Minimalism, Scope, and VP Structure

Minimalism, Scope, and VP Structure PDF Author: Thomas S. Stroik
Publisher: SAGE Publications, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
In this scholarly book, author Thomas Stroik furthers recent directions in generative grammars. Bringing together Chomsky's minimalist assumptions of syntactic representation and Aoun and Li's theory of scope, Stroik investigates what the logical representation of a sentence can tell us about the structure of verb phrases (VPs). Arguing that scopal relations provide the clearest view of the structural relationship between noun phrase (NP) arguments, he uses scopal data to explore and expose the base argument structure of VPs. In his analysis of VP structure, Stroik discusses double-object constructions, multiple interrogatives, bare NP adverbials, and psych-verb constructions.

Minimalism, Scope, and VP Structure

Minimalism, Scope, and VP Structure PDF Author: Thomas S. Stroik
Publisher: SAGE Publications, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
In this scholarly book, author Thomas Stroik furthers recent directions in generative grammars. Bringing together Chomsky's minimalist assumptions of syntactic representation and Aoun and Li's theory of scope, Stroik investigates what the logical representation of a sentence can tell us about the structure of verb phrases (VPs). Arguing that scopal relations provide the clearest view of the structural relationship between noun phrase (NP) arguments, he uses scopal data to explore and expose the base argument structure of VPs. In his analysis of VP structure, Stroik discusses double-object constructions, multiple interrogatives, bare NP adverbials, and psych-verb constructions.

Locality in Minimalist Syntax

Locality in Minimalist Syntax PDF Author: Thomas S. Stroik
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026226157X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
This minimalist study proposes that the computational system of human language must consist of strictly local operations. In this highly original reanalysis of minimalist syntax, Thomas Stroik considers the optimal design properties for human language. Taking as his starting point Chomsky's minimalist assumption that the syntactic component of a language generates representations for sentences that are interpreted at perceptual and conceptual interfaces, Stroik investigates how these representations can be generated most parsimoniously. Countering the prevailing analyses of minimalist syntax, he argues that the computational properties of human language consist only of strictly local Merge operations that lack both look-back and look-forward properties. All grammatical operations reduce to a single sort of locally defined feature-checking operation, and all grammatical properties are the cumulative effects of local grammatical operations. As Stroik demonstrates, reducing syntactic operations to local operations with a single property—merging lexical material into syntactic derivations—not only radically increases the computational efficiency of the syntactic component, but it also optimally simplifies the design of the computational system. Locality in Minimalist Syntax explains a range of syntactic phenomena that have long resisted previous generative theories, including that-trace effects, superiority effects, and the interpretations available for multiple-wh constructions. It also introduces the Survive Principle, an important new concept for syntactic analysis, and provides something considered impossible in minimalist syntax: a locality account of displacement phenomena.

Asymmetry in Grammar

Asymmetry in Grammar PDF Author: Anne-Marie Di Sciullo
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027227782
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
Asymmetry in Grammar: Syntax and Semantics brings to fore the centrality of asymmetry in DP, VP and CP. A finer grained articulation of the DP is proposed, and further functional projections for restrictive relatives, as well as a refined analyses of case identification and presumptive pronouns. The papers on VP discuss further asymmetries among arguments, and between arguments and adjuncts. Double-object constructions, specificational copula sentences, secondary predicates, and the scope properties of adjuncts are discussed in this perspective. The papers on CP propose a further articulation of the phrasal projection, justifications for Remnant IP movement, and an analysis of variation in clause structure asymmetries. The papers in semantics support the hypothesis that interpretation is a function of configurational asymmetry. The type/token information difference is further argued to correspond to the partition between the upper and lower level of the phrase. It is also proposed that Point of View Roles are not primitives of the pragmatic component, but are head-dependent categories. Configurationality is further argued to be required to distinguish contrastive from non-contrastive Topic. Compositionality is proposed to explain cross-linguistic variations in the selectional behavior of typologically different languages. The papers in syntax include contributions from Antonia Androutsopoulou and Manuel Español-Echevarría, Dana Isac, Edit Jakab, Cedric Boeckx, Julie Anne Legate, Maria Cristina Cuervo, Jacqueline Guéron, Niina Zhang, Thomas Ernst, Manuela Ambar, Jean-Yves Pollock, Anna Maria Di Sciullo, Ilena Paul and Stanca Somesfalean.The papers on semantics include contributions of Greg Carlson,Peggy Speas and Carol Tenny, Chungmin Lee, and James Pustejovsky.

The Syntax of Adjuncts

The Syntax of Adjuncts PDF Author: Thomas Ernst
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139431692
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 571

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Book Description
This book proposes a theory of the distribution of adverbial adjuncts in a Principles and Parameters framework, claiming that there are few syntactic principles specific to adverbials; rather, for the most part, adverbials adjoin freely to any projection. Adjuncts' possible hierarchical positions are determined by whether they can receive a proper interpretation, according to their selectional (including scope) requirements and general compositional rules, while linear order is determined by hierarchical position along with a system of directionality principles and morphological weight, both of which apply generally to adjuncts and all other syntactic elements. A wide range of adverbial types is analysed; predicational adverbs (such as manner, and modal adverbs), domain expressions like financially, temporal, frequency, duration and focusing adverbials; participant PPs (e.g. locatives and benefactives); resultative and conditional clauses, and others, taken primarily from English, Chinese, French and Italian, with occasional reference to others (such as German and Japanese).

Small Phrase Layers

Small Phrase Layers PDF Author: Satu Helena Manninen
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027282226
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
This monograph examines the structure and properties of Finnish manner adverbials. The central idea is that, instead of AdvPs, DPs, APs, PPs, NumPs and InfinitivalPs, manner adverbials have the form of either kPs or pPs, and they are licensed as unique specifiers of a manner-related small vP. Secondly, because ”obligatory” and ”optional” manner adverbials are merged as specifiers of one and the same small vP, the computational system of language sees no difference between them. This is why ”obligatory” and ”optional” manner adverbials often behave in exactly the same way with regard to syntactic operations such as movement. Thirdly, the author shows that, although all arguments and VP-internal adverbials are merged as specifiers of a unique small vP, this hierarchical structure need not always be reflected in an unambiguous linear order: in many languages VP-internal manner, place and time adverbials are allowed to permute freely because they have no features which would need checking by the features of a higher functional head, and because their original Spec,vP positions are ”invisible” to the Linear Correspondence Axiom. Although the argumentation and analyses are mainly supported by Finnish data, the author also shows how they can be applied to other languages. The book also contains an extensive introduction to Finnish, to help readers unfamiliar with the language to follow the discussion.

Symmetry Breaking in Syntax

Symmetry Breaking in Syntax PDF Author: Hubert Haider
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107017750
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
A new theory of grammar which explores the old distinction between OV and VO languages and their underlying basic asymmetry.

Verbal Complement Clauses

Verbal Complement Clauses PDF Author: Claudia Felser
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027227461
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
This monograph examines the syntax of bare infinitival and participial complements of perception verbs in English and other European languages, and investigates the general conditions under which verbal complement clauses are licensed. The introductory chapter is followed by an overview of the major syntactic and semantic characteristics of non-finite complements of perception verbs in English. The third chapter presents an analysis within the framework of Chomsky's (1995) Minimalist Program according to which event-denoting complements are minimally realised as projections of an aspectual head. In the next chapter, it is argued that verbs capable of licensing aspectual complement clauses must be able to function as a special type of control predicate, an assumption which is shown to account for a number of seemingly unrelated properties of the constructions under consideration. The final chapter examines syntactically reduced clausal complements from a cross-linguistic perspective, showing that Southern Romance languages differ from Germanic ones with respect to the availability of 'bare' aspectual complement clauses, a difference that is attributed to morphological properties of verbs in these languages.

On Pied-Piping

On Pied-Piping PDF Author: Fabian Heck
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110211467
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
Pied-piping, the phenomenon that wh-movement may target categories not marked with the feature [wh], has generally been considered idiosyncratic and pathological. On Pied-Piping argues that this assessment is not correct. The book presents a compilation of crosslinguistic generalizations on pied-piping and a theory that derives them. Pied-piping is incorporated into a derivational theory of successive cyclic wh-movement that includes input-output optimization, the operation Agree, and phase theory. The resulting theory is a step towards closing a long-standing gap in syntactic theorizing.

Prepositions, Case and Verbal Prefixes

Prepositions, Case and Verbal Prefixes PDF Author: Petr Biskup
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027262640
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
This monograph is concerned with prepositional elements in Slavic languages, prepositions, verbal prefixes and functional elements of prepositional nature. It argues that verbal prefixes are incorporated prepositions projecting their argument structure in the complement of the verbal root and that their meaning is based on the two-argument meaning of prepositions, enriched with the CAUSE operator. The book investigates idiomaticity in the realm of prefixed verbs and proposes a novel analysis of non-compositional prefixed verbs based on the operation of predicate transfer. It also offers a uniform analysis of cases. Prepositional as well as non-prepositional cases are treated as a reflection of the agreement operation, whereat the type of prepositional case is determined by semantic properties of the decomposed preposition. Furthermore, it examines prepositions from a diachronic perspective and argues that they can be grammaticalised as future markers under certain circumstances.

The Locative Syntax of Experiencers

The Locative Syntax of Experiencers PDF Author: Idan Landau
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262266105
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
A new account of the peculiar syntax of psychological verbs argues that experiencers are grammaticalized as locative phrases. Experiencers—grammatical participants that undergo a certain psychological change or are in such a state—are grammatically special. As objects (John scared Mary; loud music annoys me), experiencers display two peculiar clusters of nonobject properties across different languages: their syntax is often typical of oblique arguments and their semantic scope is typical of subjects. In The Locative Syntax of Experiencers, Idan Landau investigates this puzzling correlation and argues that experiencers are syntactically coded as (mental) locations. Drawing on results from a range of languages and theoretical frameworks, Landau examines the far-reaching repercussions of this simple claim. Landau shows that all experiencer objects are grammaticalized as locative phrases, introduced by a dative/locative preposition. “Bare” experiencer objects are in fact oblique, too, the preposition being null. This preposition accounts for the oblique psych(ological) properties, attested in case alternations, cliticization, resumption, restrictions on passive formation, and so on. As locatives, object experiencers may undergo locative inversion, giving rise to the common phenomenon of quirky experiencers. When covert, this inversion endows object experiencers with wide scope, attested in control, binding, and wh-quantifier interactions. Landau's synthesis thus provides a novel solution to some of the oldest puzzles in the generative study of psychological verbs. The Locative Syntax of Experiencers offers the most comprehensive description of the syntax of psychological verbs to date, documenting their special properties in more than twenty languages. Its basic theoretical claim is readily translatable into alternative frameworks. Existing accounts of psychological verbs either consider very few languages or fail to incorporate other theoretical frameworks; this study takes a broader perspective, informed by findings of four decades of research