Questions of Syntax

Questions of Syntax PDF Author: Richard S. Kayne
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190863617
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
There are far more syntactically distinct languages than we might have thought; yet there are far fewer than there might have been. Questions of Syntax collects sixteen papers authored by Richard S. Kayne, a preeminent theoretical syntactician, who has sought over the course of his career to understand why both these facts are true. With a particular emphasis on comparative syntax, these chapters collectively consider how wide a range of questions the field of syntax can reasonably attempt to ask and then answer. At issue, among other topics, are the relation between syntax and (certain aspects of) semantics, the relation between syntax and what appear to be lexical questions, the relation between syntax and morphology, the relation between syntax and certain aspects of phonology (insofar as silent elements and their properties play a substantial role), and the extent to which comparative syntax can provide new and decisive evidence bearing on these different kinds of questions. To Kayne, comparative syntax can shed light on what may initially seem lexical questions, and antisymmetry on the evolution of human language itself. Taken as a whole, these essays elucidate the theoretical contributions of one the most influential scholars in linguistics.

Questions of Syntax

Questions of Syntax PDF Author: Richard S. Kayne
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190863617
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Get Book

Book Description
There are far more syntactically distinct languages than we might have thought; yet there are far fewer than there might have been. Questions of Syntax collects sixteen papers authored by Richard S. Kayne, a preeminent theoretical syntactician, who has sought over the course of his career to understand why both these facts are true. With a particular emphasis on comparative syntax, these chapters collectively consider how wide a range of questions the field of syntax can reasonably attempt to ask and then answer. At issue, among other topics, are the relation between syntax and (certain aspects of) semantics, the relation between syntax and what appear to be lexical questions, the relation between syntax and morphology, the relation between syntax and certain aspects of phonology (insofar as silent elements and their properties play a substantial role), and the extent to which comparative syntax can provide new and decisive evidence bearing on these different kinds of questions. To Kayne, comparative syntax can shed light on what may initially seem lexical questions, and antisymmetry on the evolution of human language itself. Taken as a whole, these essays elucidate the theoretical contributions of one the most influential scholars in linguistics.

Constituent Questions

Constituent Questions PDF Author: E. Engdahl
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400953232
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description


Questions of Syntax

Questions of Syntax PDF Author: Richard S. Kayne
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780190863593
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
"There are far more syntactically distinct languages than we might have thought. Yet there are far fewer than there might have been. We need to understand why, in both cases. One common and relevant theme that runs through these chapters, with varying degrees of explicitness, concerns how wide a range of questions the field of syntax can reasonably attempt to ask and then answer. At issue, among other things, are the relation between syntax and (certain aspects of) semantics, the relation between syntax and what appear to be lexical questions, the relation between syntax and morphology, the relation between syntax and certain aspects of phonology (insofar as silent elements and their properties play a substantial role) and the extent to which comparative syntax can provide new and decisive evidence bearing on these different kinds of questions. More and more questions need to be asked, if we are to achieve depth of explanation. Comparative syntax provides evidence bearing on questions which are not initially comparative in nature. It is extremely fruitful to search for correlations across syntactic differences as a means of establishing a new kind of window into the language faculty. Micro-comparative syntax is an especially powerful tool that allows us to probe questions concerning the most primitive units of syntactic variation, and whose growth in recent decades is to be compared with the development of the earliest microscopes, . Comparative syntax sheds light on what might at first appear to be lexical questions, as in the case of transitive verbal need, whose cross-linguistic distribution is less arbitrary that it appears to be, when viewed in the context of a silent counterpart of have"--

Experimental Syntax

Experimental Syntax PDF Author: Wayne Cowart
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 0761900438
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
This book provides a concise yet thorough introduction to methods that linguists can use to study patterns of sentence acceptability in speech. Experimental Syntax shows how to design, execute and analyze an appropriate survey experiment for a well-formed question about a matter of fact relative to sentence acceptability. The book also examines variability and demonstrates a method by which an investigator can make principled decisions as to whether two or more informants who use atypical dialects are using the same atypical dialect.

Prominence and Locality in Grammar

Prominence and Locality in Grammar PDF Author: Jianhua Hu
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000008665
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
This book challenges the current consensus on the analysis of wh-questions and reflexives from the perspective of the syntax-semantics interface. An integrated approach incorporating analyses of the interaction between different levels of linguistic knowledge is proposed. It argues that the derivation and interpretation of wh-questions and reflexives are not purely syntactic in nature but are regulated by principles operating at the syntax-semantics interface. Two general principles underlying our knowledge of language and cognition are proposed in this work. One is the Principle of Locality, and the other is the Principle of Prominence. It shows that although wh-quantification and reflexivization belong to two different domains of study in generative grammar, their derivation and interpretation are basically constrained by the complex interaction between prominence and locality in grammar. The first part of the book discusses how wh-questions are formed and interpreted in Chinese and English and shows that the formation and interpretation of wh-questions are constrained by the interaction between prominence and locality. It is shown that in wh-interpretation prominence is used to define the set generators so as to licence other wh-words in the pair-list reading in multiple wh-questions. It also discusses wh-island effects in English and Chinese, and unlike previous claims made in the literature (cf. Huang 1982a, 1982b), it argues that the so-called wh-island effects in English are also observed in Chinese. The second part of the book investigates the role that prominence and locality play in reflexive binding. It is shown that in reflexive binding, the binding domain of the reflexive is defined by prominence. It proposes a unified account for both the noncontrastive compound reflexive and the bare reflexive in Chinese and shows that they are constrained by the same reflexive binding condition proposed in this work, though they employ different definitions of the most prominent NPs to determine their binding domains. Prominence and Locality in Grammar: The Syntax and Semantics of Wh-Quesitons and Reflexives is an important theoretical contribution to the syntax-semantics interface studies and can serve as a valuable text for graduate students and scholars in the field of Chinese, linguistics, and cognitive science.

Sin and Syntax

Sin and Syntax PDF Author: Constance Hale
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0385346891
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
A fully revised and updated edition with writing prompts and challenges in every chapter Today’s writers need more spunk than Strunk: whether it's the Great American e-mail, Madison Avenue advertising, or Grammy Award-winning rap lyrics, memorable writing must jump off the page. Copy veteran Constance Hale is on a mission to make creative communication, both the lyrical and the unlawful, an option for everyone. With its crisp, witty tone, Sin and Syntax covers grammar’s ground rules while revealing countless unconventional syntax secrets (such as how to use—Gasp!—interjections or when to pepper your prose with slang) that make for sinfully good writing. Discover how to: *Distinguish between words that are “pearls” and words that are “potatoes” * Avoid “couch potato thinking” and “commitment phobia” when choosing verbs * Use literary devices such as onomatopoeia, alliteration, and metaphor (and understand what you're doing) Everyone needs to know how to write stylish prose—students, professionals, and seasoned writers alike. Whether you’re writing to sell, shock, or just sing, Sin and Syntax—now celebrating 20 years in print—is the guide you need to improve your command of the English language.

Understanding Syntax

Understanding Syntax PDF Author: Maggie Tallerman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317635108
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Assuming no prior knowledge, Understanding Syntax illustrates the major concepts, categories and terminology associated with the study of cross-linguistic syntax. A theory-neutral and descriptive viewpoint is taken throughout. Starting with an overview of what syntax is, the book moves on to an explanation of word classes (such as noun, verb, adjective) and then to a discussion of sentence structure in the world’s languages. Grammatical constructions and relationships between words in a clause are explained and thoroughly illustrated, including grammatical relations such as subject and object; function-changing processes such as the passive and antipassive; case and agreement processes, including both ergative and accusative alignments; verb serialization; head-marking and dependent-marking grammars; configurational and non-configurational languages; questions and relative clauses. The final chapter explains and illustrates the principles involved in writing a brief syntactic sketch of a language, enabling the reader to construct a grammatical sketch of a language known to them. Data from approximately 100 languages appears in the text, with languages representing widely differing geographical areas and distinct language families. The book will be essential for courses in cross-linguistic syntax, language typology, and linguistic fieldwork, as well as for basic syntactic description.

Recent Advances in the Psychology of Language

Recent Advances in the Psychology of Language PDF Author: R. Campbell
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9781468425345
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
The Stirling Psychology of Language Conference was held in the University of Stirling, 21-26 June 1976. 250 people attended the conference and 70 papers were presented. The two volumes of Pro ceedings present a selection of papers from the conference reflect ing as far as possible the range of topics that were discussed. Volume 1 is concerned exclusively with language acquisition. In recent years the 'centre of gravity' of acquisition research has shifted from syntactic and phonological description to the amor phous domains of semantics and pragmatics. This shift is reflected in the two large sections (II and III) devoted to these aspects of language development. In addition the volume contains three smaller sections dealing with general problems of acquisition theory, syntax and the development of comprehension, and applied developmental psycholinguistics. Volume 2 contains a substantial section of papers which stress the formal aspects of psycholinguistics: these include papers in which artificial intelligence figures prominently, papers which apply re cent developments in syntax and semantics to psycholinguistic prob lems, and papers that are broadly critical of the use psychologists have made of linguistic theories. Volume 2 also contains a section dealing with the experimental study of sentence comprehension and production, and there is a final section concerned with phonology and its development.

The Syntax of Yes and No

The Syntax of Yes and No PDF Author: Anders Holmberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198701853
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
This book is a cross-linguistic study of the syntax of yes-no questions and their answers, drawing on data from a wide range of languages with particular focus on English, Finnish, Swedish, Thai, and Chinese. There are broadly two types of answer to yes-no questions: those that employ particles such as 'yes' and 'no' (as found in English) and those that echo a part of the question, usually the finite verb, with or without negation (as found in Finnish). The latter are uncontroversially derived by ellipsis, while the former have been claimed to be clause substitutes. Anders Holmberg argues instead that even answers that employ particles are complete sentences, derived by ellipsis from full sentential expressions, and that the two types share essential syntactic properties. The book also examines the related cross-linguistic and intralinguistic variation observed in answers to negative questions such as 'does he not drink coffee?', whereby 'yes' in one language appears to correspond to 'no' in another. The book illustrates how a seemingly trivial phenomenon can have the most wide-ranging consequences for theories of language, and will be of interest not only to theoretical linguists but also to students and scholars of typological and descriptive linguistics.

Synthetic Syntax, Meaning, and Philosophical Questions

Synthetic Syntax, Meaning, and Philosophical Questions PDF Author: Paul Rastall
Publisher: Masarykova univerzita
ISBN: 8028001211
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Kniha je souborem dvanácti původních kapitol, které se zabývají různými syntaktickými, sémantickými a filozofickými otázkami. Autor k těmto problémům přistupuje integrovaně či holisticky a své argumenty dokládá četnými příklady jazyků tak rozmanitých, jako je mimo jiné angličtina, ruština nebo malajština. Každá kapitola je samostatným textem, ale celý soubor je svázán zastřešujícím společným tématem, jednotnou teorií a metodologií. Klíčovým pojmem knihy je syntetická syntax, která představuje zásadní alternativu k většině současných syntaktických přístupů. Rastall prosazuje chápání jazyka jako prostředku, jímž lidé vyjadřují své zkušenosti. V jádru tohoto přístupu je vnitrojazyková a mezijazyková rozmanitost. Aspekty zkušenosti jsou zachyceny (nebo pojmenovány) základními jazykovými jednotkami, znaky (slovy i idiomy a rčeními), a tyto znaky jsou seskupeny tak, aby odrážely skutečné nebo vnímané vztahy mezi těmito aspekty zkušenosti. Procesy pojmenování a seskupování jsou vzájemně propojeny, a proto jsou v tomto přístupu syntax a sémantika integrovány. Rastall však nepředkládá pouze sterilní formální analýzy těchto problémů, ale spíše o nich diskutuje a přemýšlí formou eseje. Tento typ argumentace je ve filozofii běžný, a skutečně, mnohé problémy, jimiž se autor zabývá, mají filozofickou povahu. Stručně řečeno, kniha je cenná nejen pro lingvisty (obecně pro syntaktiky a sémantiky, zvláště pro anglisty), ale také pro filozofy. Navazuje na tradici funkční lingvistiky, obohacuje ji o mnoho nových myšlenek a aplikuje ji na nové i staré problémy. Kniha navazuje na autorovu monografii „Bottom-Up Linguistics“, která již dříve vyšla v nakladatelství Munipress.