Abstracts

Syntax
Aufbau und Leistung einer empirisch-formalen Rezeptions- und Koreferenzgrammatik der Wortform "sich"
Karsten Hvidfelt Nielsen

Drawing on the resources of reception theory, binding theory and text technology, I present a formal grammar especially designed to identify expressions co-referent with the German reflexive sich. I take co-reference to be an empirical relation determined by the use of native speakers. The aim of my paper, now, is to investigate in how far the empirical performance of native speakers can be simulated by a formal grammar. According to my formal grammar, sich may occur in twelve different syntactical schemata. I investigate the possibilities of determin¬ing the expressions co-referring with sich in the two most frequent schemata. I find that 45 formal rules are needed to do the job. Of these, 39 rules are grammatically decidable in the sense that they identify for any given grammatically analysed construction at most one expression as the co-referring one. For the remaining six rules, I assume without investigating the matter other knowledge components than grammar to enable native speakers to disambiguate the relation between the reflexive and its co-referring expressions. I end with a comment on the nature of the grammar represented.



Spracherwerb
Rethinking Language Dominance in Bilingual Children
Katja Cantone, Tanja Kupisch, Natascha Müller und Katrin Schmitz

Ever since the analysis of language development in bilingual children, researchers have been confronted with the issue of language dominance. The present study aims at discussing language dominance from a new perspective. In comparing the development of the two languages of seven bilingual children acquiring German simultaneously with French or Italian, we address the question whether the languages evolve (a) at the same rate and (b) at a "normal" rate. In other words, bilinguals can develop their two languages similarly (if not throughout, at least for certain periods of time) and at a normal rate, that is, not slower than other bilingual (and monolingual) children. In order to examine this hypothesis, we measure the distance between the two languages in the bilingual child and the distance of each language to a pre-calculated norm for the respective language. Based on these results, we establish bilingual learner types, who may be distinguished along the following parameters: (i) Do the languages develop at the same rate? If not, which language develops faster? (ii) Do the languages differ from the "bilingual norm"? If yes, to what extent do they differ from it and do they do so in both languages? The establishment of these types allows us to reconsider the concept of "language dominance". We assume that dominance may but need not be related to other phenomena of bilingual first language acquisition, such as lack of language separation, cross-linguistic influence and language mixing.


Semantik
Warum "nicht bleiben" nicht "werden" ist
Barbara Schlücker

This paper addresses the question whether the German copular verbs bleiben ('remain') and werden ('become') can be adequately described in terms of duality, as proposed by Löbner (1990). It is argued that bleiben and werden contrary to Löbner’s proposal are not duals, on the basis of two main arguments: First, apparently equivalent copular constructions with bleiben and werden do not refer to the same sort of situations, i.e. states or events. Second, bleiben possesses a meaning element that werden does not, namely a contrasting alternative. Apart from these main claims which concern bleiben- and werden-constructions in general, two more constructions are discussed, comparative structures as well as constructions with the past participle. The paper also discusses the consequences of the claim that werden and bleiben are not duals for the semantic description of these verbs. This is especially important for bleiben which has often been described in the literature so far by taking the duality relation as a basis.