Download or read book Minimal Words in a Minimal Syntax written by Gunlög Josefsson and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Minimal Words in a Minimal Syntax the author combines a detailed description of the morphological structure of words in Swedish with a daring new approach to theoretical morphology, based on the Minimalist Program of Chomsky (1995) (as developed for syntactic structure). The X-bar theoretic approach to word structure of the Principles and Parameters framework is replaced by a rule free approach incorporating only Merge and Move as structure building devices. The author argues that stems have no word class features, which are provided inflectional affixes (including theme vowels etc.). Inflectional and derivational affixes differ only in the external syntactic requirement that inflectional affixes are associated with features that require checking in the functional domain. An important analysis of compounding is included, where binding elements are analyzed as a result of structural antisymmetry requirements a la Kayne (1994). Old chestnuts of morphological theory, such as the notion “head of a word” and the nature and structure of the lexicon, are succinctly discussed in the light of the theoretical proposals advanced here. On the empirical side, there are two lengthy chapters involving the semantic characterization of prefixes and suffixes in Swedish, explaining their distribution in terms of “types of Aktionsarten” imposed by the affix on its host.

Download or read book Mind Design and Minimal Syntax written by Wolfram Hinzen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-02-23 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wolfram Hinzen introduces generative grammar and asks what it tells us about the human mind. He argues that the mind is the product not of adaptive evolutionary history but of principles and processes that are ahistorical and internalist.

Download or read book Minimalist Syntax written by Andrew Radford and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-05-27 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description

Download or read book The Minimalist Syntax of Defective Domains written by Acrisio Pires and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2006-10-31 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book unifies the analysis of certain non-finite domains, focusing on subject licensing, agreement, and Case and control. It proposes a minimalist analysis of English gerunds which allows only a null subject PRO (TP-defective gerunds), a lexical subject (gerunds as complements of perception verbs), or both types of subjects (clausal gerunds). It then analyzes Portuguese infinitives, showing that the morphosyntactic properties of non-inflected and inflected infinitives correlate with distinct treatments of obligatory and non-obligatory control. It explores these and other phenomena to show that tense and event binding do not correlate with the contrast between control and raising/exceptional case marking (ECM), against null Case theories of control. A Probe-Goal approach to Case and agreement is adopted in combination with a movement analysis of control. The book then investigates diachronic morphosyntactic phenomena involving infinitives, verb movement and cliticization in Portuguese, exploring a cue-based theory of syntactic change grounded in language acquisition.

Download or read book Word Order Change in Icelandic written by Thorbjörg Hróarsdóttir and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2001-01-23 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While Modern Icelandic exhibits a virtually uniform VO order in the VP, Old(er) Icelandic had both VO order and OV order, as well as ‘mixed’ word order patterns. In this volume, the author both examines the various VP-word order patterns from a descriptive and statistical point of view and provides a synchronic and diachronic analysis of VP-syntax in Old(er) Icelandic in terms of generative grammar. Her account makes use of a number of independently motivated ideas, notably remnant-movement of various kinds of predicative phrase, and the long movement associated with “restructuring” phenomena, to provide an analysis of OV orders and, correspondingly, a proposal as to which aspect of Icelandic syntax must have changed when VO word order became the norm: the essential change is loss of VP-extraction from VP. Although this idea is mainly supported here for Icelandic, it has numerous implications for the synchronic and diachronic analysis of other Germanic languages.

Download or read book From NP to DP The expression of possession in noun phrases written by Martine Coene and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 314 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 Syntactic Aspects of Topic and Comment written by André Meinunger and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book focuses on the syntactic behavior of argument noun phrases depending on their discourse status. The main language of consideration is German, but it is shown that the observations can be carried over to other languages. The claim is that discourse-new arguments remain inside the VP where they are base generated. The hierarchy of argument projection is claimed to be fix within and across languages. With the major attention to direct objects it is then argued that discourse-old, here called topical noun phrases undergo raising to agreement projections. This movement can be realized differently: scrambling, object agreement, clitic-doubling, differences in morphological case and stress pattern turn out to be analyzable as one underlying phenomenon. It is furthermore shown that many so-called subject:object asymmetries boil down to topic:non-topic differences, for example with respect to extraction. Thus, irrespectively of the argumental status discourse-new constituents do not act as barriers whereas topical arguments create (weak) islands.

Download or read book Balkan Syntax and Semantics written by Olga Mišeska Tomi? and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book deals with some syntactic and semantic aspects of the shared Balkan Sprachbund properties. In a comprehensive introductory chapter, Tomic offers an overview of the Balkan Sprachbund properties. Sobolev, displaying the areal distribution of 65 properties, argues for dialect cartography. Friedman, on the example of the evidentials, argues for typologically informed areal explanation of the Balkan properties. The other contributions analyze specific phenomena: polidefinite DPs in Greek and Aromanian (Campos and Stavrou), Balkan constructions in which datives combine with impersonal clitics or non-active morphology (Rivero), Balkan optatives (Ammann and Auwera), imperative force in the Balkan languages (Isac and Jakab), clitic placement in Greek imperatives (Boškovic), focused constituents in Romanian and Bulgarian (Hill), synthetic and analytic tenses in Romanian (D'Hulst, Coene and Avram), "purpose-like" modification in a number of Balkan languages (Bužarovska), Balkan modal existential “wh”-constructions (Grosu), child and adult strategies in interpreting empty subjects in Serbian/Croatian (Stojanovic and Marelj), conditional sentences in Judeo-Spanish (Montoliu and Auwera).

Download or read book Prosodic Syntax in Chinese written by Feng Shengli and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-04-08 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the two volumes of Prosodic Syntax in Chinese, the author develops a new model, which proposes that the interaction between syntax and prosody is bi-directional and that prosody not only constrains syntactic structures but also activates syntactic operations. All of the facts investigated in Chinese provide new perspectives for linguistic theories as well as insights into the nature of human languages. The subtitles of the two volumes are Theory and Facts and History and Change respectively, with each focusing on different topics (though each volume has both theoretical and historical descriptive concerns). This book has shown that prosody has played a crucial role in triggering the many changes in the diachronic development of Chinese. On the one hand, this book investigates the existence of SOV structures in Early Archaic Chinese, a SVO language, and then demonstrates the role of VO prosody in causing the disappearance of the remnant structures after the Han Dynasty. On the other hand, this book surveys the historical evidence for analyses of bei passives and Ba-constructions, and then offers a prosodic analysis on the origin of these two sentence patterns in Chinese. It is claimed that prosody can be an important factor in triggering, balancing and finally terminating changes in the syntactic evolution of Chinese.

Download or read book Verbal Complement Clauses written by Claudia Felser and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1999-05-15 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph examines the syntax of bare infinitival and participial complements of perception verbs in English and other European languages, and investigates the general conditions under which verbal complement clauses are licensed. The introductory chapter is followed by an overview of the major syntactic and semantic characteristics of non-finite complements of perception verbs in English. The third chapter presents an analysis within the framework of Chomsky's (1995) Minimalist Program according to which event-denoting complements are minimally realised as projections of an aspectual head. In the next chapter, it is argued that verbs capable of licensing aspectual complement clauses must be able to function as a special type of control predicate, an assumption which is shown to account for a number of seemingly unrelated properties of the constructions under consideration. The final chapter examines syntactically reduced clausal complements from a cross-linguistic perspective, showing that Southern Romance languages differ from Germanic ones with respect to the availability of 'bare' aspectual complement clauses, a difference that is attributed to morphological properties of verbs in these languages.

Download or read book The Grammar of Focus written by Georges Rebuschi and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1999 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The grammar of focus has been studied in generative grammar from its inception. It has been the subject of intense, detailed cross-linguistic investigation for over 20 years, particularly within the Principles and Parameters framework. It is appropriate at this point, therefore, to take stock. Appraisal at this particular point is all the more legitimate because it comes at a time of general evaluation of the results of the profound activity that has characterized the Principles and Parameters framework. This general assessment has produced a radical new direction within that framework. The volume starts off with an introductory chapter that aims to provide an outline for the assessment, to be followed by an overview of the evolution of the study of focus in generative grammar, and a recapitulation of the principal issues associated with focus. These issues are taken up in the remaining chapters of the book, where various grammatical means of marking focus (as well as grammaticalization of focus marking) are analyzed in a wide variety of languages.

Download or read book Control in Grammar and Pragmatics written by Rudolf R?ži?ka and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1999-07-15 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The claim that “…pronominals have phonological features only where they must, for some reason”, is strongly supported by the occurrence of the null pronoun PRO as coined and introduced by Noam Chomsky. How reference of PRO is determined is the main subject of control theory, the subsystem of core grammar to which this study is dedicated. Chomsky has not followed up his “natural suggestion that choice of controller is determined by theta roles or other semantic properties of the verb, perhaps pragmatic conditions of some sort.” But then, a great many students of control have engaged in exploring thematic roles as tools most suitable for investigating control. Shifting analysis of control to the relationship between thematic features carried by PRO and its potential controller respectively, was a turning point in control theory. Control proved to be a by-product of satisfying matching conditions that exist between thematic properties of PRO and its licit controller. The constraints derived from them are not construction-specific. If grammar and pragmatics seem to go hand in hand, their complicity in determining control behavior is elucidated by showing that pragmatic factors can be referred to by grammatical constraints. Data of nine languages are used in the study.

Download or read book Formal Approaches to Function in Grammar written by Andrew Carnie and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributions making up this volume in honor of Eloise Jelinek are written from a formalist perspective that deals with stereotypically functionalist questions about language. Jelinek's pioneering work in formalist syntax has shown that autonomous syntax need not exist in a vacuum. Her work has highlighted the importance of incorporating the effects of discourse and information structure on the syntactic representation. This book aims to invoke Jelinek's work either in substance or spirit. The focus is on Jelinek's influential Pronominal Argument Hypothesis as an "non-configurational" language; the influence of discourse-related interface phenomena on syntactic structure; the syntactic analysis of the grammaticalization; interactions between morphology, phonology and phonetics; and foundational issues about the link between formal grammar and function of language, as well as the methodological issues underlying the different approaches to linguistics.

Download or read book Asymmetry in Grammar written by Anna Maria Di Sciullo and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2003-03-20 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Asymmetry in Grammar: Morphology, Phonology and Acquisition presents evidence that asymmetry, as a property of linguistic relations, is salient in grammar. The papers in morphology bring further evidence for the centrality of asymmetry in word-structure. It is shown that asymmetry is part of the internal structure of functional constructs such as determiners and complementizers, as it is the case for lexical constructs. Further evidence is presented for the asymmetry of prefixes in verb structure. A typology of formal objects based on the distinction between maximal and minimal categories is formulated. It is proposed that Formal Complexity drives the change from synthetic to analytic expressions. The papers in phonology point to the fact that asymmetry is part of that linguistic dimension in terms of processes that eliminates symmetric relations, in terms of head-dependency relations, in terms of relative scope of the distinctive features in any inventory, in terms of universal principles in combination with certain language specific choices. Moreover, the papers on acquisition bring to fore experimental data that point to the same direction. The asymmetry of grammatical relations provides the form of the initial state of language that enables the child to cope with the poverty of the stimulus. The collection includes papers in morphology by Anna Maria Di Sciullo, Angela Ralli, Réjean Canac-Marquis, Abdelkader Fassi Fehri, papers in phonology by Eric Raimy, Harry van der Hulst and Nancy Ritter, Glyne Piggott, Charles Reiss, Elan Dresher, and papers in acquisition from Maria Louisa Rivero and Magdalena Goledzinowska, and David Lebeaux.

Download or read book The Syntax of Jamaican Creole written by Stephanie Durrleman-Tame and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008-08-28 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an in-depth study of the overall syntax of (basilectal) Jamaican Creole, the first since Bailey (1966). The author, a Jamaican linguist, meticulously examines distributional and interpretative properties of functional morphology in Jamaican Creole (JC) from a cartographic perspective (Cinque 1999, 2002; Rizzi 1997, 2004), thus exploring to what extent the grammar of JC provides morphological manifestations of an articulate IP, CP and DP. The data considered in this work offers new evidence in favour of these enriched structural analyses, and the instances where surface orders differ from the underlying functional skeleton are accounted for in terms of movement operations. This investigation of Jamaican syntax therefore allows us to conclude that the 'poor' inflectional morphology typical of Creole languages in general and of (basilectal) Jamaican Creole in particular does not correlate with poor structural architecture. Indeed the free morphemes discussed, as well as the word order considerations that indicate syntactic movement to designated projections, serve as arguments in favour of a rich underlying functional map.

Download or read book Comparative Studies in Germanic Syntax written by Jutta Hartmann and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This selection of papers presented at the 20th Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop brings together contributions that address issues in syntactic predication and studies in the nominal system, as well as papers on data from the history of English and German. Showing a strong comparative commitment, the contributions include studies on previously neglected data on case and predicative structures in Icelandic and other Germanic languages, on the (non-)syntactic distinction of predicative vs. argument NP/DPs, on quirky V2 in Afrikaans, the pronominal system, resumptive pronouns with relative clauses in Zurich German, as well as historical papers on word-formation processes, on auxiliary selection in relation to counter factuality, and on the development of VO-OV orders in the history of English. This volume presents a wide range of studies that enrich both the theoretical understanding and the empirical foundation of comparative research on the Germanic languages.

Download or read book Focus Structure in Generative Grammar written by Carsten Breul and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2004-04-29 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion of focus structure in this work refers to the distinction between categorical, thetic and identificational sentences. The central claim is that the syntactic representation of every sentence has to encode which of these types of focus structure is realized. This claim is discussed in great detail with respect to syntax, intonation and semantics within the framework of the Minimalist Program. It is shown that the incorporation of focus structure into syntax offers new perspectives for a solution of vexing problems in syntax and semantics. For example, fronting (preposing, 'topicalisation') is treated as a syntactic operation which clearly belongs to core grammar, i.e. is not optional or 'stylistic'; the semantic notion of quantifier raising is dispensed with in favour of a focus structural treatment of phenomena which gave rise to it. The book appeals to generative linguists and to functional linguists who do not believe in an unbridgeable gap between the formal and functional analysis of language.