Pragmatic Aspects of Scalar Modifiers

Pragmatic Aspects of Scalar Modifiers PDF Author: Osamu Sawada
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019871422X
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
This volume examines the meaning of scalar modifiers - expressions such as more than, a bit, and much - from the standpoint of the semantics-pragmatics interface. It draws on data from Japanese and a range of other languages to explore the information expressed by these modifiers at both the semantic and the pragmatic level.

Pragmatic Aspects of Scalar Modifiers

Pragmatic Aspects of Scalar Modifiers PDF Author: Osamu Sawada
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019871422X
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume examines the meaning of scalar modifiers - expressions such as more than, a bit, and much - from the standpoint of the semantics-pragmatics interface. It draws on data from Japanese and a range of other languages to explore the information expressed by these modifiers at both the semantic and the pragmatic level.

Pragmatic Aspects of Scalar Modifiers

Pragmatic Aspects of Scalar Modifiers PDF Author: Osamu Sawada
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781109689952
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
This dissertation will provide a new empirical perspective on the interface between semantics and pragmatics.

Pseudo-Noun Incorporation and Differential Object Marking

Pseudo-Noun Incorporation and Differential Object Marking PDF Author: Imke Driemel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192691481
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
This book provides a detailed cross-linguistic study of pseudo-noun incorporation, a phenomenon whereby an argument forms a 'closer than usual' relation with the verb. Imke Driemel draws on data from Tamil, Mongolian, Korean, Turkish, and German, and applies diagnostic tests across eleven noun types in each of the languages under consideration. What emerges is a coherent effect of pseudo-incorporated arguments that maps loss of case marking to obligatory narrow scope, lack of binding and control relations, and a potentially restricted movement pattern. The book provides a unifying theory that is able to capture all properties with a single assumption: pseudo-incorporation effects result from noun phrases that are made up of a nominal and a verbal category feature; implemented in a derivational framework, the nominal feature is active early in the derivation, being responsible for c-selection and nominal modification, while the verbal feature is active late and crucially derives the effects we have come to recognize as pseudo-noun incorporation. One important empirical contribution of this study stems from the observation that pseudo-incorporation does not have to be the only reason for optional case marking. Tamil and Korean provide evidence that only a subset of optionally case-marked noun types also show a correlation with scope, binding, control, and movement constraints. This insight enforces the conclusion that the same language can make use of both pseudo-noun incorporation and differential object marking.

Cartography and Explanatory Adequacy

Cartography and Explanatory Adequacy PDF Author: Ángel J. Gallego
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019886793X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
This volume offers a critical examination of the cartographic assumption that there is a rich array of functional projections whose hierarchical order is fixed and determined by Universal Grammar. The contributions discuss the nature of these hierarchies and their relation to the central theoretical goal of explanatory adequacy.

Encoding Events

Encoding Events PDF Author: Xuhui Hu
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019253596X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This volume presents theoretical and empirical research on the syntax of events within the broader framework of generative grammar, focusing on the central question of how conceptual meaning interacts with narrow syntactic computation. Xuhui Hu proposes a set of integration conditions that require the content of the predicate to be licensed by theta-role information generated by narrow syntax. The other principal theoretical component of the book concerns the functional structure of events, which is related to issues such as the parallel between the event and nominal domains, the mapping of a predicate onto an entity, and the grammatical foundation of verb classification. The framework is applied to three areas: the syntax of resultatives in English and Chinese, cross-linguistic and diachronic variation in resultatives, and applicative constructions. The findings shed light on the thematic relationship between core arguments and predicates and on the syntax of non-core arguments, contribute to the theory of parametric variation in the generative tradition, and provide insights into the verb-framed vs satellite-framed typology

The Place of Case in Grammar

The Place of Case in Grammar PDF Author: Christina Sevdali
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192635417
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 641

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Book Description
This book deals with the category of case and where to place it in grammar. The crux of the debate lies in how the morphological expression of grammatical function should relate to formal syntax. In the generative tradition, this issue was addressed by the influential proposal that abstract syntactic Case should be dissociated from the morphological expression of case. The chapters in this book deal with a number of key issues in the ongoing debates that have emerged from this proposal. The first part discusses the modes that we need for structural case assignment, and how Case would relate to a theory of parameters. In the second part, contributors explore the division of labour between structural and inherent case, synchronically and diachronically, while the third part investigates individual cases and how they can illuminate case theory. The chapters discuss a wide range of phenomena, including differential object marking (DOM), global case splits, prepositional genitives and other prepositional phrases, nominative infinitival subjects, nominalizations of deponent verbs, and three-place predicates. They also draw on data from a variety of languages and language families, such as Hindi, Lithuanian, Kashmiri, Kinande, Greek, Hiberno-English, Romance, and Sahapatin.

Non-Interrogative Subordinate Wh-Clauses

Non-Interrogative Subordinate Wh-Clauses PDF Author: Łukasz Jędrzejowski
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192844628
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description
This volume examines subordinate wh-clauses that lack an interrogative interpretation, particularly those in which the wh-word seems to deviate from its literal meaning. These include subordinate manner wh-clauses that have a declarative-like meaning, locative wh-clauses expressing kinds, and headed relatives that serve as recognitional cues, among many others. While regular interrogative embedding has been widely studied in recent years, little is known about the circumstances under which non-interrogative (subordinate) wh-clauses are licensed, nor why some, but not all, wh-phrases can be polyfunctional. The chapters in the book combine the study of cross-linguistic variation in patterns of subordination with formal semantic and syntactic analyses, with data drawn from a wide range of languages including Basque, Czech, English, Mandarin, Romanian, and Taiwan Southern Min. They provide novel insights into the ways in which wh-phrases can be used to introduce complements, relative clauses, and adverbial clauses, and show how the meanings associated with wh-words are exploited beyond their standard distribution. The findings have implications for our understanding of both the phenomenon of subordination as a whole and the relationship between form and meaning in wh-clauses.

Definiteness in Balkan Romance

Definiteness in Balkan Romance PDF Author: Daniela Isac
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198865708
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
This book explores the micro-variation in the realization of definiteness across languages belonging to the Balkan Romance family: Romanian, Aromanian, Istro-Romanian and Megleno-Romanian. Daniela Isac offers a unified analysis of the different patterns observed, based on a post-syntactic spell-out rule.

The Derivational Timing of Ellipsis

The Derivational Timing of Ellipsis PDF Author: Güliz Güneş
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192589296
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This volume explores the nature of ellipsis, the core phenomenon that results in various types of omission in sentences. The chapters adopt the popular 'silent structure' accounts of ellipsis, and investigate the question of when linguistic material becomes silenced during the derivation and realization of syntactic structure. The book begins with a detailed introduction from the editors that outlines the current generative syntactic approaches to the derivational timing of ellipsis. In the chapters that follow, internationally-recognized experts in the field address key topics including structure building, the architecture of grammar, the interaction of distinct modules with syntax, the order of operations in the post-syntactic component, and constraints on binding relations. The authors also present novel arguments for and against the derivational approaches to ellipsis, the licensing of ellipsis, and phonological constraints on elliptical sentences. The findings, based on data from English and other languages such as Armenian, Italo-Romance, Ossetic, Spanish, Taiwanese, and Turkish, facilitate a deeper understanding of the interaction between syntax and the neighbouring modules in the formation of elliptical utterances.

The Roots of Verbal Meaning

The Roots of Verbal Meaning PDF Author: John Beavers
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198855788
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
This book explores possible and impossible word meanings, with a specific focus on the meanings of verbs. It presents a new theory of possible root meanings and their interaction with event templates that produces a new typology of possible verbs, with semantic and grammatical properties determined not just by templates, but also by roots.