Stefan Schnell
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 3592339 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Stefan Schnell |
| NOMBRES | Stefan |
| APELLIDO | Schnell |
| FIRMA | SCHNELL S |
| AFILIACIONES | The University of Melbourne |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2036-2263 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 12 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 22 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 11 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2011 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 2 |
A cross-linguistic computational study on one new idea per clause
We investigate a notion related to Chafe’s One New Idea Constraint (ONICON), namely that clauses only contain one new idea at a time. We investigate both the nominal and the verbal domain in discourse production data from 16 diverse languages. We find no convincing evidence for a hard constraint on the number of new ideas per clause, nor for speakers actively managing information flow in discourse. The absence of an underlying ONICON is suggested…
Discourse ergativity and human reference in Basque
One possible usage-based motivation for ergative alignment in grammars is the reference-establishing function shared by the sole argument of intransitives and the patient argument of transitives. Here we test this hypothesis, known as Preferred Argument Structure, against discourse data from Basque, a language with ergative case marking. While we do find a discourse-ergative distribution of lexical forms of reference, our results suggest animacy …
Cross-linguistic patterns in the lexicalisation of bring and take
This study investigates the linguistic expression of bring and take events and more generally of the semantic domain of directed caused accompanied motion (‘directed CAM’) across a sample of eight languages of the Pacific and the Americas. Unlike English, the majority of languages in our sample do not lexicalise directed CAM events by simple verbs, but rather encode the defining meaning components – caused motion, accompaniment, and directedness …
Crosslinguistic Corpus Studies in Linguistic Typology
Corpus-based studies have become increasingly common in linguistic typology over recent years, amounting to the emergence of a new field that we call corpus-based typology. The core idea of corpus-based typology is to take languages as populations of utterances and to systematically investigate text production across languages in this sense. From a usage-based perspective, investigations of variation and preferences of use are at the core of unde…
Efficiency in discourse processing
The introduction of new referents into discourse has traditionally been regarded as a major challenge to language processing, for which speakers deploy specific syntactic configurations, guided by the speaker’s assessment of the recipient’s state of mind (‘recipient design’). In this paper we probe these assumptions against discourse data from nine languages. We find little evidence for specialized syntactic configurations accommodating new refer…
Expression of anaphoric subjects in Vera'a
The choice between a pronoun and zero anaphor for the expression of third-person subjects is examined in a corpus of Vera'a (Oceanic). While predominantly expressed by a pronoun, subjects are found to permit zero form with referents that have low anaphoric distance. Within this context, zero is found to be preferred with a subset of verbal predicates that take a specific tense-aspect-mood-polarity (TAMP) marker that historically retains subject a…
Discourse motivations for pronominal and zero objects across registers in Vera'a
The choice between pronominal and zero form for objects in the Oceanic language Vera'a is investigated quantitatively in texts from two registers with discourse topics of three different ontological class memberships. Discourse topicality is found to predict best the choice between pronoun and zero, outranking the factors of ontological class membership, antecedent form, and antecedent function. Contrary to current models of referent tracking, an…
Whence subject-verb agreement? Investigating the role of topicality, accessibility, and frequency in Vera’a texts
While the grammaticalization of subject agreement appears to be a diachronic near-universal, there has been little agreement on usage-based motivations for this crosslinguistic tendency. Three usage-based approaches – Givón’s NP detachment under topicalization, Ariel’s accessibility theory, and a set of accounts in terms of frequency-driven morphologization – are examined here in the light of corpus data from the Oceanic language Vera’a. The high…
The discourse basis of ergativity revisited
This document contains illustration and justification of the methodology used in our article 'The discourse basis of ergativity revisited
The discourse basis of ergativity revisited
Since Du Bois's (1987b) seminal paper, ergative alignment in morphosyntax has been claimed to correlate with a characteristic constellation of argument realization in discourse: both intransitive subjects (S) and transitive objects (P) serve to introduce new referents via full noun phrases (NPs), while transitive subjects (A) are dispreferred for this function and are thus mostly realized as pronouns or zero (e.g. Dixon 1995, Du Bois et al. 2003,…
Referential Hierarchies in Three-Participant Constructions in Vera'a
This paper 1 explores the relevance of referential hierarchies for different types of threeparticipant constructions in Vera'a, an endangered Oceanic language of North Vanuatu. In Vera'a, animacy, information structure and referential status of discourse participants interact in complex ways to influence the realization of goals/recipients in two different types of construction that both exhibit indirective argument alignment. The choice between …
Documenting Endangered Languages
"The rapid decline in the world's linguistic diversity has prompted the emergence of documentary linguistics. While documentary linguistics aims primarily at creating a durable, accessible and comprehensive record of languages, it has also been a driving force in developing language annotation and analysis software, archiving architecture, improved fieldwork methodologies, and new standards in data accountability and accessibility. More recently,…
The discourse basis of ergativity revisited
Since Du Bois's (1987b) seminal paper, ergative alignment in morphosyntax has been claimed to correlate with a characteristic constellation of argument realization in discourse: both intransitive subjects (S) and transitive objects (P) serve to introduce new referents via full noun phrases (NPs), while transitive subjects (A) are dispreferred for this function and are thus mostly realized as pronouns or zero (e.g. Dixon 1995, Du Bois et al. 2003,…
Discourse motivations for pronominal and zero objects across registers in Vera'a
The choice between pronominal and zero form for objects in the Oceanic language Vera'a is investigated quantitatively in texts from two registers with discourse topics of three different ontological class memberships. Discourse topicality is found to predict best the choice between pronoun and zero, outranking the factors of ontological class membership, antecedent form, and antecedent function. Contrary to current models of referent tracking, an…
Crosslinguistic Corpus Studies in Linguistic Typology
Corpus-based studies have become increasingly common in linguistic typology over recent years, amounting to the emergence of a new field that we call corpus-based typology. The core idea of corpus-based typology is to take languages as populations of utterances and to systematically investigate text production across languages in this sense. From a usage-based perspective, investigations of variation and preferences of use are at the core of unde…
Expression of anaphoric subjects in Vera'a
The choice between a pronoun and zero anaphor for the expression of third-person subjects is examined in a corpus of Vera'a (Oceanic). While predominantly expressed by a pronoun, subjects are found to permit zero form with referents that have low anaphoric distance. Within this context, zero is found to be preferred with a subset of verbal predicates that take a specific tense-aspect-mood-polarity (TAMP) marker that historically retains subject a…
Documenting Endangered Languages
"The rapid decline in the world's linguistic diversity has prompted the emergence of documentary linguistics. While documentary linguistics aims primarily at creating a durable, accessible and comprehensive record of languages, it has also been a driving force in developing language annotation and analysis software, archiving architecture, improved fieldwork methodologies, and new standards in data accountability and accessibility. More recently,…
Referential Hierarchies in Three-Participant Constructions in Vera'a
This paper 1 explores the relevance of referential hierarchies for different types of threeparticipant constructions in Vera'a, an endangered Oceanic language of North Vanuatu. In Vera'a, animacy, information structure and referential status of discourse participants interact in complex ways to influence the realization of goals/recipients in two different types of construction that both exhibit indirective argument alignment. The choice between …
The discourse basis of ergativity revisited
This document contains illustration and justification of the methodology used in our article 'The discourse basis of ergativity revisited
The discourse basis of ergativity revisited
Since Du Bois's (1987b) seminal paper, ergative alignment in morphosyntax has been claimed to correlate with a characteristic constellation of argument realization in discourse: both intransitive subjects (S) and transitive objects (P) serve to introduce new referents via full noun phrases (NPs), while transitive subjects (A) are dispreferred for this function and are thus mostly realized as pronouns or zero (e.g. Dixon 1995, Du Bois et al. 2003,…
Discourse motivations for pronominal and zero objects across registers in Vera'a
The choice between pronominal and zero form for objects in the Oceanic language Vera'a is investigated quantitatively in texts from two registers with discourse topics of three different ontological class memberships. Discourse topicality is found to predict best the choice between pronoun and zero, outranking the factors of ontological class membership, antecedent form, and antecedent function. Contrary to current models of referent tracking, an…
Whence subject-verb agreement? Investigating the role of topicality, accessibility, and frequency in Vera’a texts
While the grammaticalization of subject agreement appears to be a diachronic near-universal, there has been little agreement on usage-based motivations for this crosslinguistic tendency. Three usage-based approaches – Givón’s NP detachment under topicalization, Ariel’s accessibility theory, and a set of accounts in terms of frequency-driven morphologization – are examined here in the light of corpus data from the Oceanic language Vera’a. The high…
Expression of anaphoric subjects in Vera'a
The choice between a pronoun and zero anaphor for the expression of third-person subjects is examined in a corpus of Vera'a (Oceanic). While predominantly expressed by a pronoun, subjects are found to permit zero form with referents that have low anaphoric distance. Within this context, zero is found to be preferred with a subset of verbal predicates that take a specific tense-aspect-mood-polarity (TAMP) marker that historically retains subject a…
Efficiency in discourse processing
The introduction of new referents into discourse has traditionally been regarded as a major challenge to language processing, for which speakers deploy specific syntactic configurations, guided by the speaker’s assessment of the recipient’s state of mind (‘recipient design’). In this paper we probe these assumptions against discourse data from nine languages. We find little evidence for specialized syntactic configurations accommodating new refer…
Cross-linguistic patterns in the lexicalisation of bring and take
This study investigates the linguistic expression of bring and take events and more generally of the semantic domain of directed caused accompanied motion (‘directed CAM’) across a sample of eight languages of the Pacific and the Americas. Unlike English, the majority of languages in our sample do not lexicalise directed CAM events by simple verbs, but rather encode the defining meaning components – caused motion, accompaniment, and directedness …
Crosslinguistic Corpus Studies in Linguistic Typology
Corpus-based studies have become increasingly common in linguistic typology over recent years, amounting to the emergence of a new field that we call corpus-based typology. The core idea of corpus-based typology is to take languages as populations of utterances and to systematically investigate text production across languages in this sense. From a usage-based perspective, investigations of variation and preferences of use are at the core of unde…
Discourse ergativity and human reference in Basque
One possible usage-based motivation for ergative alignment in grammars is the reference-establishing function shared by the sole argument of intransitives and the patient argument of transitives. Here we test this hypothesis, known as Preferred Argument Structure, against discourse data from Basque, a language with ergative case marking. While we do find a discourse-ergative distribution of lexical forms of reference, our results suggest animacy …
A cross-linguistic computational study on one new idea per clause
We investigate a notion related to Chafe’s One New Idea Constraint (ONICON), namely that clauses only contain one new idea at a time. We investigate both the nominal and the verbal domain in discourse production data from 16 diverse languages. We find no convincing evidence for a hard constraint on the number of new ideas per clause, nor for speakers actively managing information flow in discourse. The absence of an underlying ONICON is suggested…
Linguistics (11 obras) · Computer Science (9 obras) · Philosophy (9 obras) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (9 obras) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (8 obras) · Psychology (5 obras) · Sociology (5 obras) · Artificial Intelligence (4 obras) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (4 obras) · Mathematics (4 obras)