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In the literature on relative clauses (e. g. Alexiadou et al.2000: 4), it is occasionally observed that the German complex definite determiner d-jenige (roughly ‘the one’) must share company with a restrictive relative clause, in contrast to bare determiners der/die/das (Roehrs2006: 213–215; Gunkel2006; Gunkel2007). Previous works such as Sternefeld (2008: 378–379) and Blümel (2011) treat the relative clause as a complement of D to account for its mandatory occurrence. While such syntactic analyses have intuitive appeal, they pose problems for a compositional semantic analysis.

Antilocality effects provide strong evidence for expectation-based sentence parsing models. Previous discussion of the antilocality effect, however, largely focused on the argument-verb dependencies in verb-final constructions, for which a memory retrieval-based account has been argued to be equally adequate. To test whether the principles of expectation/memory-based accounts hold for a wider range of dependencies, we report on two self-paced reading experiments that compared two different determiners in German: the morphologically complex determiner "derjenige" 'the-jenig,' which obligatorily requires a relative clause, and the bare determiner "der" 'the,' which does not trigger such expectations. The first experiment did not show the expected antilocality effect, but the reliability of our results was restricted by the experiment's low statistical power. In a large-scale second experiment we addressed confounds in the design of Experiment 1 and found evidence for an antilocality effect with the complex determiner. As the antilocality effect found in our study does not involve argument-verb dependencies, the memory-based account cannot be extended to the current case. Thus, our findings provide novel empirical support for the expectation-based antilocality effect. At the same time, the experiment attests to a processing cost in later sentence regions, hinting that memory- and expectation-based effects can co-occur within the same structure.

Existing work on the acquisition of polarity-sensitive expressions (PSIs) suggests that children show an early sensitivity to the restricted distribution of negative polarity items (NPIs), but may be delayed in the acquisition of positive polarity items (PPIs). However, past studies primarily targeted PSIs that are highly frequent in children's language input. In this paper, we report an experimental investigation on children's comprehension of two NPIs and two PPIs in German. Based on corpus data indicating that the four tested PSIs are present in child-directed speech but rare in young children's utterances, we conducted an auditory rating task with adults and 11- to 12-year-old children. The results demonstrate that, even at 11-12 years of age, children do not yet show a completely target-like comprehension of the investigated PSIs. While they are adult-like in their responses to one of the tested NPIs, their responses did not demonstrate a categorical distinction between licensed and unlicensed PSI uses for the other tested expressions. The effect was led by a higher acceptance of sentences containing unlicensed PSIs, indicating a lack of awareness for their distributional restrictions. The results of our study pose new questions for the developmental time scale of the acquisition of polarity items.

Negation is a universal component of human language; polarity sensitivity (i.e., lexical distributional constraints in relation to negation) is arguably so while being pervasive across languages. Negation has long been a field of inquiry in psychological theories and experiments of reasoning, which inspired many follow-up studies of negation and negation-related phenomena in psycholinguistics. In generative theoretical linguistics, negation and polarity sensitivity have been extensively studied, as the related phenomena are situated at the interfaces of syntax, semantics and pragmatics, and are thus extremely revealing about the architecture of grammar. With the now long tradition of research on negation and polarity in psychology and psycholinguistics, and the emerging field of experimental semantics and pragmatics, a multitude of interests and experimental paradigms have emerged which call for re-evaluations and further development and integration. This special issue contains a collection of 16 research articles on the processing of negation and negation-related phenomena including polarity items, questions, conditionals, and irony, using a combination of behavioral (e.g., rating, reading, eye-tracking and sentence completion) and neuroimaging techniques (e.g., EEG). They showcase the processing of negation and polarity with or without context, in various languages and across different populations (adults, typically developing and ADHD children). The integration of multiple theoretical and empirical perspectives in this collection provides new insights, methodological advances and directions for future research.

In this paper, the meaning and processing of the German conditional connectives (CCs) such as "wenn" 'if' and "nur wenn" 'only if' are investigated. In Experiment 1, participants read short scenarios containing a conditional sentence (i.e., If P, Q.) with "wenn"/"nur wenn" 'if/only if' and a confirmed or negated antecedent (i.e., P/not-P), and subsequently completed the final sentence about Q (with or without negation). In Experiment 2, participants rated the truth or falsity of the consequent Q after reading a conditional sentence with "wenn" or "nur wenn" and a confirmed or negated antecedent (i.e., If P, Q. P/not-P. // Therefore, Q?). Both experiments showed that neither "wenn" nor "nur wenn" were interpreted as biconditional CCs. Modus Ponens (If P, Q. P. // Therefore, Q) was validated for wenn, whereas it was not validated in the case of "nur wenn." While Denial of the Antecedent (If P, Q. not-P. // Therefore, not-Q.) was validated in the case of "nur wenn," it was not validated for "wenn." The same method was used to test "wenn" vs. "unter der Bedingung," "dass" 'on condition that' in Experiment 3, and "wenn" vs. "vorausgesetzt," "dass" 'provided that' in Experiment 4. Experiment 5, using Affirmation of the Consequent (If P, Q. Q. // Therefore, P.) to test "wenn" vs. "nur wenn" replicated the results of Experiment 2. Taken together, the results show that in German, "unter der Bedingung," "dass" is the most likely candidate of biconditional CCs whereas all others are not biconditional. The findings, in particular of "nur wenn" not being semantically biconditional, are discussed based on available formal analyses of conditionals.

The concept of bias is familiar to linguists primarily from the literature on questions. Following the work of Giannakidou and Mari (Truth and Veridicality in Grammar and Thought: Modality, Mood, and Propositional Attitudes, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2021), we assume "nonveridical equilibrium" (implying that p and ¬p as equal possibilities) to be the default for epistemic modals, questions and conditionals. The equilibrium of conditionals, as that of questions, can be manipulated to produce bias (i.e., reduced or higher speaker commitment). In this paper, we focus on three kinds of modal elements in German that create bias in conditionals and questions: the adverb "wirklich" 'really', the modal verb "sollte" 'should', and conditional connectives such as "falls" 'if/in case'. We conducted two experiments collecting participants' inference about speaker commitment in different manipulations, Experiment 1 on "sollte"/"wirklich" in "ob"-questions and "wenn"-conditionals, and Experiment 2 on "sollte"/"wirklich" in "wenn"/"falls"/V1-conditionals. Our findings are that both "ob"-questions and "falls"-conditionals express reduced speaker commitment about the modified (antecedent) proposition in comparison to "wenn"-conditionals, which did not differ from V1-conditionals. In addition, "sollte"/"wirklich" in the antecedent of conditionals both create negative bias about the antecedent proposition. Our studies are among the first that deal with bias in conditionals (in comparison to questions) and contribute to furthering our understanding of bias.

Negative concord (NC) is used in many English varieties but usually considered ungrammatical in ‘standard’ contemporary English, where negative polarity items (NPIs) are used. In this paper, we take a novel experimental approach to the use of NC versus NPI constructions, in relation to register, sets of speech repertoires linked to specific situational and functional parameters. We report on two rating experiments with American and British English participants using interlocutor relations as a formality manipulation. Results show that (i) across both samples, NC constructions were rated as less appropriate than NPI associates, and (ii) there was a register effect in the American English data in that NC was rated less appropriate in formal than informal contexts. Our study is the first to provide experimental evidence for the register-sensitivity of NC constructions in American English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional chromosome analysis plays an important role in establishing the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment planning for hematologic malignancies, in determining the genetic basis of pregnancy loss, and other purposes. However, [...], * Context.--Chromosome analysis on bone marrow or peripheral blood samples fails in a small proportion of attempts. A method that is more reliable, with similar or better resolution, would be a welcome addition to the armamentarium of the cytogenetics laboratory.Objective.--To develop a method similar to banded metaphase chromosome analysis that relies only on interphase nuclei.Design.--To label multiple targets in an equidistant fashion along the entire length of each chromosome, including landmark subtelomere and centromere regions. Each label so generated by using cloned bacterial artificial chromosome probes is molecularly distinct with unique spectral characteristics, so the number and position of the labels can be tracked to identify chromosome abnormalities.Results.--Interphase chromosome profiling (ICP) demonstrated results similar to conventional chromosome analysis and fluorescence in situ hybridization in 55 previously studied cases and obtained useful ICP chromosome analysis results on another 29 cases in which conventional methods failed.Conclusions.--ICP is a new and powerful method to karyotype peripheral blood and bone marrow aspirate preparations without reliance on metaphase chromosome preparations. It will be of particular value for cases with a failed conventional analysis or when a fast turnaround time is required.(Arch Pathol Lab Med. 2018;142:213-228; doi: 10.5858/arpa.2016-0621-OA)