Parameters of Predicate Fronting

Parameters of Predicate Fronting
Author: Vera Lee-Schoenfeld
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2021-05-28
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0197545572

Many of the world's languages permit or require clause-initial positioning of the primary predicate, potentially alongside some or all of its dependents. While such predicate fronting (where "fronting" may or may not involve movement) is a widespread phenomenon, it is also subject to intricate and largely unexplained variation. In Parameters of Predicate Fronting, Vera Lee-Schoenfeld and Dennis Ott bring together leaders in the field of comparative syntax to explore the empirical manifestations and theoretical modelling of predicate fronting across languages. There exists by now a rich literature on predicate fronting, but few attempts have been made at synthesizing the resulting empirical observations and theoretical implementations. While individual phenomena have been described in some detail, we are currently far from a complete understanding of the uniformity and variation underlying the wider cross-linguistic picture. This volume takes steps towards this goal by showcasing the state of the art in research on predicate fronting and the parameters governing its realization in a range of diverse languages. Covering topics like prosody, VP-fronting, and predicate doubling across a wide arrange of languages, including English, German, Malagasy, Niuean, Ch'ol, Asante, Twi, Limbum, Krachi, Hebrew, and multiple sign languages, this collection enriches our understanding of the predicate fronting phenomenon.

Parameters of Predicate Fronting

Parameters of Predicate Fronting
Author: Vera Lee-Schoenfeld
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2021-05-28
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0197545580

Many of the world's languages permit or require clause-initial positioning of the primary predicate, potentially alongside some or all of its dependents. While such predicate fronting (where "fronting" may or may not involve movement) is a widespread phenomenon, it is also subject to intricate and largely unexplained variation. In Parameters of Predicate Fronting, Vera Lee-Schoenfeld and Dennis Ott bring together leaders in the field of comparative syntax to explore the empirical manifestations and theoretical modelling of predicate fronting across languages. There exists by now a rich literature on predicate fronting, but few attempts have been made at synthesizing the resulting empirical observations and theoretical implementations. While individual phenomena have been described in some detail, we are currently far from a complete understanding of the uniformity and variation underlying the wider cross-linguistic picture. This volume takes steps towards this goal by showcasing the state of the art in research on predicate fronting and the parameters governing its realization in a range of diverse languages. Covering topics like prosody, VP-fronting, and predicate doubling across a wide arrange of languages, including English, German, Malagasy, Niuean, Ch'ol, Asante, Twi, Limbum, Krachi, Hebrew, and multiple sign languages, this collection enriches our understanding of the predicate fronting phenomenon.

The size of things II

The size of things II
Author: Zheng Shen
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 410
Release: 2023-12-11
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3985540381

This book focuses on the role size plays in grammar. Under the umbrella term size fall the size of syntactic projections, the size of feature content, and the size of reference sets. This Volume II discusses size effects in movement, agreement, and interpretation while the contributions in Volume I focus on size and structure building. Part I of Volume II investigates how size interacts with head movement and various phrasal movement including left branch extraction, object shift, tough movement, and multiple wh movement. Part II of this volume discusses the role size plays in agreement and morphology-related matters like allomorphy. Contributions in Part III focus on semantic-oriented issues, in particular the size of reference domains and NPI licensing. The languages covered in this volume include American Sign Language, Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian and various other Slavic languages, German, Icelandic, dialects of Italian, Japanese, Nancowry, Panoan languages, and Tamil.

The Grammar of Multiple Head-Movement

The Grammar of Multiple Head-Movement
Author: Phil Branigan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2023-02-09
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0197677037

Head-movement has played a central role in morpho-syntactic theory, but its nature has remained unclear. While it is widely accepted that the main grammatical constraint controlling head-movement is the Head Movement Constraint (HMC), this constraint is flouted in many of the linguistic structures examined in this book. More specifically, the strictures of the HMC turn out to be sometimes inactive for specific grammars allowing multiple head-movement to take place in particular syntactic contexts. In The Grammar of Multiple Head-Movement, Phil Branigan shows that multiple head-movement is far from rare, forming a part of the grammar in Finnish, in English, in Perenakan Javanese, in northern Norwegian and Swedish dialects, and generally in the Slavic and Algonquian language families. Basing his analysis on a new model of the grammatical parameters which control word formation in the human brain, Branigan shows how careful attention to the contexts in which multiple head-movement takes place allows new generalizations to be identified. And these, in turn, allow a new model to be formulated of how head-movement fits into the overall architecture of grammatical computation. Through careful comparative study, Branigan not only provides a better understanding of head-movement, but also provides new opportunities to address larger questions concerning the architecture of the grammatical system and the theory of linguistic parameters. A new account of how complex words are formed in languages as different as Russian or Innu-aimun, as well as in English, this study deepens our understanding of how languages vary and of the mental computational system of human grammars.

Taboo in Sign Languages

Taboo in Sign Languages
Author: Donna Jo Napoli
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2023-10-31
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1009291963

Taboo topics in deaf communities include those found in spoken languages, as well as ones particular to deaf experiences, both in how deaf people relate to hearing people and how deaf people interact with other deaf people. These topics can help linguists understand better the consequences of field method choices and lead them to adopt better ones.

The Comparative Syntax of Korean and Japanese

The Comparative Syntax of Korean and Japanese
Author: Yutaka Sato
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2023-12-21
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0198896530

This book provides a detailed survey of Korean and Japanese syntax from a comparative perspective, based within a generative framework. Yukata Sato and Sungdai Cho demonstrate that while the two languages exhibit remarkably similar morphosyntactic features, they behave differently in specific types of construction, with the main differences observed in genitive marking, sentence negation, Negative Polarity Items, the formation of causatives, and passivization. The book also explores pragmatic and sociolinguistic issues in the two languages, and shows that they differ in the perception and realization of 'givenness' as a topic marker and in the influence of relationships of power and distance on the use of honorifics. The authors further offer additional context by exploring the typological relationship between Japanese and Korean and the surrounding languages such as Ainu, and the Chinese and Altaic languages, as well as providing socio-cultural and historical background.

Rich Descriptions and Simple Explanations in Morphosyntax and Language Acquisition

Rich Descriptions and Simple Explanations in Morphosyntax and Language Acquisition
Author: Giuliano Bocci
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2024-06-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0198889488

This volume offers new perspectives on the tension between the rich patterns of language variation that emerge from comparative studies and the quest for simple theoretical primitives. The chapters explore the debate between Cartography and Minimalism: on the one hand, the need for detailed and articulated descriptions of the clausal architecture, and on the other, the endeavor to reduce the theoretical apparatus to fundamental computational mechanisms. The first part of the book begins with a reflection on the goals of modern linguistic theory, and investigates the principles of human language, in an effort to subsume the regularities of particular grammars under a small set of morphosyntactic and semantic primitives. The second part examines the clausal structure - both the CP-layer and the IP-layer - from a comparative perspective, which directly relates to the fundamental questions of universality, linguistic variation, and learnability addressed in the first part of the book. With chapters written by world-leading linguists who analyze a wide range of old and new phenomena, the volume will be a valuable resource for researchers and students interested in theoretical linguistics and language development.

Incomplete Category Fronting

Incomplete Category Fronting
Author: Gereon Müller
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2013-03-14
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9401718644

Incomplete Category Fronting is a detailed investigation of the syntax of incomplete category fronting in German, carried out from a cross-linguistic perspective. The study presents a wealth of empirical evidence involving unbound traces created by remnant topicalization, wh-movement, scrambling, left dislocation, and extraposition. Four characteristic properties of remnant movement are identified that pose severe problems for a representational movement theory. It is argued that these properties can be fruitfully addressed on the basis of Chomsky's minimalist program, and that they follow from a derivational movement theory that incorporates the Barriers Condition, the Strict Cycle Condition, Fewest Steps, Last Resort, and the Minimal Link Condition but completely dispenses with surface filters. Incomplete Category Fronting provides an empirical underpinning for the minimalist program and presents a powerful argument for a derivational theory of grammar. Audience: Incomplete Category Fronting will interest all linguists working on theoretical syntax, Germanic syntax or the syntax-semantics interface.

Verb First

Verb First
Author: Andrew Carnie
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2005-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027227973

This collection of papers brings together the most recent crosslinguistic research on the syntax of verb-initial languages. Authors with a variety of theoretical perspectives pursue the questions of how verb-initial order is derived, and how these derivations play into the characteristic syntax of these languages. Major themes in the volume include the role of syntactic category in languages with verb-initial order; the different mechanisms of deriving V-initial order; and the universal correlates of the order. This book should be of interest to scholars who work on theoretical approaches to word order derivation, typologists, and those who work on the particular grammars of Celtic, Zapotec, Mixtec, Polynesian, Austronesian, Mayan, Salish, Aboriginal, and Nilotic languages.

The Blackwell Companion to Syntax

The Blackwell Companion to Syntax
Author: Martin Everaert
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 3575
Release: 2008-04-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1405178418

*** Pre-Order The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, second edition, publishing December 2017. Find out more at www.companiontosyntax.com *** This long-awaited reference work marks the culmination of numerous years of research and international collaboration by the world's leading syntacticians. There exists no other comparable collection of research that documents the development of syntax in this way. Under the editorial direction of Martin Everaert and Henk van Riemsdijk, this 5 volume set comprises 70 case studies commissioned specifically for this volume. The 80 contributors are drawn from an international group of prestigious linguists, including Joe Emonds, Sandra Chung, Susan Rothstein, Adriana Belletti, Jim Huang, Howard Lasnik, and Marcel den Dikken, among many others. A unique collection of 70 newly-commissioned case studies, offering access to research completed over the last 40 years. Brings together the world’s leading syntacticians to provide a large and diverse number of case studies in the field. Explores a comprehensive range of syntax topics from an historical perspective. Investigates empirical domains which have been well-documented and which have played a prominent role in theoretical syntax at some stage in the development of generative grammar. Serves as a research tool for not only theoretical linguistics but also the various forms of applied linguistics. Contains an accessible alphabetical structure, with an index integral to each volume featuring keywords and key figures. Each multi-volume set is also accompanied by a CD Rom of the entire Companion. Like the prestigious Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics series, this multi-volume work, in the new The Wiley Blackwell Companions to Linguistics series, can be relied upon to deliver the quality and expertise with which Blackwell Publishing’s linguistics list is associated.