Category Archives: Publications

Between syntax and morphology (Glossa)

Roland Schäfer and Ulrike Sayatz. Between syntax and morphology: German noun+verb units. Accepted by Glossa on 13 November 2023.

Final submitted version of 12 November 2023 (accepted as of 13 November 2023)

DOI for complete dataset and article: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10116662

Abstract We show that graphemic variation—at least in some writing systems—can be analysed in terms of grammatical variation given a usage- based probabilistic view of the grammar-graphemics interface. Concretely, we examine a type of noun+verb unit in German, which can be written as one word or two. We argue that the variation in writing is rooted in the units’ ambiguous status in between morphology (one word) and syntax (two words). The major influencing factors are shown to be the semantic relation between the noun and the verb (argument or oblique relation) and the morphosyntactic context. In prototypically nominal contexts, a reinterpretation of the unit as a noun+noun compound is facilitated, which favours spelling as one word, while in prototypically verbal contexts, a syntactic realisation and consequently spelling as two words is preferred. We report the results of two large-scale corpus studies and a controlled production experiment to corroborate our analysis.

Probabilistic German Morphosyntax (Habilitationsschrift)

Probabilistic German Morphosyntax is a sequence of papers with a methodological introduction representing my kumulative Habilitation (cumulative version of the second thesis in the German-speaking systems). As a result, I obtained the venia legendi for German and General Linguistics from the Faculty of Language Sciences (Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät) at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin on 10 April 2019.

Download: Roland Schäfer (2018) Probabilistic German Morphosyntax. General introduction, overview, and wrap-up (Rahmentext der kumulativen Habilitationsschrift). Continue reading

Einführung in die grammatische Beschreibung des Deutschen, dritte Auflage (2018)

Roland Schäfer. 2018. Einführung in die grammatische Beschreibung des Deutschen (Introduction to the Grammar of German), Dritte, überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage. Berlin: Language Science Press, Text Books in Language Science, No. 2. [BibTeX]

The book can be downloaded freely under an open access license (CC-BY). If you use the book, why not do me a favor and tweet it @codeslapper or send me a message? Or visit the book website grammatick.de.

Buy it on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.de/dp/3961101183

Previous editions: second edition, first edition.