On Complementation in Icelandic

On Complementation in Icelandic
Author: Hoskuldur Thrainsson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 526
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1317918657

This study deals with the complementation of verbs in Icelandic. The main emphasis is on clausal complements of verbs and the syntactic rules that operate in and on such complements. This study is written with two kinds of readers in mind. First, it is written for the theoretical linguist who is looking for phenomena of general theoretical interest, i.e. facts about Icelandic syntax that bear on the question what an adequate general linguistic theory must be like and hence shed some light on the nature of human language. Second, the study is also written with a different kind of reader in mind, namely a reader who is interested in Icelandic syntax in particular, perhaps from a more descriptive point of view.

Sentential Complementation

Sentential Complementation
Author: W. de Geest
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2019-06-04
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110882698

No detailed description available for "Sentential Complementation".

Modern Icelandic Syntax

Modern Icelandic Syntax
Author: Joan Maling
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2020-01-13
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9004373233

This comprehensive overview of Icelandic syntax contains new analyses of word order and long-distance reflexivization, detailed studies of case-marking, and the first systematic description of the -st middles. It presents a complete picture of modern Icelandic syntax as seen in the tradition of generative grammar, striking a good balance between theory and description.

Icelandic Morphosyntax and Argument Structure

Icelandic Morphosyntax and Argument Structure
Author: Jim Wood
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2015-01-05
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3319091387

This book provides a detailed study of Icelandic argument structure alternations within a syntactic theory of argument structure. Building on recent theorizing within the Minimalist Program and Distributed Morphology, the author proposes that much of what is traditionally attributed to syntax should be relegated to the interfaces, and adapts the late insertion theory of morphology to semantics. The resulting system forms sound-meaning pairs by generating hierarchical structures that can be translated into morphological representations, on the one hand, and semantic representations, on the other. The syntactic primitives, however, underdetermine both morphophonology and semantics. Without appealing to special stipulations, the theory derives constraints on the external argument of causative-alternation verbs, interpretive restrictions on nominative objects, and the optionally agentive interpretation of verbs denoting self-directed motion.

Agreement and Its Failures

Agreement and Its Failures
Author: Omer Preminger
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2014-09-19
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0262323206

A novel proposal regarding predicate-argument agreement that combines detailed empirical investigation with rigorous theoretical discussion. In this book, Omer Preminger investigates how the obligatory nature of predicate-argument agreement is enforced by the grammar. Preminger argues that an empirically adequate theory of predicate-argument agreement requires recourse to an operation, whose obligatoriness is a grammatical primitive not reducible to representational properties, but whose successful culmination is not enforced by the grammar. Preminger's argument counters contemporary approaches that find the obligatoriness of predicate-argument agreement enforced through representational means. The most prominent of these is Chomsky's “interpretability”-based proposal, in which the obligatoriness of predicate-argument agreement is enforced through derivational time bombs. Preminger presents an empirical argument against contemporary approaches that seek to derive the obligatory nature of predicate-argument agreement exclusively from derivational time bombs. He offers instead an alternative account based on the notion of obligatory operations better suited to the facts. The crucial data involves utterances that inescapably involve attempted-but-failed agreement and are nonetheless fully grammatical. Preminger combines a detailed empirical investigation of agreement phenomena in the Kichean (Mayan) languages, Zulu (Bantu), Basque, Icelandic, and French with an extensive and rigorous theoretical exploration of the far-reaching consequences of these data. The result is a novel proposal that has profound implications for the formalism that the theory of grammar uses to derive obligatory processes and properties.

The Handbook of Lexical Functional Grammar

The Handbook of Lexical Functional Grammar
Author: Mary Dalrymple
Publisher: Language Science Press
Total Pages: 2192
Release: 2023-12-14
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3961104247

Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) is a nontransformational theory of linguistic structure, first developed in the 1970s by Joan Bresnan and Ronald M. Kaplan, which assumes that language is best described and modeled by parallel structures representing different facets of linguistic organization and information, related by means of functional correspondences. This volume has five parts. Part I, Overview and Introduction, provides an introduction to core syntactic concepts and representations. Part II, Grammatical Phenomena, reviews LFG work on a range of grammatical phenomena or constructions. Part III, Grammatical modules and interfaces, provides an overview of LFG work on semantics, argument structure, prosody, information structure, and morphology. Part IV, Linguistic disciplines, reviews LFG work in the disciplines of historical linguistics, learnability, psycholinguistics, and second language learning. Part V, Formal and computational issues and applications, provides an overview of computational and formal properties of the theory, implementations, and computational work on parsing, translation, grammar induction, and treebanks. Part VI, Language families and regions, reviews LFG work on languages spoken in particular geographical areas or in particular language families. The final section, Comparing LFG with other linguistic theories, discusses LFG work in relation to other theoretical approaches.

Parameters and Functional Heads

Parameters and Functional Heads
Author: Adriana Belletti
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 309
Release: 1996
Genre: Grammar, Comparative and general
ISBN: 0195087941

The essays collected in this volume, most previously unpublished, address a number of closely interconnected issues raised by the comparative syntax of functional heads within the Principles-and-Parameters approach. The general theory of head movement, the properties of derived structures created by incorporation, and the parameterization involved are the main theoretical foci. One major empirical area which is addressed concerns head movement in configurations involving certain kinds of operator-like elements, for example, the different manifestations of Verb Second phenomena in Wh and other constructions and the syntax of negative heads and specifiers. In addition, properties of functional heads and head movement in nominal and clausal structures and the causative construction are investigated.

The Diachronic Typology of Non-Canonical Subjects

The Diachronic Typology of Non-Canonical Subjects
Author: Ilja A. Serzant
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2013-11-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027271305

This volume is an important contribution to the diachrony of non-canonical subjects in a typological perspective. The questions addressed concern the internal mechanisms and triggers for various changes that non-canonical subjects undergo, ranging from semantic motivations to purely structural explanations. The discussion encompasses the whole life-cycle of non-canonical subjects: from their emergence out of non-subject arguments to their expansion, demise or canonicization, focusing primarily on syntactic changes and changes in case-marking. The volume offers a number of different case studies comprising such languages as Italian, Spanish, Old Norse and Russian as well as languages less studied in this context, such as Latin, Classical Armenian, Baltic languages and some East Caucasian languages. Typological generalizations in the form of recurrent developmental paths are offered on the basis of data presented in this volume and in the literature.

Parameters and Functional Heads : Essays in Comparative Syntax

Parameters and Functional Heads : Essays in Comparative Syntax
Author: Perugia Adriana Belletti Associate Professor of Linguistics Universita per Stanieri
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 313
Release: 1996-03-30
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0198024886

The essays collected in this volume, most previously unpublished, address a number of closely interconnected issues raised by the comparative syntax of functional heads within the Principles-and-Parameters approach. The general theory of head movement, the properties of derived structures created by incorporation, and the parameterization involved are the main theoretical foci. One major empirical area which is addressed concerns head movement in configurations involving certain kinds of operator-like elements, for example, the different manifestations of Verb Second phenomena in Wh and other constructions and the syntax of negative heads and specifiers. In addition, properties of functional heads and head movement in nominal and clausal structures and the causative construction are investigated.