Project C06
in Phase 2
Grammatical processing and syntactic change
PI(s): Prof. Dr. Ulrike Demske & PD Dr. Claudia Felser
This project seeks to explore the dimensions of syntactic variability from a diachronic perspective, starting from the hypothesis that structures that are easier to process tend to prevail in syntactic change. During the second phase of the CRC, we will examine the extent to which the principle of dependency length minimization can account for variability and syntactic change in the history of German. Focusing on the placement of subordinate clauses in German, psycholinguistic data from present-day speakers will be compared to data from diachronic corpora to test the hypothesis that the distance between dependent constituents has decreased significantly over time.
Papers
Talks
| Author(s) | Title | Year | Published in | Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bosch, S., & Felser, C. | The role of L1 influence on L2 word order behaviour in German infinitival complementation. | 2022 | Paper presented at the GLAC 28, University of Georgia, Athens, USA, 31 March – 2 April. | |
| Bosch, S., & Felser, C. | Word-order variation in L2 German infinitival complementation. | 2022 | Paper presented at the EuroSLA 31, University of Fribourg, Switzerland, 24 - 27 August. | |
| De Cesare, I., & Demske, U. | Ambiguity avoidance as an efficiency strategy driving word order change. | 2022 | Paper presented at the 25th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL25), University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. 01 - 05 August. | |
| Gosemann, L., & De Cesare, I. | Factors influencing non-canonical word order in German: a corpus study. | 2023 | Paper presented at the AG16: Creativity and routine in sentence production, 45. Annual Conference of the German Linguistic Soeciety (DGfS), 09.03.23, Universität zu Köln, Cologne, Germany. | |
| Felser, C. | Structural ambiguity in language comprehension and production. | 2023 | Talk presented at the ICHL 26, University of Heidelberg, 5 September. | |
| Gosemann, L. | Syntactic change and DLM in German: a corpus study. | 2023 | Paper presented at the 26th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany. 04-08 September. | |
| Cortés Rodríguez, Á., Bosch, S., & Felser, C. | Dependency length minimization in German relative clause extraposition: Evidence from speeded acceptability judgments and production choices. | 2024 | Paper presented at the 6th Variation and Language Processing Conference (VALP6), University of Vigo, Spain. 26 - 28 June. | |
| Gosemann, L. | The placement of relative clauses in German newspapers: processing constraints from a diachronic perspective. | 2024 | Poster presented at the 12th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 12), University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria. 08 - 11 July. | |
| Gosemann, L. | Wortstellungsvariation von Relativsätzen: zum Einfluss der gesprochenen Sprache auf die geschriebene Sprache im Zeitungsmedium. | 2024 | Paper presented at the Grammatik im Diasystem, University of Uppsala, Uppsala, Sweden. 26-28 September. |