A series of production and perception experiments investigating the prosody and well-formedness of special sentences, called Wide Focus Partial Fronting (WFPF), which consist of only one prosodic phrase and a unique initial accented argument, are reported on here. The results help us to decide between different models of German prosody. The absence of pitch height difference on the accent of the sentence speaks in favor of a relative model of prosody, in which accents are scaled relative to each other, and against models in which pitch accents are scaled in an absolute way. The results also speak for a model in which syntax, but not information structure, influences the prosodic phrasing. Finally, perception experiments show that the prosodic structure of sentences with a marked word order needs to be presented for grammaticality judgments. Presentation of written material only is not enough, and falsifies the results.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1965. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 214-217).

The 10th volume of the working paper series contains two papers contributed by SFB-members. The first paper “Single prosodic phrase sentences” by Caroline Féry (A1) and Heiner Drenhaus (C6, University of Potsdam) investigates the prosody of Wide Focus Partial Fronting in a series of production and perception experiments. The second paper “Focus Asymmetries in Bura” by Katharina Hartmann, Peggy Jacob (B2, Humboldt University Berlin) and Malte Zimmermann (A5, University of Potsdam) explores the strategies of marking focus in Bura (Chadic).

In recent years, attempts to simplify the grammatical mechanisms used in syntax have led to proposals to reduce the relationships between elements in a sentence to relations between heads and complements, doing away with free adjunction. For the analysis of modifying relations one consequence has been the rise of analyses that use the properties of selecting heads to stipulate unexpected syntactic behaviour, such as the use of light verbs to derive transparency in complex verb constructions. This thesis shows that such accounts are empirically inadequate and argues that the relationship between heads and adjuncts provides a more empirically-satisfactory model of modifying relations, such as complex verb constructions, than one restricted to the selection relation between heads and complements in the syntax. In support of the adjunct relation, I show how a modular approach to adjuncts in which the position of adjunction is licensed in the semantics and long-distance dependencies are licensed in the syntax can provide a more unified account of subextraction from two separate types of island configurations, viz. asymmetric subextraction from coordination and subextraction from participial adjuncts, either than analyses involving complementation in the syntax (Borgonovo and Neeleman, 2000; Fabregas and Jiménez-Fernández, 2016; Wiklund, 2007), or hybrid analyses mixing processing filters with syntactic licensing of long-distance dependencies (Truswell, 2009, 2011). The first part of the thesis shows that Chomsky’s (2000; 2001) phase theory gives rise to blackholes in the specifier positions of phases from which movement cannot take place. I provide a theoretical account in terms of feature-licensing, where blackholes are formed by the impossibility of licensing at least one unlicensed feature on a phase head, and show how this account derives the distinction between canonical adjuncts from which subextraction is not permitted and subextraction from single event constructions in which subextraction is permitted. The section speculatively concludes with a demonstration of how blackholes might provide a unified analysis of islandhood in general. The second part of the thesis concentrates on the empirical phenomenon of subextraction from coordination and participial adjuncts. I report the results of a series of judgement experiments run in parallel across two sets of constructions, coordination and participial adjuncts, in three languages, English, German and Norwegian. The aim was to test whether acceptability of subextraction from within coordination and participial adjuncts varied depending on the aspectual or grammatical type of matrix predicate. The results show that acceptability of subextraction does depend on the type of matrix predicate. The crucial factor is intransitivity, partially confirming the bias towards unaccusatives in subextraction from participial adjuncts observed informally in Borgonovo and Neeleman (2000); Fabregas and Jiménez-Fernández (2016); Truswell (2011) whilst providing evidence against theoretical accounts that rely primarily on unaccusativity (Borgonovo and Neeleman, 2000; Fabregas and Jiménez-Fernández, 2016), primarily on aspectual distinctions (Truswell, 2007b) or primarily on agentivity (Truswell, 2009, 2011). Interestingly, the hierarchy in acceptability between the four types of matrix predicates stays constant across all three languages, despite both pseudocoordination and subextraction from within participials being ungrammatical in German.

[pt] Esta dissertação é um estudo experimental que busca investigar a construção da referência de expressões nominais inseridas em contextos discursivos. Um dos objetivos foi analisar se falantes nativos do português brasileiro fazem uso de informações dadas no contexto para interpretação de expressões nominais definidas. O outro objetivo foi verificar em que medida presença de traços de personalidade esquizotípica em falantes normais interfere na integração de informações contextuais na construção da referência. Para realizar a investigação, foi conduzido um teste de linguagem acompanhado de dois questionários psicométricos para medir traços gerais de personalidade esquizotípica e traços de desordens do pensamento. O experimento foi conduzido com adultos universitários do Rio de Janeiro. Os resultados indicam que no geral os falantes do português brasileiro têm preferência por interpretar uma expressão nominal definida como se referindo a uma única entidade, mas são sensíveis às informações dadas no contexto, de modo que a referência de uma expressão nominal definida pode ser uma classe de indivíduos quando o contexto fornece informações ostensivas nessa direção. Correlações entre os resultados do teste de linguagem e os resultados dos questionários psicométricos sugerem que falantes com baixas habilidades para conversas e afeto constrito apresentam possibilidades interpretativas mais restritas, especialmente quando o contexto favorece referência a um único individuo. Embora, a investigação conduzida sobre a relação entre linguagem e esquizotipia seja preliminar, os resultados encontrados indicam possíveis interferências de traços de personalidade esquizotípica na construção da referência pela linguagem. / [en] This thesis is an experimental study to investigate how the reference of nominal expressions is built within a discourse context. The first goal was to analyze how native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese use contextual information in interpreting definite descriptions. The second goal was to determine whether or not traces of schizotypal personality can interfere in the integration of contextual information in building reference. The linguistic experimental study was accompanied by two psychometric scales. The psychometric scales were used to measure general traits of schizotypal personality and thought disorders. The participants in the experiment were adult native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese from Rio de Janeiro, and the results showed that in general the participants had a significant preference for interpreting a definite description as referring to a single entity. However, they were sensitive to contextual information and reference to a group of entities (king reading) was licensed when the context was favorable. Correlations between the linguistic results and the results of the psychometric scales suggest that speakers with low conversational ability and constricted affect are more restrictive in their interpretation choices, displaying a greater preference for reference to a single entity, especially in contexts favoring single entity reference. Although this is a preliminary investigation, our experimental findings indicate that traits of schizotypy can interfere in how reference is built within language.

Diese Dissertation ist ein Beitrag zur Analyse von psych(-ologischen) Verben, einer Verbklasse, die in den letzten 35 Jahren umfangreiche Forschung erfahren hat. Diese hat unter anderem ergeben, dass Psychverben auch deshalb so besonders sind, weil sie ein sehr heterogenes Aspektprofil aufweisen. Darum beschränkt sich die Dissertation auf rein stative (Verwendungen von) Psychverben, wodurch der Weg für einen kontrastiven Vergleich mit anderen stativen Verben geebnet und eine innovative Perspektive auf Psychverben eröffnet wird. Der Vergleich konzentriert sich auf sog. 'Objekteffekte' und untersucht ihr Vorhandensein in den verschiedenen Gruppen von stativen Psych- und nicht-Psychverben. Objekteffekte beschreiben den Wechsel von einem 'Individual-level'- zu einem 'Stage-level'-Status, ausgelöst durch einen Definitheitswechsel des Objekts. Es wird ein experimentelles Design entwickelt, mit dem solche aspektuellen Bedeutungsverschiebungen empirisch erfassbar sind, sowie Daten für deutsche und englische Verben gesammelt. Die Ergebnisse bestätigen, dass Objekteffekte in beiden Sprachen bei kanonischen stativen Verben außerhalb der Psychdomäne vorhanden sind, während sie in allen Gruppen von stativen Psychverben fehlen. Wir führen diesen semantischen Unterschied auf eine grundlegend andere Beschaffenheit der syntaktischen Struktur von Psychverben zurück. Wir zeigen, dass Objekteffekte eine transitive Struktur voraussetzen und schlussfolgern, dass Psychverben eine unakkusative Syntax aufweisen. Darüber hinaus deuten die gewonnenen Daten auch auf subtilere aspektuelle Bedeutungsunterschiede zwischen den Untergruppen der stativen Psychverben hin. Gleichzeitig leistet unsere Studie einen Beitrag zur Erforschung von Objekteffekten, indem eine empirische Grundlage für eine bisher ausschließlich theoretische Diskussion geschaffen wird. Diese empirische Evidenz ermöglicht weitere Schlussfolgerungen zur Quelle von Objekteffekten sowie deren Eigenschaften. / This dissertation aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion on how to syntactically analyze psych(-ological) verbs. This verb class cross-linguistically displays unexpected argument structure alternations associated with a number of syntactic peculiarities, which have given rise to a large body of literature over the past 35 years. For our research, we pursue a new angle by restricting ourselves to the stative (uses of) psych verbs and treating them as a subclass of stative verbs, thereby paving the way for a contrastive comparison with stative verbs outside the psych domain. The comparison focuses on so-called 'object effects' and examines their presence in the different groups of stative psych and non-psych verbs. Object effects describe the shift of an individual-level to a stage-level status induced by a change in the definiteness of the object DP. We develop an experimental design able to empirically detect such aspectual shifts and collect data for German and English verbs. The results confirm that object effects are present in both languages in canonical stative verbs outside the psych domain, whereas they are absent in all groups of stative psych verbs. We attribute this behavior to fundamental differences in the internal constitution of psych verbs. Based on the insight that object effects require a transitive structure, we conclude that stative psych verbs generally exhibit an unaccusative syntax. Our findings also point to finer-grained interpretational patterns in the subclasses of stative psych verbs, consistent with previous observations of systematic semantic-syntactic differences. At the same time, our study contributes to the study of object effects by providing an empirical basis for a previously purely theoretical discussion. This empirical evidence allows for further conclusions about the source of object effects as well as their properties.