http://hdl.handle.net/10900/87132 Tue, 12 May 2026 20:01:13 GMT 2026-05-12T20:01:13Z https://publikationen.uni-tuebingen.de:443/xmlui/bitstream/id/30b98911-2c4e-45c5-befc-b20c8d37672d/ http://hdl.handle.net/10900/87132 http://hdl.handle.net/10900/91253 The Learnability of Evidential Systems in the Case of L1 Bulgarian and L2 English Ilchovska, Zlatomira Georgieva; Culbertson, Jennifer Evidentiality represents the abstract grammatical system encoding the source of information (Aikhenvald, 2004), and one hypothesis is that evidential systems' development in languages could be explained through the action of cognitive biases on language learning (Fedzechkina et al., 2012). Consequently, this article tests the learnability of different two-category (Aikhenvald, 2004) evidential systems, in a semi-artificial language learning experiment with Bulgarian speakers, and hypothesizes to reflect the typological pattern of those systems' distribution in the world languages. The alternative hypothesis predicts that the learnability of the evidential systems would depend on the languages that the participants speak and would be influenced by a morphosyntactic transfer from participants' native language - the grammatically evidential “Non-firsthand versus ‘everything else’“ (Aikhenvald, 2004) Bulgarian. Despite the fact that the mixed-model analyses performed on accuracy and response time did not display any significant effect or interaction (p > 0.1), the small trends showed by the results possibly reflect a salient cognitive and semantic distinction between direct and indirect evidential information that is easier for acquisition, compared to marking which violates this categorisation. Wed, 31 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10900/91253 2019-07-31T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/91252 Corpus Data in Experimental Linguistics Börner, Alicia Katharina; Pieper, Jutta; Kiss, Tibor This contribution outlines a novel way of experimental item construction which aims at integrating as much realistic data as possible in experimental studies on phenomena that seem to ban extensive recourse to natural data. As a case in point, we discuss syntactic base positions. In Modified Stimulus Composition, semantically annotated corpus data are extracted and systematically modified so as to fit an indicative test surround. With that, we arrive at near-natural experimental items covering natural lexical variability, thus preventing bias and artificiality. As the systematic derivation is captured in an annotation scheme, the method in addition facilitates further analyses of surface-related phenomena. Wed, 31 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10900/91252 2019-07-31T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/91251 What’s the Alternative? Experimental Research on the Extent of Focus Alternative Sets Ndao, Anna-Lisa; Spalek, Katharina According to alternative semantics (Rooth, 1985, 1992), the main function of focus is to evoke contextually relevant alternatives for a focused element. The present study uses a cross-modal priming experiment to investigate the extent of these focus alternative sets that are being activated in the listeners' minds when processing a focused element. Wed, 31 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10900/91251 2019-07-31T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10900/91250 Intervention Effects in NPI-Environments: A Case of Scope Incompatibility? Freitag, Constantin Certain quantifiers have been suggested to be interveners in wh-questions and in NPI-licensing environments. The current study investigates NPI-licensing in German and presents evidence from acceptability judgments and self-paced reading which indicates that certain quantifiers indeed give rise to “intervention effects”. Surprisingly, however, the same effect was found in minimally different structures where the NPI was replaced by a non-NPI. We argue that these effects stem from scope incompatibilities of certain semantic operators and are independent of NPI-licensing. Wed, 31 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10900/91250 2019-07-31T00:00:00Z