The Article and the Concept of Definiteness in Language

The Article and the Concept of Definiteness in Language PDF Author: Jiří Krámský
Publisher: Janua Linguarum. Series Minor
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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No detailed description available for "The Article and the Concept of Definiteness in Language".

The Article and the Concept of Definiteness in Language

The Article and the Concept of Definiteness in Language PDF Author: Jiří Krámský
Publisher: Janua Linguarum. Series Minor
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
No detailed description available for "The Article and the Concept of Definiteness in Language".

The Article and the Concept of Definiteness in Language

The Article and the Concept of Definiteness in Language PDF Author: Jirí Krámský
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110886901
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Definiteness across languages

Definiteness across languages PDF Author: Ana Aguilar-Guevara
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961101922
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description
Definiteness has been a central topic in theoretical semantics since its modern foundation. However, despite its significance, there has been surprisingly scarce research on its cross-linguistic expression. With the purpose of contributing to filling this gap, the present volume gathers thirteen studies exploiting insights from formal semantics and syntax, typological and language specific studies, and, crucially, semantic fieldwork and cross-linguistic semantics, in order to address the expression and interpretation of definiteness in a diverse group of languages, most of them understudied. The papers presented in this volume aim to establish a dialogue between theory and data in order to answer the following questions: What formal strategies do natural languages employ to encode definiteness? What are the possible meanings associated to this notion across languages? Are there different types of definite reference? Which other functions (besides marking definite reference) are associated with definite descriptions? Each of the papers contained in this volume addresses at least one of these questions and, in doing so, they aim to enrich our understanding of definiteness.

Definiteness in a Language Without Articles - a Study on Polish

Definiteness in a Language Without Articles - a Study on Polish PDF Author: Adrian Czardybon
Publisher: Düsseldorf University Press
ISBN: 9783957580474
Category : Polish language
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
The aim of this book is to investigate how definiteness is expressed in Polish, a language which is claimed to have no definite and in-definite articles. The central question is how the difference in definiteness is indicated between 'a woman' and 'the woman' in Polish. In English, the definite article 'the' and the indefinite article 'a' express the category of definiteness explicitly. Since definiteness is also relevant in articleless languages, there are other means to indicate that a nominal phrase is definite or indefinite.0This study is delimited to four means for expressing definiteness in Polish, which are demonstratives, aspect, case alternation, and information structure. Each strategy is investigated independently from the others, although they interact in a complex way, which is shown at the end of this book resulting in a decision tree. Polish is not investigated in isolation, however, the study is complemented by comparisons with other Slavic languages and also with a Polish dialect called 'Upper Silesian', which differs from Polish.0The analysis in this book is based on Löbner?s theory of 'Concept Types and Determination' (CTD). Löbner?s distinction of the four concept types (sortal, relational, functional, individual) is crucial since definiteness phenomena under discussion can be explained. Therefore, the interaction of the four concept types with the four definiteness strategies plays a central role in this book.

Definiteness and Indefiniteness

Definiteness and Indefiniteness PDF Author: John Hawkins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131741957X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
First published in 1988, this book is concerned with the definite and indefinite articles in English. It provides an integrated pragmatic-semantic theory of definite and indefinite reference, on the basis of which, many co-occurance restrictions between articles and non-modifiers are explained. At the general theoretical level, this book looks at the role of semantics in the prediction of all and only the grammatical sentences of a language. A generalisation is proposed uniting semantic oppositions underlying ungrammaticality with syntactic oppositions between conditions of application on transformational generative rules. A procedure is suggested for distinguishing semantic from syntactic causes of ungrammaticality. At a more particular level, the book explores the nature of reference. It examines an important selection of subjects such as the contrast between definiteness and indefiniteness, the relationship between definite and demonstrative reference, and the relationship between pragmatic and logical aspects of determining meaning.

Definiteness Effects

Definiteness Effects PDF Author: Susann Fischer
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443898007
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 475

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Book Description
This volume explores in detail the empirical and conceptual content of the definiteness effect in grammar. It brings together a variety of relevant observations from a typological, diachronic and a bilingual/second language acquisition perspective, and provides a general overview of different approaches concerned with the syntactic, morphological, semantic, and pragmatic properties of the Definiteness Effect in a series of European and non-European languages.

Definiteness

Definiteness PDF Author: Christopher Lyons
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521368353
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
This 1999 textbook investigates definiteness both from a comparative and a theoretical point of view, showing how languages express definiteness and what definiteness is. It surveys a large number of languages to discover the range of variation in relation to definiteness and related grammatical phenomena, such as demonstratives, possessives and personal pronouns. It outlines work done on the nature of definiteness in semantics, pragmatics and syntax, and develops an account on which definiteness is a grammatical category represented in syntax as a functional head (the widely discussed D). Consideration is also given to the origins and evolution of definite articles in the light of the comparative and theoretical findings. Among the claims advanced are that definiteness does not occur in all languages, though the pragmatic concept which it grammaticalizes probably does.

Sentence and Discourse

Sentence and Discourse PDF Author: Jacqueline Guéron
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019105982X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
This book looks at the relationship between the structure of the sentence and the organization of discourse. While a sentence obeys specific grammatical rules, the coherence of a discourse is instead dependent on the relations between the sentences it contains. In this volume, leading syntacticians, semanticists, and philosophers examine the nature of these relations, where they come from, and how they apply. Chapters in Part I address points of sentence grammar in different languages, including mood and tense in Spanish, definite determiners in French and Bulgarian, and the influence of aktionsart on the acquisition of tense by English, French, and Chinese children. Part II looks at modes of discourse, showing for example how discourse relations create implicatures and how Indirect Discourse differs from Free Indirect Discourse. The studies conclude that the relations between sentences that make a discourse coherent are already encoded in sentence grammar and that, once established, these relations influence the meaning of individual sentences.

Articles in the World’s Languages

Articles in the World’s Languages PDF Author: Laura Becker
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110724421
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
This study provides a systematic overview of articles and article systems in the world’s languages using a sample of 104 languages. Articles can be classified into 10 types according to their referential functions: definite, anaphoric, weak definite, recognitional, indefinite, presentational, exclusive-specific, nonspecific, inclusive-specific, and referential articles. All 10 types are described in detail with examples from various languages of the world. The book also addresses crosslinguistic trends concerning the distribution and the development of different article types, and it proposes a typology of article systems. The aim of this study is to provide a general crosslinguistic overview concerning the attested properties and distributions of articles. It is geared towards readers with interests in language typology and the nominal domain, and it can serve as a point of reference for language-specific studies of articles or determiners.

The Semantics of Definite and Indefinite Noun Phrases

The Semantics of Definite and Indefinite Noun Phrases PDF Author: Irene Roswitha Heim
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Grammar, Comparative and general
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description