Reconstructing Syntax

Reconstructing Syntax PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004392009
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 389

Get Book Here

Book Description
During several decades, syntactic reconstruction has been more or less regarded as a bootless and an unsuccessful venture, not least due to the heavy criticism in the 1970s from scholars like Watkins, Jeffers, Lightfoot, etc. This fallacious view culminated in Lightfoot’s (2002: 625) conclusion: “[i]f somebody thinks that they can reconstruct grammars more successfully and in more widespread fashion, let them tell us their methods and show us their results. Then we’ll eat the pudding.” This volume provides methods for the identification of i) cognates in syntax, and ii) the directionality of syntactic change, showcasing the results in the introduction and eight articles. These examples are offered as both tastier and also more nourishing than the pudding Lightfoot had in mind when discarding the viability of reconstructing syntax.

Reconstructing Syntax

Reconstructing Syntax PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004392009
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 389

Get Book Here

Book Description
During several decades, syntactic reconstruction has been more or less regarded as a bootless and an unsuccessful venture, not least due to the heavy criticism in the 1970s from scholars like Watkins, Jeffers, Lightfoot, etc. This fallacious view culminated in Lightfoot’s (2002: 625) conclusion: “[i]f somebody thinks that they can reconstruct grammars more successfully and in more widespread fashion, let them tell us their methods and show us their results. Then we’ll eat the pudding.” This volume provides methods for the identification of i) cognates in syntax, and ii) the directionality of syntactic change, showcasing the results in the introduction and eight articles. These examples are offered as both tastier and also more nourishing than the pudding Lightfoot had in mind when discarding the viability of reconstructing syntax.

The Theme–Topic Interface

The Theme–Topic Interface PDF Author: María de los Ángeles Gómez González
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027299005
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 464

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Theme-Topic Interface (TTI) gives a useful catalogue of approaches to the concept Theme in the analysis of Natural Language. The book is written with both theoretical and descriptive goals and aims to synthesize and revise current approaches to pragmatic functions. In addition, TTI explains that different thematic constructions in natural language reveal different discourse strategies related to point of view and speaker subjectivity, which shows the mutually supportive role of form and discourse function vis-á-vis each other. The book’s value is enhanced by the use of natural language corpora, the Lancaster IBM Spoken English Corpus (LIBMSEC), and by running multivariate statistical tests, taking into account both segmental and suprasegmental features. The bibliography lists more than 600 publications providing ample material for further research into an integrated theory of language and its use. The indexes provide easy access to most authors mentioned and to the major concepts covered.

Constructing Global Enemies

Constructing Global Enemies PDF Author: Eva Herschinger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136863117
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book Here

Book Description
Examines efforts to counteract terrorism at the international level and drug prohibition policies

The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar

The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar PDF Author: Thomas Hoffmann
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199376638
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
The last decade has seen a rise in popularity in construction-based approaches to grammar. The various approaches within the rubric 'construction grammar' all see language as a network of constructions-pairings of form and meaning. Construction Grammar, as a kind of cognitive linguistics, differs significantly from mainstream generative grammar as espoused by Chomsky and his followers. Advocates of Construction Grammar see it as a psychologically plausible theory of human language. As such, it is capable of providing a principled account of language acquisition, language variation and language change. Research in Construction Grammar also includes multidisciplinary cognitive studies in psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and computational linguistics. The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar is the first authoritative reference work solely dedicated to Construction Grammar. Divided into five sections, the book will be an invaluable resource that students and scholars alike can turn to for a comprehensive account of current work on Construction Grammar, its theoretical foundations, and its applications to and relationship with other kinds of linguistic enquiry.

God and Blackness

God and Blackness PDF Author: Andrea C. Abrams
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814705251
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Get Book Here

Book Description
Blackness, as a concept, is extremely fluid: it can refer to cultural and ethnic identity, socio-political status, an aesthetic and embodied way of being, a social and political consciousness, or a diasporic kinship. It is used as a description of skin color ranging from the palest cream to the richest chocolate; as a marker of enslavement, marginalization, criminality, filth, or evil; or as a symbol of pride, beauty, elegance, strength, and depth. Despite the fact that it is elusive and difficult to define, blackness serves as one of the most potent and unifying domains of identity.a a God and Blackness aoffers an ethnographic study of blackness as it is understood within a specific communityOCothat of the First Afrikan Church, a middle-class Afrocentric congregation in Atlanta, Georgia. Drawing on nearly two years of participant observation and in-depth interviews, Andrea C. Abrams examines how this community has employed Afrocentrism and Black theology as a means of negotiating the unreconciled natures of thoughts and ideals that are part of being both black and American. Specifically, Abrams examines the ways in which First AfrikanOCOs construction of community is influenced by shared understandings of blackness, and probes the means through which individuals negotiate the tensions created by competing constructions of their black identity. Although Afrocentrism operates as the focal point of this discussion, the book examines questions of political identity, religious expression and gender dynamics through the lens of a unique black church. a"

Rock Mechanics in Underground Construction

Rock Mechanics in Underground Construction PDF Author: C. F. Leung
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9812772413
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 530

Get Book Here

Book Description
This proceedings volume contains over 300 papers on rock mechanics and engineering with contributors from all over Asia and many other parts of the world. Seven keynote papers summarize the state-of-the-art in rock engineering including topics such as underground rock caverns. The technical papers cover a wide range of rock mechanics and engineering topics: rock tunnels, caverns, mining, rock slopes and dams, rock blasting, rock burst and failure, rock properties, rock mass, rock joints, and block theory. Numerous valuable rock engineering case studies are also reported. This volume should serve as a useful reference for the engineers and researchers in rock mechanics and rock engineering. Sample Chapter(s). Chapter 1: Forensic Engineering for Underground Construction (244 KB). Contents: Tunnelling; Rock Caverns; Mining; Blasting and Dynamics; Support and Reinforcement; Rock Mass; Rock Properties; Discontinuities; Block Theory and DDA; Failure, Fracture and Burst; Dams and Slopes; Other Applications. Readership: Graduate students, academics and researchers in civil engineering and engineering mechanics.

Past Participle Agreement

Past Participle Agreement PDF Author: Jorge Vega Vilanova
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 902726046X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this book, the traditional definition of ‘grammaticalization’ is challenged in the light of current developments in grammar theory. The main innovation of this approach is the focus on the feature composition of lexical items. From this perspective, the loss of past participle agreement in Catalan is analyzed on the basis of newly collected data as a consequence of the grammaticalization of formal features. The emergence of syntactic formal features through grammaticalization is understood as a last-resort repair mechanism for pragmatically costly derivations. Further far-reaching implications of this proposal under discussion are: the interplay between (re-)parametrization, economy, cyclicity, and grammaticalization; the characterization of free variation under a modified version of the Interface Hypothesis; and the precedence of syntactic over morphological change. This book is not only of interest to specialists in Romance languages but also to anyone working on diachronic linguistics.

Approaches to Hungarian

Approaches to Hungarian PDF Author: Veronika Hegedűs
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027261601
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume contains selected papers from the 13th International Conference on the Structure of Hungarian (Budapest, 2017).The contributions address current issues in Hungarian linguistics, including comparisons with other languages (e.g., English, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish). Specifically, the phonetics and phonology papers present experimental and corpus studies of /h/ voicing, the acoustics of Hungarian word stress, and vowel harmony in harmonically mixed stems. The papers on syntax and semantics discuss object agreement and its locality restrictions, equative markers in German and Hungarian diachronically and synchronically, anaphoric possessor strategies and definite article distribution, and the semantics of various aspectual adverbs. Experimental studies of information structure examine the linear placement of textually given topical constituents post-verbally, exhaustivity inferences with focus partitioning in German, English and Hungarian, and contextual factors licensing Hungarian structural focus. The broad range of topics ensures that this volume will interest scholars of Hungarian and theoretical linguists more generally.

Periphrasis and Inflexion in Diachrony

Periphrasis and Inflexion in Diachrony PDF Author: Adam Ledgeway
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198870809
Category : Romance languages
Languages : en
Pages : 529

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume brings together contributions from leading specialists in syntax and morphology to explore the complex relation between periphrasis and inflexion from both a synchronic and diachronic perspective. The chapters draw on data from across the Romance language family, including standard and regional varieties and dialects. The relation between periphrasis and inflexion raises questions for both syntax and morphology, and understanding the phenomena involved requires cooperation across these sub-domains. For example, the components that express many periphrases can be interrupted by other words in a way that is common in syntax but not in morphology, and in some contexts, a periphrastic form may be semantically equivalent to a single-word inflected form, with which it arguably forms part of a paradigmatic set. Patterns of this kind are found across Romance, albeit with significant local differences. Moreover, diachrony is essential in understanding these phenomena, and the rich historical documentation available for Romance allows an in-depth exploration of the changes and variation involved, as different members of the family may instantiate different stages of development. Studying these changes also raises important questions about the relation between attested and reconstructed patterns. Although the empirical focus of the volume is on the Romance languages, the analyses and conclusions presented shed light on the development and nature of similar structures in other language families and provide valuable insights relevant to linguistic theory more broadly.

Cultural Turns/Geographical Turns

Cultural Turns/Geographical Turns PDF Author: Simon Naylor
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131787904X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 410

Get Book Here

Book Description
Introduces undergraduates to the key debates regarding space and culture and the key theoretical arguments which guide cultural geographical work. This book addresses the impact, significance, and characteristics of the 'cultural turn' in contemporary geography. It focuses on the development of the cultural geography subdiscipline and on what has made it a peculiar and unique realm of study. It demonstrates the importance of culture in the development of debates in other subdisciplines within geography and beyond. In line with these previous themes, the significance of space in the production of cultural values and expressions is also developed. Along with its timely examination of the health of the cultural geographical subdiscipline, this book is to be valued for its analysis of the impact of cultural theory on studies elsewhere in geography and of ideas of space and spatiality elsewhere in the social sciences.