure

In this article, we present the Nordic Word Order Database (NWD), with a focus on the rationale behind it, the methods used in data elicitation, data analysis and the empirical scope of the database. NWD is an online database with a user-friendly search interface, hosted by The Text Laboratory at the University of Oslo, launched in April 2019 (https://tekstlab.uio.no/nwd). It contains elicited production data from speakers of all of the North Germanic languages, including several different dialects. So far, 7 fieldtrips have been conducted, and data from altogether around 250 participants (age 16–60) have been collected (approx. 55 000 sentences in total). The data elicitation is carried out through a carefully controlled production experiment that targets core syntactic phenomena that are known to show variation within and/or between the North Germanic languages, e.g., subject placement, object placement, particle placement and verb placement. In this article, we present the motivations and research questions behind the database, as well as a description of the experiment, the data collection procedure, and the structure of the database

Acoustic Correlates of Focus Marking in Czech and Polish

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 358-377
Author(s):  
Fatima Hamlaoui ◽  
Marzena Żygis ◽  
Jonas Engelmann ◽  
Michael Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Close Correlation ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Word Stress ◽  
Acoustic Correlates ◽  
Production Study ◽  
Focus Marking ◽  
Prosodic Focus ◽  
Germanic Languages

Languages vary in the type of contexts that affect prosodic prominence. This paper reports on a production study investigating how different types of foci influence prosody in Polish and Czech noun phrases. The results show that in both languages, focus and givenness are marked prosodically, with pitch and intensity as the main acoustic correlates. Like Germanic languages, Polish and Czech patterns show prosodic focus marking in a broad range of contexts and differ in this regard from other fixed-word-stress languages such as French. This suggests that (a) Polish and Czech are similar to Germanic languages and are unlike Romance languages in marking a variety of types of focus prosodically; (b) there is no close correlation between fixed word stress and lack of prosodic focus marking because Polish, which has fixed stress on the penult, shows prosodic focus marking for all types of focus; and (c) there is no straightforward relationship between flexible word order and whether focus and givenness are prosodically marked, contrary to earlier claims, because both Czech and Polish, with their relatively flexible word order, are more similar to English than Romance languages.

scholarly journals Argument placement in Faroese

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-27
Author(s):  
Björn Lundquist
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
Demographic Information ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Germanic Languages

This article gives a summary of the Faroese data concerning argument placement in the Nordic Word order Database (NWD). Special emphasis is put on carefully describing the different conditions tested in the argument placement experiment, the experimental set-up, and the demographic information of the participants. An overview of relevant parts of Faroese grammar is also given, as well as a summary of the word order patterns found in the Faroese data present in the database. Finally, we discuss how the data in the database provides new insights to the grammar of Faroese, and how the data patterns in Faroese differ from the patterns observed in the other North Germanic languages.

scholarly journals Stable and vulnerable domains in Germanic heritage languages

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 503-526
Author(s):  
Marit Westergaard ◽  
Tanja Kupisch
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Heritage Languages ◽  
The World ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Germanic Languages

This paper provides an overview of Germanic languages as heritage languages, i.e. languages acquired naturalistically by children in parts of the world where these languages are not the majority language. Summarizing research on different types of heritage speakers of Danish, German, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish, we identify certain stable and vulnerable domains. We focus on the so far best studied areas, word order and grammatical gender, adding evidence from other lesser studied domains, such as definiteness and phonology. We propose that in addition to the linguistic make-up of the phenomena in question, the size of the heritage community and, relatedly, opportunities to use the language need to be taken into account. The latter may explain, for example, why moribund varieties of German and the Scandinavian languages in North America appear to be less stable than the language of second-generation heritage speakers in Europe.

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