Zeitschrift Fur Sprachwissenschaft 

About: Zeitschrift Fur Sprachwissenschaft is an academic journal published by De Gruyter Mouton. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): German & Computer science. It has an ISSN identifier of 0721-9067. It is also open access. Over the lifetime, 359 publications have been published receiving 3895 citations. The journal is also known as: ZS. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft & Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft (Print).

Optimality and diachronic adaptation.

Abstract: In this programmatic paper, I argue that the universal constraints of Optimality Theory (OT) need to be complemented by a theory of diachronic adaptation. OT constraints are traditionally stipulated as part of Universal Grammar, but this misses the generalization that the grammatical constraints normally correspond to constraints on language use. As in biology, observed adaptive patterns in language can be explained through diachronic evolutionary processes, as the unintended cumulative outcome of numerous individual intentional actions. The theory of diachronic adaptation also provides a solution to the teleology problem, which has often been used as an argument against usage-based functional explanations. Finally, I argue against the view that the grammatical constraints could be due to accident. Thus, an adaptive explanation must eventually be found, whether at the level of language use and diachronic change (as proposed in this paper), or at the level of biological evolutionary change.

Second Language Acquisition in Early Childhood

Abstract: There is a broad consensus in the research literature on the acquisition of bilingualism that the simultaneous acquisition of two (or more) languages can be qualified as an instance of bilingual first language (2L1) development; see de Houwer (1995) for a summarizing discussion of this issue. 2L1 children differentiate from early on the linguistic systems of the languages to which they are exposed (Meisel 1989), they proceed through the same developmental phases as the respective monolinguals, and they are able to attain native competence in each of their languages; see Meisel (2001, 2004) for state-of-the-art summaries of the relevant research. It therefore seems to be justified to assert that the human Language Making Capacity (LMC) constitutes an endowment for multilingualism. If, however, two or more languages are acquired successively, a very different picture emerges from the literature reporting on investigations of this type of language acquisition. Although it is not possible to summarize in a few words the long and ongoing debate on similarities and differences between first (L1) and second (L2) acquisition, successive

Grammaticalization vs. Reanalysis : A Semantic-Pragmatic Account of Functional Change in Grammar

Abstract: Most current theorizing conceives of grammaticalization (and reanalysis) in purely structural-descriptive terms, according to Lehmann's (1995) parameters. But these leave fundamental questions unanswered: what do speakers/hearers actually do when they grammaticalize/reanalyze a linguistic item? We will show reanalysis to be essentially a hearer-based procedure. Listeners aim at understanding what speakers say. Grammaticalization, on the other hand, is a speaker-based phenomenon: Speakers invent expressive discourse techniques in order to pay tribute to basic communicative needs such as to tell the truth, to be relevant; as a consequence of routinization, these techniques will lose their salience and their relics end up by becoming part of the grammar. Like any type of change, grammaticalization is ratified by reanalyses on the part of listeners. In a trivial sense, lexical elements are reanalyzed as grammatical ones. Only in this sense are reanalysis and grammaticalization inseparable twins.

Minimalist Morphology: An Approach to Inflection

Abstract: A partir d'exemples issus de la morphologie du verbe allemand, les As. proposent une caracterisation minimale de la morphologie flexionnelle comme systeme combinatoire de racines et de suffixes sous-specifies, qui est controle par une hierarchie de categories, par des principes generaux d'affixation et par des principes regulant les structures paradigmatiques. Ils montrent que, alors que les sous-regularites sont representees par des entrees lexicales structurees, qui prennent la forme d'un arbre d'heritage non monotone, l'affixation reguliere semble etre une operation monotone. Il illustrent ensuite en detail la structure des paradigmes avec la morphologie de l'accord du verbe avec le sujet en arabe classique

Toward a unified grammar of reference

Abstract: The unification of traditionally distinct and apparently unrelated objects of inquiry under common more abstract principles is one of the most welcome results of empirical science. This article proposes to draw together some insights of Longobardi (1994, 1996, 2001) into a unified theory of object-and kind-reference viewed as a single grammatical phenomenon, though crosslinguistically parametrized. The present account aims to improve both in accuracy and explanatory force over those outlined in the articles just cited. 1 To do so, the combined leading intuitions of such works are first spelt out, in section 6, into a deeper generalization about the form/meaning relation in nominals and later deduced from a more principled mapping theory, proposing that a syntactically specified position, traditionally labeled D, is responsible in many languages for one of human fundamental linguistic abilities, reference to individuals (Topological Mapping Theory). After the unification of the syntactic mechanisms available for reference to individuals, virtually all other distinctions simply follow precisely from that between the two varieties of such entities (kinds and objects) previewed in Carlson's (1977a) ontology, indirectly confirming its continuing heuristic power, and from widely accepted economy conditions of recent syntactic theory.