The Syntax of Tenselessness

The Syntax of Tenselessness PDF Author: Anna-Lena Wiklund
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110197839
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Tense/Mood/Aspect-agreeing Infinitivals is an in-depth investigation of the syntax of verb-verb agreement phenomena in Swedish, including pseudocoordinations of the form John started and wrote 'John started writing' and double participles of the form John had been-able written 'John had been able to write'. Providing evidence from facts concerning extraction, locality, selection, and interpretation, the book argues that the relevant construction types all involve surface variants of "infinitives in disguise"; infinitivals that agree with the matrix clause in tense/mood/aspect. Arguments are presented in favour of taking the dependencies underlying the agreement to be instances of Agree between functional heads of the same label, a configuration that yields restructuring/clause-union. The main theoretical contributions of the book are two: (i) Agreement is proportional to functional structure: The possibility of "copying" a particular morphosyntactic form is contingent on the presence of the corresponding functional projection in the agreeing XP. (ii) Size constancy between restructuring/non-restructuring infinitivals: The category selected by a verb may remain constant between restructuring and non-restructuring configurations. It is suggested that an important aspect of restructuring may be alternation between unmarked (negatively specified) features and unvalued varieties of the same features, capturing properties such as "tenselessness", "finitelessness", etc. of restructuring infinitivals. The book is an important contribution to the syntax of infinitival clauses, the syntax of clause-union/restructuring, and more generally to the syntax of agreement phenomena in natural language. In addition, it provides a general reference source for anyone interested in the syntax of Swedish and other Scandinavian languages.

The Syntax of Tenselessness

The Syntax of Tenselessness PDF Author: Anna-Lena Wiklund
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110197839
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Tense/Mood/Aspect-agreeing Infinitivals is an in-depth investigation of the syntax of verb-verb agreement phenomena in Swedish, including pseudocoordinations of the form John started and wrote 'John started writing' and double participles of the form John had been-able written 'John had been able to write'. Providing evidence from facts concerning extraction, locality, selection, and interpretation, the book argues that the relevant construction types all involve surface variants of "infinitives in disguise"; infinitivals that agree with the matrix clause in tense/mood/aspect. Arguments are presented in favour of taking the dependencies underlying the agreement to be instances of Agree between functional heads of the same label, a configuration that yields restructuring/clause-union. The main theoretical contributions of the book are two: (i) Agreement is proportional to functional structure: The possibility of "copying" a particular morphosyntactic form is contingent on the presence of the corresponding functional projection in the agreeing XP. (ii) Size constancy between restructuring/non-restructuring infinitivals: The category selected by a verb may remain constant between restructuring and non-restructuring configurations. It is suggested that an important aspect of restructuring may be alternation between unmarked (negatively specified) features and unvalued varieties of the same features, capturing properties such as "tenselessness", "finitelessness", etc. of restructuring infinitivals. The book is an important contribution to the syntax of infinitival clauses, the syntax of clause-union/restructuring, and more generally to the syntax of agreement phenomena in natural language. In addition, it provides a general reference source for anyone interested in the syntax of Swedish and other Scandinavian languages.

Microvariation in Syntactic Doubling

Microvariation in Syntactic Doubling PDF Author: Lambertus Christiaan Jozef Barbiers
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1848550200
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
Contains seventeen papers on microvariation in syntactic doubling. This work provides an overview of the syntactic doubling phenomena attested and of the theoretical analyses available. It discusses the syntactic doubling phenomena including, among others, subject pronoun doubling, WH pronoun doubling, clitic doubling and auxiliary doubling.

The Syntax of Tense

The Syntax of Tense PDF Author: Ellen Thompson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description


The Syntax of Nonsententials

The Syntax of Nonsententials PDF Author: Ljiljana Progovac
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027233578
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
This volume brings the data that many in formal linguistics have dismissed as peripheral straight into the core of syntactic theory. By bringing together experts from syntax, semantics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, language acquisition, aphasia, and pidgin and creole studies, the volume makes a multidisciplinary case for the existence of nonsententials, which are analyzed in various chapters as root phrases and small clauses (Me; Me First!; Him worry?!; Class in session), and whose distinguishing property is the absence of Tense, and, with it, any syntactic phenomena that rely on Tense, including structural Nominative Case. Arguably, the lack of Tense specification is also responsible for the dearth of indicative interpretations among nonsententials, as well as for their heavy reliance on pragmatic context. So pervasive is nonsentential speech across all groups, including normal adult speech, that a case can be made that continuity of grammar lies in nonsentential, rather than sentential speech.

The Syntax of Tenselessness

The Syntax of Tenselessness PDF Author: Anna-Lena Wiklund
Publisher: Almqvist & Wiksell International
ISBN:
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description


The Syntax and Semantics of English Tense Markers

The Syntax and Semantics of English Tense Markers PDF Author: Eva Ejerhed
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description


The Syntax of Nonsententials

The Syntax of Nonsententials PDF Author: Ljiljana Progovac
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 902729335X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
This volume brings the data that many in formal linguistics have dismissed as peripheral straight into the core of syntactic theory. By bringing together experts from syntax, semantics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, language acquisition, aphasia, and pidgin and creole studies, the volume makes a multidisciplinary case for the existence of nonsententials, which are analyzed in various chapters as root phrases and small clauses (Me; Me First!; Him worry?!; Class in session), and whose distinguishing property is the absence of Tense, and, with it, any syntactic phenomena that rely on Tense, including structural Nominative Case. Arguably, the lack of Tense specification is also responsible for the dearth of indicative interpretations among nonsententials, as well as for their heavy reliance on pragmatic context. So pervasive is nonsentential speech across all groups, including normal adult speech, that a case can be made that continuity of grammar lies in nonsentential, rather than sentential speech.

The Cambridge Handbook of Germanic Linguistics

The Cambridge Handbook of Germanic Linguistics PDF Author: Michael T. Putnam
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108386350
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 1176

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Book Description
The first comprehensive overview of the structure of modern Germanic languages. Written by a team of internationally-renowned experts, it is a vital resource for students and researchers investigating the Germanic family of languages and dialects, covering key topics such as phonology, morphology, syntax, heritage and minority languages.

Microvariation in Syntactic Doubling

Microvariation in Syntactic Doubling PDF Author: Sjef Barbiers
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1848550219
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 495

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Book Description
Contains seventeen papers on microvariation in syntactic doubling. This work provides an overview of the syntactic doubling phenomena attested and of the theoretical analyses available. It discusses the syntactic doubling phenomena including, among others, subject pronoun doubling, WH pronoun doubling, clitic doubling and auxiliary doubling.

Mood, Aspect, Modality Revisited

Mood, Aspect, Modality Revisited PDF Author: Joanna Blaszczak
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022636366X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
Over the past several decades, linguistic theorizing of tense, aspect, and mood (TAM), along with a strongly growing body of crosslinguistic studies, has revealed complexity in the data that challenges traditional distinctions and treatments of these categories. Mood, Aspect, Modality Revisited argues that it’s time to revisit our conventional assumptions and reconsider our foundational questions: What exactly is a linguistic category? What kinds of categories do labels such as “subjunctive,” “imperative,” “future,” and “modality” truly refer to? In short, how categorical are categories? Current literature assumes a straightforward link between grammatical category and semantic function, and descriptions of well-studied languages have cultivated a sense of predictability in patterns over time. As the editors and contributors of Mood, Aspect, Modality Revisited prove, however, this predictability and stability vanish in the study of lesser-known patterns and languages. The ten provocative essays gathered here present fascinating cutting-edge research demonstrating that the traditional grammatical distinctions are ultimately fluid—and perhaps even illusory. Developing groundbreaking and highly original theories, the contributors in this volume seek to unravel more general, fundamental principles of TAM that can help us better understand the nature of linguistic representations.