Linguistischer Arbeitskreis: Programm im Wintersemester 2025-26

Bilingual speakers of null subject languages have been shown to overuse overt subjects in comparison to monolingual or majority language speakers (see Keating et al. 2016; Montrul, 2004). This tendency to be overexplicit can even be observed in bilingual speakers who speak two null subject languages (Rinke & Flores, 2018; Sorace et al. 2009). In contrast, when it comes to object realization, bilingual speakers of null object languages such as European Portuguese (EP) and Polish tend to omit objects more frequently than their monolingual peers (Rinke et al. 2018). In this talk, I examine data from several studies illustrating the tendency to overuse subjects and to omit objects in EP as heritage language in Germany and Switzerland. I propose that the opposed tendencies are two sides of the same coin, reflecting bilinguals’ sensitivity to referential features like animacy, while they simultaneously exhibit a relaxation of discourse-pragmatic constraints. Notably, for monolingual speakers, animacy also plays an important role in establishing discourse relations and can enhance a referent’s accessibility more than the syntactic function of its previous mention (Bader et al. 2023). 

References

Bader, M., Torregrossa, J., & Rinke, E. (2023). Pinning down the interaction between animacy and syntactic function in the interpretation of German and Italian personal and demonstrative pronouns. Discourse Processes, 60(9), 655–673. Keating, G. D., Jegerski, J., & VanPatten, B. (2016). Online processing of subject pronouns in monolingual and heritage bilingual speakers of Mexican Spanish. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 19(1), 36–49. Montrul, S. (2004). Subject and object expression in Spanish heritage speakers: A case of morphosyntactic convergence. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7, 125–142. Rinke, E. & Flores, C. (2018). Another look at the interpretation of overt and null pronominal subjects in bilingual language acquisition. Heritage Portuguese in contact with German and Spanish. Glossa 3 (1), 68. Rinke, E., Flores, C., & Barbosa, P. (2018). Null objects in the spontaneous speech of monolingual and bilingual speakers of European Portuguese. Probus: International Journal of Latin and Romance Linguistics, 30(1), 93–120. Sorace, A., Serratrice, L., Filiaci, F. & Baldo, M. (2009). Discourse conditions on subject pronoun realization: Testing the linguistic intuitions of older bilingual children, Lingua 119, 460–47.

Der Vortrag gibt zunächst streiflichtartig eine Charakterisierung verschiedener Wahrheitsauffassungen, die in der abendländischen Philosophie vorgeschlagen wurden. Sodann wird das Konzept Finitheit in Abgrenzung zur Infinitheit erörtert und die zentralen Unterschiede zwischen finiten und semi- bzw. infiniten Wurzelsätzen dargestellt. Eine flexionsmorphologische Analyse der Finitheitskategorie isoliert die verwendeten Morpheme und schlägt eine kompositionelle Struktur für Präsens und Präteritum im Hinblick auf die Kategorien Konjunktiv 1 und 2 vor. Dabei zeigt sich, dass Tempus und Modus die relevanten Kategorien für den Ausdruck der Wahrheit sind. Im Anschluss wird die Tempustheorie von Klein (1994) kritisch besprochen und das Konzept „Topic Time“ dekonstruiert. Eine syntaktische Analyse (im Rahmen generativer Standardannahmen) stellt einen anderen Bezug zwischen Tempus und Assertion her als von Klein konzipiert. Auch hierbei muss eine kompositionelle Analyse angenommen werden. Als Konsequenz ergibt sich schließlich, dass die Wahrheit lediglich behauptet werden kann. Ob der damit verbundene Geltungsanspruch gerechtfertigt ist, muss durch unabhängige Operationen geprüft werden.

Presupposed content has been characterized as “inaccessible” for direct responses and anaphoric relations (Potts 2015). This has been related to the idea that as not-at-issue content, it directly enters the common ground upon being uttered, rather than being put up for discussion (Murray 2014, Anderbois et al. 2015). The empirical picture on this has been somewhat unclear, however. Not least because there are many confounding factors that can affect whether presupposed content is accessible for anaphoric uptake: amongst them whether it has an overt linguistic antecedent or its own propositional discourse referent and whether it is at the right frontier of discourse.  
 

In this talk, I am going to present the results from two studies investigating the processing of morphological case in German. One study specifically sought to address the role of cross-linguistic influence and compared the comprehension of transitive and ditransitive sentences in two multilingual speaker groups whose first languages (L1s) differ typologically and structurally from the target language German: Polish and Norwegian. Like German and unlike Norwegian and English (Germanic languages), Polish (Slavic) has morphological case and a relatively free word order. For all participants, German was the third or even later acquired language, and all had knowledge of English. A second study that used the same experimental stimuli focused on the consequences of reduced L1 input on L1 processing ('L1 attrition'). In this study, the real-time comprehension of German case was compared between a group of German L1 speakers in Germany and German L1 speakers residing abroad in a multilingual context.

In recent years, the field of cognitive neuroscience has become increasingly concerned with the extent to which experimental results reflect human information processing in the "real world". Accordingly, naturalistic studies are becoming more and more popular. Such studies do, however, continue to pose challenges in regard to their execution, analysis and interpretation due to the uncontrolled nature of many experimental parameters. These challenges increase further in the area of developmental research, particularly when working with young children. Here, we present the results of a proof-of-concept study in which we examined the feasibility of collecting meaningful electrophysiological (EEG) data from preschool children during a 30-minute music lesson. Fifty children enrolled at a preschool in Singapore  (30 female; mean age: 5:5 years; age range: 4:8-6:4) participated in the study. We collected resting-state EEG data from all participants and additional on-task EEG from a subset of 35 participants. On-task recordings were undertaken while the children completed a series of musical tasks in a one-on-one interaction with a teacher. Crucially, the musical tasks -- targetting rhythm, pitch and melody -- formed part of the children's normal music curriculum and were not altered in any way for experimental purposes. We will present initial results, which indicate that it is indeed feasible to collect meaningful EEG data from preschoolers under ecologically valid conditions in a classroom setting. 

Demonstratives -- words like “this” and “that” -- exist in all spoken languages, are sometimes considered the evolutionary foundation our present-day languages were built on, form the linguistic link between the mental models in our minds and the physical reality outside of it, and also represent the verbal glue that keeps larger stretches of discourse together. But what makes a speaker or writer decide to use one demonstrative (“this”) rather than another (“that”)? Theoretically, I will present a conceptual framework of demonstrative reference that describes demonstrative choice as an interplay between physical, psychological, and referent-intrinsic factors. Empirically, I will show some recent corpus-based and experimental evidence indicating that discourse genre is the main predictor of writers’ demonstrative use in text, at least in Dutch, English, and Mandarin. These findings are taken to reflect that writers across the globe mentally position textual referents in psychological proximity to themselves or to the reader as a function of the genre of their text.

In this talk I will try to show how we can use language models and brain imaging to address traditional questions in the field of semantics and linguistics, like polysemy or the meaning of proper names. I will go through some experimental results from my Ph.D. and current postdoc that go in this direction. Along the way I will provide brief introductions to the different neuroscientific techniques used (EEG, fMRI), as well as to language models and some theoretical grounding. I hope this will provide a common ground for a shared discussion, taking into consideration multiple points of view on the value, as well as the downsides, of cutting-edge approaches to meaning and language.

Turn-taking in conversation requires speakers to process incoming speech while simultaneously planning their own utterances. This talk presents research that investigates how interlocutors manage these concurrent cognitive demands. Using a multi-method approach combining controlled experiments and analyses of natural conversation, it demonstrates that speakers commonly begin planning their responses while still listening to their interlocutor, leading to partial overlap of comprehension and production processes. Laboratory evidence targeting different levels of linguistic processing reveals that comprehending incoming speech can be shallow due to high cognitive load during phases of overlapping planning. Pupillometric data from natural conversation shows that speakers nonetheless systematically engage in early response planning despite these processing costs, at least at turn transitions in which they are (co-)selected as a next speaker. This planning-in-overlap strategy appears to serve multiple conversational goals: it enables shorter gaps between turns, helps to avoid unwanted implications of delayed responses, and secures speaking opportunities in multi-party settings. The combination of these findings suggests that speakers prioritise timely turn transitions over processing efficiency and depth, supporting a planning-prioritised model of turn-taking in conversation. The results demonstrate how experimental and observational methods can complement each other to advance our understanding of the cognitive mechanisms underlying smooth conversation.