Günther Grewendorf

Markus Steinbach

Arnim von Stechow

Abstracts Wegner, Dennis, Härtl, Holden, Schlechtweg, Marcel: Optionality and the recovery of temporal information in German verb clusters. While the clause-final placement of finite elements is usually quite rigid in German embedded clauses, verbal clusters mark an exception in that they allow finite temporal auxiliaries to be placed linearly before the verbal elements they embed. The prescriptive rules of Standard German suggest that there is optionality with respect to the two ordering possibilities at least in future clauses. However, previous studies have shown that this also holds for perfect clauses with lassen ('let'). Based on two experimental studies focussing on verbal clusters with continuative lassen ('let') and perception verbs, which supposedly have similar properties, the present paper aims at investigating a) whether there really is proper optionality with respect to placing the finite auxiliary in a cluster-initial or clause-final position, and b) whether preposing the temporal auxiliary induces advantages for the processing of temporal information. Pafel, Jürgen: Konditionale und minimale Differenz. Counterfactuals invite us to imagine a course of the world in which certain state-of-affairs obtain which might be contrary to fact, but which is otherwise identical to the real course of the world. They invite us to imagine a minimal different course of the world. Minimal difference is an essential ingredient of many, perhaps most, semantic accounts of counterfactuals. They differ in the way they conceptualize minimal difference. I present a definition of 'minimal different course of the world' after discussing many scenarios in detail, with respect to which certain counterfactuals are supposed to be true or false. Minimal difference means that, as for a 'counterfactual' course of the world, everything is as it actually is except that (i) the counterfactual's antecedent is true and (ii) state-of-affair obtain which are possible in virtue of (i) and the regularities of the world. With this background, the truth condition of a counterfactual can be stated as follows: It is true if the consequent is true in every course of the world in which the antecedent is true, and which is minimal different from the actual course of the world. This kind of truth condition is argued to be adequate for singular indicative conditionals too. Various problems concerning this extension are discussed. A closer look at the pragmatics of counterfactuals exhibits a variety of different 'implications', whose status is partially unclear. Finally, I discuss the prospects of extending the minimal-difference semantics of conditionals to causals. Bauer, Anastasia: Rezension: Vadim Kimmelman (2019): Information structure in sign languages. Evidence from Russian Sign Language and Sign Language of the Netherlands. Berlin: De Gruyter and Ishara Press. Krstic, Vladimir: Rezension: Meibauer, Jörg (ed.) (2019): The Oxford handbook of lying. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tsiknakis, Antonios: Rezension: Sonja Müller (2019): Die Syntax-Pragmatik-Schnittstelle. Ein Studienbuch. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto. Klaus, Müllner: Informationen und Hinweise.

Linguistische Berichte Heft 270

G. Meggle

Speech Acts, Mind, and Social Reality - these are the main topics in the work of John R. Searle, one of the leading philosophical figures of the present times. How language is based on intentionality, how intentionality in turn is to be explicated by means of distinctions discovered in Speech Act Theory, and how language and intentionality are both related to social facts and institutions - these are questions to be tackled in this volume. The contributions result from discussions on and with John R. Searle, containing Searle's own latest views - including his seminal ideas on Rationality in Action. The collection provides a good basis for advanced seminar debates in Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind, and Social Philosophy, and will also stimulate some further research on all of the three main topics.

Discussions with John R. Searle

Speech Acts, Mind, and Social Reality

Monika Rathert

This volume explores new interfaces between linguistics and jurisprudence. Its theoretical and methodological importance lies in showing that many questions asked within the field of language and law receive satisfactory answers from formal linguistics. The book starts with a paper by the two editors in which they explain why the volume - as a whole and with its individual papers - is an innovation in the field of language and law. In addition, an overview about the most important research projects on language and law is given. The first chapter of the book is on understanding the law. Jurists and laypersons always ask for the precise meaning of a certain piece of the law. In linguistics, the discipline investigating 'meaning' is semantics; thus, it is to be expected that semantics can contribute to a correct understanding of the law. Chapter 1 also investigates the alleged incomprehensibility of legal language with the help of psycholinguistics. Chapter 2 is on identifying the criminal. To find the author of a blackmailer's letter, text/ corpus linguistics is instrumental. If the blackmailer uses the telephone instead of the letter, speaker identification and phonetics are necessary. The BKA stores all blackmailing letters in a database, but databases are only one possibility of organizing legal systems; another possibility is the application of tools from computational linguistics and artificial intelligence. These tools can be useful to handle terminology, to retrieve information, or to model legal theorizing in a formal system. Chapter 3 demonstrates a variety of examples of organizing legal systems. The topic of chapter 4 is multilingualism and the law. The European legislation is a product of legal and linguistic diversity, as the member states do not only differ in languages but also in their legal systems. One paper shows how Switzerland handles its multilingualism in legal drafting. The input of translation studies is of course vital in this field of research. An index for both subjects and persons complements the volume.

Formal Linguistics and Law

Noam Chomsky, der laut New York Times bedeutendste Intellektuelle der Gegenwart, hat nicht nur die Wissenschaft von der Sprache und die Theorie des menschlichen Geistes revolutioniert; seine Annahmen über die Natur des Menschen haben ihn zu vehementen Plädoyers für Freiheit und Demokratie veranlasst und politische Analysen und Aktivitäten motiviert, die u.a. die Rolle des Staates und die Funktion der Demokratie betreffen. Die Beiträge dieses Buches befassen sich mit den wichtigsten Themen seines politischen Werkes: Die Natur des Menschen und die Entstehung gesellschaftlicher Institutionen Die Beziehung des Individuums zum Staat und der Kern von Chomskys anarchistischer Theorie des Staates Menschenrechte und der Begriff der Freiheit Macht und Widerstand Mit Beiträgen von Robert Barsky, Željko Bošković, Jean Bricmont, Günther Grewendorf, Georg Meggle, Milan Rai, Tom Roeper, Michael Schiffmann und Juan Uriagereka.

Chomsky on State and Democracy

In der Reihe Denker erscheinen Einführungen in Leben und Werk der wichtigsten Philosophen der Welt. Die Bände sind von renommierten Hochschullehrern verfaßt. Auf eine Biographie folgen ausführliche Werkanalysen, Grundzüge der Wirkungsgeschichte, eine Zeittafel, eine inhaltlich gegliederte Bibliographie sowie Namen- und Sachregister. Alle Bände sind Originalausgaben. Nach Einschätzung der New York Times gilt Noam Chomsky als der bedeutendste lebende Intellektuelle. Er hat nicht nur die Wissenschaft von der Sprache revolutioniert und der Erforschung des menschlichen Geistes entscheidende Impulse gegeben; er hat auch durch seine kritischen politischen Schriften und Aktivitäten weltweite Resonanz gefunden. Grewendorfs Buch gibt einen Einblick in Chomskys kognitionstheoretisches, linguistisches und politisches Werk.

Noam Chomsky

This book addresses two crucial problems associated with the phenomenon of Remnant Movement: First, what evidence can be brought to bear in favor of, or opposing, Remnant Movement analyses of linguistic phenomena? Secondly, what does the presence or absence of Remnant Movement in the syntax tell us about constraints imposed by Universal Grammar on syntactic operations?

Remnant Movement

Wolfgang Sternefeld

The articles in this volume deal with various phenomena which have been covered traditionally by the term scrambling. The analyses presented here refer to the most recent developments in generative grammar (the so-called Barriers-framework developed in Chomsky 1986). Some of the topics discussed are: the movement vs the base structure approach to scrambling, the correlation between the possibility of scrambling and certain infinitive structures, scrambling and ergativity, barriers and domains for scrambling.

Scrambling and Barriers

The volume explores new interfaces between linguistics and jurisprudence. Its theoretical and methodological importance lies in showing that many questions asked within language and law receive satisfactory answers from formal linguistics, including computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, translation studies, psycholinguistics, semantics, phonetics and corpus linguistics.

Thomas Ede Zimmermann

Bringing together papers from various subfields of theoretical linguistics, this volume gives a representative glimpse of current research on form and function in grammar. Its overarching topic is as old as it is hot: the relation between the major clause types as determined in syntax, and their canonical or idiosyncratic roles in discourse as characterized in pragmatic terms. Though none of the papers addresses this topic in its full breadth, they can all be seen to make their specific contributions to it, scrutinizing the pertinent aspects of the grammatical interfaces and elaborating detailed case studies. The first part of this collection comprises three papers (by Asher, Portner, and van Rooy & Franke) devoted to the semantics/pragmatics interface. The second part, with contributions by Rizzi, Saito, and Belletti, deals with the question of how the constitution of sentence types can be related to properties of functional categories in the clausal periphery.The last four papers (Bošković, van Riemsdijk, Bauke & Roeper, Williams) concern the interaction of lexical elements and clausal functional categories, revealing unexpected parallels between clause structure and the internal structure, particularly in lexical categories.

Günther Grewendorf

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