On identifiability and definiteness in English and German

2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-285
Author(s):  
Carsten Breul
Keyword(s):  
Structure Analysis ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Focus Structure ◽  
Structural Category ◽  
Guiding Questions

Despite increasingly numerous works dealing with issues of information structure from a cross-linguistic perspective, contrastive information structure analysis is not an established field of research yet. The paper aims at showing that it is worthwhile staking out and exploring such a field. Starting off from a brief reminder of what information structure is, as conceived of by Lambrecht (1994), the paper proposes guiding questions that contrastive information structure analysis should strive to answer. It then turns to the discussion of an example of contrastive analysis which involves the information structural category of identifiability. It is argued that the variable x in the English formula ‘as for x’ and the corresponding German formula was x {(an)betrifft / angeht} in sentence initial position can only be instantiated by expressions that have identifiable discourse referents. Results of a corpus-based comparison of expressions which instantiate x in these English and German formulas are presented. These results show contrasts between English and German in the lexicogrammatical expression of identifiable referents that go beyond the better-known differences in the use of the definite article. A methodological point to be made is that Lambrechtian categories of information structure (identifiability and activation of discourse referents, focus structure) may serve as tertia comparationis for the analysis of contrasts on the lexicogrammatical level.

Zum Augment neuägyptischer Verbalformen

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 139-164
Author(s):  
Carsten Peust
Keyword(s):  
Initial Position ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Verb Forms

“On the Augment of Late Egyptian Verb Forms” -- It is shown that the augment which is characteristic of certain nominal verb forms of Late Egyptian – and survives in a few traces up until Coptic – contains none of those vowels that were regularly admitted at the beginning of Egyptian words. Rather, it must continue a wordinternal vowel /ǝ/ that moved into the initial position by a misdivision of the proclitic definite article, which frequently preceded participles and relative forms in speech. The same vowel [ǝ] occurred as an epenthetic sound before the preposition ‹r› /r/ ~ [ǝr], from which only ǝ remained after its consonantal body got lost. These phonetic insights prove that the Late Egyptian augment cannot derive from the Old Egyptian augment, as has been contended, but is a genuine innovation of Late Egyptian. Finally, the rise of unetymological initial vowels in various other nouns such as ⲉϭⲱϣ (“Nubian”) and ⲉϩⲟⲟⲩ (Bohairic for “day”) is explained.

scholarly journals Quaestio-related information structuring in German market reports

2021 ◽  
Vol 145 ◽  
pp. 163-178
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Nycz
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
German Market ◽  
Main Structure ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Focus Structure

This paper attempts at analyzing the information structure of an economic text with the use of the quaestio model. The quaestio constrains the topic-focus structure of particular utterances as well as the manner in which information is carried from one utterance to the next. At the same time, it outlines the overall structure of the text, describes which expressions in the text form its main structure, and which belong to the side structure.

scholarly journals How to start a V2 declarative clause: Transfer of syntax vs. information structure in L2 German

Nordlyd ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ute Bohnacker ◽  
Christina Rosén
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Production Data ◽  
Control Data ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
L1 Transfer ◽  
Text Corpora ◽  
Discourse Pragmatics ◽  
Linguistic Means

This paper discusses V2 word order and information structure in Swedish, German and non-native German. Concentrating on the clause-initial position of V2 declaratives, the ‘prefield’, we investigate the extent of L1 transfer in a closely related L2. The prefield anchors the clause in discourse, and although almost any type of element can occur in this position, naturalistic text corpora of native Swedish and native German show distinct language-specific patterns. Certain types of elements are more common than others in clause-initial position, and their frequencies in Swedish differ substantially from German (subjects, fronted objects, certain adverbs). Nonnative cross-sectional production data from Swedish learners of German at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels are compared with native control data, matched for age and genre (Bohnacker 2005, 2006, Rosén 2006). The learners’ V2 syntax is largely targetlike, but their beginnings of sentences are unidiomatic. They have problems with the language-specific linguistic means that have an impact on information structure: They overapply the Swedish principle of “rheme later” in their L2 German, indicating L1 transfer at the interface of syntax and discourse pragmatics, especially for structures that are frequent in the L1 (subject-initial and expletive-initial clauses, and constructions with <em>så</em> (‘so’) and object <em>det</em> (‘it/that’)).

scholarly journals DISA: A Scientific Writing Advisor with Deep Information Structure Analysis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hen-Hsen Huang ◽  
Hsin-Hsi Chen
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Structure Analysis ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Intelligent System ◽  
Scientific Writing ◽  
Computer Aided ◽  
Network Technologies ◽  
Neural Network Technologies

This paper demonstrates DISA, a higher-level writing assistant system, which analyzes the information structure of abstracts, and retrieves the knowledge according to the research goals from the related work. By incorporating the latest neural-network technologies including linguistically-informed neural-network and autoencoder, we construct an intelligent system which extends the scope of computer-aided writing.

scholarly journals AutoSurvey: Automatic Survey Generation based on a Research Draft

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hen-Hsen Huang
Keyword(s):  
Structure Analysis ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Intelligent System ◽  
Neural Model ◽  
Literature Survey ◽  
Fine Grained

This work presents AutoSurvey, an intelligent system that performs literature survey and generates a summary specific to a research draft. A neural model for information structure analysis is employed for extracting fine-grained information from the abstracts of previous work, and a novel evolutionary multi-source summarization model is proposed for generating the summary of related work. This system is extremely used for both academic and educational purposes.

scholarly journals On word order variation and informationstructure in peninsular spanish and italian ‘why’-interrogatives

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. e021025
Author(s):  
Svenja Schmid ◽  
Klaus Von Heusinger ◽  
Georg A. Kaiser
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Word Order Variation ◽  
High Preference ◽  
Parallel Text ◽  
Peninsular Spanish ◽  
Structural Category ◽  
The Impact

In this paper, we investigate the effect of information structure on word order in Italian and Peninsular Spanish ‘why’-interrogatives, and whether these two languages differ from each other. To this end, we conducted two empirical studies. In a parallel text corpus study, we compared the frequency of the word order patterns ‘why’SV and ‘why’VS, as well as the distribution of focal and non-focal subjects in the two languages. In order to get a deeper understanding of the impact of the information structural categories focus and givenness on word order in ‘why’-interrogatives, we conducted a forced-choice experiment. The results indicate that word order is affected by focus in Italian, while it is not determined by any information structural category in Peninsular Spanish. We show that Italian and Peninsular Spanish ‘why’-interrogatives differ from each other in two ways. First, non-focal subjects occur preverbally in Italian, while they occupy the postverbal position in Peninsular Spanish. Second, Italian reveals a lower level of optionality with respect to word order patterns. Even though we find a high preference for the postverbal position in Peninsular Spanish, we argue that this limitation is related to a higher flexibility regarding word order in Peninsular Spanish than in Italian which does not allows for ‘why’VSO in contrast to Peninsular Spanish.

scholarly journals Locative Inversion as an Alternation Phenomenon in Setswana: The Case of Lexical Functional Grammar Theory

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Setumile Morapedi
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Functional Grammar ◽  
Structure Approach ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Lexical Functional Grammar ◽  
New Information ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Locative Inversion

The paper has examined locative inversion constructions in Setswana, showing that the pre-posed locative phrase in these constructions is not the subject as it is viewed by other linguists in the literature. It has been argued, in this paper, that locative phrase occurs in the sentence initial position to perform the topic function which sets the scene for the focused noun phrase that alternates with it (locative phrase). The analysis has been achieved through information structure approach, showing the locative phrase that occurs in sentence initial position is a discourse phenomenon showing given information, and that the focused post-verbal noun phrase is new information that is emphasised on. Also, an appeal is made to Lexical Functional Grammar Approach to explain different ways of representing syntactic structures such as constituent structure and the functional structure.

МЕЖЯЗЫКОВЫЕ СОПОСТАВЛЕНИЯ В УПОТРЕБЛЕНИИ АРТИКЛЕЙ АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА

2019 ◽  
pp. 23-25
Author(s):  
Чыныбаева С.Р.
Keyword(s):  
Definite Article ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Indefinite Article ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Nature ◽  
Textual Material ◽  
Parallel Texts

Аннотация: В статье излагаются результаты сопоставительного анализа функционирования артикля на материале параллельных текстов (фрагментов переводов повести Ч.Айтматова «Жамиля» на кыргызский, английский языки). Артикль рассматривается как средство обозначения вида характеристики существительного в тексте высказывания. На основе результатов анализа тек- стового материала делается вывод об общей природе артикля на кыргызском и русском языках. Языковая специфика имеет прямое функционирование артиклей, но имеют одинаковую основу в разных языках и они являются основными в организации текста. Заменяют повторные фрагменты текста и служат средством экономии. Ключевые слова: артикль,определенные артикли, неопределенные артикли, совпадение артиклей в переводах, сопоставление, параллельные тексты, функционирование артикля, смысловая неизменяемость. Аннотация: Макалада англис тилиндеги артиклдеринин дал келтирүү ыкмаларынын Ч. Айтматовдун «Жамиля» повестинин кыргыз жана англис тилдериндеги котормолордун салыштыруу жыйынтыгы каралган. Артиклдер зат атоочторго мүнөздөмө берүүчү каражат катары тексттердин мазмундарында каралат. Талдоонун негизинде, тилдин өзгөчөлүгү артиклдердин колдонулушуна түздөн түз таасир этээри берилген, ошол эле учурда ар кыл тилдерде алардын кызматы текстин маңызын толуктап туруучу соз түркүмү экендиги каралган. Тексттерди салыштыруу жолу менен англис тилиндеги артиклдердин кыргыз жана орус тилдериндеги окшоштуктары жана дал келүүсү берилген. Түйүндүү сөздөр: артиклдер, белгилүү артиклдер, белгисиз артиклдер, котормолордо артиклдердин дал келүүсү, талдоо, мааниси бир тексттер, тексттердеги артиклдин кызмат орду, мазмундун өзгөрбөшү. Abstract: This paper the results of the contrastive analysis of the functioning of articles in parallel texts (parts of translations of novel «Jamila» into English and Kyrgyz languages). This article is considered as a means of denoting the type of reference of a noun in an utterance. The conclusion based on the analysis of textual material shows the common nature of article in Kyrgyz and Russian languages, represented in the single semantic invariant of the article. Linguistic specificity has direct functioning of articles but has same basis in different languages and fundamental in the text. Comparison of the texts in English, Russian and Kyrgyz languages and similarities. Keywords: article ,definite article, indefinite article, use of article, parallel texts, matches of the articles in translation, mismatches of the articles in translations, semantic invariant.

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