A Lexicalist Account of Argument Structure

A Lexicalist Account of Argument Structure PDF Author: Stefan Müller
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781013291692
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 102

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Book Description
Currently, there are two prominent schools in linguistics: Minimalism (Chomsky) and Construction Grammar (Goldberg, Tomasello). Minimalism comes with the claim that our linguistic capabilities consist of an abstract, binary combinatorial operation (Merge) and a lexicon. Most versions of Construction Grammar assume that language consists of flat phrasal schemata that contribute their own meaning and may license additional arguments. This book examines a variant of Lexical Functional Grammar, which is lexical in principle but was augmented by tools that allow for the description of phrasal constructions in the Construction Grammar sense. These new tools include templates that can be used to model inheritance hierarchies and a resource driven semantics. The resource driven semantics makes it possible to reach the effects that lexical rules had, for example remapping of arguments, by semantic means. The semantic constraints can be evaluated in the syntactic component, which is basically similar to the delayed execution of lexical rules. So this is a new formalization that might be suitable to provide solutions to longstanding problems that are not available for other formalizations. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

A Lexicalist Account of Argument Structure

A Lexicalist Account of Argument Structure PDF Author: Stefan Müller
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781013291692
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 102

Get Book

Book Description
Currently, there are two prominent schools in linguistics: Minimalism (Chomsky) and Construction Grammar (Goldberg, Tomasello). Minimalism comes with the claim that our linguistic capabilities consist of an abstract, binary combinatorial operation (Merge) and a lexicon. Most versions of Construction Grammar assume that language consists of flat phrasal schemata that contribute their own meaning and may license additional arguments. This book examines a variant of Lexical Functional Grammar, which is lexical in principle but was augmented by tools that allow for the description of phrasal constructions in the Construction Grammar sense. These new tools include templates that can be used to model inheritance hierarchies and a resource driven semantics. The resource driven semantics makes it possible to reach the effects that lexical rules had, for example remapping of arguments, by semantic means. The semantic constraints can be evaluated in the syntactic component, which is basically similar to the delayed execution of lexical rules. So this is a new formalization that might be suitable to provide solutions to longstanding problems that are not available for other formalizations. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

A lexicalist account of argument structure

A lexicalist account of argument structure PDF Author:
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961101213
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
There are two prominent schools in linguistics: Minimalism (Chomsky) and Construction Grammar (Goldberg, Tomasello). Minimalism comes with the claim that our linguistic capabilities consist of an abstract, binary combinatorial operation (Merge) and a lexicon. Most versions of Construction Grammar assume that language consists of flat phrasal schemata that contribute their own meaning and may license additional arguments. This book examines a variant of Lexical Functional Grammar, which is lexical in principle but was augmented by tools that allow for the description of phrasal constructions in the Construction Grammar sense. These new tools include templates that can be used to model inheritance hierarchies and a resource driven semantics. The resource driven semantics makes it possible to reach the effects that lexical rules had, for example remapping of arguments, by semantic means. The semantic constraints can be evaluated in the syntactic component, which is basically similar to the delayed execution of lexical rules. So this is a new formalization that might be suitable to provide solutions to longstanding problems that are not available for other formalizations. While the authors suggest a lexical treatment of many phenomena and only assume phrasal constructions for selected phenomena like benefactive and resultative constructions in English, it can be shown that even these two constructions should not be treated phrasally in English and that the analysis would not extend to other languages as for instance German. I show that the new formal tools do not really improve the situation and many of the basic conceptual problems remain. Since this specific proposal fails for two constructions, it follows that proposals (in the same framework) that assume phrasal analyses for all constructions are not appropriate either. The conclusion is that lexical models are needed and this entails that the schemata that combine syntactic objects are rather abstract (as in Categorial Grammar, Minimalism, HPSG and standard LFG). On the other hand there are constructions that should be treated by very specific, phrasal schemata as in Construction Grammar and LFG and HPSG. So the conclusion is that both schools are right (and wrong) and that a combination of ideas from both camps is needed.

Argument Structure

Argument Structure PDF Author: Eric J. Reuland
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027233721
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Recent developments in the generative tradition have created new interest in matters of argument structure and argument projection, giving prominence to the discussion on the role of lexical entries. Particularly, the more traditional lexicalist view that encodes argument structure information on lexical entries is now challenged by a syntactic view under which all properties of argument structure are taken up by syntactic structure. In the light of these new developments, the contributions in this volume provide detailed empirical investigations of argument structure phenomena in a wide range of languages. The contributions vary in their response to the theoretical questions and address issues that range from the role of specific functional heads and the relation of argument projection with syntactic processes, to the position of argument structure within a broader clausal architecture and the argument structure properties of less studied categories.

The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax

The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax PDF Author: Marcel den Dikken
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107354587
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Syntax – the study of sentence structure – has been at the centre of generative linguistics from its inception and has developed rapidly and in various directions. The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax provides a historical context for what is happening in the field of generative syntax today, a survey of the various generative approaches to syntactic structure available in the literature and an overview of the state of the art in the principal modules of the theory and the interfaces with semantics, phonology, information structure and sentence processing, as well as linguistic variation and language acquisition. This indispensable resource for advanced students, professional linguists (generative and non-generative alike) and scholars in related fields of inquiry presents a comprehensive survey of the field of generative syntactic research in all its variety, written by leading experts and providing a proper sense of the range of syntactic theories calling themselves generative.

Argument Structure and Syntactic Relations

Argument Structure and Syntactic Relations PDF Author: Maia Duguine
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027255415
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
The topic of this collection is argument structure. The fourteen chapters in this book are divided into four parts: Semantic and Syntactic Properties of Event Structure; A Cartographic View on Argument Structure; Syntactic Heads Involved in Argument Structure; and Argument Structure in Language Acquisition. Rigorous theoretical analyses are combined with empirical work on specific aspects of argument structure. The book brings together authors working in different linguistic fields (semantics, syntax, and language acquisition), who explore new findings as well as more established data, but then from new theoretical perspectives. The contributions propose cartographic views of argument structure, as opposed to minimalistic proposals of a binary template model for argument structure, in order to optimally account for various syntactic and semantic facts, as well as data derived from wider cross-linguistic perspectives. "Argument structure plays a central role in the articulation of syntax. Yet whether this contribution is primordial or derivative, derivational or representational, minimalist or cartographic, is entirely up for grabs. This is what makes a book like the present one equivalent to a murder thriller: one cannot finish one chapter without wanting to read the next. While the solution to the underlying mystery remains as open as it ever was, the clues offered here seem just impossible to ignore."

Arguments and Structure

Arguments and Structure PDF Author: Teun Hoekstra
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110197359
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
This book contains 14 articles by Teun Hoekstra (1953-1998) on core issues in syntactic theory. Some articles focus on the structure of DP, others on the structure of the sentence as a whole, while others still deal explicitly with the parallels between the two. The papers are distributed over four sections: "Argument structure", "T-chains", "The morpho-syntax of verbal and nominal projections" and "Small clauses". More than half of the articles in this book are published here for the first time or appear for the first time in English. Hoekstra's work is characterized by a fundamental interest in the central questions of syntactic theory, most notably the relation between argument structure and X-bar structure. This concentrated interest led to a deep understanding of the notion of transitivity, with respect to both the status of the external argument and that of the internal argument, where "status" refers to both the content and the licensing. In this collection of papers, Hoekstra reports on his insights in these matters. As far as content and licensing of the external argument is concerned, this collection contains papers on the relation between passives and their active counterparts, the parallels between possessives and transitives and the differences and similarities between past participles and infinitives. As to the internal argument, we find papers addressing sentential complementation, verbal affixation and resultatives. And there is a whole section on tense, and its role in keeping the sentence together. One of the papers in this collection is Hoekstra's classic, but hitherto unpublished "Small clauses everywhere" (more than 70 pages), which summarizes Hoekstra's views on such issues as resultatives, particle verbs and double object constructions.

Argument Structure in Usage-Based Construction Grammar

Argument Structure in Usage-Based Construction Grammar PDF Author: Florent Perek
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027268754
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
The argument structure of verbs, defined as the part of grammar that deals with how participants in verbal events are expressed in clauses, is a classical topic in linguistics that has received considerable attention in the literature. This book investigates argument structure in English from a usage-based perspective, taking the view that the cognitive representation of grammar is shaped by language use, and that crucial aspects of grammatical organization are tied to the frequency with which words and syntactic constructions are used. On the basis of several case studies combining quantitative corpus studies and psycholinguistic experiments, it is shown how a usage-based approach sheds new light on a number of issues in argument realization and offers frequency-based explanations for its organizing principles at three levels of generality: verbs, constructions, and argument structure alternations.

Arguments in Syntax and Semantics

Arguments in Syntax and Semantics PDF Author: Alexander Williams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316239470
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
Argument structure - the pattern of underlying relations between a predicate and its dependents - is at the base of syntactic theory and the theory of the interface with semantics. This comprehensive guide explores the motives for thematic and event-structural decomposition, and its relation to structure in syntax. It also discusses broad patterns in the linking of syntactic to semantic relations, and includes insightful case studies on passive and resultative constructions. Semantically explicit and syntactically impartial, with a careful, interrogative approach, Williams clarifies notions of argument within both lexicalist and nonlexicalist approaches. Ideal for students and researchers in syntactic and semantic theory, this introduction includes: • A comprehensive overview of arguments in syntax and semantics • Discussion questions and suggestions for further reading • A glossary with helpful definitions of key terms.

The Theta System

The Theta System PDF Author: Martin Everaert
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199602522
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
This book considers the recent results and evaluations of the Theta System in both theoretical and experimental domains. Distinguished linguists from all over the world examine the theory in the context of an impressive array of new empirical data ranging from Germanic, Romance, and Slavic to Ugro-Finnish, and Semitic languages.

Arguments in Syntax and Semantics

Arguments in Syntax and Semantics PDF Author: Alexander Williams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521190967
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
A guide to the relations between a predicate and its arguments, for researchers and advanced students in linguistics. Engages foundational issues in both syntax and semantics, with attention to the correspondence between structure at the two levels. Chapters include discussion questions and suggestions for further reading.