P Widmer
Biographic Data
| ID | 26334 |
|---|---|
| NAME | P Widmer |
| GIVEN NAMES | P |
| FAMILY NAME | Widmer |
| SIGNATURE | WIDMER P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Zurich |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9949-5212 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1960 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The road to negation: A comparative study of five typologically and culturally diverse languages
The acquisition of negation is a key milestone in early language development that enables children to express rejection, non-existence, and deny propositions. In this study, we ask whether the development of the functions of negation follows a universal trajectory or varies based on language-specific features and environmental input. We investigate the acquisition of negative functions in 10 children (age = 2;00-3;00) across five typologically ma…
Quantifying the faithfulness of poetry translations in four closely related Slavic languages
Translating poetry is notoriously difficult—some would claim impossible—because it inherently requires making triage decisions what to preserve and what to sacrifice if necessary. Both form and meaning contribute to the esthetic effects of the original, but translations that faithfully preserve the metrical versification principles of the original might struggle to fully preserve lexically conveyed meanings and connotations, and vice versa. Other…
Negation in First Language Acquisition: Universal or Language‐Specific
Negation is a cornerstone of human language and one of the few universals found in all languages. Without negation, neither categorization nor efficient communication would be possible. Languages, however, differ remarkably in how they express negation. It is yet widely unknown how the way negation is marked influences the acquisition process of first language learners. Here, we investigate whether universal or language‐specific cues are more rel…
Daten und Zahlen zur Struktur rigvedischer Metren
In this article we introduce and describe an easily accessible data set that contains metrical information on each Rigvedic syllable and pāda, in particular weight and position of each syllable in the pāda, transitions between adjacent syllables, and position of word boundaries within pādas. We illustrate the usefulness of this data by providing some sample summary statistics as well as an assessment of a widely assumed metrical rule, namely the …
Areal and phylogenetic dimensions of word order variation in Indo-European languages
Both areal and phylogenetic affiliation have been discussed as driving factors of the distribution of word order in the languages of the world. However, disentangling the interaction of these two factors is challenging. Here we take Indo-European as a test case. Word order in this family is largely homogeneous both within areas and within branches, which makes it difficult to assess which factor was more important in shaping the present-day distr…
Word order evolves at similar rates in main and subordinate clauses: Corpus-based evidence from Indo-European
In syntactic change, it remains an open issue whether word orders are more conservative or innovative in subordinate clauses compared with main clauses. Using 47 dependency-annotated corpora and Bayesian phylogenetic inference, we explore the evolution of S/V, V/O, and S/O orders across main and subordinate clauses in Indo-European. Our results reveal similar rates of change across clause types, with no evidence for any inherent conservatism of s…
Pairing peers and pears: Changing conventions of Gheg Albanian heritage speakers
Migration events splitting speaker communities and establishing novel contact situations are among the major drivers of language variation and change. While the precise processes that lead to change cannot usually be determined for past events with any certainty, the study of minority and heritage language usage in apparent time may provide insight into the contribution of the linguistic behavior underlying the dynamics. We capitalize on this and…
Detecting contact in language trees: A Bayesian phylogenetic model with horizontal transfer
Phylogenetic trees are a central tool for studying language evolution and have wide implications for understanding cultural evolution as a whole. For example, they have been the basis of studies on the evolution of musical instruments, religious beliefs and political complexity. Bayesian phylogenetic methods are transparent regarding the data and assumptions underlying the inference. One of these assumptions—that languages change independently—is…
Slipping en vieil islandais
Cet article réunit deux études indépendantes qui traitent le passage du discours direct au discours indirect en vieil islandais : La première étude, par P. Widmer, se propose de donner un aperçu de l'utilisation et des fonctions du slipping dans les sagas et le grágás, alors que dans la deuxième étude, N. Meylan entreprend l'examen philologique d'un cas de slipping appartenant à un genre tout différent, à savoir la poésie eddique
Formen und Funktionen des Übergangs von indirekter Rede in direkte Rede im altsächsischen Heliand
Dans l'Heliand, une traduction en vieux saxon d'une narration sacrée dans le style épique, le glissement soudain du discours direct au discours indirect s 'observe davantage que dans les autres textes épiques des langues germaniques anciennes. Ce fait peut s'expliquer par l'influence de contraintes pragmatiques ayant pour résultat un style apparemment oral. Le poète de l'Heliand, un personnage, semble-t-il, de grande érudition, n'adopte cependant…
Evaluating Syntactic Annotation of Ancient Languages: Lessons from the Vedic Treebank
In this paper we introduce an extended version of the Vedic Treebank ( vtb , Hellwig et al. 2020) which comes along with revisited and extended annotation guidelines. In order to assess the quality of our annotations as well as the usability and limits of the guidelines we performed an inter-annotator agreement test. The results show that agreement between annotators is hampered by various factors, most prominently by insufficient understanding o…
R̥gvedic depictive adjectival compounds and their functions
The present study provides a survey of the semantics of depictive (in a broad sense, including circumstantials) adjectival compounds in Vedic Sanskrit. Following the typology of depictive constructions developed by Himmelmann & Schultze-Berndt (2005), we structure our classification along the semantic fields that such expressions tend to occur in. Our results show that in Vedic, the use of depictive adjectival compounds spans (almost) the whole g…
Convergence by Shared Ancestry in Romance
In many cases of apparent contact-induced change the contribution of genealogical correlation in the language sample and its interaction with processes such as matter and pattern replication are difficult to specify. In order to get a better sense of the relevance of shared ancestry, we quantify the change in similarity since the late Middle Ages in a sample of Romance and Germanic languages with data from a selected grammatical domain (expressio…
Reassessing Rigvedic Strata
It is commonly assumed that linguistically the Rigveda is a heterogeneous collection of texts. Since the early days of Vedic scholarship, researchers have tried to correlate grammatical properties with individual parts of the Rigveda, aiming at identifying layers and strata. In this article we review stratifications proposed in previous literature and assess the support for these strata by performing statistical analyses with allomorphic linguist…
Numeral classifiers and number marking in Indo-Iranian: A phylogenetic approach
This paper investigates the origins of sortal numeral classifiers in the Indo-Iranian languages. While these are often assumed to result from contact with non-Indo-European languages, an alternative possibility is that classifiers developed as a response to the rise of optional plural marking. This alternative is in line with the so-called Greenberg-Sanches-Slobin (henceforth GSS ) generalization. The GSS generalization holds that the presence of…
Bretona-marking of (internal) verbal arguments: A result of language contact
We discuss a potential case of borrowing in this paper: Bretona- 'of', 'from' marking of (internal) verbal arguments, unique in Insular Celtic languages, and reminiscent of Gallo-Romancede/du- (anden-) arguments. Looking at potential Gallo-Romance parallels of three Middle Breton constructions analyzed in some detail (awith indefinite mass nominals in direct object position,a-marking of internal arguments under the scope of negation,a[allomorphsa…
Evidence for Britain and Ireland as a linguistic area
Approaches to linguistic areas have largely focused either on purely qualitative investigation of area-formation processes, on quantitative and qualitative exploration of synchronic distributions of linguistic features without considering time, or on theoretical issues related to the definition of the notion ‘linguistic area’. What is still missing are approaches that supplement qualitative research on area-formation processes with quantitative m…
Evidence for Britain and Ireland as a linguistic area: Supplementary material
Towards a Multivariate Classification of Event Noun Constructions in Middle Welsh
S, A, and P argument demotion with preverbal imm-(a-N) in Old and Middle Irish
Démotion du sujet et de l’objet direct avec imm-(a-N) en irlandais médiéval. L’irlandais médiéval est susceptible d’intégrer dans son complexe verbal un morphème imm-(a-N) avec des propriétés syntaxiques et sémantiques très particulières. Dans cet article, nous nous proposons de fournir une description de l’emploi d’imm-(a-N), tout en tenant compte des différents changements que ce morphème induit sur la réalisation des arguments, et d’explorer l…
NP recursion over time: Evidence from Indo-European: Supplemental Material
NP recursion over time: Evidence from Indo-European
Some languages constrain the recursive embedding of NPs to some specific morphosyntactic types, allowing it, for example, only with genitives but not with bare juxtaposition. In Indo-European, every type of NP embedding-genitives, adjectivizers, adpositions, head marking, or juxtaposition-is unavailable for syntactic recursion in at least one attested language. In addition, attested pathways of change show that NP types that allow recursion can e…
Vedische exozentrische Komposita mit drei Relationen
In this paper it is suggested that a large subset of Vedic exocentric nominal compounds can best be described by focusing on two semantosyntactic relationships that exist in addition to the first one, viz. the modificative relation an exocentric compound bears to the head noun: A second, external relation which establishes a link between one single member of the compound and the noun the compound modifies as a whole, and a third, internal relatio…
Pascal Sidler, Schwarzröcke, Jakobiner, Patrioten: Revolution, Kontinuität und Widerstand im konfessionell gemischten Toggenburg 1795-1803, 2013
No abstract available
Laure Ognois, Die Pfarrer und der Umbruch, 2009
No abstract available
NP recursion over time: Evidence from Indo-European
Some languages constrain the recursive embedding of NPs to some specific morphosyntactic types, allowing it, for example, only with genitives but not with bare juxtaposition. In Indo-European, every type of NP embedding-genitives, adjectivizers, adpositions, head marking, or juxtaposition-is unavailable for syntactic recursion in at least one attested language. In addition, attested pathways of change show that NP types that allow recursion can e…
Bretona-marking of (internal) verbal arguments: A result of language contact
We discuss a potential case of borrowing in this paper: Bretona- 'of', 'from' marking of (internal) verbal arguments, unique in Insular Celtic languages, and reminiscent of Gallo-Romancede/du- (anden-) arguments. Looking at potential Gallo-Romance parallels of three Middle Breton constructions analyzed in some detail (awith indefinite mass nominals in direct object position,a-marking of internal arguments under the scope of negation,a[allomorphsa…
Zur Geographie des Suhrentales
No abstract available
Fatigue in long-duration travel diaries
Zur Bedeutung von indoiranisch *nāuiia
Young Avestan nāuuiia-, Old Persian nāviyā, Sanskrit nāvya-, all descending from Indo-Iranian *nāuiia-, are usually glossed by ‘passable (only) by boat, not to be crossed without the help of a boat’. A closer examination of the contexts they occur in reveals that the meaning ‘streaming, raging’ is much more appropriate. In consequence, *nāuiia- can not be a secondary derivative of Indo-Iranian *nāu- ‘ship, boat’, which is improbable for other rea…
Eric Godel, Die Zentralschweiz in der Helvetik (1798–1803), 2009
No abstract available
Laure Ognois, Die Pfarrer und der Umbruch, 2009
No abstract available
Satzspaltung im Avestischen und Altpersischen (mit einem Ausblick auf das Mittelpersische)
This paper investigates the formal and functional properties of cleft sentences in Avestan and Old Persian, a construction whose existence has not been recognised in these languages hitherto. In Avestan, cleft sentences mainly function as focussing device, whereas in Old Persian, their principal function consists in the structuring of information on a text level. It is, furthermore, pointed to the fact that the usage of cleft sentences increases …
Pascal Sidler, Schwarzröcke, Jakobiner, Patrioten: Revolution, Kontinuität und Widerstand im konfessionell gemischten Toggenburg 1795-1803, 2013
No abstract available
Vedische exozentrische Komposita mit drei Relationen
In this paper it is suggested that a large subset of Vedic exocentric nominal compounds can best be described by focusing on two semantosyntactic relationships that exist in addition to the first one, viz. the modificative relation an exocentric compound bears to the head noun: A second, external relation which establishes a link between one single member of the compound and the noun the compound modifies as a whole, and a third, internal relatio…
S, A, and P argument demotion with preverbal imm-(a-N) in Old and Middle Irish
Démotion du sujet et de l’objet direct avec imm-(a-N) en irlandais médiéval. L’irlandais médiéval est susceptible d’intégrer dans son complexe verbal un morphème imm-(a-N) avec des propriétés syntaxiques et sémantiques très particulières. Dans cet article, nous nous proposons de fournir une description de l’emploi d’imm-(a-N), tout en tenant compte des différents changements que ce morphème induit sur la réalisation des arguments, et d’explorer l…
NP recursion over time: Evidence from Indo-European: Supplemental Material
NP recursion over time: Evidence from Indo-European
Some languages constrain the recursive embedding of NPs to some specific morphosyntactic types, allowing it, for example, only with genitives but not with bare juxtaposition. In Indo-European, every type of NP embedding-genitives, adjectivizers, adpositions, head marking, or juxtaposition-is unavailable for syntactic recursion in at least one attested language. In addition, attested pathways of change show that NP types that allow recursion can e…
Towards a Multivariate Classification of Event Noun Constructions in Middle Welsh
Evidence for Britain and Ireland as a linguistic area
Approaches to linguistic areas have largely focused either on purely qualitative investigation of area-formation processes, on quantitative and qualitative exploration of synchronic distributions of linguistic features without considering time, or on theoretical issues related to the definition of the notion ‘linguistic area’. What is still missing are approaches that supplement qualitative research on area-formation processes with quantitative m…
Evidence for Britain and Ireland as a linguistic area: Supplementary material
Numeral classifiers and number marking in Indo-Iranian: A phylogenetic approach
This paper investigates the origins of sortal numeral classifiers in the Indo-Iranian languages. While these are often assumed to result from contact with non-Indo-European languages, an alternative possibility is that classifiers developed as a response to the rise of optional plural marking. This alternative is in line with the so-called Greenberg-Sanches-Slobin (henceforth GSS ) generalization. The GSS generalization holds that the presence of…
Bretona-marking of (internal) verbal arguments: A result of language contact
We discuss a potential case of borrowing in this paper: Bretona- 'of', 'from' marking of (internal) verbal arguments, unique in Insular Celtic languages, and reminiscent of Gallo-Romancede/du- (anden-) arguments. Looking at potential Gallo-Romance parallels of three Middle Breton constructions analyzed in some detail (awith indefinite mass nominals in direct object position,a-marking of internal arguments under the scope of negation,a[allomorphsa…
Evaluating Syntactic Annotation of Ancient Languages: Lessons from the Vedic Treebank
In this paper we introduce an extended version of the Vedic Treebank ( vtb , Hellwig et al. 2020) which comes along with revisited and extended annotation guidelines. In order to assess the quality of our annotations as well as the usability and limits of the guidelines we performed an inter-annotator agreement test. The results show that agreement between annotators is hampered by various factors, most prominently by insufficient understanding o…
R̥gvedic depictive adjectival compounds and their functions
The present study provides a survey of the semantics of depictive (in a broad sense, including circumstantials) adjectival compounds in Vedic Sanskrit. Following the typology of depictive constructions developed by Himmelmann & Schultze-Berndt (2005), we structure our classification along the semantic fields that such expressions tend to occur in. Our results show that in Vedic, the use of depictive adjectival compounds spans (almost) the whole g…
Convergence by Shared Ancestry in Romance
In many cases of apparent contact-induced change the contribution of genealogical correlation in the language sample and its interaction with processes such as matter and pattern replication are difficult to specify. In order to get a better sense of the relevance of shared ancestry, we quantify the change in similarity since the late Middle Ages in a sample of Romance and Germanic languages with data from a selected grammatical domain (expressio…
Reassessing Rigvedic Strata
It is commonly assumed that linguistically the Rigveda is a heterogeneous collection of texts. Since the early days of Vedic scholarship, researchers have tried to correlate grammatical properties with individual parts of the Rigveda, aiming at identifying layers and strata. In this article we review stratifications proposed in previous literature and assess the support for these strata by performing statistical analyses with allomorphic linguist…
Detecting contact in language trees: A Bayesian phylogenetic model with horizontal transfer
Phylogenetic trees are a central tool for studying language evolution and have wide implications for understanding cultural evolution as a whole. For example, they have been the basis of studies on the evolution of musical instruments, religious beliefs and political complexity. Bayesian phylogenetic methods are transparent regarding the data and assumptions underlying the inference. One of these assumptions—that languages change independently—is…
Slipping en vieil islandais
Cet article réunit deux études indépendantes qui traitent le passage du discours direct au discours indirect en vieil islandais : La première étude, par P. Widmer, se propose de donner un aperçu de l'utilisation et des fonctions du slipping dans les sagas et le grágás, alors que dans la deuxième étude, N. Meylan entreprend l'examen philologique d'un cas de slipping appartenant à un genre tout différent, à savoir la poésie eddique
Formen und Funktionen des Übergangs von indirekter Rede in direkte Rede im altsächsischen Heliand
Dans l'Heliand, une traduction en vieux saxon d'une narration sacrée dans le style épique, le glissement soudain du discours direct au discours indirect s 'observe davantage que dans les autres textes épiques des langues germaniques anciennes. Ce fait peut s'expliquer par l'influence de contraintes pragmatiques ayant pour résultat un style apparemment oral. Le poète de l'Heliand, un personnage, semble-t-il, de grande érudition, n'adopte cependant…
Word order evolves at similar rates in main and subordinate clauses: Corpus-based evidence from Indo-European
In syntactic change, it remains an open issue whether word orders are more conservative or innovative in subordinate clauses compared with main clauses. Using 47 dependency-annotated corpora and Bayesian phylogenetic inference, we explore the evolution of S/V, V/O, and S/O orders across main and subordinate clauses in Indo-European. Our results reveal similar rates of change across clause types, with no evidence for any inherent conservatism of s…
Pairing peers and pears: Changing conventions of Gheg Albanian heritage speakers
Migration events splitting speaker communities and establishing novel contact situations are among the major drivers of language variation and change. While the precise processes that lead to change cannot usually be determined for past events with any certainty, the study of minority and heritage language usage in apparent time may provide insight into the contribution of the linguistic behavior underlying the dynamics. We capitalize on this and…
Computer Science (17 works) · Linguistics (17 works) · Philosophy (17 works) · Linguistics and language evolution (12 works) · Mathematics (12 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (10 works) · Artificial Intelligence (9 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (8 works) · History (7 works) · Natural language processing (7 works)