Welcome to Research on Language

Submission deadline for abstracts: December 31, 2024
Deadline for submission of manuscripts: July 10, 2025

Language of contribution: German or English

Volume 01/25: words in sentences

“Words are like building blocks. You can put them together and then you get a sentence that means something.” This statement was made by a fourth grade student in response to the question of what a word is.

The questions “What is a word?” and “What function does a word have in a sentence?” concern the core areas of linguistics. It is therefore not surprising that different word concepts exist side by side: orthographic word, phonological word, morphological word, lexical word, syntactic word (e.g. Meibauer 2015; Geilfuß-Wolfgang/Ponitka 2020; Neef 2023).

Words have an internal structure (cf. Eisenberg 2020, p.3ff.), but this can be viewed and analyzed differently depending on the linguistic level and medium. For example, an orthographic word is a sequence of letters “surrounded by spaces, but not containing any spaces itself” (Meibauer 2015, p. 17). This may apply to the written language, but this definition cannot be applied to the spoken language. This is where the phonological word comes into play, a sequence of sounds that can be distinguished from one another by signals such as word accent or pauses in speech (cf. ibid., p.17). At the level of morphemes, the smallest meaning-bearing units, “a word [...] is a freely occurring morpheme or a freely occurring morpheme construction” (ibid., p.17). The syntactic word concept, on the other hand, spans a larger framework. “A syntactic word is a word as it occurs specifically in a sentence or in a syntactic structure” (Geilfuss-Wolfgang/Ponitka 2020, p. 13). The meaning aspect of a word is ultimately taken into account in the lexical word concept. A “lexical word is a unit that contains basic properties such as phonetic form, core meaning, part of speech and invariant morphological features” (ibid., p. 13).

Despite the different word concepts, the definitions do not have to be mutually exclusive, which often makes it difficult to define the term word and extract its function in the sentence, as the following examples illustrate:

The word Sonne (,sun’) is typically classified as a noun. In the sentence Ich sonne mich gern. (,I like to sunbathe.’) on the other hand, it is a verb, which raises the question of whether there is actually a change of part of speech here or whether sonne should be regarded as an independent word with a new meaning in these cases. The didacticization of parts of speech in schools is also controversial, especially as the lexical concept of parts of speech is still the starting point for consideration. What new approaches to didactization are promising here?

In the sentence Es regnet wieder mal in Strömen. (,It's raining cats and dogs again.’) es (,it’) has no meaning; it is semantically empty and serves as a formal subject. It is used here primarily for syntactic reasons in the sentence, since in German every sentence usually requires an occupied subject position. Is it not a lexical word in this case?

The function of words in sentences can also be seen in such small, usually inconspicuous words as auch (,also’) or nur (,only’), so-called focus particles. Focus particles carry an aspect of meaning into the sentence that forces the listener or reader to take information into account in order to interpret the sentence that is not explicitly given in the sentence itself (e.g. Dimroth/Klein 1996). For example, the focus particle in Auch Yuna ist gestern nach Berlin gefahren. (Yuna also went to Berlin yesterday.’) indicates that, in addition to Yuna, other people from a certain group of people traveled to Berlin. The effect of focus particles becomes even clearer when they are replaced by nur (,only’) in the sentence: Nur Yuna ist gestern nach Berlin gefahren. (,Only Yuna went to Berlin yesterday.’). Now Yuna is the only person in a group of people who went to Berlin. Studies on acquisition have shown that children growing up monolingually acquire focus particles relatively early, but children can have problems understanding sentences with focus particles until preschool age (e.g. Müller/Höhle/Schulz, 2015). How and when are focus particles and other quantifying expressions acquired by children and young people growing up multilingually?

Words such as dann (,then’), aber (,but’), wenn (,if’) and während (,while’) are also small and inconspicuous. Connectors are regarded as “links” between phrases and sentences and play a crucial role in text cohesion (see Averintseva-Klisch 2018). In addition to fundamental questions of acquisition and comprehension, written usage is also of interest here. How are connectors used by learners in texts? How are connectors taken into account in teaching-learning arrangements?

The focus of this issue is therefore on words and their function in sentences. The word in the sentence itself can be considered as well as the function of the word for a phrase or for the entire sentence. We welcome contributions that examine the acquisition, use, understanding or mediation of words and their function in sentences on a theoretical, conceptual or empirical level, for example on the following topics:

- Acquisition and/or use of quantifying expressions in monolingual and/or multilingual children

- Acquisition and/or use of connectors in written or spoken language

- Perception of words/word boundaries in persons growing up multilingual

- Change/alteration of word meaning depending on the context of use

- Didactic approaches to the theory of parts of speech

- Word concepts of pupils

- Teaching-learning arrangements

With this call, we invite you to submit abstracts for the third issue of the journal Research on Language. This issue will be an open, i.e. unrelated issue. We are looking forward to abstracts that present current work in line with the above-mentioned content orientation of the journal. Abstracts for the second issue can be submitted until  December 31, 2024, should have a maximum length of 3.000 characters (excl. bibliography) and meet the following criteria, among others:

• Brief explanation of the relevance of the topic
• Outline of the theoretical background and the state of research and/or the research desideratum
• Statement of the research question(s)/hypothesis(es)
• Description of the research design (including sample) and the evaluation procedure
• Outline of existing results or outlook on expected results based on the theoretical explanations
• Presentation of the significance of the work or the added value for language didactics/linguistics

The submitted abstracts will be reviewed by the editorial board, which will decide whether a contribution may be submitted for the issue. Subsequently, the contributions go through an anonymous review. The deadline for submission is July 10, 2025.

Contributions can be submitted in German and English. Only original contributions that have not already been submitted elsewhere or have already been published will be accepted. Contributions from young researchers are very welcome.

Research on Language was founded in 2023 by Anja Wildemann and Katharina Kellermann at the University Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU). From day one, it has been accessible free of charge to all interested parties as an online publication. An important principle of the journal is to support young academics. We adopt a constructive approach and are open to concrete suggestions for improvement in the reviews.

Research on Language is an open access journal, i.e. all content is available to users free of charge in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access. All users are authorized to read, download, copy and use the texts of the articles for lawful purposes. The prior consent of the publisher or author is not required. The content is protected by a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0). Research on Language does not charge Article Processing Charges (APCs) or Article Submission Charges (ASCs) and allows authors to retain copyright without restriction.

Reviewers, authors and editors must disclose any financial or non-financial conflict of interest in relation to the manuscript. In case of doubt, the editors of the journal should be contacted.

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The journal Research on Language cooperates with the Kaiserlautern University Library. In addition to publication on the Research on Language website, the articles are also published on KLUEDO (Kaiserslautern and Landau university-wide electronic document server). KLUEDO is an open access repository. The long-term archiving of KLUEDO content is carried out by the German National Library.

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Dr. Barbara Rieger studied linguistics and media and communication science and holds a doctorate in educational science. Since 2016, she has been working at the Rhineland-Palatinate University of Technology
Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU) in the field of teacher training in multilingualism, diversity and German as a second language. As
coordinator of the projects "Heterogeneity and Multilingualism (HuM)" and "LeseAdler and SchreibFüchse", she is a lecturer and bridge builder at the interface between the university and cooperating schools and also performs tasks relating to conception and organization, public relations and graphic design.

The journal Research on Language has set itself the goal of promoting young researchers. We try to do this specifically by 1) providing various documents, e.g. style sheets, which make transparent which requirements are associated with an abstract in the journal Research on Language, how the submissions are to be structured and which aspects are of particular importance. 2) we endeavor to provide the submitters with constructive suggestions for improvement in the reviews so that they can make progress in their writing development process.