The English it-Cleft

The English it-Cleft PDF Author: Amanda Patten
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110279525
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines the structure and function of the English it-cleft configuration from within the framework of construction grammar. It defends a straightforward extraposition-from-NP analysis (on which the cleft clause is a restrictive relative, modifying the initial it) and claims that all types of it-cleft involve nominal predication. Support for this analysis comes from three main areas: (a) the central role of definiteness in the creation of specificational meaning, (b) the existence and makeup of predicational (and proverbial) it-clefts, and (c) the early, historical it-cleft data. In addition, the book contains a sizeable diachronic component, drawing data from the Penn Parsed Corpora of Historical English and from the International Corpus of English - Great Britain. This investigation informs and advances what is an otherwise simple account of the English it-cleft, explaining how and why the configuration has developed an assortment of peculiar, construction-specific properties over time.

The English it-Cleft

The English it-Cleft PDF Author: Amanda Patten
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110279525
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines the structure and function of the English it-cleft configuration from within the framework of construction grammar. It defends a straightforward extraposition-from-NP analysis (on which the cleft clause is a restrictive relative, modifying the initial it) and claims that all types of it-cleft involve nominal predication. Support for this analysis comes from three main areas: (a) the central role of definiteness in the creation of specificational meaning, (b) the existence and makeup of predicational (and proverbial) it-clefts, and (c) the early, historical it-cleft data. In addition, the book contains a sizeable diachronic component, drawing data from the Penn Parsed Corpora of Historical English and from the International Corpus of English - Great Britain. This investigation informs and advances what is an otherwise simple account of the English it-cleft, explaining how and why the configuration has developed an assortment of peculiar, construction-specific properties over time.

The Pseudo-Cleft Construction in English

The Pseudo-Cleft Construction in English PDF Author: F. R. Higgins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317436814
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Get Book Here

Book Description
This work, first published in 1979, was a doctoral dissertation submitted to the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on June 22nd 1973. The ostensible central topic of this essay is a construction which is generally known as the "pseudo-cleft" construction. This essay aims to provide an overall picture of the construction, and show why another treatment of it is necessary. This book will be of interest to those pursuing the topic of copular sentences.

Cleft Structures

Cleft Structures PDF Author: Katharina Hartmann
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027271127
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 358

Get Book Here

Book Description
The phenomenon of clefts is beyond doubt a golden oldie. It has captivated linguists of different disciplines for decades. The fascination arises from the unique syntax of clefts in interaction with their pragmatic and semantic interpretation. Clefts structure sentences according to the information state of the constituents contained in them. They are special as they exhibit a rather uncommon syntactic form to achieve the separation of the prominent part, either focal or topical, from the background of the clause. Despite the long-lasting interest in clefts, linguists have not yet come to an agreement on many basic questions. The articles contained in this volume address these issues from new theoretical and empirical perspectives. Based on data from about 50 languages from all over the world, this volume presents new arguments for the proper derivation of clefts, and contributes to the ongoing debate on the information-structural impact of cleft structures. Theoretically, it combines modern syntactic theorizing with investigations at the interface between grammar and information-structure.

Questions in Discourse

Questions in Discourse PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004378308
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 314

Get Book Here

Book Description
The volume Questions in Discourse - Vol. 1 Semantics contains a comprehensive overview of the semantic analysis of questions and their role in structuring discourse, next to a series of in-depth contributions on individual aspects of question meanings. The expert contributions offer novel accounts of semantic phenomena such as negation and biased questions, question embedding, exhaustivity, disjunction in alternative questions, and superlative quantification particles in questions. Some accounts are modelled in the framework of inquisitive semantics, whereas others employ alternative semantics, and yet others point to the discourse-structuring potential of marked questions. All contributions are easily accessible against the background of the general introduction. Together, they give an excellent overview of current trends in question semantics.

Cleft and Pseudo-Cleft Constructions in English

Cleft and Pseudo-Cleft Constructions in English PDF Author: Peter C. Collins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317421361
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 429

Get Book Here

Book Description
First published in 1991, this book examines the communicative properties of ‘cleft’ and ‘pseudo-cleft’ constructions in contemporary English. The book argues that these properties cannot be ignored in any attempt to provide an adequate grammatical description of the constructions. Furthermore, they provide a source of explanations for the patterns of stylistic variation displayed by clefts and pseudo-clefts. The book reports findings from a corpus-based study of clefts and pseudo-clefts in modern British English.

Clefts and Their Relatives

Clefts and Their Relatives PDF Author: Matthew Reeve
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027255687
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Get Book Here

Book Description
Cleft constructions have long presented an analytical challenge for syntactic theory. This monograph argues that clefts and related constructions cannot be analysed in a straightforwardly compositional manner. Instead, it proposes that the locality conditions on modification (for example by a restrictive relative clause) must be reformulated such that they account for the apparent compositionality of DP-internal modification whilst also permitting 'discontinuous' modification of the type which is independently needed for constructions such as relative clause extraposition. The empirical focus of the book is on clefts in English and Russian, which have a similar interpretation but considerably divergent syntactic structures. The author argues that, despite these syntactic differences, both types of cleft are mapped to their semantic interpretations in the same manner. This monograph will be essential reading for those working on cleft constructions and copular sentences more generally, and will be of interest to those working on the syntax-semantics interface.

Cleft and Pseudo-Cleft Constructions in English

Cleft and Pseudo-Cleft Constructions in English PDF Author: Peter C. Collins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131742137X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 247

Get Book Here

Book Description
First published in 1991, this book examines the communicative properties of ‘cleft’ and ‘pseudo-cleft’ constructions in contemporary English. The book argues that these properties cannot be ignored in any attempt to provide an adequate grammatical description of the constructions. Furthermore, they provide a source of explanations for the patterns of stylistic variation displayed by clefts and pseudo-clefts. The book reports findings from a corpus-based study of clefts and pseudo-clefts in modern British English.

Routledge Library Editions: The English Language

Routledge Library Editions: The English Language PDF Author: Various
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317415469
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 7703

Get Book Here

Book Description
This set reissues 29 books on the English language, originally published between 1932 and 2003. Together, the volumes cover key topics within the larger subject of the English Language, including grammar, dialect and the history of English. Written and edited by an international set of scholars, particular volumes employ comparisons with other languages such as French and German, whilst other volumes are devoted to specific English dialects such as Cockney and Canadian English, or English in general. This collection provides insight and perspective on various elements of the English language over a period of 70 years and demonstrates its enduring importance as a field of research.

Index of the Periodical Dental Literature Published in the English Language

Index of the Periodical Dental Literature Published in the English Language PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dentistry
Languages : en
Pages : 548

Get Book Here

Book Description
Beginning with 1962, references are not limited to material in the English language.

Index of the Periodical Dental Literature Published in the English Language

Index of the Periodical Dental Literature Published in the English Language PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Classification
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description