Marta Wierzba
Biographic Data
| ID | 807093 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Marta Wierzba |
| GIVEN NAMES | Marta |
| FAMILY NAME | Wierzba |
| SIGNATURE | WIERZBA M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Potsdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8610-0464 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 7 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 7 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Sources of variability in the syntactic flexibility of idioms
Idiomatic verb phrases (e.g., kick the bucket, fig. 'to die') vary in their syntactic flexibility: they can undergo operations like, e.g., passivization (“The bucket was kicked”) to varying degrees. We (re-)consider potential sources of this variability. It has been proposed that compositionality influences syntactic flexibility of idioms. In the first part of the paper, we reassess this finding from a methodological perspective by replicating ea…
The syntactic flexibility of German and English idioms
It is controversial which idioms can occur with which syntactic structures. For example, can Mary kicked the bucket (figurative meaning: ‘Mary died’) be passivized to The bucket was kicked by Mary ? We present a series of experiments in which we test which structures are compatible with which idioms in German (for which there are few experimental data so far) and English, using acceptability judgments. For some of the tested structures – includin…
Condition C in German A′-movement
In recent experimental work, arguments for or against Condition C reconstruction in A′-movement have been based on low/high availability of coreference in sentences with and without A′-movement. We argue that this reasoning is problematic: It involves arbitrary thresholds, and the results are potentially confounded by the different surface orders of the compared structures and non-syntactic factors. We present three experiments with designs that …
The German additive particle noch
The particle noch (‘still’) can have an additive reading similar to auch (‘also’). We argue that both particles indicate that a previously partially answered QUD is re-opened to add a further answer. The particles differ in that the QUD, in the case of auch, can be re-opened with respect to the same topic situation, whereas noch indicates that the QUD is re-opened with respect to a new topic situation. This account predicts a difference in the ac…
Expression of information structure in West Slavic
Expression of information structure in West Slavic
The received wisdom is that word-order alternations in Slavic languages arise as a direct consequence of word-order-related information-structure constraints such as ‘Place given expressions before new ones’. In this article, we compare the word-order hypothesis with a competing one, according to which word-order alternations arise as a consequence of a prosodic constraint: ‘Avoid stress on given expressions’. Based on novel experimental and mode…
The role of givenness, presupposition, and prosody in Czech word order
We present evidence from acceptability judgment experiments that there is systematic prosodic givenness marking in Czech in that discourse-salient elements avoid sentence stress, contra the claim in Kučerová (2007, 2012) that givenness is marked only syntactically---by establishing a word order in which all given elements precede all new ones---and not prosodically in Czech. We argue that the syntactic movement of given elements results from the …
Expression of information structure in West Slavic
The received wisdom is that word-order alternations in Slavic languages arise as a direct consequence of word-order-related information-structure constraints such as ‘Place given expressions before new ones’. In this article, we compare the word-order hypothesis with a competing one, according to which word-order alternations arise as a consequence of a prosodic constraint: ‘Avoid stress on given expressions’. Based on novel experimental and mode…
Condition C in German A′-movement
In recent experimental work, arguments for or against Condition C reconstruction in A′-movement have been based on low/high availability of coreference in sentences with and without A′-movement. We argue that this reasoning is problematic: It involves arbitrary thresholds, and the results are potentially confounded by the different surface orders of the compared structures and non-syntactic factors. We present three experiments with designs that …
The role of givenness, presupposition, and prosody in Czech word order
We present evidence from acceptability judgment experiments that there is systematic prosodic givenness marking in Czech in that discourse-salient elements avoid sentence stress, contra the claim in Kučerová (2007, 2012) that givenness is marked only syntactically---by establishing a word order in which all given elements precede all new ones---and not prosodically in Czech. We argue that the syntactic movement of given elements results from the …
Expression of information structure in West Slavic
Expression of information structure in West Slavic
The received wisdom is that word-order alternations in Slavic languages arise as a direct consequence of word-order-related information-structure constraints such as ‘Place given expressions before new ones’. In this article, we compare the word-order hypothesis with a competing one, according to which word-order alternations arise as a consequence of a prosodic constraint: ‘Avoid stress on given expressions’. Based on novel experimental and mode…
The German additive particle noch
The particle noch (‘still’) can have an additive reading similar to auch (‘also’). We argue that both particles indicate that a previously partially answered QUD is re-opened to add a further answer. The particles differ in that the QUD, in the case of auch, can be re-opened with respect to the same topic situation, whereas noch indicates that the QUD is re-opened with respect to a new topic situation. This account predicts a difference in the ac…
Condition C in German A′-movement
In recent experimental work, arguments for or against Condition C reconstruction in A′-movement have been based on low/high availability of coreference in sentences with and without A′-movement. We argue that this reasoning is problematic: It involves arbitrary thresholds, and the results are potentially confounded by the different surface orders of the compared structures and non-syntactic factors. We present three experiments with designs that …
Sources of variability in the syntactic flexibility of idioms
Idiomatic verb phrases (e.g., kick the bucket, fig. 'to die') vary in their syntactic flexibility: they can undergo operations like, e.g., passivization (“The bucket was kicked”) to varying degrees. We (re-)consider potential sources of this variability. It has been proposed that compositionality influences syntactic flexibility of idioms. In the first part of the paper, we reassess this finding from a methodological perspective by replicating ea…
The syntactic flexibility of German and English idioms
It is controversial which idioms can occur with which syntactic structures. For example, can Mary kicked the bucket (figurative meaning: ‘Mary died’) be passivized to The bucket was kicked by Mary ? We present a series of experiments in which we test which structures are compatible with which idioms in German (for which there are few experimental data so far) and English, using acceptability judgments. For some of the tested structures – includin…
Linguistics (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · German (4 works) · Natural language processing (4 works) · Artificial Intelligence (3 works) · Mathematics (3 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (3 works) · Word order (3 works)