Richard Wiese

The phonology of German

In this book Richard Wiese provides the most complete and up-to-date description presently available of the phonology of German. Starting with a presentation of phonemes and their features, the author then describes in detail syllables, higher prosodic units, phonological conditions of word-formation, patterns of redundancy for features, phonological rules, and rules of stress for words and phrases. He lays particular emphasis on the interaction of morphology and phonology. He focuses on the present-day standard language, but includes occasional discussion of other variants and registers. The study is informed by recent models of phonological theory, and for phonologists and morphologists it provides both a rich source of material and critical discussion of current problems and solutions. It also serves as an introduction to the sound-system of German for the non-specialist reader. This book is intended for linguists, especially phonologists and morphologists; scholars and students of German.

The emergence of the unmarked: A new perspective on the language-specific function of Broca's area

A number of neuroimaging studies have implicated an involvement of Brocas area, particularly of the pars opercularis of the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), in the processing of complex (permuted) sentences. However, functional interpretations of this regions role range from very general (e.g., in terms of working memory) to highly specific (e.g., as supporting particular types of syntactic operations). A dissociation of these competing accounts is often impossible because in most cases, the language internal complexity of permuted sentence structures is accompanied invariably by increasing costs of a more general cognitive nature (e.g., working memory, task difficulty, and acceptability). We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the precise nature of the pars opercularis activation in the processing of permuted sentences by examining the permutation of pronouns in German. Although clearly involving a permutation operation, sentences with an initial object pronoun behave like simple, subject‐initial sentences (e.g., in terms of acceptability) because of a rule stating that pronouns should generally precede non‐pronominal arguments. The results of the experiment show that in contrast to non‐pronominal permutations, sentences with a permuted pronoun do not engender enhanced pars opercularis activation. Our findings therefore speak against both language‐related working memory and transformation‐based accounts of this regions role in sentence comprehension. Rather, we argue that the pars opercularis of the left IFG supports the language‐specific linearization of hierarchical linguistic dependencies. Hum Brain Mapp, 2005.

The role of the posterior superior temporal sulcus in the processing of unmarked transitivity

Is it living or not? The ability to differentiate between animate and inanimate entities is of considerable value in everyday life, since it allows for the dissociation of individuals that may willfully cause an action from objects that cannot. The present fMRI study aimed to shed light on the neural correlates of animacy at a relational-interpretive level, i.e. on the role of animacy in the establishment of relations between entities that are more or less likely to cause an event and differ in their potential to act volitionally. To this end, we investigated the processing of visually presented transitive German sentences (nominative-accusative structures) in which the factors animacy and argument order were manipulated. The relations between the arguments differed in that the animate subject either acted on an inanimate object (a very natural construction in terms of transitivity) or on an animate object (resulting in a sentence deviating from an unmarked transitive structure). Participants performed an acceptability judgment task. Violations of unmarked transitivity yielded a significant activation increase within the posterior left superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), thus suggesting a specific role of this cortical region in the relational use of animacy information. This result indicates that the influence of animacy as a relational feature differs from the impact of this parameter on the word level and is in line with other neuroimaging studies showing an engagement of the pSTS when a matching between syntax and semantics is required. A comparison between object- and subject-initial conditions further revealed a robust effect of argument order in the pars opercularis of the left inferior frontal gyrus (a subregion of Brocas area), thereby replicating previous findings demonstrating a sensitivity of this region to fine-grained language-specific linearization rules.

Phonology and morphology of the Germanic languages

The papers collected in this volume apply principles of phonology and morphology to the Germanic languages. Phonological phenomena range from subsegmental over phonemic to prosodic units (as syllables, pitch accent, stress). Morphology includes properties of roots, derivation, inflection, and words. The analyses deal with language-internal and comparative aspects, covering the whole (European) range of Germanic languages. From a theoretical perspective, most papers concentrate on constraint-based approaches. Crucial to those theories are principles of the phonology-morphology interaction, both within and between languages. The well documented Germanic languages provide an excellent field for research and almost all papers deal with aspects of the interface.

The processing of German word stress: evidence for the prosodic hierarchy

The present paper explores whether the metrical foot is necessary for the description of prosodic systems. To this end, we present empirical findings on the perception of German word stress using event-related brain potentials as the dependent measure. A manipulation of the main stress position within three-syllable words revealed differential brain responses, which (a) correlated with the reorganisation of syllables into feet in stress violations, and (b) differed in strength depending on syllable weight. The experiments therefore provide evidence that the processing of word stress not only involves lexical information about stress positions, but also (quantity-sensitive) information about metrical structures, in particular feet and syllables.

Compounding and inflection in German child language

A central question in language acquisition is whether children’s grammatical principles are identical to adults’ or whether grammatical principles undergo substantial developmental changes. Recently, researchers studying the acquisition of syntax have martialed substantial evidence in favor of a ‘continuity’ position, in which syntactic principles are innately given. Children obey many syntactic principles from as early an age as they can be tested, they make few errors, and often display knowledge of grammatical principles even when the environment offers little explicit evidence, leading to a nativist argument that Crain (1991) dubbed ‘language learning in the absence of experience.’

The influence of rhythmic (ir)regularities on speech processing: Evidence from an ERP study on German phrases

The present study investigates the status of rhythmic irregularities occurring in natural speech and the importance of rhythmic alternations in cognitive processing. Previous studies showed the relevance of rhythm for language processing, but there has been only little research using the method of event-related potentials to investigate this phenomenon in a natural metrical context. To this end, an experiment was conducted in which the so-called Rhythm Rule (alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables) was either met or violated by stress clashes or stress lapses which are known to occur in German. The comparison of rhythmic well-formed conditions with the conditions including rhythmic irregularities revealed biphasic EEG-patterns for rhythmically marked structures, i.e., stress clashes and lapses. The present results show that irregular but possible rhythmic variants are costly in language processing, reflected by an early negativity and an N400 in contrast to the well-formed control conditions. Supposedly, the early negativity reflects error detection in rhythmical structure and supports the view that the brain is sensitive to subtle violations of rhythmical structure. A late positive component reflects the evaluation process related to the task requirements. The study shows that subtle rhythmical deviations from the Rhythm Rule are perceived and treated differently from well-formed structures during processing, even if the deviation in question is permitted and can therefore occur in language production.

Phonological versus morphological rules: on German Umlaut and Ablaut

This paper addresses the relationship between phonology and morphology, using the vowel alternations of Standard German Umlaut and Ablaut as relevant examples. Umlaut is analysed as a completely unified process of vowel fronting which can be found in a wide variety of morphologically derived environments. A number of nonlinear phonological analyses of Umlaut, involving a floating feature, are presented and compared. While Umlaut is interpreted, in current analyses, as a morphological rule, the present paper argues for its status as a lexical phonological rule. Ablaut, on the other hand, is, synchronically, a totally unpredictable vowel change found mostly in the paradigms of so-called strong verbs. On the grounds of its internal and external behaviour, it is argued that this phenomenon must receive a completely different description by means of additional specifications for lexical entries.

Zero morphology and constraint interaction: subtraction and epenthesis in German dialects

This paper investigates what looks like a case of subtractive plural morphology in Hessian German, illustrated in (1).

Schwa and the structure of words in German

This paper argues for a treatment of schwa in German as a vowel of epenthesis. The analysis presupposes a CV model of the syllable in German. Within this framework, an epenthesis rule is given, which is then applied to all forms of schwa, even the word-final ones. Assuming a particular version of a lexicon (following the theory of lexical phonology) and distributing the epenthesis rule over all levels in the lexicon, the analysis succeeds in describing all subgroups of schwa occurrence adequately and is argued to be superior to accounts previously proposed. Syllabic sonor ants are handled by a postlexical rule of reassociation between sonorants and the syllabic