Meaning and Universal Grammar

Meaning and Universal Grammar PDF Author: Cliff Goddard
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027230633
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
Volume one of a set of studies that is founded on the idea that universal grammar is based on - indeed, inseparable from - meaning. The theoretical framework is the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) approach originated by Anna Wierzbicka and developed in collaboration with Cliff Goddard.

Meaning and Universal Grammar

Meaning and Universal Grammar PDF Author: Cliff Goddard
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027230633
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 355

Get Book

Book Description
Volume one of a set of studies that is founded on the idea that universal grammar is based on - indeed, inseparable from - meaning. The theoretical framework is the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) approach originated by Anna Wierzbicka and developed in collaboration with Cliff Goddard.

Meaning and Universal Grammar

Meaning and Universal Grammar PDF Author: Cliff Goddard
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027281866
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
This book develops a bold new approach to universal grammar, based on research findings of the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) program. The key idea is that universal grammar is constituted by the inherent grammatical properties of some 60 empirically established semantic primes, which appear to have concrete exponents in all languages. For six typologically divergent languages (Mangaaba-Mbula, Mandarin Chinese, Lao, Malay, Spanish and Polish), contributors identify exponents of the primes and work through a substantial set of hypotheses about their combinatorics, valency properties, complementation options, etc. Each study can also be read as a semantically-based typological profile. Four theoretical chapters by the editors describe the NSM approach and its application to grammatical typology. As a study of empirical universals in grammar, this book is unique for its rigorous semantic orientation, its methodological consistency, and its wealth of cross-linguistic detail.

Universal Grammar and Narrative Form

Universal Grammar and Narrative Form PDF Author: David Herman
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822316688
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
In a major rethinking of the functions, methods, and aims of narrative poetics, David Herman exposes important links between modernist and postmodernist literary experimentation and contemporary language theory. Ultimately a search for new tools for narrative theory, his work clarifies complex connections between science and art, theory and culture, and philosophical analysis and narrative discourse. Following an extensive historical overview of theories about universal grammar, Herman examines Joyce's Ulysses, Kafka's The Trial, and Woolf's Between the Acts as case studies of modernist literary narratives that encode grammatical principles which were (re)fashioned in logic, linguistics, and philosophy during the same period. Herman then uses the interpretation of universal grammar developed via these modernist texts to explore later twentieth-century cultural phenomena. The problem of citation in the discourses of postmodernism, for example, is discussed with reference to syntactic theory. An analysis of Peter Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover raises the question of cinematic meaning and draws on semantic theory. In each case, Herman shows how postmodern narratives encode ideas at work in current theories about the nature and function of language. Outlining new directions for the study of language in literature, Universal Grammar and Narrative Form provides a wealth of information about key literary, linguistic, and philosophical trends in the twentieth century.

Meaning and Universal Grammar

Meaning and Universal Grammar PDF Author: Cliff Goddard
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027281874
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
This book develops a bold new approach to universal grammar, based on research findings of the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) program. The key idea is that universal grammar is constituted by the inherent grammatical properties of some 60 empirically established semantic primes, which appear to have concrete exponents in all languages. For six typologically divergent languages (Mangaaba-Mbula, Mandarin Chinese, Lao, Malay, Spanish and Polish), contributors identify exponents of the primes and work through a substantial set of hypotheses about their combinatorics, valency properties, complementation options, etc. Each study can also be read as a semantically-based typological profile. Four theoretical chapters by the editors describe the NSM approach and its application to grammatical typology. As a study of empirical universals in grammar, this book is unique for its rigorous semantic orientation, its methodological consistency, and its wealth of cross-linguistic detail.

Semantic Primes and Universal Grammar

Semantic Primes and Universal Grammar PDF Author: Bert Peeters
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027230919
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
This volume is part of a research program which started with the publication, in 1972, of Anna Wierzbicka's groundbreaking work on Semantic Primitives. The first within the program to focus on a number of typologically similar languages, it proposes a French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian version of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) elaborated over the years by Wierzbicka and colleagues. Repetition is avoided through teamwork: a number of authors working on the languages under examination have had equal input in a set of five papers dealing with distinct parts of the metalanguage. Some of the findings presented here invite us to have a fresh look at what has already been achieved, and to amend some of the working hypotheses of the NSM approach accordingly. The volume also contains six case studies (on Italian sfogarsi, Portuguese saudades, Spanish crisis, French certes, Spanish expressions of sincerity and Italian and Spanish diminutives, respectively).

The Philosophy of Universal Grammar

The Philosophy of Universal Grammar PDF Author: Wolfram Hinzen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199654832
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
This book considers the relationship between language and thought from a philosophical perspective, drawing both on the philosophical study of language and the purely formal study of grammar, and arguing that the two should align. Evidence is considered from biology, the evolution of language, language disorders, and linguistic phenomena.

Speculative Grammar, Universal Grammar, and Philosophical Analysis of Language

Speculative Grammar, Universal Grammar, and Philosophical Analysis of Language PDF Author: Dino Buzzetti
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027245258
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
This volume brings together papers originally presented at a seminar series on Speculative Grammar, Universal Grammar, and Philosophical Analysis, held at the University of Bologna in 1984. The seminars aimed at considering various aspects of the interplay between linguistic theories on the one hand, and theories of meaning and logic on the other. The point of view was mainly historical, but a theoretical approach was also considered relevant. Theories of grammar and related topics were taken as a focal point of interest; their interaction with philosophical reflections on languages was examined in presentations dealing with different authors and periods, ranging from the Middle Ages to the present day.

The Oxford Handbook of Universal Grammar

The Oxford Handbook of Universal Grammar PDF Author: Ian G. Roberts
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199573778
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 673

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Book Description
''This handbook provides a critical guide to the most central proposition in modern linguistics: the notion, generally known as universal grammar, that a universal set of structural principles underlies the grammatical diversity of the world's languages. It will be a vital reference for linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists.''--

Empirical Linguistics

Empirical Linguistics PDF Author: Geoffrey Sampson
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1847144314
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Linguistics has become an empirical science again after several decades when it was preoccupied with speakers' hazy "intuitions" about language structure. With a mixture of English-language case studies and more theoretical analyses, Geoffrey Sampson gives an overview of some of the new findings and insights about the nature of language which are emerging from investigations of real-life speech and writing, often (although not always) using computers and electronic language samples ("corpora"). Concrete evidence is brought to bear to resolve long-standing questions such as "Is there one English language or many Englishes?" and "Do different social groups use characteristically elaborated or restricted language codes?" Sampson shows readers how to use some of the new techniques for themselves, giving a step-by-step "recipe-book" method for applying a quantitative technique that was invented by Alan Turing in the World War II code-breaking work at Bletchley Park and has been rediscovered and widely applied in linguistics fifty years later.

Chomsky's Universal Grammar

Chomsky's Universal Grammar PDF Author: Vivian Cook
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 9788126517473
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
This new edition introduces the reader to Noam Chomsky's theory of language by setting the specifics of syntactic analysis in the framework of his general ideas. It explains its fundamental concepts and provides an overview and history of the theory.