Author: Peter C. Collins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317421361
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 429
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Book Description
First published in 1991, this book examines the communicative properties of ‘cleft’ and ‘pseudo-cleft’ constructions in contemporary English. The book argues that these properties cannot be ignored in any attempt to provide an adequate grammatical description of the constructions. Furthermore, they provide a source of explanations for the patterns of stylistic variation displayed by clefts and pseudo-clefts. The book reports findings from a corpus-based study of clefts and pseudo-clefts in modern British English.
Author: F. R. Higgins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317436814
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 408
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Book Description
This work, first published in 1979, was a doctoral dissertation submitted to the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on June 22nd 1973. The ostensible central topic of this essay is a construction which is generally known as the "pseudo-cleft" construction. This essay aims to provide an overall picture of the construction, and show why another treatment of it is necessary. This book will be of interest to those pursuing the topic of copular sentences.
Author: Katharina Hartmann
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027271127
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 358
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Book Description
The phenomenon of clefts is beyond doubt a golden oldie. It has captivated linguists of different disciplines for decades. The fascination arises from the unique syntax of clefts in interaction with their pragmatic and semantic interpretation. Clefts structure sentences according to the information state of the constituents contained in them. They are special as they exhibit a rather uncommon syntactic form to achieve the separation of the prominent part, either focal or topical, from the background of the clause. Despite the long-lasting interest in clefts, linguists have not yet come to an agreement on many basic questions. The articles contained in this volume address these issues from new theoretical and empirical perspectives. Based on data from about 50 languages from all over the world, this volume presents new arguments for the proper derivation of clefts, and contributes to the ongoing debate on the information-structural impact of cleft structures. Theoretically, it combines modern syntactic theorizing with investigations at the interface between grammar and information-structure.
Author: Gabriela Bara
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3640554256
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 41
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Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,7, Technical University of Braunschweig (Englisches Seminar), course: Introduction to Information Structure, language: English, abstract: From language to language, there are different alternatives in which a speaker can structure information. Information structure deals with the highlighting of pieces of information in sentences. Even though there are a variety of ways in which the same basic informational content can be conveyed, the preference for a particular way reveals how the speaker's semantic representation is transposed into syntactical data. Moreover, the speaker's choice for structuring information into a particular linguistic form shows the coherent way in which utterances are connected in sequences, revealing thus the importance of discourse. There are several syntactic devices that are able to encode the pragmatic information of a preferred alternative. One type of such devices used to mark information structure is cleft constructions. There are two major types of clefts: it-clefts and WH-clefts, also called pseudo-clefts. There has been claimed in the literature for a long time that cleft constructions are interchangeable. Clefts present a series of syntactic similarities, but they behave differently in discourse. The purpose of this paper is to prove that it-clefts and WH-clefts are not interchangeable. In doing so, data will be analyzed by comparing clefts as far as form, structure, and discourse functions are concerned, and eventually, in the light of given and known information, I will show the essential differences between them. Although the grammatical forms are in direct relation and determine to some degree the information structure in a cleft, apart from the syntactical level, of significant importance is the analysis of cleft constructions as integrated components of a discourse. One should take into account the natural flow of la
Author: Markku Haakana
Publisher: BoD - Books on Demand
ISBN: 9522221341
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
Talk in interaction - Comparative dimensions is a collection of current conversation analytical work on interactional practices. How do speakers correct the errors made by other speakers? How is disappointment expressed in interaction? How are disputes constructed in different kinds of interaction? Do girls and boys construct play interaction in the same way? These are among the topics addressed in the volume. The central theme of the volume is comparative analysis of interactional practices. The authors analyse the specific phenomena through different kinds of comparative perspectives. Some of the studies analyse the different ways of construction a certain conversational action, some compare the realization of certain activities in different kinds of interactions (e.g. everyday vs. institutional interaction), and some explore the culture- and language-specific aspects of interaction. In addition, the articles address the issues of gender and the change in interactional practices over the time. Furthermore, the volume explores the possibilities and challenges of comparative analysis within conversation analysis in general.
Author: Peter C. Collins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781138918412
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
First published in 1991, this book examines the communicative properties of 'cleft' and 'pseudo-cleft' constructions in contemporary English. The book argues that these properties cannot be ignored in any attempt to provide an adequate grammatical description of the constructions. Furthermore, they provide a source of explanations for the patterns of stylistic variation displayed by clefts and pseudo-clefts. The book reports findings from a corpus-based study of clefts and pseudo-clefts in modern British English.
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004402918
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 393
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Book Description
The chapters of this volume address a variety of topics that pertain to modern readers’ understanding of ancient texts, as well as tools or resources that can facilitate contemporary audiences’ interpretation of these ancient writings and their language. In this regard, they cover subjects related to the fields of ancient Hebrew linguistics and Bible translation. The chapters apply linguistic insights and theories to elucidate elements of ancient texts for modern readers, investigate how ancient texts help modern readers to interpret features in other ancient texts, and suggest ways in which translations can make the language and conceptual worlds of ancient texts more accessible to modern readers. In so doing, they present the results of original research, identify new lines and topics of inquiry, and make novel contributions to modern readers’ understanding of ancient texts. Contributors are Alexander Andrason, Barry L. Bandstra, Reinier de Blois, Lénart J. de Regt, Gideon R. Kotzé, Geoffrey Khan, Christian S. Locatell, Kristopher Lyle, John A. Messarra, Cynthia L. Miller-Naudé, Jacobus A. Naudé, Daniel Rodriguez, Eep Talstra, Jeremy Thompson, Cornelius M. van den Heever, Herrie F. van Rooy, Gerrit J. van Steenbergen, Ernst Wendland, Tamar Zewi.
Author: Renaat Declerck
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110869330
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
Studies on Copular Sentences, Clefts and Pseudo-Clefts.
Author: Rodney Huddleston
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521297042
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 516
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Book Description
Written for students without knowledge of linguistics and unfamiliar with "traditional" grammar, this text concentrates on providing a much needed foundation in Standard English in preparation for more advanced work in theoretical linguistics.
Author: Laurel J. Brinton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108326331
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 598
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Book Description
Based on a rich set of historical data, this book traces the development of pragmatic markers in English, from hwæt in Old English and whilom in Middle English to whatever and I'm just saying in present-day English. Laurel J. Brinton carefully maps the syntactic origins and development of these forms, and critically examines postulated unilineal pathways, such as from adverb to conjunction to discourse marker, or from main clause to parenthetical. The book sets case studies within a larger examination of the development of pragmatic markers as instances of grammaticalization or pragmaticalization. The characteristics of pragmatic markers - as primarily oral, syntactically optional, sentence-external, grammatically indeterminate elements - are revised in the context of scholarship on pragmatic markers over the last thirty or more years.
