Download or read book Structuring Sense Volume 1 In Name Only written by Hagit Borer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-20 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Structuring Sense' explores the difference between words however defined and structures however constructed. It sets out to demonstrate that the explanation of linguistic competence should be shifted from lexical entry to syntactic structure, from memory of words to manipulation of rules.
Download or read book Icelandic Morphosyntax and Argument Structure written by Jim Wood and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-01-05 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a detailed study of Icelandic argument structure alternations within a syntactic theory of argument structure. Building on recent theorizing within the Minimalist Program and Distributed Morphology, the author proposes that much of what is traditionally attributed to syntax should be relegated to the interfaces, and adapts the late insertion theory of morphology to semantics. The resulting system forms sound-meaning pairs by generating hierarchical structures that can be translated into morphological representations, on the one hand, and semantic representations, on the other. The syntactic primitives, however, underdetermine both morphophonology and semantics. Without appealing to special stipulations, the theory derives constraints on the external argument of causative-alternation verbs, interpretive restrictions on nominative objects, and the optionally agentive interpretation of verbs denoting self-directed motion.
Download or read book A Companion to Chomsky written by Nicholas Allott and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A COMPANION TO CHOMSKY Widely considered to be one of the most important public intellectuals of our time, Noam Chomsky has revolutionized modern linguistics. His thought has had a profound impact upon the philosophy of language, mind, and science, as well as the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science which his work helped to establish. Now, in this new Companion dedicated to his substantial body of work and the range of its influence, an international assembly of prominent linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists reflect upon the interdisciplinary reach of Chomsky's intellectual contributions. Balancing theoretical rigor with accessibility to the non-specialist, the Companion is organized into eight sections—including the historical development of Chomsky's theories and the current state of the art, comparison with rival usage-based approaches, and the relation of his generative approach to work on linguistic processing, acquisition, semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language. Later chapters address Chomsky's rationalist critique of behaviorism and related empiricist approaches to psychology, as well as his insistence upon a "Galilean" methodology in cognitive science. Following a brief discussion of the relation of his work in linguistics to his work on political issues, the book concludes with an essay written by Chomsky himself, reflecting on the history and character of his work in his own words. A significant contribution to the study of Chomsky's thought, A Companion to Chomsky is an indispensable resource for philosophers, linguists, psychologists, advanced undergraduate and graduate students, and general readers with interest in Noam Chomsky's intellectual legacy as one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century.
Download or read book Encoding Events written by Xuhui Hu and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents theoretical and empirical research on the syntax of events within the broader framework of generative grammar, focusing on the central question of how conceptual meaning interacts with narrow syntactic computation. Xuhui Hu proposes a set of integration conditions that require the content of the predicate to be licensed by theta-role information generated by narrow syntax. The other principal theoretical component of the book concerns the functional structure of events, which is related to issues such as the parallel between the event and nominal domains, the mapping of a predicate onto an entity, and the grammatical foundation of verb classification. The framework is applied to three areas: the syntax of resultatives in English and Chinese, cross-linguistic and diachronic variation in resultatives, and applicative constructions. The findings shed light on the thematic relationship between core arguments and predicates and on the syntax of non-core arguments, contribute to the theory of parametric variation in the generative tradition, and provide insights into the verb-framed vs satellite-framed typology
Download or read book Aspects of Music written by Ford Mylius Lallerstedt and published by Archway Publishing. This book was released on 2023-11-23 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study focuses on a continued evaluation and integration of Schenker’s work, specifically the role of his ever-deepening understanding of counterpoint in musicalistic structures, both horizontal (melodic) and vertical (‘chordal’). It reformulates the role of this understanding in discerning the atomic, primitive elements of an abstract human species-specific, cognitive-computational process. We conjecture that the fundamental technical concepts of counterpoint plausibly form the basis of natural musical logic and coherence and somehow reflect the basis of a representing system for a generative capacity evidenced in the creation and interpretation of musicalistic expressions. It is plausible to assume that a thorough investigation of the musical generating principles of consonance and dissonance, as developed through the technical perspective of species counterpoint, can lead to surprising insights necessary for the formulation of a general theory of music. Music, like language, is obviously an extremely complex system. Music theory must simplify this complexity and endeavour to discover its primitive elements which can be used to develop a systematic representation of levels that contributes to greater descriptive and explanatory salience of musicalistic structure.
Download or read book Gender and Noun Classification written by Éric Mathieu and published by Oxford Studies in Theoretical. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the many ways by which natural languages categorize nouns into genders or classes. A noun may belong to a given class because of its logical or symbolic similarities with other nouns, because it shares a similar morphological form with other nouns, or simply through an arbitrary convention. The aim of this book is to establish which functional or lexical categories are responsible for this type of classification, especially along the nominal syntactic spine. The book's contributors draw on data from a wide range of languages, including Amharic, French, Gitksan, Haro, Lithuanian, Japanese, Mi'kmaw, Persian, and Shona. Chapters examine where in the nominal structure gender is able to function as a classifying device, and how in the absence of gender, other functional elements in the nominal spine come to fill that gap. Other chapters focus on how gender participates in grammatical concord and agreement phenomena. The volume also discusses semantic agreement: hybrid agreement sometimes arises due to a distinction that grammars encode between natural gender on the one hand and grammatical gender on the other. The findings in the volume have significant implications for syntactic theory and theories of interpretation, and contribute to a greater understanding of the interplay between inflection and derivation. The volume will be of interest to theoretical linguists and typologists from advanced undergraduate level upwards.
Download or read book Building and Interpreting Possession Sentences written by Neil Myler and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-02-06 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging generative analysis of the typology of possession sentences, solving long-standing puzzles in their syntax and semantics. A major question for linguistic theory concerns how the structure of sentences relates to their meaning. There is broad agreement in the field that there is some regularity in the way that lexical semantics and syntax are related, so that thematic roles (the different participant roles in an event: agent, theme, goal, etc.) are predictably associated with particular syntactic positions. In this book, Neil Myler examines the syntax and semantics of possession sentences, which are infamous for appearing to diverge dramatically from this broadly regular pattern. On the one hand, Myler points out, possession sentences have too many meanings; in any given language, the construction used to express archetypal possessive meanings (such as personal ownership) is also often used to express other apparently unrelated notions (body parts, kinship relations, and many others). On the other hand, possession sentences have too many surface structures; languages differ markedly in the argument structures used to convey the same possessive meanings. Myler argues that recent work on the syntax-semantics interface in the generative tradition has developed the tools needed to solve these puzzles. Examining and synthesizing ideas from the literature and drawing on data from many languages (including some understudied Quechua dialects), Myler presents a novel way to understand the apparent irregularity of possession sentences while preserving explanations of general cross-linguistic regularities, offering a unified approach to the syntax and semantics of possession sentences that can also be integrated into a general theory of argument structure.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Event Structure written by Robert Truswell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 737 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First detailed survey of research into event structure; Interdisciplinary approach, with insights from linguistics, philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and computer science; Explores both foundational research and new cutting edge developments -
Download or read book The Underspecification of Past Participles written by Dennis Wegner and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are the past participial forms that occur in passive and perfect periphrases substantially identical or should they rather be distinguished into accidentally homophonous passive and perfect(ive) participles? This book discusses the long-standing mystery of past participial (non-)identity on the basis of a broad range of synchronic data from Germanic and Romance, eventually focussing on German and English as these draw the most relevant distinctions (e.g. auxiliary alternation, a passive auxiliary that is not BE). Together with some contrastive insights from Slavic as well as the diachrony of passive and perfect periphrases, this clearly points to an identity-view. The novel approach that is laid out suggests that past participles conflate diathetic and aspectual properties. The former cause the suppression of an external argument, whereas the latter impose event-structure sensitive perfectivity, which only induces the completion of a situation if the underlying eventuality denotes a simple change of state. An approach along these lines sheds light on the intricate properties of past participles and the auxiliaries they occur with, the determinants of auxiliary selection as well as the interplay of argument and event structure.
Download or read book The Morphosyntax of Transitions written by Víctor Acedo-Matellán and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-18 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the cross-linguistic expression of changes of location or state, taking as a starting point Talmy's typological generalization that classifies languages as either 'satellite-framed' or 'verb-framed'. In verb-framed languages, such as those of the Romance family, the result state or location is encoded in the verb. In satellite-framed languages, such as English or Latin, the result state or location is encoded in a non-verbal element. These languages can be further subdivided into weak satellite-framed languages, in which the element expressing result must form a word with the verb, and strong satellite-framed languages, in which it is expressed by an independent element: an adjective, a prepositional phrase or a particle. In this volume, Víctor Acedo-Matellán explores the similarities between Latin and Slavic in their expression of events of transition: neither allows the expression of complex adjectival resultative constructions and both express the result state or location of a complex transition through prefixes. They are therefore analysed as weak satellite-framed languages, along with Ancient Greek and some varieties of Mandarin Chinese, and stand in contrast to strong satellite-framed languages such as English, the Germanic languages in general, and Finno-Ugric. This variation is expressed in terms of the morphological properties of the head that expresses transition, which is argued to be affixal in weak but not in strong satellite-framed languages. The author takes a neo-constructionist approach to argument structure, which accounts for the verbal elasticity shown by Latin, and a Distributed Morphology approach to the syntax-morphology interface.
Download or read book The Theta System written by Martin Everaert and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-05 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before she died in 2007, Tanya Reinhart had gone a long way towards developing the Theta System, a theory in which formal features defining the thematic relations of verbs are encoded in the lexicon, enabling an interface between the lexical component and the computational system/syntax, directly, and the Inference system, indirectly. This book considers the recent results and evaluations of Tanya Reinhart's research in both theoretical and experimental domains. After a comprehensive presentation of the framework by the editors, distinguished linguists from all over the world examine the underpinning of the Theta System, compare the framework to alternative approaches, and consider its implications for the architecture of grammar. In addition, they consider and exemplify the applications of the system and offer improvements and extensions. The book is an important contribution to linguistic research. It engages in the key dialogue between competing lexicalist and syntactic approaches to lexico-semantic problems and does so in the context of an impressive array of new empirical data ranging from Germanic, Romance, and Slavic to Ugro-Finnish, and Semitic languages.
Download or read book Externalization written by Yoshihito Dobashi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores theoretical issues of the syntax-phonology interface within the Minimalist Program of linguistic theory and proposes an entirely new approach to prosodic categories. Conceptual as well as empirical questions are addressed, concerning how syntactic objects are mapped to the sensorimotor system through the processes of externalization. Elaborating on recent progress in the theories of labelling and workspace-based syntactic derivation, this book further develops a null theory of the prosodic domains, and recasts these as the domains of interpretation that are reducible to more fundamental concepts of linguistic theory. Phonological phrases are characterized by Minimal Search, a third factor principle of efficient computation. Intonational phrases are taken to be reflexes of the termination of syntactic derivation, which is formulated in terms of the workspace to which MERGE applies. This book explores the new implications this theory has for the general architecture of grammar as well as for linguistic interfaces. It provides a comprehensive review of the development of theories of the syntax-phonology interface from over the past three decades. The book is well-suited for general linguistic readers as well as phonologists, syntacticians, and any linguist interested in interface research.
Download or read book Chinese Syntax in a Cross linguistic Perspective written by Yen-hui Audrey Li and published by Oxford Studies in Comparative. This book was released on 2015 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Chinese Syntax in a Cross-linguistic Perspective collects twelve new papers that explore the syntax of Chinese in comparison with other languages"--
Download or read book Extravagant Morphology written by Matthias Eitelmann and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking extra-vagans literally (Lat. ‘wandering outside, out of bounds’), this volume comprises nine case studies on extravagant morphology ranging from pattern-extending derivational processes via theory-challenging compounding processes to interface-straddling morphosyntactic phenomena. As a heuristic approach, morphological extravagance captures word-formation processes characterised by constraint violations, interface phenomena as well as borderline phenomena not easily reconcilable with traditional postulates of morphological accounts. In this regard, the notion of extravagance allows for an exploration of rule-bending language use both empirically and theoretically. The volume makes a valuable contribution to studies on morphological variation, which has only recently seen a renewed and growing interest in morphological phenomena that challenge morphological frameworks. The volume is of interest to all researchers who seek to gain a broader understanding of the mechanisms and factors at work in morphological variation and who are interested in the reassessment of morphological theorising in light of empirical data.
Download or read book Parameter Hierarchies and Universal Grammar written by Ian Roberts and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019-06-27 with total page 730 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops a minimalist approach to cross-linguistic morphosyntactic variation. Ian Roberts argues that the essential insight of the principles-and-parameters approach to variation can be maintained - albeit in a somewhat different guise - in the context of the minimalist program for linguistic theory. The central idea is to organize the parameters of Universal Grammar (UG) into hierarchies that define the ways in which properties of individually variant categories and features may act in concert. A further leading idea, which is consistent with the overall goal of the minimalist programme to reduce the content of UG, is that the parameter hierarchies are not directly determined by UG, and are instead emergent properties stemming from the interaction of the three factors in language design. Cross-linguistic variation in word order, null subjects, incorporation, verb-movement, case/alignment, wh-movement, and negation are all analyzed in the light of this approach. This book represents a significant new contribution to the formal study of cross-linguistic morphosyntactic variation on both the empirical and theoretical levels, and will appeal to researchers and students in all areas of theoretical linguistics and comparative syntax.
Download or read book Causation in Grammatical Structures written by Bridget Copley and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together research on the topic of causation from experts in the fields of linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. It seeks to arrive at a more sophisticated understanding both of how causal concepts are expressed in causal meanings, and how those meanings in turn are organized into structures. Chapters address some of the most exciting current issues in the field, including the relata of causal relations; the representation of defeasible causation within verb phrases and at the level of modality; the difference between direct and indirect causal chains; and the representation of these chains in syntax.The book examines data from a wide variety of languages, such as Tohono O'odham, Finnish, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Hindi, and Karachay-Balkar, and will be of interest to syntacticians and semanticists, as well as psycholinguists and philosophers, from graduate level upwards.
Download or read book Morphological Metatheory written by Daniel Siddiqi and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2016-06-29 with total page 547 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The field of morphology is particularly heterogeneous. Investigators differ on key points at every level of theory. These divisions are not minor issues about technical implementation, but rather are foundational issues that mold the underlying anatomy of any theory. The field has developed very rapidly both theoretically and methodologically, giving rise to many competing theories and varied hypotheses. Many drastically different and often contradictory models and foundational hypotheses have been proposed. Theories diverge with respect to everything from foundational architectural assumptions to the specific combinatorial mechanisms used to derive complex words. Today these distinct models of word-formation largely exist in parallel, mostly without proponents confronting or discussing these differences in any major forum. After forty years of fast-paced growth in the field, morphologists are in need of a moment to take a breath and survey the drastically different points of view within the field. This volume provides such a moment.
