Functional Categories and Parametric Variation

Functional Categories and Parametric Variation PDF Author: Jamal Ouhalla
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134934750
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
From within the context of the principles and parameters framework put forward by Chomsky and others, Jamal Ouhalla develops the argument that much of what we understand by the term "grammar" involves functional categories.

Functional Categories and Parametric Variation

Functional Categories and Parametric Variation PDF Author: Jamal Ouhalla
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134934750
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
From within the context of the principles and parameters framework put forward by Chomsky and others, Jamal Ouhalla develops the argument that much of what we understand by the term "grammar" involves functional categories.

The Function of Function Words and Functional Categories

The Function of Function Words and Functional Categories PDF Author: Marcel den Dikken
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027228024
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
LC number: 2005048395

The Rise of Functional Categories

The Rise of Functional Categories PDF Author: Elly van Gelderen
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027227292
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
In recent years, word order has come to be seen, within a Government Binding/Minimalist framework, as determined by functional as well as lexical categories. Within this framework, functional categories are often seen as present in every language without evidence being available in that language. This book contains arguments that even though Universal Grammar makes functional categories available, the language learner must decide whether or not to incorporate them in his or her grammar. For instance, it is shown that English has one (not two as often assumed) functional category between the complementizer and the Negation, but that languages such as Dutch, Swedish, German and Old and Middle English have none. The title of the book can be seen in terms of the direction current research is taking; it can also be seen in terms of the changes that have taken place in English.

Functional Categories

Functional Categories PDF Author: Pieter Muysken
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521853859
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
In every language there are descriptive lexical elements, such as evening and whisper, as well as grammatical elements, such as the and -ing. The distinction between these two elements has proven useful in a number of domains, but what is covered by the terms, lexical and grammatical, and the basis on which the distinction is made, appear to vary according to the domain involved. This book analyses the grammatical elements ('functional categories') in language, a topic that has drawn considerable attention in linguistics, but has never been approached from an integrated, cross-disciplinary perspective. Muysken considers functional categories from the perspective of grammar, language history, language contact and psychology (including child language and aphasia). Empirically based, the book examines the available converging evidence from these various disciplines, and draws on comparative data from a wide range of different languages.

The Feature Structure of Functional Categories

The Feature Structure of Functional Categories PDF Author: Elabbas Benmamoun
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195353145
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Focusing on the relation between functional categories and lexical and phrasal categories in Arabic dialects, Benmamoun proposes that universally functional categories are specified for categorial features which determine their relation with lexical categories. Language variation is attributed to differences with respect to the categorial feature specifications of functional categories and how they interact with lexical categories. The book brings new insights to issues related to the syntax of functional categories, the relation between syntax and the morpho-phonological component, and comparative syntax.

Functional Categories in Learner Language

Functional Categories in Learner Language PDF Author: Christine Dimroth
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110216167
Category : Language acquisition
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Research on spontaneous processes of language acquisition has shown that early learner systems are based on lexical structures. At some point in acquisition this lexical-semantic system is given up in favour of a target-like functional category system. This work deals with the driving forces behind the acquisition of the functional properties of inflection, word-order variation, definiteness and agreement.

A Feature-Based Syntax of Functional Categories

A Feature-Based Syntax of Functional Categories PDF Author: Michael Hegarty
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110895404
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
This book develops ideas of Minimalist syntax to derive functional categories from the partially-ordered features expressed by functional elements, thereby dispensing with functional categories as primitives of the theory. It generalizes attempts to do this in the literature, while drawing significant empirical consequences from general constraints formulated to block overgeneration. The resulting theory of the construction of functional categories is applied to various problems in syntactic analysis and comparative and historical syntax, including variation across Germanic languages in patterns of verb-second and in the occurrence of expletive subjects in existential constructions, verb positions in Old and Middle English, problems regarding the placement of clitic pronouns in Romance languages and Modern Greek, and some previously unexamined structures of reduced clause coordination in colloquial English. Facts from early stages of the acquisition of syntax are shown to follow from the mechanisms for the projection of functional features as functional categories, exercised before all of the features for a language, along with their ordering and feature co-occurrence restrictions, have been acquired. It is observed that child acquisition of functional elements exhibits successive developmental stages, each characterized by the number of clausal functional elements which can be represented together within a clause. This, and facts regarding the lag in development of functional categories by children with specific language impairment, are shown to be not entirely reducible to limitations in working memory or processing capacity, but to depend in part on the growth of representational resources for the projection of functional categories.

Functional Categories in Three Atlantic Creoles

Functional Categories in Three Atlantic Creoles PDF Author: Claire Lefebvre
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027268258
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
This book is about the functional categories of three Caribbean creoles: Saramaccan, Haitian Creole and Papiamentu with two specific goals. The first one is to evaluate the respective contribution of the source languages to the functional categories of these three creoles. The second is to evaluate the degree of similarity/dissimilarity of the functional categories across these creoles. This study is cast within the relabeling-based account of creole genesis. Several lexical items discussed in this book may fulfill more than one grammatical function thus raising the issue of multifuctionality. No such in-depth comparative work of these three creoles with their source languages and of the three creoles among themselves is available elsewhere in the literature. This book is addressed to linguists (including Master and PhD students) interested in syntactic categories and more specifically in functional categories, to creolists and to researchers interested in language contact.

Functional Categories in Language Acquisition

Functional Categories in Language Acquisition PDF Author: Annette Hohenberger
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110923521
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
This study investigates the acquisition of Functional Categories (e.g., INFL (AGR, TNS), DET, COMP) from the perspective of self-organization in generative grammar. Language is conceived of as a dynamical system which evolves in time and bifurcates when critical thresholds are reached. The emergence of syntax as evidenced by the acquisition of Functional Categories is the major bifurcation in child language acquisition. Target values of syntactic parameters are attractors which children approach on individual trajectories. A proposed tripartite scenario of change - from a simple stable state A, via symmetry-breaking in a liminal phase B characterized by variation, to a new complex stable state C - accounts for the dynamics in early grammatical development. Traditional generative issues, such as the acquisition of case-marking, finiteness, V2, and wh-questions, are discussed as well as new issues, such as functional neologisms, and sentential blends. Dynamical notions like precursor, oscillation, symmetry-breaking, and trigger are important explanatory tools. The growing child phrase marker is a fractal mental object which represents syntactic information by way of self-similar extended projections. The book addresses researchers in language acquisition from various theoretical camps: generative, functional, connectionist, by giving new answers to old questions in the light of a novel challenging theory: self-organization.

Recommendations for Improving the Budget Functional Categories

Recommendations for Improving the Budget Functional Categories PDF Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on the Budget
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Budget
Languages : en
Pages : 20

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Book Description