Download or read book Choctaw Verb Agreement and Universal Grammar written by William D. Davies and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Choctaw language, indigenous to the southeastern United States, now with its greatest concentrations ofspeakers in Missis sippi, Oklahoma, and Los Angeles, has in the main escaped the scrutinyoftheoreticallinguistics. ItisnotthatChoctaw isanintrin sicallyuninterestinglanguage- aquickglanceataclausewithfive agreement controllers and a mismatch between the caseofafree standingnominaland its agreement affix should dispelthat notion. Rather it is, I think, the question of what we can learn from a languageinwhichNPsdon'tmovearound, "WHs"don'tfront, and gaps simply arise from pronominalization. My hope is that the presentvolume, takentogetherwithagrowingliteraturespurredon by the workofPamMunro and her students atUCLA, will bring Choctawintothelightofdayand into the circleoflanguagescon sidered when constructing theories that define "possible human language". Thepresentstudy, arevisionofmy 1981dissertation(University ofCalifornia, SanDiego), focusesfirstandforemostontheChoctaw agreementsystem, takingthisasthekeytothestructureofChoctaw syntax. The immediate goal, then, is to provide a unified account ofthestructures and rules underlyingtheagreement system. Along the way a rangeofgrammatical phenomena is examined, taken as evidence for particular structural configurations, and incorporated into awell-integratedaccountofmorphologicaland syntacticfacts. The resultsbearon anumber ofcurrent issues, includingthe Un accusative Hypothesis, the existence of demotions, the nature of antipassive, disjunctive rule application, universals of causative constructions, and others. For these reasons Choctawdeserves the scrutinyoftheoreticians. The data forming the corpus for analysis represent a variety of Oklahoma Choctaw. They were collected from a nativespeaker in San Diego between 1978 and 1982 and from various speakers in Oklahoma during two extended visits to Broken Bow in 1980. I lX PREFACE x wishtothankthespeakerswhohelpedmebysharingtheirlanguage andencouragingmystudies. MyworkonChoctawwassupportedin partbyfundsfrom theNationalScienceFoundation(throughgrant numberBNS78-17498totheUniversityofCalifornia, SanDiego), theAmericanPhilosophicalSociety(throughaPhillipsFundgrant), andtheDepartmentofLinguisticsatUCSD.

Download or read book Anaphora in Celtic and Universal Grammar written by R. Hendrick and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is based in large part on fieldwork that I conducted in Brittany and Wales in 1983 and 1985. I am thankful for a Fulbright Award for Research in Western Europe and a Faculty Development Award from the University of North Carolina that funded that fieldwork. lowe a less tangible, but no less real, debt to Steve Anderson, G. M. Awbery, Steve Harlow and Jim McCloskey whose work initially sparked my interest, and led me to undertake this project. I want to thank Joe Emonds and Alec Marantz who read portions of Chapter 3 and 5. I am particularly grateful though to Kathleen Flanagan, Frank Heny and two anonymous referees who read a dyslexic and schizophrenic manuscript, providing me with criticisms that improved this final version considerably. The Welsh nationalist community in Aberstwyth and its Breton coun terpart in Quimper helped make the time I spent in Wales and Brittany productive. I am indebted to Thomas Davies, Partick Favreau, Lukian Kergoat, Sue Rhys, John Williams and Beatrice among others for sharing their knowledge of their languages with me. Catrin Davies and Martial Menard were especially patient and helpful. Without their assistance this work would have been infinitely poorer. I am hopeful that this book will help stimulate more interest in the Celtic languages and culture, and assist, even in a small way, those in Wales and Brittany who struggle to keep their language and culture strong.

Download or read book Studies in Greek Syntax written by A. Alexiadou and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains thirteen studies on various aspects of Greek syntax, as well as a general introduction by the editors. In recent years, the study of Greek has become important for the development of generative theory. The various contributions to this volume demonstrate clearly how much the field of Greek syntax has grown both in range and depth. The topics investigated include the phrase structure of clauses and nominal phrases, clitics in standard Greek and in dialects, the licensing of negative polarity items, the nature of sentential operators, control, argument structure and compounds. The studies highlight the importance of Greek for the development of a satisfactory theory of comparative syntax.

Download or read book Themes in Arabic and Hebrew Syntax written by J. Ouhalla and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2002-04-30 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection spans diverse themes in the syntax of Arabic, Modern Arabic dialects and Hebrew. The original contributors are written by specialists with an eye to both broad theoretical and conceptual issues as well as empirical detail. The editors' introduction sets in Generative Grammar. Among the topics discussed in this collection are VSO and SVO, cliticization and agreement, questions and the syntax of wh-movement, cognate objects, adjectival Construct State , Though construction, Gapping, causatives, the syntax of negation and the semantics of the Nominal sentence. It is the only collection of its kind targeting theoretical linguists and specialists in Semitic language alike.

Download or read book Flexible Syntax written by A. Neeleman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most linguistic theories assume that each grammatical relation is established in a unique structural configuration. Neeleman and Weerman take issue with this view, arguing for a more flexible approach on the basis of conceptual considerations and data taken mostly, but not exclusively, from the Germanic languages. In-depth analyses of word order phenomena as well as diachronic and typological generalizations motivate a re-evaluation of the role of case in the projection of arguments. Case is shown to provide a syntactic foothold for thematic interpretation, something which is necessary in a grammar that does not allow fixed theta-positions. Thus, this study does not only offer a genuine alternative to many standard assumptions, it also explains why there should be such a thing as case in natural language.

Download or read book New Horizons in Chinese Linguistics written by C-T James Huang and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The past decade and a half has witnessed a great deal of renewed interest in the study of Chinese linguistics, not only in the traditional areas of philological studies and in theoretically oriented areas of syn chronic grammar and language change but also in the cultivation of new frontiers in related areas of the cognitive sciences. There is a significant increase in the number of students studying one area or another of the linguistic structure of Chinese in various linguistic programs in the United States, Europe, Australia and in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and other parts of Asia. Several new academic departments devoted to the study of linguistics have been established in Taiwan and Hong Kong in the past few years. The increasing research and study activities have also resulted in a number of national and international conferences, including the North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL), which has been held annually in the United States; the International Symposium on Chinese Languages and Linguistics (IsCLL), which has had its fourth meeting since it was launched by Academia Sinica in Taiwan in 1990; the International Association of Chinese Linguistics (lACL), created in Singapore in 1992 and now incorporated in Irvine, California, which has held its annual meetings at major institutions in Asia, Europe, and the US.

Download or read book Koasati Grammar written by Bel Abbey and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An American Indian language belonging to the Muskogean linguistic family, Koasati is spoken today by fewer than five hundred people living in southwestern Louisiana and on the Alabama-Coushatta Indian Reservation in Texas. Geoffrey D. Kimball has collected material from the speakers of the larger Louisiana community to produce the first comprehensive description of Koasati. The book opens with a brief history of the Koasati. The chapters that follow describe Koasati phonology, verb conjugation classes and inflectional morphology, verb derivation, noun inflectional and derivational morphology, grammatical particles, and syntax and semantics. A discussion of Koasati speech styles illustrated with texts concludes the book. Because examples of grammatical construction are drawn from native speakers in naturally occurring discourse, they authoritatively document aspects of a language that is little known.

Download or read book Thematic Relations written by Wendy Wilkins and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-01-13 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thematic Relations provides information pertinent to thematic relations, which focus both on what sematic roles are expressible in the grammar and how these roles come to be associated with noun phrases. This book presents the interaction of components of the language faculty and other aspects of cognition. Organized into 13 chapters, this volume begins with an overview of the semantic relations involved in verb-argument structure. This text then examines the predicate-argument representations, which have come to figure prominently in all current generative theories of syntax. Other chapters consider the generalizations about thematic relations that are most insightfully captured at the level of syntax of at the level of semantics. This book discusses as well the importance of thematic roles to the grammar. The final chapter deals with the central role of thematic roles in language comprehension. This book is a valuable resource for linguists, syntacticians, and semanticists with an active involvement in research on natural language.

Download or read book Studies in American Indian Languages written by Leanne Hinton and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of 31 articles (dedicated to Margaret Langdon) represents the multitude of approaches to Native American languages taken by linguists today. Half of the essays treat Hokan languages, but Uto-Aztecan, Penutian, Muskogean, Iroquoian, Mayan, and other groups are also represented, with pieces on phonology, syntax, the lexicon, and discourse.

Download or read book The Mandarin VP written by Rint Sybesma and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mandarin VP deals with a number of constructions in Mandarin Chinese which involve the main verb and the material following it, like the object NPs, resultative phrases, durative expressions and other elements. The basis claim defended in this book is that all elements that follow the main verb in a Mandarin sentence form one single constituent which functions as the complement of the verb. The Mandarin VP offers new and original analyses of such hot issues as resultative constructions, the ba-construction and verb-le. In addition, the conclusions drawn from the research into Mandarin syntax are discussed in more general theoretic terms, which leads to original proposals regarding the internal make-up of accomplishments and the status of Theta Theory. The research reported on in this book was concluded within the bounds of mainstream generative theorizing. The Mandarin VP is of interest to all syntacticians, especially those interested in Chinese.

Download or read book Licensing Theory and French Parasitic Gaps written by C.R. Tellier and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of parasitic gap constructions (e. g. these are the reports; which you corrected _; before filing _i) has been a very lively area of research over the last decade. The impetus behind this lies mostly in the margi nality of the construction. Clearly, the intuitions that native speakers have about parasitic gaps do not stem from direct instruction; hence, it is reasoned, such knowledge follows from the restrictions imposed by Universal Grammar. Furthermore, it is unlikely that any principle of Universal Grammar refers specifically to parasitic gap constructions; their syntactic and interpretive properties must instead follow entirely from independent principles. My own interest in the phenomenon was sparked a few years ago, when, in a novel, I came across a sentence like the following: Chait un armateur; dont Ie prestige _; reposait largement sur la fortune _;, 'he was a shipbuilder of whom the prestige was largely based on the wealth'. As the indices indicate, the interpretation of the French sentence is un ambiguous: both the prestige and the wealth necessarily pertain to the same individual. In this aspect, the sentence much resembles the English parasitic gap construction above: in the former case too, the comple ments of correct and file must corefer with the noun phrase heading the relative (the reports). Yet, there is an important difference between the two constructions. Verbs like correct and file subcategorize their com plements.

Download or read book Order and Constituency in Mandarin Chinese written by Audrey Li Yen Hui and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent developments in generative grammar have been very stimulating. The current theory defines a small set of principles that apply to all human languages. Efforts have been made to demonstrate the adequacy of this theory for a wide range of languages. We thus see an interesting interface of theory and empirical data: the study of natural languages contributes to defining the properties of Universal Grammar and the predictions of the theory help in uncovering generalizations regarding natural languages. This book aims to add to this exciting development by showing how the analysis of Mandarin Chinese constituent structures helps to define Case Theory and how interesting generalizations concerning Chinese grammar are uncovered through verification of the theoretical predictions. Starting from the inadequacy of work by Koopman, Li, and Travis on the effect of Case directionality on word order, the book shows that a detailed study of Chinese constituent structures allows us to reduce the phrase structure component to a minimal statement concerning the position of the head in a given phrase. It argues that in a given language the constituent structures can be adequately captured by the interaction of Case Theory, Theta Theory, Government Theory, and X Theory. Long standing controversies concerning Chinese basic word order are resolved by showing that underlying word order generalizations can differ from surface word order generalizations.

Download or read book Peripheries written by David Adger and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-01-14 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The syntactic periphery has become one of the most important areas of research in syntactic theory in recent years, due to the emergence of new research programmes initiated by Rizzi, Kayne and Chomsky. However research has concentrated on the empirical nature of clausal peripheries. The purpose of this volume is to explore the question of whether the notion of periphery has any real theoretical bite. An important consensus emerging from the volume is that the edges of certain syntactic expressions appear to be the locus of the connection between phrase structure, prosody, and information structure. This volume contains 16 papers by researchers in this area. The book: - contains an extensive introduction setting out the research questions addressed and setting the contributions in an overall theoretical context, - has a distinct comparative slant, - brings together work from a range of theoretical perspectives, while maintaining a unity of purpose, - could serve as the basis for a graduate course on peripheral positions, - contains papers addressing: = the question of the fine-grainedness of syntactic representations, = the relevance of syntactic edges to locality and semantic interpretation, = the nature of the dependencies connecting peripheral elements to the syntactic core. Audience: Academics and graduate students interested in syntax and its interfaces with semantics and prosody, acquisition of syntax, cross-linguistic comparison.

Download or read book Balkan Sprachbund Morpho Syntactic Features written by Olga M. Tomic and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-09-13 with total page 750 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses the morpho-syntactic Balkan Sprachbund features in nine languages in which they are most numerous. It contains a wealth of Balkan linguistic material. The focus is on displaying similarities and differences in the representation of the most widely acknowledged Balkan Sprachbund morpho-syntactic features and their interaction with other features in the structure of the DP or the sentence of individual languages.

Download or read book Elements of Control written by Idan Landau and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2001-11-30 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a new outlook on the derivation and interpretation of control constructions. It clears up some common misconceptions about the nature of control, as well as sharpening the empirical challenges that face any comprehensive theory in this domain. Regardless of theoretical framework, scholars of syntax and semantics interested in these topics, will find this book a major contribution to the field.

Download or read book Subject Clitics in the Northern Italian Dialects written by Cecilia Goria and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-11-02 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1. 0 INTRODUCTION This book provides an encompassing analysis of Subject Clitics (SCLs) by giving a detailed description of these elements in two varieties of Piedmontese, a Northern Italian Dialect: Astigiano and Turinese spoken in the areas of Asti and Turin respectively. It accounts for the structural position and function of these elements inside the computational system and for their morphological and distributional properties. It also provides an empirical and theoretical comparison between Piedmontese SCLs and SCLs in other Northern Italian Dialects (NIDs). of SCLs types in the NIDs have been regarded as Since the 1980s, the majority elements of agreement, in that they contribute to the realisation of subject verb agreement by expressing features of the subject similar, in a way, to verbal inflection. Nonetheless, SCLs are not to be assimilated to verbal affixes as they exhibit different properties. Most distinctively, they can be separated from the verb by other clitic elements and, in the case of the varieties considered here, SCLs are optional in all contexts and may be omitted in coordination. A more refined identification of SCLs separates SCLs which encode agreement features from those which do not and are related to pragmatic factors, as originally observed by Beninca (1994) with respect to the clitic a in Paduano The different morphological and syntactic properties that characterise SCLs across the NIDs have justified numerous accounts which regard them as head of their own projection.

Download or read book Aspectual Inquiries written by Paula Kempchinsky and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2005-02-14 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of the linguistic reflexes of aspect has been an active field of research in various sub-disciplines of linguistics, such as syntax, semantics (including discourse theory) and acquisition studies. However, communication and dissemination of results across these various subfields has often been indirect. This volume solves that problem. The different angles brought together here give us a comprehensive picture of the representation of aspect in the mind/brain of the speaker. The papers in this volume represent the results of a workshop on the syntax, semantics and acquisition of aspect held in 2002 whose purpose was to foment active cross-disciplinary communication. A number of the papers examine the syntactic representation of lexical or situation aspect, while others focus on the syntactic interaction of lexical aspect with grammatical aspect, and of grammatical aspect and tense. Other papers examine the role of aspect in discourse representations, while a third group of papers reports on results of empirical studies on the acquisition of aspect in both first and second language acquisition, and patterns of loss of morphosyntactic reflexes of aspect in language attrition. This volume is of interest to researchers and advanced graduate students in syntax, semantics, discourse representation and language acquisition, particularly those working on tense and aspect.