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 2006-01-01 with total page 205 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 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 The Syntax of Nonsententials written by Ljiljana Progovac and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2006-09-13 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings the data that many in formal linguistics have dismissed as peripheral straight into the core of syntactic theory. By bringing together experts from syntax, semantics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, language acquisition, aphasia, and pidgin and creole studies, the volume makes a multidisciplinary case for the existence of nonsententials, which are analyzed in various chapters as root phrases and small clauses (Me; Me First!; Him worry?!; Class in session), and whose distinguishing property is the absence of Tense, and, with it, any syntactic phenomena that rely on Tense, including structural Nominative Case. Arguably, the lack of Tense specification is also responsible for the dearth of indicative interpretations among nonsententials, as well as for their heavy reliance on pragmatic context. So pervasive is nonsentential speech across all groups, including normal adult speech, that a case can be made that continuity of grammar lies in nonsentential, rather than sentential speech.

Download or read book Verbal Prepositions and Argument Structure written by Mai Ellin Tungseth and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates different types of verb-PP combinations and examines the types of meanings which arise when the argument structure of the PP fuses with the verbal argument structure. Focussing mainly on data from Norwegian, the book investigates three different empirical domains of PP-VP combinations and concludes that the arising interpretations result from a combination of the fine-grained structure of the PP, the structure of the verb phrase, and the different modes of combination. The book sheds new light on the syntax-semantics interplay while adding new insight about the properties of the category P in Norwegian. The book also contributes to the debate between Lexicalism and Constructionism, and it concludes that a moderate Constructionist model with a fine-grained syntactic structure determining interpretation is best equipped to handle the enormous flexibility of verb-prepositional phrase combinations of the types explored.

Download or read book Grammatical Change and Linguistic Theory written by Thórhallur Eythórsson and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008-03-06 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains 15 revised papers originally presented at a symposium at Rosendal, Norway, under the aegis of The Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. The overall theme of the volume is ‘internal factors in grammatical change.’ The papers focus on fundamental questions in theoretically-based historical linguistics from a broad perspective. Several of the papers relate to grammaticalization in different ways, but are generally critical of ‘Grammaticalization Theory’. Further papers focus on the causes of syntactic change, pinpointing both extra-syntactic (exogenous) causes and – more controversially – internally driven (endogenous) causes. The volume is rounded up by contributions on morphological change ‘by itself.’ A wide range of languages is covered, including Tsova-Tush (Nakh-Dagestan), Zoque, and Athapaskan languages, in addition to Indo-European languages, both the more familiar ones and some less well-studied varieties.

Download or read book Unique Focus written by Marina Stoyanova and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008-04-10 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph focuses on an interesting typological property shared by four languages: the ungrammaticality of multiple wh-questions in Irish, Berber, Italian and Somali. It contains a broad discussion of data related to the grammar of wh-questions, a comparative analysis of wh-constructions in the four languages, and a theoretical account for the observed phenomenon. The analysis is based on the minimalist syntax theory as developed by Chomsky since 1995. It takes up the standard assumption that wh-phrases are typical representatives of elements bearing new information, in theoretical terms referred to as information focus. Most importantly, in the languages without multiple wh-questions the information focus is licensed in a unique syntactic position. The basic claim is that languages with unique focus are languages without multiple wh-questions. The analysis makes possible the classification of the languages without multiple wh-questions into the crosslinguistic typology of wh-constructions. Furthermore, this book is a contribution to the better understanding of information structure in natural languages, especially of focusing phenomena.

Download or read book Theoretical and Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Semantics of Aspect written by Susan D. Rothstein and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008-03-20 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The papers in this volume investigate the semantics of aspect from both a theoretical and a crosslinguistic point of view, in a wide range of languages from a number of different language families. The papers are all informed by the belief that a thorough exposure to the expression of aspect crosslinguistically is crucial for progress in understanding how the semantics of aspect works and what the semantic basis of aspectual distinctions is. The languages discussed include Russian, English, Dutch, Hebrew, Mandarin, Japanese and Kalaallisut. The issues discussed in this volume include the centrality of measuring and counting in an understanding of telicity; the importance of the singular/plural distinction in the study of aspect; the importance of homogeneity as a property of event types; the flexibility of lexical classes; and the interaction between expressions of aspect and the particular morphosyntactic structure of a language.

Download or read book Control as Movement written by Cedric Boeckx and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-26 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Movement Theory of Control (MTC) makes one major claim: that control relations in sentences like 'John wants to leave' are grammatically mediated by movement. This goes against the traditional view that such sentences involve not movement, but binding, and analogizes control to raising, albeit with one important distinction: whereas the target of movement in control structures is a theta position, in raising it is a non-theta position; however the grammatical procedures underlying the two constructions are the same. This book presents the main arguments for MTC and shows it to have many theoretical advantages, the biggest being that it reduces the kinds of grammatical operations that the grammar allows, an important advantage in a minimalist setting. It also addresses the main arguments against MTC, using examples from control shift, adjunct control, and the control structure of 'promise', showing MTC to be conceptually, theoretically, and empirically superior to other approaches.

Download or read book Pragmatics and Autolexical Grammar written by Etsuyo Yuasa and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents papers in honor of Jerry Sadock's rich legacy in pragmatics and Autolexical Grammar. Highlights of the pragmatics section include Larry Horn on almost, barely, and assertoric inertia; William Lycan on Sadock's resolution of the Performadox with truth1 and truth2; and Jay Atlas on Moore's Paradox and the truth value of propositions of belief. Highlights of the Autolexical Grammar section include Fritz Newmeyer's comparison of the minimalist, autolexical, and transformational treatments of English nominals; Barbara Abott's extension of Sadock's PRO-less syntax to a PRO-less semantics of the infinitival complements of know how; and Haj Ross's syntactic connections between semantically related English pseudoclefts. Encompassing a range of languages (Aleut, Bangla, Greenlandic, Japanese, and a home-based sign language) and extending into psycholinguistics (language acquisition, sentence processing, and autism) this volume will interest a range of readers, from theoretical linguists and philosophers of language to applied linguists and exotic language specialists.

Download or read book The Grammar of Repetition written by Jason Kandybowicz and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Displacement is a fundamental property of grammar. Typically, when an occurrence moves it is pronounced in only one environment. This was previously viewed as a primitive/irreducible property of grammar. Recent work, however, suggests that it follows from principled interactions between the syntactic and phonological components of grammar. As such, the phonetic character of movement chains can be seen as both a reflection of and probe into the syntax-phonology interface. This volume deals with repetition, an atypical outcome of movement operations in which displaced elements are pronounced multiple times. Although cross-linguistically rare, the phenomenon obtains robustly in Nupe, a Benue-Congo language of Nigeria. Repetition raises a tension of the descriptive-explanatory variety. In order to achieve both measures of adequacy, movement theory must be supplemented with an account of the conditions that drive and constrain multiple pronunciation. This book catalogs these conditions, bringing to light a number of undocumented aspects of Nupe grammar.

Download or read book Categorial Features written by Phoevos Panagiotidis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proposes a novel theory of parts of speech, bringing together the latest research and discoveries.

Download or read book Infinitives at the Syntax Semantics Interface written by Lukasz Jedrzejowski and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-06-26 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The major aim of this volume is to investigate infinitival structures from a diachronic point of view and, simultaneously, to embed the diachronic findings into the ongoing theoretical discussion on non-finite clauses in general. All contributions subscribe to a dynamic approach to infinitival clauses by investigating their origin, development and loss in miscellaneous patterns and across different languages.

Download or read book Applicatives written by Youngmi Jeong and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-03-07 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Applicatives is concerned with the syntax of constructions that contain arguments that transcend the traditional subject-object characterization, and how the syntax of such constructions yields the interpretive effects that previous research has identified. At the empirical level this volume remedies the inadequacies and limitations of previous accounts by proposing a more nuanced view of all the factors that enter into the syntax and semantics of applicatives. At the theoretical level, this book offers empirical arguments for various theoretical options currently entertained in the minimalist program, among which movement into theta-position, multiple agree, anti-locality, and a very derivational view on successive cyclic movement.

Download or read book Complex Predicates written by Leila Lomashvili and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2011-03-16 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Complex predicates present different levels of complexity at the syntactic and morphological levels crosslinguistically. The focus of this book is a subset of these constructions (causative and applicative) in three polysynthetic languages of the South Caucasian language family, in which the functional morphology associated with the argument structure of these constructions is unusually rich. Due to such focus, the syntax-morphology interface in causative and applicative constructions is subject to scrutiny in two main chapters of the book. The analysis includes the argument structure of causatives and applicatives along with the morpho-phonological instantiation of the functional heads involved in these constructions. The book is written very clearly and is accessible for a wide audience including undergraduate students in the introductory syntax and morphology courses as well as graduate students in basic syntax courses and seminars in linguistics. It naturally appeals to a general linguistic audience interested in theoretical linguistics.

Download or read book Clitics in Greek written by Marios Mavrogiorgos and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph investigates the morpho-syntactic and other properties of clitic pronouns in Greek and offers a grammar of proclisis and enclisis in light of Chomsky s (1995, 2001a, 2005) Minimalist Program. It explores the nature of clitics as syntactic topicalizers which are probed by structurally higher verbal heads to which they move and into which they incorporate morpho-syntactically. A theory is advanced according to which cliticization derives from syntactic agreement between (the phi-features of) a clitic pronoun and a phase head, v* in the case of proclisis and CM in the case of enclisis. Incorporation of the clitic into its host is argued to depend on two factors, i.e. the fact that the clitic only contains a subset of the features of its host, and the fact that the edge of the host is accessible. Also, the syntax of strong pronouns and their relation to clitics, of negated imperatives, of surrogate imperatives and of free clitic ordering in Greek enclisis are also discussed. This monograph would appeal to syntacticians and morphologists as well as to those interested in Greek and more generally in clitic syntax."

Download or read book The Structure of Stative Verbs written by Antonia Rothmayr and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the nature of stative verbs, their eventuality structure, and the patterns of argument realization. The study shows that there is no single class of stative verbs. Rather, several distinct groups of verbs are found: Verbs that undergo a systematic stative/eventive ambiguity; verbs that allow for a stative reading only; and verbs that seem to have an intermediate status (verbs of position and verbs of internal causation). The study concludes that there is a discrete boundary between stative and eventive verbs, excluding any intermediate status. Stativity arises because the aspectual operators DO and BECOME are absent in the lexical-semantic structure. Eventivity arises if one of these is present. A minimalist view on argument realization and event structure completes the book: Theta features on the arguments are checked against the aspectual heads within the verb phrase.

Download or read book Grammar as Processor written by Roland Pfau and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spontaneous speech errors provide valuable evidence not only for the processes that mediate between a communicative intention and the articulation of an utterance but also for the types of grammatical entities that are manipulated during production. This study proposes an analysis of speech errors that is informed by grammar theory. In particular, it is shown how characteristic properties of erroneous German utterances can be accounted for within Distributed Morphology (DM). The investigation focuses on two groups of errors: Errors that result from the manipulation of semantic and morphosyntactic features, and errors which appear to involve the application of a post-error repair strategy. It is argued that a production model which incorporates DM allows for a straightforward account of the attested, sometimes complex, error patterns. DM mechanisms, for instance, render unnecessary the assumption of repair processes. Besides providing an account for the attested error patterns, the theory also helps us in explaining why certain errors do not occur. In this sense, DM makes for a psychologically real model of grammar.