Download or read book The Role of Agreement in Non finite Predication written by Gréte Dalmi and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comparative syntactic study claims that agreement is the most central functional category responsible for licensing predication in finite, non-finite and small clauses alike. Intriguing syntactic phenomena like Icelandic infinitival predicates taking non-nominative (quirky) subjects; "psych-impersonal" and "modal" predicates in Italian, Hungarian and Russian; meteorological predicates, existential clauses, post-verbal and null subjects in the so-called" null-subject" VSO languages can all be better analyzed through a concept of predication that is closely related to AGRP, manifesting subject-verb agreement. The overt agreement marking in Hungarian and Portuguese infinitival clauses further strengthens this view. "Obviation" and "control "subjunctive clauses in the Balkan languages, Welsh finite and non-finite infinitival clauses as well as case-marked secondary predicates in Icelandic, Slovak, Hungarian, Russian and Finnish also lend support to an analysis where the []pred] feature is checked in AGRP.
Download or read book Approaches to Predicative Possession written by Gréte Dalmi and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses existential and possessive constructions in two important, yet under-studied, language families, Slavic and Finno-Ugric. Using data from the Slavic languages of Polish, Belarusian and Russian, and the Finno-Ugric languages of Finnish, Hungarian, Meadow Mari, Komi-Permiyak and Udmurt, as well as the closely related Selkup of the Samoyedic family, the chapters in this volume analyse predicative possession in current syntactic terms. Seeking an answer to the theoretical question of whether BE-possessives and HAVE-possessives are just accidental values of the 'Possessive Parameter' or are intrinsically related, this book takes a comparative approach to a whole range of syntactic and semantic phenomena that appear in these constructions, including the definiteness restriction, genitive of negation, person/number agreement, argument structure and extractability. The individual case studies can be easily integrated into the Principles & Parameters framework in terms of parametric variation. Approaches to Predicative Possession is an important contribution to our understanding of predicative possession across languages, with findings that can be fruitfully extended to other language families. It is an equally useful source of information for theoretical linguists, typologists, and graduate students of linguistics.
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 Individuals in Time written by María J. Arche and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph investigates the temporal properties of those predicates referring to individuals the so-called individual-level (IL) predicates in contrast to those known as stage-level (SL) predicates. Many of the traditional tenets attributed to the IL/SL dichotomy are not solidly founded, this book claims, as it examines current theoretical issues concerning the syntax/semantics interface such as the relation between semantic properties of predicates and their syntactic structure. By using the contrast found in Spanish copular clauses (ser vs. estar), Individuals in Time shows that the conception of IL predicates as permanent and stative cannot be maintained. The existence of nonstative IL predicates is demonstrated through analyzing the correlation between the syntactic presence of certain projections (specifically, prepositional complements) and process-like aspect properties. This detailed examination of IL predicates in the domains of inner aspect, outer aspect, and tense will be welcomed by scholars and students with an interest in event structure, tense, and aspect.
Download or read book Phase Theory written by Ángel J. Gallego and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a detailed and up to date review of the framework of phases (Chomsky 2000 and subsequent work). It explores the interaction between the narrow syntactic computation and the external systems from a minimalist perspective. As has sometimes been noted, "Phase Theory" is the current way to study the cyclic nature of the system, and 'phases' are therefore the natural locality hallmark, being directly relevant for phenomena such as binding, agreement, movement, islands, reconstruction, or stress assignment. This work discusses the different approaches to phases that have been proposed in the recent literature, arguing in favor of the thesis that the points of cyclic transfer are to be related to uninterpretable morphology (the ?-features on the heads C and v*). This take on phases is adopted in order to investigate raising structures, binding, subjunctive dependents, and object shift (word order) in Romance languages, as well as the nature of islands.
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 The Syntax of Anti Causatives written by Florian Schäfer and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008-06-26 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops an approach to the causative alternation that assumes syntactic event decomposition and a configurational theta theory. It is couched within the framework of the Minimalist Program and, especially, within Distributed Morphology. Central to the work is the syntax and semantics of canonical external arguments of causative verbs as well as of oblique causers and causative PPs in the context of anticausative verbs in different languages such as Germanic, Romance, Balkan, and Caucasian languages. The book also develops a new account of the origin and nature of the morphological marking which is often found on anticausatives across languages. The main claim is that this morphology is a reflex of a syntactic way to prohibit the assignment of the external theta role. Moreover, the book develops an account about the origin of the implicit agent in generic middles which often bear the same morphology as marked anticausatives.
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 Structure Preserved written by C. Jan-Wouter Zwart and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Structure is at the rock-bottom of all explanatory sciences" (Jan Koster). Forty years ago, the hypothesis that underlying the bewildering variety of syntactic phenomena are general and unified structural patterns of unexpected beauty and simplicity gave rise to major advancements in the study of Dutch and Germanic syntax, with important implications for the theory of grammar as a whole. Jan Koster was one of the central figures in this development, and he has continued to explore the structure preserving hypothesis throughout his illustrious career. This collection of articles by over forty syntacticians celebrates the advancements made in the study of syntax over the past forty years, reflecting on the structural principles underlying syntactic phenomena and emulating the approach to syntactic analysis embodied in Jan Koster's teaching and research.
Download or read book The Semantics of Generics in Dutch and Related Languages written by Albert M. Oosterhof and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008-04-25 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph is a comprehensive study of the various ways in which genericity can be expressed in Dutch, dialects of Dutch, and languages related to Dutch. On the basis of empirical (corpus- and questionnaire-based) data, a wide range of topics are discussed which have been addressed in the literature on the semantics and pragmatics of generics. The empirical data presented in this book shed new light on issues crucial to the study of genericity. A number of widely accepted ideas are shown to be problematic. For example, arguments are presented against the well-known claim that progressive forms typically exclude characterizing interpretations. Furthermore, the author shows that speakers do not agree in their judgements of the acceptability of bare plurals (as well as other noun phrase types) in generic contexts. Such data are a problem for the influential thesis that bare plurals refer to kinds unambiguously.
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 The Syntax of Nonsententials written by Ljiljana Progovac and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 384 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 Edges Heads and Projections written by Anne-Marie Di Sciullo and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection deals with central issues in the syntax of clauses and their interfaces with the conceptual-intentional system. The book targets the syntactic properties that have an impact on the interpretation of discourse and temporal dependencies, functional fields including CP, pragmatic markers at the syntax-pragmatic interface, and on the possible parameterization of these properties. The papers in this volume bring to the fore the role of the edges (specifier and adjuncts), heads and projections in the grammar and at the interfaces. They address the question to what extent the relevant configurations at the level of edges, head, and projections determine the syntax/semantic, semantic/pragmatic connections. The contributions clarify the notion of edge and bring evidence that this notion is core to the analysis of various phenomena at the left periphery of clauses and phrases. This volume also discusses functional heads and their projections, particularly insofar as the properties of these heads determine the composition of the CP field, and cases where a CP may or may not be projected.
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 Modality Aspect and Negation in Persian written by Azita H. Taleghani and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008-06-26 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph presents a morpho-syntactic investigation on modality, aspect, and negation by concentrating on Persian, and is designed to contribute to theoretical linguistics and the study of Iranian languages. The analysis is based on the Minimalist program. This research challenges the idea that the syntactic structure maps on the semantic interpretation or vice versa. The discussion presented in this monograph shows that the syntactic structure of Persian modals is uniform no matter if the modals are interpreted as having root or epistemic readings. Although it is claimed that modals are raising constructions in different languages, modals in Persian, which does not have subject-raising constructions, show a different syntactic behavior. Furthermore, the structural analysis of the interaction of Persian modals and negation shows that because of the scope interaction of negation and modals, the syntactic structure of modals with respect to negation mostly corresponds to the semantic interpretation of modals.
Download or read book Minimalist Interfaces written by Yosuke Sato and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Empirically rich, analytically sophisticated, and theoretically necessary. A major step forward in minimalist theorizing." --
Download or read book The Layered DP written by Tabea Ihsane and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines argumental un-NPs and du/des-NPs in French: nominals with the indefinite article and with the so-called 'partitive article' respectively. The main aim is to account for the different interpretations of these indefinites and to determine how interpretation and structure are related. This study thus concerns the syntax-semantics interface, with an emphasis on the composition of the left periphery and the inflectional domain of the indefinites mentioned. It is realized in the framework of generative grammar and in a cartographic approach. A crucial proposal put forward in this book is that indefinites of different semantic types are associated with different left peripheries. The analysis further suggests that the inflectional domain of these indefinites may comprise three discrete functional projections encoding the features [count], [quantity] and [number]. Interestingly, these results seem to extend to a selection of bare nouns in Romance and Germanic languages.
