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Book The Transitivity Hypothesis   Investigation on the importance of transitivity in grammar and discourse

Download or read book The Transitivity Hypothesis Investigation on the importance of transitivity in grammar and discourse written by Conny Schibisch and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2007-01-15 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, University of Dusseldorf "Heinrich Heine" (Department of English Language and Linguistics), course: Seminar: English Functional Syntax, language: English, abstract: As a learner of languages in general and of English in particular, sooner or later one comes across transitive and intransitive verbs. For most of the learners this only means that there are these verbs, which take a direct object (transitive) and those, which do not (intransitive). (1) Susan left. (2) He is writing something. When comparing example (1) and (2), the average student of EFL 1 would claim the second one to be transitive, while the first one would be described as intransitive. For learners at school this explanation might be sufficient, but as a linguist the notion of Transitivity goes far beyond the simple declaration of verbs to be object-taking or not. In this paper special interest will focus on the notion of Transitivity. The observations are based on a study made by Paul J. Hopper and Sandra A. Thompson 2 published in 1980, which focuses on the importance of Transitivity in grammar and discourse 3 . The first part of the paper presented here will explain the notion of Transitivity according to the results of the study by Hopper/Thompson. The second part will draw attention to the universality of Transitivity. The question arises in how far Transitivity is essential to language. Why does the speaker of a language use Transitivity within a speech and how does he do so? Therefore, the main focus of the third part will lie on the pragmatic function of Transitivity, which means the importance of it as a discourse determiner. Especially the role of Transitivity in Foregrounding in discourse will be looked at. The writer of this paper tries to find own examples, if possible, but when it comes to universality and the corpus investigation, only examples of the original study can guarantee the verification of the theory. [...]

Book Studies in Transitivity

Download or read book Studies in Transitivity written by Paul J. Hopper and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-01-13 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Transitivity

Download or read book Transitivity written by Teun Hoekstra and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Transitivity in Discourse

Download or read book Transitivity in Discourse written by Ann Lindvall and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Transitivity

Download or read book Transitivity written by Patrick Brandt and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when a canonically transitive form meets a canonically transitive meaning, and what happens when this doesn t happen? How do dyadic forms relate to monadic ones, and what are the entailments of the operations that the grammar uses to relate one to the other? Collecting original expert work from acquisition, processing, typological and theoretical syntax-semantics research, this volume provides a state of the art as well as cutting edge discussion of central issues in the realm of Transitivity. These include the definition and role of "Natural Transitivity," the interpretation and repercussions of valency changing operations and differential case marking, and the interactions between (in)transitive Gestalts in different categories and at different levels of representation."

Book Clause Combining in Grammar and Discourse

Download or read book Clause Combining in Grammar and Discourse written by John Haiman and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1988-01-01 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditionally the study of syntax is restricted to the study of what goes on within the boundaries of the prosodic sentence. Although the nature of clause combining within a prosodic sentence has always been a central concern of traditional syntax (in GG, e.g. it underlies important research on deletion and anaphora), work within a discourse analysis framework has hardly been done. Analyses like this are given in the present volume.

Book Lexical Perspectives on Transitivity and Ergativity

Download or read book Lexical Perspectives on Transitivity and Ergativity written by Maarten Lemmens and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fusing insights from cognitive grammar, systemic-functional grammar and Government & Binding, the present work elaborates and refines Davidse's view that the English grammar of lexical causatives is governed by the transitive and ergative paradigms, two distinct models of causation (Davidse 1991, 1992). However, on the basis of extensive synchronic and diachronic data on verbs of killing (e.g. kill, execute, choke or drown), it is shown that 'transitivity' and 'ergativity' are not absolute but prototypical characteristics of verbs which may be overruled by the semantics of the construal in which they occur. The variable transitive or ergative character of the verbs reveals the complex interaction between the semantics of the construction and that of the verb. The diachronic analyses further illustrate how in the course of time verbs may change their paradigmatic properties, either temporarily (e.g. the ergativization of strangle, throttle and smother) or permanently (e.g. the 'causativization' of starve or the partial transitivization of abort). The analyses show that these changes are semantically well-motivated and further illustrate the cognitive reality of the two causative models. The work explores the experiential basis of the prototypical paradigmatic behaviour of verbs (e.g. the ergative predilection of the SUFFOCATE verbs). In addition, it attempts to shed more light on the semantics and restrictions of certain constructions, such as the medio-passive, the derivation of adjectives in –able, or the derivation of agentive nominals in –er.

Book Prototypical Transitivity

Download or read book Prototypical Transitivity written by Åshild Næss and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a functional analysis of a notion which has gained considerable importance in cognitive and functional linguistics over the last couple of decades, namely 'prototypical transitivity'. It discusses what prototypical transitivity is, why it should exist, and how it should be defined, as well as how this definition can be employed in the analysis of a number of phenomena of language, such as case-marking, experiencer constructions, and so-called ambitransitives. Also discussed is how a prototype analysis relates to other approaches to transitivity, such as that based on markedness. The basic claim is that transitivity is iconic: a construction with two distinct, independent arguments is prototypically used to refer to an event with two distinct, independent participants. From this principle, a unified account of the properties typically associated with transitivity can be derived, and an explanation for why these properties tend to correlate across languages can be given.

Book The Empirical Stance

    Book Details:
  • Author : Bas C. van Fraassen
  • Publisher : Yale University Press
  • Release : 2008-10-01
  • ISBN : 0300127960
  • Pages : 302 pages

Download or read book The Empirical Stance written by Bas C. van Fraassen and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is empiricism and what could it be? Bas C. van Fraassen, one of the world’s foremost contributors to philosophical logic and the philosophy of science, here undertakes a fresh consideration of these questions and offers a program for renewal of the empiricist tradition. The empiricist tradition is not and could not be defined by common doctrines, but embodies a certain stance in philosophy, van Fraassen says. This stance is displayed first of all in a searing, recurrent critique of metaphysics, and second in a focus on experience that requires a voluntarist view of belief and opinion. Van Fraassen focuses on the philosophical problems of scientific and conceptual revolutions and on the not unrelated ruptures between religious and secular ways of seeing or conceiving of ourselves. He explores what it is to be or not be secular and points the way toward a new relationship between secularism and science within philosophy.

Book Subjectivity in Grammar and Discourse

Download or read book Subjectivity in Grammar and Discourse written by Sh?ichi Iwasaki and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the notion of subjectivity from a pragmatic point of view. There have been attempts to reduce the notion of the speaker or subjectivity as a syntactic category, or to seek an explanation for it in semantic terms. However, in order to understand the vast range of subjectivity phenomena, it is more fruitful to examine how the attributes and the experience of the real speaker affect language. The volume provides a theoretical/methodological basis for the study of various aspects of language and discourse and applies these specifically to Japanese spoken discourse, for which the data are added in an appendix.

Book Transitivity Alternations in Diachrony

Download or read book Transitivity Alternations in Diachrony written by Nikolaos Lavidas and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-12-14 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Τhis book offers a new approach to the theory of change in argument structure and voice morphology. It investigates the diachrony of transitivity, and especially the changes in causative verbs and transitivity alternations, based on data mainly from the Greek and English diachrony (all historical data are transcribed and accompanied by glosses and translations into Modern English). Data from earlier periods provide new information on burning questions in both Historical and Theoretical Linguistics. The study shows that (a) causativisations are the result of reanalysis of intransitive verbs as transitive on the basis of the linguistic cue of Case; (b) the changes in voice morphology do not depend on the derivation and direction of new transitivity alternations. Finally, the study demonstrates that the generalisation that guides the changes in voice demands morphological differentiation of the anticausative from the passive types.

Book Causatives and Transitivity

Download or read book Causatives and Transitivity written by Bernard Comrie and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together 18 typological studies of causative and related constructions (transitivity, voice, other expressions of cause) by 19 scholars from North America, Western Europe, and Russia. The inspirations for the volume is the pioneering work on causative constructions by the Leningrad Typology Group; several of the contributors have close connections to the charter members of that group, others have appreciated this work from a distance. The volume as a whole is based on the concept of causative constructions as embracing both morphology and syntax, with an important semantic component as well. In addition to general studies concerning the morpho syntactic and semantic typology and the history of causative constructions and relations to other phenomena, the following individual languages are treated in detail: Russian, English, Dutch, Svan, Even, Korean, Yukaghir, Alutor, Aleut, Haruai, Dogon, Athabaskan languages. The volume will be of interest to typologists, to other linguists interested in causative constructions and transitivity relations, and to all who are interested in the linguistic expression of causal relations.

Book Proceedings of the Twenty second Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society

Download or read book Proceedings of the Twenty second Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society written by Lila R. Gleitman and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 1108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vol inclu all ppers & postrs presntd at 2000 Cog Sci mtg & summaries of symposia & invitd addresses. Dealg wth issues of representg & modelg cog procsses, appeals to scholars in all subdiscip tht comprise cog sci: psy, compu sci, neuro sci, ling, & philo

Book Changing Valency

Download or read book Changing Valency written by Robert M. W. Dixon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-02-10 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Distinguished scholars examine the phenomena of passives and causatives in languages from around the world.

Book Transitivity

Download or read book Transitivity written by Seppo Kittilä and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Grounding in Chinese Written Narrative Discourse

Download or read book Grounding in Chinese Written Narrative Discourse written by Wendan Li and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-02-19 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Grounding in Chinese Written Narrative Discourse Wendan Li offers a comprehensive account of how Chinese, as a morphologically challenged language, uses grammatical means to highlight (or foreground) major events of a narrative and to demote (or background) other supporting descriptions.

Book External Arguments in Transitivity Alternations

Download or read book External Arguments in Transitivity Alternations written by Artemis Alexiadou and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an exploration of the syntax of external arguments in transitivity alternations from a cross-linguistic perspective. It focuses particularly on the causative/anticausative alternation, which the authors take to be a Voice alternation, and the formation of adjectival participles. The authors use data principally from English, German, and Greek to demonstrate that the presence of anticausative morphology does not have any truth-conditional effects, but that marked anticausatives involve more structure than their unmarked counterparts. This morphology is therefore argued to be associated with a semantically inert Voice head that the authors call 'expletive Voice'. The authors also propose that passive formation is not identical across languages, and that the distinction between target vs. result state participles is crucial in understanding the contribution of Voice in adjectival passives. The book provides the tools required to investigate the morphosyntactic structure of verbs and participles, and to identify the properties of verbal alternations across languages. It will be of interest to theoretical linguists from graduate level upwards, particularly those specializing in morphosyntax and typology.