Download or read book Oblique Subjects in Germanic written by Jóhanna Barðdal and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-09-18 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulling together the threads of forty years of research on oblique subjects in the Germanic languages, this book introduces a novel approach to grammatical relations, based on a definition of subject as the first argument of the argument structure. New data are presented from Gothic, Old Saxon, Old Norse-Icelandic, Old Swedish and Old Danish, as well as from Icelandic, Faroese and German. This includes alternating Dat-Nom/Nom-Dat predicates, where either argument, the dative or the nominative, takes on subject behavior. The subject concept is modeled with the formalism of Construction Grammar, both synchronically and for the purpose of reconstructing grammatical relations for Proto-Germanic.
Download or read book Topic Drop and Null Subjects in German written by Ewa Trutkowski and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-04-25 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph deals with argument drop in the German prefield and it presents new insights into null subjects, topic drop and the interpretation of topic dropped elements. Major issues are (inter alia) the drop of structurally vs. obliquely cased arguments and the question on which basis nominative/accusative and dative/genitive can be kept apart. Furthermore, it is shown that the (im)possibility of phi-feature mismatches concerning the antecedent and gap in topic drop dialogues allows to differentiate between coreference and "real" (quantifier) binding. Aside from topic drop, (1st/2nd vs. 3rd person) null subjects are investigated across a couple of unrelated languages, also focusing on the presence of syncretisms within verbal inflectional paradigms. It is proven that 1st/2nd person null subjects in German are not an instance of antecedent-dependent topic drop but that they are licensed by discrete verbal inflectional endings. Thus, according to this property, German can be classified as a partial pro-drop language. Next to theoretical discussions and considerations this book offers a broad (empirically covered) data basis, which makes it suitable for both theoretically and empirically interested (generative) linguists.
Download or read book Word order Change as a Source of Grammaticalisation written by Susann Fischer and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: followed by the loss of morphology. --Book Jacket.
Download or read book Oblique Subjects in Germanic written by Jóhanna Barðdal and published by De Gruyter Mouton. This book was released on 2023-09-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulling together the threads of forty years of research on oblique subjects in the Germanic languages, this book introduces a novel approach to grammatical relations, based on a definition of subject as the first argument of the argument structure. New data are presented from Gothic, Old Saxon, Old Norse-Icelandic, Old Swedish and Old Danish, as well as data from Icelandic, Faroese and German. This includes alternating Dat-Nom/Nom-Dat predicates, where either argument, the dative or the nominative, takes on subject behavior. The subject concept is modeled with the formalism of Construction Grammar, both synchronically and for the purpose of reconstructing grammatical relations for Proto-Germanic.
Download or read book Non Canonically Case Marked Subjects written by Jóhanna Barðdal and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2018-10-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interest in non-canonically case-marked subjects has been unceasing since the groundbreaking work of Andrews and Masica in the late 70’s who were the first to document the existence of syntactic subjects in another morphological case than the nominative. Their research was focused on Icelandic and South-Asian languages, respectively, and since then, oblique subjects have been reported for language after language throughout the world. This newfangled recognition of the concept of oblique subjects at the time was followed by discussions of the role and validity of subject tests, discussions of the verbal semantics involved, as well as discussions of the theoretical implications of this case marking strategy of syntactic subjects. This volume contributes to all these debates, making available research articles on different languages and language families, additionally highlighting issues like language contact, differential subject marking and the origin of oblique subjects.
Download or read book The MIHI EST construction written by Mihaela Ilioaia and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-12-18 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the Romanian mihi est construction (Mi-e foame/frică, me.dat = is hunger/fear ‘I am hungry/ afraid’). While it disappeared from all other Romance languages to be replaced with a habeo structure, the mihi est pattern is in Romanian the most common way of expressing psychological or physiological states. By means of synchronic and diachronic corpus studies, the book investigates the status of the core arguments of the mihi est structure, i.e. the dative experiencer and the nominative state noun, as well as its evolution throughout the centuries. The data analysis reveals that the dative experiencer syntactically behaves like nominative subjects, whereas the state noun shows predicate behavior. As for the evolution of the mihi est structure, the analysis shows a certain tendency toward innovation, since in present-day Romanian it can coerce nouns coming from other semantic fields into the construction’s psychological or physiological interpretation. Could this be another unique trait of Romanian, which causes it to seemingly go against the tendency of most Romance languages toward canonical marking of core arguments?
Download or read book Variation in Datives written by Beatriz Fernandez and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Variation in Datives collects new research on the nature of syntactic micro-variation in datives. The papers in this volume examine different aspects of internal variation in dative marking, such as agreement and case alternations, distribution of adpositional structures and dative case-marking, the different structural positions of dative arguments and their semantic contribution, and patterns of syncretism in the clitic and/or agreement system. Interest in these topics has grown significantly in the past 20 years. Variation in Datives makes a significant contribution to our understanding of language variation, as it adds the micro-comparative perspective to the general discussion and includes 10 new articles on a wide range of European languages, including Greek, Basque, Icelandic, and Serbo-Croatian. Variation in Datives will appeal to scholars and advanced students of syntax, linguistic variation, and especially syntactic micro-variation.
Download or read book Grammatical Relations in Change written by Jan Terje Faarlund and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eleven selected contributions making up this volume deal with grammatical relations, their coding and behavioral properties, and the change that these properties have undergone in different languages. The focus of this collection is on the changing properties of subjects and objects, although the scope of the volume goes beyond the central problems pertaining to case marking and word order. The diachrony of syntactic and morphosyntactic phenomena are approached from different theoretical perspectives, generative grammar, valency grammar, and functionalism. The languages dealt with include Old English, Mainland Scandinavian, Icelandic, German and other Germanic languages, Latin, French and other Romance languages, Northeast Caucasian, Eskimo, and Popolocan. This book provides an opportunity to compare different theoretical approaches to similar phenomena in different languages and language families.
Download or read book Case Valency and Transitivity written by L. I. Kulikov and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The three concepts of case, valency and transitivity belong to the most discussed topics of modern linguistics. On the one hand, they are crucially connected with morphological aspects of the clause, including case marking, person agreement and voice. On the other hand, they are related to several semantic issues such as the meaning of case, semantico-syntactic verbal classes, and the semantic correlates of transitivity. The volume unifies papers written within different theoretical frameworks and representing variegated approaches (Optimality Theory, Government and Binding, various versions of the Functional approach, Cross-linguistic and Typological analyses), containing both numerous new findings in individual languages and valuable observations and generalizations related to case, valency and transitivity.
Download or read book The Bloomsbury Companion to Syntax written by Silvia Luraghi and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-02-14 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Bloomsbury Companion is the most wide-ranging, state-of-the-art resource to a key area of contemporary linguistics. It covers fundamental issues, concepts, movements and approaches within the most relevant theoretical perspectives on syntax, encompassing the relationship between syntax and other levels of grammar. This book is a major tool for understanding syntax and its essential assumptions in the broader framework of current linguistic research. It is the most complete resource for postgraduate students and researchers working in syntax and neighboring fields. In addition, this companion offers a comprehensive reference resource, giving an overview of key terms and topics in syntax, research areas and new directions. With its section on methodology, it features a manageable guide to beginning or developing research in the field. It provides a review of current research as well as practical guidance for advanced study in the area.
Download or read book Syntactic Reconstruction and Proto Germanic written by George Walkden and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers reconstructions of various syntactic properties of Proto-Germanic, including verb position in main clauses, the syntax of the wh-system, and the (non-)occurrence of null pronominal subjects and objects. Although previous studies have looked at the lexical and phonological reconstruction of Proto-Germanic, little is currently known about the syntax of the language, and it has even been argued that the reconstruction of syntax is impossible. Dr Walkden uses extensive evidence from the early Germanic languages - Old English, Old High German, Old Saxon, Old Norse, and Gothic - to show that syntactic reconstruction is not only possible but also profitable. He argues that while the reconstruction of syntax differs from lexical-phonological reconstruction due to the so-called 'correspondence problem', this is not insurmountable. In fact, the approach taken in current Minimalist theories, in which syntactic variation is attributed to the properties of lexical items, opens the door for syntactic reconstruction as lexical reconstruction. The book also discusses practical solutions for circumventing the correspondence problem, in particular the use of both distributional properties of lexical items and the phonological forms of such items in order to establish cognacy. The book will be of interest to historical linguists working on syntactic reconstruction and the Germanic languages, from graduate level upwards, as well as to advanced students of syntactic change more generally.
Download or read book The Syntax of Mainland Scandinavian written by Jan Terje Faarlund and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-21 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the syntactic structures of Mainland Scandinavian, a term that covers the Northern Germanic languages spoken in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and parts of Finland. The continuum of mutually intelligible standard languages, regional varieties, and dialects stretching from southern Jutland to eastern Finland share many syntactic patterns and features, but also present interesting syntactic differences. In this volume, Jan Terje Faarlund discusses the main syntactic features of the national languages, alongside the most widespread or typologically interesting features of the non-standard varieties. Each topic is illustrated with examples drawn from reference grammars, research literature, corpora of various sorts, and the author's own research. The framework is current generative grammar, but the volume is descriptive in nature, with technical formalities and theoretical discussion kept to a minimum. It will hence be a valuable reference for students and researchers working on any Scandinavian language, as well as for syntacticians and typologists interested in Scandinavian facts and data without necessarily being able to read Scandinavian.
Download or read book Grammatical Change in Indo European Languages written by Vít Bubeník and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The product of a group of scholars who have been working on new directions in Historical Linguistics, this book is focused on questions of grammatical change, and the central issue of grammaticalization in Indo-European languages. Several studies examine particular problems in specific languages, but often with implications for the IE phylum as a whole. Given the historical scope of the data (over a period of four millennia) long range grammatical changes such as the development of gender differences, strategies of definiteness, the prepositional phrase, or of the syntax of the verbal diathesis and aspect, are also treated. The shifting relevance of morphology to syntax, and syntax to morphology, a central motif of this research, has provoked lively debate in the discipline of Historical Linguistics.
Download or read book The Role of Semantic Pragmatic and Discourse Factors in the Development of Case written by Jóhanna Barðdal and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2009-03-11 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aim of this volume is to bring non-syntactic factors in the development of case into the eye of the research field, by illustrating the integral role of pragmatics, semantics, and discourse structure in the historical development of morphologically marked case systems. The articles represent fifteen typologically diverse languages from four different language families: (i) Indo-European: Vedic Sanskrit, Russian, Greek, Latin, Latvian, Gothic, French, German, Icelandic, and Faroese; (ii) Tibeto-Burman, especially the Bodic languages and Meithei; (iii) Japanese; and (iv) the Pama-Nyungan mixed language Gurindji Kriol. The data also show considerable diversity and include elicited, archival, corpus-based, and naturally occurring data. Discussions of mechanisms where change is obtained include semantically and aspectually motivated synchronic case variation, discourse motivated subject marking, reduction or expansion of case marker distribution, case syncretism motivated by semantics, syntax, or language contact, and case splits motivated by pragmatics, metonymy, and subjectification.
Download or read book Modality in Syntax Semantics and Pragmatics written by Werner Abraham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-17 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative survey that covers the linguistic questions of modality and mood, offering a new model for the phenomenon.
Download or read book Optimal Linking Grammar written by Daniel Galbraith and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-27 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a pioneering new theory of grammar, which explains a wide variety of sentence types across languages.
Download or read book Language written by George Melville Bolling and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
