The Grammatical Realization of Polarity Contrast

The Grammatical Realization of Polarity Contrast PDF Author: Christine Dimroth
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027263388
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
The polarity of a sentence is crucial for its meaning. It is thus hardly surprising that languages have developed devices to highlight this meaning component and to contrast statements with negative and positive polarity in discourse. Research on this issue has started from languages like German and Dutch, where prosody and assertive particles are systematically associated with polarity contrast. Recently, the grammatical realization of polarity contrast has been at the center of investigations in a range of other languages as well. Core questions concern the formal repertoire and the exact meaning contribution of the relevant devices, the kind of contrast they evoke, and their relation to information structure and sentence mood. This volume brings together researchers from a theoretical, an empirical, and a typological orientation and enhances our understanding of polarity with the help of in-depth analyses and cross-linguistic comparisons dealing with the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and/or prosodic aspects of the phenomenon.

The Grammatical Realization of Polarity Contrast

The Grammatical Realization of Polarity Contrast PDF Author: Christine Dimroth
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027263388
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 299

Get Book Here

Book Description
The polarity of a sentence is crucial for its meaning. It is thus hardly surprising that languages have developed devices to highlight this meaning component and to contrast statements with negative and positive polarity in discourse. Research on this issue has started from languages like German and Dutch, where prosody and assertive particles are systematically associated with polarity contrast. Recently, the grammatical realization of polarity contrast has been at the center of investigations in a range of other languages as well. Core questions concern the formal repertoire and the exact meaning contribution of the relevant devices, the kind of contrast they evoke, and their relation to information structure and sentence mood. This volume brings together researchers from a theoretical, an empirical, and a typological orientation and enhances our understanding of polarity with the help of in-depth analyses and cross-linguistic comparisons dealing with the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and/or prosodic aspects of the phenomenon.

The Grammar of Polarity

The Grammar of Polarity PDF Author: Michael Israel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139500570
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
Many languages include constructions which are sensitive to the expression of polarity: that is, negative polarity items, which cannot occur in affirmative clauses, and positive polarity items, which cannot occur in negatives. The phenomenon of polarity sensitivity has been an important source of evidence for theories about the mental architecture of grammar over the last fifty years, and to many the oddly dysfunctional sensitivities of polarity items have seemed to support a view of grammar as an encapsulated mental module fundamentally unrelated to other aspects of human cognition or communicative behavior. This book draws on insights from cognitive/functional linguistics and formal semantics to argue that, on the contrary, the grammar of sensitivity is grounded in a very general human cognitive ability to form categories and draw inferences based on scalar alternatives, and in the ways this ability is deployed for rhetorical effects in ordinary interpersonal communication.

Logic in Grammar

Logic in Grammar PDF Author: Gennaro Chierchia
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199697973
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
In a fundamental investigation of language and human reasoning, Gennaro Chierchia looks at how syntactic and inferential processes interact through the study of polarity sensitive and free choice items. He reformulates the semantics of focus and scope and the pragmatics of implicature as part of the recursive semantic system.

The Oxford Handbook of Negation

The Oxford Handbook of Negation PDF Author: Viviane Déprez
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198830521
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 889

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Book Description
This volume offers reviews of cross-linguistic research on the major classic issues in negation, as well as accounts of more recent results from experimental linguistics, psycholinguistics, and neuroscience. The volume will be an essential reference on the topic of negation for students and researchers across a wide range of disciplines.

Beyond 'Any' and 'Ever'

Beyond 'Any' and 'Ever' PDF Author: Eva Csipak
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110305232
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
The grammar of negative polarity items is one of the challenges for linguistic theory. NPIs cross-cut all traditional categories in grammar and semantics, yet their distribution is by no means arbitrary. Theories of NPI licensing have been proposed in terms of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics - each with its own merits and problems. The volume comprises state-of-the-art studies and suggests an interpolation approach to NPI licensing.

Negation and Polarity

Negation and Polarity PDF Author: Laurence R. Horn
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191584398
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Negation is a central feature of language and cognition, interacting with all areas of grammar as well as with the philosophy of language. Whereas there is a cross-linguistic uniformity in logical and semantic aspects of negation, there is a diversity of syntactic and morphological forms and rules. This asymmetry in function and form poses problems for syntactic and universal grammar theory and for the study of the interface between syntax and discourse. It is particularly evident in negative polarity–words and phrases which can appear only in negative sentences. The exploration of negation and negative polarity phenomena and their implications for linguistic theory are the main themes of this book.

The Expression of Negation

The Expression of Negation PDF Author: Laurence R. Horn
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110219298
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Negation is at the core of human language; without negation there can be no denial, contradiction, irony, or lies. This book examines the form and function of negative sentences in a variety of languages and offers state-of-the-art surveys of the acquisition of negation by children, its processing by adults, its historical development, and its interaction with other operators and predicates within natural language sentences. Topics covered include the nature of negative polarity, the phenomenon of pleonastic or illogical negation, and the role of morphological, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic.

Interpersonal Grammar

Interpersonal Grammar PDF Author: J. R. Martin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108660681
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
This pioneering volume lays out a set of methodological principles to guide the description of interpersonal grammar in different languages. It compares interpersonal systems and structures across a range of world languages, showing how discourse, interpersonal relationships between the speakers, and the purpose of their communication, all play a role in shaping the grammatical structures used in interaction. Following an introduction setting out these principles, each chapter focuses on a particular language - Khorchin Mongolian, Mandarin, Tagalog, Pitjantjatjara, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, British Sign Language and Scottish Gaelic – and explores mood, polarity, tagging, vocation, assessment and comment systems. The book provides a model for functional grammatical description that can be used to inform work on system and structure across languages as a foundation for functional language typology.

Plurals and Events

Plurals and Events PDF Author: Barry Schein
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262193344
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
Barry Schein proposes combining a second-order treatment of plurals with Donald Davidson's suggestion that there are positions for reference to events in ordinary predicates in order to account for several of the more puzzling features of plurals without invoking plural objects, with its attendant metaphysics, and also provide an absolute truth-theoretic characterization of the semantics of sentences with plurals in them. How do we make sense of sentences with plural noun phrases in them? In Plurals and Events, Barry Schein proposes combining a second-order treatment of plurals with Donald Davidson's suggestion that there are positions for reference to events in ordinary predicates in order to account for several of the more puzzling features of plurals without invoking plural objects, with its attendant metaphysics, and also provide an absolute truth-theoretic characterization of the semantics of sentences with plurals in them. Schein's highly original argument should have significant impact on how natural-language semantics is done, with repercussions for philosophy and logic. The book opens with foundational arguments that the logical language should have four major features: reduction to singular predication via a Davidsonian logical form, amereology of events, a logical syntax that allows the constituents of a Davidsonian analysis to be predicated of distinct events and separated from one another by other logical elements, and descriptive anaphors that cross-refer to the events described by antecedent clauses. A semantics for plurality and quantification is developed in the remaining chapters, which address some of the empirical and formal questions raised by the variety of interpretations in which plurals and quantifiers participate.

Polarity Sensitivity as (Non)Veridical Dependency

Polarity Sensitivity as (Non)Veridical Dependency PDF Author: Anastasia Giannakidou
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027282285
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Polarity phenomena have been known to linguists since Klima’s seminal work on English negation. In this monograph Giannakidou presents a novel theory of polarity which avoids the empirical and conceptual problems of previous approaches by introducing a notion wider than negation and downward entailment: (non)veridicality. The leading idea is that the various polarity phenomena observed in language are manifestations of the dependency of certain expessions, i.e. polarity items, to the (non)veridicality of the context of appearence. Dependencies to negation or downward entailment emerge as subcases of nonveridicality.The (non)veridical dependency may be positive (licensing), or negative (anti-licensing), and arises from the sensitivity semantics of polarity items. The book is also concerned with the syntactic mapping of the sensitivity dependency. It is argued that licensing does not necessarily correspond to a requirement that the licensee be in the scope of the licenser. In some cases, for instance for the interpretation of negative concord, the reverse is required: that the licensee takes the licenser in its scope. The theory is applied to an extended set of old and new data concerning affective, free-choice dependencies, and mood choice in relative clauses. The primary focus is on Greek, but data from Dutch, English, and to a lesser extend Romance and Slavic, are also considered.