THE PROCESSING OF GERMAN MODAL PARTICLES AND THEIR
HOMONYMOUS COUNTERPARTS
Laura Dörre, University of Konstanz
4th Central European Conference in Linguistics for
Postgraduate Students, Lublin, August 21-22, 2014
1
Introduction
German is rich in modal particles (hereafter MPs) like bloß (literal translation: only), which
show special properties compared to other word classes:
They belong to the inventory of so-called expressives (cf. Potts, 2007), i.e. they have an
expressive rather than a propositional meaning (Kratzer, 1999; Gutzmann, 2013)
Linguistic expressions of different levels belong to the category of expressives. An example for an
expressive on word level is the pejorative Köter (cur). It can be used instead of Hund (dog), but
adds a negative connotation or a special emotional colouring to the primary meaning.
Compositionally, they do not contribute to the truth of the expression.
à Two-dimensional meaning (e.g., Potts, 2007; Gutzmann, 2013)
•
According to Kratzer (1999), MPs and other kinds of expressives are ignored in the computation
of descriptive meanings (1, 2).
(1) Sie kann ja nicht kommen, weil sie ja doch ihre Zwillinge versorgen muss.
She can JA not come because she JA DOCH her twins take care of must.
‘She JA cannot come, because she JA DOCH must take care of her twins.’
à Relevant for the computation of the descriptive meaning:
(2) Sie kann nicht kommen, weil sie ihre Zwillinge versorgen muss
She can not come because she her twins take care of must.
‘She cannot come, because she must take care of her twins.’
MP takes the whole proposition as its argument.
Instead of contributing to the truth-value of a sentence, MPs modify the speech act (cf.
Searle, 1969)
MPs do not modify the propositional content of a sentence, but the “Äußerungsbedeutung”,
the speech act (Bayer, 1991; Bayer & Obenauer, 2011). For example, the speech act of an
information question (3) turns into a rhetorical question (3’) by adding the MP schon.
•
(3)
A: Wer räumt gerne auf?
Who likes to clean up?
B: Maria räumt gerne auf.
Mary likes to clean up.
(3’)
A: Wer räumt schon gerne auf?
Who SCHON likes to clean up?
B’: Niemand.
Nobody.
1 •
Every MP, at least in German, has a homonymous counterpart (Thurmair, 1989;
Helbig, 1990; Abraham, 1991; Meibauer, 1994; Coniglio, 2009)
These counterparts belong to different parts of speech (e.g., focus particles, adverbs,
adjectives, conjunctions). In German, there are minimal pairs in which bloß as a counterpart, a
focus particle in (4), generates a ‘semantic’ reading, whereas bloß as a MP in (5) generates a
‘pragmatic’ or ‘expressive’ reading (cf. Bayer, 1991). That indicates that the interpretation of
MPs is strongly context dependent (Doherty, 1985; Hartmann, 1986).
(4) Wer hat bloß den Flur gewischt?
‘Who wiped only the corridor?’
(5) Wer hat bloß den Flur gewischt?
‘Who wiped the corridor? (I am wondering)’
In theoretical linguistics, it is assumed that the counterpart (e.g., bloß as a focus particle in 4) is
the historical origin from which the MP derives and that the counterpart triggers the
dominant reading.
MPs and their homonymous counterparts are well studied in theoretical linguistics (e.g.,
Thurmair, 1989; Meibauer, 1994; Abraham 1991; Helbig, 1990). However, there is little to
no psycholinguistic research on them, although there are a lot of interesting questions
regarding their processing.
The following questions arise:
a) Is the counterpart meaning or the MP meaning the dominant one?
b) How are MPs and their homonymous counterparts processed?
In order to investigate the first question, we conducted a corpus study (cf. Potts & Schwarz,
2008) with 13.100 German sentences containing 12 homonymous lexemes with a MP
meaning and a counterpart meaning.
2
Corpus study on the meaning frequency of MPs and their homonymous
counterparts
Question
Is the counterpart meaning or the MP meaning the dominant one?
Predictions
• If these lexemes have a dominant meaning, then this meaning should occur more
often than the other, non-dominant meanings
• If the counterpart meaning (e.g., bloß as a focus particle) is the dominant one, then it
should occur more often than the MP meaning
• If the counterpart meaning is the dominant meaning in general, for all 12 lexemes, the
counterpart meaning should occur more often than the MP meaning
Method
We examined 12 lexemes (auch, bloss, doch, eben, einfach, erst, gleich, nur, ruhig, schon, vielleicht, wohl)1
1
Literal translations: auch (also, too), bloß (merely, only), doch (but, yet, still), eben (even, just, flat,
smooth), einfach (simple, easy), erst (first, later than expected, scalar only), gleich (same, immediately), nur
(only), ruhig (quiet), schon (already), vielleicht (perhaps, probably), wohl (well, probably)
2 by searching the German DWDS special corpus on spoken language (Klein & Geyken, 2010),
a huge corpus of naturalistic data. All lexemes either had a MP meaning or a counterpart
meaning. The counterparts were adverbs (ADV), adjectives (ADJ), conjunctions (CONJ),
answering particles (AP), focus particles (FP), and prepositions (P).
In the corpus, we found 13.254 hits for the lexeme auch, 93 for bloß, 4.425 for doch, 1.264 for
eben, 1.158 for einfach, 2.927 for erst, 1.199 for gleich, 6.321 for nur, 136 for ruhig, 4.539 for schon,
1.645 for vielleicht, and 930 for wohl. Because the amount of hits for the lexemes auch, doch, nur,
and schon were extremely high, namely over 4.000 hits, we decided to take a sample of 1.000
hits for each of these four lexemes.
By means of the context, we classified the lexemes according to the MP or the counterpart
meaning. This procedure was very time-intensive, because we had to classify the meanings
“by hand”. We were not able to classify 252 lexemes, due to a lack of disambiguating context.
These 252 cases were removed. The final data set comprised of 13.100 sentences containing
the 12 lexemes.
For each lexeme, the dominant meaning was determined on the basis of frequency of
occurrence. In particular, if one meaning of a lexeme occurred in over 60% of the cases, the
lexeme had a biased frequent meaning. Otherwise, the lexeme had a balanced meaning.
Results
Table 1 shows the frequency of occurrences in percentages for the four most representative
word classes. A bold number indicates a biased frequent meaning, and the grey colouring
indicates a balanced meaning. 9 out of the 12 lexemes had a biased frequent meaning. In
particular, 4 had a frequent MP meaning, and 5 had a frequent counterpart meaning (ADV,
FP, or ADJ). 3 of the 12 lexemes had a balanced meaning.
Lexeme
auch
bloß
doch
eben
einfach
erst
gleich
nur
ruhig
schon
vielleicht
wohl
MP
28,4%
7,5%
73,3%
74,3%
66,4%
4,6%
0,9%
8,3%
32,6%
34,7%
2%
80%
FP
70,3%
67,7%
0%
0%
0%
16%
1,7%
67%
0%
6,5%
0%
0%
ADV
0%
0%
21,9%
19,8%
4,9%
12,1%
46,3%
0%
21,2%
58,7%
98%
19,7%
ADJ
0%
21,5%
0%
0%
28,8%
67,2%
50,4%
0%
46,2%
0%
0%
0%
Table 1. Results of the four most representative word classes in percentages
Discussion
The data indicate that there are differences between the frequencies of the single meanings.
Some meanings occur more often than other meanings of one lexeme. Hence, we were able to
determine dominant and non-dominant meanings.
Indeed, in some cases, the counterpart meaning is the dominant one. But nevertheless, the
counterpart meaning is not the dominant meaning for all 12 lexemes, and therefore not the
default meaning in general. Rather, the 12 lexemes differ in their most frequent meaning. We
can identify three groups of lexemes:
The group with a dominant counterpart meaning is called the biased counterpart group. The
lexemes auch, bloß, and nur (dominant FP meaning), vielleicht (dominant ADV meaning) and erst
(dominant ADJ meaning) belong to this group. The group with a dominant MP meaning is
3 called the biased MP group. The lexemes doch, eben, einfach, and wohl belong to this group. The
third group, with no single frequent meaning, is called the balanced group, with the lexemes
gleich, ruhig, and schon. The existence of these three groups speaks against the general
assumption that the counterpart meaning, which is the historical origin from which the MP
meaning derives, is the dominant meaning.
3
The processing of MPs and their homonymous counterparts
The results of the corpus study show that the counterpart meaning is not the dominant
meaning in general, but that some lexemes rather have a dominant MP meaning or a
balanced meaning. The questions that arise for our study are the following:
a) How are sentences containing MPs and their homonymous counterparts are
processed?
b) Does the meaning frequency of each lexeme influence the processing? That is, are
lexemes with a dominant counterpart meaning processed differently than lexemes with
a dominant MP meaning or a balanced meaning?
In order to investigate these questions, we conducted a self-paced reading experiment.
Participants read sentences on a computer screen, whereby all words are replaced by dashes.
By pressing a button, the first dash turns into the first word of the sentence. By pressing
another button, the first word turns back into a dash und the second word appears, and so
forth. Hence, participants read the sentence word by word and we can measure the reading
times for every single word. This methodology allows us to simulate fairly natural reading, but
without access to any information associated with the upcoming word (Luke & Christianson,
2013).
By using minimal pairs (as in 4 and 5), we have exactly the same sentences, which enable us to
compare the reading times for identical words in different conditions. The only difference is
the context, which triggers a special meaning of the ambiguous sentence. Sentences (6) and (7)
are an example of one experimental sentence pair. The identical target sentences (underlined)
contain a homonymous target word (bold). Altogether, we included 10 target words with
either a biased MP meaning, a biased counterpart meaning, or a balanced meaning. The
preceding contexts (italic) trigger either the counterpart meaning (6) or the MP meaning (7).
6) Die anderen Zimmer sind ebenfalls schmutzig, wer hat bloß den Boden im Flur gewischt?
‘The other rooms are also dirty, who wiped only the floor in the corridor?’
7) Hier ist noch Schneematsch von draußen, wer hat bloß den Boden im Flur gewischt?
‘Here is still mud from outside, who wiped the floor in the corridor (I am wondering)?’
There are 4 conditions of presenting the context. In condition 1, the context precedes the
ambiguous target sentence and triggers the counterpart meaning. In condition 2, the context
precedes the ambiguous target sentence and triggers the MP meaning. In condition 3, the
context follows the ambiguous target sentence and triggers the counterpart meaning. And in
condition 4, the context follows the ambiguous target sentence and triggers the MP meaning.
Conditions 3 and 4 are referred to as ‘neutral’ conditions, because there is no contextual
information before the ambiguous target sentence is encountered.
Condition 1: context triggers the counterpart meaning + target sentence
Condition 2: context triggers the MP meaning + target sentence
Condition 3: target sentence + context triggers the counterpart meaning
4 Condition 4: target sentence + context triggers the MP meaning
Predictions
a) How are sentences containing MPs and their homonymous counterparts processed?
• If the counterpart meaning and the MP meaning are processed differently, we expect
differences in reading times between condition 1 and 2. Reading times should be
slower in conditions 3 and 4, due to the lack of preceding disambiguating context.
• If the counterpart meaning is the dominant one, reading times should be faster in
condition 1 than in condition 2. The counterpart meaning should be activated, if no
context is given. Hence, reading times should be equally fast in conditions 1, 3, and 4.
• If the MP meaning is the dominant one, reading times should be faster in condition 2
than in condition 1. The MP meaning should be activated, if no context is given.
Hence, reading times should be equally fast in conditions 2, 3, and 4.
• If both meanings activate each other, reading times should be equally fast in
conditions 1 and 2. If no context is given, there should be a competition between both
meanings. Hence, reading times should be slower in conditions 3 and 4.
• If both meanings are completely independent of each other, reading times should be
equally fast in conditions 1 and 2. If no context is given, there should be a competition
between both meanings. Hence, reading times should be slower in conditions 3 and 4.
b) Does the meaning frequency of each lexeme influence the processing?
• If meaning frequency has an influence, reading times should be faster if the meaning
that is triggered by the context matches with the biased meaning of the target word.
• Reading times for target words with a biased meaning should be faster than for words
with a balanced meaning, because for word with a balanced meanings, there is a
competition between two possible meanings.
• If meaning frequency has no influence, there should be no differences in reading times
between words with a biased counterpart meaning, a biased MP meaning or a
balanced meaning.
Method
Participants
58 German native speakers participated in the self-paced reading experiment. 41 were female
and 17 were male. The mean age was 22,9 years (18-34). All were students from the
University of Konstanz.
Material
We selected 10 out of the 12 lexemes of our corpus study. For each lexeme, we created 5
ambiguous minimal pairs with either a MP meaning or a counterpart meaning (for vielleicht we
created 5 additional, interrogative target sentences). Altogether, we created 55 target
sentences.
We combined each target sentence with a preceding/following context, which lead to a
complex sentence with a length of 13–15 words (mean 13,7 words). The contexts triggered
either the MP meaning or the counterpart meaning. The appropriateness of the contexts was
tested in a pre-test. Altogether, we had 55 sentence quartets, leading to 220 experimental
sentences.
Based on the meaning frequency data of the corpus study, we divided the 10 target words into
three meaning frequency groups: The three lexemes doch, eben, and einfach belong to the biased
MP group, auch, bloß, nur, and vielleicht to the biased counterpart group, and ruhig, schon, and
gleich to the balanced group.
5 We added 285 filler sentences. All sentences were divided into 4 lists by means of the Latin
square design.
Results
We present analyses of reading times for four regions, namely for the ambiguous target word,
for the first word following the target word (+1 Region), for the second word following the
target word (+2 Region), and for the third word following the target word (+3 Region).
The statistical analysis was performed using a linear mixed-effects model with the reading
time as dependent variable, and meaning (C or M), context (prec and foll), and meaning
frequency (biased counterpart meaning, biased MP meaning, or balanced meaning) as
independent variables. Furthermore, we included items and participants as random factors.
Target word
For the target word, we found a significant interaction between meaning frequency and
context: if the context precedes the ambiguous target sentence, reading times for target words
with a frequent MP meaning are longer then reading times for target words with a frequent
counterpart meaning. This meaning frequency effect does not emerge if the disambiguating
context follows the target sentence.
+1 Region
We found a significant main effect of context: if the context precedes the target sentence,
reading times are longer than if the context follows the target sentence.
Additionally, we found a significant interaction between meaning frequency and context: if
the context precedes the target sentence, reading times for words with a balanced meaning are
longer than reading times for words with both a biased counterpart and a biased MP
meaning. Reading times for words with a biased MP meaning are longer than for words with
a biased counterpart meaning.
+2 Region
We found a significant main effect of context: if the context precedes the ambiguous target
sentence, reading times are longer than if the context follows the ambiguous target word.
Additionally, there is a significant interaction between context and meaning: reading times are
longer if the preceding context triggers the MP meaning than if the preceding context triggers
the counterpart meaning.
+3 Region
We found a significant main effect of context: if the context precedes the ambiguous target
sentence, reading times are longer than if the context follows the ambiguous target word.
Discussion
1) How are sentences containing MPs and their homonymous counterparts processed?
The processing of ambiguous target sentences does not differ until the second word following
the ambiguous target word is encountered. This late effect indicates that the MP meaning lead
to higher processing costs than the counterpart meaning. This speaks in favor of the
hypothesis that the counterpart meaning is the dominant meaning.
To be noticed, this effect only emerges if contextual information precede the target sentence.
If the context follows the target sentence, that is, if the ambiguous sentence is read neutrally,
there is no difference between the MP and the counterpart meaning. Thus, we suggest that
there is one ‘default meaning’ that is present until enough contextual information is available
6 in order to resolve the ambiguity (cf. Bayer & Marslen-Wilson, 1992). Against our prediction,
reading times are faster if the context follows the target sentence. These results support the
assumption of such a default interpretation.
In theoretical linguistics, it is assumed that MPs belong to the category of expressives and that
they have a multi-dimensional meaning. This multi-dimensionality can be supported by our
results, since the interpretation of the MP meaning takes more time and exhibits higher
processing costs than the interpretation of the counterpart meaning.
2) Does the meaning frequency of each lexeme influence the processing?
Meaning frequency influences the interpretation, but only very early. The effect emerges at
the target word, where longer reading times for words with a biased MP meaning are
encountered, and one word following the target word, where we find longer reading times for
words with a balanced meaning, as expected. Thus, meaning frequency might influence the
processing of the homonymous target word, but the lack of an interaction between the
meaning frequency and the meaning that is triggered by the preceding context suggests that
meaning frequency is not crucial for the processing of the whole sentence meaning.
The meaning frequency effect only occurs when the context precedes the target sentence. This
indicates that the meaning frequency only influences the processing if enough contextual
information is given.
4
Conclusion
Contextual information are very important for the interpretation of ambiguous sentences
containing MPs and their counterparts.
The processing of the MP meaning takes more time and exhibits higher processing costs than
the processing of the counterpart meaning. These results support the theory that the
counterpart meaning is the dominant meaning, and that sentences containing MPs have a
multi-dimensional meaning.
The meaning frequency has a small influence on the processing of ambiguous target words,
but only if some contextual information are given. It is not crucial for the processing of the
whole sentence meaning.
More research and the use of more diverse methods is necessary!
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