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Author: Robin Clark
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315519879
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 219
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Book Description
In recent years, lexical argument structure, in the guise of thematic roles, has come to play an increasingly important part in syntactic theory. The first part of this book, first published in 1990, explores the interplay between thematic role assignment and movement processes, with particular reference to the explanatory problem of nominalisation. The second part explores the relationship between thematic roles and control. Particularly close attention is paid to implicit arguments, arbitrary control and adverbs of quantification. A theory of control is presented which unifies obligatory and non-obligatory control. The theory of control, furthermore, generalises to account for the binding gaps in purposive clauses, tough movement constructions, infinitival clauses and other constructions which have typically been analysed as involving long-distance dependencies. This title will be of interest to students of linguistics.
Author: Robin Clark
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315519879
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 219
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Book Description
In recent years, lexical argument structure, in the guise of thematic roles, has come to play an increasingly important part in syntactic theory. The first part of this book, first published in 1990, explores the interplay between thematic role assignment and movement processes, with particular reference to the explanatory problem of nominalisation. The second part explores the relationship between thematic roles and control. Particularly close attention is paid to implicit arguments, arbitrary control and adverbs of quantification. A theory of control is presented which unifies obligatory and non-obligatory control. The theory of control, furthermore, generalises to account for the binding gaps in purposive clauses, tough movement constructions, infinitival clauses and other constructions which have typically been analysed as involving long-distance dependencies. This title will be of interest to students of linguistics.
Author: Wendy Wilkins
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004373217
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
Thematic Relations provides information pertinent to thematic relations, which focus both on what sematic roles are expressible in the grammar and how these roles come to be associated with noun phrases. This book presents the interaction of components of the language faculty and other aspects of cognition. Organized into 13 chapters, this volume begins with an overview of the semantic relations involved in verb-argument structure. This text then examines the predicate-argument representations, which have come to figure prominently in all current generative theories of syntax. Other chapters consider the generalizations about thematic relations that are most insightfully captured at the level of syntax of at the level of semantics. This book discusses as well the importance of thematic roles to the grammar. The final chapter deals with the central role of thematic roles in language comprehension. This book is a valuable resource for linguists, syntacticians, and semanticists with an active involvement in research on natural language.
Author: Dorothea Kallfass
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3638592324
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 20
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Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,7, Humboldt-University of Berlin, course: Ergativity: A Comparative Perspective, 16 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Thematic roles are a linguistic phenomenon describing the more specific relations between a predicate and its respective arguments. This is especially important in the field of language acquisition, or, more generally stated, for the process of understanding. A discussion of thematic roles is closely linked to one of the most complex questions ever: what is meaning? Thematic roles are a linguistic approach to this question which is characterized by its comparative simplicity. Still, it is a complex theory. It ist acknowledged that if you know the grammar of a language you really know this language. Since grammar takes a closer look at units of speech such as sentences, and smaller chunks of sentences, one has to come up with some strategies for interpreting these chunks and the sort of relation they have with each other in order to know grammar. Theta theory is one of these strategies, focusing on "who does what to whom in a clause". In short: a predicate is able to assign certain thematic roles to its respective arguments - we say that predicates have a thematic structure. The part of grammar whicht regulates the assignment of these roles is called theta theory. As an issue of linguistic interest, thematic roles have gained importance during the last two decades. Theta theory as part of the Government and Binding Theory will be discussed in the following chapters. First, the theory has to be localized in the field of grammar. Then, there follows a brief introduction to Noam Chomsky's current theory of principles and parameters. After these introductory sections the main issues will be addressed, for example the grammatical relevance of thematic roles, and also the question as to which extent theta marking is grammatically realized.
Author: Nomi Erteschik-Shir
Publisher: Oxford Studies in Theoretical
ISBN: 9780199280438
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 348
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Book Description
This collection of new work focuses on issues at the lexicon-syntax interface. It presents innovative analyses of theoretical issues of aspectual interpretation in a variety of languages. The authors address questions such as to what extent can variation in verbal meaning, and thematic information can be determined in the syntax, and how the interpretation of various syntactic constructions is derived, once lexical information is minimized. A subset of the articles develops theories that take as their starting point the lexical-syntactic framework of the late Ken Hale and Jay Keyser, prominent among which is their own chapter.
Author: A. Neeleman
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401142890
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 261
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Book Description
Most linguistic theories assume that each grammatical relation is established in a unique structural configuration. Neeleman and Weerman take issue with this view, arguing for a more flexible approach on the basis of conceptual considerations and data taken mostly, but not exclusively, from the Germanic languages. In-depth analyses of word order phenomena as well as diachronic and typological generalizations motivate a re-evaluation of the role of case in the projection of arguments. Case is shown to provide a syntactic foothold for thematic interpretation, something which is necessary in a grammar that does not allow fixed theta-positions. Thus, this study does not only offer a genuine alternative to many standard assumptions, it also explains why there should be such a thing as case in natural language.
Author: Edwin Williams
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262731065
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
This important monograph summarizes, rethinks, and extends a decade of the author's work on therole assignments - the ways in which the roles implied by verbs of a given type play out in terms of position and other syntactic functions. The study of theta roles and the locality of theta-role assignment leads into many interesting areas of linguistic theory, such as scope, the ECP, X-bar theory, binding theory, and the weak crossover condition; Williams's reconstruction thus offers a systematic integration of a remarkably wide range of syntactic phenomena.Williams starts by outlining a theory of the clause,specifically, of the distribution of Nominative Case and Tense. He then develops a formalism for the notion of"external argument" that is used throughout the rest of the book. Subsequent chapters review the issues surrounding the syntactic expression of the subject-predicate relationship, extend the notion of external argument to include NP movement, and reanalyze the verb movement constructions as deriving from the calculus of theta roles rather than movement.The last chapter distinguishes referential dependence and coreference, showing that a general Leftness condition governs the former, while the binding theory restated in terms of theta relations governs the latter.Edwin Williams is Professor of Linguistics at Princeton University.
Author: Dominique Sportiche
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118470478
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 472
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Book Description
An Introduction to Syntactic Analysis and Theory offersbeginning students a comprehensive overview of and introduction toour current understanding of the rules and principles that governthe syntax of natural languages. Includes numerous pedagogical features such as‘practice’ boxes and sidebars, designed to facilitateunderstanding of both the ‘hows’ and the‘whys’ of sentence structure Guides readers through syntactic and morphological structuresin a progressive manner Takes the mystery out of one of the most crucial aspects of theworkings of language – the principles and processes behindthe structure of sentences Ideal for students with minimal knowledge of current syntacticresearch, it progresses in theoretical difficulty from basic ideasand theories to more complex and advanced, up to date concepts insyntactic theory
Author: Elizabeth A. Cowper
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022616022X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 219
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Book Description
This textbook is intended to give students a quick start in using theory to address syntactic questions. At each stage, Cowper is careful to introduce a theoretical apparatus that is no more complex than is required to deal with the phenomenon under consideration. Comprehensive and up-to-date, this accessible volume will also provide an excellent refresher for linguists returning to the study of Government-Binding theory. "Cowper exhibits the analytical devices of current principles-and-parameters approaches, takes readers carefully through the central elements of grammatical theory (including very recent work), and ushers them selectively into the technical literature. . . . A serious introduction for those who want to know the nuts and bolts of syntactic theory and to see why linguists are so excited these days."—David Lightfoot, University of Maryland "An excellent short introduction to the Government and Binding model of syntactic theory. . . . Cowper's work succeeds in teaching syntactic argumentation and in showing the conceptual reasons behind specific proposals in modern syntactic theory."—Jaklin Kornfilt, Syracuse University
Author: Iggy M. Roca
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110872617
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 345
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Book Description
Author: Denis Bouchard
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226067339
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 544
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Book Description
During the last thirty years, most linguists and philosophers have assumed that meaning can be represented symbolically and that the mental processing of language involves the manipulation of symbols. Scholars have assembled strong evidence that there must be linguistic representations at several abstract levels—phonological, syntactic, and semantic—and that those representations are related by a describable system of rules. Because meaning is so complex, linguists often posit an equally complex relationship between semantic and other levels of grammar. The Semantics of Syntax is an elegant and powerful analysis of the relationship between syntax and semantics. Noting that meaning is underdetermined by form even in simple cases, Denis Bouchard argues that it is impossible to build knowledge of the world into grammar and still have a describable grammar. He thus proposes simple semantic representations and simple rules to relate linguistic levels. Focusing on a class of French verbs, Bouchard shows how multiple senses can be accounted for by the assumption of a single abstract core meaning along with background information about how objects behave in the world. He demonstrates that this move simplifies the syntax at no cost to the descriptive power of the semantics. In two important final chapters, he examines the consequences of his approach for standard syntactic theories.
