Download or read book Wh scope Marking written by Uli Lutz and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume deals with what the WH-movement parameter has to say about varieties of WH-dependencies in different languages. Section two introduces WH-scope marking and the related concept of partial WH-movement. Section three, the main approaches to WH-scope marking are introduced.
Download or read book Locality in WH Quantification written by Veneeta Dayal and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Locality in WH Quantification argues that Logical Form, the level that mediates between syntax and semantics, is derived from S-structure by strictly local movement. The primary data for the claim of locality at LF is drawn from Hindi but English data is used in discussing the semantics of questions and relative clauses. The book takes a cross-linguistic perspective showing how the Hindi and English facts can be brought to bear on the theory of universal grammar. There are several phenomena generally thought to involve long-distance dependencies at LF, such as scope marking, long-distance list answers and correlatives. In this book they are handled by explicating novel types of local relationships that interrogative and relative clauses can enter. Amore articulated semantics is shown leading to a simpler syntax. Among other issues addressed is the switch from uniqueness/maximality effects in single WH constructions to list readings in multiple WH constructions. These effects are captured by adapting the treatment of WH expressions as quantifying over functions to the cases of multiple WH questions and correlatives. List readings due to functional dependencies are systematically distinguished from those that are based on plurality.
Download or read book Dependency and Directionality written by Marcel den Dikken and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-05 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The direction in which the structure of sentences and filler-gap dependencies are built is a topic of fundamental importance to linguistic theory and its applications. This book develops an integrated understanding of structure building, movement and locality embedded in a syntactic theory that argues for a 'top down' approach, presenting an explicit counterweight to the bottom-up derivations pervading the Chomskian mainstream. It combines a compact and comprehensive historical perspective on structure building, the cycle, and movement, with detailed discussions of island effects, the typology of long-distance filler-gap dependencies, and the special problems posed by the subject in clausal syntax. Providing introductions to the main issues, reviewing extant arguments for bottom-up and top-down approaches, and presenting several case studies in its development of a new theory, this book should be of interest to all students and scholars of language interested in syntactic structures and the dependencies inside them.
Download or read book Contrasts and Positions in Information Structure written by Ivona Kučerová and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-26 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Information structure, or the way the information in a sentence is 'divided' into categories such as topic, focus, comment, background, and old versus new information, is one of the most widely debated topics in linguistics. This volume incorporates exciting work on the relationship between syntax and information structure. The contributors are united in rejecting accounts that assume designated syntactic positions associated with specific information-structural interpretations, and aim instead to derive information-structural conditions on word order and other phenomena from the way syntax and syntax-external systems interact. Beyond this shared aim, the authors of the various chapters advocate a number of approaches, based on different types of data (syntactic, semantic, phonological/phonetic) from a range of languages. The book is aimed at specialists in syntax and/or information structure, as well as students and linguists in related fields keen to familiarise themselves with current issues in this fascinating area of research.
Download or read book The Syntactic Structures of Korean written by Jong-Bok Kim and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-28 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering both core and peripheral phenomena, The Syntactic Structures of Korean is a concrete and precise grammar of the language. Based on the framework of Sign-based Construction Grammar, it provides a grammar of Korean which is computationally implementable and cognitively viable. Remarkably broad, yet in-depth, it is an outstanding analysis of Korean syntax and semantics which will be welcomed by those working in linguistics and the Korean language.
Download or read book Approaches to Meaning written by Daniel Gutzmann and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-08-28 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The basic claims of traditional truth-conditional semantics are that the semantic interpretation of a sentence is connected to the truth of that sentence in a situation, and that the meaning of the sentence is derived compositionally from the semantic values meaning of its constituents and the rules that combine them. Both claims have been subject to an intense debate in linguistics and philosophy of language. The original research papers collected in this volume test the boundaries of this classic view from a linguistic and a philosophical point of view by investigating the foundational notions of composition, values and interpretation and their relation to the interfaces to other disciplines. They take the classical theories one step further and closer to a realistic semantic theory that covers speaker’s intentions, the knowledge of discourse participants, meaning of fiction and literature, as well as vague and paradoxical utterances. Ede Zimmermann is a pioneering researcher in semantics whose students, friends, and colleagues have collected in this volume an impressive set of studies at the interfaces of semantics. How do meanings interact with the context and with intentions and beliefs of the people conversing? How do meanings interact with other meanings in an extended discourse? How can there be paradoxical meanings? Researchers interested in semantics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, anyone interested in foundational and empirical issues of meaning, will find inspiration and instruction in this wonderful volume. Kai von Fintel, MIT Department of Linguistics
Download or read book Questions written by Veneeta Dayal and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book synthesizes and integrates 40 years of research on the semantics of questions, and its interface with pragmatics and syntax, conducted within the formal semantics tradition. A wide range of topics are covered, including weak-strong exhaustiveness, maximality, functional answers, single-multiple-trapped list answers, embedding predicates, quantificational variability, concealed questions, weak islands, polar and alternative questions, negative polarity, and non-canonical questions. The literature on this rich set of topics, theoretically diverse and scattered across multiple venues, is often hard to assimilate. Veneeta Dayal, drawing on her own research, brings them together for the first time in a coherent, concise, and well-structured whole. Each chapter begins with a non-technical introduction to the issues discussed; semantically sophisticated accounts are then presented incrementally, with the major points summarized at the end of each section. Written in an accessible style, this book provides both a guide to one of the most vibrant areas of research in natural language and an account of how this area of study is developing. It will be a unique resource for the novice and expert alike, and seeks to appeal to a variety of readers without compromising depth and breadth of coverage.
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 Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2018 written by Sergio Baauw and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2021-12-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains a peer reviewed selection of invited contributions, papers and posters that were presented at the 2018 venue of Going Romance (XXXII) in Utrecht (a four day program that included two thematic workshops). The papers all discuss data and formalized analyses of one or more Romance languages or dialects, in either synchronic or diachronic perspective, and pay particular attention to the variation and the actual variability that is at stake, not only in syntax and morpho-syntax but also in semantics and phonology. Beyond the discussion of differences between languages and/or dialects from a formalist perspective, the volume also contains a number of papers linking the theme of variation to sociolinguistic issues such as natural bilingualism and micro-contact.
Download or read book Semantics of Chinese Questions written by Hongyuan Dong and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Semantics of Chinese Questions is the first major study of Chinese questions, especially wh-questions, within the framework of Alternative Semantics. It takes an interface approach to study the syntax, semantics, and phonology of questions and proposes a phonological scope-marking strategy in Chinese questions, based upon experimental data. It also incorporates historical linguistic data regarding the grammaticalization of sentence-final particles such as –ne and –ma to study the formal diachronic semantics of questions. Primarily suitable for scholars in the field of Chinese linguistics, this book makes new theoretical contributions to the study of questions.
Download or read book The Acquisition of Syntax in Romance Languages written by Vincent Torrens and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2006-07-26 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume includes a selection of papers that address a wide range of acquisition phenomena from different Romance languages and all share a common theoretical approach based on the Principles and Parameters theory. They favour, discuss and sometimes challenge traditional explanations of first and second language acquisition in terms of maturation of general principles universal to all languages. They all depart from the view that language acquisition can be explained in terms of learning language specific rules, constraints or structures. The different parts into which this volume is organized reflect different approaches that current research has offered, which deal with issues of development of reflexive pronouns, determiners, clitics, verbs, auxiliaries, inflection, wh-movement, ressumptive pronouns, topic and focus, mood, the syntax/discourse interface, and null arguments.
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 Processing and Producing Head final Structures written by Hiroko Yamashita and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-11-05 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first collection of studies on an important yet under-investigated linguistic phenomenon, the processing and production of head-final syntactic structures. Until now, the remarkable progress made in the field of human sentence processing had been achieved largely by investigating head-initial languages such as English. The goal of the present volume is to deepen our understanding by examining head-final languages and offering a comparison of those results to findings from head-initial languages. This book brings together cross-linguistic investigations of languages with prominent head-final structures such as Basque, Chinese, German, Japanese, Korean, and Hindi. It will inform readers of linguistics with both theoretical and experimental backgrounds, as it provides accounts of previous studies, offers experimentally-based theoretical discussions, and includes experimental stimuli in the original languages.
Download or read book Movement and Clitics written by Linda Escobar and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2010-01-08 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume gathers selected papers from the workshops Facing Movement and Meeting Clitics held in the context of the Barcelona Linguistic Institute. The authors explore a wide variety of languages, from Icelandic to Mayan, from Japanese to Russian and Italian, from various data sources: adult grammar, first and second language acquisition, developmental language disorders and language change. The papers on movement address the issues of reconstruction in parasitic gaps; the alternation between short and long distance movement in Germanic; subextraction from subjects; wh- in situ in Greek; word order alternations derived by movement in bilingual acquisition; intervention effects in L2 acquisition of Chinese; multiple wh- fronting in L2; and production of wh- questions in L1, L2 and SLI in French. In the papers on clitics, the theoretical issues considered include: the affixal character of subject clitics in L1; the morphological complexity of clitics; proclisis versus enclisis; the restrictions on cooccurrence of clitics in causative and other constructions; clitic placement in relation to L2 and language change; clitics as demarcative markers; and the acquisition of pronominal clitics in European Portuguese.
Download or read book Issues in Formal German ic Typology written by Werner Abraham and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes up a variety of general syntactic topics, which either yield different solutions in German, in particular, or which lead to different conclusions for theory formation. One of the main topics is the fact that languages that allow for extensive scrambling between the two verbal poles, V-2 and V-last, need to integrate discourse functions like thema and rhema into the grammatical description. This is attempted, in terms of Minimalism, thus extending the functional domain. Special attention is given to the asymmetrical scrambling behavior of indefinites vs. definites and their semantic interpretation. Related topics are: Transitive expletive sentences, types of existential sentences with either BE or HAVE, the that-trace phenomenon and its semantics, negative polarity items, ellipsis and gapping, passivization, double negation all of which have extensive effects both on distributional behavior and semantic disambiguation, reaching far beyond effects observable in English with its rigid, 'un-scrambable' word order.
Download or read book The Syntax and Semantics of the Left Periphery written by Horst Lohnstein and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-04-17 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The left periphery of clausal structures has been a prominent topic of research in generative linguistics during the last decades. Closer examination of its properties unfolds a rich array of perspectives like the status of barriers for extraction and government, the articulation of the topic focus structure, the fixation of wh-scope, the marking of clausal types, the interaction of syntactic structure with inflectional morphology as well as the determination of sentence mood and illocutionary force to mention just a few. The purpose of this book is to collect different and relevant studies in this field and to give a general overview of the various theoretical approaches concerned with morphological, syntactic and semantic properties together with the diachronic development of the left periphery.
Download or read book From Syntax to Discourse written by C. Hamann and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: claim is that such morphological processes can be learnt without symbolization and innate knowledge. See Rumelhart and McClelland (1986) for the original model of past tense acquisition, Plunkett and Marchman (1993), Nakisa, Plunkett and Hahn (1996) and Elman et al. (1996) for developments and extensions to other morphological processes, and Marcus et al. (1992) and Pinker and Prince (1988) for criticism. One line of investigation supporting the view of language as a genetic endowment is closely linked to traditional research on language acquisition and argues as follows: If language is innate there must be phenomena that should be accessible from birth in one form or the other. Thus it is clear that the language of children, especially young children and preferably babies should be investigated. As babies unfortunately don't talk, the abilities that are available from birth must be established in ways different from the usual linguistic analysis. Psycholinguistic research of the last few years has shown that at the age of 4 and 8 months and even during their first week of life children already have important language skills. From the fourth day, infants distinguish their mother tongue from other languages. From the first months children prefer the sound of speech to 'other noise'. At the age of 4 months, infants prefer pauses at syntactic boundaries to random pauses.