Manfred Krifka

Mathias Schenner

Reconstruction effects in relative clauses are a class of phenomena where the external head of the relative clause seems to behave as if it occupied a position within the relative clause, as far as some commonly accepted principle of grammar is concerned. An often cited type of example is “The [relative of his] [which every man admires most] is his mother.”, where the pronoun “his” in the relative head appears to be bound by the quantified noun phrase “every man” in the relative clause – although the latter does not c-command the former, which is commonly required for binding. Several solutions have been developed in various theoretical frameworks. One interesting aspect about reconstruction effects in relative clauses is that they can be used as a benchmark for competing theories of grammar: Which architecture of the syntax-semantics interface can provide the most satisfying explanation for these phenomena? This volume brings together researchers working in different frameworks but looking at the same set of empirical facts, enabling the reader to develop their own perspective on the perfect tradeoff between syntax and semantics in a theory of grammar.

Reconstruction Effects in Relative Clauses

Renate Musan

The book reports on the present state of the theoretical presentation, empirical investigation, psycholinguistic aspects and acquisition of information structure, and computation. It also provides descriptions of the information structural encoding strategies of individual languages of different types. The book can be used as a textbook appropriate for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses.

The Expression of Information Structure

Information structure deals with the linguistic forms and techniques that support the integration of what is said into the current informational and attentional state of the addressee. This shows in categories like topic-comment structuring, focus to highlight expressions, marking of givenness and of presupposed information, and ways to indicate that the information provided is restricted. The book relates infor-mation structure to theoretical models of grammar, to computation and modelling and brings together what is known about the expression of information structure in human language with regard to its empirical investigation, its psycholinguistic aspects and the acquisition of information structure. Since the need to integrate what is said into the informational and attentional state of the addressee is central to all human communication, it is not surprising that all natural languages have developed devices to express information structural cate-gories. To illustrate this, the book also provides concrete and theory independent descriptions of the information structural encoding strategies of individual languages of different types . The book can be used as a textbook appropriate for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses; it also provides information for linguists that are not specialists in the field.

Annette Leßmöllmann

André Meinunger

Rosemarie Tracy

Joanna Błaszczak

Barbara Stiebels

Hubert Truckenbrodt

Mehrsprachigkeit ist heute eine Realität, ganz besonders in der Schule: Lehrer sind damit konfrontiert, dass ihre Schüler zum Teil keine deutschen Muttersprachler sind. Viele Kinder wachsen mehrsprachig auf, manche lernen erst in der Schule Deutsch. Das empfinden Lehrer, Bildungsplaner, Didaktiker – und Eltern – häufig als Last, die das Bildungsniveau der Schulen drückt. Dabei ist Mehrsprachigkeit ein wertvolles Gut, ein Mehr an Sprachen und an Unterrichtsmöglichkeiten. Dazu müssen Lehrer aber etwas über die Sprachen wissen, die ihre Schüler in den Unterricht mitbringen. Hier setzt dieses Buch an: Es liefert anregende und dabei linguistisch fundierte Informationen über die Sprachen, die von Schülerinnen und Schülern in Deutschland am häufigsten gesprochen werden – von Japanisch, Chinesisch, Vietnamesisch, über Hindi, Persisch und Türkisch bis Spanisch, von Russisch und Ukrainisch über Griechisch und Albanisch bis Arabisch und Hebräisch. Linguisten und Mehrsprachigkeits-Forscher wollen in diesem Buch zeigen, dass diese unterschiedlichen Sprachkompetenzen ein Schatz sind. „Das mehrsprachige Klassenzimmer“ ist kein didaktischer Leitfaden, sondern bietet Hintergrundinformationen, die Leser und Leserinnen nach Bedarf in Unterrichtsvorbereitungen, in die Konzeption von Lehrbüchern, in politische Überlegungen zur schulischen Integration oder in ihre persönliche Weiterbildung einfließen lassen können.

Über die Muttersprachen unserer Schüler

Das mehrsprachige Klassenzimmer

Ferenc Kiefer

Chungmin Lee

A group of authors containing both leading authorities and young researchers addresses a number of issues of contrastiveness, polarity items and exhaustivity, quantificational expressions and the implicatures they generate, and the interaction between semantic operators and speech acts. The 19 contributions provide insights on the interplay between semantics and pragmatics. The volume’s reach is cross-linguistic and takes an unorthodox multi-paradigm approach. Languages studied range from European languages including Hungarian and Russian to East Asian languages such as Japanese and Korean, with rich data on focus and discourse particles. This volume contributes to a major area of research in linguistics of the last decade, and provides novel, state-of-the-art views on some of the central topics in linguistic research, and will appeal to an audience of graduate and advanced undergraduate researchers in linguistics, philosophy of language and computational linguistics.

Manfred Krifka

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