Syntactic Derivations

Syntactic Derivations PDF Author: Ulf Brosziewski
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110953560
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 113

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Book Description
This study investigates a model of syntactic derivations that is based on a new concept of dislocation, i.e., of 'movement' phenomena. Derivations are conceived of as a compositional process that constructs larger syntactic units out of smaller ones without any phrase-structure representations, as in categorial grammars. It is demonstrated that a simple extension of this view can account for dislocation without gap features, chains, or structural transformations. Basically, it is assumed that movement 'splits' a syntactic expression into two parts, which form a derivational unit but enter separately into the formation of larger constituents. The study shows that in this approach, if common assumptions about selection and licensing are added, a small and coherent set of axioms suffices to deduce fundamental syntactic generalizations that transformational theories express in terms of X-bar-Theory and various constraints on movement. These generalizations include, for example, equivalents to the C-Command Condition and the Head Movement Constraint, the 'structure-preserving' nature of dislocation, its 'economical' character, and elementary bounding principles.

Syntactic Derivations

Syntactic Derivations PDF Author: Ulf Brosziewski
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110953560
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 113

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Book Description
This study investigates a model of syntactic derivations that is based on a new concept of dislocation, i.e., of 'movement' phenomena. Derivations are conceived of as a compositional process that constructs larger syntactic units out of smaller ones without any phrase-structure representations, as in categorial grammars. It is demonstrated that a simple extension of this view can account for dislocation without gap features, chains, or structural transformations. Basically, it is assumed that movement 'splits' a syntactic expression into two parts, which form a derivational unit but enter separately into the formation of larger constituents. The study shows that in this approach, if common assumptions about selection and licensing are added, a small and coherent set of axioms suffices to deduce fundamental syntactic generalizations that transformational theories express in terms of X-bar-Theory and various constraints on movement. These generalizations include, for example, equivalents to the C-Command Condition and the Head Movement Constraint, the 'structure-preserving' nature of dislocation, its 'economical' character, and elementary bounding principles.

Deriving Syntactic Relations

Deriving Syntactic Relations PDF Author: John Bowers
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108547044
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
A pioneering new approach to a long-debated topic at the heart of syntax: what are the primitive concepts and operations of syntax? This book argues, appealing in part to the logic of Chomsky's Minimalist Program, that the primitive operations of syntax form relations between words rather than combining words to form constituents. Just three basic relations, definable in terms of inherent selection properties of words, are required in natural language syntax: projection, argument selection, and modification. In the radically simplified account of generative grammar Bowers proposes there are just two interface levels, which interact with our conceptual and sensory systems, and a lexicon from which an infinite number of sentences can be constructed. The theory also provides a natural interpretation of phase theory, enabling a better formulation of many island constraints, as well as providing the basis for a unified approach to ellipsis phenomena.

Phrasal and Clausal Architecture

Phrasal and Clausal Architecture PDF Author: Simin Karimi
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027292922
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
The present collection includes papers that address a wide range of syntactic phenomena. In some, the authors discuss such major syntactic properties as clausal architecture, syntactic labels and derivation, and the nature of features and their role with respect to movement, agreement, and event-related constructions. In addition, several papers offer syntax-based discussions of aspects of acquisition, pedagogy, and neurolinguistics, addressing issues related to case marking, negation, thematic relations, and more. Several papers report on new findings relevant to less commonly investigated languages, and all provide valuable observations related to natural language syntactic properties, many of which are universal in their implications. The authors challenge several aspects of recent syntactic theory, broaden the applicable scope of others, and introduce important and provocative analyses that bear on current issues in linguistics.

Derivations

Derivations PDF Author: Juan Uriagereka
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134538480
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
This book presents an analysis of a variety of central linguistic notions, such as case agreement, obviation, and rigidity, from a derivational perspective.

Derivations and Evaluations

Derivations and Evaluations PDF Author: Hans Broekhuis
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 9783110198645
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
The architecture of the human language faculty has been one of the main foci of the linguistic research of the last half century. This branch of linguistics, broadly known as Generative Grammar, is concerned with the formulation of explanatory formal accounts of linguistic phenomena with the ulterior goal of gaining insight into the properties of the 'language organ'. The series comprises high quality monographs and collected volumes that address such issues. The topics in this series range from phonology to semantics, from syntax to information structure, from mathematical linguistics to studies of the lexicon.

Regimes of Derivation in Syntax and Morphology

Regimes of Derivation in Syntax and Morphology PDF Author: Edwin Williams
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136824812
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
Regimes of Derivation in Syntax and Morphology presents a theory of the architecture of the human linguistic system that differs from all current theories on four key points. First, the theory rests on a modular separation of word syntax from phrasal syntax, where word syntax corresponds roughly to what has been called derivational morphology. Second, morphosyntax (corresponding to what is traditionally called "inflectional morphology") is the immediate spellout of the syntactic merge operation, and so there is no separate morphosyntactic component. There is no LF (logical form) derived; that is, there is no structure which 'mirrors' semantic interpretation ("LF"); instead, semantics interprets the derivation itself. And fourth, syntactic islands are derived purely as a consequence of the formal mechanics of syntactic derivation, and so there are no bounding nodes, no phases, no subjacency, and in fact no absolute islands. Lacking a morphosyntactic component and an LF representation are positive benefits as these provide temptations for theoretical mischief. The theory is a descendant of the author's "Representation Theory" and so inherits its other benefits as well, including explanations for properties of reconstruction, remnant movement, improper movement, and scrambling/scope interactions, and the different embedding regimes for clauses and DPs. Syntactic islands are added to this list as special cases of improper movement.

Understanding Minimalism

Understanding Minimalism PDF Author: Norbert Hornstein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113993659X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
Understanding Minimalism, first published in 2005, is an introduction to the Minimalist Program - the model of syntactic theory within generative linguistics. Accessibly written, it presents the basic principles and techniques of the minimalist program, looking firstly at analyses within Government and Binding Theory (the Minimalist Program's predecessor), and gradually introducing minimalist alternatives. Minimalist models of grammar are presented in a step-by-step fashion, and the ways in which they contrast with GB analyses are clearly explained. Spanning a decade of minimalist thinking, this textbook will enable students to develop a feel for the sorts of questions and problems that minimalism invites, and to master the techniques of minimalist analysis. Over 100 exercises are provided, encouraging them to put these skills into practice. Understanding Minimalism will be an invaluable text for intermediate and advanced students of syntactic theory, and will set a solid foundation for further study and research within Chomsky's minimalist framework.

Locality in Minimalist Syntax

Locality in Minimalist Syntax PDF Author: Thomas S. Stroik
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026226157X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
This minimalist study proposes that the computational system of human language must consist of strictly local operations. In this highly original reanalysis of minimalist syntax, Thomas Stroik considers the optimal design properties for human language. Taking as his starting point Chomsky's minimalist assumption that the syntactic component of a language generates representations for sentences that are interpreted at perceptual and conceptual interfaces, Stroik investigates how these representations can be generated most parsimoniously. Countering the prevailing analyses of minimalist syntax, he argues that the computational properties of human language consist only of strictly local Merge operations that lack both look-back and look-forward properties. All grammatical operations reduce to a single sort of locally defined feature-checking operation, and all grammatical properties are the cumulative effects of local grammatical operations. As Stroik demonstrates, reducing syntactic operations to local operations with a single property—merging lexical material into syntactic derivations—not only radically increases the computational efficiency of the syntactic component, but it also optimally simplifies the design of the computational system. Locality in Minimalist Syntax explains a range of syntactic phenomena that have long resisted previous generative theories, including that-trace effects, superiority effects, and the interpretations available for multiple-wh constructions. It also introduces the Survive Principle, an important new concept for syntactic analysis, and provides something considered impossible in minimalist syntax: a locality account of displacement phenomena.

Coordination in Syntax

Coordination in Syntax PDF Author: Niina Ning Zhang
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139485083
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Coordination in syntax is an important part of the analysis of sentence structure. Niina Ning Zhang addresses the issues raised by coordinate pairings and the implications of these structures, looking in particular at examples within English and Chinese. The volume covers the major questions regarding coordinates in syntax, providing a fresh perspective to arguments raised within previous literature. She explains how such coordinate complexes are structured, how some coordinators can be combined in parts of speech, the fixed nature of some of these pairings and what changes exist between the coordinate and non-coordinate constructions. The theories raised are backed up by a rich variety of examples as well as providing a cross-linguistic perspective, contextualising these ideas within current syntactic research.

Local Modelling of Non-Local Dependencies in Syntax

Local Modelling of Non-Local Dependencies in Syntax PDF Author: Artemis Alexiadou
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 311029477X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
Syntactic dependencies are often non-local: They can involve two positions in a syntactic structure whose correspondence cannot be captured by invoking concepts like minimal clause or predicate/argument structure. Relevant phenomena include long-distance movement, long-distance reflexivization, long-distance agreement, control, non-local deletion, long-distance case assignment, consecutio temporum, extended scope of negation, and semantic binding of pronouns. A recurring strategy pursued in many contemporary syntactic theories is to model cases of non-local dependencies in a strictly local way, by successively passing on the relevant information in small domains of syntactic structures. The present volume brings together eighteen articles that investigate non-local dependencies in movement, agreement, binding, scope, and deletion constructions from different theoretical backgrounds (among them versions of the Minimalist Program, HPSG, and Categorial Grammar), and based on evidence from a variety of typologically distinct languages. This way, advantages and disadvantages of local treatments of non-local dependencies become evident. Furthermore, it turns out that local analyses of non-local phenomena developed in different syntactic theories (spanning the derivational/declarative divide) often may not only share identical research questions but also rely on identical research strategies.