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.

Events and Predication

Events and Predication
Author: Montserrat Sanz
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2000-10-20
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 902728444X

Studies on the syntactic consequences of event type in languages have shown that Aktionsart plays a role in Universal Grammar. This book contributes to the exploration of the syntax/semantics interface by presenting a thorough comparison of event and predicate types in English and Spanish. The mapping between event and syntactic predicate types, including detransitives, is given a minimalist account based on the functional categories that embed event features and on a careful analysis of the features checked by objects. As the book delves into the theoretical issue of how parameters are characterized, it presents the most comprehensive account to date of event type phenomena in Spanish, an innovative analysis of the clitic SE and a re-definition of unaccusativity. The theory is then applied to the ongoing issues in the sentence processing literature. A proposal is made for an update of the current data in light of these latest linguistic discoveries.

Continuity and Variation in Germanic and Romance

Continuity and Variation in Germanic and Romance
Author: Sam Wolfe
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 623
Release: 2021
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0198841167

This volume offers a range of synchronic and diachronic case studies in comparative Germanic and Romance morphosyntax. These two language families, spoken by over a billion people today, have played a central role in linguistic research, but many significant questions remain about the relationship between them. Following an introduction that sets out the methodological, empirical, and theoretical background to the book, the volume is divided into three parts that deal with the morphosyntax of subjects and the inflectional layer; inversion, discourse pragmatics, and the left periphery; and continuity and variation beyond the clause. The contributors adopt a diverse range of approaches, making use of the latest digitized corpora and presenting a mixture of well-known and under-studied data from standard and non-standard Germanic and Romance languages. Many of the chapters challenge received wisdom about the relationship between these two important language families. The volume will be an indispensable resource for researchers and students in the fields of Germanic and Romance linguistics, historical and comparative linguistics, and morphosyntax.

Language and Bilingual Cognition

Language and Bilingual Cognition
Author: Vivian Cook
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 837
Release: 2011-04-27
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1136866396

This innovative volume provides a state-of-the-art overview of the relationship between language and cognition with a focus on bilinguals. It brings together contributions from international leading figures in various disciplines and showcases contemporary research on the emerging area of bilingual cognition. The first part of the volume discusses the relationship between language and cognition as studied in various disciplines, from psychology to philosophy to anthropology to linguistics, with chapters written by some of the major thinkers in each discipline. The second part concerns language and cognition in bilinguals. Following an introductory overview and contributions from established figures in the field, bilingual cognition researchers provide examples of their latest research on topics including time, space, motion, colors, and emotion. The third part discusses practical applications of the idea of bilingual cognition, such as marketing and translation. The volume is essential reading for researchers and postgraduate students with an interest in language and cognition, or in bilingualism and second languages.

The Middle Voice and Connected Constructions in Ibero-Romance

The Middle Voice and Connected Constructions in Ibero-Romance
Author: Carlota de Benito Moreno
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2022-08-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027257582

The reflexive constructions that are the focus of this book are the constructions broadly described with the term “middle”: i.e., those that can appear in all persons, and in which the reflexive marker (RM) cannot be understood as a full referential pronoun. One goal of this study is to provide a corpus-based typology of middle and related uses that allow us to compare the behaviour of the RM in these constructions with previous typological accounts, where competing models (based either on changes of diathesis or on the semantics of the verbal event) can be found. A second goal is to shed light on the evolution of the different functions of the RM, by exploring the factors that affect its productivity, with a specific focus on those verbs where reflexive marking is most variable, that is, anticausative verbs and verbs with no change of valency. These reflexive constructions show a notable difference in productivity in Spanish and Galician, although the languages are closely related and contiguous. The languages are thus good candidates for a contrastive and variationist analysis serving these two goals. The semantic class of the predicate, its aspectual properties and the animacy of the subject are some of the most relevant factors that are taken into account to understand the motivations behind the presence (or absence) of the RM. By relying on a corpus of interviews from rural communities across peninsular Spain (except Catalonia), space as a relevant extra-linguistic variable is taken into account, helping uncover previously unknown geographical patterns.

Data Representativity and Granularity in Spanish Syntax

Data Representativity and Granularity in Spanish Syntax
Author: Iván Ortega-Santos
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2024-04-26
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1040006450

Data Representativity and Granularity in Spanish Syntax focuses on the dialogue between Generative Grammar, Variationism, and experimental linguistics with a unique emphasis on Spanish linguistics. Combining formal syntax and empirical data collection, this volume analyzes and compares various data collection methods in syntactic theory, and examines a wide variety of approaches to gain novel insight in this emerging area. Through the case study of subject properties in Spanish, with an emphasis on how differences in data collection and data analysis standards may shape our perception of the object of study, this book addresses the following questions: (a) How do the data gathered through the standard methodology in each discipline diverge (if at all) and why? and (b) What kind of research questions can be answered with the standard methodology in each field? The volume argues for methodological crosspollination to avoid forcing data to conform to field-specific expectations and to appreciate language variation for what it has to tell us about linguistic theory, marrying the goals of Generative Grammar with data-driven research. This is an essential resource for researchers in the area of formal and generative syntax, linguists with an interest in data collection standard in syntax, and graduate or advanced undergraduate students in the field of Spanish linguistics.

Interface-Driven Phenomena in Spanish

Interface-Driven Phenomena in Spanish
Author: Melvin González-Rivera
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2020-02-07
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1000028399

Interface-Driven Phenomena in Spanish: Essays in Honor of Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach brings together a collection of articles from leading experts in the fields of formal syntax and semantics. With a specific focus on interface-related phenomena, the articles address a broad array of issues in Spanish grammar. In so doing, the book offers an updated view on current research topics while providing a rich variety of methods and theoretical perspectives. The volume will be of interest to advanced students, researchers and scholars working on Spanish syntax, semantics and their interfaces.

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.