This volume contributes to a linguistic program characterized by the view that explanatory goals in syntax and semantics can be met only in models that are sufficiently formalized. The properties of these formalizations must be well understood, and they have to do justice to both the syntactic and semantic aspects of a construction. The contributions shed light on this view from the perspectives of theoretical linguistics (semantics, syntax), automata theory, and computational and mathematical linguistics.

Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die Relation zwischen Komplexitat der Strukturen und Okonomie der Elemente (Prinzipien) in der Organisation des sprachlichen Wissens. Im Fokus stehen Analysen der Prinzipien, die sich auf die phonetische Komponente (PF) des Lexikoneintrags beziehen. Diese Untersuchung zeigt, dass die Veranderungen der phonetischen Struktur nicht arbitrar sind, sondern als eine Resultierende von verschiedenen konkurrierenden Tendenzen angesehen werden sollten, deren Rangordnung sich auch andern kann. Eine der wichtigsten Tendenzen ist die artikulatorische Okonomie, die sich in...

All humans are equipped with perceptual and articulatory mechanisms which (in healthy humans) allow them to learn to perceive and produce speech. One basic question in psycholinguistics is whether humans share similar underlying processing mechanisms for all languages, or whether these are fundamentally different due to the diversity of languages and speakers. This book provides a cross-linguistic examination of speech comprehension by investigating word recognition in users of different languages. The focus is on how listeners segment the quasi-continuous stream of sounds that they hear into...

Die Unterscheidung zwischen Kern und Peripherie in Sprache und Grammatik wird in der Linguistik kontrovers diskutiert. Die Beitrage in diesem Sammelband befassen sich aus unterschiedlichen theoretischen Perspektiven mit der grammatiktheoretischen Relevanz dieser Unterscheidung als auch mit empirischen Phanomenen an Randbereichen der Grammatik, die besondere Herausforderungen an die Kern/Peripherie-Unterscheidung stellen.

"

This series publishes original contributions which describe and theoretically analyze structures of natural languages. The main focus is on principles and rules of grammatical and lexical knowledge both with respect to individual languages and from a comparative perspective. The volumes cover all levels of linguistic analysis, especially phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, including aspects of language acquisition, language use, language change, and phonetical and neuronal realization.

Are the past participial forms that occur in passive and perfect periphrases substantially identical or should they rather be distinguished into accidentally homophonous passive and perfect(ive) participles? This book discusses the long-standing mystery of past participial (non-)identity on the basis of a broad range of synchronic data from Germanic and Romance, eventually focussing on German and English as these draw the most relevant distinctions (e.g. auxiliary alternation, a passive auxiliary that is not BE). Together with some contrastive insights from Slavic as well as the diachrony of...

Are the past participial forms that occur in passive and perfect periphrases substantially identical or should they rather be distinguished into accidentally homophonous passive and perfect(ive) participles? This book discusses the long-standing mystery of past participial (non-)identity on the basis of a broad range of synchronic data from Germanic and Romance, eventually focussing on German and English as these draw the most relevant distinctions (e.g. auxiliary alternation, a passive auxiliary that is not BE). Together with some contrastive insights from Slavic as well as the diachrony of...