The Morphosyntax of Negative Markers

The Morphosyntax of Negative Markers PDF Author: Karen De Clercq
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501513753
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Get Book

Book Description
This book applies the tools of nanosyntax to the natural language phenomenon of negation. Most work on negation is concerned with the study of sentence negation, while low scope negation or constituent negation is hardly ever systematically discussed in the literature. The present book aims to fill that gap, by investigating scopally different negative markers in a sample of 23 typologically diverse languages. A four-way classification of negative markers is argued for and it is shown how meaningful syncretism patterns arise across those four groups of negative markers in the language sample investigated. The syncretisms are meaningful in that they track the natural semantic scope of negation, and provide support to the idea that morphology is not arbitrary, but points to submorphemic structure. Consequently, this study leads to a decomposition of the negative morpheme into five privative features: Tense, Focus, Classification, Quantity and Negation proper. Finally, the book argues that sentence, constituent and lexical negation can all be treated in the same module of the grammar, i.e. syntax.

The Morphosyntax of Negative Markers

The Morphosyntax of Negative Markers PDF Author: Karen De Clercq
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501513753
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Get Book

Book Description
This book applies the tools of nanosyntax to the natural language phenomenon of negation. Most work on negation is concerned with the study of sentence negation, while low scope negation or constituent negation is hardly ever systematically discussed in the literature. The present book aims to fill that gap, by investigating scopally different negative markers in a sample of 23 typologically diverse languages. A four-way classification of negative markers is argued for and it is shown how meaningful syncretism patterns arise across those four groups of negative markers in the language sample investigated. The syncretisms are meaningful in that they track the natural semantic scope of negation, and provide support to the idea that morphology is not arbitrary, but points to submorphemic structure. Consequently, this study leads to a decomposition of the negative morpheme into five privative features: Tense, Focus, Classification, Quantity and Negation proper. Finally, the book argues that sentence, constituent and lexical negation can all be treated in the same module of the grammar, i.e. syntax.

The Morphosyntax of Negative Markers

The Morphosyntax of Negative Markers PDF Author: Karen De Clercq
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 150151377X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Get Book

Book Description
This book applies the tools of nanosyntax to the natural language phenomenon of negation. Most work on negation is concerned with the study of sentence negation, while low scope negation or constituent negation is hardly ever systematically discussed in the literature. The present book aims to fill that gap, by investigating scopally different negative markers in a sample of 23 typologically diverse languages. A four-way classification of negative markers is argued for and it is shown how meaningful syncretism patterns arise across those four groups of negative markers in the language sample investigated. The syncretisms are meaningful in that they track the natural semantic scope of negation, and provide support to the idea that morphology is not arbitrary, but points to submorphemic structure. Consequently, this study leads to a decomposition of the negative morpheme into five privative features: Tense, Focus, Classification, Quantity and Negation proper. Finally, the book argues that sentence, constituent and lexical negation can all be treated in the same module of the grammar, i.e. syntax.

The Morphosyntax of Imperatives

The Morphosyntax of Imperatives PDF Author: Daniela Isac
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191047937
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book

Book Description
This book studies the properties of imperative clauses in the context of a theory of Universal Grammar. Daniela Isac argues that the specificity of imperative clauses cannot be the result of a unique imperative Force feature; instead, the `type' of imperative clauses can be traced back to a plurality of finer grained features, such as Modality and phi-features, hosted by the Mod, Infl, and Speech Event heads, among others. The data are drawn from a wide range of languages including various Romance, Slavic, and Germanic languages, as well as Finnish and Inuktitut. The analysis accounts for recurrent patterns in the interaction of imperative mood with phenomena like negation, restrictions on grammatical subjects, and the possibility of embedding imperative clauses. The approach, which focuses exclusively on morphosyntactic rather than semantic features, is potentially transferable to the analysis of other clause types, such as exclamatives, interrogatives, and declaratives.

Exploring Nanosyntax

Exploring Nanosyntax PDF Author: Lena Baunaz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190876751
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 361

Get Book

Book Description
Exploring Nanosyntax is the first in-depth introduction to the framework of nanosyntax. Deploying the cartographic "one feature - one head" maxim, the framework decomposes morphosyntactic structure, laying bare the building blocks of the universal functional sequence. This volume presents the framework's constitutive tools and principles, and explains how nanosyntax relates to cartography and to Distributed Morphology. It also illustrates how nanosyntactic tools and principles can e applied to a range of empirical domains of natural language. Comprising twelve original contributions by leaders of the field, the volume provides a range of cross-linguistic investigations that contribute to a better understanding of the functional sequence. Book jacket.

The Morphosyntax of Complement-head Sequences

The Morphosyntax of Complement-head Sequences PDF Author: Enoch Oladé Aboh
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195159905
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 396

Get Book

Book Description
This is the first book on the syntax of the Niger-Conger language family, which includes most of the languages of sub-Saharan Africa. Aboh, who is a native speaker of one of the languages (Gungbe) discussed, analyzes different aspects of the syntax of the "Kwa" language group. Aboh also suggests how grammatical pictures for these languages can shed some light on Universal Grammar in general.

Modality, Aspect and Negation in Persian

Modality, Aspect and Negation in Persian PDF Author: Azita H. Taleghani
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027290687
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book

Book Description
This monograph presents a morpho-syntactic investigation on modality, aspect, and negation by concentrating on Persian, and is designed to contribute to theoretical linguistics and the study of Iranian languages. The analysis is based on the Minimalist program. This research challenges the idea that the syntactic structure maps on the semantic interpretation or vice versa. The discussion presented in this monograph shows that the syntactic structure of Persian modals is uniform no matter if the modals are interpreted as having root or epistemic readings. Although it is claimed that modals are raising constructions in different languages, modals in Persian, which does not have subject-raising constructions, show a different syntactic behavior. Furthermore, the structural analysis of the interaction of Persian modals and negation shows that because of the scope interaction of negation and modals, the syntactic structure of modals with respect to negation mostly corresponds to the semantic interpretation of modals.

Manual of Romance Morphosyntax and Syntax

Manual of Romance Morphosyntax and Syntax PDF Author: Andreas Dufter
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311037708X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 977

Get Book

Book Description
This volume offers theoretically informed surveys of topics that have figured prominently in morphosyntactic and syntactic research into Romance languages and dialects. We define syntax as being the linguistic component that assembles linguistic units, such as roots or functional morphemes, into grammatical sentences, and morphosyntax as being an umbrella term for all morphological relations between these linguistic units, which either trigger morphological marking (e.g. explicit case morphemes) or are related to ordering issues (e.g. subjects precede finite verbs whenever there is number agreement between them). All 24 chapters adopt a comparative perspective on these two fields of research, highlighting cross-linguistic grammatical similarities and differences within the Romance language family. In addition, many chapters address issues related to variation observable within individual Romance languages, and grammatical change from Latin to Romance.

Cycles in Language Change

Cycles in Language Change PDF Author: Miriam Bouzouita
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019255848X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book

Book Description
This volume explores the multiple aspects of cyclical syntactic change from a wide range of empirical perspectives. The notion of 'linguistic cycle' has long been recognized as being relevant to the description of many processes of language change. In grammaticalization, a given linguistic form loses its lexical meaning - and sometimes some of its phonological content - and then gradually weakens until it ultimately vanishes. This change becomes cyclical when the grammaticalized form is replaced by an innovative item, which can then develop along exactly the same pathway. But cyclical changes have also been observed in language change outside of grammaticalization proper. The chapters in this book reflect the growing interest in the phenomenon of grammaticalization and cyclicity in generative syntax, with topics including the diachrony of negation, the syntax of determiners and pronominal clitics, the internal structure of wh-words and logical operators, cyclical changes in argument structure, and the relationship between morphology and syntax. The contributions draw on data from multiple language families, such as Indo-European, Semitic, Japonic, and Athabascan. The volume combines empirical descriptions of novel comparative data with detailed theoretical analysis, and will appeal to historical linguists working in formal and usage-based frameworks, as well as to typologists and scholars interested in language variation and change more broadly.

Negation Raising

Negation Raising PDF Author: Vincenzo Moscati
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443825336
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Get Book

Book Description
With this book, the author explores the syntax of negative sentences, tracing the fine-grained contours of linguistic variation and offering a detailed cartographic representation of the distribution of negative markers. The goal is to show the existing tension in language between the variable surface realization of negation and its stable logical representation. In order to solve this tension and to unify the interpretation of negative sentences, a mapping operation, LF-Negation Raising, is proposed. Verbal arguments related to negation such as n-words, negative quantifiers and negative polarity items are also considered, in order to derive negative concord phenomena from the inner semantics of nominal constituents.

Describing Morphosyntax

Describing Morphosyntax PDF Author: Thomas E. Payne
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521588058
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Get Book

Book Description
Of the 6000 languages now spoken throughout the world around 3000 may become extinct during the next century. This guide gives linguists the tools to describe them, syntactically and grammatically, for future reference.