Aspectuality

Aspectuality PDF Author: Sarah Dessì Schmid
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110564106
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
This synchronic study presents a new onomasiological, frame-theoretical model for the description, classification and theoretical analysis of the cross-linguistic content category aspectuality. It deals specifically with those pieces of information, which, in their interplay, constitute the aspectual value of states of affairs. The focus is on Romance Languages, although the model can be applied just as well to other languages, in that it is underpinned by a principle grounded in a fundamental cognitive ability: the delimitation principle. Unlike traditional approaches, which generally have a semasiological orientation and strictly adhere to a semantic differentiation between grammatical aspect and lexical aspect (Aktionsart), this study makes no such differentiation and understands these as merely different formal realisations of one and the same content category: aspectuality.

Aspectuality

Aspectuality PDF Author: Sarah Dessì Schmid
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110564106
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 319

Get Book Here

Book Description
This synchronic study presents a new onomasiological, frame-theoretical model for the description, classification and theoretical analysis of the cross-linguistic content category aspectuality. It deals specifically with those pieces of information, which, in their interplay, constitute the aspectual value of states of affairs. The focus is on Romance Languages, although the model can be applied just as well to other languages, in that it is underpinned by a principle grounded in a fundamental cognitive ability: the delimitation principle. Unlike traditional approaches, which generally have a semasiological orientation and strictly adhere to a semantic differentiation between grammatical aspect and lexical aspect (Aktionsart), this study makes no such differentiation and understands these as merely different formal realisations of one and the same content category: aspectuality.

Aspectuality across Languages

Aspectuality across Languages PDF Author: Alan Cienki
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027263698
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
The book provides a nuanced, multimodal perspective on how people express events via certain grammatical forms of verbs in speech and certain qualities of movement in manual gestures. The volume is the outcome of an international project that involved three teams: one each from France, Germany, and Russia, including scholars from the Netherlands and the United States. Aspect and gesture use are studied in three Indo-European languages, i.e. French, German, and Russian. The book also summarizes the main points and arguments from French, German, and Russian works on aspect in relation to tense, bringing these historical traditions together for an English-speaking reading audience. The work rekindles some fundamental theorizing about events and aspect, reinvigorating it in a new light with the use of recent theorizing from cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology, as well as new research methods applied to new data from actual spoken, interactive language use. It illustrates the value of researching the variably multimodal nature of communication – as well as theoretical issues in connection with thinking for speaking and mental simulation – from an empirical point of view.

A Theory of Aspectuality

A Theory of Aspectuality PDF Author: Henk J. Verkuyl
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521564526
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Sentences may pertain to states or processes or events. They may express duration, frequency, habituality, and many other forms of temporality. How do they do this? It is the aspectual properties of sentences in natural languages which allow the user to express a temporal structure, and Henk Verkuyl presents a unified formal system to account for them. He explains aspectuality in terms of the opposition between terminative aspect and durative aspect, and describes the way in which terminative aspect is compositionally formed on the basis of semantic information expressed by different syntactic elements, in particular the verb and its arguments. The aim is to determine which semantic conditions make a sentence terminative; but at least ten different forms of durative aspectuality are also treated. All are drawn into a theory which can account for both terminative and durative aspectuality together. A Theory of Aspectuality draws together into a coherent whole the author's thinking on the subject over the last twenty years, and will interest all those working on aspect and the semantics of noun phrases. It promises to be a major new contribution to our understanding of the subject.

Tense, aspect and discourse structure

Tense, aspect and discourse structure PDF Author: Jakob Egetenmeyer, Sarah Dessì Schmid, Martin G. Becker
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111453936
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description


The Theory of Functional Grammar: The structure of the clause

The Theory of Functional Grammar: The structure of the clause PDF Author: Simon C. Dik
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 9783110154047
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
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 ...

Topics in South Slavic Syntax and Semantics

Topics in South Slavic Syntax and Semantics PDF Author: Mila Dimitrova-Vulchanova
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 902723678X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
This collection of articles presents a variety of approaches to central phenomena in South Slavic syntax and semantics, with an informal introduction by the editors on South Slavic clause structure. Phenomena addressed (treated partly on a language specific basis, partly comparative) include: the structure of the functional field, verb fronting, clitic placement, conjunctions, noun phrase structure, possessives, agreement, and aspectual phenomena.

Pragmatic Markers in Contrast

Pragmatic Markers in Contrast PDF Author: Karin Aijmer
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 0080480292
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
Presents an examination of the methods and theories for studying pragmatic markers cross-linguistically. This work also explores the comparison of pragmatic markers across languages in order to offer important insights into the similarities and differences between languages.

Cross-linguistic Semantics of Tense, Aspect, and Modality

Cross-linguistic Semantics of Tense, Aspect, and Modality PDF Author: Lotte Hogeweg
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027288933
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
In recent years, we have witnessed, on the one hand, an increased interest in cross-linguistic data in formal semantic studies, and, on the other hand, an increased concern for semantic issues in language typology. However, only few studies combine semantic and typological research for a particular semantic domain (such as the papers in Bach et al. (1995) on quantification and Smith (1997) on aspect). This book brings together formal semanticists with a cross-linguistic perspective and/or those working on lesser-known languages, and typologists interested in semantic theory, to discuss semantic variation in the specific domain of Tense, Aspect, and Mood/Modality.

Perspectives on Aspect

Perspectives on Aspect PDF Author: Henk J. Verkuyl
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402032323
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
This book offers both a retrospective view on how theories of aspectuality have developed over the past 30 years, and presents current, new directions of aspectuality research. The articles in this book take a wide crosslinguistic scope including aspectual analyses of the following languages: English and two varieties of English: African American English and Colloquial Singapore English, Italian, French, Bulgarian, Czech, Mandarin Chinese, West-Greenlandic, Wakashan languages, and Nahk-Daghestanian languages.

Syntax

Syntax PDF Author: Talmy Givón
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9781588110664
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 526

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Book Description
This new edition of Syntax: A functional-typological introduction is at many points radically revised. In the previous edition (1984) the author deliberately chose to de-emphasize the more formal aspects of syntactic structure, in favor of a more comprehensive treatment of the semantic and pragmatic correlates of syntactic structure. With hindsight the author now finds the de-emphasis of the formal properties a somewhat regrettable choice, since it creates the false impression that one could somehow be a functionalist without being at the same time a structuralist. To redress the balance, explicit treatment is given to the core formal properties of syntactic constructions, such as constituency and hierarchy (phrase structure), grammatical relations and relational control, clause union, finiteness and governed constructions. At the same time, the cognitive and communicative underpinning of grammatical universals are further elucidated and underscored, and the interplay between grammar, cognition and neurology is outlined. Also the relevant typological database is expanded, now exploring in greater precision the bounds of syntactic diversity. Lastly, Syntax treats synchronic-typological diversity more explicitly as the dynamic by-product of diachronic development or grammaticalization. In so doing a parallel is drawn between linguistic diversity and diachrony on the one hand and biological diversity and evolution on the other. It is then suggested that — as in biology — synchronic universals of grammar are exercised and instantiated primarily as constraints on development, and are thus merely the apparent by-products of universal constraints on grammaticalization.