Download or read book Wh In Situ Licensing in Questions and Sluicing written by Jun Abe and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2022-07-15 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the question of how in-situ wh-phrases are licensed from a minimalist perspective in which the basic assumptions about narrow syntax need to be reduced to the bare minimum. I propose that in-situ wh-phrases are licensed by way of either minimal Search or covert internal Merge: while in-situ wh-adjuncts are uniformly licensed by covert internal Merge, in-situ wh-arguments have a choice between the two options, depending on whether the licensing C head is overtly manifested. I also discuss sluicing, an ellipsis construction with a remnant wh-phrase, and address the question of how the remnant wh-phrase is licensed. I support the in-situ approach to sluicing, advocated in my previous book The In-Situ Approach to Sluicing (John Benjamins), according to which the remnant wh-phrase stays in situ. I argue against the more standard analysis, endorsing the main claim of this previous book that island repair by ellipsis is a myth.

Download or read book The In Situ Approach to Sluicing written by Jun Abe and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2015-04-15 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has been standardly claimed since Merchant (2001) that island violations can be repaired by simply deleting the categories that induce such violations, as witnessed by sluicing, an ellipsis construction that deletes TP with a remnant wh-phrase. This book aims to argue that such “repair by ellipsis” is simply a myth. Alternatively, the author argues for what is called the in-situ approach to sluicing, originally proposed by Kimura (2007, 2010), according to which the remnant wh-phrase in sluicing stays in situ. This approach immediately explains the island-insensitivity of sluicing, since no overt wh-movement is involved in the derivation of this construction. Hence, it challenges the approach in terms of island repair by ellipsis in that it nullifies the necessity of a repair mechanism. This book makes an important contribution to the field in providing an alternative way of approaching ellipsis phenomena that are claimed to induce “island repair.”

Download or read book Copular Clauses written by Line Mikkelsen and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2005-10-13 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is concerned with a class of copular clauses known as specificational clauses, and its relation to other kinds of copular structures, predicational and equative clauses in particular. Based on evidence from Danish and English, I argue that specificational clauses involve the same core predication structure as predicational clauses — one which combines a referential and a predicative expression to form a minimal predicational unit — but differ in how the predicational core is realized syntactically. Predicational copular clauses represent the canonical realization, where the referential expression is aligned with the most prominent syntactic position, the subject position. Specificational clauses involve an unusual alignment of the predicative expression with subject position. I suggest that this unusual alignment is grounded in information structure: the alignment of the less referential DP with the subject position serves a discourse connective function by letting material that is relatively familiar in the discourse appear before material that is relatively unfamiliar in the discourse. Equative clauses are argued to be fundamentally different.

Download or read book Diagnosing Syntax written by Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-07-25 with total page 617 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Diagnosis is an essential part of scientific research. It refers to the process of identifying a phenomenon, property, or condition on the basis of certain signs and by the use of various diagnostic procedures. This book is the first ever to consider the use of diagnostics in syntactic research and focuses on the five core domains of natural language syntax - ellipsis, agreement, anaphora, phrasal movement, and head movement. Each empirical domain is considered in turn from the perspectives of syntax, syntax at the interfaces, neuropsycholinguistics, and language diversity. Drawing on the expertise of 20 leading scholars and their empirically rich data, the book presents current thoughts on, and practical answers to, the question: What are the diagnostic signs, techniques and procedures that can be used to analyse natural language syntax? It will interest linguists, including formalists, typologists, psycholinguists and neurolinguists.

Download or read book Sluicing Cross Linguistic Perspectives written by Jason Merchant and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-03 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book of new research by leading experts expands our current understanding of the ways in which languages allow for ellipsis of the sluicing type to occur, and shows how sluicing constructions reveal important information about the general architecture of grammar.

Download or read book The Syntax of Silence written by Jason Merchant and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A primary goal of contemporary theoretical linguistics is to develop a theory of the correspondence between sound (or gesture) and meaning. This sound-meaning correspondence breaks down completely in the case of ellipsis, and yet various forms of ellipsis are pervasive in natural language:words and phrases which should be in the linguistic signal go missing. How this should be possible is the focus of Jason Merchant's investigation. He focuses on the form of ellipsis known as sluicing, a common feature of interrogative clauses, such as in 'Sally's out hunting - guess what!'; and'Someone called, but I can't tell you who'. It is the most frequently found cross-linguistic form of ellipsis. Dr Merchant studies the phenomenon across twenty-four languages, and attempts to explain it in linguistic and behavioural terms.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Ellipsis written by Jeroen van Craenenbroeck and published by Oxford Handbooks. This book was released on 2019 with total page 1147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook is the first volume to provide a comprehensive, in-depth, and balanced discussion of ellipsis, a phenomena whereby expressions in natural language appear to be incomplete but are still understood. It explores fundamental questions about the workings of grammar and provides detailed case studies of inter- and intralinguistic variation.

Download or read book Multiple Wh fronting written by Cedric Boeckx and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Typological differences in the formation of multiple "Wh"-questions are well-known. One option is fronting all "Wh"-phrases to the sentence periphery. The contributions to this volume all explore this option from a number of perspectives. Topics covered include finer investigations of the classic multiple "Wh"-fronting languages (such as the South Slavic languages Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian), extensions to less well studied languages (Basque, Malagasy, Persian, Yiddish), explorations for languages that don t obviously fall into this category (German, Hungarian), peripheral effects (optionality of fronting, Superiority vs. Anti-Superiority etc.), interface issues (with semantics, pragmatics, and phonology), and simply theoretical approaches aiming to capture the mechanisms involved in multiple "Wh"-fronting strategies. The theoretical framework adopted throughout is the Minimalist Program, viewed from different angles. This volume brings together some of the leading experts on the syntax of "Wh"-questions and offers up-to-date analyses of the topic. It will be indispensable for scholars investigating multiple "Wh"-questions, and will find an appropriate audience in advanced students and faculty alike.

Download or read book Phrasal Movement and Its Kin written by David Pesetsky and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2000-10-10 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study investigates the types of movement and movement-like relations that link positions in syntactic structure. David Pesetsky argues that there are three such relations. Besides overt phasal movement, there are two distinct types of movement without phonological effect: covert phrasal movement and feature movement. Focusing on wh-questions, he shows how his classification of movement-like relations allows us to understand the story behind wh-questions in which an otherwise inviolable property of movement—"Attract Closest"—appears to be violated. By demonstrating that more movement takes place in such configurations than previously suspected, he shows that Attract Closest is actually not violated at all in these cases. This conclusion draws on recent research in both syntax and semantics, and depends crucially on Pesetsky's expanded repertoire of movement-like relations. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph No. 37

Download or read book Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 13 written by Janine Berns and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2018-07-15 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the three decades of its existence, the annual Going Romance conference has turned out to be the major European discussion forum for theoretically relevant research on Romance languages where current theoretical ideas about language in general and about Romance languages in particular are exchanged. The twenty-ninth Going Romance conference was organized by the Radboud University and took place in December 2015 in Nijmegen. The present volume contains a selection of 18 peer-reviewed articles dealing with syntax, phonology, morphology, semantics and acquisition of the Romance languages. They represent the wide range of topics at the conference and the variety of research carried out on Romance languages within theoretical linguistics and will be of interest to scholars in Romance and in general linguistics.

Download or read book The Copy Theory of Movement written by Norbert Corver and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-06-27 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together papers which address issues regarding the copy theory of movement. According to this theory, a trace is a copy of the moved element that is deleted in the phonological component but is available for interpretation at L(ogical) F(orm). Thus far, the bulk of the research on the copy theory has mainly focused on interpretation issues at LF. The consequences of the copy theory for syntactic computation per se and for the syntax–phonology mapping, in particular, have received much less attention in the literature, despite its crucial relevance for the whole architecture of the model. As a contribution to fill this gap, this volume congregates recent work that deals with empirical and conceptual consequences of the copy theory of movement for the inner working of syntactic computations within the Minimalist Program, with special emphasis on the syntax–phonology mapping.

Download or read book Cleft Constructions in Japanese Syntax written by M. Kizu and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-01-07 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cleft constructions occur across languages and are much analyzed in relation to syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Mika Kizu, working in a Principles and Parameters framework, with some consideration of the Minimalist Program, provides the first coherent account of cleft constructions in Japanese. She claims that the construction is analyzed on a par with topic constructions and some types of relative clause. One of the most interesting properties, the syntactic phenomenon of 'connectivity' is closely examined.

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 Sluicing Cross Linguistic Perspectives written by Jason Merchant and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-03 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers the phenomenon of sluicing. Sluicing is the term applied to sentences in which the ellipsis of a sequence of words following an embedded wh question word appears to occur, and hearers must somehow recover the content of missing material (as in Someone saw her, but I don't know who _.). Elliptical constructions of this type are now known to occur widely in the world's languages in some form or another, and create interesting problems for linguistic analysis, involving complex interactions between syntax, semantics and morphology, as well as prosody. The present volume brings together new research by leading experts who analyse sluicing constructions in English, Dutch, Frisian, Serbo-Croatian, Romanian, Turkish, Malagasy, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi and Bengali. The book expands our current understanding of the ways in which languages allow for ellipsis of the sluicing type to occur, and shows how sluicing constructions reveal important information about the general architecture of grammar. In addition to the nine chapters dedicated to specific languages, the volume features an introductory chapter and Haj Ross's original (1969) landmark paper on sluicing.

Download or read book Simpler Syntax written by Peter W. Culicover and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2005-07-01 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking book offers a new and compelling perspective on the structure of human language. The fundamental issue it addresses is the proper balance between syntax and semantics, between structure and derivation, and between rule systems and lexicon. It argues that the balance struck by mainstream generative grammar is wrong. It puts forward a new basis for syntactic theory, drawing on a wide range of frameworks, and charts new directions for research. In the past four decades, theories of syntactic structure have become more abstract, and syntactic derivations have become ever more complex. Peter Culicover and Ray Jackendoff trace this development through the history of contemporary syntactic theory, showing how much it has been driven by theory-internal rather than empirical considerations. They develop an alternative that is responsive to linguistic, cognitive, computational, and biological concerns. At the core of this alternative is the Simpler Syntax Hypothesis: the most explanatory syntactic theory is one that imputes the minimum structure necessary to mediate between phonology and meaning. A consequence of this hypothesis is a far richer mapping between syntax and semantics than is generally assumed. Through concrete analyses of numerous grammatical phenomena, some well studied and some new, the authors demonstrate the empirical and conceptual superiority of the Simpler Syntax approach. Simpler Syntax is addressed to linguists of all persuasions. It will also be of central interest to those concerned with language in psychology, human biology, evolution, computational science, and artificial intellige

Download or read book Silently Structured Silent Argument written by Yuta Sakamoto and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2020-05-08 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theoretical linguistics in the generative tradition has payed much attention to issues related to silence ? children know the syntax of silence despite the fact that they do not have direct access to it throughout their language acquisition process. One of the issues that have been hotly discussed regarding silence in natural languages is whether it involves syntactic structure or not. This book is concerned with a particular instance of silence in natural languages, what is called radical pro-drop, showing that it is silently structured on the basis of novel data from Japanese as well as Chinese, Korean, Mongolian, and Turkish. The discussion in this book also has consequences for the dichotomy between PF-deletion vs. LF-copying, shedding a new light on the proper analysis of several syntactic phenomena in Japanese, including wh-in-situ and control.

Download or read book Advances in formal Slavic linguistics 2016 written by Denisa Lenertová and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advances in Formal Slavic Linguistics 2016 initiates a new series of collective volumes on formal Slavic linguistics. It presents a selection of high quality papers authored by young and senior linguists from around the world and contains both empirically oriented work, underpinned by up-to-date experimental methods, as well as more theoretically grounded contributions. The volume covers all major linguistic areas, including morphosyntax, semantics, pragmatics, phonology, and their mutual interfaces. The particular topics discussed include argument structure, word order, case, agreement, tense, aspect, clausal left periphery, or segmental phonology. The topical breadth and analytical depth of the contributions reflect the vitality of the field of formal Slavic linguistics and prove its relevance to the global linguistic endeavour. Early versions of the papers included in this volume were presented at the conference on Formal Description of Slavic Languages 12 or at the satellite Workshop on Formal and Experimental Semantics and Pragmatics, which were held on December 7-10, 2016 in Berlin.