The Grammar of Names

The Grammar of Names
Author: John M. Anderson
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2007-01-04
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0191538132

This book is the first systematic account of the syntax and semantics of names. Drawing on work in onomastics, philosophy, and linguistics John Anderson examines the distribution and subcategorization of names within a framework of syntactic categories, and considers how the morphosyntactic behaviour of names connects to their semantic roles. He argues that names occur in two basic circumstances: one involving vocatives and their use in naming predications, where they are not definite; the other their use as arguments of predicators, where they are definite. This division is discussed in relation to English, French, Greek, and Seri, and a range of other languages. Professor Anderson reveals that the semantic status of names, including prototypicality, is crucial to understanding their morphosyntax and role in derivational relationships. He shows that semantically coherent subsets of names, such as those referring to people and places, are characterized by morphosyntactic properties which may vary from language to language. His original and important investigation will appeal to scholars and advanced students of linguistics and philosophy.

Identity Relations in Grammar

Identity Relations in Grammar
Author: Kuniya Nasukawa
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2014-10-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1614518114

Few concepts are as ubiquitous in the physical world of humans as that of identity. Laws of nature crucially involve relations of identity and non-identity, the act of identifying is central to most cognitive processes, and the structure of human language is determined in many different ways by considerations of identity and its opposite. The purpose of this book is to bring together research from a broad scale of domains of grammar that have a bearing on the role that identity plays in the structure of grammatical representations and principles. Beyond a great many analytical puzzles, the creation and avoidance of identity in grammar raise a lot of fundamental and hard questions. These include: Why is identity sometimes tolerated or even necessary, while in other contexts it must be avoided? What are the properties of complex elements that contribute to configurations of identity (XX)? What structural notions of closeness or distance determine whether an offending XX-relation exists or, inversely, whether two more or less distant elements satisfy some requirement of identity? Is it possible to generalize over the specific principles that govern (non-)identity in the various components of grammar, or are such comparisons merely metaphorical? Indeed, can we define the notion of identity in a formal way that will allow us to decide which of the manifold phenomena that we can think of are genuine instances of some identity (avoidance) effect? If identity avoidance is a manifestation in grammar of some much more encompassing principle, some law of nature, then how is it possible that what does and what does not count as identical in the grammars of different languages seems to be subject to considerable variation?

Rigid Designation and Theoretical Identities

Rigid Designation and Theoretical Identities
Author: Joseph LaPorte
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2013
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0199609209

Joseph LaPorte offers an original account of the connections between the reference of words for properties and kinds, and theoretical identity statements. He argues that terms for properties, as well as for concrete objects, are rigid designators, and defends the Kripkean tradition of theoretical identities.

Indices and Identity

Indices and Identity
Author: Robert Fiengo
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 1994
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780262560764

Under what conditions are expressions of a language the same; when are they different? Indices and Identity focuses on this question in the context of the theory of anaphora and on the role of indices in characterizing syntactic and semantic identity of expressions. Fiengo and May develop two main themes within the theory of anaphora. The first pertains to the meaning of coindexing and non-coindexing--the correspondence between indexical relations among expressions and the valuation relation that holds among them--while the second is the development of Dependency Theory, the theory of the relations of occurrences of indices. The novelty of Fiengo and May's approach lies with their characterization of indexical dependencies and the conditions under which structures manifest the same or different dependency. In particular, Indices and Identity emphasizes issues raised by strict and sloppy identity in ellipsis, exploring what Fiengo and May call the eliminative puzzles of ellipsis. The significance of these puzzles is that they show the shortcomings of current theories of anaphora in ellipsis, while illustrating an application of Dependency Theory to complex cases of strict and sloppy identity. Elliptical contexts in turn lead to consideration of the embedding of the formal syntactic notions of identity arising from indices and dependencies within more general notions of structural identity. This relates to a consideration of the foundations of reconstruction, which, the authors argue, is syntactic identity up to indexical identity and vehicle change--variation in the syntactic form of expression of arguments.The book concludes with a discussion of the relation of reconstruction, logical representation in grammar, and the application of grammatical constraints. The discussion focuses on antecedent contained deletion, and stands independently as a comprehensive study of this construction. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph No. 24

The Grammar of Copulas Across Languages

The Grammar of Copulas Across Languages
Author: María J. Arche
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2019-01-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0192565427

This volume presents a crosslinguistic survey of the current theoretical debates around copular constructions from a generative perspective. Following an introduction to the main questions surrounding the analysis and categorization of copulas, the chapters address a range of key topics including the existence of more than one copular form in certain languages, the factors determining the presence or absence of a copula, and the morphology of copular forms. The team of expert contributors present new theoretical proposals regarding the formal mechanisms behind the behaviour and patterns observed in copulas in a wide range of typologically diverse languages, including Czech, French, Korean, and languages from the Dene and Bantu families. Their findings have implications beyond the study of copulas and shed more light on issues such as agreement relations, the nature of grammatical categories, and nominal predicates in syntax and semantics.

Grammar, Expressiveness, and Inter-subjective Meanings

Grammar, Expressiveness, and Inter-subjective Meanings
Author: Paulo M. Barroso
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2015-09-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1443881619

How do we learn, use, and understand the meaning of words representing sensations? How is the connection between words and sensations structured? How can outward signs of sensations be manifested? What does it mean “to understand someone”? Is semantics affected by inner states? What does one mean when one uses an expression to describe a sensation? How should such success in communication be defined? Grammar, Expressiveness, and Inter-subjective Meanings: Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Psychology deals with these questions, examining the peculiar uses of language-games representing sensations (such as “thinking”, “seeing such-and-such”, and “I’m in pain”) and exploring outer references to inner states. Externalising something internal gives expression to the psychological experience. As such, an expression should be understood as a sophisticated form of exteriorising experiences. This book clarifies the use of sense-expressions and the praxis of “bringing to expression” as an inter-subjective meaning process. The central focus of the book entails both the outwardness of language and the inwardness of experience, as was intensively remarked by Wittgenstein’s last writings (namely his lectures from 1946–47, exclusively and remarkably concerning the philosophy of psychology), which were recently published and which, despite their importance and originality, are still little known.

Grammars of Identity / Alterity

Grammars of Identity / Alterity
Author: Gerd Baumann
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2004-12-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789203686

Issues of the construction of Self and Other, normally in the context of social exclusion of those perceived as different, have assumed a new urgency. This collection offers a fresh perspective on the ongoing debates on these questions in the social sciences and the humanities by focusing specifically on one theoretical proposition, namely, that the seemingly universal processes of identity formation and exclusion of the 'other' can be differentiated according to three modalities. All contributors directly engage with rigorous empirical testing and theoretical cross-examination of this proposition. Their results have direct implications not only for a more differentiated understanding of collective identities, but also for a better understanding of extreme collective violence and genocide.