Exploring the Syntax-Semantics Interface

Exploring the Syntax-Semantics Interface PDF Author: Robert D. Van Valin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521811798
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
This book looks at how syntax, semantics and pragmatics interact in different ways across human languages.

Exploring the Syntax-Semantics Interface

Exploring the Syntax-Semantics Interface PDF Author: Robert D. Van Valin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521811798
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
This book looks at how syntax, semantics and pragmatics interact in different ways across human languages.

Investigations of the Syntax-semantics-pragmatics Interface

Investigations of the Syntax-semantics-pragmatics Interface PDF Author: Robert D. Van Valin
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027205728
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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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.

Exploring Interfaces

Exploring Interfaces PDF Author: Mónica Cabrera
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108488277
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
An innovative exploration of the interface between grammar, meaning and form.

Economy and Semantic Interpretation

Economy and Semantic Interpretation PDF Author: Danny Fox
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262561211
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Exploring the relevance of principles of optimization to the interface between syntax and semantics. In Economy and Semantic Interpretation, Danny Fox investigates the relevance of principles of optimization (economy) to the interface between syntax and semantics. Supporting the view that grammar is restricted by economy considerations, Fox argues for various economy conditions that constrain the application of covert operations. Among other things, he argues that syntactic operations that do not affect phonology cannot apply unless they affect the semantic interpretation of a sentence. This position has a number of consequences for the architecture of grammar. For example, it suggests that the modularity assumption, according to which a language's syntax must be characterized independently of its semantics, needs to be revised. Another consequence concerns new answers to the question of exactly where in the syntactic derivation the various constraints on interpretation apply. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph No. 35Copublished with the MIT Working Papers in Linguistics series.

Morphology and Its Interfaces

Morphology and Its Interfaces PDF Author: Alexandra Galani
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 902725561X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
One of the most striking trends across linguistic research in recent years has been the examination of the interfaces between the various subcomponents of the language faculty. Yet, approaches to these interfaces across different theoretical frameworks differ substantially. This volume pulls together research into Morphology and its interfaces from researchers employing a variety of different theoretical and methodological perspectives: Morphology is a diverse field, and rather than aiming to collect works sharing a particular approach or framework of assumptions, this collection instead captures the diversity and provides an overview of the state of the research field while also addressing particular empirical phenomena with up-to-date analyses. The articles collected provide case studies from a diverse variety of languages revealing properties of the interfaces that morphology shares with syntax, semantics, phonology, and the lexicon, while the volume's inclusive cross-theoretical approach will serve to introduce readers to the findings of alternative frameworks and methodologies.

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.

Mismatch

Mismatch PDF Author: Elaine Francis
Publisher: Center for the Study of Language and Information Publica Tion
ISBN:
Category : Grammar, Comparative and general
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
Linguistic mismatch phenomena involve semiotic functions that attach to forms in defiance of grammatical design features. Noun phrases, when used as predicates, provide one example: how do predicate nominals correspond to our theories of what nouns mean? How do such phenomena challenge traditional conceptions of grammar? How do competing theories of the syntax-semantics interface stand up when confronted with mismatch phenomena? Mismatch addresses these questions through the efforts of some of the most original thinkers in syntactic and semantic theory, exploring a wide variety of mismatch phenomena in a broad sampling of languages.

The Interfaces

The Interfaces PDF Author: Kerstin Schwabe
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027227843
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
The Interfaces: Deriving and Interpreting Omitted Structures is a collection of never-before-published papers that explore the nature of the interfaces of syntax with semantics, phonology, and discourse. The papers investigate the various ways in which elliptical structures are related to these interfaces. As such, they not only make a valuable contribution to generative linguistic research but, more generally, help to deepen our understanding of the relation between form and meaning in natural language. In the book's introductory chapter, the editors address general issues related to current work on ellipsis and the syntax/semantics, syntax/phonology and syntax/discourse interfaces. The rest of the book is organized into three parts. The first examines PF-deletion accounts of elliptical structures; the second investigates these structures from the perspective of the syntax/semantic interface; and the third explores these from a perspective that concentrates on the relation between semantics and focus and discourse structure. Together the papers collected in this volume offer a convincing demonstration of the value of collaborative research on the 'interfaces'.

What Counts

What Counts PDF Author: Elena Herburger
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262263016
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
In What Counts, Elena Herburger considers the effects of focus on interpretation. She investigates how focus affects the pragmatics and truth conditions of a sentence by rearranging its quantificational structure. Adopting a neo-Davidsonian stance, Herburger claims that various pragmatic and truth-conditional effects of focus sustain a uniform explanation if focus is viewed as imposing structure on otherwise unrestricted quantification. Phenomena discussed include "free" focus, the interaction between focus and negation, the quantificational structure of adverbs of quantification, the semantics of only and even, and the differences between weak and strong determiners. One of Herburger's aims is to show that a simple semantics, without reliance on such notions as semantic presupposition, can account for the truth-conditional and pragmatic effects of focus. The book will be of interest to anyone exploring the syntax-semantics interface and current theories of quantification. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph No. 36

Semantic Structure in English

Semantic Structure in English PDF Author: Jim Feist
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027266522
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
Syntax puts our meaning (“semantics”) into sentences, and phonology puts the sentences into the sounds that we hear and there must, surely, be a structure in the meaning that is expressed in the syntax and phonology. Some writers use the phrase “semantic structure”, but are referring to conceptual structure; since we can express our conceptual thought in many different linguistic ways, we cannot equate conceptual and semantic structures. The research reported in this book shows semantic structure to be in part hierarchic, fitting the syntax in which it is expressed, and partly a network, fitting the nature of the mind, from which it springs. It is complex enough to provide for the emotive and imaginative dimensions of language, and for shifts of standard meanings in context, and the “rules” that control them. Showing the full structure of English semantics requires attention to many currently topical issues, and since the underlying theory is fresh, there are fresh implications for them. The most important of those issues is information structure, which is given full treatment, showing its overall structure, and its relation to semantics and the whole grammar of English. As of October 2024, this e-book is Open Access under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.