Linguistische Berichte Heft 198

A polycentric approach to stress assumes that for languages with complex stress assignment, such as Modem Standard German, that devising algorithms based solely on prosodic features is not sufficient. Morphosemantic, syntactic and pragmatic factors may also have to be taken into consideration. In (AB]C compounds, where the A-constituent is a numeral, stress can only be determined in part by prosodic factors based on the syllable structure of the B-constituent. However, the stress in many other of these compounds has to be accounted for by implicit or explicit paradigmatic relations. In a few instances, a marked pattern (rightward stress), which occurs elsewhere in the German lexicon, will account for the observed stress.

Drawing on a variety of different phenomena the paper argues for the existence of a designated topic position in the middle field of the German clause. This implies that German is discourse configurational with regard to topics. The result allows some basic questions to be addressed, including the possible number of sentence topics, the possibility of topics in embedded clauses, the question whether there is a dependence between scrambling and topicality, and the question whether the generic interpretation of a bare plural subject is dependent on its topical status. Moreover, a proposai for the structural representation of the media! topic position is put forward.

This paper focuses on quantitative and qualitative aspects of children's naming skills, assuming that children make use of their lexical and semantic knowledge when confronted with a naming task. 240 monolingual German children, age 2;6 to 8;0, were tested with an oral picture naming test including nouns and verbs. The results on naming accuracy show improvements with increasing age and a better performance in noun naming compared to verb naming. Additionally, a detailed analysis of error types reveals developmental trends as well as effects of word category. With respect to noun naming, semantically related substitutions are dominating. Their proportion increases with age, while unrelated reactions decrease. In naming verbs, children predominantly use circumlocutions, which again gradually improve with regard to adequacy and verb quality. In sum, children's error types point to complementary developmental processes with more refined responses replacing early strategies. Thus, picture naming skills reflect the elaboration of the child's semantic system.