Download or read book Clausal Architecture and Subject Positions written by Sabine Mohr and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a comparative study of the Germanic languages. It promotes a new approach to the OV vs. VO classification, according to which all clauses have a universal base where the internal argument is always merged in SpecVP. Word order differences and their correlates result from an interaction of checking conditions, the EPP and different types of verb movement, and from parametric variation concerning the location of the subject of predication in the I- or in the C-system. In the discussion of a range of impersonal constructions in German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Yiddish, Icelandic, the Mainland Scandinavian languages and English, it is shown that crosslinguistic variation as regards, e.g., the distribution of the expletive in impersonal passives and the occurrence of a Definiteness Effect in Transitive Expletive Constructions is mainly due to the choice of different kinds of 'expletive' elements (each associated with different featural make-ups which force them to show up in different positions), namely true expletives, event arguments and quasi-arguments, whereas expletive pro is shown not to exist.
Download or read book Clause Structure and Word Order in Hebrew and Arabic written by Ur Shlonsky and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1997 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looking at the grammars of Hebrew and several varieties of Arabic, Shlonsky examines clausal architecture and verb movement and the role of agreement in natural language, using Chomsky's Government and Binding Approach.
Download or read book Phrasal and Clausal Architecture written by Simin Karimi and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-02-21 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present collection includes papers that address a wide range of syntactic phenomena. In some, the authors discuss such major syntactic properties as clausal architecture, syntactic labels and derivation, and the nature of features and their role with respect to movement, agreement, and event-related constructions. In addition, several papers offer syntax-based discussions of aspects of acquisition, pedagogy, and neurolinguistics, addressing issues related to case marking, negation, thematic relations, and more. Several papers report on new findings relevant to less commonly investigated languages, and all provide valuable observations related to natural language syntactic properties, many of which are universal in their implications. The authors challenge several aspects of recent syntactic theory, broaden the applicable scope of others, and introduce important and provocative analyses that bear on current issues in linguistics.
Download or read book Grammatical Change and Linguistic Theory written by Thórhallur Eythórsson and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008-03-06 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains 15 revised papers originally presented at a symposium at Rosendal, Norway, under the aegis of The Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. The overall theme of the volume is ‘internal factors in grammatical change.’ The papers focus on fundamental questions in theoretically-based historical linguistics from a broad perspective. Several of the papers relate to grammaticalization in different ways, but are generally critical of ‘Grammaticalization Theory’. Further papers focus on the causes of syntactic change, pinpointing both extra-syntactic (exogenous) causes and – more controversially – internally driven (endogenous) causes. The volume is rounded up by contributions on morphological change ‘by itself.’ A wide range of languages is covered, including Tsova-Tush (Nakh-Dagestan), Zoque, and Athapaskan languages, in addition to Indo-European languages, both the more familiar ones and some less well-studied varieties.
Download or read book Explorations in English Historical Syntax written by Hubert Cuyckens and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2018-08-15 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The papers in this volume cover a wide range of interrelated syntactic phenomena, from the history of core arguments, to complements and non-finite clauses, elements in the clause periphery, as well as elements with potential scope over complete sentences and even larger discourse chunks. In one way or another, however, they all testify to an increasing awareness that even some of the most central phenomena of syntax – and the way they develop over time – are best understood by taking into account their communicative functions and the way they are processed and represented by speakers’ cognitive apparatus. In doing so, they show that historical syntax, and historical linguistics in general, is witnessing a convergence between formerly distinct linguistic frameworks and traditions. With this fusion of traditions, the trend is undeniably towards a richer and more broadly informed understanding of syntactic change and the history of English. This volume will be of great interest to scholars of (English) historical syntax and historical linguistics within the cognitive-linguistic as well as the generative tradition.
Download or read book Semantic and syntactic aspects of impersonality written by Peter Herbeck and published by Helmut Buske Verlag. This book was released on 2019-08-01 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Herbeck, Bernhard Pöll & Anne C. Wolfsgruber: Foreword Hubert Haider: On expletive, semantically void, and absent subjects Janayna Carvalho: Incorporated subjects in Existential Impersonal Sentences in Brazilian Portuguese Thórhallur Eythórsson, Anton Karl Ingason & Einar Freyr Sigurðsson: Flavors of reflexive arguments in Icelandic impersonals Sigríður Sigurjónsdóttir & Joan Maling: From passive to active: diachronic change in impersonal constructions Anne C. Wolfsgruber: Impersonal interpretations of Medieval Romance se - tracing initial contexts Eduardo Amaral & Wiltrud Mihatsch: Incipient impersonal pronouns in colloquial Brazilian Portuguese based on pessoa, pessoal and povo
Download or read book Overt and Null Subjects in Bulgarian and in L1 Bulgarian L2 German Interlanguage written by Dobrinka Genevska-Hanke and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the realization of pronominal subjects in Bulgarian and its implications for late near-native competence of German as a second/foreign language. Since Bulgarian is under-researched, typological investigations were carried out prior to the empirical study of L2 subject use. The book covers the adequate classification of Bulgarian, ascertaining its pro-drop nature, and explores the possible impact of related cross-linguistic differences on near-native interlanguage grammars of speakers with the language combination L1-Bulgarian/L2-German. Although German is not pro-drop, it allows null topics and requires some obligatory null expletives, so that null subject contexts superficially overlap for the two languages. This is a source of interlanguage deficits if no proper differentiation between subject types is made.
Download or read book Adverb Licensing and Clause Structure in English written by Dagmar Haumann and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-03-07 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph provides an in-depth investigation of the structural integration and the licensing of adverbs in relation to clause structure, with special emphasis on the structural implementation of the relation between the position and interpretation of adverbs. The book substantiates the hypothesis that the licensing of adverbs within and across the three layers of the clause is contingent on specifier-head agreement and that variation in the linear order of adverbs and other elements of the clause follows from the interplay of a small number of factors. The central claims made are: functional projections hosting adverbs are not confined to the inflectional and complementizer layer of the clause, but also play a central role in the shaping of the lexical layer; postverbal adverbs are realized within a semantically empty verbal projection and licensed under specifier head agreement by proxy; and adverbs that occur within the complementizer layer of the clause do so by either move or merge.
Download or read book The Syntax Information Structure Interface written by Timothy Gupton and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2014-10-24 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is quite remarkable that, after over a half-century of generative grammar, there is still uncertainty with respect to the analysis of preverbal subjects in a number of languages. According to canonical analyses, preverbal subjects are arguments (A-elements). However, following non-canonical analyses, preverbal subjects are not arguments, but rather A’-elements that behave like topical preverbal direct and indirect objects, which have received a CLLD analysis in the literature (e.g. Cinque 1990). The implications of this debate are far-reaching for generative theory: if preverbal subjects are non-arguments, one must question the universality of the EPP (as in e.g. Alexiadou & Agnostopoulou 1998), as well as its associated features and feature-strengths. Galician is an underdocumented Romance language within the generative paradigm. In this book, I develop an experimental program for establishing clausal word order preferences for a number of information structure contexts. The preference data suggest that preverbal subjects behave like canonical elements, and not CLLD elements. These results inform the model of the preverbal field that I propose for Galician, which also takes into account the enclisis-proclisis divide and reco.
Download or read book Subjects in English written by Peter Uhrig and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-06-11 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of the book is twofold. First it tries to give a descriptive account of subjects in English. The second aim is to elucidate the status of the subject both as a concept in grammatical theory and with regard to the question whether the subject is determined by item-specific arbitrary formal restrictions in the same way as postverbal complements of the verb have been shown to be.
Download or read book Selected Papers from the 2006 Cyprus Syntaxfest written by Kleanthes K. Grohmann and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a selection of contributions from the week-long Cyprus Syntaxfest in 2006, which brought together research in syntax by several respected and prolific theoretical linguists from all over the world. During the six days of the Syntaxfest, work from a variety of viewpoints in modern generative grammar was presented, and the research discussed and debated followed diverse methodological paths, with the thematic focus on left peripheries in linguistic structures and (their) interface interpretation. The current collection of expanded versions of selected research presented at the Cyprus Syntaxfest reflects a wide variety of approaches to these topics; it also provides a glimpse of the rich sample of cross-linguistic data that informed the discussions of syntactic peripheries and their interface interpretation. It offers eleven studies on clausal and nominal left-peripheral phenomena and their (role in) interpretation in a variety of typologically unrelated languages. More significantly, the contributions collected here underscore the by now established importance and theoretical interest of studying the edge of constituents, whether phasal or not. In every chapter, the blueprint of a general interpretive hierarchy driving and constraining syntax is also retraced throughout.
Download or read book Research in Afroasiatic Grammar written by Jacqueline Lecarme and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a selection of papers from the 3rd Conference on Afroasiatic Languages, held in Sophia Antipolis, France, in 1996. The languages discussed include (varieties of) Arabic, Hebrew, Berber, Chaha, Wolof, and Old Egyptian.
Download or read book The Morphology and Syntax of Topic and Focus written by Liliana Sánchez and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an innovative analysis that relates informational structure, syntax and morphology in Quechua. It provides a minimalist account of the relationship between focus, topic, evidentiality and other left-peripheral features and sentence-internal constituents marked with suffixes that have been previously considered of a pragmatic nature. Intervention effects show that these relationships are also of a syntactic nature. The analysis is extended to morphological markers that appear on polarity sensitive items and wh-words. The book also provides a brief overview of the main characteristics of Quechua syntax as well as additional bibliographical information.
Download or read book The Syntax of German written by Hubert Haider and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-07 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A broad coverage of German syntax, providing an in-depth look at object-verb sentence formation in comparison with other languages.
Download or read book Parametric Variation written by Theresa Biberauer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Parametric variation in linguistic theory refers to the systematic grammatical variation permitted by the human language faculty. This book is a defence of the parametric approach to linguistic variation, set within the framework of the Minimalist Program.
Download or read book Variation in the Input written by Merete Anderssen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-09-22 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The topic of variation in language has received considerable attention in the field of general linguistics in recent years. This includes research on linguistic micro-variation that is dependent on fine distinctions in syntax and information structure. However, relatively little work has been done on how this variation is acquired. This book focuses on how different types of variation are expressed in the input and how this is acquired by young children. The collection of papers includes studies of the acquisition of variation in a number of different languages, including English, German, Greek, Italian, Korean, Norwegian, Swiss German, Ukrainian, and American Sign Language. Different kinds of linguistic variation are considered, ranging from pure word order variation to optionally doubly filled COMPs and the resolution of scopal ambiguities. In addition, papers in the volume deal with the extreme case of variation found in bilingual acquisition.
Download or read book Syntactic Complexity from a Language Acquisition Perspective written by Elisa Di Domenico and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-11 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume examines syntactic complexity from an acquisitional perspective, which offers a peculiarly grounded starting point when dealing with linguistic complexity, under the assumption that what is simpler is acquired earlier than what must be thought of as complex. Connecting acquisitional data inseparably to formal linguistic analyses, it not only allows a comparison between structures at various levels in terms of complexity, but also a deeper insight into the factors determining complexity in different populations of acquirers. The book is divided into two parts following an introductory chapter. The papers in Part I consider the first language acquisition of some complex structures such as different types of passives, relative clauses, questions and classes of predicates, with a look at children’s early sensitivity to seemingly complex domains, such as the Definiteness Effect and unaccusative predicates. Part II is dedicated to the acquisition of complex structures in different modes of acquisition. The papers here examine, sometimes comparatively, different conditions of language acquisition dealing with clitics, types of relative clauses or referential pronouns. The languages considered range from European Portuguese to Finnish, French, German, Italian and Romanian.
