Ellipsis and Focus in Generative Grammar

Ellipsis and Focus in Generative Grammar PDF Author: Susanne Winkler
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110890429
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Covering linguistic research on empty categories over more than three decades, this monograph presents the result of an in-depth syntactic and focus-theoretical investigation of ellipsis in generative grammar. The phenomenon of ellipsis most generally refers to the omission of linguistic material, structure and sound. The central aim of this book is to explain on the basis of linguistic theorizing of how it is possible that we understand more than we actually hear. The answer developed throughout this book is that ellipsis is an interface phenomenon which can only be explained on the basis of the complex interaction between syntax, semantics and information structure. Scholars of grammar and cognitive scientists will profit from reading this book.

Ellipsis and Focus in Generative Grammar

Ellipsis and Focus in Generative Grammar PDF Author: Susanne Winkler
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110890429
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Covering linguistic research on empty categories over more than three decades, this monograph presents the result of an in-depth syntactic and focus-theoretical investigation of ellipsis in generative grammar. The phenomenon of ellipsis most generally refers to the omission of linguistic material, structure and sound. The central aim of this book is to explain on the basis of linguistic theorizing of how it is possible that we understand more than we actually hear. The answer developed throughout this book is that ellipsis is an interface phenomenon which can only be explained on the basis of the complex interaction between syntax, semantics and information structure. Scholars of grammar and cognitive scientists will profit from reading this book.

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 : 1412

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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.

Focus Structure in Generative Grammar

Focus Structure in Generative Grammar PDF Author: Carsten Breul
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027227928
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
The notion of focus structure in this work refers to the distinction between categorical, thetic and identificational sentences. The central claim is that the syntactic representation of every sentence has to encode which of these types of focus structure is realized. This claim is discussed in great detail with respect to syntax, intonation and semantics within the framework of the Minimalist Program. It is shown that the incorporation of focus structure into syntax offers new perspectives for a solution of vexing problems in syntax and semantics. For example, fronting (preposing, 'topicalisation') is treated as a syntactic operation which clearly belongs to core grammar, i.e. is not optional or 'stylistic'; the semantic notion of quantifier raising is dispensed with in favour of a focus structural treatment of phenomena which gave rise to it. The book appeals to generative linguists and to functional linguists who do not believe in an unbridgeable gap between the formal and functional analysis of language.

Focus in Generative Grammar

Focus in Generative Grammar PDF Author: Michael S. Rochemont
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027286337
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
The topic of this book is the notion of ‘focus’ and its linguistic characterization. The main thesis is that focus has a uniform grammatical identification only as a syntactic element with – in English at least – a certain systematic phonological interpretation and – presumably universally – a range of semantic interpretations. In broad respects, the framework within this investigation is conducted is that of Chomsky & Lasnik (1977) and the subsequent Government and Binding framework. After considering defining the location of prominence in a focused phrase in terms of constituent structure, the author argues that an argument structure approach to the focus phrase/prominence relation is more promising. This is then exemplified in analyses of cleft focus and constructional focus.

The Oxford Handbook of Ellipsis

The Oxford Handbook of Ellipsis PDF Author: Jeroen van Craenenbroeck
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks
ISBN: 0198712391
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1147

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Book Description
This handbook is the first volume to provide a comprehensive, in-depth, and balanced discussion of ellipsis, a phenomena whereby expressions in natural language appear to be incomplete but are still understood. It explores fundamental questions about the workings of grammar and provides detailed case studies of inter- and intralinguistic variation.

Bare Argument Ellipsis and Focus

Bare Argument Ellipsis and Focus PDF Author: Andreas Konietzko
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027266565
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
This monograph explores the syntax and information structure of bare argument ellipsis. The study concentrates on stripping, which is identified as a subtype of bare argument ellipsis typically associated with focus sensitive particles or negation. This monograph presents a unified account of stripping located at the syntax-information structure interface and argues for a licensing mechanism which is strongly tied to the focus properties of the construction. Under this view, types of bare argument ellipsis such as stripping and pseudostripping, which have received different treatments in the literature, are shown to be subject to the same licensing mechanism. This analysis is also extended to instances of bare argument ellipsis in embedded contexts, which have received little attention in the literature so far. Integrating theoretical and experimental reasoning, this study presents a series of experiments investigating the extraction, prosody and context properties of stripping and thus arrives at a comprehensive and unified account.

Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory

Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory PDF Author: Enoch O. Aboh
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027288704
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
The volumes Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory: Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ contain the selected papers of the Going Romance conferences, a major European annual discussion forum for theoretically relevant research on Romance languages.This volume assembles a significant number of selected papers that were presented at the 21st edition of Going Romance, which was organized by the Chair of Romance Linguistics of the University of Amsterdam in December 2007. The range of languages (both standard and non-standard varieties) analyzed in this volume is quite significant: Catalan, French, Italian, European and Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish. The volume is quite representative of the spread of the variety of research carried out nowadays on Romance languages within theoretical linguistics and shows the vitality of this research.

The Syntax of Silence

The Syntax of Silence PDF Author: Jason Merchant
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780199243730
Category : Extraction (Linguistics).
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
A primary goal of contemporary theoretical linguistics is to develop a theory of the correspondence between sound (or gesture) and meaning. This sound-meaning correspondence breaks down completely in the case of ellipsis, and yet various forms of ellipsis are pervasive in natural language:words and phrases which should be in the linguistic signal go missing. How this should be possible is the focus of Jason Merchant's investigation. He focuses on the form of ellipsis known as sluicing, a common feature of interrogative clauses, such as in 'Sally's out hunting - guess what!'; and'Someone called, but I can't tell you who'. It is the most frequently found cross-linguistic form of ellipsis. Dr Merchant studies the phenomenon across twenty-four languages, and attempts to explain it in linguistic and behavioural terms.

The Elliptical Noun Phrase in English

The Elliptical Noun Phrase in English PDF Author: Christine Günther
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415658268
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
This book presents a detailed analysis of structural as well as pragmatic aspects underlying the phenomenon of noun ellipsis in English. Here Günther examines the structure of elliptical noun phrases to account for the conditions on noun ellipsis and those on one-insertion, with special emphasis on the (oft-neglected) parallels between the two. She also examines the use of noun ellipsis with adjectives in order to shed light on this under-researched phenomenon, drawing on data from the British National Corpus.

Right Peripheral Fragments

Right Peripheral Fragments PDF Author: Javier Fernández-Sánchez
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027261695
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
In recent years, a number of authors (De Vries 2009, Truckenbrodt 2015, Ott and de Vries 2016, inter alia) have defended that right dislocations (RD) should be treated as bisentential structures, where the “dislocated” constituent is actually a remnant of a clausal ellipsis operation licensed under identity with an antecedent clause. Although Romance RD is a fertile area of research, the consequences of the biclausal analysis remain unexplored in these languages. This monograph intends to fill this gap. Adopting this approach not only solves some issues that have always been at the core of dislocation structures in general; it also allows us to uncover novel sets of data and to provide straightforward explanations for well-known generalizations. Further, it brings RD along with a set of phenomena which are structurally very similar, like afterthoughts or split questions, which have been independently argued to display a bisentential structure. Under alternative, monoclausal approaches to RD, the striking similarities between these phenomena must be rendered anecdotal.