Quantification in the Theory of Grammar

Quantification in the Theory of Grammar PDF Author: Taisuke Nishigauchi
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400919727
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
In the past few decades, the development of theoretical linguistics has proved to be successful in shedding light on the intricate nature of language and knowledge of grammar, which contributes to a deeper understanding of the human mind. This book discusses various issues in syntax and logical structure of natural language from theoretical perspectives. The primary data on which theoretical claims are made is drawn from Japanese and Japanese-type languages, but it also contains discussion of related phenomena in English which have never been discussed from the same viewpoint in the current literature. Although the book is written in the format of a version of the Extended Standard Theory tradition, informally referred to as the Principles and Parameters Approach or 'Government and Binding (OB) Theory', it should be of interest to a much wider audience. The reader interested in other theoretical frameworks will find the discussion in this book easily translatable in the framework of his or her choice - in fact, I would like to claim that the problems posed by this book are inevitable in any theory of syntax and semantics of natural language.

Quantification in the Theory of Grammar

Quantification in the Theory of Grammar PDF Author: Taisuke Nishigauchi
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400919727
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 251

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the past few decades, the development of theoretical linguistics has proved to be successful in shedding light on the intricate nature of language and knowledge of grammar, which contributes to a deeper understanding of the human mind. This book discusses various issues in syntax and logical structure of natural language from theoretical perspectives. The primary data on which theoretical claims are made is drawn from Japanese and Japanese-type languages, but it also contains discussion of related phenomena in English which have never been discussed from the same viewpoint in the current literature. Although the book is written in the format of a version of the Extended Standard Theory tradition, informally referred to as the Principles and Parameters Approach or 'Government and Binding (OB) Theory', it should be of interest to a much wider audience. The reader interested in other theoretical frameworks will find the discussion in this book easily translatable in the framework of his or her choice - in fact, I would like to claim that the problems posed by this book are inevitable in any theory of syntax and semantics of natural language.

Quantification in Natural Languages

Quantification in Natural Languages PDF Author: Emmon W. Bach
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780792331292
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 774

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Book Description
This extended collection of papers is the result of putting recent ideas on quantification to work on a wide variety of languages. A central perspective of many of the papers follows the recognition of two broad types of quantificational strategies, one associated with nominal structures and determiners, the other with adverbial and other non-nominal expression (`D-quantifiers' and `A-quantifiers'). The papers demonstrate both the unity and the variety of natural language quantificational forms and meanings. Many of the papers also shed new light on questions of language typology and syntactic and morphological variation. The languages discussed include English, Dutch, Italian, American Sign Language, Hindi, and a number of languages of Australia, Greenland, and the Americas. These comparative studies provide initial data for a typology of quantificational structures in natural languages, with important implications for the study of universal grammar. The book consists of research papers aimed at linguists, philosophers, and psychologists interested in semantics and linguistic form. An introduction presents a sketch of the background of this research and some of the central issues discussed, with pointers toward the included papers.

Quantification and Syntactic Theory

Quantification and Syntactic Theory PDF Author: R. Cooper
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401569320
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
The format of this book is unusual, especially for a book about linguistics. The book is meant primarily as a research monograph aimed at linguists who have some background in formal semantics, e. g. Montague Grammar. However, I have two other audiences in mind. Linguists who have little or no experience of formal semantics, but who have worked through a basic mathematics for linguists course (e. g. using Wall, 1972, or Partee, 1978), should, perhaps with the help of a sympathetic Montague gramma rian, be able to discover enough of how I have adapted some of the basic ideas in formal semantics to make the developments that I undertake in the rest of the book accessible. Logicians and computer scientists who know about model theoretic semantics and formal systems should be able to glean enough from Chapters I and II about linguistic concerns and techniques to be able to read the remainder of the book, again possibly with the help of a sympathetic Montague grammarian. However, readers should beware. Chapter II is not meant as a general introduction either to formal semantics or to linguistics and while much of the presentation there is going over ground that is already well covered in the literature, the particular formulation and the emphases are very much oriented to the developments to be undertaken later in the book.

The Grammar of French Quantification

The Grammar of French Quantification PDF Author: Lena Baunaz
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400706219
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
This book is the first extensive study on French Quantification in the field of Syntax. It provides a typology of four main quantified noun phrases in French (existential, universal, negative and wh-), detailing their syntactic, semantic and prosodic behaviors and showing that they can be reduced to two classes—Split-DP structures or Floating quantification. Relying on syntax and semantics, the book establishes a three-way structural typology of wh in-situ phrases and extends it to existentials. It pays special attention to the prosodic properties associated with their different readings and proposes an analysis of the distribution of subextraction and pied-piping. Similarly based on semantic and syntactic tests, the book reveals N(egative) words to be universal Quantifiers. It proposes a new structure of N-words in terms of constituent negation and includes a detailed analysis of the difference between not an N and not all the N in French.

Finding Metaphor in Grammar and Usage

Finding Metaphor in Grammar and Usage PDF Author: Gerard J. Steen
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027291853
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Cognitive linguists have proposed that metaphor is not just a matter of language but of thought, and that metaphorical thought displays a high degree of conventionalization. In order to produce converging evidence for this theory of metaphor, a wide range of data is currently being studied with a large array of methods and techniques. Finding Metaphor in Grammar and Usage aims to map the field of this development in theory and research from a methodological perspective. It raises the question when exactly evidence for metaphor in language and thought can be said to count as converging. It also goes into the various stages of producing such evidence (conceptualization, operationalization, data collection and analysis, and interpretation). The book offers systematic discussion of eight distinct areas of metaphor research that emerge as a result of approaching metaphor as part of grammar or usage, language or thought, and symbolic structure or cognitive process.

Linguistic Analysis

Linguistic Analysis PDF Author: Annarita Puglielli
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110222515
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description
This book reconsiders the classic topics of linguistic analysis and reflects on universal aspects of language from a typological and comparative perspective. The aim is to show the crucial interactions which occur at the different levels of grammar (phonology, morphology, lexicon, syntax and pragmatics), illustrating their various roles in the structural organization of the sentence and exploring how interface relations contribute to yield interpretation in typologically different languages. The structural analysis is set within the Generative framework of grammar, though theoretical tenets are the outcome, rather than the starting point, of a study based on the observation of data. As the basic intent is to show different phenomena across a wide range of languages, a 'semi-guided' method has been adopted in order to facilitate comprehension and assist the reader in the identification of language universals. For every topic, the discussion of previous literature is followed by cross-linguistic evidence so that theory can be checked against data and the relevant generalizations drawn. Ultimately, this approach reveals that grammar is based on a very limited number of universal principles, which operate yielding different effects at the different levels of the grammar. It implies that a real understanding of the language-system can only be derived from a comparative analysis in which the notion of interface plays a crucial role. The seven chapters in the volume deal with categories and functions, argument structure, syntactic functions, the structure of noun phrases, adverbial modification, information structure and illocutive force. Throughout, the observation of data from 74 languages is a crucial element in the formulation and understanding of theoretical tenets. This book is highly recommended for researchers and students interested in formal analysis from a typological, comparative perspective.

Strategies of Quantification

Strategies of Quantification PDF Author: Kook-Hee Gil
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199692432
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Quantification has been at the heart of research in the syntax and semantics of natural language since Aristotle. The last few decades have seen an explosion of detailed studies of the syntax and semantics of quantification and its relation to the rest of the theory of grammar, resulting in a highly sophisticated understanding of the mechanisms of quantification. This book considers the ways natural languages vary with respect to their realisation of quantificational notions. Drawing on data from English, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Hausa and others, the authors also link the variation in the expression of quantification to the notions of polarity sensitivity, free-choice and indefiniteness.

Grammatical theory

Grammatical theory PDF Author: Stefan Müller
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961100748
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This book introduces formal grammar theories that play a role in current linguistic the- orizing (Phrase Structure Grammar, Transformational Grammar/Government & Binding, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Gram- mar, Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Construction Grammar, Tree Adjoining Grammar). The key assumptions are explained and it is shown how the respective the- ory treats arguments and adjuncts, the active/passive alternation, local reorderings, verb placement, and fronting of constituents over long distances. The analyses are explained with German as the object language. The second part of the book compares these approaches with respect to their predictions regarding language acquisition and psycholinguistic plausibility. The nativism hypothe- sis, which assumes that humans posses genetically determined innate language-specific knowledge, is critically examined and alternative models of language acquisition are dis- cussed. The second part then addresses controversial issues of current theory building such as the question of flat or binary branching structures being more appropriate, the question whether constructions should be treated on the phrasal or the lexical level, and the question whether abstract, non-visible entities should play a role in syntactic analyses. It is shown that the analyses suggested in the respective frameworks are often translatable into each other. The book closes with a chapter showing how properties common to all languages or to certain classes of languages can be captured. “With this critical yet fair reflection on various grammatical theories, Müller fills what has been a major gap in the literature.” Karen Lehmann, Zeitschrift für Rezensionen zur germanistischen Sprachwissenschaft, 2012 “Stefan Müller’ s recent introductory textbook, “Grammatiktheorie”, is an astonishingly comprehensive and insightful survey of the present state of syntactic theory for beginning students.” Wolfgang Sternefeld und Frank Richter, Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, 2012 “This is the kind of work that has been sought after for a while. [...] The impartial and objective discussion offered by the author is particularly refreshing.” Werner Abraham, Germanistik, 2012

Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar

Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar PDF Author: Noam Chomsky
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110903849
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description


Grammars for Language and Genes

Grammars for Language and Genes PDF Author: David Chiang
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642204449
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
Grammars are gaining importance in natural language processing and computational biology as a means of encoding theories and structuring algorithms. But one serious obstacle to applications of grammars is that formal language theory traditionally classifies grammars according to their weak generative capacity (what sets of strings they generate) and tends to ignore strong generative capacity (what sets of structural descriptions they generate) even though the latter is more relevant to applications. This book develops and demonstrates a framework for carrying out rigorous comparisons of grammar formalisms in terms of their usefulness for applications, focusing on three areas of application: statistical parsing, natural language translation, and biological sequence analysis. These results should pave the way for theoretical research to pursue results that are more directed towards applications, and for practical research to explore the use of advanced grammar formalisms more easily.