Definiteness Effects
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Author | : Susann Fischer |
Publisher | : Cambridge Scholars Publishing |
Total Pages | : 475 |
Release | : 2016-08-17 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 1443898007 |
This volume explores in detail the empirical and conceptual content of the definiteness effect in grammar. It brings together a variety of relevant observations from a typological, diachronic and a bilingual/second language acquisition perspective, and provides a general overview of different approaches concerned with the syntactic, morphological, semantic, and pragmatic properties of the Definiteness Effect in a series of European and non-European languages.
Author | : Christopher Lyons |
Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | : 408 |
Release | : 1999-03-13 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 9780521368353 |
This 1999 textbook investigates definiteness both from a comparative and a theoretical point of view, showing how languages express definiteness and what definiteness is. It surveys a large number of languages to discover the range of variation in relation to definiteness and related grammatical phenomena, such as demonstratives, possessives and personal pronouns. It outlines work done on the nature of definiteness in semantics, pragmatics and syntax, and develops an account on which definiteness is a grammatical category represented in syntax as a functional head (the widely discussed D). Consideration is also given to the origins and evolution of definite articles in the light of the comparative and theoretical findings. Among the claims advanced are that definiteness does not occur in all languages, though the pragmatic concept which it grammaticalizes probably does.
Author | : Neil Myler |
Publisher | : MIT Press |
Total Pages | : 471 |
Release | : 2024-02-06 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 0262551098 |
A wide-ranging generative analysis of the typology of possession sentences, solving long-standing puzzles in their syntax and semantics. A major question for linguistic theory concerns how the structure of sentences relates to their meaning. There is broad agreement in the field that there is some regularity in the way that lexical semantics and syntax are related, so that thematic roles (the different participant roles in an event: agent, theme, goal, etc.) are predictably associated with particular syntactic positions. In this book, Neil Myler examines the syntax and semantics of possession sentences, which are infamous for appearing to diverge dramatically from this broadly regular pattern. On the one hand, Myler points out, possession sentences have too many meanings; in any given language, the construction used to express archetypal possessive meanings (such as personal ownership) is also often used to express other apparently unrelated notions (body parts, kinship relations, and many others). On the other hand, possession sentences have too many surface structures; languages differ markedly in the argument structures used to convey the same possessive meanings. Myler argues that recent work on the syntax-semantics interface in the generative tradition has developed the tools needed to solve these puzzles. Examining and synthesizing ideas from the literature and drawing on data from many languages (including some understudied Quechua dialects), Myler presents a novel way to understand the apparent irregularity of possession sentences while preserving explanations of general cross-linguistic regularities, offering a unified approach to the syntax and semantics of possession sentences that can also be integrated into a general theory of argument structure.
Author | : Elisabeth Stark |
Publisher | : John Benjamins Publishing |
Total Pages | : 392 |
Release | : 2007 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 9789027230997 |
The following theoretical-empirical points on the DP are discussed: Article and its referential-anaphoric properties by Abraham (Determiners in Centering Theory); Bartra (On bare NPs in Old Spanish and Catalan); identification of all functional nominal categories by Stvan (Bare singular count nouns); Kupisch & Koops (Specificity and negation); Jäger (History of German indefinite determiners); typological comparison of the interaction of nominal and verbal determination by Abraham (Discourse-functional crystallization of the original demonstrative); Leiss (Covert (in)definiteness and aspect in Old Icelandic, Gothic, Old High German); Lohndal (Double definiteness during Old Norse); emergence of DP in ontogeny/phylogeny by Osawa (DP, TP and aspect in Old English and L1 acquisition); Bittner (Early functions of definites in L1 acquisition); Wood (Demonstratives and possessives emergent from Old English); Bauer ((in)definite articles in Indo-European) and Stark (Variation in nominal indefiniteness in Romance).
Author | : Gianina Iordăchioaia |
Publisher | : Cambridge Scholars Publishing |
Total Pages | : 195 |
Release | : 2014-07-08 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 1443863815 |
This collection of selected papers addresses theoretical and empirical issues related to lexical categories, categorization and category change. Any grammatical description makes use of parts-of-speech. The proper set of lexical categories and the definitions of their properties cross-linguistically has been a remnant issue in linguistics since the beginnings of grammatical description. Besides, the traditional classification of lexical classes with their morphological, syntactic and/or interpretational properties has led to the emergence of mixed categories, which are problematic in linguistic theory, since the current systems, either feature-based or syntactic, have no means to express fuzziness. This volume addresses both these issues in two thematic parts. The first part, “Categories and categorization”, consists of papers that tackle the problem of defining categories and mixed categories and its reflex on the inventory. The second part, “Issues in category change”, comprises investigations on category change, focusing on nominalizations, which is the test ground for a theory of category change and word formation. The papers included in this part discuss, among others, the similarities and mismatches between derived nominals and the corresponding verbs in terms of argument realization and eventive interpretation. The languages investigated in the volume include English, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. This book targets researchers and advanced students in theoretical linguistics.
Author | : Susann Fischer |
Publisher | : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG |
Total Pages | : 702 |
Release | : 2016-09-12 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 3110311860 |
Different components of grammar interact in non-trivial ways. It has been under debate what the actual range of interaction is and how we can most appropriately represent this in grammatical theory. The volume provides a general overview of various topics in the linguistics of Romance languages by examining them through the interaction of grammatical components and functions as a state-of-the-art report, but at the same time as a manual of Romance languages.
Author | : Lisa Matthewson |
Publisher | : BRILL |
Total Pages | : 499 |
Release | : 2008 |
Genre | : Education |
ISBN | : 0080453503 |
This volume presents articles by formal linguists on quantification in (relatively) understudied languages. The ten contributions provide analysis of quantificational phenomena in languages from nine different families: Eskimo-Aleut, Algonquian, Na-Dene, Austronesian, Basque, Quechua, Otomanguean, Bantu, and Chadic. Approximately half of the papers present systematic overviews of quantificational phenomena in the respective languages; the remainder of the papers present theoretical analyses of specific quantificational constructions. The cross-linguistic focus of this volume enables standard theories of quantification to be challenged by languages other than those for which they were originally designed. The volume as a whole also uncovers a number of cross-linguistically common properties in the realm of quantification. The research presented here forms part of a growing trend towards formal study of understudied languages. This is a process which will ultimately lead us to a greatly enriched understanding of the universal human language faculty. The authors are all experts on their respective languages, most with many years field experience. All the authors have theoretical expertise in the area of quantification. This book will be of interest to semanticists and syntacticians working on quantification, to specialists in the languages discussed, and to semantic and syntactic fieldworkers. * This volume presents articles on quantification in (relatively) understudied languages * The authors are all experts on their respective languages
Author | : Frans Plank |
Publisher | : Walter de Gruyter |
Total Pages | : 878 |
Release | : 2008-08-22 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 3110197073 |
The result of over five years of close collaboration among an international group of leading typologists within the EUROTYP program, this volume is about the morphology and syntax of the noun phrase. Particular attention is being paid to nominal inflectional categories and inflectional systems and to the syntax of determination, modification, and conjunction. Its areal focus, like that of other EUROTYP volumes, is on the languages of Europe; but in order to appreciate what is peculiarly European about their noun phrases, a more comprehensive and genuinely typological view is being taken at the full range of cross-linguistic variation within this structural domain. There has been no shortage lately of contributions to the theory of noun phrase structure; the present volume is, however, unique in the extent to which its theorizing is empirically grounded.
Author | : Andreas Späth |
Publisher | : Walter de Gruyter |
Total Pages | : 405 |
Release | : 2012-02-14 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 3110926008 |
The volume contains articles that focus on the interface between linguistic and conceptual knowledge. The issues addressed in the volume include the preconditions of every level of the language system that are required for the transformation of linguistic information into conceptual representations. In accordance with Chomsky’s Minimalist language model, the language system is embedded into the performative systems where language is a part of the cognitive competence of human beings, i.e. system of articulation and perception (A/P) and the conceptual-intentional system (C/I). During the formation of linguistic structures, every performative system obtains well-formed representations as its input information. The articles of the volume show how interface conditions determine the linguistic representations on each level of the linguistic system. Interface conditions result in requirements for the ordering of linguistic elements. The syntactic transformation achieves a point, where the linguistic structure formation branches to two distinct representational levels. Both levels deliver instructions for the systems of performance A/P and C/I. Linearization takes place on the syntactic surface of a sentence. The linearization of linguistic elements is manifest at the derivational point of Spell-out and also on the level of the phonological form (PF). This means that on the one hand, linearization is relevant to the phonetic aspect of linguistic expressions, and on the other hand, the interpretation of linguistic utterances is based on hierarchical structures. On the level of Logical Form (LF) all operations apply which don’t have any influence on the linear order in overt syntax. In addition they affect the generation of hierarchical structures. The structure obtained on LF is the representational format of the semantic form of a sentence.
Author | : Henrik Høeg Müller |
Publisher | : John Benjamins Publishing |
Total Pages | : 394 |
Release | : 2008-07-09 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 902729030X |
This volume brings together scholars of diverse theoretical persuasions who all share an interest in capturing the role that nominal determination and reference assignment play in the complicated interplay between thought, language and communication. The articles can be divided roughly into five main areas of concern: the conceptual level of determination; the emergence and function of articles; their semantic contribution to nominal interpretation; the morphology and syntax of determiners; and the interplay and contrasts between articles, demonstratives and possessives. Thus, linguistic and philosophical issues in the subject field of nominal determination are addressed at all interface levels between morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. This volume shows that different theoretical frameworks may be brought fruitfully together in the effort to formulate new analyses of well-known problems, but also to raise new questions and point to new areas which may prove interesting topics for future research both in functional and formal paradigms.