Download or read book Formal Issues in Lexical Functional Grammar written by Mary Dalrymple and published by Center for the Study of Language (CSLI). This book was released on 1995-11-24 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lexical-Functional Grammar was first developed by Joan Bresnan and Ronald M. Kaplan in the late 1970s, and was designed to serve as a medium for expressing and explaining important generalisations about the syntax of human languages and thus to serve as a vehicle for independent linguistic research. An equally important goal was to provide a restricted, mathematically tractable notation that could be interpreted by psychologically plausible and computationally efficient processing mechanisms. The formal architecture of LFG provides a simple set of devices for describing the common properties of all human languages and the particular properties of individual languages. This volume presents work conducted over the past several years at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Stanford University, and elsewhere. The different sections link mathematical and computational issues and the analysis of particular linguistic phenomena in areas such as wh-constructions, anaphoric binding, word order and coordination.

Download or read book Intertexts written by William F. Hanks and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2000-01-10 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past two decades, William Hanks has explored the dynamics of verbal interaction, and how speakers and listeners make meaning through language. With equal commitment to theory and empirical description, Hanks' writings combine analyses of linguistic form, speech processes, and sociocultural context. His work is marked by a commitment to interdisciplinary research, starting with his joint training in linguistics and anthropology, and increasingly integrating elements from philosophy, literary theory, and history. This book brings together papers written over the last decade, organized around the three central themes that have been emerged in Hanks' work: indexicality and referential practices; discourse genres and textuality; and the historical embeddedness of language. Together, they present the main elements of a coherent, synthetic approach to language in context. The linguistic, ethnographic, and historical material through which Hanks argues his approach come from his field research among maya speakers in Yucatan, Mexico, and from archival work on the historical development of Maya discourse under Spanish colonial rule. Several of the papers originally appeared in journals and edited volumes abroad and appear here for the first time in English.

Download or read book Theory and Experiment in Syntax written by Grant Goodall and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-30 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reflects on key questions of enduring interest on the nature of syntax, bringing together Grant Goodall’s previous publications and new work exploring how syntactic representations are structured and the affordances of experimental techniques in studying them. The volume sheds light on central issues in the theory of syntax while also elucidating the methods of data collection which inform them. Featuring Goodall’s previous studies of linguistic phenomena in English, Spanish, and Chinese, and complemented by a new introduction and material specific to this volume, the book is divided into four sections around fundamental strands of syntactic theory. The four parts explore the dimensionality of syntactic representations; the relationship between syntactic structure and predicate-argument structure; interactions between subjects and wh-phrases in questions; and more detailed investigations of wh-dependencies but from a more overtly experimental perspective. Taken together, the volume reinforces the connections between these different aspects of syntax by highlighting their respective roles in defining what syntactic objects look like and how the grammar operates on them. This book will be a valuable resource for scholars in linguistics, particularly those with an interest in syntax, psycholinguistics, and Romance linguistics.

Download or read book Studies of Passive Clauses written by Paul Martin Postal and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1986-01-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this work, Paul M. Postal supports the universalist theory of language by examining passive clauses. Contrary to a skeptical tradition, Postal argues that passive clauses are cross-linguistically identifiable and characterizable. This study proposes refinements of the analysis of the natural language grammatical category Passive Clause. These refinements include an account of the notion 'dummy nominal,' central to the analysis of impersonal passive clauses; additions permitting a proper typology of the major known subtypes of Passive Clause; a generalization permitting application to clauses whose subjects are not earlier level direct objects; and, construction of precise rule concepts to represent restrictions on passive clauses. The passive domain supports the universalist approach in three distinguishable ways: (1) by permitting formulation of otherwise apparently unstatable lawful characteristics of all passive structures; (2) by facilitating statement of language-specific passive constraints holding in diverse languages; and, (3) by allowing uniform statement in grammars of recurrent constraints on passives. Each mode of support is applied to actual cases based on material from more than a dozen languages from English and French to Quiche (Mayan) and Chi-Mwi:ni (Bantu).

Download or read book English Historical Linguistics written by Bettelou Los and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains a set of articles based on papers selected from those delivered at the 20th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL, Edinburgh 2018). It focuses on cutting-edge research in the history of English, while reflecting the diversity that exists in the current landscape of English historical linguistics. Chapters showcase traditional as well as novel methodologies in historical linguistics (the latter made possible by the increasing quality and accessibility of digital tools), work on linguistic interfaces (between segmental phonology and prosody, and syntax and information structure) and work on mechanisms of language change (such as Yang’s Tolerance Principle, on the threshold for the productivity of linguistic rules in language acquisition). The volume will be of interest to those working on the historical phonology, morphology, syntax and pragmatics of English, language change, corpus linguistics, computational historical linguistics, and related sub-disciplines.

Download or read book Gradient Acceptability and Linguistic Theory written by and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines a challenging problem at the intersection of theoretical linguistics and the psychology of language: the interpretation of gradient judgments of sentence acceptability in relation to theories of grammatical knowledge. Acceptability judgments constitute the primary source of data on which such theories have been built, despite being susceptible to various extra-grammatical factors. Through a review of experimental and corpus-based research on a variety of syntactic phenomena and an in-depth examination of two case studies, Elaine J. Francis argues for two main positions. The first is that converging evidence from online comprehension tasks, elicited production tasks, and corpora of naturally-occurring discourse can help to determine the sources of variation in acceptability judgments and to narrow down the range of plausible theoretical interpretations. The second is that the interpretation of judgment data depends crucially on the theoretical commitments and assumptions made, especially with respect to the nature of the syntax-semantics interface and the choice of either a categorical or a gradient notion of grammaticality. The theoretical frameworks considered in this book include derivational theories (e.g. Minimalism, Principles and Parameters), constraint-based theories (e.g. Sign-based Construction Grammar, Simpler Syntax), competition-based theories (e.g. Stochastic Optimality Theory, Decathlon Model), and usage-based approaches. The volume shows that while acceptability judgment data are typically compatible with the assumptions of various theoretical frameworks, some gradient phenomena are best captured within frameworks that permit soft constraints-non-categorical grammatical constraints that encode the conventional preferences of language users.

Download or read book The Handbook of Historical Linguistics Volume II written by Richard D. Janda and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 717 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An entirely new follow-up volume providing a detailed account of numerous additional issues, methods, and results that characterize current work in historical linguistics. This brand-new, second volume of The Handbook of Historical Linguistics is a complement to the well-established first volume first published in 2003. It includes extended content allowing uniquely comprehensive coverage of the study of language(s) over time. Though it adds fresh perspectives on several topics previously treated in the first volume, this Handbook focuses on extensions of diachronic linguistics beyond those key issues. This Handbook provides readers with studies of language change whose perspectives range from comparisons of large open vs. small closed corpora, via creolistics and linguistic contact in general, to obsolescence and endangerment of languages. Written by leading scholars in their respective fields, new chapters are offered on matters such as the origin of language, evidence from language for reconstructing human prehistory, invocations of language present in studies of language past, benefits of linguistic fieldwork for historical investigation, ways in which not only biological evolution but also field biology can serve as heuristics for research into the rise and spread of linguistic innovations, and more. Moreover, it: offers novel and broadened content complementing the earlier volume so as to provide the fullest available overview of a wholly engrossing field includes 23 all-new contributed chapters, treating some familiar themes from fresh perspectives but mostly covering entirely new topics features expanded discussion of material from language families other than Indo-European provides a multiplicity of views from numerous specialists in linguistic diachrony. The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Volume II is an ideal book for undergraduate and graduate students in linguistics, researchers and professional linguists, as well as all those interested in the history of particular languages and the history of language more generally.

Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax written by Marcel den Dikken and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-25 with total page 1412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Syntax – the study of sentence structure – has been at the centre of generative linguistics from its inception and has developed rapidly and in various directions. The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax provides a historical context for what is happening in the field of generative syntax today, a survey of the various generative approaches to syntactic structure available in the literature and an overview of the state of the art in the principal modules of the theory and the interfaces with semantics, phonology, information structure and sentence processing, as well as linguistic variation and language acquisition. This indispensable resource for advanced students, professional linguists (generative and non-generative alike) and scholars in related fields of inquiry presents a comprehensive survey of the field of generative syntactic research in all its variety, written by leading experts and providing a proper sense of the range of syntactic theories calling themselves generative.

Download or read book Arc Pair Grammar written by David E. Johnson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 753 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arc pair grammar is a new, extensively formalized, theory of the grammatical structure of natural languages. As an outgrowth of relational grammar, it constitutes a theoretical alternative to the long-dominant generative transformational approach to linguistics. In this work, David Johnson and Paul Postal offer the first comprehensive presentation of this theoretical framework, which provides entirely new notions of all the basic concepts of grammatical theory: sentence, language, rule, and grammar. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Download or read book Studies in Relational Grammar 2 written by David M. Perlmutter and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1983 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vol. 2 coed. by Carol G. Rosen ; Vol. 3 ed. by Paul M. Postal and Brian D. Joseph.

Download or read book Evidentiality written by Aleksandra I︠U︡rʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-11-04 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In some languages every statement must contain a specification of the type of evidence on which it is based: for example, whether the speaker saw it, or heard it, or inferred it from indirect evidence, or learnt it from someone else. This grammatical reference to information source is called 'evidentiality', and is one of the least described grammatical categories. Evidentiality systems differ in how complex they are: some distinguish just two terms (eyewitness and noneyewitness, or reported and everything else), while others have six or even more terms. Evidentiality is a category in its own right, and not a subcategory of epistemic or some other modality, nor of tense-aspect. Every language has some way of referring to the source of information, but not every language has grammatical evidentiality. In English expressions such as I guess, they say, I hear that, the alleged are not obligatory and do not constitute a grammatical system. Similar expressions in other languages may provide historical sources for evidentials. True evidentials, by contrast, form a grammatical system. In the North Arawak language Tariana an expression such as "the dog bit the man" must be augmented by a grammatical suffix indicating whether the event was seen, or heard, or assumed, or reported. This book provides the first exhaustive cross-linguistic typological study of how languages deal with the marking of information source. Examples are drawn from over 500 languages from all over the world, several of them based on the author's original fieldwork. Professor Aikhenvald also considers the role evidentiality plays in human cognition, and the ways in which evidentiality influences human perception of the world.. This is an important book on an intriguing subject. It will interest anthropologists, cognitive psychologists and philosophers, as well as linguists.

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics written by Tom Bartlett and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-01-12 with total page 707 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics brings together internationally renowned scholars of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) to provide a space for critical examination of the key tenets underpinning SFL theory. Uniquely, it includes description of the three main strands within contemporary SFL scholarship: Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar, Martin’s discourse semantics and Fawcett’s Cardiff Grammar. In five sections and thirty-eight interdisciplinary chapters, this is the first handbook to cover the whole architecture of SFL theory, comprising: the ontology and epistemology of SFL; SFL as a clause grammar; lexicogrammar below the clause, and SFL’s approach to constituency; SFL’s vibrant theory of language above the clause; and SFL as a theory of praxis with real-world applications. With a wide range of language examples, a comprehensive editors’ introduction and a section on further reading, The Routledge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics is an essential resource for all those studying and researching SFL or functional grammar.

Download or read book Conversational Style written by Deborah Tannen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-07-21 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This revised edition of Tannen's first discourse analysis book--first published in 1984--presents an approach to analyzing conversation that later became the hallmark and foundation of her extensive body of work in discourse analysis.

Download or read book Parameters of Slavic Morphosyntax written by Steven Franks and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1995-05-11 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on issues of case theory and comparative grammar, this study treats selected problems in the syntax of the Slavic languages from the perspective of Government-Binding theory. Steven Franks seeks to develop parametric solutions to related constructions among the various Slavic languages. A model of case based loosely on Jakobson's feature system is adapted to a variety of comparative problems in Slavic, including across-the-board constructions, quantification, secondary predication, null subject phenomena, and voice. Solutions considered make use of recent approaches to phrase structure, including the VP-internal subject hypothesis and the DP hypothesis. The book will serve admirably as an introduction to GB theory for Slavic linguists as well as to the range of problems posed by Slavic for general syntacticians.

Download or read book Manual of Romance Morphosyntax and Syntax written by Andreas Dufter and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 978 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers theoretically informed surveys of topics that have figured prominently in morphosyntactic and syntactic research into Romance languages and dialects. We define syntax as being the linguistic component that assembles linguistic units, such as roots or functional morphemes, into grammatical sentences, and morphosyntax as being an umbrella term for all morphological relations between these linguistic units, which either trigger morphological marking (e.g. explicit case morphemes) or are related to ordering issues (e.g. subjects precede finite verbs whenever there is number agreement between them). All 24 chapters adopt a comparative perspective on these two fields of research, highlighting cross-linguistic grammatical similarities and differences within the Romance language family. In addition, many chapters address issues related to variation observable within individual Romance languages, and grammatical change from Latin to Romance.

Download or read book Copular Sentences in Russian written by Asya Pereltsvaig and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-05-11 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a detailed study and a novel Minimalist account of copular sentences in Russian, focusing on case marking alternations (nominative vs. instrumental) and drawing a distinction between two types of copular sentences. On the assumption that Merge is defined in the simplest way possible, it is argued that not all syntactic structures are a(nti)symmetrical. One of the copular sentence types is analyzed as a poster child for symmetrical structures, while the other type is treated as asymmetrical. The originality of this study lies in treating the copula in the two types of copular sentences neither as completely identical nor as two distinct lexical items; instead, the two types of copula are derived through the process of semantic bleaching. Furthermore, it is argued that the two types of the copula need to combine with post-copular phrases of different categories. It is concluded that Russian draws a distinction between saturated DPs and unsaturated NPs, in spite of its renowned lack of overt articles.

Download or read book Uto Aztecan written by Eugene H. Casad and published by USON. This book was released on 2000 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: