The Syntax of Spanish

The Syntax of Spanish
Author: Karen Zagona
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2002
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780521576840

A clear and well-organised introduction to Spanish syntax, assuming no prior knowledge of current theory.

Negation and Clausal Structure

Negation and Clausal Structure
Author: Raffaella Zanuttini
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 1997-09-04
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 019535978X

Every human language has some syntactic means of distinguishing a negative from a non-negative sentence; in other words, every speaker's syntactic competence provides a means to express sentential negation. This ability, however, may be expressed in different ways, as shown by the fact that individual languages employ different syntactic strategies for the expression of the same semantic function of negating a sentence. Zanuttini's goal here is to characterize the range of such variation by comparing the different syntactic means for expressing sentential negation exhibited by the members of one language family--the Romance languages--and by reducing the differences we witness to a constrained set of choices available to the particular grammars of these languages. This sort of analysis is a first step towards the ultimate goal of determining and understanding what limits there are on the syntactic options that universal grammar imposes on the expression of sentential negation.

Bilingual Sentence Processing

Bilingual Sentence Processing
Author: Eva M. Fernández
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2003-03-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027296782

The cross-linguistic differences documented in studies of relative clause attachment offer an invaluable opportunity to examine a particular aspect of bilingual sentence processing: Do bilinguals process their two languages as if they were monolingual speakers of each? This volume provides a review of existing research on relative clause attachment, showing that speakers of languages like English attach relative clauses differently than do speakers of languages like Spanish. Fernández reports the findings of an investigation with monolinguals and bilinguals, tested using speeded ("on-line") and unspeeded ("off-line") methodology, with materials in both English and Spanish. The experiments reveal similarities across the groups when the procedure is speeded, but differences with unspeeded questionnaires: The monolinguals replicate the standard cross-linguistic differences, while bilinguals have language-independent preferences determined by language dominance — bilinguals process stimuli in either of their languages according to the general preferences of monolinguals of their dominant language.

The Clause Structure of Wolof

The Clause Structure of Wolof
Author: Harold Torrence
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2013-01-29
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027273014

This volume investigates the clausal syntax of Wolof, an understudied Atlantic language of Senegal. The goals of the work are descriptive, analytical, and comparative, with a focus on the structure of the left periphery and left peripheral phenomena. The book includes detailed examination of the morpho‑syntax of wh‑questions, successive cyclicity, subject marking, relative clauses, topic/focus articulation, and complementizer agreement. Novel data from Wolof is used to evaluate and extend theoretical proposals concerning the structure of the Complementizer Phrase (CP) and Tense Phrase (TP). It is argued that Wolof provides evidence for the promotion analysis of relative clauses, an “exploded” CP and TP, and for analyses that treat relative clauses as composed of a determiner with a CP complement. It is further argued that Wolof has a set of silent wh‑expressions and these are compared to superficially similar constructions in colloquial German, Bavarian, Dutch, and Norwegian. The book also presents a comparison of complementizer agreement across a number of related and unrelated languages. Data from Indo‑European (Germanic varieties, French, Irish), Niger‑Congo (Atlantic, Bantu, Gur), and Semitic (Arabic) languages put the Wolof phenomena in a larger typological context by showing the range of variation in complementizer agreement systems.

The Structure of the Clause

The Structure of the Clause
Author: Simon C. Dik
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 532
Release: 2009-06-23
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110218364

Introduction When one takes a functional approach to the study of natural languages, the ultimate questions one is interested in can be formulated as: How does the natural language user (NLU) work? How do speakers and addressees succeed ...

The Clausal Structure of Spanish

The Clausal Structure of Spanish
Author: Francisco Ordonez
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2018-12-07
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1135715610

This work studies various aspects of word order and clause structure in Spanish that have proved problematic for syntactic theory. These aspects are explored theoretically in light of the antisymmetry approach of Kayne (1994) and empirically by examining parallel structures in related languages. For example, the author uses antisymmetry to critique the traditional understanding of post-verbal subjects, which have assumed a right-adjunction approach. However, he provides empirical as well as theoretical reasons to believe that a combination of leftward movements constitutes a better alternative. Likewise, the study uses a number of combined theoretical and empirical arguments to provide new and more constrained analyses of overt wh -movement and pre-verbal subjects. It shows that the obligatory post-verbal positioning of overt subjects cannot be explained by recourse to a required overt head movement of the verb. Instead, the author explains this restriction by proposing that overt subjects, which are always topicalized in Spanish, conflict with the feature specifications of wh -complementizers. Finally, the author relates the obligatory topicalized nature of pre-verbal subjects in Spanish to a proposal that person agreement morphemes on the verb should be considered arguments that receive the subject theta-role. This book will be of interest to syntacticians and comparitivists, as well as scholars of Romance languages.

The Clause Structure of Wolof

The Clause Structure of Wolof
Author: Harold Torrence
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2013-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027255814

This volume investigates the clausal syntax of Wolof, an understudied Atlantic language of Senegal. The goals of the work are descriptive, analytical, and comparative, with a focus on the structure of the left periphery and left peripheral phenomena. The book includes detailed examination of the morpho?syntax of wh?questions, successive cyclicity, subject marking, relative clauses, topic/focus articulation, and complementizer agreement. Novel data from Wolof is used to evaluate and extend theoretical proposals concerning the structure of the Complementizer Phrase (CP) and Tense Phrase (TP). It is argued that Wolof provides evidence for the promotion analysis of relative clauses, an exploded CP and TP, and for analyses that treat relative clauses as composed of a determiner with a CP complement. It is further argued that Wolof has a set of silent wh?expressions and these are compared to superficially similar constructions in colloquial German, Bavarian, Dutch, and Norwegian. The book also presents a comparison of complementizer agreement across a number of related and unrelated languages. Data from Indo?European (Germanic varieties, French, Irish), Niger?Congo (Atlantic, Bantu, Gur), and Semitic (Arabic) languages put the Wolof phenomena in a larger typological context by showing the range of variation in complementizer agreement systems."

Language Patterns in Spanish and Beyond

Language Patterns in Spanish and Beyond
Author: Juan J. Colomina-Almiñana
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2020-10-25
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1000193144

The scholarly articles included in this volume represent significant contributions to the fields of formal and descriptive syntax, conversational analysis and speech act theory, as well as language development and bilingualism. Taken together, these studies adopt a variety of methodological techniques—ranging from grammaticality judgments to corpus-based analysis to experimental approaches—to offer rich insights into different aspects of Ibero-Romance grammar. The volume consists of three parts, organized in accordance with the topics treated in the chapters they comprise. Part I focuses on structural patterns, Part II analyzes pragmatic ones, and Part III investigates the acquisition of linguistic aspects found in the speech of L1, L2 and heritage speakers. The authors address these issues by relying on empirically rooted linguistic approaches to data collection, which are coupled with current theoretical assumptions on the nature of sentence structure, discourse dynamics and language acquisition. The volume will be of interest to anyone researching or studying Hispanic and Ibero-Romance linguistics.

Issues in Italian Syntax

Issues in Italian Syntax
Author: Luigi Rizzi
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2013-02-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110883716

The architecture of the human language faculty has been one of the main foci of the linguistic research of the last half century. This branch of linguistics, broadly known as Generative Grammar, is concerned with the formulation of explanatory formal accounts of linguistic phenomena with the ulterior goal of gaining insight into the properties of the 'language organ'. The series comprises high quality monographs and collected volumes that address such issues. The topics in this series range from phonology to semantics, from syntax to information structure, from mathematical linguistics to studies of the lexicon.

The Grammatical Structures of English and Spanish

The Grammatical Structures of English and Spanish
Author: Robert P. Stockwell
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 1965-06-15
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 0226775046

This series is designed to provide a detailed account of one of the major problems in the teaching of a second language—the interference caused by structural differences between the native language of the learner and the foreign language he is studying. The similarities and differences between English and the language being taught are described in two volumes, one on the sound systems and one on the grammatical systems, for some of the foreign languages most in demand in the United States today.