Contrast marking variation in Romance and Germanic languages

This article deals with folk names (phytonyms) that denote common yarrow (Achillea millefolium L.) in two Germanic (English, German) and three Finno-Permic languages (Finnish including Ingrian Finnish dialects, Karelian and Komi). The author analyses the motivations of these folk names and identifies some of the nominative characteristics which the names of this plant can be based upon. Some names belonging to the Germanic languages are also viewed in the diachronic perspective. The research employs the descriptive, contrastive, and comparative methods. The material mainly draws from the following sources: Dictionary of English Plant Names (J. Britten, R. Holland), Die Deutschen Volksnamen der Pflanzen (G. Pritzel, C. Jessen), Wörterbuch der Deutschen Pflanzennamen (H. Marzell), Suomalaiset kasvinnimet (P. Suhonen), Finnish Folk Plant Vocabulary (Formation and Functioning) (Yu. E. Koppaleva), and Komi-Russian Botanical Dictionary (A. N. Rakin). It is established that the names of yarrow are motivated by the following characteristics: form; usage in folk medicine; habitat; effect produced by the plant; usage by animals as food; folk beliefs and customs; colour; features of structure. The author concludes that the images of yarrow in the five languages considered mostly correspond with each other. This can be explained by the common view on the plant among the speakers of these languages. The names belonging to both language groups contain the following characteristics: form; usage in folk medicine; effect produced by the plant; folk beliefs and customs; colour. The Finno-Permic languages alone note the habitat and features of structure and only the Germanic languages note usage by animals as food. In addition, the article contains observations as to how frequently these nominative characteristics occur in the names of yarrow in the five languages studied. The author also describes some difficulties that can arise during the analysis and classification of this material.

The research aims to explore the etymology and semantic field of the zoonym “cow” in the linguocultural contexts of the Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic language families. The article analyzes the origin of the word “cow” in Slavic, Turkic, Romance and Germanic languages, identifying its core and additional meanings, commonalities and specific features. This analysis makes it possible to determine the national characteristics in the expression of knowledge about people, animals, and the world in mythological and religious beliefs by the native speakers. The scientific novelty of the research lies in considering the zoonym “cow” not only as a linguistic object, but also as a cultural phenomenon intertwined with history, mythology, religion, and human lifestyle. This zoonym is studied for the first time in a comparative aspect using data from Slavic, Turkic, Romance and Germanic languages, with the aim of identifying, analyzing, and describing national cultural features, similarities, and differences. As a result, the study proves that the etymology and semantics of the word “cow” in the contexts of the Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic language families display shared roots, dating back to a distant past, and indicate profound connections between the peoples. Despite some differences among the peoples who speak Slavic and Turkic languages, such as national specificity of worldview, varying living conditions, traditions, history, and religion, the words designating the cow in various linguocultures are part of a unified history, connected to the use of this animal in human life.

Cross-linguistic differences in gender congruency effects: Evidence from meta-analyses

Romance languages are the modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin languages between the third and eighth centuries. This comes under a subgroup of Italic languages within the Indo-European language family. The five major and mostly spoken Romance languages all over the world are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian. The fundamental vocabularies of all the Romance languages were inherited from Latin. Besides, some words shared in Romance languages are not directly from the Latin inheritance, but they are words that were borrowed from the Celtic origin. The main intention of this research is to discover the similarities between the Romance languages not only in the morphological, syntactic, semantic, and phonetic basis but also the vocabulary variations in this language family. By the beginning of the 21st century, 920 million people claimed a Romance language as their mother tongue whilst 300 million people as a second language. In the current global context, at least one language of the Romance language family is studied by a significant number of divergent ethnic groups in different parts of the world. In such a period, where Romance languages are embraced by thousands, the study of linguistic characteristics in terms of mutual intelligibility of Romance languages provides the opportunity to identify the unique features interconnected with each language. Romance methods of forming unfamiliar words are also inherited from Latin origin. For instance, the suffix "-āre” in Latin morphology, which is a part of infinitives, has made the influence for languages such as French, Italian, and Catalan in making verbs. For example, the lexical form of “to plant” in Latin is “plantāre” and similarly “planter” in French, “plantare" in Italian, and “plantar” in Catalan. In conclusion, the Romance languages, which were originated from Latin, have more intelligibility even if they are considered as different languages of different regions at present.

Corpus linguistics and computational linguistics are two language-related fields of study with somewhat different aims that nevertheless show great methodological overlap and interplay. In corpus linguistics, the empirical study of collections of naturally occurring text—corpora—is the core instrument for doing linguistics. Its goal is to further our understanding of language, just as in other branches of linguistics. Computational linguistics engages itself with the computational processing of language data, where sometimes the aim is to learn more about language per se and/or the languages studied, and sometimes the aim is to learn more about the effectiveness of the technological solutions used for this processing. Present-day computational linguistics is almost exclusively data-driven in nature, which means that in practice, corpora play a central role here, too, as sources for the machine learning algorithms that underlie the computational linguistic techniques. Moreover, as the computational tools developed in computational linguistics improve and the reliance on larger materials in corpus linguistics increases, the tools developed in the former play an increasingly important role in supporting the latter. There is not much genuine computational or corpus-based comparative or contrastive work specifically involving Germanic languages as Germanic languages, focused on comparison within the group of Germanic languages or comparison of the whole group with other language groups. However, there is a wealth of work presenting single-language studies and, especially, data sets and resources that can support corpus-based research on Germanic languages, both of the computational linguistic kind and of corpus linguistic nature.

This paper studies the reliability and validity of naturalistic speech errors as a tool for language production research. Possible biases when collecting naturalistic speech errors are identified and specific predictions derived. These patterns are then contrasted with published reports from Germanic languages (English, German and Dutch) and one Romance language (Spanish). Unlike findings in the Germanic languages, Spanish speech errors show many patterns which run contrary to those expected from bias: (1) more phonological errors occur between words than within word; (2) word-initial consonants are less likely to participate in errors than word-medial consonants, (3) errors are equally likely in stressed and in unstressed syllables, (4) perseverations are more frequent than anticipations, and (5) there is no trace of a lexical bias. We present a new corpus of Spanish speech errors collected by many theoretically naïve observers (whereas the only corpus available so far was collected by two highly trained theoretically informed observers), give a general overview of it, and use it to replicate previous reports. In spite of the different susceptibility of these methods to bias, results were remarkably similar in both corpora and again contrary to predictions from bias. As a result, collecting speech errors "in the wild" seems to be free of bias to a reasonable extent even when using a multiple-collector method. The observed contrasting patterns between Spanish and Germanic languages arise as true cross-linguistic differences.

In the Germanic languages, verbs of manner of movement can regularly be used in construction with a directional prepositional phrase in order to denote a telic movement event (e.g. The hunters walked into the forest). We show that the Romance languages, allow such a construction, too, but only with a limited group of verbs (e.g. the verbs for slide or jump) but not for the verbs corresponding to float or march, for instance. The syntactic limitations observed with the latter verbs have given rise to the idea of a "lexicalisation parameter" (Talmy 1985), while the former group has rather been dismissed as idiosyncratic lexical exceptions from this general pattern. In this paper, we develop the hypothesis that there is in fact a parameter in the area of semantic composition that distinguishes movement verb constructions in e.g. French and German. It is proposed that in Romance, a telic construction with a PP can only be based on manner of movement verbs whose lexical meaning makes reference to a homomorphic mapping between manner and progression on the path. It is shown that such a regularity falls out naturally from the theory of telicity in Rothstein (2004). The paper moreover addresses a very curious observation in the area of manner of movement verbs : in the Germanic languages, the verb climb can be combined with different directions (climb up or climb down) while in Romance (specifically, French), only upward direction is possible. This effect is argued to be another regular consequence of the same proposed parameter.

Reviewed by: Null pronouns Henrik Rosenkvist Null pronouns. Ed. by Melani Wratil and Peter Gallman. (Studies in generative grammar 106.) Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2011. Pp. 270. ISBN 9783110238709. $140 (Hb). The possibility of omitting referential subject pronouns from a finite clause has been a popular topic for generative grammarians for quite some time. Following a couple of influential works by Rizzi (1982, 1986), a substantial part of the research has been concerned with null subjects in the Romance languages and in languages such as Greek, Mandarin, and Finnish, while the Germanic languages have been absent from the scholarly debate. Indeed, since all standard Germanic languages require referential subject pronouns to be overt, some linguists have claimed that referential null subjects as such are incompatible with the V2-property. As shown by the articles in Null pronouns, however, that conjecture is erroneous. Referential null subjects in both Old and Modern Germanic languages are discussed in depth in the book, and it is therefore an important addition to this field of research. Null pronouns is a collection of five articles from a 2006 workshop in Jena, plus an introduction by the editors. In the introduction, Melani Wratil and Peter Gallman provide a background to the research on null subjects in the framework of principles and parameters, discussing PRO, pro, the pro-drop parameter, and the much-debated relation between null subjects and verbal inflection. Throughout the introduction, problems with previous approaches to null subjects are highlighted, including the notion of a particular pro-drop parameter, null subjects and V2, null subjects and rich inflection, the identification of null subjects, and the historical development of null subjects. Although the introduction is relatively brief, it provides a useful outline of generative research about null subjects. In some places, however, one might have wished for a more complete set of references. For instance, the notion of I-subject (i.e. the idea that the inflectional affix on the finite verb may function as the subject of a clause) goes back to Borer (1986), and as shown by Roberts and Holmberg (2010:3), the correlation between rich agreement and null subjects was probably first observed by Apollonius Dyscolus, a second-century grammarian in Alexandria. Following the introduction, Katrin Axel and Helmut Weiß explore the emergence of null subjects in some Modern Germanic vernaculars in ‘Pro-drop in the history of German—from Old High German to the modern dialects’. In early Old High German (OHG), null referential subjects varied quite freely with overt subjects, but null subjects only appeared in clauses where the finite verb moved to C, that is, main clauses and embedded clauses with V-to-C movement. They claim that this requirement indicates that OHG null subjects needed to be c-commanded by agreement features in C. While OHG verb inflection was distinct in parts of the paradigm, however, the forms for first- and third-person singular show no agreement at all, and hence one would expect that such subject pronouns should always be overt in OHG. That is not the case; third-person null subjects were very frequent. To deal with this problem, Axel and Weiß evoke Sigurðsson’s (1993) concept of free discourse coindexing, without going into details. In a number of Modern Germanic vernaculars, such as Bavarian and Frisian, first- and second-person (but not third-person) null subjects can also be found, in main clauses as well as in embedded clauses of all types. Another conspicuous, and typologically rare, feature of these language varieties is complementizer agreement. The complementizer wenn ‘if’ in Bavarian, for instance, may be inflected for second-person singular. In the clause wennst willst ‘if you.sg want to’, there are two instances of -st, the affix for second-person singular (but no overt subject). The analysis presented by Axel and Weiß is that the OHG licensing condition still applies, and that null subjects in Modern Germanic vernaculars may appear in nonroot contexts because complementizer agreement, not present in OHG, can c-command and identify a null subject also in a verb-final embedded clause. This idea, which is also presented in Axel & Weiß 2010, is appealing, but other Germanic...

The study explores how translation can be used as part of pedagogical translanguaging to facilitate multilingual learners’ understanding of the way tempo-aspecutal meanings are conveyed. Two sets of data are analysed, focusing on tense-aspect marking: (1) a novel excerpt originally written in Italian is compared with its professional translations in Romance (French, Spanish) and Germanic (English, German) languages; (2) retranslations from these languages to Italian, provided by L1 speakers of Italian and learners of Italian with French, Spanish and German as their L1 are compared with each other and with the original Italian text. Professional translations provide a window to crosslinguistic variation in the use of tense-aspect marking and to complex linguistic phenomena such as the aoristic drift in Romance languages. Retranslations from these languages back to Italian capture some differences in the way speakers develop a tempo-aspectual representation of situations. Similar analyses, guided by the teacher, can be conducted in multilingual classrooms as part of pedagogical translanguaging. Analysing the same text passage in multiple languages and engaging in its retranslations fosters crosslinguistic awareness and promotes joint exploration and co-construction of linguistic knowledge.

Article Wiltrud Mihatsch / Inga Hennecke / Anna Kisiel / Alena Kolyaseva / Kristin Davidse / Lieselotte Brems (eds.): Type Noun Constructions in Slavic, Germanic and Romance Languages. Semantics and Pragmatics on the Move was published on December 1, 2025 in the journal Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana (volume 23, issue 46).

Adverb positions vary within a single language as well as across diverse languages. Based on the study of adverbs in English, French and German, this monograph shows that the distribution of adverbs is influenced by various factors at distinct levels of linguistic representation – comprising semantics, syntax, phonology and information structure –, which interact in determining adverb positions. The results of the investigation are formulated within the theoretical framework of Optimality Theory, which captures the complex interaction of these factors by hierarchically ranked constraints, deriving cross-linguistic variation of adverb positions by differences in the language-specific constraint hierarchies. The book is divided into two parts: While Part I examines adverb positions in general, Part II investigates under which circumstances an adverb may attach to a phonetically empty constituent in the languages under discussion. The book appeals to a linguistic audience interested in Germanic and Romance languages as well as in theoretical syntax in general.

This paper focuses on a problem which has been the object of numerous studies centered mainly on Germanic languages, and which concerns general linguistics : determining to what extent the meaning of a derivative can be predicted from the meaning of the base. The author attempts to answer this question by taking the Romagnese dialect as an example. By observing 232 Romagnol deverbatives (corresponding to pairs of verbs derived from a single noun with variations in the prefix), it was possible to establish that the meaning of 76% of them can be predicted from the base noun. The main causes of idiosyncrasy are : flaws in the lexical system (homonymy, polysemy), the phenomenon of transference of denomination (metaphor, metonymy), chance events linked to the history of lexicon (modification of originally regular meaning, introduction of units from other systems, etc.). This relatively high rate of readability seems to correct the somewhat chaotic view on derivation proposed by English and American linguists and to accord with the conclusions of scholars (Rainer, Corbin) who have measured the semantic predictability of derivatives in Romance languages

The volume presents new approaches to explaining word order variation and change in the Germanic languages and thus relates to one of the most prominent and widely discussed topics in the theory of language change and diachronic syntax. The novelty of our approach consists in three main points. First of all, we aim at describing functional variety in the field of word order and verb placement in the early Germanic languages not as a result of language contact, but rather as a language-internal phenomenon related to stylistic and grammatical conditions in information packaging. Second, given that information structure is not directly accessible in texts from historical corpora that are available only in written form and bear no or little information on prosody and intonation, it presents various methods of retrieving information-structural categories in such texts. Third, it presents empirical studies on the relation between word order and information structure of the four main texts of the Old High German period and embeds these results in the wider picture of word order change in Germanic. The volume will be of interest to students of German, English, and general linguistics as well as to researchers interested in diachronic syntax, philology of Older German, language change, information structure, discourse semantics, language typology, computational linguistics, and corpus studies.

Phonatory behavior of German speakers (GS) and French speakers (FS) in native (L1) and non-native (L2) speech was instrumentally examined. Vowel productions of the two groups were analyzed using a parametrization of phonatory behaviour and phonatory quality properties in the acoustic signal. The behavior of GS is characterized by more strained adduction of the vocal folds whereas FS show more incomplete glottal closure. Furthermore, GS change their phonatory behavior in the foreign language (=French) by adapting phonatory strategies of FS, whereas FS do not show this tendency. In addition, German beginners (BEG) and partly German advanced learners (ADV) are already orientated on production characteristics of the L2. French BEG however retain their phonatory behavior in L2 (=German) by showing less vocal fold adduction in comparison to their L1. French ADV show the opposite behavior. Finally, ADV of the two speaker groups generally show more strained behavior in L2 productions than BEG. The results provide evidence that GS and FS apply different laryngeal phonatory settings and that they altered their settings in L2 differently. Perceptual evaluation of voice quality of the speech material and a correlation analysis between acoustic and perceptual results are suggested for future research.

The aim of this research will be to conduct a comparative study of the category of aspectuality; that implies defining and analysing the whole complex of general and distinctive properties, characteristic of the languages under consideration, that is, Russian and German, revised in the comparative aspect. The research methods include descriptive method, distributive and introspective analyses. The authors indicate that today contrastive studies are especially relevant to identify common and distinctive features in systems of different languages. It is noted that actional and aspectual semantics, as well as the means of its expression, have become objects of study by linguists at the beginning of the 20th century. Attention is drawn to the actual domestic and foreign significant research in the field of aspectology of genetically unrelated languages, as well as languages that are in a distant genetic relationship. The form and tense of a verb are characteristics of temporality, since, for example, in the Slavic languages, the form organizes and determines temporal relationships. In contrast to the Slavic languages, in the Romance and Germanic languages, species relations are structured on the basis of temporal forms. The comparative approach to the study of time and species in languages belonging to different groups makes it possible to better understand the specifics of species-temporal relations. It is pointed out that the grammatical category of the species as a binary category is represented only in some languages. The need to distinguish between species as a grammatical category inherent in the Slavic languages and as a broad functional and semantic category that exists in all languages is emphasized, since it represents the entire complex of linguistic means that express the nature of the course of action. In the process of analyzing some texts, it was concluded that the absence of a grammatical category of the species in the German language does not indicate the absence of a corresponding concept. During the research, the authors came to the conclusion, that when studying the verb tense, it is necessary to take into account several other factors, apart from the verb forms: the context, the lexical, lexical-grammatical, grammatical and syntactic components, considered within the framework of their interaction in speech, since the functional-semantic field includes interacting means, united by the common function of expressing the semantic attribute of aspectuality, namely, grammar, lexical-grammatical and lexical means.