Nominal Phrases from a Scandinavian Perspective

Nominal Phrases from a Scandinavian Perspective PDF Author: Marit Julien
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027294127
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 365

Get Book Here

Book Description
This monograph presents a new model of the internal syntax of nominal phrases. The model is mainly based on Scandinavian, since with the wide range of variation that Scandinavian displays in the nominal domain, despite the close genetic relationship between the different varieties, Scandinavian is particularly well-suited for explorations into nominal syntax. Among the topics covered are the basic syntactic structure of nominal phrases, definiteness, adjective phrases, possessors, relative clauses, and nominal predicates. The model is however meant to be a tool for analysing the nominal phrases of any language. While the base-generated structure is taken to be universally uniform, the model allows for variation in the feature makeup of individual elements, in the phonological realisation of the features, and in the movements that may or may not apply. Hence, as shown in the final chapter, patterns found in languages outside of Scandinavian can also be accounted for within the model.

Nominal Phrases from a Scandinavian Perspective

Nominal Phrases from a Scandinavian Perspective PDF Author: Marit Julien
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027294127
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 365

Get Book Here

Book Description
This monograph presents a new model of the internal syntax of nominal phrases. The model is mainly based on Scandinavian, since with the wide range of variation that Scandinavian displays in the nominal domain, despite the close genetic relationship between the different varieties, Scandinavian is particularly well-suited for explorations into nominal syntax. Among the topics covered are the basic syntactic structure of nominal phrases, definiteness, adjective phrases, possessors, relative clauses, and nominal predicates. The model is however meant to be a tool for analysing the nominal phrases of any language. While the base-generated structure is taken to be universally uniform, the model allows for variation in the feature makeup of individual elements, in the phonological realisation of the features, and in the movements that may or may not apply. Hence, as shown in the final chapter, patterns found in languages outside of Scandinavian can also be accounted for within the model.

The Noun Phrase in Romance and Germanic

The Noun Phrase in Romance and Germanic PDF Author: Petra Sleeman
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027287295
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Get Book Here

Book Description
One of the recurrent questions in historical linguistics is to what extent languages can borrow grammar from other languages. It seems for instance hardly likely that each 'average European' language developed a definite article all by itself, without any influence from neighbouring languages. It is, on the other hand, by no means clear what exactly was borrowed, since the way in which definiteness is expressed differs greatly among the various Germanic and Romance languages and dialects. One of the main aims of this volume is to shed some light on the question of what is similar and what is different in the structure of the noun phrase of the various Romance and Germanic languages and dialects, and what causes this similarity or difference.

Grammaticalization in the North

Grammaticalization in the North PDF Author: Östen Dahl
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3944675576
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book looks at some phenomena within the grammar of the noun phrase in a group of traditional North Germanic varieties mainly spoken in Sweden and Finland, usually seen as Swedish dialects, although the differences between them and Standard Swedish are often larger than between the latter and the other standard Mainland Scandinavian languages. In addition to being conservative in many respects – e.g. in preserving nominal cases and subject-verb agreement – these varieties also display many innovative features. These include extended uses of definite articles, incorporation of attributive adjectives, and a variety of possessive constructions. Although considerable attention has been given to these phenomena in earlier literature, this book is the first to put them in the perspective of typology and grammaticalization processes. It also looks for a plausible account of the historical origin of the changes involved, arguing that many of them spread from central Sweden, where they were later reverted due to the influence from prestige varieties coming from southern Scandinavia.

Nominal Determination

Nominal Determination PDF Author: Elisabeth Stark
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027230997
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 392

Get Book Here

Book Description
The following theoretical-empirical points on the DP are discussed: Article and its referential-anaphoric properties by Abraham (Determiners in Centering Theory); Bartra (On bare NPs in Old Spanish and Catalan); identification of all functional nominal categories by Stvan (Bare singular count nouns); Kupisch & Koops (Specificity and negation); Jäger (History of German indefinite determiners); typological comparison of the interaction of nominal and verbal determination by Abraham (Discourse-functional crystallization of the or­ig­inal demonstrative); Leiss (Covert (in)definiteness and aspect in Old Icelandic, Goth­ic, Old High German); Lohndal (Double definiteness during Old Norse); emergence of DP in ontogeny/phylogeny by Osawa (DP, TP and aspect in Old English and L1 acquisition); Bittner (Early functions of definites in L1 acquisition); Wood (Demonstratives and possessives emergent from Old English); Bauer ((in)defin­ite articles in Indo-European) and Stark (Variation in nominal indefiniteness in Romance).

Crosslinguistic Studies on Noun Phrase Structure and Reference

Crosslinguistic Studies on Noun Phrase Structure and Reference PDF Author: Patricia Cabredo Hofherr
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004261443
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 413

Get Book Here

Book Description
Crosslinguistic Studies on Noun Phrase Structure and Reference contains 11 studies on the grammar of noun phrases. Part One explores NP-structure and the impact of information structure, countability and number marking on interpretation, using data from Russian, Armenian, Hebrew, Brazilian Portuguese, Karitiana, Turkish, English, Catalan and Danish. Part Two examines language specific definiteness marking strategies in spoken and signed languages—differentiated definiteness marking in Germanic, double definiteness in Greek, adnominal demonstratives in Japanese, ‘weak’ definiteness in Martiniké and the special referring options made avilable by signing. Part Three examines the second-language acquisition of genericity in English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. This volume will be of interest to researchers and students in syntax, formal semantics, and language acquisition. Contributors include: Željko Bošković, Patricia Cabredo Hofherr, Edit Doron, Nomi Erteschik Shir, Brigitte Garcia, Elaine Grolla, Tania Ionin, Loïc Jean-Louis, Makoto Kaneko, Marika Lekakou, Silvina Montrul, Ana Müller, Asya Pereltsvaig, Marie-Anne Sallandre, Helade Santos, Serkan Şener, Rebekka Studler, Kriszta Szendröi, Anne Zribi-Hertz.

Variation in Nominal Possessive Expressions

Variation in Nominal Possessive Expressions PDF Author: Alicja Piotrowska
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900468218X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is an account of the variation between two possessive constructions in Danish and Swedish: the s-genitive (husets tak ‘the house’s roof’), and the prepositional construction (taket på huset ‘the roof of the house’). Present-day corpus data, as well as historical data (texts from 1250–1550) are explored. Through statistical and qualitative analysis, various factors that influence the choice between the two constructions are identified. The book offers new data on the genitive variation in Danish and Swedish. The approach is also novel as two closely related Scandinavian languages are compared from both a historical and a contemporary perspective.

Icelandic Nominalizations and Allosemy

Icelandic Nominalizations and Allosemy PDF Author: Jim Wood
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198865155
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book brings a basic yet detailed description of Icelandic nominalizations to bear on the general theoretical and architectural issues that nominalizations have raised since the earliest work in generative syntax. While nominalization has long been central to theories of argument structure, and Icelandic has been an important language for the study of argument structure and syntax, Icelandic has not been brought into the general body of theoretical work on nominalization. In this work, Jim Wood shows that Icelandic-specific issues in the analysis of derived nominals have broad implications that go beyond the study of that one language. In particular, Icelandic provides special evidence that Complex Event Nominals (CENs), which seem to inherit their argument structure from the underlying verbs, can be formed without nominalizing a full verb phrase. This conclusion is at odds with prominent theories of nominalization that claim that CENs have the properties that they have precisely because they involve the nominalization of full verb phrases. The book develops a theory of allosemy within the framework of Distributed Morphology, showing how one single syntactic structure can get distinct semantic interpretations corresponding to the range of readings that are available to derived nominals. The resulting proposal demonstrates how the study of Icelandic nominalizations can both further our understanding of argument structure and shed new light on the syntax-semantics interface.

Adjective attribution

Adjective attribution PDF Author: Michael Rießler
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3944675657
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 327

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is the first typological study of adjective attribution marking. Its focus lies on Northern Eurasia, although it covers many more languages and presents an ontology of morphosyntactic categories relevant to noun phrase structure in general. Beside treating synchronic data, the study contributes to historical linguistics by reconstructing the origin of new types specifically in the language contact area between the Indo-European and Uralic families.

New Perspectives on Bare Noun Phrases in Romance and Beyond

New Perspectives on Bare Noun Phrases in Romance and Beyond PDF Author: Johannes Kabatek
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027271259
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book envisions the study of bare noun phrases as a field of research in its own right rather than an accessory matter in the wider domain of nominal determination. Combining insights from different theoretical backgrounds and extending the empirical coverage of bare noun phenomena, the ten contributions provide new perspectives on long-standing but still actively debated problems as well as investigations into previously ignored issues. The volume focuses on the wide range of bare noun phenomena in Romance languages, including Spanish, Catalan, Brazilian and European Portuguese, Italian and French; but also widens its inherently comparative perspective to languages such as Bulgarian and Modern Hebrew. The authors discuss the importance of cross-linguistic patterns in the modeling of the syntax and semantics of noun phrases and of common noun denotations, the role of information structure as well as that of discourse traditions and coordination.

Germanic Heritage Languages in North America

Germanic Heritage Languages in North America PDF Author: Janne Bondi Johannessen
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027268193
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 426

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book presents new empirical findings about Germanic heritage varieties spoken in North America: Dutch, German, Pennsylvania Dutch, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, West Frisian and Yiddish, and varieties of English spoken both by heritage speakers and in communities after language shift. The volume focuses on three critical issues underlying the notion of ‘heritage language’: acquisition, attrition and change. The book offers theoretically-informed discussions of heritage language processes across phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics and the lexicon, in addition to work on sociolinguistics, historical linguistics and contact settings. With this, the volume also includes a variety of frameworks and approaches, synchronic and diachronic. Most European Germanic languages share some central linguistic features, such as V2, gender and agreement in the nominal system, and verb inflection. As minority languages faced with a majority language like English, similarities and differences emerge in patterns of variation and change in these heritage languages. These empirical findings shed new light on mechanisms and processes.