Download or read book Definiteness written by Christopher Lyons and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-03-13 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1999 textbook investigates definiteness both from a comparative and a theoretical point of view, showing how languages express definiteness and what definiteness is. It surveys a large number of languages to discover the range of variation in relation to definiteness and related grammatical phenomena, such as demonstratives, possessives and personal pronouns. It outlines work done on the nature of definiteness in semantics, pragmatics and syntax, and develops an account on which definiteness is a grammatical category represented in syntax as a functional head (the widely discussed D). Consideration is also given to the origins and evolution of definite articles in the light of the comparative and theoretical findings. Among the claims advanced are that definiteness does not occur in all languages, though the pragmatic concept which it grammaticalizes probably does.
Download or read book The Representation of in definiteness written by Eric J. Reuland and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Representation of(In)definiteness collects the most important current research, reflecting a wide range of approaches, on a central theoretical issue in linguistics: characterizing the distinction between definite and indefinite expressions. The authors of these 11 original essays, which draw on current work in theoretical syntax and semantics, were charged by the editors to take more than usual heed of alternative analyses offered by other theories, thereby promoting cross fertilization of syntactic and semantic ideas, concepts, and argumentation. The project as a whole is grounded in the belief that explicit comparison of seemingly incompatible approaches is essential to improve our understanding of the nature and structure of natural language. Eric J. Reuland and Alice ter Meulen are Professors of Linguistics at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and the University of Washington respectively. The Representation of (In)definiteness is fourteenth in the series Current Studies in Linguistics, edited by Samuel Jay Keyser.
Download or read book Definiteness in Bulgarian written by Olga M. Mladenova and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2008-09-25 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In its evolution from a synthetic to an analytic language, Bulgarian acquired a grammaticalized category of definiteness. The book presents the first attempt to explore in detail how this happened by comparing the earliest Modern Bulgarian texts with contemporary dialect and standard Bulgarian data. The basic units of analysis are the various types of nominal structures headed by nouns or pronouns. The analysis requires the strict terminological disentanglement of form from content and the adoption of a default inheritance model of definiteness that allow the exhaustive classification and tagging of nominal structures encountered in the texts. Tagging makes it possible to apply quantitative analysis to nominal structure and to assess the types available in the early texts from a current native-speaker perspective. Based on an S-curve model of language change, the study establishes that overt markers of definiteness were first made available to identifiability-based definites, then to inclusiveness-based definites, quantitative generics and unique referents. The overt markers of indefiniteness followed suit, separating indefinites from non-specifics and typifying generics. This progression of definiteness was directed by variables such as person, animacy, gender, number and noun-class, and started in contexts in which definiteness closely interacted with possessivity. Such an analysis leads to the realization that the two-dimensional S-curve model does not account for all language change and that there is a need for a three-dimensional model. It also demonstrates that, contrary to previous assumptions, there is continuity between the early Slavic marker of definiteness (long-form adjectives) and the Modern Bulgarian article. This discovery, in conjunction with geolinguistic arguments, sheds new light on the role that relations inside the Balkan Sprachbund played in the grammaticalization of Bulgarian definiteness.
Download or read book The Diachrony of Definiteness in North Germanic written by Dominika Skrzypek and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an account of the rise of definite and indefinite articles in Danish, Swedish and Icelandic, as documented in a choice of extant texts from 1200-1550. These three North Germanic languages show different development patterns in the rise of articles, despite the common origin, but each reveals interdependencies between the two processes. The matter is approached from both a quantitative and a qualitative perspective. The statistical analysis provides an improved overview on article grammaticalization, focusing on the factors at the basis of such process. The in-depth qualitative analysis of longer text passages places the crucial stage of the definite article grammaticalization with the so-called indirect anaphoric reference.
Download or read book Definiteness and Indefiniteness written by John Hawkins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-03 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1988, this book is concerned with the definite and indefinite articles in English. It provides an integrated pragmatic-semantic theory of definite and indefinite reference, on the basis of which, many co-occurance restrictions between articles and non-modifiers are explained. At the general theoretical level, this book looks at the role of semantics in the prediction of all and only the grammatical sentences of a language. A generalisation is proposed uniting semantic oppositions underlying ungrammaticality with syntactic oppositions between conditions of application on transformational generative rules. A procedure is suggested for distinguishing semantic from syntactic causes of ungrammaticality. At a more particular level, the book explores the nature of reference. It examines an important selection of subjects such as the contrast between definiteness and indefiniteness, the relationship between definite and demonstrative reference, and the relationship between pragmatic and logical aspects of determining meaning.
Download or read book Quantification Definiteness and Nominalization written by Anastasia Giannakidou and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-01-29 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses recent developments in the study of quantifier phrases, nominalizations, and the linking definite determiner. It reflects the intense reconsideration of the nature of quantification, and of fundamental aspects of the syntax and semantics of quantifier phrases. Leading international scholars explore novel and challenging ideas at the interfaces between syntax and morphology, syntax and semantics, morphology and the lexicon. They examine core issues in the field, such as kind reference, number marking, partitivity, context dependence and the way presuppositions are built into the meanings of quantifiers. They also consider how in this context definiteness and the definite determiner D play a central role, and the way in which D is also instrumental in nominalizations. With nominalization, the lexical semantic contribution of verbs and their arguments becomes central, and within the perspective of this book the question is asked whether syntactic nominalizations share with noun phrases the same external layer, namely the functional projection DP. If so, what exactly is the contribution of D in this case, and how much of the lexical correspondence between nouns and verbs is preserved? This book presents the latest thinking on cross-paradigm and cross-linguistic approaches in three of the most vibrant and productive research areas in linguistics. It paves the way towards a more comprehensive understanding of how quantification, definiteness, and nominalizations are encoded in the grammar.
Download or read book Definiteness across languages written by Ana Aguilar-Guevara and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Definiteness has been a central topic in theoretical semantics since its modern foundation. However, despite its significance, there has been surprisingly scarce research on its cross-linguistic expression. With the purpose of contributing to filling this gap, the present volume gathers thirteen studies exploiting insights from formal semantics and syntax, typological and language specific studies, and, crucially, semantic fieldwork and cross-linguistic semantics, in order to address the expression and interpretation of definiteness in a diverse group of languages, most of them understudied. The papers presented in this volume aim to establish a dialogue between theory and data in order to answer the following questions: What formal strategies do natural languages employ to encode definiteness? What are the possible meanings associated to this notion across languages? Are there different types of definite reference? Which other functions (besides marking definite reference) are associated with definite descriptions? Each of the papers contained in this volume addresses at least one of these questions and, in doing so, they aim to enrich our understanding of definiteness.
Download or read book The Concept of Definiteness and Its Application to Automated Reference Resolution written by Zaur Kambarov and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2008 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of the category of definiteness in the light of research on mental spaces and frames. The author formulates a set of eight uniform rules for the use of the definite, indefinite, and zero articles in English and German. The Concept of Definiteness presents an algorithm for nominal reference resolution that uses the definiteness value of each noun phrase to guide the search for its referent. The book discusses the results of the application of an automated system based on the proposed algorithm to texts in modern English. It also demonstrates applicability of the selected approach to text fragments representing all major historical variants of the German language.
Download or read book Sentence and Discourse written by Jacqueline Guéron and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-29 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at the relationship between the structure of the sentence and the organization of discourse. While a sentence obeys specific grammatical rules, the coherence of a discourse is instead dependent on the relations between the sentences it contains. In this volume, leading syntacticians, semanticists, and philosophers examine the nature of these relations, where they come from, and how they apply. Chapters in Part I address points of sentence grammar in different languages, including mood and tense in Spanish, definite determiners in French and Bulgarian, and the influence of aktionsart on the acquisition of tense by English, French, and Chinese children. Part II looks at modes of discourse, showing for example how discourse relations create implicatures and how Indirect Discourse differs from Free Indirect Discourse. The studies conclude that the relations between sentences that make a discourse coherent are already encoded in sentence grammar and that, once established, these relations influence the meaning of individual sentences.
Download or read book Non definiteness and Plurality written by Svetlana Vogeleer and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of studies by leading scholars in the field focuses on the semantics of non-definite (bare and indefinite) plural NPs. The contributions in the first part concentrate on bare plurals and their cross-linguistic counterparts. They discuss applicability of the notion of 'semantic incorporation' to bare plurals by contrasting them to bare singulars, with the aim of accounting for the interaction between the semantics of number and the degree of (in)dependency of the NP with respect to the verb. The articles in the second part examine the relationship between the semantics of number and the semantics of aspect. The contributions in the third part concentrate on non-definite numerical noun phrases by addressing a range of fundamental questions such as: the semantics of indefinite time-phrases, numericals in classifier- and non-classifier languages, scope interactions, the at least- and exactly-readings, referential properties of numericals. The volume will be welcomed by linguists interested in the semantics of number in non-definite NPs.
Download or read book Definiteness Effects written by Susann Fischer and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2016-08-17 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores in detail the empirical and conceptual content of the definiteness effect in grammar. It brings together a variety of relevant observations from a typological, diachronic and a bilingual/second language acquisition perspective, and provides a general overview of different approaches concerned with the syntactic, morphological, semantic, and pragmatic properties of the Definiteness Effect in a series of European and non-European languages.
Download or read book Grammar Meaning and Pragmatics written by Frank Brisard and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ten volumes of "Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights" focus on the most salient topics in the field of pragmatics, thus dividing its wide interdisciplinary spectrum in a transparent and manageable way. While other volumes select philosophical, cognitive, cultural, social, variational, interactional, or discursive points of view, this fifth volume looks at the field of linguistic pragmatics from a primarily grammatical angle. That is, it asks in which particular sense a variety of older and more recent functional (rather than generative) models of grammar relate to the study of language in use: how this affects their general outlook on language structure, whether issues of language use inform the very makeup of these models or are merely included as possible research themes, and how far the actual integration of pragmatics ultimately goes (is it a module/layer or is the model truly usage-based ?). Each of the authors presenting these models has taken systematic care to highlight the relevant problems and focus on the implications of considering pragmatic phenomena from the point of view of grammar. Furthermore, a limited number of chapters deal with traditional topics in the grammatical literature, and specifically those which are called pragmatic because they either are not strictly concerned with truth (semantics), or receive their (truth) value only from an interaction with context. In the introduction, these theories and topics are set up against the historical background of a gradually changing attitude, on the part of grammarians, towards questions of linguistic knowledge and behavior, and the role of learning in their relationship."
Download or read book Reference Definiteness and the Noun Phrase in Swedish written by Harry Christian Bernard Perridon and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Logical Analysis and Definiteness of Intention written by Herman Tønnessen and published by . This book was released on 1959 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Article and the Concept of Definiteness in Language written by Jiří Krámský and published by Janua Linguarum. Series Minor. This book was released on 1972 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No detailed description available for "The Article and the Concept of Definiteness in Language".
Download or read book South Asian Languages written by Bhadriraju Krishnamurti and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publ.. This book was released on 1986 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Definiteness in a Language Without Articles a Study on Polish written by Adrian Czardybon and published by Düsseldorf University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-13 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aim of this book is to investigate how definiteness is expressed in Polish, a language which is claimed to have no definite and in-definite articles. The central question is how the difference in definiteness is indicated between 'a woman' and 'the woman' in Polish. In English, the definite article 'the' and the indefinite article 'a' express the category of definiteness explicitly. Since definiteness is also relevant in articleless languages, there are other means to indicate that a nominal phrase is definite or indefinite.0This study is delimited to four means for expressing definiteness in Polish, which are demonstratives, aspect, case alternation, and information structure. Each strategy is investigated independently from the others, although they interact in a complex way, which is shown at the end of this book resulting in a decision tree. Polish is not investigated in isolation, however, the study is complemented by comparisons with other Slavic languages and also with a Polish dialect called 'Upper Silesian', which differs from Polish.0The analysis in this book is based on Löbner?s theory of 'Concept Types and Determination' (CTD). Löbner?s distinction of the four concept types (sortal, relational, functional, individual) is crucial since definiteness phenomena under discussion can be explained. Therefore, the interaction of the four concept types with the four definiteness strategies plays a central role in this book.
