Pragmatics of Word Order Flexibility

Pragmatics of Word Order Flexibility PDF Author: Doris L. Payne
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027229058
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
For some time the assumption has been widely held that for a majority of the world's languages, one can identify a "basic" order of subject and object relative to the verb, and that when combined with other facts of the language, the "basic" order constitutes a useful way of typologizing languages. New debate has arisen over varying definitions of "basic," with investigators encountering languages where branding a particular order of grammatical relations as basic yielded no particular insightfulness. This work asserts that explanatory factors behind word order variation go beyond the syntactic and are to be found in studies of how the mind grammaticizes forms, processes information, and speech act theory considerations of speakers' attempts to get their hearers to build one, rather than another, mental representation of incoming information. Thus three domains must be distinguished in understanding order variation: syntactic, cognitive and pragmatic. The works in this volume explore various aspects of this assertion.

Pragmatics of Word Order Flexibility

Pragmatics of Word Order Flexibility PDF Author: Doris L. Payne
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027229058
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
For some time the assumption has been widely held that for a majority of the world's languages, one can identify a "basic" order of subject and object relative to the verb, and that when combined with other facts of the language, the "basic" order constitutes a useful way of typologizing languages. New debate has arisen over varying definitions of "basic," with investigators encountering languages where branding a particular order of grammatical relations as basic yielded no particular insightfulness. This work asserts that explanatory factors behind word order variation go beyond the syntactic and are to be found in studies of how the mind grammaticizes forms, processes information, and speech act theory considerations of speakers' attempts to get their hearers to build one, rather than another, mental representation of incoming information. Thus three domains must be distinguished in understanding order variation: syntactic, cognitive and pragmatic. The works in this volume explore various aspects of this assertion.

The Pragmatics of Word Order

The Pragmatics of Word Order PDF Author: Doris L. Payne
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110847280
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
The series is a platform for contributions of all kinds to this rapidly developing field. General problems are studied from the perspective of individual languages, language families, language groups, or language samples. Conclusions are the result of a deepened study of empirical data. Special emphasis is given to little-known languages, whose analysis may shed new light on long-standing problems in general linguistics.

Pragmatics and the Flexibility of Word Meaning

Pragmatics and the Flexibility of Word Meaning PDF Author: Eniko Nemeth
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 0585474265
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
Recently, the investigation of word meaning in utterances has connected two different fields: lexical semantics and pragmatics. A new linguistic discipline, namely lexical pragmatics, is emerging. The eleven papers of the present book constitute a unit in the sense that they have a common aim: to explore the interaction between lexical semantics and pragmatics. The authors examine phenomena such as productive sense extension, regular polysemy, multifunctionality, implicit arguments and predicates, and non-typical anaphoric pronouns, on the basis of linguistic data, for instance, from English, Norwegian, Russian, and Hungarian, as well as using a great variety of frameworks (optimality framework, two-level semantics, the theory of generative lexicon, cognitive grammar, Gricean theory, and relevance theory.

Pragmatic Organization of Discourse in the Languages of Europe

Pragmatic Organization of Discourse in the Languages of Europe PDF Author: Giuliano Bernini
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110892227
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 657

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Book Description
The volume is a collection of papers reporting the results of investigations on the interaction of discourse and sentence structure in the languages of Europe. The subjects discussed in the book include: morphosyntactic characteristics of spontaneous spoken texts; different patterns of word order in a pragmatic perspective; the coding of the pragmatic functions topic and focus in sentences with non-canonical word orders (e.g. dislocations, clefts); the range of functions of verb-subject order in declarative clauses and the notion of theticity; prosodic patterns of de-accenting of given information; deixis and anaphora; coding of definiteness and article systems. The book provides the empirical basis for the comparative survey of major phenomena found in the languages of Europe which have pragmatic relevance. Beside traditional areas of investigation at the interface between syntax and pragmatics such as dislocations, new areas are explored, such as the prosody of given information. Data are considered within a functional-typological approach.

Pragmatics and the Flexibility of Word Meaning

Pragmatics and the Flexibility of Word Meaning PDF Author: Enikő Németh T.
Publisher: Brill Academic Pub
ISBN: 9780080439716
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Recently, the investigation of word meaning in utterances has connected two different fields: lexical semantics and pragmatics. A new linguistic discipline, namely lexical pragmatics, is emerging. This volume explores the interaction between lexical semantics and pragmatics.

Defining Pragmatics

Defining Pragmatics PDF Author: Mira Ariel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521517834
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
This groundbreaking book challenges the prominent definitions of pragmatics and the assumption that specific topics belong on the pragmatics turf.

Word Order

Word Order PDF Author: Jae Jung Song
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107377277
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
Word order is one of the major properties on which languages are compared and its study is fundamental to linguistics. This comprehensive survey provides an up-to-date, critical overview of this widely debated topic, exploring and evaluating word order research carried out in four major theoretical frameworks – linguistic typology, generative grammar, optimality theory and processing-based theories. It is the first book to bring these theoretical approaches together in one place and is therefore a one-stop resource covering the current developments in word order research. It explains word order patterns in different languages and at different structural levels and critically evaluates (and where possible, compares) the theoretical assumptions and word order principles used in the different approaches. Also highlighted are issues and problems that require further investigation or remain unresolved. This book will be invaluable to those investigating word order, and researchers and students in syntax, linguistic theory and typology.

Pragmatic Syntax

Pragmatic Syntax PDF Author: Jieun Kiaer
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1623568358
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Jieun Kiaer puts forward an argument in this book that the grammar of a language directly underpins the processing of the language, in real time. This is a view that runs against the orthodoxy of linguistic theorizing for the last 50 years, which has insisted that languages have to be characterized in terms that make little or no reference to the dynamics of language use. This orthodox view fails to fit languages in which the verb has to be at the end of the clause - which encompasses more than half of the world's languages. Thus, as this book shows, these languages remain very problematic for conventional theories. Using a mixture of corpus methods, sentence structure analysis, prosody and psycholinguistic theory, Kiaer redresses this imbalance. The data features both Korean and English example and it functions as one of the very first general introductions to Dynamic Syntax available.

Stability, Variation and Change of Word-Order Patterns over Time

Stability, Variation and Change of Word-Order Patterns over Time PDF Author: Rosanna Sornicola
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027284717
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
The issue of permanence and change of word-order patterns has long been debated in both historical linguistics and structural theories. The interest in this theme has been revamped by contemporary research in typology with its emphasis on correlation or ‘harmonies’ of structures of word-order as explicative principles of both synchronic and diachronic processes. The aim of this book is to stimulate a critical reconsideration of perspectives and methods in the study of continuities and discontinuities of word-order patterns. Bringing together contributions by specialists of various theoretical backgrounds and with expertise in different language families or groups (Caucasian, Hamito-Semitic, and — among Indo-European — Hittite, Greek, Celtic, Germanic, Slavonic, Romance), the book addresses issues like the notions of stability, variation and change of word-order and their interrelations, the interplay of syntactic and pragmatic factors, and the role of internal and external factors in synchronic and diachronic dynamics of word-order. The book contains a selection of papers presented at a workshop held at the XIII International Conference on Historical Linguistics (Düsseldorf, August 1997) and additonal invited contributions.

Themes in Greek Linguistics

Themes in Greek Linguistics PDF Author: Brian D. Joseph
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027284059
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
This volume brings together 11 original papers on a variety of themes in Greek linguistics, covering phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics, both synchronically and diachronically.Collectively, these papers report on recent advances in the study of Greek grammar within the framework of generative grammar, and provide insights into such diverse topics as the analysis of consonant clusters, the representation of stress, the status of inflectional features, the relationship between compounds and projection, derived nominals, the occurrence of weak clitic pronouns in questions, small clauses, focus constructions, word order, the placement of clitics in Cappadocian dialects, and Medieval Greek relativisation strategies. Together, they show that Greek is a vital contributor to issues of current controversy in grammatical theory.