Essays on Nominal Determination

Essays on Nominal Determination PDF Author: Henrik Høeg Müller
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027231109
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
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.

Essays on Nominal Determination

Essays on Nominal Determination PDF Author: Henrik Høeg Müller
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027231109
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 392

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

New Perspectives on Bare Noun Phrases in Romance and Beyond

New Perspectives on Bare Noun Phrases in Romance and Beyond PDF Author: Johannes Kabatek
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027271259
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
This book envisions the study of bare noun phrases as a field of research in its own right rather than an accessory matter in the wider domain of nominal determination. Combining insights from different theoretical backgrounds and extending the empirical coverage of bare noun phenomena, the ten contributions provide new perspectives on long-standing but still actively debated problems as well as investigations into previously ignored issues. The volume focuses on the wide range of bare noun phenomena in Romance languages, including Spanish, Catalan, Brazilian and European Portuguese, Italian and French; but also widens its inherently comparative perspective to languages such as Bulgarian and Modern Hebrew. The authors discuss the importance of cross-linguistic patterns in the modeling of the syntax and semantics of noun phrases and of common noun denotations, the role of information structure as well as that of discourse traditions and coordination.

Determiners and Quantifiers

Determiners and Quantifiers PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004473327
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
This volume explores the interface between morphosyntax and semantics-pragmatics in the domain of referential and quantificational nominal expressions, by means of synchronic and diachronic case studies from Romance and Germanic languages.

Disentangling Bare Nouns and Nominals Introduced by a Partitive Article

Disentangling Bare Nouns and Nominals Introduced by a Partitive Article PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004437509
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
This volume edited by Tabea Ihsane focuses on different aspects of the distribution, semantics, and internal structure of nominal constituents with a “partitive article” in its indefinite interpretation and of potentially corresponding bare nouns. It further deals with diachronic issues, such as grammaticalization and evolution in the use of “partitive articles”. The outcome is a snapshot of current research into “partitive articles” and the way they relate to bare nouns, in a cross-linguistic perspective and on new data: the research covers noteworthy data (fieldwork data and corpora) from Standard languages - like French and Italian, but also German - to dialectal and regional varieties, including endangered ones like Francoprovençal.

Investigations of the Syntax–Semantics–Pragmatics Interface

Investigations of the Syntax–Semantics–Pragmatics Interface PDF Author: Robert D. Van Valin, Jr.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027290334
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 514

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Book Description
Investigations of the Syntax-Semantics-Pragmatics Interface presents on-going research in Role and Reference Grammar in a number of critical areas of linguistic theory: verb semantics and argument structure, the nature of syntactic categories and syntactic representation, prosody and syntax, information structure and syntax, and the syntax and semantics of complex sentences. In each of these areas there are important results which not only advance the development of the theory, but also contribute to the broader theoretical discussion. In particular, there are analyses of grammatical phenomena such as transitivity in Kabardian, the verb-less numeral quantifier construction in Japanese, and an unusual kind of complex sentence in Wari’ (Chapakuran, Brazil) which not only illustrate the descriptive and explanatory power of the theory, but also present interesting challenges to other approaches. In addition, there are papers looking at the implications and applications of Role and Reference Grammar for neurolinguistic research, parsing and automated text analysis.

A Phi-Syntax for Nominal Concord

A Phi-Syntax for Nominal Concord PDF Author: Marco Benincasa
Publisher: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag
ISBN: 382339133X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
The book focusses on the grammatical feature definiteness in German, visible in the inflection of adjectives (ein schön-es Kind vs. das schön-e Kind). It argues for an analysis of this effect that draws a connection to the visible categories of number and gender on nouns and related words rather than an abstract property. This conclusion rests on the conflation of the established grammatical categories into a single one, number-gender, which explains a vast body of grammatical phenomena in German and principles of language in general.

Language Complexity

Language Complexity PDF Author: Matti Miestamo
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027231048
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
Language complexity has recently attracted considerable attention from linguists of many different persuasions. This volume – a thematic selection of papers from the conference Approaches to Complexity in Language, held in Helsinki, August 2005 – is the first collection of articles devoted to the topic. The sixteen chapters of the volume approach the notion of language complexity from a variety of perspectives. The papers are divided into three thematic sections that reflect the central themes of the book: Typology and theory, Contact and change, Creoles and pidgins. The book is mainly intended for typologists, historical linguists, contact linguists and creolists, as well as all linguists interested in language complexity in general. As the first collective volume on a very topical theme, the book is expected to be of lasting interest to the linguistic community.

Coding Participant Marking

Coding Participant Marking PDF Author: Gerrit Jan Dimmendaal
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027205779
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
Whereas Africa as a typological area is often associated with extensive verb morphology and verb serialization, this collection of studies shows that there is tremendous typological diversity at the clausal level. Verb serialization in the Khoisan area contrasts with extensive case-marking in languages of northeastern Africa, which also use converbs and light verb plus coverb constructions. Although the categorial distinction between nouns and verbs is generally clear in African languages, a number of them nevertheless provide intricate analytical challenges in this respect. Whereas some languages are strongly head marking at the clausal level, others manifest an interesting mixture of alternative strategies for the coding of participants. The analysis of information packaging, and related issues such as split ergativity, Differential Object Marking, and discourse-configurational properties also play a role in several contributions. The collection contains not only innovative analyses for the respective language families these languages belong to, but also material relevant for the current debate in theoretical linguistics concerning lexical specification as against construction-based approaches towards argument structure.

Dependency in Linguistic Description

Dependency in Linguistic Description PDF Author: Alain Polguère
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027289581
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
The book covers three major topics crucial for contemporary syntactic research. Firstly, it offers a sketch of a general theory of dependency in natural language. Different types of linguistic dependencies are distinguished (semantic, syntactic, and morphological), the criteria for their recognition are formulated, and all possible combinations are discussed in some detail. Secondly, it demonstrates the application of the general theory in two specific domains: establishing the system of Surface-Syntactic Relations in French and linear positioning of clitics in Serbian. Thirdly, it presents a formal sketch of Head-Driven Phrase-Structure Grammar modelled in terms of syntactic dependencies.

Introducing Maltese Linguistics

Introducing Maltese Linguistics PDF Author: Bernard Comrie
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027205809
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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Book Description
Meltese Linguistics offers the general linguist a wide range if still largely unexplored areas of study. This collection of articles highlights a selection of on- going research projects in phonological, morphological and syntactic issues.