Abstract Lexical intonation in Standard German, i.e., pitch patterns related to German words, is a disputed subject. On the one hand, German is not a tone language; on the other hand, the tonal patterns of a subset of interjections, calls, and particles are salient. It is argued here that intonation patterns become associated with word meanings and thus the lexicon, which challenges the approach of post-lexical tonal phenomena usually assumed for intonation languages. The syntactic contribution to lexical intonation is the systematic occurrence of certain classes of words in either the sentence peripheries, as parenthetical structures, or as one-word sentences, in which these classes of words are intonationally detached from the rest of the utterance. The argument of lexical intonation rests on minimal pairs, which, trivially, are not derivable from syntax; therefore, the controversy is discussed through the example of hallo as a greeting particle and hallo as a sentence particle typically used by younger people. Based on the Database of Spoken German , two empirical studies on the prosodic encoding and decoding of hallo were conducted. The studies show that both the encoding and decoding of the respective function of hallo relies on pitch contours. The article concludes with the consequences of fixed tonal patterns for the share of intonation in the German lexicon.
The present study investigates the factors that underlie the choice between bare and to-infinitive complements with Middle English causative verbs. Scholars have put forward several hypotheses over the years, which range from metrical considerations to directness of the causative situation and the semantic features of the infinitive verb. However, it is still unclear what is the driving factor behind the choice of the infinitival form and, in addition, none of these accounts has provided a quantitative analysis of the data. By means of a conditional inference tree and random forests, this article sets out to explore what are the factors that ultimately determine the choice of the infinitival form and how they interact with one another. The analysis relies on a dataset of over 2,500 causative constructions collected from numerous Middle English corpora and include several causative verbs, namely cause, do, gar, hatan, let and make. The results indicate that the selection of the infinitival form is not straightforward but often depends on several interacting factors that vary across the different causative verbs. Theoretically, the paper suggests that bare and to-infinitive complements should be considered as alternations of a more schematic construction underspecified for the marking of the infinitive.
Abstract This paper proposes a syntactic analysis of the discourse marker ti : in Tunisian Arabic, traditionally viewed as a truth-value irrelevant verbal disfluency. Contrary to this perception, the study reveals ti : as a communicatively salient element with distinctive properties that are best explained through a syntactic framework that enables the mapping of the discourse effects of ti: within a structural configuration beyond CP. Specifically, the analysis demonstrates that ti: is both grammatically multicategorial and pragmatically polysemous, reflecting complex interface dynamics. These dynamics suggest that its interpretive effects interact internally with various communicative domains and, crucially, that these interactions can be formalized within the syntax-discourse interface. This syntactic approach to ti: uncovers multiple inherent interface relationships and contributes to broader crosslinguistic research on discourse markers hin syntax-discourse interactions.
The paper presents an intragenetic typological investigation of verbal colexifications. Data from 34 languages of the East Caucasian family were collected and analyzed to detect colexifications of the concept 'build'. By comparing the results of this intragenetic investigation with those of larger cross-linguistic investigations, I show that small-scale, manually compiled and carefully verified databases can contribute to validating and complementing information available from large-scale typological databases. In particular, investigations of under-documented languages allow detecting patterns that, although seemingly rare cross-linguistically, are relatively common at a microtypological level. The colexification patterns attested in my sample can all be explained by well-known metonymic and metaphorical shifts, but only one of them is reported to be cross-linguistically common. While some of the shared patterns could be attributed to a common origin of the verbs in questions, others are likely to have spread by language contact.
This study introduces a Bayesian hierarchical model for investigating the discourse functions of tail-head linkage (THL). THL is a cross-linguistically widespread discourse pattern that connects units of text through verbatim repetition or anaphoric reference. Previous research has largely concentrated on the structural properties of THL, while its proposed functions - such as cohesion and coherence, processing facilitation, and discourse structuring - have typically been inferred from qualitative analyses of individual examples. To address this gap, the present study applies a quantitative statistical model to a corpus of ten narrative texts from five speakers of the Papuan language Muyu. The results indicate that THL in Muyu is not used for referential coherence but rather contributes to maintaining coherence across narrative scenes set in different locations. No evidence was found for systematic stylistic variation among speakers. Beyond the case study, the paper demonstrates the methodological potential of Bayesian hierarchical modelling for discourse analysis. The approach allows for flexible inclusion of additional predictors, hierarchical grouping factors, and cross-linguistic data. It thus provides a framework for quantitatively exploring how discourse strategies such as THL contribute to textual organisation and coherence across languages.
