Complex Predicates and Information Spreading in LFG

Complex Predicates and Information Spreading in LFG PDF Author: Avery Delano Andrews
Publisher: Stanford Univ Center for the Study
ISBN: 9781575861647
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
This book provides a simple but precise framework for describing complex predicates and related constructions, and applies it principally to the analysis of complex predicates in Romance, and certain serial verb constructions in Tariana and Miskitu. The authors argue for replacing the projection architecture of LFG with a notion of differential information spreading within a unified feature structure. Another important feature is the use of the conception of argument-structure in Chris Manning's Ergativity to facilitate the description of how complex predicates are assembled. In both of these aspects the result is a framework that preserves the descriptive parsimony of LFG while taking on key ideas from HPSG.

Complex Predicates and Information Spreading in LFG

Complex Predicates and Information Spreading in LFG PDF Author: Avery Delano Andrews
Publisher: Stanford Univ Center for the Study
ISBN: 9781575861647
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
This book provides a simple but precise framework for describing complex predicates and related constructions, and applies it principally to the analysis of complex predicates in Romance, and certain serial verb constructions in Tariana and Miskitu. The authors argue for replacing the projection architecture of LFG with a notion of differential information spreading within a unified feature structure. Another important feature is the use of the conception of argument-structure in Chris Manning's Ergativity to facilitate the description of how complex predicates are assembled. In both of these aspects the result is a framework that preserves the descriptive parsimony of LFG while taking on key ideas from HPSG.

Complex Predicates

Complex Predicates PDF Author: Mengistu Amberber
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139487485
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
Complex predicates are multipredicational, but monoclausal structures. They have proven problematic for linguistic theory, particularly for proposed distinctions between the lexicon, morphology, and syntax. This volume focuses on the mapping from morphosyntactic structures to event structure, and in particular the constraints on possible mappings. The volume showcases the 'coverb construction', a complex predicate construction which, though widespread, has received little attention in the literature. The coverb construction contrasts with more familiar serial verb constructions. The coverb construction generally maps only to event structures like those of monomorphemic verbs, whereas serial verb constructions map to a range of event structures differing from those of monomorphemic verbs. The volume coverage is truly cross-linguistic, including languages from Australia, Papua New Guinea, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, East Africa and North America. The volume establishes a new arena of research in event structure, syntax, and cross-linguistic typology.

Modular Design of Grammar

Modular Design of Grammar PDF Author: I. Wayan Arka
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192844849
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
This volume presents the latest research in linguistic modules and interfaces in Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG). LFG has a highly modular design that models the linguistic system as a set of discreet submodules that include, among others, constituent structure, functional structure, argument structure, semantic structure, and prosodic structure; each module has its own coherent properties and is related to other modules by correspondence functions. Following a detailed introduction, Part I examines the nature of linguistic structures, interfaces, and representations in LFG's architecture and ontology. Parts II and III are concerned with problems, analyses, and generalizations associated with linguistic phenomena of long-standing theoretical significance, including agreement, reciprocals, possessives, reflexives, raising, subjecthood, and relativization, demonstrating how these phenomena can be naturally accounted for within LFG's modular architecture. Part IV explores issues of the synchronic and diachronic dynamics of syntactic categories in grammar, such as unlike category coordination, fuzzy categorial edges, and consequences of decategorialization, providing explicit LFG solutions to such problems, including those resulting from language change in progress. The final part re-examines and refines the precise representations and interfaces of syntax with morphology, semantics, and pragmatics to account for challenging facts such as suspended affixation, prosody in multiple question word interrogatives and information structure, anaphoric dependencies, and idioms. The volume draws on data from a range of typologically diverse languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Icelandic, Kelabit, Polish, and Urdu, and will be of interest not only to those working in LFG and related frameworks, but to all those working on linguistic interfaces from a variety of theoretical standpoints.

The Structure of Complex Predicates in Urdu

The Structure of Complex Predicates in Urdu PDF Author: Miriam Butt
Publisher: Center for the Study of Language (CSLI)
ISBN: 9781881526582
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
This book takes a detailed look at two differing complex predicates in the South Asian language Urdu. The Urdu permissive in particular brings into focus the problem of the syntax-semantics mismatch. An examination of the syntactic properties of this complex predicate shows that it is formed by the combination of two semantic heads, but that this combination is not mirrored in the syntax in terms of any kind of syntactic or lexical incorporation.

Lexical Functional Grammar

Lexical Functional Grammar PDF Author: Mary Dalrymple
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 184950010X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
Presents an overview and introduction to Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), a theory of the content and representation of different aspects of linguistic structure and the relations that hold between them. This book also presents a theory of semantics and the syntax-semantics interface.

Non-Projecting Words

Non-Projecting Words PDF Author: I. Toivonen
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401000530
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Focusing primarily on Swedish, a Germanic language whose particles have not previously been studied extensively, this study develops a theory of non-projecting words in which particles are morphologically independent words that do not project phrases. It identifies the violations of the basic tenets of X-bar theory and develops a formally explicit revision of X-bar theory that can accommodate the requisite "weak" projections.

The Oxford Reference Guide to Lexical Functional Grammar

The Oxford Reference Guide to Lexical Functional Grammar PDF Author: Mary Dalrymple
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198733305
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 856

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Book Description
"The authors provide detailed and extensive coverage of the analysis of syntax, semantics, morphology, prosody, and information structure, and how these aspects of linguistic structure interact in the nontransformational framework of LFG. / The volume will be [a ...] reference for graduate and advanced undergraduate students and researchers in a wide range of linguistic sub-fields, including syntax, morphology, semantics, information structure, and prosody, as well as those working in language documentation and description." - Verlag.

Syntactic Structures and Morphological Information

Syntactic Structures and Morphological Information PDF Author: Uwe Junghanns
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110904756
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 429

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Book Description
The book contains ten papers discussing issues of the relation between syntax and morphology from the perspective of morphologically rich languages including, among others, Indo-European languages, indigenous languages of the Americas, Turkish, and Hungarian. The overall question discussed in this book is to what extent morphological information shows up in syntactic structures and how this information is represented. The authors adopt different theoretical frameworks such as the Derivational Theory of Morphology, Distributed Optimality, Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical-Functional Grammar, Lexical Decomposition Grammar combined with Linking Theory and OT-like constraints, Paradigm-Based Morphosyntax as well as the Principles and Parameters Approach of Generative Grammar.

Linguistic Theory and South Asian Languages

Linguistic Theory and South Asian Languages PDF Author: Josef Bayer
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027292450
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
The South Asian languages, mainly Indo-Aryan and Dravidian, have become a focus of interest in the formal study of language as a natural consequence of the research program of the Principle and Parameters approach and an enforced interest in exploring the parametrical space of human language. The contributions to the present volume combine theoretical reasoning in syntax and phonology with a comparative research agenda in which South Asian languages figure prominently. The topics range from issues of clause structure, serial verb constructions, cleft- and question formation, to the question of what the proper syntactic format of modification should be, issues of binding theory and raising, and issues of complementation, the clausal periphery and clausal typing. The collection of articles concludes with two chapters on Dravidian and comparative phonology and a chapter on the shaping of phonological awareness by different writing systems. The authors and the editors devote this piece of work to Professor K.A. Jayaseelan, one of present-day India’s most influential linguists.

Barayin Morphosyntax

Barayin Morphosyntax PDF Author: Joseph Lovestrand
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198851154
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
This volume offers a Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) analysis of the morphosyntax of Barayin, a Chadic language spoken by about 6000 people in the Guera region of Chad. The core chapters of the book draw on rich empirical data to provide analyses of the basic clause, noun phrases, verb phrases, and serial verb constructions. The version of LFG adopted here includes two recent innovations: the first is minimal c-structure, which results in simpler phrase structure representations; the second is the assumption that glue semantics accounts for argument selection, rejecting the need for a level of a-structure or for Completeness and Coherence in f-structure. Argument sharing in serial verb constructions can thus be modeled in a connected s-structure. This method of modeling semantic composition in complex predicates is extended to directional and associated motion complex predicates in Choctaw and Wambaya, removing the need to appeal to a special mechanism to unite semantic forms in such constructions.