Approaches to Conversion / Zero-Derivation

Approaches to Conversion / Zero-Derivation PDF Author: Laurie Bauer
Publisher: Waxmann Verlag
ISBN: 3830964560
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
This thematic publication contains papers presented by invited speakers at a symposium of Conversion / Zero-Derivation held in conjunction with the 10th International Morphology Conference in Szentendre, Hungary, in May 2002, and papers from scholars who could not attend that symposium but indicated their interest in contributing to this volume. Conversion became an issue again in the nineties, probably as a result of the widespread renewed interest in morphology that is in full swing today. The papers contained in this book approach conversion from various perspectives and with different purposes in mind. They cover topics such as what it means to change category, how one can discover the directionality of conversion and the very vexed question of whether an analysis in terms of conversion is or is not to be preferred over one in terms of zero-derivation. All of these questions were canvassed at the symposium, but so were others: questions of typology, conversion in languages other than English, and the question of how far the meaning of conversion is predictable. The participants in the symposium were interested to find that with so many people discussing conversion there was remarkably little overlap in the areas addressed.

Approaches to Conversion / Zero-Derivation

Approaches to Conversion / Zero-Derivation PDF Author: Laurie Bauer
Publisher: Waxmann Verlag
ISBN: 3830964560
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
This thematic publication contains papers presented by invited speakers at a symposium of Conversion / Zero-Derivation held in conjunction with the 10th International Morphology Conference in Szentendre, Hungary, in May 2002, and papers from scholars who could not attend that symposium but indicated their interest in contributing to this volume. Conversion became an issue again in the nineties, probably as a result of the widespread renewed interest in morphology that is in full swing today. The papers contained in this book approach conversion from various perspectives and with different purposes in mind. They cover topics such as what it means to change category, how one can discover the directionality of conversion and the very vexed question of whether an analysis in terms of conversion is or is not to be preferred over one in terms of zero-derivation. All of these questions were canvassed at the symposium, but so were others: questions of typology, conversion in languages other than English, and the question of how far the meaning of conversion is predictable. The participants in the symposium were interested to find that with so many people discussing conversion there was remarkably little overlap in the areas addressed.

A Contribution to the Study of Conversion in English

A Contribution to the Study of Conversion in English PDF Author: Isabel Balteiro
Publisher: Waxmann Verlag
ISBN: 3830967187
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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Book Description
This work intends to provide new insights on a controversial word-formation phenomenon or process known as conversion or zero-derivation. It offers a critical review of previous theories and approaches to this subject but it also attempts to provide a new definition, discusses the appropriateness of using one term or the other to name the phenomenon, and identifies its main characteristics. For doing so, it discusses issues such as whether (1.) the category or word-class change is a strictly necessary condition, (2.) priority is to be given to the syntactic function or rather to the change of word-class, and (3.) the result of the process is a derived word, two different and independent units or rather, one form with two clearly differentiated units. Moreover, this study delimits conversion versus other linguistic phenomena with apparently similar results (levelling, ellipsis, shortening, among others), and discusses its different types or classifications (partial and total conversion, and change of secondary word-class). The conclusion is that, despite the appearance of being a "jack-in-the-box" or a "dumping ground" in which any linguistic process involving two formally identical elements may be included, conversion can be both delimited and distinguished from other phenomena with (apparent) similar results.The book has been awarded the national prize "Leocadio Martín Mingorance" de Lengua y Lingüística inglesas (XII edición), the English Language and Linguistics prize "Leocadio Martín Mingorance" (12th edition). This prize is awarded by AEDEAN: Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-norteamericanos (Spanish Association for English and American Studies).

Conversion in English

Conversion in English PDF Author: Sándor Martsa
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443864188
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Drawing on the conceptual metaphor and metonymy theory outlined in works by George Lakoff, René Dirven, Günter Radden and Zoltán Kövecses, Conversion in English: A Cognitive Semantic Approach proposes that the process of conversion in contemporary English is basically a semantic process underlain by a series of conceptual metonymic and metaphoric mappings. In the book, previous interpretations treating conversion as zero-derivation derivation by a zero affix or as syntactically motivated recategorization, or as usage-based coinage (relisting) are questioned, for they apparently mistake the effect of conversion, the obligatory change of word class, for its cause, the conceptual reanalysis of extralinguistic reality. The book also demonstrates that viewing conversion as the result of conceptual mappings makes it possible to view this process as an instantiation of intercategorial polysemy. It also helps to settle the long-standing debate concerning the issues of directionality and productivity of conversion.

Word-Formation

Word-Formation PDF Author: Peter O. Müller
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110393204
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 933

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Book Description
This handbook comprises an in-depth presentation of the state of the art in word-formation. The five volumes contain 207 articles written by leading international scholars. The XVI chapters of the handbook provide the reader, in both general articles and individual studies, with a wide variety of perspectives: word-formation as a linguistic discipline (history of science, theoretical concepts), units and processes in word-formation, rules and restrictions, semantics and pragmatics, foreign word-formation, language planning and purism, historical word-formation, word-formation in language acquisition and aphasia, word-formation and language use, tools in word-formation research. The final chapter comprises 74 portraits of word-formation in the individual languages of Europe and offers an innovative perspective. These portraits afford the first overview of this kind and will prove useful for future typological research. This handbook will provide an essential reference for both advanced students and researchers in word-formation and related fields within linguistics.

The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology

The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology PDF Author: Rochelle Lieber
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019165177X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 768

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology is intended as a companion volume to The Oxford Handbook of Compounding (OUP 2009) Written by distinguished scholars, its 41 chapters aim to provide a comprehensive and thorough overview of the study of derivational morphology. The handbook begins with an overview and a consideration of definitional matters, distinguishing derivation from inflection on the one hand and compounding on the other. From a formal perspective, the handbook treats affixation (prefixation, suffixation, infixation, circumfixation, etc.), conversion, reduplication, root and pattern and other templatic processes, as well as prosodic and subtractive means of forming new words. From a semantic perspective, it looks at the processes that form various types of adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and verbs, as well as evaluatives and the rarer processes that form function words. The book also surveys derivation in fifteen language families that are widely dispersed in terms of both geographical location and typological characteristics.

Studies in Honour of Marianne Nikolov

Studies in Honour of Marianne Nikolov PDF Author: József Horváth
Publisher: Lingua Franca Csoport
ISBN: 9636425779
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 519

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Book Description
A collection of studies in applied linguistics

Paradigms in Word Formation

Paradigms in Word Formation PDF Author: Alba E. Ruz
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027257426
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
The focus of Paradigms in Word Formation: Theory and applications is on the relevance of paradigms for linguistic description. Paradigmatic organization has traditionally been considered an inherent feature of inflectional morphology, but research in the last decades clearly shows the existence of paradigms in word formation, especially in affixal derivation, often at the expense of other word-formation processes. This volume seeks to address the role that paradigms may play in the description of compounding, conversion and participles. This volume should be of interest to anyone specialized in the field of English morphology and word formation.

Geschichte Der Sprachwissenschaften

Geschichte Der Sprachwissenschaften PDF Author: Sylvain Auroux
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110167360
Category : Historical linguistics
Languages : en
Pages : 909

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Book Description


Flexibility in the Parts-of-Speech System of Classical Chinese

Flexibility in the Parts-of-Speech System of Classical Chinese PDF Author: Linlin Sun
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110660873
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
Languages across the world differ from each other in a number of respects, and one such difference is in terms of how their lexicons are categorized. Compared to most European languages with distinct, functionally dedicated word classes in the traditional sense, quite a few languages are observed to possess lexical items that can fulfill the functions typically associated with more than one traditional word class such as ‘noun’ and ‘verb’. According to Rijkhoff and van Lier (2013), these lexemes exhibit what is called ‘flexibility’. Classical Chinese is observed to feature word-class flexibility, in the sense that there are lexemes that can be used to serve the functions of two or more traditional word classes, without the functional change being marked by any derivational means. For instance, a lexical item like xìn can either function as a verb meaning ‘to be trustworthy [intr.]’ or ‘to believe, to trust [tr.]’ or serve as a noun meaning ‘trust, oath of alliance’. Similarly, a human-denoting lexeme such as yŏu FRIEND cannot only mean ‘a friend’ but also ‘to be a friend, to behave friendly [intr.]’, ‘to make friends with [tr.]’ or ‘to consider as a friend [tr.]’; an instrument word like biān WHIP cannot only mean ‘a whip’ but also ‘to whip’. This situation is often thought to be related to the fact that Classical Chinese does not have any kind of productive morphology in the traditional sense (e.g. Zádrapa 2011). This is reflected in the lack of markedness distinctions across Croft’s (2000, 2001) conceptual space for parts of speech. This study ascribes flexibility of parts of speech in Classical Chinese to precategoriality, in line with Bisang (2008 a, b). Precategoriality can roughly be defined as the absence of the noun-verb distinction in the lexicon; instead, the linking of individual words to the syntactic position of N or V as well as their text frequency in these positions are subject to pragmatics. Precategorial lexical items are those that are not preclassified into parts of speech in the lexicon; rather, their word-class specification is ultimately determined at the syntactic level, according to their position/function in a given word-class indicating construction. From a diachronic viewpoint, this study assumes that precategoriality and categoriality of individual lexical items are not static, but that they are potentialities and tendencies that may change over time. Specifically, (full) precategoriality and (full) categoriality are assumed to constitute a continuum in the lexicon of Chinese throughout its history. In any given historical period, lexical items of the language are distributed between the two extremes on the continuum, according to the intensity of the association between their lexical meaning and the syntactic position/function of e.g. N or V. Generally, along the continuum at a given historical stage, lexemes with a strong association between meaning and function (i.e. lexemes that are normally associated only with one word-class specification for a particular syntactic role) tend to be located close to the extreme of (full) categoriality. In contrast, lexemes that are not necessarily related to one specific association between meaning and function, but can potentially occur in a variety of such associations, are assumed to be placed closer to (full) precategoriality instead. Roughly speaking, the group of lexemes that is located towards (full) precategoriality are flexible lexemes, though with varying degrees of flexibility, whose semantics licenses a syntactic variety and can thus be linked to more than one word-class specification through syntactic specification, a syntactically specified process of category assignment. Based on these considerations, this study aims to present the results of a corpus-based investigation into flexibility of parts of speech in Classical Chinese. The research focuses on two types of syntactic specifications of flexible lexemes, namely, those using action-denoting lexemes in nominal function (the V→N type), and those using object-denoting lexemes in verbal function (the N→V type). The two types of syntactic specifications are investigated for this study in the five Classical Chinese texts (Zuozhuan, Mengzi, Guoyu, Mozi, and Zhanguoce). Based on empirical facts, flexibility of parts of speech in Classical Chinese is addressed at three descriptive levels in this study: First, at the level of syntax, the discussion focuses on the most important syntactic configurations for the use of flexible lexemes and their relations to the basic word order of this language, with flexibility being observed in two positions of an argument structure construction: the V-position and the syntactic position of an argument. The findings of this study demonstrate that as far as the argument structure constructions formed with flexible lexemes are concerned, VO word order is much more frequent than OV. This strong preference for VO is, in connection with lexical flexibility, explained as follows: With the loss of derivational morphology in early stages of Old Chinese (e.g. Sagart 1999), word order became the most important indicator of word class and strongly supported the omission of strict verb-noun distinctions (co-existence of precategoriality and categoriality) in the lexicon of this language. Second, at the level of cognitive semantics (e.g. Lakoff 1987; Kövecses and Radden 1998; Schönefeld 2005), the discussion concentrates on the metonymic relationships that constitute the cognitive-semantic foundation of the use of flexible lexemes in Classical Chinese. In a metonymic mapping of either the V→N or the N→V type, the original semantics of a lexical item (which may typically be associated with a certain syntactic role of N or V) is used as a reference point to provide mental access to the newly derived meaning of the item in another syntactic function. Given the typologically salient characteristics of Classical Chinese discussed in this book, the argument is that the flexible use of an existing word form as a metonymically related but syntactically distinct item is one of the most economic ways in this language to name a new concept or a newly construed situation in discourse. Third, at the level of argument structure constructions (Bisang 2008a, b), the discussion focuses on how the different metonymic relationships mentioned interact with a given argument structure construction (which carries its own meaning within itself), and how these are further concretized into rule-based or metaphorically motivated pragmatic implicatures. A closer examination of an argument structure construction with an object word in the V-position reveals that there are two underlying frameworks for deriving the concrete meaning of the construction. In the rule-based framework, the verbal function of a given object word can basically be derived through grammatical analysis of the whole construction. In the metaphorical framework, the composed semantics of the construction actively interacts with the outside world in our conceptual system, where metaphor (Lakoff 1987, 1993; Kövecses 2010) serves as an essential cognitive principle in establishing and (re-)interpreting relations in the construction. The two mechanisms, rule-based and metaphorical, complement each other and work together to account for flexibility in Classical Chinese. This study argues that flexibility of parts of speech in Classical Chinese can only be fully understood by integrating a wide range of aspects, both linguistic and non-linguistic. The components that are needed to account for it include constructions (form-meaning pairings), semantics (Croft’s conceptual space), pragmatic implicatures, metonymies, metaphors, as well as world knowledge as reflected within a culture. In my view, it is reasonable to argue that these components need not be specific to the language investigated here; they are applicable to any language that shows flexibility in its parts-of-speech system.

Morphologically Derived Adjectives in Spanish

Morphologically Derived Adjectives in Spanish PDF Author: Antonio Fábregas
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027260338
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
This is the first book that presents a complete empirical description and theoretical analysis of all major classes of derived adjectives in Spanish, both deverbal and denominal. The reader will find here both a detailed empirical description of the syntactic, morphological and semantic properties of derived adjectives in contemporary Spanish and a cohesive Neo-Constructionist analysis of the syntactic and semantic tools that contemporary Spanish has available to build adjectives from other grammatical categories within a Nanosyntactic-oriented framework. In doing so, this book sheds light on the nature of adjectives as a grammatical category and argues that adjectives are syntactically built by recycling functional heads belonging to other categories. The book will be useful both to researchers in Spanish linguistics or theoretical morphology and to advanced students of Spanish interested in the main ways of building new adjectives through suffixation in this language.