Stefan Hartmann

Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf | HHU

Similarly to language, play is an essential component of human behavior and culture. However, the links between play and language have been underexamined and often neglected beyond the aesthetic uses of language as found in literature. But playing pervades language. Many aspects of language structure can be related to playing, in part because of th...

The usage-based approach to first language acquisition has become highly influential in research on first language acquisition. In recent research, it has also been adapted to account for language contact phenomena in multilingual first language acquisition, i.e. in situations in which children acquire two or more languages simultaneously. In this...

Recent years have seen increased interest in code-mixing from a usage-based perspective. In usage-based approaches to monolingual language acquisition, a number of methods have been developed that allow for detecting patterns from usage data. In this paper, we evaluate two of those methods with regard to their performance when applied to code-mixin...

The field of linguistics concerns itself with understanding the human capacity for language. Compositionality is a key notion in this research tradition. Compositionality refers to the notion that the meaning of a complex linguistic unit is a function of the meanings of its constituent parts. However, the question as to whether compositionality is...

This paper offers an inductive, exploratory study on the role of input and individual differences in the early code-mixing of bilingual children. Drawing on data from two German-English bilingual children, aged 2–4, we use the traceback method to check whether their code-mixed utterances can be accounted for with the help of constructional patterns...

Während die Entwicklung der satzinternen Großschreibung von Nomina und Nominalisierungen fürs Deutsche gut untersucht ist, stellt sie für viele andere Sprachen, in denen ebenfalls eine (wenn auch kurzlebige) Tendenz zur satzinternen Großschreibung festzustellen ist, ein Forschungsdesiderat dar. In diesem Beitrag stellen wir methodische Überlegungen...

Construction grammar is an approach to language that posits that units and structures in language can be exhaustively described as pairings between form and meaning. These pairings are called constructions and can have different degrees of abstraction, i.e. they span the entire range from very concrete ( armadillo, avocado ) to very abstract constr...

Many controversies in language evolution research derive from the fact that language is itself a natural language word, which makes the underlying concept fuzzy and cumbersome, and a common perception is that progress in language evolution research is hindered because researchers do not ‘talk about the same thing’. In this article, we claim that ag...

This paper discusses the traceback method, which has been the basis of some influential papers on first language acquisition. The method sets out to demonstrate that many or even all utterances in a test corpus (usually the last two sessions of recording) can be accounted for with the help of recurrent fixed strings (like What’s that?) or frame-and...

In this paper we use corpora of four monolingual German-speaking children at 2 years of age to analyze the effect of input on the activation of chunks and frame-and-slot patterns. For this purpose, we first investigate to what extent chunks and patterns can be traced back to the direct input compared to input which is not part of the immediate disc...

Usage-based approaches assume that children’s early utterances are item-based. This has been demonstrated in a number of studies using the tracebackmethod. In this approach, a small amount of “target utterances” from a child language corpus is “traced back” to earlier utterances. Drawing on a case study of German, this paper provides a critical eva...

In recent years, multiple researchers working on the evolution of language have put forward the idea that the theoretical framework of usage-based approaches and Construction Grammar is highly suitable for modelling the emergence of human language from pre-linguistic or proto-linguistic communication systems. This also raises the question of whethe...

In recent years, multiple researchers working on the evolution of language have put forward the idea that the theoretical framework of usage-based approaches and Construction Grammar is highly suitable for modelling the emergence of human language from pre-linguistic or proto-linguistic communication systems. This also raises the question of whethe...

Construction grammar is an approach to language which posits that units and structures in language can be exhaustively described as pairings between form and meaning. These pairings are called constructions and can have different degrees of abstraction, i.e. they span the entire range from very concrete (Armadillo, avocado) to very abstract constru...

The early modern period is a key historical era for the standardisation of languages in Europe, in which orthographies played an important role. This book traces the development of European spelling systems in the early modern era, and is unique in bringing together several strands of historical research, across a diverse range of Germanic, Romance...

This introductory paper reviews recent advances in language evolution research and summarizes the contributions of the special issue “New Directions in Language Evolution Research” in the broader context of these developments. Specifically, we discuss the increasing role of multimodality and iconicity, the more integrative view of language dynamics...

The relationship between “language change” and “language evolution” has recently become subject to some debate regarding the scope of both concepts. It has been claimed that while the latter used to refer to the language origins in the first place, both terms can now, to a certain extent, be used synonymously. In this paper, I argue that this can p...

This introductory paper reviews recent advances in language evolution research and summarizes the contributions of the special issue “New Directions in Language Evolution Research” in the broader context of these developments. Specifically, we discuss the increasing role of multimodality and iconicity, the more integrative view of language dynamics...

Dieser Beitrag fasst wesentliche Forschungsergebnisse des Projekts „Die Entwicklung der satzinternen Grosschreibung im Deutschen“ (SiGS) zusammen und fugt weitere, bisher noch nicht systematisch untersuchte soziopragmatische Aspekte hinzu. Dabei wird zunachst das Korpus aus Hexenverhorprotokollen vorgestellt, auf das sich die Untersuchung stutzt. A...

This introductory paper reviews recent advances in language evolution research and summarizes the contributions of the special issue “New Directions in Language Evolution Research” in the broader context of these developments. Specifically, we discuss the increasing role of multimodality and iconicity, the more integrative view of language dynamics...

This paper investigates the use of German -landschaft ‘landscape’ and -welt ‘world’ as compound constituents. Both occur frequently in metaphorical uses such as Korpuslandschaft ‘corpus landscape’ or Arbeitswelt ‘labor world’. The high productivity of both compound types raises the question of whether [N-landschaft] and [N-welt] form constructions...

Two of the main theoretical approaches to the evolution of language are biolinguistics and usage-based approaches. Both are often conceptualized as belonging to seemingly irreconcilable “camps.” Biolinguistic approaches assume that the ability to acquire language is based on a language-specific genetic foundation. Usage-based approaches, on the oth...

Two of the main theoretical approaches to the evolution of language are biolinguistics and usage-based approaches. Both are often conceptualized as belonging to seemingly irreconcilable ‘camps.’ Biolinguistic approaches assume that the ability to acquire language is based on a language-specific genetic foundation. Usage-based approaches, on the oth...

extravagant word formation, pseudo-participles, extravagance by semantic and morphological complexity, morphological mismatch, stereotypes, humor

http://www.meertens.knaw.nl/germanicsandwich2019/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Nowack-et-al_GS2019.pdf

This paper investigates the role of input in the code-mixing (CM) of a German-English bilingual child between the age of 2;3 until 3;11. Supporting a usage-based approach to linguistic theory, multiword units are shown to play an important role in language acquisition scenarios, both in the input children receive as well as in their own early langu...

In historischen Referenzkorpora des Deutschen sind Texte, die von Frauen verfasst wurden, nach wie vor stark unterrepräsentiert. Gerade aus kultur-, aber auch aus sprachhistorischer Perspektive kann sich jedoch der Vergleich von Texten, die von Schreiberinnen stammen, mit solchen, die von Männern verfasst wurden, als aufschlussreich erweisen, wie e...

This paper investigates the alternation between two competing German future constructions, the werden + Infinitive construction and the futurate present, from a usage-based perspective. Two lines of evidence are combined: On the one hand, a pilot corpus study indicates that werden + Infinitive is more likely to be used for referring to distant-futu...

This paper presents a diachronic analysis of the German quantifier/degreemodifier constructions ein bisschen ('a bitDIM') and ein wenig ('a little'). On the basis of data from two historical corpora, we examine to what extent these constructions followed a grammaticalization path comparable to the one Traugott (e.g. 2008a) observed for their Englis...

Unified schemas which allow for deriving multiply complex word-formation products are a central concept in Construction Morphology (CxM). Based on examples such as un-V-able formations in English, it has been argued in the framework of Construction Morphology that unified schemas (in this case: [un[V-able]A]A) can be conceived of as short cuts in c...

Sprache ist nichts Statisches, sondern in stetem Wandel begriffen. Um zu verstehen, wie die deutsche Sprache wurde, was sie ist, muss man sich daher mit ihrer Geschichte auseinandersetzen. Diese Einführung präsentiert umfassend, verständlich und aktuell den Stand der germanistischen Sprachgeschichtsforschung und gibt Studierenden und Lehrenden zahl...

The diachronic change of word-formation patterns is currently gaining increasing interest in cognitive-linguistic and constructionist approaches. This paper contributes to this line of research with a corpus-based investigation of nominalization with the suffix -ung in German. In doing so, it puts forward both theoretical and methodological conside...

This article investigates the influence of contextual pressures on the evolution of overspecification, i.e. the degree to which communicatively irrelevant meaning dimensions are specified, in an iterated learning setup. To this end, we combine two lines of research: In artificial language learning studies, it has been shown that (miniature) languag...

Sentence-internal capitalization of nouns is a characteristic of written Standard German. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been identified as the crucial period for the development of this graphemic convention. Previous studies have shown that animacy played a major role in the spread of sentence-internal capitalization. On the basis of...

This paper illustrates how different methodological approaches can be combined to reveal complex patterns of constructional variation and change in the diachronic development of English ing-nominals. More specifically, we argue that approaching the data from a schema-based (rather than morpheme-based) perspective shows that nominal gerunds in Engli...

Full 2-pages abstract and supplementary materials (Data & code available under): http://evolang.org/neworleans/papers/144.html

On the basis of an extensive corpus analysis, this paper investigates how cognitive, cultural, and language-internal factors conspire in the diachronic development of German nominalization patterns. Focusing on nominalization with the suffix -ung, the present study demonstrates that this word-formation pattern is subject to an increasing array of w...

This paper investigates the role of syntactic, semantic, and lexical factors in the diachronic development of German nominalization patterns. Drawing on an extensive corpus analysis of Early New High German and New High German texts, it is shown that (a) deverbal nominals in the suffix -ung tend to develop more reified meaning variants, which is re...

Full text available on my website: https://stefanhartmanneu.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/2014-constructing-a-schema.pdf This paper discusses how collostructional analysis can be applied to the study of word-formation patterns. Drawing on a diachronic corpus study of German ung-nominalization and Infinitival Nominalization using the GerManC Corpus,...

The domain of morphology provides a particularly challenging area of research not only for general linguistics, but also for the study of language evolution. This paper discusses which insights can be gained from the theoretical framework of Construction Grammar (CxG) with regard to the evolution of morphology. It is shown that the CxG model of lin...

The domain of morphology provides a particularly challenging area of research not only for general linguistics, but also for the study of language evolution. This paper discusses which insights can be gained from the theoretical framework of Construction Grammar (CxG) with regard to the evolution of morphology. It is shown that the CxG model of lin...

Dieser Beitrag beleuchtet die Metaphern, mit denen in modernen Verfilmungen des Tristan-Stoffes die komplexe Verwobenheit von Liebe und Tod sowohl sprachlich als auch bildlich eingefangen wird. Als Theorierahmen fungiert die kognitive Poetik, die Erkenntnisse aus unterschiedlichen Disziplinen zur Interpretation von Literatur (im weitesten Sinne) zu...

This paper presents a Cognitive-Linguistic and constructionist account of the diachronic development of two highly productive German word-formation patterns, namely ung-nominalization and Infinitival Nominalization. While ung-nominalization suffers a significant decrease in potential productivity and is subject to a growing set of constraints, no s...

While the development of German -ung-nominalization (e. g. Landung ›landing‹, Bildung ›education‹, Heizung ›heating installation‹, Bedienung ›service; waiter/waitress‹) from Early New High German to New High German is fairly well-studied, the Middle High German (MHG) period has been neglected so far. This paper aims at filling this gap with a corpu...