Download or read book Syntax of Scope written by Joseph Aoun and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Syntax of Scope takes up the issue of relative operator scope in generative grammar and offers a comparative study of quantifiers and interrogative wh-operators.

Download or read book A Syntax of Substance written by David Adger and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new approach to grammar and meaning of relational nouns is presented along with its empirical consequences.

Download or read book Restriction and Saturation written by Sandra Chung and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003-10-24 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With this study of Maori and Chamorro, Sandra Chung and William Ladusaw make a valuable contribution to the growing literature on the formal semantic analysis of non-Indo-European languages. Their ultimate focus is on how the study of these Austronesian languages can illuminate the alternatives for semantic interpretation and their interaction with syntactic structure. Revisiting the analysis of indefiniteness in terms of restricted free variables, they claim that some varieties of indefinites are better analyzed by taking restriction and saturation to be fundamental semantic operations.Chapters examine the general topic of modes of composition (including predicate restriction and syntactic versus semantic saturation), types of indefinite determiners in Maori, and object incorporation in Chamorro (including discussions of the extra object and restriction without saturation). The authors' goal is that the two case studies they offer, and their larger focus on modes of composition, will contribute to a broader account of the interaction of form, position, and semantic interpretation.

Download or read book On the Definition of Word written by Anne-Marie Di Sciullo and published by MIT Press (MA). This book was released on 1987-01 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On The Definition of Word develops a consistent and coherent approach to central questions about morphology and its relation to syntax. In sorting out the various senses in which the word word is used, it asserts that three concepts which have often been identified with each other are in fact distinct and not coextensive: listemes (linguistic objects permanently stored by the speaker); morphological objects (objects whose shape can be characterized in morphological terms of affixation and compounding); and syntactic atoms (objects that are unanalyzable units with respect to syntax). The first chapter defends the idea that listemes are distinct from the other two notions, and that all one can and should say about them is that they exist. A theory of morphological objects is developed in chapter two. Chapter three defends the claim that the morphological objects are a proper subset of the syntactic atoms, presenting the authors' reconstruction of the important and much-debated Lexical Integrity Hypothesis. A final chapter shows that there are syntactic atoms which are not morphological objects. Anne Marie Di Sciullo is in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Quebec. Edwin Williams is in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts. On The Definition of Word is Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 14.

Download or read book The Architecture of the Language Faculty written by Ray Jackendoff and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ray Jackendoff steps back to survey the broader theoretical landscape in linguistics, in an attempt to identify some of the sources of the widely perceived malaise with respect to much current theorizing. Over the past twenty-five years, Ray Jackendoff has investigated many complex issues in syntax, semantics, and the relation of language to other cognitive domains. He steps back in this new book to survey the broader theoretical landscape in linguistics, in an attempt to identify some of the sources of the widely perceived malaise with respect to much current theorizing. Starting from the "Minimalist" necessity for interfaces of the grammar with sound, meaning, and the lexicon, Jackendoff examines many standard assumptions of generative grammar that in retrospect may be seen as the product of historical accident. He then develops alternatives more congenial to contemporary understanding of linguistic phenomena. The Architecture of the Language Faculty seeks to situate the language capacity in a more general theory of mental representations and to connect the theory of grammar with processing. To this end, Jackendoff works out an architecture that generates multiple co-constraining structures, and he embeds this proposal in a version of the modularity hypothesis called Representational Modularity. Jackendoff carefully articulates the nature of lexical insertion and the content of lexical entries, including idioms and productive affixes. The resulting organization of the grammar is compatible with many different technical realizations, which he shows can be instantiated in terms of a variety of current theoretical frameworks. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph No. 28

Download or read book Barriers written by Noam Chomsky and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Asymmetry in Morphology written by Anna Maria Di Sciullo and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2005-11-04 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking monograph, Anna Maria Di Sciullo proposes that asymmetry—the irreversibility of a pair of elements in an ordered set—is a hard-wired property of morphological relations. Her argument that asymmetry is central in derivational morphology, would, if true, make morphological objects regular objects of grammar just as syntactic and phonological objects are. This contrasts with the traditional assumption that morphology is irregular and thus not subject to the basic hard-wired regularities of form and interpretation. Di Sciullo argues that the asymmetric property of morphological relations is part of the language faculty. She proposes a theory of grammar, Asymmetry Theory, according to which generic operations have specific instantiations in parallel derivations of the computational space. She posits that morphological and syntactic relations share a property, asymmetry, but diverge with respect to other properties of their primitives, operations, and interface representations. Di Sciullo offers empirical support for her theory with examples from a variety of languages, including English, Modern Greek, African, Romance, Turkish, and Slavic.

Download or read book The Antisymmetry of Syntax written by Richard S. Kayne and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1994-12-14 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is standardly assumed that Universal Grammar (UG) allows a given hierarchical representation to be associated with more than one linear order. This book proposes a restrictive theory of word order and phrase structure that denies this assumption. According to this theory, phrase structure always completely determines linear order, so that if two phrases differ in linear order, they must also differ in hierarchical structure. It is standardly assumed that Universal Grammar (UG) allows a given hierarchical representation to be associated with more than one linear order. For example, English and Japanese phrases consisting of a verb and its complement are thought of as symmetrical to one another, differing only in linear order. The Antisymmetry of Syntax proposes a restrictive theory of word order and phrase structure that denies this assumption. According to this theory, phrase structure always completely determines linear order, so that if two phrases differ in linear order, they must also differ in hierarchical structure. More specifically, Richard Kayne shows that asymmetric c-command invariably maps into linear precedence. From this follows, with few further hypotheses, a highly specific theory of word order in UG: that complement positions must always follow their associated head, and that specifiers and adjoined elements must always precede the phrase that they are sister to. A further result is that standard X-bar theory is not a primitive component of UG. Rather, X-bar theory expresses a set of antisymmetric properties of phrase structure. This antisymmetry is inherited from the more basic antisymmetry of linear order. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph No. 25

Download or read book Economy and Semantic Interpretation written by Danny Fox and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the relevance of principles of optimization to the interface between syntax and semantics. In Economy and Semantic Interpretation, Danny Fox investigates the relevance of principles of optimization (economy) to the interface between syntax and semantics. Supporting the view that grammar is restricted by economy considerations, Fox argues for various economy conditions that constrain the application of covert operations. Among other things, he argues that syntactic operations that do not affect phonology cannot apply unless they affect the semantic interpretation of a sentence. This position has a number of consequences for the architecture of grammar. For example, it suggests that the modularity assumption, according to which a language's syntax must be characterized independently of its semantics, needs to be revised. Another consequence concerns new answers to the question of exactly where in the syntactic derivation the various constraints on interpretation apply. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph No. 35Copublished with the MIT Working Papers in Linguistics series.

Download or read book Some Concepts and Consequences of the Theory of Government and Binding written by Noam Chomsky and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1982 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the study of government and binding is an outgrowth of Chomsky's earlier work in transformational grammar, it represents a significant shift in focus and a new direction of investigation into the fundamentals of linguistic theory.

Download or read book Indefinites written by Molly Diesing and published by Mit Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indefinites investigates the relationship between the syntactic and semantic representations of sentences within the framework of generative grammar. It proposes a means of relating government-binding theory, which is primarily syntactic, to the semantic theory of noun phrase interpretation developed by Kamp and Heim, and introduces a novel mapping algorithm that describes the relation between syntactic configurations and logical representations.Diesing focuses on the problem of deriving logical representations from syntactic representations of sentences, with an emphasis on issues of quantification and the interpretation of indefinites. The two central questions addressed are the possible semantic interpretations of indefinites and quantificational noun phrases, and the role played by syntactic representation in deriving the semantic representation of noun phrases. The mapping algorithm used is applied to derive the logical representations of indefinites to a wide range of syntactic and semantic phenomena in German including scrambling, VP-deletion, and extraction from NP.Molly Diesing is Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Assistant Research Social Scientist in Cognitive Science at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Download or read book The Syntax of Words written by Elisabeth O. Selkirk and published by Mit Press. This book was released on 1982 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph examines complex words -- compounds and those involving derivational and inflectional affixation -- from a syntactic standpoint that encompasses both the structure of words and the system of rules for generating that structure.The author contends that the syntax of words and the more familiar syntax involving relations among words must be defined by two discrete sets of principles in the grammar, but nevertheless that word structure has the same general formal properties as the larger syntactic structure and is generated by the same sort of rule system.This investigation of word structure and rule systems is based for the most part on the word syntax of English and related languages. One of its major conclusions is that English word structure can be "properly characterized solely in terms of a context-free grammar." Selkirk points out that the Semitic languages, for example, must be characterized in terms of a more elaborate schema.The first chapter presents a general theory of word structure, and discusses a context-free grammar for words, X theory in word structure, and word structure rules. The second chapter is concerned with compounding, and probes the structure and "headedness" of compounds, verbal compounds, and the category type of English compounds. The third and final chapter, on affixation, investigates the nature of affixes, inflectional affixation, and English derivational morphology.This book is the seventh in the Linguistic Inquiry Monograph series.

Download or read book Linguistic inquiry Monographs Linguistic inquiry Monographs written by [Anonymus AC00422756] and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Local Economy written by Chris Collins and published by Mit Press. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This monograph will provoke a great deal of constructive discussion and debate among syntacticians of all kinds. Collins has done an especially good job of making the work accessible to those of us who didn't "grow up" in Building 20." -- Molly Diesing, Cornell University Any theory of grammar must contain a lexicon, an interface with the mechanisms of production and perception (PF), and an interface with the interpretational system of semantics (LF). A traditional way to relate these three components in generative theory is through a derivation. Noam Chomsky's Minimalist Program postulates that grammatical derivations are constrained by economy conditions, requiring that derivations be minimal. One of the most important questions of syntax is what the economy conditions are and how they operate. In "Local Economy," Chris Collins proposes that economy conditions are local. According to this theory, evaluating economy conditions does not involve comparing whole derivations. Rather, economy conditions are evaluated at each step in the derivation. Collins shows that locative inversion and quotative inversion provide strong arguments for local economy. In addition, he explores the far-reaching consequences of this proposal for other areas of syntax, including the strict cycle, binary branching, successive cyclicity, and expletive constructions. He demonstrates that local economy is superior to global economy on conceptual as well as empirical grounds. "Local Economy" is one of the first books other than Chomsky's "The Minimalist Program" (MIT, 1995) to deal in a general way with economy of derivation and Minimalism. "Linguistic InquiryMonograph No. 29"

Download or read book Subjunctive Conditionals written by Michela Ippolito and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A proposal for a compositional semantics for subjunctive (or would) conditionals in English. In this book, Michela Ippolito proposes a compositional semantics for subjunctive (or would) conditionals in English that accounts for their felicity conditions and the constraints on the satisfaction of their presuppositions by capitalizing on the occurrence of past tense morphology in both antecedent and consequent clauses. Very little of the extensive literature on subjunctive conditionals tries to account for the meaning of these sentences compositionally or to relate this meaning to their linguistic form; this book fills that gap, connecting the different lines of research on conditionals. Ippolito's proposal will be of interest both to linguists and to philosophers concerned with conditionals and modality more generally. Ippolito reviews previous analyses of counterfactuals and subjunctive conditionals in the work of David Lewis, Robert Stalnaker, Angelika Kratzer, and others; considers the contrast between future simple past subjunctive conditionals and future past perfect subjunctive conditionals; presents a proposal for subjunctive conditionals that addresses puzzles left unsolved by previous proposals; reviews a number of presupposition triggers showing that they fit the pattern predicted by her proposal; and discusses an asymmetry between the past and the future among subjunctive conditionals, arguing that the best account of our linguistic intuitions must include an indeterministic view of the world.

Download or read book Logical Form written by Robert May and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1985 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study focuses on the relation of syntactic and semantic structure. It investigates the notion that within generative grammar there is a level of linguistic representation Logical Form. Its main assumption is that this is a level of phrase structure representation, derived by transformational operations from S-structure, and over which formal semantic interpretations are defined.The book explores Logical Form by focusing primarily on quantificational phenomena and on how their explicit syntactic representation interacts with various syntactic and semantic properties. Among the topics discussed are the interactions of wh and quantified phrases, bound variable anaphora, branching quantifiers, extraposition and multiple interrogation.Logical Form contains several technical innovations: the notion that LF-movement closely approximates "Move α," a new approach to characterizing quantifier scope, which makes central use of the notion of "government," a novel interpretation of the relation of syntactic nodes and categorical projections, and an application of path theory to the syntactic structure of Logical Form.Robert May is Assistant Professor of Linguistics, Barnard College, Columbia University. Logical Form is Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 12.

Download or read book Features of Person written by Peter Ackema and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-10-30 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A proposal that person features do not have inherent content but are used to navigate a “person space” at the heart of every pronominal expression. This book offers a significant reconceptualization of the person system in natural language. The authors, leading scholars in syntax and its interfaces, propose that person features do not have inherent content but are used to navigate a “person space” at the heart of every pronominal expression. They map the journey of person features in grammar, from semantics through syntax to the system of morphological realization. Such an in-depth cross-modular study allows the development of a theory in which assumptions made about the behavior of a given feature in one module bear on possible assumptions about its behavior in other modules. The authors' new theory of person, built on a sparse set of two privative person features, delivers a typologically adequate inventory of persons; captures the semantics of personal pronouns, impersonal pronouns, and R-expressions; accounts for aspects of their syntactic behavior; and explains patterns of person-related syncretism in the realization of pronouns and inflectional endings. The authors discuss numerous observations from the literature, defend a number of theoretical choices that are either new or not generally accepted, and present novel empirical findings regarding phenomena as different as honorifics, number marking, and unagreement.