On Pied-Piping

On Pied-Piping
Author: Fabian Heck
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2008-11-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110211467

Pied-piping, the phenomenon that wh-movement may target categories not marked with the feature [wh], has generally been considered idiosyncratic and pathological. On Pied-Piping argues that this assessment is not correct. The book presents a compilation of crosslinguistic generalizations on pied-piping and a theory that derives them. Pied-piping is incorporated into a derivational theory of successive cyclic wh-movement that includes input-output optimization, the operation Agree, and phase theory. The resulting theory is a step towards closing a long-standing gap in syntactic theorizing.

Contiguity Theory

Contiguity Theory
Author: Norvin Richards
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2016-06-24
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0262528827

An argument that the word order of a given language is largely predictable from independently observable facts about its phonology and morphology. Languages differ in the types of overt movement they display. For example, some languages (including English) require subjects to move to a preverbal position, while others (including Italian) allow subjects to remain postverbal. In its current form, Minimalism offers no real answer to the question of why these different types of movements are distributed among languages as they are. In Contiguity Theory, Norvin Richards argues that there are universal conditions on morphology and phonology, particularly in how the prosodic structures of language can be built, and that these universal structures interact with language-specific properties of phonology and morphology. He argues that the grammar begins the construction of phonological structure earlier in the derivation than previously thought, and that the distribution of overt movement operations is largely determined by the grammar's efforts to construct this structure. Rather than appealing to diacritic features, the explanations will generally be rooted in observable phenomena. Richards posits a different kind of relation between syntax and morphology than is usually found in Minimalism. According to his Contiguity Theory, if we know, for example, what inflectional morphology is attached to the verb in a given language, and what the rules are for where stress is placed in the verb, then we will know where the verb goes in the sentence. Ultimately, the goal is to construct a theory in which a complete description of the phonology and morphology of a given language is also a description of its syntax.

Preposition Placement in English

Preposition Placement in English
Author: Thomas Hoffmann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2011-01-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1139494562

Preposition placement, the competition between preposition stranding (What is he talking about?) and pied-piping (About what is he talking?), is one of the most interesting areas of syntactic variation in English. This is the first book to investigate preposition placement across all types of clauses that license it, such as questions, exclamations and wh-clauses, and those which exhibit categorical stranding, such as non-wh relative clauses, comparatives, and passives. Drawing on over 100 authentic examples from both first-language (English) and second-language (Kenyan) data, it combines experimental and corpus-based approaches to provide a full grammatical account of preposition placement in both varieties of English. Although written within the usage-based construction grammar framework, the results are presented in theory-neutral terminology, making them accessible to researchers from all syntactic schools. This pioneering volume will be of interest not only to syntacticians, but also second-language researchers and those working on variation in English.

Latin Embedded Clauses

Latin Embedded Clauses
Author: Lieven Danckaert
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2012-04-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027274886

This monograph is one of the first studies that approaches Latin syntax from a formal perspective, combining detailed corpus-based description with formal theoretical analysis. The empirical focus is word order in embedded clauses, with special attention to clauses in which one or more constituents surface to the left of a subordinating conjunction. It is proposed that two such types of left peripheral fronting should be distinguished. The proposed analyses shed light not only on the clausal left periphery, but also on the overall structure of the Latin clause. The study is couched in the framework of generative grammar, but since a thorough introduction is provided, no special background in formal syntax is required. Major topics touched upon are word order, information structure, locality, and the syntax of pied-piping. The book covers both synchronic and diachronic topics of Latin syntax, and is of interest for classical philologists, historical linguists, and formal syntacticians.

Composing Questions

Composing Questions
Author: Hadas Kotek
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2019-02-19
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0262351072

An investigation of the syntax and semantics of wh-questions through the lens of intervention effects, offering a new proposal on overt and covert wh-movement. In this book, Hadas Kotek investigates the syntax and semantics of wh-questions, offering a new solution to a central question in the study of interrogatives: given that overt wh-movement is cross-linguistically common, is syntactic movement a prerequisite for the interpretation of wh-phrases? Some linguists argue that all wh-phrases undergo movement to interrogative C, even if covertly; others propose mechanisms of in-situ interpretation that do not require any movement. Kotek moves beyond these positions to argue that wh-in-situ does move covertly, but not necessarily to C. Instead, she contends, wh-in-situ undergoes a short movement step akin to covert scrambling. This makes the LF behavior of English parallel to the overt behavior of German. Kotek presents a series of self-paced reading experiments, alongside judgment data from German, to substantiate the idea of covert scrambling. She introduces new diagnostics for the underlying structure of questions, using as a principal tool the distribution of intervention effects. This system allows her to offer the first unified account for a range of phenomena of interrogative syntax-semantics as pied-piping, superiority effects, the cross-linguistically varied syntax of questions, and intervention effects. Kotek develops a theory of interrogative syntax-semantics; studies the phenomena of intervention effects in wh-questions, proposing that the nature of intervention is crucially tied to the availability of wh-movement in a question; and shows that covert wh-movement should be modeled as a short scrambling operation rather than an unbounded, successive-cyclic, and potentially long-distance movement operation.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin

The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Author: Robert Browning
Publisher:
Total Pages: 80
Release: 1912
Genre: Avarice
ISBN:

The Pied Piper pipes the village free of rats, and when the villagers refuse to pay him for the service he exacts a terrible revenge.

The Grammar of Q

The Grammar of Q
Author: Seth Cable
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2010-09-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0199780277

The Grammar of Q puts forth a novel syntactic and semantic analysis of wh-questions, one that is based upon in-depth study of the Tlingit language, an endangered and under-documented language of North America. A major consequence of this new approach is that the phenomenon classically dubbed "pied-piping" does not actually exist.

Verbal Complexes

Verbal Complexes
Author: Hilda Judith Koopman
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2000
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780262611541

The central idea of Dynamic Antisymmetry is that movement and phrase structure are not independent properties of grammar; more specifically, that movement is triggered by the geometry of phrase structure. Assuming a minimalist framework, movement is traced back to the necessity for natural language to organize words in linear order at the interface with the perceptual-articulatory module.Andrea Moro uses this innovative perspective to analyze several empirical domains, focusing on small clauses, split wh-movement, and clitic constructions. In a final speculative chapter, he examines the general consequences for the design of grammar implied by Dynamic Antisymmetry.The book is self-contained, with a synopsis of current theories of movement and a synthetic presentation of the theory of antisymmetry. An appendix presents the essentials of a unified theory of copular sentences, which plays a central role in the argument and has several important consequences for syntax, for example, for expletives and locality.Linguistic Inquiry Monograph No. 38

Imbabura Quechua

Imbabura Quechua
Author: Peter Cole
Publisher: Israeli Hebrew
Total Pages: 121
Release: 1985
Genre: Imbabura dialect
ISBN: 0709934440

The Pied Piper of Hamelin

The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Author: Russell Brand
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2014-11-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1501107275

With this first book in Russell Brand’s Trickster Tales series, the famed comedian, actor, and bestselling author delivers a hilarious retelling of an old fairytale favorite that will appeal to adults and children alike. Once upon a time, long ago, in a time that seemed, to those present, exactly like now except their teeth weren’t so clean and more things were wooden, there was a town called Hamelin. The people of Hamelin were a pompous bunch who loved themselves and their town so much that if it were possible they would have spent all day zipped up in a space suit smelling their own farts. But space suits hadn’t been invented yet so they couldn’t. Then one day without warning a gang of rats bowled into the town and began causing a right rumpus… So begins Russell Brand’s wildly funny and surprisingly wise retelling of the classic tale The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Whether you’re a kid or a grown-up kid, you’ll be chuckling the whole way through this zany story that bypasses Brand’s more adult humor for the outrageous, the madcap, and the just plain silly. Maybe you’ve heard about the Pied Piper before, with his strange music and those pompous townspeople and pesky rats. Or maybe you haven’t. But one thing is for sure: you’ve never heard it quite like this.