Semantics Processing of Conditional Connectives: German wenn ‘if’ Versus nur wenn ‘only if’

In this paper, the meaning and processing of the German conditional connectives (CCs) such as wenn ‘if’ and nur wenn ‘only if’ are investigated. In Experiment 1, participants read short scenarios containing a conditional sentence (i.e., If P, Q.) with wenn/nur wenn ‘if/only if’ and a confirmed or negated antecedent (i.e., P/not-P), and subsequently completed the final sentence about Q (with or without negation). In Experiment 2, participants rated the truth or falsity of the consequent Q after reading a conditional sentence with wenn or nur wenn and a confirmed or negated antecedent (i.e., If P, Q. P/not-P. // Therefore, Q?). Both experiments showed that neither wenn nor nur wenn were interpreted as biconditional CCs. Modus Ponens (If P, Q. P. // Therefore, Q) was validated for wenn, whereas it was not validated in the case of nur wenn. While Denial of the Antecedent (If P, Q. not-P. // Therefore, not-Q.) was validated in the case of nur wenn, it was not validated for wenn. The same method was used to test wenn vs. unter der Bedingung, dass ‘on condition that’ in Experiment 3, and wenn vs. vorausgesetzt, dass ‘provided that’ in Experiment 4. Experiment 5, using Affirmation of the Consequent (If P, Q. Q. // Therefore, P.) to test wenn vs. nur wenn replicated the results of Experiment 2. Taken together, the results show that in German, unter der Bedingung, dass is the most likely candidate of biconditional CCs whereas all others are not biconditional. The findings, in particular of nur wenn not being semantically biconditional, are discussed based on available formal analyses of conditionals.

Нерепатрійовані: судові процеси над військовополоненими на Дніпропетровщині (друга половина 1940-х рр.)

One of the results of the Second World War was the presence of a large number of the Germans, Austrian, Romanian and other prisoners of war on the territory of the Soviet Union. Their were actively used in the postwar reconstructions. The article is devoted to the analysis of personal histories of the former enemy soldiers who were kept in the USSR after 1945 and then they were convicted in the 1940's. The main sources are the materials of the Security Service of Ukraine in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast archives. The mentioned above archival materials show that, despite the prosecution, the final sentence for prisoners of war was the same and they had to spend 25 years in labor camps. Particular attention is paid to the cases of George Ionescu, Rudolf Petri, Paul Edgard, Joseph Lecker and Johann Pikanski. In 1945–1950 they were held in detention camps No. 315 or 460, which were located on the territory of Dnipropetrovsk region. Each of these persons chose their own surviving strategy in the camp – escape attempt, avoiding work, finding opportunities to obtain information about the outside world, honestly abiding by rules or sabotage. However, despite the chosen way, the process of repatriation was delayed for all of them until the 1950s. Only after the «Thaw» («Vidlyhy») epoch and the amnesty laws passing, the prisoners got possibility to return to their homeland.

“And that”: Halliday’s logogenesis, sociogenesis, and phylogenesis in Darwin’s tangled bank

The late linguist M.A.K. Halliday described the last paragraph of Darwin’s Origin of Species, with its description of a tangled bank, as one of the most remarkable paragraphs in the whole of literature. Yet it appears marred by an obvious grammatical mistake. In this article, we seek to show that the apparent mistake is actually the vestige of a now extinct form of paragraph in which the structure we now reserve for a single sentence could be extended over a whole paragraph or even many paragraphs. We first zoom out to show that the final sentence makes sense in the context of the paragraph as a whole, and then zoom out again to show that the modern paragraph itself is still a work in progress. Finally, we use a comparison between English and Farsi to try to show that all such grammatical choices mediate between humans and their environment. This relationship too is a work in progress in which the grammar of a language has an important role to play.

Defining laboratory medicine, or squaring the circle?

In the August 2020 issue of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, Giuseppe Lippi and Mario Plebani proposed a definition of laboratory medicine, which ends with this sentence: “The results of these measurements are translated into actionable information for improving the care and/or maintaining the wellness of both a single individual and an entire population”. Nevertheless, the selfishness of individuals may, sometimes, jeopardize the interest of whole populations. The virtue of justice being within the reach of the entire human community more than of single individuals, the final sentence in the definition proposed by Giuseppe Lippi and Mario Plebani, should therefore, in our view, be rewritten, less selfishly, for example like this: “For a given investment, these measurements are preferably made when they bring as much beneficence, and non-maleficence, as possible to the whole population”.

Coherence formation during narrative text processing: a comparison between auditory and audiovisual text presentation in 9- to 12-year-old children

In an experiment with 114 children aged 9–12 years, we compared the ability to establish local and global coherence of narrative texts between auditory and audiovisual (auditory text and pictures) presentation. The participants listened to a series of short narrative texts, in each of which a protagonist pursued a goal. Following each text, we collected the response time to a query word that was either associated with a near or a distant causal antecedent of the final sentence. Analysis of these response times indicated that audiovisual presentation has advantages over auditory presentation for accessing information relevant for establishing both local and global coherence, but there are indications that this effect may be slightly more pronounced for global coherence.

A Dynamic Interpretation of Nietzsche’s “The Greatest Weight”

GS 341 is one of the most familiar of Nietzsche’s writings. This article proposes a new reading that stands in contrast with most English-language Nietzsche scholarship. The text presents a communication and its reception. A ‘demon’ makes an announcement, and a hearer responds in one way or another. But there is also another narrative altogether, whose conceptual vocabulary comes from a dynamic world-view. In this an interaction of forces leads to a new situation. If the hearer is not crushed by the ‘greatest weight’, there must be an inner force that counteracts its impact. I argue that what Nietzsche calls amor fati is a state that allows our drives to achieve full expression, and so makes possible a collective strength able to withstand the greatest impact. The final sentence refers to a “confirmation and sealing”. What happens is that the demon’s message makes an impression on the receptive hearer. For Nietzsche this is a working metaphor, not a turn of phrase. In a draft from this period he writes: “Let us stamp the image of eternity on our life!” That sudden and forceful act, embodying an evaluative judgement, is the event that GS 341 is all about.

What does a verb? Indicate sentence type

An important task of the verb in German is to indicate sentence type. Depending on where the verb is positioned, the clause is a declarative (verb after the first constituent, which can be any constituent), wh-interrogative (verb after the first constituent, being the wh-phrase), yes/no-interrogative (verb in first position, bearing indicative or subjunctive mood) or imperative clause (verb in first position, bearing imperative mood). This system developed out of a system in which sentence type was indicated by clause-final sentence mood particles, as is usual in older Indo-European (and Semitic) languages. In declarative sentences, the verb-second syntax only came about shortly before the Old High German attestation sets in. We can trace the gradual development of the modern German verb-second syntax with variable prefield from a clear topic-comment structure to a more flexible structure.