Download or read book The Semantics of Determiners RLE Linguistics B Grammar written by Johan Van Der Auwera and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-21 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of linguistic and philosophical papers dealing with the semantic problems of determiners. The language under investigation is mostly English, although a few papers deal with French and German, and, to a lesser extent, with Dutch, Polish, Russian and Hebrew. The majority of the contributions focus on the semantics of the definite and indefinite articles, leading into discussions of anaphoricness, specificness, opacity and transparency, referentiality and attributiveness and genericness. The relation of the determiners to other parts of grammar, in particular relativisation and predication, is also investigated. Some attention is also given to quantifiers. In the spirit of pluralism, there is no single paradigm unifying all the papers, rather, the volume reflects elements of the Extended Standard Theory, Generative Semantics, Montague Grammar, (Gricean) Pragmatics and Speech Act Theory.
Download or read book The Semantics of Determiners RLE Linguistics B Grammar written by Johan Van Der Auwera and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-21 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of linguistic and philosophical papers dealing with the semantic problems of determiners. The language under investigation is mostly English, although a few papers deal with French and German, and, to a lesser extent, with Dutch, Polish, Russian and Hebrew. The majority of the contributions focus on the semantics of the definite and indefinite articles, leading into discussions of anaphoricness, specificness, opacity and transparency, referentiality and attributiveness and genericness. The relation of the determiners to other parts of grammar, in particular relativisation and predication, is also investigated. Some attention is also given to quantifiers. In the spirit of pluralism, there is no single paradigm unifying all the papers, rather, the volume reflects elements of the Extended Standard Theory, Generative Semantics, Montague Grammar, (Gricean) Pragmatics and Speech Act Theory.
Download or read book Determiners written by Jila Ghomeshi and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together recent work on the formal and interpretational properties of determiners across a variety of typologically and geographically unrelated languages. It seeks to answer the core question of modern linguistic theory: Which properties of languages are universal and which are variable? In recent theorizing, much of language variation is argued to stem from differences in the properties of features associated with functional heads. As such, this volume can be viewed as a case study of one such category: the determiner (D). The contributions all investigate the status of D as a language universal by examining the language-specific syntactic and semantic properties associated with this category. This volume will appeal to researchers and students in syntax and semantics, as well as to those who have more a specific interest in determiners and noun phrases.
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 632 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 Routledge Library Editions Linguistics Mini Set B Grammar written by Routledge and published by . This book was released on 2013-11-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: RLE: Linguistics Mini-set B has brought together a collection of essential Grammar titles, ranging from Basic Word Order to Existential Sentences, from The Pragmatics of Style to The Semantics of Determiners. These books, some long out of print, form a classic collection by some of the world's leading linguists.
Download or read book Grammar Meaning and Pragmatics written by Frank Brisard and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2009-08-11 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ten volumes of Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights focus on the most salient topics in the field of pragmatics, thus dividing its wide interdisciplinary spectrum in a transparent and manageable way. While other volumes select philosophical, cognitive, cultural, social, variational, interactional, or discursive points of view, this fifth volume looks at the field of linguistic pragmatics from a primarily grammatical angle. That is, it asks in which particular sense a variety of older and more recent functional (rather than generative) models of grammar relate to the study of language in use: how this affects their general outlook on language structure, whether issues of language use inform the very makeup of these models or are merely included as possible research themes, and how far the actual integration of pragmatics ultimately goes (is it a module/layer or is the model truly “usage-based”?). Each of the authors presenting these models has taken systematic care to highlight the relevant problems and focus on the implications of considering pragmatic phenomena from the point of view of grammar. Furthermore, a limited number of chapters deal with traditional topics in the grammatical literature, and specifically those which are called pragmatic because they either are not strictly concerned with truth (semantics), or receive their (truth) value only from an interaction with context. In the introduction, these theories and topics are set up against the historical background of a gradually changing attitude, on the part of grammarians, towards questions of linguistic knowledge and behavior, and the role of learning in their relationship.
Download or read book The Role of Alternatives in Language written by Sophie Repp and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2021-06-21 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Formal Semantics written by Paul H. Portner and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings is a collection of seminal papers that have shaped the field of formal semantics in linguistics.
Download or read book Determiners and Quantifiers written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the interface between morphosyntax and semantics-pragmatics in the domain of referential and quantificational nominal expressions, by means of synchronic and diachronic case studies from Romance and Germanic languages.
Download or read book Semantics and Morphosyntactic Variation written by Itamar Francez and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book explores a key issue in linguistic theory, the systematic variation in form between semantic equivalents across languages. Two contrasting views of the role of lexical meaning in the analysis of such variation can be found in the literature: (i) uniformity, whereby lexical meaning is universal, and variation arises from idiosyncratic differences in the inventory and phonological shape of language-particular functional material, and (ii) transparency, whereby systematic variation in form arises from systematic variation in the meaning of basic lexical items. In this volume, Itamar Francez and Andrew Koontz-Garboden contrast these views as applied to the empirical domain of property concept sentences - sentences expressing adjectival predication and their translational equivalents across languages. They demonstrate that property concept sentences vary systematically between possessive and predicative form, and propose a transparentist analysis of this variation that links it to the lexical denotations of basic property concept lexemes. At the heart of the analysis are qualities: mass-like model theoretic objects that closely resemble scales. The authors contrast their transparentist analysis with uniformitarian alternatives, demonstrating its theoretical and empirical advantages. They then show that the proposed theory of qualities can account for interesting and novel observations in two central domains of grammatical theory: the theory of syntactic categories, and the theory of mass nouns. The overall results highlight the importance of the lexicon as a locus of generalizations about the limits of crosslinguistic variation. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.
Download or read book The Role of Formal Features in Second Language Acquisition written by Juana Liceras and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 557 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using Chomsky's minimalist program as a framework, this volume explores the role of formal (or functional) features in current descriptions and accounts of language acquistion. In engaging, up-to-date articles, distinguished experts examine the role of features in current versions of generative grammar and in learnibility theory as it relates to native, non-native, and impaired acquisition.
Download or read book On the Semantics of Syntax written by Eirian C. Davies and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-03 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1979, this book develops a grammatically orientated semantics (as opposed to a semantically orientated grammar) of mood and condition in English. It seeks to establish correspondences between areas of semantic organisation (‘planes’) and surface grammar, without reverting to an intermediate notion of deep grammar. The chapters explore topics including the differences between ‘literal meaning’ and ‘significance’, speech roles, and constructions of condition and reason in terms of the four panes discussed earlier in the volume.
Download or read book Challenges at the Syntax Semantics Pragmatics Interface written by Robert D. Van Valin Jr. and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together recent scholarship addressing a number of significant issues in linguistic theory and description, including verb classification, case marking, comparative constructions, noun phrase structure, clause linkage and reference-tracking in discourse. These topics are discussed with respect to a wide range of languages, including Bamunka (Bantu), Biblical Hebrew, Japanese, Persian, Pitjantjatjara (Australia), Russian and Taiwan Sign Language. The theoretical perspective employed in these analyses is that of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG), a theory which strives to describe language structure and grammatical phenomena in terms of the interaction of syntax, semantics and discourse-pragmatics. RRG differs from other parallel-architecture, constructionally-oriented theories in important ways, particularly with respect to the ability to formulate cross-linguistic generalizations. The ability of RRG to facilitate the formulation of cross-linguistic generalizations is exemplified well in the contributions to this volume. As such, this text makes important theoretical and descriptive contributions to contemporary linguistic discussions.
Download or read book Definiteness and Indefiniteness written by John Hawkins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-03 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1988, this book is concerned with the definite and indefinite articles in English. It provides an integrated pragmatic-semantic theory of definite and indefinite reference, on the basis of which, many co-occurance restrictions between articles and non-modifiers are explained. At the general theoretical level, this book looks at the role of semantics in the prediction of all and only the grammatical sentences of a language. A generalisation is proposed uniting semantic oppositions underlying ungrammaticality with syntactic oppositions between conditions of application on transformational generative rules. A procedure is suggested for distinguishing semantic from syntactic causes of ungrammaticality. At a more particular level, the book explores the nature of reference. It examines an important selection of subjects such as the contrast between definiteness and indefiniteness, the relationship between definite and demonstrative reference, and the relationship between pragmatic and logical aspects of determining meaning.
Download or read book Semantics in Generative Grammar written by Irene Heim and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 1998-01-02 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by two of the leading figures in the field, this is a lucid and systematic introduction to formal semantics.
Download or read book Understanding Semantics written by Sebastian Loebner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-23 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This series provides approachable, yet authoritative, introductions to all the major topics in linguistics. Ideal for students with little or no prior knowledge of linguistics, each book carefully explains the basics, emphasising understanding of the essential notions rather than arguing for a particular theoretical position. Understanding Semantics offers a complete introduction to linguistic semantics. The book takes a step-by-step approach, starting with the basic concepts and moving through the central questions to examine the methods and results of the science of linguistic meaning. Understanding Semantics unites the treatment of a broad scale of phenomena using data from different languages with a thorough investigation of major theoretical perspectives. It leads the reader from their intuitive knowledge of meaning to a deeper understanding of the use of scientific reasoning in the study of language as a communicative tool, of the nature of linguistic meaning, and of the scope and limitations of linguistic semantics. Ideal as a first textbook in semantics for undergraduate students of linguistics, this book is also recommended for students of literature, philosophy, psychology and cognitive science.
Download or read book Logical Form and Language written by Gerhard Preyer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the central issues of analytic philosophy and especially the theory of language is the concept of logical form. As typically understood this concept covers investigations into universal logical features underlying languages. However, from Frege and Russell onwards logical form analysts were no longer confined to such narrow linguistic perspectives. For them, investigating the logical form of language took the wider philosophical perspective of trying to understand language as our principal means for representing the world. From Russell's theory of definite descriptions to Davidson's truth-theoretical analyses of adverbial modification, citation, and reported speech, to lay open the logical structures underlying language is seen as a way of revealing the structure and features of the thereby represented world. Seventeen specially written essays by eminent philosophers and linguists appear for the first time in this anthology. Logical Form and Language brings together exciting new contributions from diverse points of view, which illuminate the lively current debate about this topic.
