Download or read book Contrasts and Positions in Information Structure written by Ivona Kučerová and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-26 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Information structure, or the way the information in a sentence is 'divided' into categories such as topic, focus, comment, background, and old versus new information, is one of the most widely debated topics in linguistics. This volume incorporates exciting work on the relationship between syntax and information structure. The contributors are united in rejecting accounts that assume designated syntactic positions associated with specific information-structural interpretations, and aim instead to derive information-structural conditions on word order and other phenomena from the way syntax and syntax-external systems interact. Beyond this shared aim, the authors of the various chapters advocate a number of approaches, based on different types of data (syntactic, semantic, phonological/phonetic) from a range of languages. The book is aimed at specialists in syntax and/or information structure, as well as students and linguists in related fields keen to familiarise themselves with current issues in this fascinating area of research.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure written by Caroline Féry and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-21 with total page 800 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides linguists with a clear, critical, and comprehensive overview of theoretical and experimental work on information structure. Leading researchers survey the main theories of information structure in syntax, phonology, and semantics as well as perspectives from psycholinguistics and other relevant fields. Following the editors' introduction the book is divided into four parts. The first, on theories of and theoretical perspectives on information structure, includes chapters on focus, topic, and givenness. Part 2 covers a range of current issues in the field, including quantification, dislocation, and intonation, while Part 3 is concerned with experimental approaches to information structure, including language processing and acquisition. The final part contains a series of linguistic case studies drawn from a wide variety of the world's language families. This volume will be the standard guide to current work in information structure and a major point of departure for future research.
Download or read book Objects and Information Structure written by Mary Dalrymple and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-02 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cross-linguistic study of how objects are affected by information structure.
Download or read book The Syntax of Topic Focus and Contrast written by Ad Neeleman and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses how core notions of information structure (topic, focus and contrast) are expressed in syntax. The authors propose that the syntactic effects of information structure come about as a result of mapping rules that are flexible enough to allow topics and foci to be expressed in a variety of positions, but strict enough to capture certain cross-linguistic generalisations about their distribution. In particular, the papers argue that only contrastive topics and contrastive foci undergo movement and that this is because such movement has the function of marking the scope of contrast. Several predications are derived from this proposal: such as that a focus cannot move across a topic – whether the latter is in situ or not. Syntactic and semantic evidence in support of this proposal is presented from a wide range of languages (including Dutch, English, Japanese, Korean and Russian) and theoretical consequences explored. The first chapter not only outlines its theoretical aims, but also provides an introduction to information structure. As a consequence, the book is accessible to advanced students as well as professional linguists.
Download or read book Perspectives on Language Structure and Language Change written by Lars Heltoft and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2019-06-15 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume centers on three important theoretical concepts for the study of language change and the ways in which language structure emerges and turns into new structure: reanalysis, actualization, and indexicality. Reanalysis is a part of ongoing everyday language use, a process through which language is reproduced and changed. Actualization refers to the processes through which a reanalyzed structure spreads throughout single communities and society. Indexicality covers the way in which parts of a linguistic system can point to other parts of the system, both syntagmatically and paradigmatically. The inclusion of indexicality leads to fine-grained analysis in morphology, word order, and constructional syntax.
Download or read book The Role of Alternatives in Language written by Sophie Repp and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2021-06-21 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Pronouns Presuppositions and Hierarchies written by Andrew Carnie and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-05 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eloise Jelinek was a leading authority on syntactic and semantic theory, information structure, and several Native American languages (including Lummi, Yaqui, and Navajo). She was one of the very first generative linguists who brought the theoretical implications of the properties of typologically unusual and understudied languages to the forefront of mainstream generative thinking. Jelinek originated the Pronominal Argument Hypothesis – the idea that many languages restrict realization of their arguments to pronouns. In other work, Jelinek investigated a broad range of morphological, syntactic and semantic phenomena in understudied and endangered languages. Besides the theoretical value of that work, it was instrumental in providing sophisticated semantic and syntactic documentation for such languages, where description is typically limited to the basic morphophonology and morphosyntax, as well as texts, that form the core of most descriptive work. Thirteen of her most important papers, together with a fourteenth essay previously unpublished, are here collected, each preceded by a short introduction that provides context for the work and evidence of its subsequent influence.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure written by Caroline Féry and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 993 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Researchers survey the main theories of information structure in syntax, phonology, and semantics as well as perspectives from psycholinguistics and other relevant fields"--Del editor.
Download or read book The Syntax Information Structure Interface written by Eugenia Casielles-Suárez and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Central questions addressed are the analysis of subjects in Spanish and English (DP vs. NP and null vs. preverbal vs. postverbal) and the nature of constructions such as topicalization, left-dislocation, and focus preposing.
Download or read book Optimizing Adverb Positions written by Eva Engels and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adverb positions vary within a single language as well as across diverse languages. Based on the study of adverbs in English, French and German, this monograph shows that the distribution of adverbs is influenced by various factors at distinct levels of linguistic representation comprising semantics, syntax, phonology and information structure , which interact in determining adverb positions. The results of the investigation are formulated within the theoretical framework of Optimality Theory, which captures the complex interaction of these factors by hierarchically ranked constraints, deriving cross-linguistic variation of adverb positions by differences in the language-specific constraint hierarchies. The book is divided into two parts: While Part I examines adverb positions in general, Part II investigates under which circumstances an adverb may attach to a phonetically empty constituent in the languages under discussion. The book appeals to a linguistic audience interested in Germanic and Romance languages as well as in theoretical syntax in general.
Download or read book Papers of the Forty Third Algonquian Conference written by Monica Macaulay and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Papers of the forty-third Algonquian Conference held at University of Michigan in October 2011. The papers of the Algonquian Conference have long served as the primary source of peer-reviewed scholarship addressing topics related to the languages and societies of Algonquian peoples. Contributions, which are peer-reviewed submissions presented at the annual conference, represent an assortment of humanities and social science disciplines, including archeology, cultural anthropology, history, ethnohistory, linguistics, literary studies, Native studies, social work, film, and countless others. Both theoretical and descriptive approaches are welcomed, and submissions often provide previously unpublished data from historical and contemporary sources, or novel theoretical insights based on firsthand research. The research is commonly interdisciplinary in scope and the papers are filled with contributions presenting fresh research from a broad array of researchers and writers. These papers are essential reading for those interested in Algonquian world views, cultures, history, and languages. They build bridges among a large international group of people who write in different disciplines. Scholars in linguistics, anthropology, history, education, and other fields are brought together in one vital community, thanks to these publications.
Download or read book Arguments and Agreement written by Peter Ackema and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2006-09-28 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together new work by leading syntactic theorists from the USA and Europe on a central aspect of syntactic and morphological theory: it explores the role of agreement morphology in the morphosyntactic realization of a verb's arguments. The authors examine the differences and parallels between nonconfigurational, pronominal- agreement languages; configurational languages which allow pronoun drop (for example, "Is coming" for "He is coming"); languages that allow pronoun drop in particular constructions only; and languages which always require overt syntactic determiner phrases as arguments. The book considers whether the morphological properties of agreement play a role in determining which of these types a language belongs to and how far languages differ with respect to the argumental status of their agreement and syntactic determiner phrases. The authors explore these and related issues and problems in the context of a wide range of languages. Their book will interest linguists at graduate level and above concerned with morphosyntactic theory, linguistic typology, and the interactions of syntax and morphology in different languages.
Download or read book On Information Structure Meaning and Form written by Kerstin Schwabe and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-03-08 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of articles offers a new and compelling perspective on the interface connecting syntax, phonology, semantics and pragmatics. At the core of this volume is the hypothesis that information structure represents the common interface of these grammatical components. Information structure is investigated here from different theoretical viewpoints yielding typologically relevant information and structural generalizations. In the volume's introductory chapter, the editors identify two central approaches to information structure: the formal and the interpretive view. The remainder of the book is organized accordingly. The first part examines information structure and grammar, concentrating on generalizations across languages. The second part investigates information structure and pragmatics, concentrating on clause structure and context. Through concrete analyses of topic, focus, and related phenomena across different languages, the contributors add new and convincing evidence to the research on information structure.
Download or read book Information Theory and Language written by Łukasz Dębowski and published by MDPI. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Information Theory and Language” is a collection of 12 articles that appeared recently in Entropy as part of a Special Issue of the same title. These contributions represent state-of-the-art interdisciplinary research at the interface of information theory and language studies. They concern in particular: • Applications of information theoretic concepts such as Shannon and Rényi entropies, mutual information, and rate–distortion curves to the research of natural languages; • Mathematical work in information theory inspired by natural language phenomena, such as deriving moments of subword complexity or proving continuity of mutual information; • Empirical and theoretical investigation of quantitative laws of natural language such as Zipf’s law, Herdan’s law, and Menzerath–Altmann’s law; • Empirical and theoretical investigations of statistical language models, including recently developed neural language models, their entropies, and other parameters; • Standardizing language resources for statistical investigation of natural language; • Other topics concerning semantics, syntax, and critical phenomena. Whereas the traditional divide between probabilistic and formal approaches to human language, cultivated in the disjoint scholarships of natural sciences and humanities, has been blurred in recent years, this book can contribute to pointing out potential areas of future research cross-fertilization.
Download or read book From NP to DP The syntax and semantics of noun phrases written by Martine Coene and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first of a two-volume selection of refereed and revised papers, originally presented at the international conference "From NP to DP" at the University of Antwerp. The papers address issues in the syntax and semantics of the noun phrase, in particular the so-called DP-hypothesis which takes noun phrases to be headed by a functional head D(eterminer). The major concerns can be grouped around 3 subthemes: the internal syntax of noun phrases, the syntax and semantics of bare nouns and indefinites and the expression of measurement in noun phrases. The wealth of data coming from over 40 different languages combined with a thorough introduction to the current issues in the field of NPs/DPs and some alternative syntactic and semantic analyses, provide a comprehensive reference work from both a descriptive and a theoretical point of view. The second volume is concerned exclusively with the expression of possession in noun phrases.
Download or read book Information Structure and Sentence Form written by Knud Lambrecht and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-11-13 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do speakers of all languages use different grammatical structures under different communicative circumstances to express the same idea? Professor Lambrecht explores the relationship between the structure of the sentence and the linguistic and extra-linguistic context in which it is used. His analysis is based on the observation that the structure of a sentence reflects a speaker's assumption about the hearer's state of knowledge and consciousness at the time of the utterance. This relationship between speaker assumptions and formal sentence structure is governed by rules and conventions of grammar, in a component called 'information structure'. Four independent but interrelated categories are analysed: presupposition and assertion, identifiability and activation, topic, and focus.
Download or read book Dimensions of Phonological Stress written by Jeffrey Heinz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-17 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Top researchers explore the nature of stress and accent patterns in languages, especially the nature of their representations and how people learn them.
