Programm StuTS 70

Registration

Registration starts at 3 PM at the foyer of A&O Hostel (Sonnwendgasse 11, 1100 Vienna)

Onboarding

If you have any questions about the way our online platform works, if want to test uploading files or if you simply want to try it out, feel free to meet us here.

Analyzing Crisis Communication during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

This lecture presents results from a qualitative discourse-historical analysis of governmental crisis communication in Austria, Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, and New Zealand during the global lockdown from March 2020 to May 2020...

By analysing a sample of important speeches and press conferences by government leaders (all performing as the “face of crisis management”), it is possible to deconstruct a range of strategies coping with the COVID-19 pandemic where everybody is in danger of falling ill, regardless of their status, position, education, and so forth. I focus on four frames that have been employed to mitigate the “dread of death” (Bauman 2006): a “religious frame”, a “dialogic frame”, a frame emphasizing “trust”, and a frame of “leading a war”. These interpretation frameworks are all embedded in “renationalizing” tendencies, specifically visible in the EU member states where even the Schengen area was suddenly abolished (in order to “keep the virus out”) and borders were closed. Thus, everybody was and continues to be confronted with national biopolitics and body politics (Wodak 2021) which have been legitimised in distinct ways. Thus, it seems as though everybody will have (to learn) to live with ever more uncertainty and fear for the near future.

Vienna meets the Balkans

Vienna as a city is strongly shaped inter alia, by migrants from Slavic- speaking countries, including primarily migrants from the Balkans along with the former Soviet Union citizens. Its urban space is characterized by various hot spots, mainly l...

Accumulations of small businesses such as cafes, restaurants, nightclubs, etc., run by Slavs migrants are typical examples of these hot spots. Cases in point can be found in the following streets in Vienna, namely in the Märzstraße, the Ottakringer Straße, and the Mariahilfer Straße, as well as widely spread across the 15th and 16th district. Similarly, small businesses, for example mostly grocery shops and services such as locksmith or shoemaker and fewer restaurants, managed by the former Soviet Union residents are currently scattered all over Vienna, ranging from the first to the 20th district, the majority of them being in the 3rd district.

These predominantly small-scale businesses represent typical forms of ethnic entrepreneurship because they started and are predominantly run by first generation migrants due to a specific set of reasons and motives: problematic access to the first labour market, unapproval of the educational achievement of the migrants gained in their countries of origin, insufficient knowledge of the host country’s language, etc. Self-employment, for instance starting a business is a chance for social advancement, including social and financial well-b...

Break

Evolving Human Language.

Human language rests upon an evolved biological foundation, some components of which are unique to our species. Although language, as a whole, is unique to humans, many components of language are nonetheless shared with other animals. The precise...

I outline a thoroughly comparative approach to this current research problem. I first illustrate the value of a comparative approach with case studies on speech and syntax. In speech, recent data indicate that a long-standing focus on vocal anatomy, and particularly the descended human larynx, has deflected attention away from more fundamental changes in the neural pathways involved in speech control. Regarding syntax, recent data examining pattern perception in both auditory and visual domains suggest that some aspects of linguistic syntax rest on a cognitive basis that also applies to other human cognitive domains including music and visual pattern perception. Specifically, the strong human propensity to attribute complex, hierarchically-embedded structures to visual or auditory inputs appears to be biologically unusual or perhaps unique to our species. I then turn to the “cognition vs. communication” debate, arguing that many of the key neural and computational precursors of human language are more likely to be found in cognitive operations (e.g. social cognition or technology) than in the communication systems of our pre-linguistic ancestors.

References:

Fitch, W. ...

Lunch Break

Lunch Break

Lunch Break

Orthographie in Erst- und Fremdsprache

In diesem Vortrag werde ich das Thema meiner Masterarbeit präsentieren. Darin untersuche ich Schreibprodukt- und Schreibprozessdaten Studierender aus den USA, die mit Englisch literarisiert sind und Deutsch als Fremdsprache studieren. Bei den Spra...

Family language policy in multicultural environment. Circassian families resident in Moscow.

A 15 - 20 minutes description of the research and its results.Then 10-15 minutes discussion.

One of the best ways of language acquisition is the natural one (from parent to child). This is particularly important for minority languages in context of globalization.
How do modern parents implement language policy in multicultural environment? What factors affect their decisions? How do they see future of their ethnic language?
All this questions (and of course any other questions concerning family language policy in multicultural environment) can be and will be discussed during the event

Measure phrases as modifiers of negative adjectives

Multiple semantic models identify measure phrase constructions containing negative adjectives as ungrammatical. But corpus data on English and German provide evidence of the frequency of such collocations, necessitating more detailed discussion.

Gradable adjectives divide into pairs of positive and negative antonyms (e.g., old – young), referring to the same scale but differing in terms of their polarity. According to seminal work (Kennedy, 2001; Schwarzschild, 2005; Winter, 2005) on the semantic analysis of measure phrase constructions such as 5 years old, measure phrases are incompatible with negative adjectives and do not combine (e.g., 5 years young) syntactically well-formed. However, Doetjes (2012) and Hofstetter (2013) indicate that measure phrases can modify negative adjectives in evaluative contexts, contradicting the incompatibility assumption. This talk aims at verifying the observations of Doetjes and Hofstetter based on corpus data on English and German in a first step. Fully aware of this corpus analysis, this talk evaluates the existing approaches to measure phrase constructions in a second step. Lastly, it tends to contribute to the premises of a revised semantic model.

References:
Doetjes, J. (2012). On the (in)compatibility of non neutral adjectives and measure phrases. Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung, 16(2), 197-210.
Hofstetter, S. (2013). Selected issues in the theory of comparison: Phrasal c...

Inhärente Sprache

Vor allem als Konsequenz grenzüberschreitender Prozesse wie Migration und Globalisierung wachsen immer mehr Menschen in einem mehrsprachigen Umfeld auf. Das Aneignen dieser Sprachen stellt einen bedeutenden Teil von (Dis-)Integrationsprozessen da...

Der Vortrag sich bezieht sich auf das Konzept der „inhärenten Sprache“: Es umfasst die oder all jene Sprachen, die einem Individuum als Teil seines Selbst kontextabhängig und je nach GesprächspartnerIn reflexartig als erstes ins Bewusstsein kommt bzw. kommen.

Im Rahmen des Vortrages werden die Resultate einer Studie präsentiert, die das Konzept der inhärenten Sprache mit solchen wie Muttersprache, Erst-, Zweit- und Fremdsprache vergleicht. Diese theoretische Auseinandersetzung wird durch empirische Beispiele aus Interviews mit mehrsprachigen Personen illustriert. Da es sich um eine Studie mit biografischem Schwerpunkt handelt, die narrative und interpretative Prozesse erfordert, wurde das biografische Interview als Erhebungsmethode gewählt, konzentriert auf biografisch relevante Episoden in Bezug auf das sprachliche Repertoire der Befragten, wie sie jede ihrer Sprachen in Bezug auf den Zeitpunkt und die Art des Erwerbs sowie deren pragmatische Funktion wahrnehmen.

Ethnolinguistic shift of the frontier territory of Sakhalin Island

My lecture considers the history and ethnolinguistic shift of the Sakhalin Koreans.

My research is dedicated to the language shift on the Sakhalin Island. It considers the language situation of the Korean diaspora that has been living on the island since the beginning of the twentieth century. Korean people were sent to Sakhalin for forced labour during Japanese rule called “Karafuto”. After The Second World War, Korea was divided into South and North one and Sakhalin came under the jurisdiction of the USSR. North Korea was under the protection of the USSR, while South Korea was under the protection of the USA. In this regard, Sakhalin Koreans could not repatriate to their homeland in South Korea and continued to live on the Island. As a result of the assimilation and integration of Koreans into the Soviet and post-Soviet society, linguistic shift took place that affected not only language but also culture and identity.

On Cognate Objects in Norwegian: An Empirical Approach

In this talk, I provide a corpus-based analysis of cognate objects in Norwegian. Cognate objects (COs) are noun phrases whose head noun is semantically and often morphologically related (i.e., ‘cognate’) to the verb (Faarlund et al. 1997:665), as ...

Tackling the replication crisis: Student theses should be collaborative replication studies

A brief input about the replication crisis in linguistics and an attempt to overcome it with student-led replication studies.

We are in state of crisis. Currently, society is facing crises in three domains of the general public, (i) the environment and climate, (ii) health, and (iii) finance. In science, we are up against the replication crisis (Ioannidis, 2005; Open ScienceCollaboration, 2015). Most studies in linguistics and psychology cannot be replicated for a multitude of reasons (see Sönning & Werner, 2021 for an overview). This questions a cornerstone of science: reproducibility. Without replication, we can't know if general claims that are based on studies are any longer true.
Besides the fact that replications are often not possible due to a lack of open data, code or underpowered studies, there is a related issue. Replications are not done simply because they are seen to lack novelty which disqualifies them for publication. This must change.
Inspired by Quintana (2021), we propose that one way to foster fruitful and large-scale replication is by having students conduct cumulative replication studies for their bachelor's and master's theses. This would pose a new win-win situation for our field, linguistics, as well as students who are often overstrung by their final theses for reasons s...

Russian Mixed North: Language and cultural contacts on the Kola Peninsula

The Murmansk Region, located on the territory of the Kola Peninsula, is a relatively young region of the Russian Federation. The rapid growth of industry commenced there only in the first half of the XX century, which provoked population increment...

A Puzzle about the Extension of Slurs

This talk is a report of my BA thesis about the meaning dimensions of slurs.
I dealt with novel data that suggest that possible targets of a slur are not always equivalent to the set of the derogated group, thereby contrasting with current theories.

I will discuss three examples where the extension of a slur is:

(i) the set of the derogated group
(ii) people that have at least one stereotypical property of the derogated group (according to the speaker)
(iii) a combination of both

The purpose of this talk is to investigate the mechanisms involved in the predication of a slur and to introduce a theory that allows for their varying extensions.
Additionally, the theory should also explain how slurs behave under negation, as a common problem in the study of slurs is to account for their hyper-projection; there is rarely a context where a slur is not offensive.
To achieve this, I compare existing theories by analysing where they place the derogative content (in the literal content or via a non-truth-conditional mechanism) and if they can account for the projection behaviour (why and how do slurs remain derogative under negation?).

Referring to Potts (2015) for the analysis of implicatures and Simons et al. (2010) for insight on projection, I found that an account that combines a modified conventional implicature approach (Camp 2018) with a prototype-based characterisation (Croom 2015, Foster 2020) of the implicated c...

DURel Annotation Tool Measuring Patterns of Contextual Word Meaning over Time

DURel is an annotation tool for sentence pairs of a word. The annotations are used to form sense clusters of a word and to visualize them over time. In this way, lexical properties such as polysemy, vagueness or change of meaning of a word can be ...

We present an online annotation interface for sentence pairs of a word. Annotators are asked to judge the degree of semantic relatedness of pairs of word uses, such as the two uses of arm in (1) and (2) on a scale of 1 (unrelated) to 4 (identical).

(1) and taking a knife from her pocket, she opened a vein in her little arm, and dipping a feather in the blood, wrote something on a piece of white cloth, which was spread before her.
(2) It stood behind a high brick wall, its back windows overlooking an arm of the sea which, at low tide, was a black and stinking mud-flat

The annotated data of a word is then represented in a Word Usage Graph (WUG), where nodes represent word uses and weights on edges represent the (median) semantic relatedness judgment of a pair of uses as e.g. (1) and (2). The final WUGs are clustered with a variation of correlation clustering and split into subgraphs representing nodes and edges from different time periods. Clusters are then interpreted as word senses and changes in clusters over time as lexical semantic change.

The interface allows users to upload a project, i.e., use samples for several target words which will be combined into use pai...

The result of incoordination? The cases of sentence-initial 'but' in English and sentence-final '-nde' in Korean

This talk is based on the contents of my BA thesis and concerned with Discourse Grammar, cooptation (following Heine et al. 2013, 2021) and phenomena of clause-loss. I analysed spoken English and Korean for cases of incoordination, which is a process by which a coordinated sentence loses at least one of its clauses and creates a new, more discourse-relevant meaning. The specific forms that were analysed are English sentence-initial 'but' and Korean sentence-final '-nde,' which both exhibit a strong potential for incoordination that is visible in comparison with their sentence-medial origins. The analysis is qualitative, based on a small number of dialogues, and goes along a list of criteria, among which are clause retrievability (Is there a candidate for the lost clause from the surrounding discourse?), semantic-pragmatic scope (Does the meaning of the connective unit expand itself to the discourse situation at hand?), and the relatedness to sentence-medial connective meaning (Is there merely contrast or does the expression evolve to convey, for instance, surprise?). I found that the two forms intersect in their functions but due to their semantic and typological differences do ...

How can we measure sonority?

Sonority is a concept used to describe the structure of syllables and its rules. In English, for example, /bluː/ is a syllable, whereas /lbuː/ is not. This is because of the sonority (‘sound fulness’) of the phonemes: /l/ has a higher sonority tha...

Prosody and grammaticalization: The case of 'sort of/kind of/type of'

This talk will present the results of my MA thesis, which dealt with the interrelationship between the grammaticalization and the prosodic realization of 'sort of/kind of/type of' (SKT-construction) from a Construction Grammar perspective.
The da...

Comparative Cognition

Burgenlandkroatisch Workshop

Mari Workshop [hybrid]

„Es gibt keine Norm für diesen Bereich“

In unserem Workshop wollen wir zunächst einmal eine Definition für die geschlechtersensible Sprache (GS) geben und verschiedene Unterbereiche abgrenzen. Wir wollen gemeinsam mit euch erarbeiten, welchen Zweck die geschlechtersensible Sprache hat u...

Gargle Session

Focus Marking Crosslinguistically

Languages in which focus is marked by special morphemes or syntactic positions have long been known and also, more recently, well described.

Assuming that the pragmatic (and possibly semantic) effects of focusing in such languages should be modelled using alternatives (as in the case of the European languages) the question arises: How can the toolbox of focus semantics developed for the latter be applied to the former? In this talk I present some results of our recent FWF project for West African languages, which lead us to a rather radical rethinking of the way we model focus realization, both of the morphological marking and the more familiar metrical variety.

Break

Sprachentwicklungsstörungen bei mehrsprachigem Aufwachsen in der klinischen Praxis

Einleitend wird das für die Klinik gängige Diagnosesystem ICD-10 der WHO mit dem Schwerpunkt F80: umschriebene Entwicklungsstörungen des Sprechens und der Sprache beschrieben (Dilling, Freyberger 2019, Amorosa 2008) sowie die in Überarbeitung bef...

Es werden Konsequenzen für die Praxis erläutert: Dabei geht es zunächst um Ansätze zur Differenzierung typisch entwickelter Kinder von Kindern mit ICD-10 F 80 Sprachentwicklungsstörung (Tuller et al.2018 u.a.). In der Folge geht es um die Bedeutung der muttersprachlichen Diagnostik für alle mehrsprachig aufwachsenden Kinder und vor allem für jene die aufgrund des entwicklungspsychologischen Befundes Hinweise auf eine komorbide Sprachentwicklungsstörung zeigen. Anhand des Fehlens normierter Testverfahren für gesprochene Varietäten wird auf vier Szenarii (Thordadottier 2015) eingegangen und daraus abgeleitet das „Wiener Modell“ (Eisenwort et al.2021) skizziert. Eine Fallstudie eines Russisch und Deutsch erwerbenden Knabens illustriert das Vorgehen. Eine kurze Beschreibung unserer Sprechstunde wird mit ersten Daten von 270 Kindern vervollständigt (Schmid et al.: in Vorbereitung). Abschließend wird ein Ausblick zur Rolle der Linguistik gewagt und als Diskussionsgrundlage geboten.

Lunch Break

Lunch Break

Lunch Break

Does CASE trump determiners? Considering blocking effects in heritage Turkishes in Germany and the U.S.

We present a study on different patterns of expressing definite meanings in heritage Turkishes. A key finding is that heritage speakers use fewer determiners compared to their monolingual peers. We argue that this is linked to a blocking effect by...

Please find the full abstract as a pdf on the right-hand side of this page.
Short abstract:
We present a study on different patterns of expressing definite meanings in heritage Turkishes. A key finding is that heritage speakers use fewer determiners compared to their monolingual peers. We argue that this is linked to a blocking effect by accusative case which also expresses definiteness. Our hypotheses and findings call for a revisit of discussions around definiteness in Turkishes.

Interacting "without" shared linguistic resources?

Plurilingual communication is linked to concepts such as translanguaging (e. g. Canagarajah 2011; Li 2010), Polylanguaging (Jørgensen, Karrebæk, Madsen, & Møller 2011) and encompasses concrete phenomena such as code-switching, mediation and interc...

Bibliography:

Canagarajah, S. (2011). Translanguaging in the classroom: Emerging issues for research and pedagogy. Applied Linguistics Review, 2, 1 – 28.
Engel, D., Barrett, J., Platzgummer, V., & Zanasi, L. (2020). Sprachenrepertoires und Mehrsprachigkeitskompetenzen im Sprachendorf aktivieren. Zeitschrift Für Interkulturellen Fremdsprachenunterricht, 25(1), 1081 – 1106.
Jørgensen, J. N., Karrebæk, M. S., Madsen, L. M., & Møller, J. S. (2011). Polylanguaging in Superdiversity. Diversities, 13(2), 23 – 37.
Lenz, P. & Berthele, R. (2010). Assessment in Plurilingual and Intercultural Education. Satellite Study No 2, Guide for the development and implementation of curricula for plurilingual and intercultural education. Strasbourg: Council of Europe.
Li, W. (2010). Moment Analysis and translanguaging space: Discursive construction of identities by multilingual Chinese youth in Britain. In: Journal of Pragmatics, 43(59), 1222-1235.
Schlabach, J. (2017). Probleme in mehrsprachigen Situationen. Zur Grundlegung des Lernziels plurilinguale Kompetenz. Zeitschrift für Interkulturellen Fremdsprachenunterricht. Didaktik und Methodik im Bereich Deutsch als Fremdsprache, 22(2), 66 – 79.

Reconstructing Proto-Baining

In my talk, I will give an overview of my MA thesis, where I try to reconstruct Proto-Baining, the hypothesized ancestor of a small language family of Papua New Guinea.

Baining is a small language family spoken in the Gazelle Peninsula on the island of New Britain, part of the Bismarck Archipelago in Papua New Guinea. The family includes five languages, four of which are adequately documented, each having no more than a couple houndred to a couple thousand speakers. They are clearly related, since they are strikingly similar to each other. However, no comparative work has been done yet. This is what I attempt to do in my MA thesis: establish regular sound correspondences and arrive at a first reconstruction of Proto-Baining. In this presentation, I plan to give a typological overview of this language family that probably nobody has ever heard of, elaborate on the methods used in my research, and give some intermediate results.

Performativer Aktivismus auf Instagram

Dieser Vortrag illustriert die Ergebnisse meiner Studie über eine Infografik, die im letzten internationalen Aufflammen des Israel-Palästina-Konflikts auf Instagram äußert stark verbreitet wurde. Anhand einer Topos-Analyse sowie der Konzeptualisie...

Im Mai 2021 kam es im Israel-Palästina-Konflikt erneut zu Auseinandersetzungen, die viele Opfer bis hin zu Todesfällen zählen mussten. Während dieser Zeit wurde in den sozialen Medien auf beiden Seiten maßgeblich Stellung bezogen. Da es in den digitalen Gefechten immer wieder zu rassistischen und antisemitischen Vorfällen kam, habe ich eine der präsentesten und prominentesten Infografiken im anti-israelischen Diskurs analysiert. Dabei habe ich eine Topos-Analyse nach Martin Wengeler (2003; 2012) angewandt, um folgende Frage zu beantworten: Welche antisemitischen Topoi werden in der Infografik des Instagramaccounts @key48return reproduziert?
Eine solche Analyse ist aus meiner Sicht nicht zuletzt deshalb wichtig durchzuführen, weil sie dabei helfen kann, versteckte und möglicherweise eigene antisemitische Tendenzen zu reflektieren, den eigenen Sprachgebrauch anzupassen sowie gewisse Topoi und Argumentationsmuster in Zukunft zu vermeiden. Die Ergebnisse der Analyse machen kenntlich, dass nach genauerer Prüfung des Materials tatsächlich eine Fülle antisemitischer Vorurteile zu finden sind, die miteinander verflochten sind und so zu einem konspirationistisch-inspirierten Weltbild ve...

Seeking explanations for differences in language learning outcomes

In this presentation, I want to talk about the role of Working Memory in Second Language Acquisition and give insights into the research conducted for my Bachelor's thesis. I will present how individual differences research based on the recent Pho...

In second language acquisition, as in many other complex cognitive processes, the Working Memory - a system of short-term storage and online manipulation plays an important role. It seems reasonable to suppose that individual differences in learners Working Memory functions may help explain why some people are better at learning a language than others. Even though a large amount of research has already found that better Working Memory functions predict better vocabulary and grammar learning, individual differences research in this area and investigations of how single components relate to learning outcomes is still scarce.

This talks will give a short overview on theoretical foundations of Working Memory focusing on the very recent Phonological/Executive Model by Z. Wen and the connection with the concept of Language Aptitude. For purposes of illustration, I will present parts of research conducted for my Bachelor’s thesis where I investigated the relationship between individual differences in Working Memory and early-stage adult language learning, using data from the DAFNET study at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig. I would be happy...

Die sprachliche Kodierung von Ereignissen mit drei Partizipanten im Beria (Ost-Saharanisch, Sudan)

(English below.)

Die Kodierung von Ereignissen mit drei Partizipanten (‚geben‘, ‚zeigen‘) scheint Sprachen weltweit vor eine Herausforderung zu stellen. Wie Margetts & Austin (2007) zeigen, sind die Strategien im übereinzelsprachlichen Vergleich zahlreich und nicht auf ditransitive Ver-ben beschränkt. Der Vortrag beleuchtet die dem Wagi – einer noch unzureichend beschrie-benen dialektalen Varietät des Beria (auch Zaghawa genannt; Ost-Saharanisch, Sudan) – zur Verfügung stehenden Strategien, Ereignisse mit drei Partizipanten zu kodieren. Das Wagi verfügt zum derzeitigen Forschungsstand über fünf Strategien: (1) dritter Partizipant als direktes Argument des Verbs, (2) Kausativstrategie, (3) dritter Partizipant als Adjunkt oder obliques Argument, (4) Direktionalstrategie, (5) Konverbstrategie. Der Fall des Wagi zeigt, dass Margetts & Austins Typologie um die Konverbstrategie erweitert, oder ihr Begriff der serial verb strategy im Sinne einer „Multiverbstrategie“ für abhängige, nicht-finite Verb-formen geöffnet werden muss. Außerdem wirft die Konverbstrategie interessante Fragen zur Diachronie zwischen Strategien auf.

The encoding of three-participant events as denoted by transfer verbs such as ‘...

Visualität, Raum und Interaktion in der Katastrophen-Medizin

Dieser Beitrag aus dem Bereich der Workplace Studies (vgl. Knoblauch 1999) betrachtet, wie Rettungskräfte ihre professionellen Strukturen für den Umgang mit Großschadenslagen und Situationen mit einer großen Anzahl an Verletzten interaktiv in konk...

Bibliographie:
Goodwin, Charles (1994): Professional Vision. In: American Anthropologist. 96 (3). S. 606 – 633.

Knoblauch, Hubert / Heath, Christian (1999): Technologie, Interaktion und Organisation. Die Workplace Studies. In: Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Soziologie. 25 (2). S. 163 – 181.

Pitsch, Karola / Bachmann, Peter / Dudda, Marcel (2020): ‚Triage‘ in Mass Casulty as Situated Interaction. Algorithm and Participation. In: Proceedings of the 18th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work.

Schmitt, Reinhold (2015): Positionspapier. Multimodale Interaktionsanalyse. In: Dausendschön-Gay, Ulrich / Gülich, Elisabeth / Krafft, Ulrich (Hrsg.): Ko-Konstruktion in der Interaktion. Die gemeinsame Arbeit an Äußerungen und anderen sozialen Ereignissen. Bielefeld: transcript. S. 43 – 54.

Sources of foreign language listening anxiety in learners of German as a foreign language

Anxiety in language learning is an important factor in the process of studying a foreign language. While much of the research up to date has focused on learners of English and specifically on anxiety in the skill of speaking, little is known about...

Critical & Open Symposium (Reading Group)

In this reading group we will be discussing Paul Hopper's 1987 paper on Emergent Grammar. It would be great if you read the paper if you want to participate, but anyone is welcome and there will be a brief introduction. The reading group is hosted...

In this reading group we will be discussing Paul Hopper's 1987 paper on Emergent Grammar. This seminal paper in functional grammar positions grammar between speakers, constantly emerging in dialogic discourse, instead of treating it as a feature of some 'competence' in the back of one's mind. If you can, please read the paper ahead of the conference if you want to participate, but anyone is welcome and there will be a brief introduction. The reading group is hosted by the Leipzig Critical and Open Symposium, a group of Linguistics students from Leipzig.

Items Structuring on a Meta-Conversational Level

How are backchannels organized in conversation? How do they Interact with other Items? What are backchannels from a perspektive of discourse structure? I try to awnser those and more questions around this Topic at my Talk (Rest siehe Beschreibung!)

The success of a conversation depends crucially on the backchannels given by the interlocutor in the role of the active listener, since only these contemporaneous provide information about mutual understanding. However, little is known about how the active listener synchronizes his backchannels with the turn of the speaker, so that they have no disturbing effect. This paper examines the role of two central structuring principles of conversation in it; 'turn' and 'sequentiality'. The main assumption/hypothesis here thereby is, that backchannels organize themselves sequentially as turns on a estimated meta-conversational level, with backchannel-inviting cues in a cluster, as the sequential counterpart and its very own repair-mechanisms in case of a occurring sequential errors, to built a basic theoretical structure for further research and provide a convenient model for analyzing Backchannels as a indispensable part of natural Conversation.

Possessoren als Bindeglied

Viele verschiedene Theorien wurden entwickelt um Kasussynkretismus abzuleiten. Alle mir bekannten haben insbesonders Probleme bestimmte Genitivsynkretismen abzuleiten. In meiner Bachelorarbeit habe ich (zufällig) einen Lösungsansatz gefunden.

Synkretismus von Possessoren mit mindestens einer anderen Art Argument (Patiens, Rezipient etc.) macht mehr als die Hälfte der Muster aus, die für postulierte Kasussequenzen nicht ableitbar sind (siehe z.B. Zompì 2017:§5.1 und seine Kasussequenz in 1).

Anstelle von binären Merkmalen (z.B. [±regiert], [±objekt]), die natürliche Klassen definieren, nutzen Kasussequenzen strukturelle Adjazenz, um Kasus in Abhängigkeiten zueinander zu setzen. Wenn dabei manche Kasus andere dominieren, spricht man von einer Kasushierarchie, wie z.B. bei Zompì:

(1) {NOM, ABS} < {AKK, ERG} < {DAT, LOK, INSTR}

Zompì entscheidet sich aufgrund der vielen, vermeintlich widersprüchlichen Muster dagegen, Genitiv überhaupt mit in seine Hierarchie in (1) aufzunehmen.

In meiner Bachelorarbeit habe ich untersucht, ob die von Zompì postulierte Hierarchie Synkretismus in sogenannten nominativmarkierenden Sprachen ableiten kann.
Um diese Synkretismen ableitbar zu machen, habe ich die Hierarchie von traditioneller Kasusterminologie getrennt und stattdessen die grammatischen Rollen, in denen die Kasusmorphe auftreten, in Klassen eingeteilt.

(2) S ≤ {A, P, PR} ≤ {R, TL, PC,…}

Mit Possessoren nun in...

Wiener Dialekt Workshop

fənɛtɪk trænskraɪbərz ɪn paɪθɑn [online]

An introduction into different strategies how to transcribe multilingual orthographical data phonetically in Python

This workshop includes an overview over existing Python toolkits for phonetic transcription, like wiktionaryparser, py-espeak-ng, epitran or copius_api. It will be shown how new languages can be added to existing rule-based frameworks. The workshop also includes a short summary of the pitfalls of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), and its alternatives such as UPA, XSAMPA, or ARPABET. The necessary workshop material is accessible under the link below.

Digital ethnography for linguists

This workshop is designed for linguists with little or no experience with digital ethnography. It introduces the basics of (digital) ethnographic practice for the study of communication, discusses the challenges digital ethnographers face, and exp...

In this crash course, we will deal with the basics of digital ethnographic research and its relevance for (applied) linguists. After briefly examining the foundations of ethnographic approaches and their historical ties to the study of communication, we will start asking questions about digital ethnography, the ethnographic study of digital spaces: What does it do? What challenges does it have to face? What is its relevance for linguists? Can it help you study your favorite memes, and if so, how?

As linguists' interest in exploring online communicative phenomena is only getting stronger, we will discuss how digital ethnography can help in such endeavors from a theoretical and a practical standpoint. How do digital ethnographers conceptualize linguistic practices? And what kind of methods are common in their approach?

Finally, by looking at examples of existing digital ethnographic studies in applied linguistics, we will examine what digital ethnography is good for when you're a linguist. You will also have the chance to ask questions about your own research and how it may benefit from going digital-ethnographic.

LaTeX for beginners

Tired of relabelling all of your 150 examples manually every time you open your thesis document? Want to do it the right way and create your very own beautiful tables and examples? Then hop on and join our workshop!

In this beginners' workshop,...

Prepare yourself: Get yourself a (free) overleaf account, following the link on the right.

If you use this link, Nehir gets extra stuff on Overleaf. Just so you know ;-)

We are also adding a handout document for you to work in. Once you have created an account on Overleaf, you can access the document via the link on the right. To edit the document, create your own copy and edit away. If you can't figure out how to do this, you can contact us by email or at the start of the workshop.

Disclaimer: This workshop covers essentially the same things as those at the last few StuTS conferences.

Phonology goes syntax

To what extent do the individual modules of grammar share a similar architecture? In this talk we will ask that question about syntax and phonology. While scholars like Bromberger & Halle (1989) claim that those two domains of grammar are very dif...

Some parallels that have been pointed out are relatively obvious and potentially very superficial or misleading. (E.g., that short vowels in English are like transitive verbs in that both need a certain something following them: An object in the case of transitive verbs; a consonant or another syllable in the case of short vowels, thus , but *.) One of the central questions (if not *the* central question), however, is whether phonology has hierarchical structure that is comparable to what we see in syntax. (More precisely, whether we find recursive hierarchical structure.)

In this talk I will focus on the “lower” levels of phonological constituency to show what kind of evidence we find for (recursive) hierarchical structure. Neeleman & van de Koot (2006) point out (correctly, I believe) that any argument in favour of parallels between the two modules must not only show that phonology *can* be done with hierarchical structures, but why it *must* be. Syntax needs hierarchical structures to express asymmetries, and similar asymmetries in phonology can be found between elements, i.e. the successors of phonological features. Asymmetries between the elements I and U...

Break

Discourses of discrimination in Austrian criminal law.

Legal practice in past and present may reflect patterns of group-focused enmity, such as homophobia, racism, antisemitism and ethnicism (Reisigl & Wodak 2005) in organisational texts and discourses, which create and perpetuate inequality before an...

The enforcement of criminal law aims to realise preventive effects deterring both the public (general prevention) and the individual perpetrator (special prevention) (Seiler 2020: 28). In Austrian criminal law, as frequently encountered around the globe, the notion of prevention was misused to discriminate against individuals of the LGBTIQ+ community. Until 1971 sexual acts between individuals constructed as belonging to the same sex were classified as “same-sex fornication” (gleichgeschlechtliche Unzucht), with various legal categories and subcategories allowing for prosecution. 1974 saw the enactment of the Great Criminal Law Reform. The criminal code still included provisions against, inter alia, male same-sex activity with an individual below the age of 18, the act of advocating same-sex sexual acts and the forming of associations to facilitate same-sex sexual acts (§§ 209, 210, 220, 221 StGB). In 2002, section 209 was the last to be removed from the criminal code, leading to an equalisation of the age of consent at 14. However, the removal of explicitly homophobic criminal provisions has not led to equality (see Holzleithner 2020; Graupner 2014, 2004), which forms the basis...

Lunch Break

Lunch Break

Lunch Break

Sense & Sonority

Sonority is per se a controversial topic, the definition of which poses methodological difficulties. However, there is a broad consensus in the scientific community that sonority is a non-binary phonological element that can be used to categorize ...

Minority Languages in International and Local Education Policy: the Case of Chukotka

The research addresses the issue of language policy in education in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia. The majority of the people in this region identify themselves as Russians (All-Russian Census 2010), with Chukchi, Yupik, and Even ethnic groups...

Firstly, 5 international conventions, declarations, and treaties linked to the language policy in education and ratified by the Russian Federation have been analyzed to see in what framework the Russian law exists. Russia seems to have ratified all the major instruments linked to language policy in education except 2, and the reasons for that are discussed, too.

Secondly, 20 laws, decrees, orders, acts, and regulations of federal and regional governments on language policy in education have been perused to outline the “official,” or expected by policy makers, language situation in the region. This analysis then is compared to the international legal framework to see if there are any inconsistencies between them.

Finally, 10 in-depth semi-structured interviews have been carried out with native speakers of minority languages of Chukotka to understand whether the claimed language policy in education corresponds to the real language situation in the region. The analysis of the interviews shows that even though some attempts to preserve the Chukot, Yupik, and Even languages through education are made, they are mostly unsuccessful. Consequently, these languages are gradually di...

Des wor fei schee - Die Modalpartikel fei in Franken

In diesem Vortrag soll es um die Modalpartikel "fei" in Franken gehen. Im Gegensatz zum bairischen "fei" gibt es zur Verwendung von "fei" in Franken bisher kaum Forschung. Diese Forschungslücke soll mittelfristig geschlossen werden. Die Verwendung...

Exploring the interactions between visual input, agreement attraction and numerical cognition: an (online) study in Dutch

Exploring the interactions between visual input, agreement attraction and numerical cognition: an (online) study in Dutch

While humans are unique among species in their cognitive capacity for learned mathematical skill (counting, performing arithmetic operations), our innate ability for intuitively grasping and evaluating quantities and magnitude characterize most of our daily experience.
Our Approximate Number System (ANS) is thought to be involved in the estimation of ‘how much’ there is of a given element in ecological scenarios; for example, when visually assessing how much rice there is in a plate, based on approximated grain size and surface distribution. Research suggests that display properties of the visual stimuli influence magnitude and quantity estimation. When elements of an image array appear more spread-out, numerosity perception tends to increase at a certain magnitude threshold (Krueger, 1972).
How this latter subsystem interacts and interferes with other higher cognitive functions, like language, is not completely understood as of now. However, it is the case that such contact occurs routinely, as the information the ANS carries is vital for expressing nu...

Look what I'm saying!

Everyday life is full of ambiguous speech sounds, and contextual information is known to facilitate speech perception and disambiguation. However, the integration of letters and speech sounds seems to be impaired in individuals with developmental ...

In this talk, I will give a short introduction to developmental dyslexia and the audiovisual integration of speech, followed by a description of the research paradigm used in the study. Then, I will present obtained results and discuss them - ideally in dialogue with the audience.

Mitgliederversammlung - Junge Sprachwissenschaft

Methods to detect contact-induced language change in Spanish

When working on language change, it is difficult to decide if a phenomenon of language change is the result of language contact or internal language change. This is true especially in the case of languages of the same language family in contact as...

Brinkmann (accepted; 2018) analyses data of contact-induced language change in Maya and combines Sorace (2011) and Heine & Kuteva (2009) to obtain a more complete theory. Maya and Spanish are languages from very different language families. Therefore, detecting Spanish influences in Maya seems to be a different task than finding influences from one Romance language in another, e.g., Spanish influences within Aranese.
Winkelmann (1989) compares the language use of people in the Val d’Aran (Spain) and neighboring regions in Spain and France. By comparing language tokens of different regions and of speakers of different ages, Winkelmann (1989) concludes which structures in Aranese are influenced by language contact with neighbor varieties (e.g., Spanish, Catalan, or Occitan varieties). Another conclusion refers to the question of which structures are solely the result of internal language change. However, this method has some problems concerning the differentiation between language contact and internal language change of Romance languages as they all derive from Latin and, therefore, can have similar developments even without language contact.
In this talk, I compare methods on...

Ironischer Sprachgebrauch als Mittel zur Positionierung im Rahmen soziopolitischer Problemstellungen

Wir werden uns in diesem Vortrag, der dezidiert als diskussionseröffnend denn als "fertige" Ergebnisse präsentierend verstanden werden soll, mit ironischem Sprachgebrauch als Form des sog. uneigentlichen Sprechens beschäftigen.
Wenn die Ironie e...

Literatur:
Grice, Herbert-Paul (1975). Logic and conversation. In: P. Cole / J.L. Morgan (eds): Syntax and semantics. Vol. 3: Speech acts. New York, pp. 41-58.
Groeben, Norbert (1984). Rezeption als Konstruktion. Das Prinzip der Sinnkonstanz am Beispiel von Ironie. In: J. Engelkamp (Hg.): Lehr- und Forschungstexte Psychologie Band 10. Psychologische Aspekte des Verstehens. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer, 185-201.
Hörmann, Hans (1976). Meinen und Verstehen. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.
Lucius-Hoene, Gabriele & Arnulf Deppermann (2004). Narrative Identität und Positionierung. Gesprächsforschung 5 (Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion), 166-183.
Schwarz-Friesel, Monika (2009). Ironie als indirekter expressiver Sprechakt: Zur Funktion emotionsbasierter Implikaturen bei kognitiver Simulation. In: A. Bachmann-Stein / S. Merten / Ch. Roth (Hg.): Perspektiven auf Wort, Satz und Text. Semantisierungsprozesse auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen des Sprachsystems. Festschrift für Inge Pohl. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 223-232.

What's in a pun?

Punning jokes are a form of humorous wordplay based on semantic ambiguity between two phonologically similar words, in a sentence context where both meanings are more or less acceptable. In this study, we aimed to quantify and compare phonological...

In this talk, the results from this investigation will be presented, together with a slightly more critical view on the question whether it is worthwhile to focus on such a detailed aspect of such a complex phenomenom. In this context, different theories on linguistic humour will be revisited and the phenomenon of punning will be put in context.

Language in the brain or general cognition?

Is language a unique cognitive capacity, or can it be explained in terms of more general computational mechanisms of the human brain?
The presentation aims to tackle this debate by giving a talk reviewing important literature, followed by a pane...

For decades the predominant paradigm in linguistic research was that language is a uniquely human phenomenon. The reasons for that assumption are obvious – no other species can manipulate signs and thereby communicate in a way as complex and sophisticated as humans do. In line with this observation was the dominating view that language is not only unique to humans, but unique in general. That is, it was proposed that language does not form part of general cognition, but is has to be seen as a separate mental capacity, a linguistic module of the mind, if you will (Fodor, 1983).

As science progressed, learning mechanisms were discovered that suggested that there might be, to some extent at least, more general processes at play when acquiring language (see, e.g., Marcus et al., 1999; Saffran et al., 1996). Also, in the fields of comparative cognition findings suggested potential parallels between animal learning mechanisms and human linguistic capacities (Fitch, 2018). Further, from an evolutionary point of view, humans stand out in that they show an disproportionally increased size of association cortex compared to primates (Krienen & Buckner, 2020; Mars et al., 2017), potenti...

Abschlussplenum