Alena Witzlack-Makarevich
Biographic Data
| ID | 1342258 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alena Witzlack-Makarevich |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alena |
| FAMILY NAME | Witzlack-Makarevich |
| SIGNATURE | WITZLACK-MAKAREVICH A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0138-4635 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 12 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The cross-cultural big two
63,720). (3) The 45-item Cross-Cultural Big Two Inventory was assessed psychometrically and validated against external criteria in the Africa Long Life Study samples and (4) in the online data and additionally compared to existing two-factor frameworks. The relation of the cross-cultural big two to other two-factor models and theories, its future development, and the potential and importance of culturally decentered models and inventories are dis…
Towards a phonological typology of the Kalahari Basin Area languages
This article reports some results of the first large-scale, comprehensive survey of the phonological systems of the Khoisan languages of the Kalahari Basin Area. These languages are famous for their large sets of click phonemes, a typologically rare characteristic otherwise found only in a limited number of languages worldwide. They are also unique because the click phonemes carry a high functional load in terms of phonemic and lexical distinctio…
A corpus-based analysis of P indexing in Ruuli (Bantu, JE103)
Verbs in Bantu languages usually carry an obligatory subject (or S/A) prefix, whereas the presence of a transitive object (or P) prefixes depends on various language-specific factors. A number of such factors is well described in a range of studies mainly based on elicited data. To examine their interplay in naturalistic texts, we conducted a corpus-based case study of object prefixes (or P indexing in the terminology used in this article) in the…
Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss
While global patterns of human genetic diversity are increasingly well characterized, the diversity of human languages remains less systematically described. Here we outline the Grambank database. With over 400,000 data points and 2,400 languages, Grambank is the largest comparative grammatical database available. The comprehensiveness of Grambank allows us to quantify the relative effects of genealogical inheritance and geographic proximity on t…
The extent and degree of utterance-final word lengthening in spontaneous speech from 10 languages
Words in utterance-final positions are often pronounced more slowly than utterance-medial words, as previous studies on individual languages have shown. This paper provides a systematic cross-linguistic comparison of relative durations of final and penultimate words in utterances in terms of the degree to which such words are lengthened. The study uses time-aligned corpora from 10 genealogically, areally, and culturally diverse languages, includi…
Antipassive
Clausal complementation in Ruuli (Bantu, JE103)
This paper describes the morphosyntactic and semantic characteristics of clausal object complementation in the Great Lakes Bantu Language Ruuli (JE103). In addition to providing an overview of the complementation strategies in Ruuli, parallels will be drawn to constructions described for related languages as well as common cross-linguistic patterns in clausal complementation. Ruuli employs several different complementation strategies, including i…
Valency and Transitivity in Contact
Referential and lexical factors in alignment variation of trivalent verbs
Argument marking with trivalent verbs exhibits a much larger variation than argument marking with bivalent verbs. In many cases, this variation – stemming both from referential and lexical factors – presents a problem when attempting crosslinguistic comparison of alignment patterns of trivalent verbs. Often, this problem results in picking just one of a number of patterns as representative for comparative purposes and thus ignoring the rest of th…
Referential hierarchies and alignment
A referential hierarchy is a scalar representation of types of referents or referring expressions that are ranked according to their deictic, semantic, and/or dis- course-pragmatic properties. 1 The first representation of this kind was Silverstein ’ s (1976: 113) “ hierarchy of inherent lexical content ” , 2 which predicts tendencies of the distribution of accusative vs. ergative alignment patterns in languages with ergative traits. Silverstein …
Decomposing hierarchical alignment
Apart from common cases of differential argument marking, referential hierarchies affect argument marking in two ways: (a) through hierarchical marking, where markers compete for a slot and the competition is resolved by a hierarchy, and (b) through co-argument sensitivity, where the marking of one argument depends on the properties of its co-argument. Here we show that while co-argument sensitivity cannot be analyzed in terms of hierarchical mar…
Semantic role clustering
This paper seeks to determine to what extent there is cross-linguistic evidence for postulating clusters of predicate-specific semantic roles such as experiencer, cognizer, possessor, etc. For this, we survey non-default case assignments in a sample of 141 languages and annotate the associated predicates for cross-linguistically recurrent semantic roles, such as ‘the one who feels cold’, ‘the one who eats sth.’, ‘the thing that is being eaten’. W…
Impersonal Constructions
Reviewed by: Impersonal Constructions: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective ed. by Andrej Malchukov, Anna Siewierska Alena Witzlack-Makarevich and Csilla Kász Impersonal Constructions: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Edited by Andrej Malchukov and Anna Siewierska. Studies in Language Companion Series 124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2011. Pp. x + 641. $158.00 (hardcover). Impersonal constructions (such as Latin me pudet, lit., ‘me shames’, German mich f…
Decomposing hierarchical alignment
Apart from common cases of differential argument marking, referential hierarchies affect argument marking in two ways: (a) through hierarchical marking, where markers compete for a slot and the competition is resolved by a hierarchy, and (b) through co-argument sensitivity, where the marking of one argument depends on the properties of its co-argument. Here we show that while co-argument sensitivity cannot be analyzed in terms of hierarchical mar…
Referential hierarchies and alignment
A referential hierarchy is a scalar representation of types of referents or referring expressions that are ranked according to their deictic, semantic, and/or dis- course-pragmatic properties. 1 The first representation of this kind was Silverstein ’ s (1976: 113) “ hierarchy of inherent lexical content ” , 2 which predicts tendencies of the distribution of accusative vs. ergative alignment patterns in languages with ergative traits. Silverstein …
The cross-cultural big two
63,720). (3) The 45-item Cross-Cultural Big Two Inventory was assessed psychometrically and validated against external criteria in the Africa Long Life Study samples and (4) in the online data and additionally compared to existing two-factor frameworks. The relation of the cross-cultural big two to other two-factor models and theories, its future development, and the potential and importance of culturally decentered models and inventories are dis…
Clausal complementation in Ruuli (Bantu, JE103)
This paper describes the morphosyntactic and semantic characteristics of clausal object complementation in the Great Lakes Bantu Language Ruuli (JE103). In addition to providing an overview of the complementation strategies in Ruuli, parallels will be drawn to constructions described for related languages as well as common cross-linguistic patterns in clausal complementation. Ruuli employs several different complementation strategies, including i…
Valency and Transitivity in Contact
Semantic role clustering
This paper seeks to determine to what extent there is cross-linguistic evidence for postulating clusters of predicate-specific semantic roles such as experiencer, cognizer, possessor, etc. For this, we survey non-default case assignments in a sample of 141 languages and annotate the associated predicates for cross-linguistically recurrent semantic roles, such as ‘the one who feels cold’, ‘the one who eats sth.’, ‘the thing that is being eaten’. W…
Impersonal Constructions
Reviewed by: Impersonal Constructions: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective ed. by Andrej Malchukov, Anna Siewierska Alena Witzlack-Makarevich and Csilla Kász Impersonal Constructions: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Edited by Andrej Malchukov and Anna Siewierska. Studies in Language Companion Series 124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2011. Pp. x + 641. $158.00 (hardcover). Impersonal constructions (such as Latin me pudet, lit., ‘me shames’, German mich f…
Referential and lexical factors in alignment variation of trivalent verbs
Argument marking with trivalent verbs exhibits a much larger variation than argument marking with bivalent verbs. In many cases, this variation – stemming both from referential and lexical factors – presents a problem when attempting crosslinguistic comparison of alignment patterns of trivalent verbs. Often, this problem results in picking just one of a number of patterns as representative for comparative purposes and thus ignoring the rest of th…
Referential hierarchies and alignment
A referential hierarchy is a scalar representation of types of referents or referring expressions that are ranked according to their deictic, semantic, and/or dis- course-pragmatic properties. 1 The first representation of this kind was Silverstein ’ s (1976: 113) “ hierarchy of inherent lexical content ” , 2 which predicts tendencies of the distribution of accusative vs. ergative alignment patterns in languages with ergative traits. Silverstein …
Decomposing hierarchical alignment
Apart from common cases of differential argument marking, referential hierarchies affect argument marking in two ways: (a) through hierarchical marking, where markers compete for a slot and the competition is resolved by a hierarchy, and (b) through co-argument sensitivity, where the marking of one argument depends on the properties of its co-argument. Here we show that while co-argument sensitivity cannot be analyzed in terms of hierarchical mar…
Valency and Transitivity in Contact
Clausal complementation in Ruuli (Bantu, JE103)
This paper describes the morphosyntactic and semantic characteristics of clausal object complementation in the Great Lakes Bantu Language Ruuli (JE103). In addition to providing an overview of the complementation strategies in Ruuli, parallels will be drawn to constructions described for related languages as well as common cross-linguistic patterns in clausal complementation. Ruuli employs several different complementation strategies, including i…
The extent and degree of utterance-final word lengthening in spontaneous speech from 10 languages
Words in utterance-final positions are often pronounced more slowly than utterance-medial words, as previous studies on individual languages have shown. This paper provides a systematic cross-linguistic comparison of relative durations of final and penultimate words in utterances in terms of the degree to which such words are lengthened. The study uses time-aligned corpora from 10 genealogically, areally, and culturally diverse languages, includi…
Antipassive
A corpus-based analysis of P indexing in Ruuli (Bantu, JE103)
Verbs in Bantu languages usually carry an obligatory subject (or S/A) prefix, whereas the presence of a transitive object (or P) prefixes depends on various language-specific factors. A number of such factors is well described in a range of studies mainly based on elicited data. To examine their interplay in naturalistic texts, we conducted a corpus-based case study of object prefixes (or P indexing in the terminology used in this article) in the…
Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss
While global patterns of human genetic diversity are increasingly well characterized, the diversity of human languages remains less systematically described. Here we outline the Grambank database. With over 400,000 data points and 2,400 languages, Grambank is the largest comparative grammatical database available. The comprehensiveness of Grambank allows us to quantify the relative effects of genealogical inheritance and geographic proximity on t…
Towards a phonological typology of the Kalahari Basin Area languages
This article reports some results of the first large-scale, comprehensive survey of the phonological systems of the Khoisan languages of the Kalahari Basin Area. These languages are famous for their large sets of click phonemes, a typologically rare characteristic otherwise found only in a limited number of languages worldwide. They are also unique because the click phonemes carry a high functional load in terms of phonemic and lexical distinctio…
The cross-cultural big two
63,720). (3) The 45-item Cross-Cultural Big Two Inventory was assessed psychometrically and validated against external criteria in the Africa Long Life Study samples and (4) in the online data and additionally compared to existing two-factor frameworks. The relation of the cross-cultural big two to other two-factor models and theories, its future development, and the potential and importance of culturally decentered models and inventories are dis…
Computer Science (11 works) · Linguistics (11 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Natural Language Processing Techniques (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (6 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (5 works) · Artificial Intelligence (4 works) · Language and cultural evolution (4 works) · History (3 works)