Perspectives on Historical Syntax

Perspectives on Historical Syntax
Author: Carlotta Viti
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2015-04-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027268932

This volume discusses topics of historical syntax from different theoretical perspectives, ranging from Indo-European studies to generative grammar, functionalism, and typology. It examines mechanisms of syntactic change such as reanalysis, analogy, grammaticalization, independent drift, and language contact, as well as procedures of syntactic reconstruction. More than one factor is considered to explain a syntactic phenomenon, since it is maintained that an accurate account of multiple causations, of both structural and social nature, is to be preferred to considerations of economy. Special attention is given to the relationship between principles of syntactic theory and a search for data reliability through the methods of corpus linguistics. Data are drawn from a variety of languages, including Hittite, Vedic, Ancient Greek, Latin, Romance, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Austroasiatic, Gulf of Guinea creoles. The book may be therefore of interest for specialists of these languages in addition to scholars and advanced students of syntax and historical linguistics.

Dislocated Elements in Discourse

Dislocated Elements in Discourse
Author: Benjamin Shaer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 542
Release: 2009-01-13
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1134156340

This volume is about 'dislocation' – the removal of phrases from their canonical positions in a sentence to its left or right edge. Dislocation encompasses a wide range of linguistic phenomena, related to nominal and adverbial expressions and to the information structuring notions of topic and focus; and takes intriguingly different forms across languages. This book reveals some of the empirical richness of dislocation and some key puzzles related to its syntactic, semantic, and discourse analysis.

Development of the Syntax-Discourse Interface

Development of the Syntax-Discourse Interface
Author: S. Avrutin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2013-04-17
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9401712395

In this book, I address several issues of child linguistic development from the perspective of the syntax -discourse interface. Traditionally, language acquisition research has focused on the development of one of the linguistic modules, e.g. acquisition of syntax, morphology or phonology. While this approach can be viewed as fruitful in some cases, there is a number of linguistic phenomena whose explanation depends on the interaction of different modules and, therefore, different domains of linguistic knowledge. A typical example is pronominal anaphora: It can be shown that to correctly use pronominal elements, normal adult speakers must possess both syntactic and pragmatic knowledge, and that these kinds of knowledge must interact with each other. With regard to the language acquisition process, such phenomena suggest a somewhat different approach to the language acquisition research. Indeed, if some experimental studies show that children make errors in the construction under investigation, it will be necessary to consider these results from the point of view of the interaction of the different domains of linguistic knowledge involved in their interpretation. In other words, if this particular construction requires the integration of, for example, syntactic and discourse-based knowledge, children's errors may, in principle, be due to their lack of the former, the latter, or both kinds of knowledge, and cannot be taken as direct evidence for the "underdeveloped" status of just one of them.

Discourse-oriented Syntax

Discourse-oriented Syntax
Author: Josef Bayer
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2015-12-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027267723

Until recently, little attention has been paid within syntax to components of discourse meaning that go beyond information structure and fall into the domain of non-at-issue meaning operating at the level of illocutionary force. To approach this domain, many of the contributions of this volume deal with the syntax of discourse particles. However, the issue of how to account for discourse particles within a more explicit map of the illocutionary domain is a good starting point for considering further phenomena related to the syntax of speech acts. By focusing on speech-act related particles and/or meaning domains, this volume makes a new contribution to the field, as existing collections either do not offer a comparatively narrow focus on particles or are not limited to syntax-oriented approaches. The primary audience of this volume are researchers and graduate students interested in state-of-the-art approaches to the syntax-discourse interface within the cartographic approach to syntax.

Theoretical and Experimental Aspects of Syntax-Discourse Interface in Heritage Grammars

Theoretical and Experimental Aspects of Syntax-Discourse Interface in Heritage Grammars
Author: Tania Ivanova-Sullivan
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2015-01-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9004246177

In Theoretical and Experimental Aspects of Syntax-Discourse Interface in Heritage Grammars, Tanya Ivanova-Sullivan investigates comprehension and production of anaphoric dependencies with null and overt subject pronouns. She discusses the divergent behaviour of the heritage speakers of Russian by providing a closer look at their proficiency level, quantity of input and order of language acquisition. She explains the results with various degrees of successful application of pragmatic principles and efficiency in allocating cognitive resources. The contribution of the monograph lies in the discussion of theoretical and experimental issues related to anaphora resolution along with an investigation of all aspects of representation and processing of anaphoric pronouns by various kinds of bilinguals: heritage speakers, L2 learners and L1 attriters.

Discourse Particles

Discourse Particles
Author: Josef Bayer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2016-12-19
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110497158

Particles have for the longest time been ignored by linguistic research. School-type grammars ignored them since they did not fit into pre-conceived notions of categories, and since they did not seem to enter into grammatical relations commonly discussed in the genre. Only in the last century did some publications discuss particles – and even then only from the perspective of their discourse and pragmatic functions, i.e. their dependance on certain previous contexts, and concluded that the function of particles for the grammar of sentences and their interpretation remains obscure. The current volume presents 11 new articles that take a fresh look at particles: As it turns out, particles inform many aspects of syntax and semantics, too – both diachronically and synchronically: Particles are shown to have fascinating syntactic properties with respect to projection, locality, movement and scope. Their interpretative contributions can be studied with the rigorous methods of formal semantics. Cross-linguistic and diachronic investigations shed new light on the genesis and development of these intriguing – and under-estimated – kinds of lexical elements.

New Perspectives in Language, Discourse and Translation Studies

New Perspectives in Language, Discourse and Translation Studies
Author: Mirosław Pawlak
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2011-08-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3642200834

The current volume is a collection of papers representing the most recent developments in linguistics, specifically in the fields of language, discourse and translation studies. It includes papers representative of traditionally distinguished linguistic subdisciplines such as phonetics and phonology, morphology and syntax, historical linguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis and sociolinguistics, as well as translation. Since the contributions contained in the book touch upon such a variety of disciplines and do so from both more traditional and more innovative perspectives, it will be an important point of reference for scholars, graduate students and lecturers teaching courses in linguistics.

Functional Perspectives on Grammar and Discourse

Functional Perspectives on Grammar and Discourse
Author: Christopher Butler
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2007
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027230959

This book, a tribute to Angela Downing, consists of twenty papers taking a broadly functional perspective on language, with topics ranging from the general (grammar as an evolutionary product, text comprehension, integrative linguistics) to particular aspects of the grammars of languages (Bulgarian, English, Icelandic, Spanish, Swedish). The more specific papers are sequenced according to Halliday s division into ideational, textual and interpersonal aspects of the grammar, and cover a wide range of areas, including aspect, argument structure, noun phrase/nominal group structure and nominalisations, pronominal clitics, theme in relation to writing skills, discourse structures and markers, the role of attention in conversation, the functions of topic, phatic communion, subjectification, formulaic language and modality. A recurrent theme in the volume is the use of corpus materials in order to base functional descriptions on authentic productions. Overall, the volume constitutes a panoramic but nevertheless detailed view of some important current trends in functional linguistics.

Perspectives on Semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse

Perspectives on Semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse
Author: Ferenc Kiefer
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2001-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027251091

Professor Ferenc Kiefer of the Linguistics Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences was instrumental in bringing early transformational grammar to Europe. His extensive work contributes substantially to making a connection between the grammatical theory and other areas of linguistics. The 17 essays in this book celebrate his career by continuing to explore inter-area research in linguistics: pragmatics in grammar (de Groot, van Riemsdijk, Dressler & Barbaresi, Comrie), semantic compositionality and pragmatics (Wunderlich, Partee, Borschev, Szabo, Bach), logical structures and universals in semantics and pragmatics (van der Auwera, Bultinck, Burton-Roberts, Harnish, Wierzbicka) dialogue and thematic structure (Jonasson, Doherty, Hajicova, Panevova, Sgall, Allwood, Fraser).