Download or read book Gradience in Grammar written by Gisbert Fanselow and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book represents the state of the art in the study of gradience in grammar - the degree to which utterances are acceptable or grammatical, and the relationship between acceptability and grammaticality. Gradience is at the centre of controversial issues in the theory of grammar and the understanding of language. The acceptability of words and sentences may be linked to the frequency of their use and measured on a scale. Among the questions considered in the book are: whether such measures are beyond the scope of a generative grammar or, in other words, whether the factors influencing acceptability are internal or external to grammar; whether observed gradience is a property of the mentally represented grammar or a reflection of variation among speakers; and what gradient phenomena reveal about the relationship between acceptability and grammaticality, and between competence and performance. The book is divided into four parts. Part I seeks to clarify the nature of gradience from the perspectives of phonology, generative syntax, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics. Parts II and III examine issues in phonology and syntax. Part IV considers long wh-movement from different methodological perspectives. The data discussed comes from a wide range of languages and dialects, and includes tone and stress patterns, word order variation, and question formation. Gradience in Grammar will interest linguists concerned with the understanding of syntax, phonology, language acquisition and variation, discourse, and the operations of language within the mind.
Download or read book Syntactic Gradience written by Bas Aarts and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2007-06-21 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first exhaustive investigation of gradience in syntax, conceived of as grammatical indeterminacy. It looks at gradience in English word classes, phrases, clauses and constructions, and examines how it may be defined and differentiated. Professor Aarts addresses the tension between linguistic concepts and the continuous phenomena they describe by testing and categorizing grammatical vagueness and indeterminacy. He considers to what extent gradience is a grammatical phenomenon or a by-product of imperfect linguistic description, and makes a series of linked proposals for its theoretical formalization. Bas Aarts draws on, and reviews, work in psychology, philosophy and language from Aristotle to Chomsky., and writes clearly on a fascinating and important aspect of language and cognition. His book will appeal to scholars and graduate students of language and syntactic theory in departments of (English) linguistics, philosophy and cognitive science.
Download or read book Variation and Gradience in Phonetics and Phonology written by Frank Kügler and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2009-08-17 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an overview of current issues in variation and gradience in phonetics, phonology and sociolinguistics. It contributes to the growing interest in gradience and variation in theoretical phonology by combing research on the factors underlying variability and systematic quantitative results with theoretical phonological considerations. Variation is inherent to language, and one of the aims of phonological theory is to describe and explain the mechanisms underlying variation at every level of phonological representation. Variation below the segment concerns articulatory, acoustic and perceptual cues that contribute to the formation of natural classes of sounds. At the segmental level there are grammatical differences in the production and perception of contextual variation of segments and in the syntagmatic constraints on the combination of segments. At the suprasegmental level the mapping of tones to grammatical functions and vice versa is discussed. Further aspects addressed in this book are factors outside of language: Variation that arises as a result of a particular dialect or of belonging to a certain age group, or variation that is the consequence of language change. Gradience and variation have always been a central issue in phonetic and sociolinguistic research. Gradience introduces variation in phonology as well. If a phonetic entity can be pronounced in different ways, depending on the environment, prosodic factors or dialectal influences, this ‘gradience’ may introduce ‘variation’, which we understand as a stable state of grammar.
Download or read book Gradience Gradualness and Grammaticalization written by Elizabeth Closs Traugott and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume, which emerged from a workshop at the "New Reflections on Grammaticalization 4" conference held at KU Leuven in July 2008, contains a collection of papers which investigate the relationship between synchronic gradience and the apparent gradualness of linguistic change, largely from the perspective of grammaticalization. In addition to versions of the papers presented at the workshop, the volume contains specially commissioned contributions, some of which offer commentaries on a subset of the other articles. The articles address a number of themes central to grammaticalization studies, such as the role of reanalysis and analogy in grammaticalization, the formal modelling of grammaticalization, and the relationship between formal and functional change, using data from a range of languages, and (in some cases) from particular electronic corpora. The volume will be of specific interest to historical linguists working on grammaticalization, and general linguists working on the interface between synchrony and diachrony.
Download or read book Gradience in Grammar written by Gisbert Fanselow and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2006-10-19 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book represents the state of the art in the study of gradience in grammar - the degree to which utterances are acceptable or grammatical, and the relationship between acceptability and grammaticality. Gradience is at the centre of controversial issues in the theory of grammar and the understanding of language. The acceptability of words and sentences may be linked to the frequency of their use and measured on a scale. Among the questions considered in the book are: whether such measures are beyond the scope of a generative grammar or, in other words, whether the factors influencing acceptability are internal or external to grammar; whether observed gradience is a property of the mentally represented grammar or a reflection of variation among speakers; and what gradient phenomena reveal about the relationship between acceptability and grammaticality, and between competence and performance. The book is divided into four parts. Part I seeks to clarify the nature of gradience from the perspectives of phonology, generative syntax, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics. Parts II and III examine issues in phonology and syntax. Part IV considers long wh-movement from different methodological perspectives. The data discussed comes from a wide range of languages and dialects, and includes tone and stress patterns, word order variation, and question formation. Gradience in Grammar will interest linguists concerned with the understanding of syntax, phonology, language acquisition and variation, discourse, and the operations of language within the mind.
Download or read book The Grammar Network written by Holger Diessel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-15 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a dynamic network model of grammar that explains how linguistic structure is shaped by language use.
Download or read book The Joy of Grammar written by James D. McCawley and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two threads run through this collection of 22 papers by students and colleagues of James D. McCawley. The first is a commitment to deep reflection on the direction of linguistic study, sometimes resulting in challenges to the writings of major figures or new appreciations, sometimes questioning our assumptions about the organization of linguistic information in the mind. The second thread is a shared sense of the requirements for the rigor of a good linguistic argument, that its presentation be thoroughgoing, straightforward and clearly made. There is a strong emphasis on testing the party line with the widest possible range of languages and the strongest possible set of linguistic tests. Demonstrating bugs and strategizing over the choice between competing analyses is not enough. The completion of an argument lies in constructing a better alternative.
Download or read book English Grammar written by Talmy Givón and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1993 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The approach to language and grammar that motivates this book is unabashedly functional; grammar is not just a system of empty rules, it is a means to an end, an instrument for constructing concise coherent communication. In grammar as in music, good expression rides on good form. Figuratively and literally, grammar like musical form must make sense. But for the instrument to serve its purpose, it must first exist; the rules must be real, they can be explicitly described and taught. This book is intended for both students and teachers, at college level, for both native and nonnative speakers. With the guidance of a teacher this book will serve as a thorough introduction to the grammar of English. Volume II continues with syntactic and communicative complexity: embedded clauses verb complements, relative clauses; detransitive voice passive, anti-passive, impersonal and middle voice, reflexive and reciprocal constructions; focus and topic constructions; nondeclarative speech acts. It closes with interclausal connectivity: conjoined and subordinate clauses, the grammar of discourse coherence, clause chains and thematic paragraphs.
Download or read book Interfaces in Functional Discourse Grammar written by Lucia Contreras-García and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-08-23 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In grammar design, a basic distinction is made between derivational and modular architectures. This raises the question of which organization of grammar can deal with linguistic phenomena more appropriately. The studies contained in the present volume explore the interface relations between different levels of linguistic representation in Functional Discourse Grammar as presented in Hengeveld and Mackenzie (2008) and Keizer (2015). This theory analyses linguistic expressions at four linguistic levels: interpersonal, representational, morphosyntactic and phonological. The articles address issues such as the possible correspondences and mismatches between those levels as well as the conditions which constrain the combinations of levels in well-formed expressions. Additionally, the theory is tested by examining various grammatical phenomena with a focus both on the English language and on typological adequacy: anaphora, raising, phonological reduction, noun incorporation, reflexives and reciprocals, serial verbs, the passive voice, time measurement constructions, coordination, nominal modification, and connectives. Overall, the volume provides both theoretical and descriptive insights which are of relevance to linguistics in general.
Download or read book Measurements of Grammaticalization written by David Correia Saavedra and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-10-25 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grammaticalization has often been described as a gradual phenomenon. While many studies have discussed the quantitative aspects of grammaticalization, there has been little to no work that has tried to propose a way of measuring degrees of grammaticalization. This book addresses this gap by proposing a corpus-based approach to the measurement of grammaticalization, using binary logistic regression modelling. Such an approach has theoretical benefits as it can provide empirical evidence for the gradience and gradualness of grammaticalization. It can help substantiate observations that have been done on the basis of case studies so far, such as the hypothesized unidirectionality of grammaticalization. In addition, as the methods proposed in this book rely on corpus-based data only, it offers a way of comparing grammaticalization across multiple languages, which is currently a challenging endeavour. What this book hopes to achieve is to start a discussion on the measurement of grammaticalization. To draw a parallel, the field of morphological productivity has greatly benefited from the discussions (and disputes) regarding how its object of study should be measured, and I believe that so will the field of grammaticalization.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Universal Grammar written by Ian G. Roberts and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook provides a critical guide to the most central proposition in modern linguistics: the notion, generally known as Universal Grammar, that a universal set of structural principles underlies the grammatical diversity of the world's languages. Part I considers the implications of Universal Grammar for philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language, and examines the history of the theory. Part II focuses on linguistic theory, looking at topics such as explanatory adequacy and how phonology and semantics fit into Universal Grammar. Parts III and IV look respectively at the insights derived from UG-inspired research on language acquisition, and at comparative syntax and language typology, while part V considers the evidence for Universal Grammar in phenomena such as creoles, language pathology, and sign language. The book will be a vital reference for linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists.
Download or read book An Introduction to Japanese Syntax Grammar Language written by Michiel Kamermans and published by . This book was released on 2010-03 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starting at the very basics and working its way up to important language constructions, "An introduction to Japanese" offers beginning students, as well as those doing self-study, a comprehensive grammar for the Japanese language. Oriented towards the serious learner, there are no shortcuts in this book: no romanised Japanese for ease of reading beyond the introduction, no pretending that Japanese grammar maps perfectly to English grammar, and no simplified terminology. In return, this book explains Japanese the way one may find it taught at universities, covering everything from basic to intermediary Japanese, and even touching on some of the more advanced constructions.
Download or read book An Introduction to Syntactic Analysis and Theory written by Dominique Sportiche and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-09-30 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Introduction to Syntactic Analysis and Theory offers beginning students a comprehensive overview of and introduction to our current understanding of the rules and principles that govern the syntax of natural languages. Includes numerous pedagogical features such as 'practice' boxes and sidebars, designed to facilitate understanding of both the 'hows' and the 'whys' of sentence structure Guides readers through syntactic and morphological structures in a progressive manner Takes the mystery out of one of the most crucial aspects of the workings of language – the principles and processes behind the structure of sentences Ideal for students with minimal knowledge of current syntactic research, it progresses in theoretical difficulty from basic ideas and theories to more complex and advanced, up to date concepts in syntactic theory
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of English Grammar written by Bas Aarts and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 854 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook provides an authoritative, critical survey of current research and knowledge in the grammar of the English language. The volume's expert contributors explore a range of core topics in English grammar, covering a range of theoretical approaches and including the relationship between 'core' grammar and other areas of language.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar written by Thomas Hoffmann and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-04-18 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook is the first authoritative reference work solely dedicated to the theory, method, and applications of Construction Grammar, and will be a resource that students and scholars alike can turn to for a representative overview of its many sub-theories and applications.
Download or read book Language Usage and Cognition written by Joan Bybee and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language demonstrates structure while also showing considerable variation at all levels: languages differ from one another while still being shaped by the same principles; utterances within a language differ from one another while exhibiting the same structural patterns; languages change over time, but in fairly regular ways. This book focuses on the dynamic processes that create languages and give them their structure and variance. It outlines a theory of language that addresses the nature of grammar, taking into account its variance and gradience, and seeks explanation in terms of the recurrent processes that operate in language use. The evidence is based on the study of large corpora of spoken and written language, what we know about how languages change, as well as the results of experiments with language users. The result is an integrated theory of language use and language change which has implications for cognitive processing and language evolution.
Download or read book Functionalist and Usage based Approaches to the Study of Language written by K. Aaron Smith and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributions to this volume honor Joan Bybee’s 2005 LSA Presidential address “Grammar is Usage and Usage is Grammar,” as a cumulative articulation of Professor Bybee's long and influential career in linguistics. The volume begins with a functional examination of child language acquisition of ergative languages. The next three contributions successively investigate the grammaticalization of Greek postural verbs, Spanish third person pronouns, and American Sign Language topicalization constructions. The two following papers report on usage-based phonological studies of Spanish /s/ and /d/, respectively. The book concludes with four papers that address usage-based effects concerning the grammatical status of ain’t in African American English, Spanish verbs of “becoming”, and English lexis and prefabs. This volume will be of interest to a wide audience of functional and cognitive linguistic researchers.
