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Diathesis ("valency alternation") is a sentence structure that reshapes the roles of a verb. The prototypical example of such a diathesis is the well-known passive. However, there are very many other such role-remappings, like antipassives, applicatives, causatives, etc. This book presents an encyclopaedic survey of diathesis in German. The objective is to catalogue all diatheses that exist in this language. Currently almost 250 different German diatheses are described in this book, some highly productive, some only attested for a handful of verbs. The main goal of this book is to present this wealth of grammatical possibility in a unified manner, while at the same time attempting to classify and organise this diversity. A summary of the about 80 most prominent diatheses is also provided, including many newly-minted German names, because most these diatheses did not have a German name yet. It might come as a surprise that there are so many different diatheses in German, but my impression is that in this respect German is no exception among the world's languages. I expect that all languages have a similar abundance of different ways in which to construe a sentence around a lexical predicate. In a sense, a diathesis allows for the expression of a distinct perspective on the event described, something that is arguably a common desire of any language user. Except for diathesis this book also aims to completely catalogue its counterpart: epithesis. An epithesis is a derived sentence structure in which the marking of the verb roles remains constant. Basically, these are the grammaticalised constructions expressing tense-aspect-mood-evidentiality in German. The list of major epitheses is also quite long (about 40 constructions), but it is quite a bit smaller than the list of major diatheses (about 80 constructions). This indicates that from a purely grammatical perspective, diathesis ("grammatical voice") is about a two-times more elaborate topic than epithesis ("tense-aspect-mood marking") in German.

This book is about reconstructing the grammar of Proto-Bantu, the ancestral language at the origin of current-day Bantu languages. While Bantu is a low-level branch of Niger-Congo, the world¿s biggest phylum, it is still Africäs biggest language family. This edited volume attempts to retrieve the phonology, morphology and syntax used by the earliest Bantu speakers to communicate with each other, discusses methods to do so, and looks at issues raised by these academic endeavours. It is a collective effort involving a fine mix of junior and senior scholars representing several generations of expert historical-comparative Bantu research. It is the first systematic approach to Proto-Bantu grammar since Meeussen¿s Bantu Grammatical Reconstructions (1967). Based on new bodies of evidence from the last five decades, most notably from northwestern Bantu languages, this book considerably transforms our understanding of Proto-Bantu grammar and offers new methodological approaches to Bantu grammatical reconstruction.

The present volume presents a selection of the revised and peer-reviewed proceedings articles of the 50th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL 50) which was hosted virtually by the faculty and students from the University of Texas at Austin. With contributions from rising and senior scholars from Europe and the Americas, the volume demonstrates the breadth of research in contemporary Romance linguistics with articles that apply corpus-based and laboratory methods, as well as theory, to explore the structure, use, and development of the Romance languages. The articles cover a wide range of fields including morphosyntax, semantics, language variation and change, sociophonetics, historical linguistics, language acquisition, and computational linguistics. In an introductory article, the editors document the sudden transition of LSRL 50 to a virtual format and acknowledge those who helped them to ensure the continuity of this annual scholarly meeting.

The present work explores computer-assisted simultaneous interpreting (CASI) from a primarily cognitive perspective. Despite concerns over the potentially negative impact of computer-assisted interpreting (CAI) tools on interpreters¿ cognitive load (CL), this hypothesis has thus far remained untested. Furthermore, previous research has been restricted to the evaluation of the CASI product. Hence, a methodology for the process-oriented evaluation of CASI and the empirical evidence for its cognitive modelling were missing. Overcoming these limitations appears essential to advance CAI research, particularly to foster a deeper understanding of the cognitive aspects of CAI through a validated research methodology and to determine the feasibility of the integration of CAI tools into the interpreting process. Therefore, this dissertation tested and empirically validated a methodology for the combined exploration of the product and process of CASI. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected during an eyetracking experiment at the Translation & Cognition Center of the University of Mainz. The study followed a convergent mixed-method and multi-method approach and involved nine MA advanced interpreting students. Prior to the experimental task, the informants were trained in the use of the three terminology support tools compared during the experiment, i. e. a digital glossary in PDF format, a CAI tool with manual look-up and a mock-up CAI tool with integrated automatic speech recognition (ASR) for terminology. After several pre-tests, the participants interpreted three speeches from English into their native German using a different tool each time. To increase comparability between the three conditions and control for potentially confounding variables, the speeches prepared ad-hoc for data collection were validated during a pilot study. The students¿ gaze data and deliveries were recorded and analysed. Qualitative data on the informants¿ perception of the tools were collected post-hoc. In the study, several performance, behavioural, and subjective measures were analysed: terminological accuracy and errors and omissions; glossary queries, ear-voice span, inter-cluster pause duration, time to first fixation, average fixation duration, and fixation time; qualitative questionnaire responses. The findings of this research provide first insights into the CASI process, in particular as it pertains to the effects of CAI tools on CL and attention allocation in interpreter-CAI tool interaction during simultaneous interpreting. As this is the first study on in-process CAI tool use with a markedly cognitive orientation, it entails significant implications for the methodological development of CAI research and the design of future studies on cognitive aspects of CASI, while raising additional questions in need of further investigation.

This book introduces formal grammar theories that play a role in current linguistic theorizing (Phrase Structure Grammar, Transformational Grammar/Government & Binding, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Head-¿Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, ConstructionGrammar, Tree Adjoining Grammar). The key assumptions are explained and it is shown how the respective theory treats arguments and adjuncts, the active/passive alternation, local reorderings, verb placement, and fronting of constituents over long distances. The analyses are explained with German as the object language.The second part of the book compares these approaches with respect to their predictions regarding language acquisition and psycholinguistic plausibility. The nativism hypothesis, which assumes that humans posses genetically determined innate language-specific knowledge, is critically examined and alternative models of language acquisition are discussed. The second part then addresses controversial issues of current theory building such as the question of flat or binary branching structures being more appropriate, the question whether constructions should be treated on the phrasal or the lexical level, and the question whether abstract, non-visible entities should play a role in syntactic analyses. It is shown that the analyses suggested in the respective frameworks are often translatable into each other. The book closes with a chapter showing how properties common to all languages or to certain classes of languages can be captured.

Language learning and translation have always been complementary pillars of multilingualism in the European Union. Both have been affected by the increasing availability of machine translation (MT): language learners now make use of free online MT to help them both understand and produce texts in a second language, but there are fears that uninformed use of the technology could undermine effective language learning. At the same time, MT is promoted as a technology that will change the face of professional translation, but the technical opacity of contemporary approaches, and the legal and ethical issues they raise, can make the participation of human translators in contemporary MT workflows particularly complicated. Against this background, this book attempts to promote teaching and learning about MT among a broad range of readers, including language learners, language teachers, trainee translators, translation teachers, and professional translators. It presents a rationale for learning about MT, and provides both a basic introduction to contemporary machine-learning based MT, and a more advanced discussion of neural MT. It explores the ethical issues that increased use of MT raises, and provides advice on its application in language learning. It also shows how users can make the most of MT through pre-editing, post-editing and customization of the technology.

This book provides a first-ever comprehensive overview of the grammatical structure of Fwe. Fwe is a Bantu language spoken on the border between Zambia and Namibia, by some 20,000 people. Very little previous documentation exists on the language, and the current description of Fwe is based exclusively on newly collected field data. It includes an analysis of the grammatical structure of Fwe, followed by basic cultural information on greetings, a Fwe narrative with its English translation, and a lexicon comprising some 2200 Fwe lexemes with their English translation. This book is intended as a resource for linguists, whether interested in African languages, Bantu languages, language typology, or general linguistics.

Where does today¿s English language come from? This book takes its readers on a journey back in time, from present-day varieties to the Old English of Beowulf and beyond. Written for students with little or no background in linguistics, and reflecting the latest scholarship, it showcases the variation and change present throughout the history of English, and includes numerous exercises and sample texts for every period. The reverse-chronological approach taken by this book sets it apart from all existing textbooks of the last fifty years. Innovative features also include its focus on variation, multilingualism and language contact, its use of texts from outside the literary canon, and its inclusion of case studies from syntax, sociophonetics and historical pragmatics.