The proceedings of this year’s HPSG conference are now available! The volume includes a contribution by Manfred Sailer & Nicolas Lamoure on “Superlative ever in Dutch, French, German, and Spanish.”
The paper examines borrowed instances of emphatic superlative ever (ES-ever) into two Germanic languages (Dutch and German) and Continue reading Sailer & Lamoure in HPSG 2023 Proceedings
Hiwa Asadpour has published a paper on “A corpus analysis of the effects of definiteness and animacy on word order veration”. In this article deals with the analysis of word order variation regarding subjects, direct objects, and non-direct object phrases called the “Target” in the corpus of languages of northwestern Iran, viz., Armenian, Mukri Kurdish, and Northeastern Kurdish (Indo-European), Jewish Northeastern Neo-Aramaic Continue reading Asadpour on Effects of Definiteness and Animacy in Word Order Variation
Iverina Ivanova’s dissertation is now available from the university library server.
In her dissertation, Iva investigated the structure of research articles in the field of Computational Linguistics (CL) with the goal of establishing that a set of distinctive linguistic features is associated with each section type. She analyzed the interaction between the intentional and the linguistic structure of each section type. The results from the quantitative and qualitative analysis show that each section possesses an individual profile of linguistic features which are associated with it more or less strongly. These section-feature mappings are shown to be derivable from the hypothesized intentions of each section type. Her research findings provide insights into the writing strategies that writers employ in the component sections of a research article so that the overall goal
of the article is achieved. Continue reading Ivanova “Text-type Constraints on the Choice of Linguistic Mechanisms in Research Articles: A Corpus-based Approach” published
On 25 October, Sascha Bargmann gave a keynote talk via Zoom on “Complex Idiom Modification” at the International Conference on Advance in Education, Humanities and Language (ICEL) 2023 in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia.
Sascha’s talk was based on Bargmann, Gehrke & Richter (2021) and the introductory chapter of his dissertation (Bargmann 2019). Continue reading Bargmann at ICEL 2023
Manfred Sailer and Nicolas Lamoure (Frankfurt a.M.) presented a paper on “Superlative ‘ever’ in Dutch, French, German, and Spanish” at the 30th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar 2023. Manfred and Nicolas look at the use of English ever in emphatic superlatives as in (1) in two Germanic and two Romance languages:
(1) a. nl: de beste opmerking ever ‘the best comment ever’
b. de: bestes Bild ever ‘best picture ever’
c. fr: la meilleure idée ever ‘the best idea ever’
d. es: la mejor foto ever ‘the best picture ever’ Continue reading Sailer & Lamoure at HPSG 2023
Sascha Bargmann’s dissertation is now available from the university library server.
In his book, Sascha develops an argument for a consequent lexical treatment of idioms, whenever such a treatment is possible. To do this, he looks at data that have not been taken into account systematically in the previous literature.
Bargmann, Sascha. 2019. Chopping up idioms: Towards a combinatorial analysis. Frankfurt a.M.: University Library.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21248/gups.73455
The 45th Annual Conference of the German Society of Linguistics (DGfS 2023) hosted a workshop on “Coexistence, competition and change: Structural borrowing and the dynamics of asymmetric language contact.” The workshop was organized by Hiwa Asadpour, Carolina Plaza Pust, and Manfred Sailer and is part of the activities of the initiative DALC (the Dynamics of Asymmetric Language Contact).
The workshop covered a number of very different language contact situtations, including the contact between sign-languages and spoken languages.
The workshop was not only organized by members of the IEAS, but also included two presentations and two posters by the organizers: Continue reading Workshop on “Coexistence, competion and change”
The proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 2021 are now available online. They contain a contribution by Manfred Sailer on “Use-conditional licensing of strong negative polarity items.” In the paper, Manfred further develops the theory of his 2021 HPSG paper that strong NPIs can be licensed by a negation at the non-at-issue semantics. The new paper looks at strong NPIs in German in verum focus constructions and in raising declaratives. Continue reading Sailer in Sinn und Bedeutung 2021 proceedings
The proceedings of this year’s HPSG conference are now available! The volume includes a contribution by Hiwa Asadpour, Shene Hassan & Manfred Sailer on “Non-wh relatives in English and Kurdish: Constraint on grammar and use.” The paper is based on Shene’s work on relative clauses in English and Kurdish, Hiwa’s fieldwork on varieties of Kurdish, and Manfred’s work on non-at-issue meaning. Continue reading Asadpour et al in HPSG22 proceedings
Hiwa Asadpour 
will give an online talk on “Minority languages and inter-ethnic peace through a linguistic perspective” at Hiroshima University. The event is organized by the Network for Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability.
The talk will take place December 7, 2022, 10:30-11:30 am, Japan Standard Time, i.e. 2.30-3.30 am Berlin time)
Kurdish is an Indo-European language from Iranian family. Kurdish is spoken in various regions, such as the west and northeast of Iran, Continue reading Hiwa on Minority Languages and Inter-ethnic Peace