Download or read book The Semantic Variability of Absolute Constructions written by G.T. Stump and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The goal of this book is to investigate the semantics of absolute constructions in English; specifically, my object is to provide an explanation for the semantic variability of such constructions. As has been widely noted in traditional grammatical studies of English, free adjuncts and absolute phrases have the ability to playa number of specific logical roles in the sentences in which they appear; yet, paradoxically, they lack any overt indication of their logical connection to the clause which they modify. How, then, is the logical function of an absolute construction determined? In attempting to answer this question, one must inevitably address a number of more general issues: Is the meaning assigned to a linguistic expression necessarily determined by linguistic rules, or can the grammar of a language in some cases simply underdetermine the interpretation of expressions? Are the truthconditions of a sentence ever sensitive to the inferences of language users? If so, then is it possible to maintain the validity of any really substantive version of the Compositionality Principle? These are, of course, issues of great inherent interest to anyone concerned with the formal syntax and semantics of natural language, with the philosophy of language, or with language processing. The descriptive framework assumed throughout is the semantic theory developed by Richard Montague (1970a, 1970b, 1973) and his followers. (For a very thorough introduction to Montague semantics, the reader may refer to Dowty, Wall and Peters (1981 ).
Download or read book Semantic Structure in English written by Jim Feist and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2016-09-07 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Syntax puts our meaning (“semantics”) into sentences, and phonology puts the sentences into the sounds that we hear and there must, surely, be a structure in the meaning that is expressed in the syntax and phonology. Some writers use the phrase “semantic structure”, but are referring to conceptual structure; since we can express our conceptual thought in many different linguistic ways, we cannot equate conceptual and semantic structures. The research reported in this book shows semantic structure to be in part hierarchic, fitting the syntax in which it is expressed, and partly a network, fitting the nature of the mind, from which it springs. It is complex enough to provide for the emotive and imaginative dimensions of language, and for shifts of standard meanings in context, and the “rules” that control them. Showing the full structure of English semantics requires attention to many currently topical issues, and since the underlying theory is fresh, there are fresh implications for them. The most important of those issues is information structure, which is given full treatment, showing its overall structure, and its relation to semantics and the whole grammar of English. As of October 2024, this e-book is Open Access under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
Download or read book Buildings and Semantics written by Pieter Pauwels and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2022-07-25 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The built environment has been digitizing rapidly and is now transforming into a physical world that is at all times supplemented by a fully web-supported and interconnected digital version, often referred to as Digital Twin. This book shows how diverse data models and web technologies can be created and used for the built environment. Key features of this book are its technical nature and technical detail. The first part of the book highlights a large diversity of IT techniques and their use in the AEC domain, from JSON to XML to EXPRESS to RDF/OWL, for modelling geometry, products, properties, sensor and energy data. The second part of the book focuses on diverse software solutions and approaches, including digital twins, federated data storage on the web, IoT, cloud computing, and smart cities. Key research and strategic development opportunities are comprehensively discussed for distributed web-based building data management, IoT integration and cloud computing. This book aims to serve as a guide and reference for experts and professionals in AEC computing and digital construction including Master's students, PhD researchers, and junior to senior IT-oriented AEC professionals.
Download or read book The Syntax and Semantics of Wh Constructions written by Paul Hirschbuhler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-11-10 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title, first published in 1985, provides a detailed analysis of aspects of the semantics and the syntax of some wh-constructions. The first part of the book deals with the semantics of questions, whilst the other part discusses the syntax of que and quoi (what) in questions in French and the syntax of free relatives in French and other languages. This title will be of interest to students of language and linguistics.
Download or read book Ten Lectures on Construction Grammar and Typology written by William Croft and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-09-25 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Ten Lectures on Construction Grammar and Typology, William Croft presents a unified theory of linguistic form and meaning that encompasses crosslinguistic diversity, verbalization and language change. Croft begins from construction grammar, a theory of syntax in which all syntactic structures are a pairing of form and meaning. Constructions are posited as basic; syntactic categories are defined by constructions. The internal structure of constructions directly link elements of constructions to the meanings they express, Constructions across languages can be situated in a space of syntactic variation. Grammar emerges from the verbalization of experience. Constructions occur in a probability distribution across the conceptual space of meanings. These probability distributions evolve, leading to grammatical change in language, modeled in an evolutionary framework.
Download or read book The Semantics of Grammar written by Anna Wierzbicka and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1988-01-01 with total page 629 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The semantics of grammar” presents a radically semantic approach to syntax and morphology. It offers a methodology which makes it possible to demonstrate, on an empirical basis, that syntax is neither “autonomous” nor “arbitrary”, but that it follows from “semantics”. It is shown that every grammatical construction encodes a certain semantic structure, which can be revealed and rigorously stated, so that the meanings encoded in grammar can be compared in a precise and illuminating way, within one language and across language boundaries. The author develops a semantic metalanguage based on lexical universals or near-universals (and, ultimately, on a system of universal semantic primitives), and shows that the same semantic metalanguage can be used for explicating lexical, grammatical and pragmatic aspects of language and thus offers a method for an integrated linguistic description based on semantic foundations. Analyzing data from a number of different languages (including English, Russian and Japanese) the author explores the notion of ethnosyntax and, via semantics, links syntax and morphology with culture. She attemps to demonstrate that the use of a semantic metalanguage based on lexical universals makes it possible to rephrase the Humboldt-Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in such a way that it can be tested and treated as a program for empirical research.
Download or read book Aspects of Meaning Construction written by Günter Radden and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-04-11 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meaning does not reside in linguistic units but is constructed in the minds of the language users. Meaning construction is an on-line mental activity whereby speech participants create meanings on the basis of underspecified linguistic units. The construction of meaning is guided by cognitive principles. The contributions collected in the volume focus on two types of cognitive principles guiding meaning construction: meaning construction by means of metonymy and metaphor, and meaning construction by means of mental spaces and conceptual blending. The papers in the former group survey experiential evidence of figurative meaning construction and discuss high-level metaphor and metonymy, the role of metonymy in discourse, the chaining of metonymies, metonymy as an alternative to coercion, and metaphtonymic meanings of proper names. The papers in the latter group address the issues of meaning construction prompted by personal pronouns, relative clauses, inferential constructions, “sort-of” expressions, questions, and the into-causative construction.
Download or read book Radical Construction Grammar written by William Croft and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2001 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is based on the results of research in language typology, and motivated by the need for a theory to explain them. Croft proposes intimate links between syntactic and semantic structures, and argues that the basic elements of any language are not syntactic but rather syntactic-semantic "Gestalts." He puts forward a new approach to syntactic representation and a new model of how language and languages work.
Download or read book The Syntax and Semantics of Split Constructions written by A. Butler and published by Springer. This book was released on 2004-04-07 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Split constructions are very widespread in natural languages. The separation of the semantic restriction of a quantifier from that quantifier is a typical example of such a construction. This study addresses the problem that such discontinuous strings exhibit a number of locality constraints, including intervention effects. These are shown to follow from the interaction of a minimalist syntax with a semantics that directly assigns a model-theoretic interpretation to syntactic logical forms. The approach is shown to have wide empirical coverage and a conceptual simplicity. The book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of syntax and semantics.
Download or read book Constructions written by Adele E. Goldberg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1995-03-15 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on work in linguistics, language acquisition, and computer science, Adele E. Goldberg proposes that grammatical constructions play a central role in the relation between the form and meaning of simple sentences. She demonstrates that the syntactic patterns associated with simple sentences are imbued with meaning—that the constructions themselves carry meaning independently of the words in a sentence. Goldberg provides a comprehensive account of the relation between verbs and constructions, offering ways to relate verb and constructional meaning, and to capture relations among constructions and generalizations over constructions. Prototypes, frame semantics, and metaphor are shown to play crucial roles. In addition, Goldberg presents specific analyses of several constructions, including the ditransitive and the resultative constructions, revealing systematic semantic generalizations. Through a comparison with other current approaches to argument structure phenomena, this book narrows the gap between generative and cognitive theories of language.
Download or read book Construction Grammar and its Application to English written by Martin Hilpert and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-17 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Construction Grammar explains how knowledge of language is organized in speakers' minds. The central and radical claim of Construction Grammar is that linguistic knowledge can be fully described as knowledge of constructions, which are defined as symbolic units that connect a linguistic form with meaning.
Download or read book On Information Structure Meaning and Form written by Kerstin Schwabe and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of articles offers a new and compelling perspective on the interface connecting syntax, phonology, semantics and pragmatics. At the core of this volume is the hypothesis that information structure represents the common interface of these grammatical components. Information structure is investigated here from different theoretical viewpoints yielding typologically relevant information and structural generalizations. In the volume's introductory chapter, the editors identify two central approaches to information structure: the formal and the interpretive view. The remainder of the book is organized accordingly. The first part examines information structure and grammar, concentrating on generalizations across languages. The second part investigates information structure and pragmatics, concentrating on clause structure and context. Through concrete analyses of topic, focus, and related phenomena across different languages, the contributors add new and convincing evidence to the research on information structure.
Download or read book Ants ancestors and medicine a semantic and pragmatic account of classifier constructions in Arrente Central Australia written by and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Introducing Semantics written by Nick Riemer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-25 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to the study of meaning in language for undergraduate students.
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 Exploring the Syntax Semantics Interface written by Robert D. van Valin, Jr. and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-07-07 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language is a system of communication in which grammatical structures function to express meaning in context. While all languages can achieve the same basic communicative ends, they each use different means to achieve them, particularly in the divergent ways that syntax, semantics and pragmatics interact across languages. This book looks in detail at how structure, meaning, and communicative function interact in human languages. Working within the framework of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG), Van Valin proposes a set of rules, called the 'linking algorithm', which relates syntactic and semantic representations to each other, with discourse-pragmatics playing a role in the linking. Using this model, he discusses the full range of grammatical phenomena, including the structures of simple and complex sentences, verb and argument structure, voice, reflexivization and extraction restrictions. Clearly written and comprehensive, this book will be welcomed by all those working on the interface between syntax, semantics and pragmatics.
Download or read book Deconstructing Language Structure and Meaning written by Mihaela Tănase-Dogaru and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2021-07-01 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together a number of researchers working on generative syntax and semantics, language acquisition and phonology to explore various theoretical frameworks, ranging from generative grammar and formal semantics to more descriptive approaches. The contributions gathered here investigate various aspects in the syntax, semantics, phonology and acquisition of Romanian in comparison with other (mainly Romance) languages. The book will be of interest to linguists who are keen on keeping up with the latest advances in the field of Romance studies, as well as those whose research bears on languages such as Hungarian, German, and Maltese, among others.
