C10 - Propositional anaphora in negative polar contexts
The goal of this project is to arrive at a better understanding of the principles that govern anaphoric reference to propositions in negative sentences. In general, negative sentences make two propositions available for anaphoric uptake: the negative proposition that is denoted by the sentence, ¬p, and that proposition without negation, p. However, not in all cases are both propositions equally available for anaphoric uptake. Consider the following dialogue:
Anne: I didn’t call Alex before 11 o’clock!
Ben: But that’s what he says.
The pronoun that in Ben’s reply refers to p, i.e. that Anne called Alex before 11 o’clock. If Ben’s reply is That’s very considerate, that refers to ¬p.
In this project we investigate the factors that – by hypothesis – influence the interpretation of anaphors like that. In other words, we investigate the factors that we hypothesize to have an influence on the prominence of ¬p vs. p and hence on the anaphoric uptake of ¬p vs. p. These include for instance conjunctions (like but), discourse particles (e.g., German ja, nämlich), subjunctive marking and tense, the type of negation involved (not, no, never etc.) or certain perspective markers. We are exploring these issues in experimental work and in corpus studies.
Team
Prof. Dr. Stefan Hinterwimmer
Teilprojektleiter B10 und C10
Büro: Universität Hamburg, Von-Melle-Park 6, Raum B 8009E-Mail: stefan.hinterwimmer(at)uni-hamburg.de
Telefon: (+49) 40 42838-4306
Prof. Dr. Sophie Repp
Teilprojektleiterin A06, C10
Stellvertretende Sprecherin des SFBBüro: Philosophikum, Raum 2.119
E-Mail: sophie.repp(at)uni-koeln.de
Telefon: (+49) 221 470-5235
Dr. Heiko Seeliger
Assoziierter Wissenschaftler A06 und C10
Büro: SFB, Luxemburger Str. 299, Raum 1.04E-Mail: heiko.seeliger(at)uni-koeln.de
Telefon: (+49) 221 470-89911
Max Bonke
Postdoktorand C10
Büro: Philosophikum, Raum 2.122E-Mail: mbonke(at)uni-koeln.de
Telefon: (+49) 221 470-3434
Nele Benz
Doktorandin C10
Büro: SFB, Luxemburger Str. 299, Raum 1.04E-Mail: nele.benz(at)uni-hamburg.de
Telefon: (+49) 221 470-89911
Student Assistants
Josefine Kälber | jkaelber(at)smail.uni-koeln.de
Jascha Garkazi | jgarkaz1(at)uni-koeln.de
Sarah Schulz | repp-hilfskraefte(at)uni-koeln.de
Publications
2026
- Canes Nápoles, Amalia & Sophie Repp. 2026. Object realisation in spoken Guadeloupean French: Evaluating NLP models for an under-resourced variety. In Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC). pdf
2025
- Patterson, Clare, Umesh Patil, Caterina Ventura, Maria Lialiou, Petra B. Schumacher & Stefan Hinterwimmer. 2025. Why register might be more important than modality for the choice of demonstrative pronouns. LInguistische Berichte (281). 7–35.
Relevante Vorpublikationen der Projektmitglieder
- Claus, Berry, A. Marlijn Meijer, Sophie Repp & Manfred Krifka. 2017. Puzzling response particles: An experimental study on the German answering system. Semantics and Pragmatics 10.
- Geist, Ljudmila & Sophie Repp. 2023. Responding to negative biased questions in Russian. In Petr Biskup, Marcel Börner, Olav Mueller-Reichau & Iuliia Shcherbina (eds.), Advances in Formal Slavic Linguistics 2021. Language Science Press.
- Hinterwimmer, Stefan (2008). If vs. When, Wenn vs. Als: Microvariation in the Semantics of Conditional and Temporal Complementizers in English and German, in E. Elfner, & M. Walkow (eds.): Proceedings of the 37th Conference of the North Eastern Linguistic Society (NELS 37), GLSA Publications, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
- Hinterwimmer, Stefan (2010). When-Clauses, factive verbs and correlates, in G. Fanselow & T. Hanneforth (eds.): Language and Logos. Studies in Theoretical and Computational Linguistics, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 176-189.
- Hinterwimmer, Stefan (2015). A Unified Account of the Properties of German Demonstrative Pronouns, In P. Grosz, P. Patel-Grosz & I. Yanovich (eds.), The Proceedings of the Workshop on Pronominal Semantics at NELS 40, 61–107. Amherst, MA: GLSA Publications.
- Loos, Cornelia, Markus Steinbach & Sophie Repp (2024). Polar response strategies across modalities: Evidence from German Sign Language (DGS). Language 100(3), 433-467.
- Meijer, A. Marlijn & Sophie Repp. 2018. Modal subordination of propositional anaphora: On the role of tense and the modal particle ook in contextual counterfactuals in Dutch. In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 21, 881–898. pdf
- Patil, Umesh, Stefan Hinterwimmer & Petra B. Schumacher (2023). Effect of evaluative expressions on two types of demonstrative pronouns in German. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 8(1).