Topic And Focus In English And German Sentences A Cross Linguistic Analysis

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Topic and Focus in English and German Sentences. A Cross-Linguistic Analysis

Author : Patrick Wedekind
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
ISBN 13 : 3668202427
Total Pages : 9 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (682 download)

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Book Synopsis Topic and Focus in English and German Sentences. A Cross-Linguistic Analysis by : Patrick Wedekind

Download or read book Topic and Focus in English and German Sentences. A Cross-Linguistic Analysis written by Patrick Wedekind and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2016-04-21 with total page 9 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: A, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, language: English, abstract: When semanticists examine the way speakers or writers code the knowledge they expect their listeners or readers to have in a sentence, one of the most important aspects to consider is the information structure of the sentence. Within this information structure, a subdivision is commonly made between already known or given information, which is usually referred to as the ‘topic’ of the sentence, and new information, normally called the ‘focus’. While some languages, for instance Somali, possess explicit focus markers to indicate the focalization of certain elements in a sentence, English has to rely mainly on the intonation of a sentence as the focus marker due to its rigid subject-verb-object (SVO) word order. German, on the other hand, provides a greater syntactic flexibility since it is a highly inflected language in which the grammatical function of words is less defined by their position within a sentence than their grammatical cases. Therefore, speakers of German do not have to rely solely on changing the intonation in order to mark a sentence’s focus, but may also use syntactic displacement as a focus marker. Nevertheless, syntactic changes to focalize certain elements in a sentence are also possible to a limited extent in English, but they require special constructions not necessary for focus marking in German. Since these differences in focus marking seem to be significant in light of the fact that both English and German are Germanic languages, they will constitute the main focus of this paper. I will begin my study of topic and focus in the two languages with an examination of the several strategies for focusing employed in spoken English and German and then continue with those strategies typically used in writing. In doing this, I take account of the limitation of some of these strategies to one of these two different forms of communication.

Information Structure in a Cross-Linguistic Perspective

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004334254
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (43 download)

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Book Synopsis Information Structure in a Cross-Linguistic Perspective by :

Download or read book Information Structure in a Cross-Linguistic Perspective written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-08-29 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present volume draws together contributions from a number of scholars with an interest in empirical, cross-linguistic description. Most of the papers were first presented at the symposium Information Structure in a Cross-linguistic Perspective held in Oslo in November/December 2000. The descriptions are functionally oriented, and their common focus is how information structure – in a broad sense – can be compared across languages. 'Information structure' has been approached in a variety of ways by the authors, so as to give a broad picture of this fundamental principle of text production, involving the way in which a speaker/writer chooses to present a message in terms of given/new information, focus, cohesion, and point of view. Central to much of the research is the problem of establishing criteria for isolating linguistic constraints on language use from cultural-linguistic conventions in text production. The linguistic comparison includes English, German and/or one of the Scandinavian languages, with sidelights to other languages. Most of the papers are text- or corpus-based, and the ongoing work on parallel corpora in Scandinavia is reflected in several contributions.

The Meaning of Topic and Focus

Author : Daniel Büring
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 113470206X
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (347 download)

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Book Synopsis The Meaning of Topic and Focus by : Daniel Büring

Download or read book The Meaning of Topic and Focus written by Daniel Büring and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study provides an illuminating and ground-breaking account of the complex interaction of intonational phenomena, semantics and pragmatics. Based on examples from German and English, and centred on an analysis of the fall-rise intonation contour, a semantic interpretation for two different pitch accents - Focus and Topic - is developed. The cross-sentence, as well as the sentence internal semantic effects of these accents, follow from the given treatment. The account is based on Montogovian possible world semantics and Chomskian generative syntax.

Focus and Background in Romance Languages

Author : Andreas Dufter
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027289522
Total Pages : 376 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (272 download)

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Book Synopsis Focus and Background in Romance Languages by : Andreas Dufter

Download or read book Focus and Background in Romance Languages written by Andreas Dufter and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2009-06-18 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focus–background structure has taken center stage in much current theorizing about sentence prosody, syntax, and semantics. However, both the inventory of focus expressions found cross-linguistically and the interpretive consequences associated with each of these continue to be insufficiently described. This volume aims at providing new observations on the availability and the use of focus markings in Romance languages. In doing so, it documents the plurality of research on focus in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian. Topics covered include constituent fronting and clefting, the position of subjects and focus particles, clitic doubling of objects, and information packaging in complex sentences. In addition, some contributions explore focus–background structure from acquisitional and diachronic angles, while others adopt a comparative perspective, studying differences between individual Romance and Germanic languages. Therefore, this volume is of interest to a broad audience within linguistics, including syntacticians, semanticists, and historical linguists.

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Second Language Acquisition

Author : Peter Robinson
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136485570
Total Pages : 782 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (364 download)

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Book Synopsis The Routledge Encyclopedia of Second Language Acquisition by : Peter Robinson

Download or read book The Routledge Encyclopedia of Second Language Acquisition written by Peter Robinson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 782 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Encyclopedia of Second Language Acquisition offers a user-friendly, authoritative survey of terms and constructs that are important to understanding research in second language acquisition (SLA) and its applications. The Encyclopedia is designed for use as a reference tool by students, researchers, teachers and professionals with an interest in SLA. The Encyclopedia has the following features: • 252 alphabetized entries written in an accessible style, including cross references to other related entries in the Encyclopedia and suggestions for further reading • Among these, 9 survey entries that cover the foundational areas of SLA in detail: Development in SLA, Discourse and Pragmatics in SLA, Individual Differences in SLA, Instructed SLA, Language and the Lexicon in SLA, Measuring and Researching SLA, Psycholingustics of SLA, Social and Sociocultural Approaches to SLA, Theoretical Constructs in SLA. • The rest of the entries cover all the major subdisciplines, methodologies and concepts of SLA, from “Accommodation” to the “ZISA project.” Written by an international team of specialists, the Routledge Encyclopedia of Second Language Acquisition is an invaluable resource for students and researchers with an academic interest in SLA.

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Second Language Acquisition

Author : Peter Jake Robinson
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0415877512
Total Pages : 782 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (158 download)

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Book Synopsis The Routledge Encyclopedia of Second Language Acquisition by : Peter Jake Robinson

Download or read book The Routledge Encyclopedia of Second Language Acquisition written by Peter Jake Robinson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 782 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Encyclopedia of Second Language Acquisition offers a user-friendly, authoritative survey of terms and constructs that are important to understanding research in second language acquisition (SLA) and its applications. The Encyclopedia is designed for use as a reference tool by students, researchers, teachers and professionals with an interest in SLA. The Encyclopedia has the following features: * 252 alphabetized entries written in an accessible style, including cross references to other related entries in the Encyclopedia and suggestions for further reading * Among these, 9 survey entries that cover the foundational areas of SLA in detail: Development in SLA, Discourse and Pragmatics in SLA, Individual Differences in SLA, Instructed SLA, Language and the Lexicon in SLA, Measuring and Researching SLA, Psycholingustics of SLA, Social and Sociocultural Approaches to SLA, Theoretical Constructs in SLA. * The rest of the entries cover all the major subdisciplines, methodologies and concepts of SLA, from "Accommodation" to the "ZISA project." Written by an international team of specialists, the Routledge Encyclopedia of Second Language Acquisition is an invaluable resource for students and researchers with an academic interest in SLA.

Third Language Acquisition

Author : Wilhelm Griehaber, Jochen Rehbein, S Çiğdem Sağin Şimşek, S Cigdem
Publisher : Waxmann Verlag
ISBN 13 : 9783830966043
Total Pages : 172 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (66 download)

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Book Synopsis Third Language Acquisition by : Wilhelm Griehaber, Jochen Rehbein, S Çiğdem Sağin Şimşek, S Cigdem

Download or read book Third Language Acquisition written by Wilhelm Griehaber, Jochen Rehbein, S Çiğdem Sağin Şimşek, S Cigdem and published by Waxmann Verlag. This book was released on with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Turkish-German Bilingual Students' Acquisition of English Word Order in a German Educational Setting investigates the syntactic influences of Turkish and German on the acquisition of English word order in a German educational setting.

Crosslinguistic Studies on Noun Phrase Structure and Reference

Author : Patricia Cabredo Hofherr
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004261443
Total Pages : 413 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Crosslinguistic Studies on Noun Phrase Structure and Reference by : Patricia Cabredo Hofherr

Download or read book Crosslinguistic Studies on Noun Phrase Structure and Reference written by Patricia Cabredo Hofherr and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-11-29 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crosslinguistic Studies on Noun Phrase Structure and Reference contains 11 studies on the grammar of noun phrases. Part One explores NP-structure and the impact of information structure, countability and number marking on interpretation, using data from Russian, Armenian, Hebrew, Brazilian Portuguese, Karitiana, Turkish, English, Catalan and Danish. Part Two examines language specific definiteness marking strategies in spoken and signed languages—differentiated definiteness marking in Germanic, double definiteness in Greek, adnominal demonstratives in Japanese, ‘weak’ definiteness in Martiniké and the special referring options made avilable by signing. Part Three examines the second-language acquisition of genericity in English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. This volume will be of interest to researchers and students in syntax, formal semantics, and language acquisition. Contributors include: Željko Bošković, Patricia Cabredo Hofherr, Edit Doron, Nomi Erteschik Shir, Brigitte Garcia, Elaine Grolla, Tania Ionin, Loïc Jean-Louis, Makoto Kaneko, Marika Lekakou, Silvina Montrul, Ana Müller, Asya Pereltsvaig, Marie-Anne Sallandre, Helade Santos, Serkan Şener, Rebekka Studler, Kriszta Szendröi, Anne Zribi-Hertz.

New Approaches to Contrastive Linguistics

Author : Renata Enghels
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110682672
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (16 download)

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Book Synopsis New Approaches to Contrastive Linguistics by : Renata Enghels

Download or read book New Approaches to Contrastive Linguistics written by Renata Enghels and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-07-20 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The practice of comparing languages has a long tradition characterized by a cyclic pattern of interest. Its meeting with corpus linguistics in the 1990s has led to a new sub-discipline of corpus-based contrastive studies. The present volume tackles two main challenges that had not yet been fully addressed in the literature, namely an empirical assessment of the nature of the data commonly used in cross-linguistic studies (e.g. translation data versus comparable data), and the development of advanced methods and statistical techniques suitably adapted to contrastive research settings. The papers collected in this volume endeavour to find out what (new) types of data are most useful for what kind of contrastive questions, and which advanced statistical techniques are most suited to deal with the multidimensionality of contrastive research questions. Answers to these questions are provided through the contrastive analysis of various language pairs or groups, and a wide variety of phenomena situated at almost all linguistic levels. In sum, this book provides an update on new methodological and theoretical insights in empirical contrastive linguistics and will stimulate further research within this field.

Frequency, Forms and Functions of Cleft Constructions in Romance and Germanic

Author : Anna-Maria De Cesare
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110361876
Total Pages : 426 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Frequency, Forms and Functions of Cleft Constructions in Romance and Germanic by : Anna-Maria De Cesare

Download or read book Frequency, Forms and Functions of Cleft Constructions in Romance and Germanic written by Anna-Maria De Cesare and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2014-11-10 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume describes the frequency, the forms and the functions of different cleft construction types across two language families: the Romance languages (with discussion of Italian, French and Spanish data) and the Germanic languages (with focus on English, German, Swiss German and Danish).

Comparative and Contrastive Studies of Information Structure

Author : Carsten Breul
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027287848
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (272 download)

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Book Synopsis Comparative and Contrastive Studies of Information Structure by : Carsten Breul

Download or read book Comparative and Contrastive Studies of Information Structure written by Carsten Breul and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010-09-09 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents original comparative and contrastive research into various aspects of information structure (topic, focus, contrastivity, givenness, anaphoricity) as well as into forms and structures whose realisation depends on information-structural factors (clefts, dislocations, reflexives, null subjects, prosodic features, interrogatives) in a number of different languages (Catalan, English, French, Georgian, German, Hebrew, Hungarian). Each contribution emphasises differences or commonalities between the languages under investigation with respect to the realisation of information structural categories or with respect to the information structural implications of a given form or structure. The specific comparative-contrastive perspective of the volume makes a substantial contribution towards a better understanding of language specific and universal aspects of information structure. It raises significant questions and provides solutions for the formal representation and the functional properties of information structural categories.

GECCo - German-English Contrasts in Cohesion

Author : Kerstin Kunz
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110711095
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis GECCo - German-English Contrasts in Cohesion by : Kerstin Kunz

Download or read book GECCo - German-English Contrasts in Cohesion written by Kerstin Kunz and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-10-25 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In contrastive linguistics of English and German, there is a tradition of accounting for contrasts with respect to grammar and, to a lesser extent, for lexis and phonetics. Moving on to discourse and text, there is a sizeable body of literature on cohesive patterns in English and German respectively - but very little in terms of a comparison. The latter, though, is of particular interest for language learners, translators and, of course, linguists and researchers in language technology. This book attempts to close this gap, based on a number of years of corpus-based study into variation and cohesion in the two languages. While there is an overall focus on language contrasts, it also investigates variation between different registers language-internally, and between written and spoken mode in particular. For each of the five major types of cohesion (co-reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunctive relations and lexical cohesion), overviews are given of contrasts in the system and of contrastive frequencies in texts. Results and methods presented in this book are thus relevant for language teaching, translation, language technology and corpus-based work on English and German generally.

Comparative and Contrastive Studies of Information Structure

Author : Carsten Breul
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027255482
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (272 download)

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Book Synopsis Comparative and Contrastive Studies of Information Structure by : Carsten Breul

Cross-Linguistic Corpora for the Study of Translations

Author : Silvia Hansen-Schirra
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
ISBN 13 : 3110260328
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (12 download)

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Book Synopsis Cross-Linguistic Corpora for the Study of Translations by : Silvia Hansen-Schirra

Download or read book Cross-Linguistic Corpora for the Study of Translations written by Silvia Hansen-Schirra and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book specifies a corpus architecture, including annotation and querying techniques, and its implementation. The corpus architecture is developed for empirical studies of translations, and beyond those for the study of texts which are inter-lingually comparable, particularly texts of similar registers. The compiled corpus, CroCo, is a resource for research and is, with some copyright restrictions, accessible to other research projects. Most of the research was undertaken as part of a DFG-Project into linguistic properties of translations. Fundamentally, this research project was a corpus-based investigation into the language pair English-German. The long-term goal is a contribution to the study of translation as a contact variety, and beyond this to language comparison and language contact more generally with the language pair English - German as our object languages. This goal implies a thorough interest in possible specific properties of translations, and beyond this in an empirical translation theory. The methodology developed is not restricted to the traditional exclusively system-based comparison of earlier days, where real-text excerpts or constructed examples are used as mere illustrations of assumptions and claims, but instead implements an empirical research strategy involving structured data (the sub-corpora and their relationships to each other, annotated and aligned on various theoretically motivated levels of representation), the formation of hypotheses and their operationalizations, statistics on the data, critical examinations of their significance, and interpretation against the background of system-based comparisons and other independent sources of explanation for the phenomena observed. Further applications of the resource developed in computational linguistics are outlined and evaluated.

The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition

Author : Dan Isaac Slobin
Publisher : Psychology Press
ISBN 13 : 1317785819
Total Pages : 471 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (177 download)

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Book Synopsis The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition by : Dan Isaac Slobin

Download or read book The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition written by Dan Isaac Slobin and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Continuing the tradition of this series, which has become a standard reference work in language acquisition, Volume 4 contains chapters on three additional languages/language groups--Finnish, Greek, and Korean. The chapters are selective, critical reviews rather than exhaustive summaries of the course of development of each language. Authors approach the language in question as a case study in a potential crosslinguistic typology of acquisitional problems, considering those data which contribute to issues of general theoretical concern in developmental psycholinguistics and linguistic theory. Each chapter, therefore, provides the following: * Grammatical Sketch of Language. Brief grammatical sketch of the language or language group, presenting those linguistic facts which are relevant to the developmental analysis. * Sources of Evidence. Summary of basic sources of evidence, characterizing methods of gathering data, and listing key references. * Overall Course of Development. Brief summary of the overall course of development in the language or language group, giving an idea of the general problems posed to the child in acquiring a language of this type, summarizing typical errors, domains of relatively error-free acquisition, and the timing of acquisition--areas of the grammar that show relatively precocious or delayed development in crosslinguistic perspective. * Data. Specific developmental aspects of the language examined in depth, depending on each individual language and available acquisition data. * Conclusions. An interpretive summary of theoretical points raised above, attending to general principles of language development and linguistic organization suggested by the study of a language of this type, plus comparisons with development of other languages.

Structures of Focus and Grammatical Relations

Author : Jorunn Hetland
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
ISBN 13 : 3110949482
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (19 download)

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Book Synopsis Structures of Focus and Grammatical Relations by : Jorunn Hetland

Download or read book Structures of Focus and Grammatical Relations written by Jorunn Hetland and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-02-06 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The seven articles of this volume take up crucial aspects of information structure and grammatical form. Special attention is paid to the definition of topic, focus and contrast, to the language specific devices for expressing different types of these information structural notions, and to the typological characterisation of languages as to discourse configurationality. The investigation of grammatical relations includes the interplay between syntactic functions, morphological case and thematic structure, and the study of the functional and formal complexity of passive in Germanic languages.

Dravidian Syntax and Universal Grammar

Author : K. A. Jayaseelan
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190630221
Total Pages : 705 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

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Book Synopsis Dravidian Syntax and Universal Grammar by : K. A. Jayaseelan

Download or read book Dravidian Syntax and Universal Grammar written by K. A. Jayaseelan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 705 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume comprises twenty eight papers selected from the widely known work of K.A. Jayaseelan and R. Amritavalli on Dravidian. Collectively, these papers cover the entire area of Dravidian syntax: they range from broad questions such as sentence structure and word order to more particular questions such as the morphological basis of anaphora, the genesis of lexical categories, the morpho-syntax of quantifiers, and the syntax and semantics of questions. Important universalist claims are embedded in these essays; for this reason, this volume will be of interest also to a student of the general theory of syntax. No future discussion of Dravidian (or South Asian) languages is possible without taking into account the insightful analyses set forth in these pages.