Modes of Modality

Modes of Modality PDF Author: Elisabeth Leiss
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027270791
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 519

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Book Description
The volume aims at a universal definition of modality or “illocutionary/speaker’s perspective force” that is strong enough to capture the entire range of different subtypes and varieties of modalities in different languages. The central idea is that modality is all-pervasive in language. This perspective on modality allows for the integration of covert modality as well as peripheral instances of modality in neglected domains such as the modality of insufficieny, of attitudinality, or neglected domains such as modality and illocutionary force in finite vs. nonfinite and factive vs. non-factive subordinated clauses. In most languages, modality encompasses modal verbs both in their root and epistemic meanings, at least where these languages have the principled distribution between root and epistemic modality in the first place (which is one fundamentally restricted, in its strict qualitative and quantitative sense, to the Germanic languages). In addition, this volume discusses one other intricate and partially highly mysterious class of modality triggers: modal particles as they are sported in the Germanic languages (except for English). It is argued in the contributions and the languages discussed in this volume how modal verbs and adverbials, next to modal particles, are expressed, how they are interlinked with contextual factors such as aspect, definiteness, person, verbal factivity, and assertivity as opposed to other attitudinal types. An essential concept used and argued for is perspectivization (a sub-concept of possible world semantics). Language groups covered in detail and compared are Slavic, Germanic, and South East Asian. The volume will interest researchers in theoretical and applied linguistics, typology, the semantics/pragmatics interface, and language philosophy as it is part of a larger project developing an alternative approach to Universal Grammar that is compatible with functionalist approaches.

Modes of Modality

Modes of Modality PDF Author: Elisabeth Leiss
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027270791
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 519

Get Book Here

Book Description
The volume aims at a universal definition of modality or “illocutionary/speaker’s perspective force” that is strong enough to capture the entire range of different subtypes and varieties of modalities in different languages. The central idea is that modality is all-pervasive in language. This perspective on modality allows for the integration of covert modality as well as peripheral instances of modality in neglected domains such as the modality of insufficieny, of attitudinality, or neglected domains such as modality and illocutionary force in finite vs. nonfinite and factive vs. non-factive subordinated clauses. In most languages, modality encompasses modal verbs both in their root and epistemic meanings, at least where these languages have the principled distribution between root and epistemic modality in the first place (which is one fundamentally restricted, in its strict qualitative and quantitative sense, to the Germanic languages). In addition, this volume discusses one other intricate and partially highly mysterious class of modality triggers: modal particles as they are sported in the Germanic languages (except for English). It is argued in the contributions and the languages discussed in this volume how modal verbs and adverbials, next to modal particles, are expressed, how they are interlinked with contextual factors such as aspect, definiteness, person, verbal factivity, and assertivity as opposed to other attitudinal types. An essential concept used and argued for is perspectivization (a sub-concept of possible world semantics). Language groups covered in detail and compared are Slavic, Germanic, and South East Asian. The volume will interest researchers in theoretical and applied linguistics, typology, the semantics/pragmatics interface, and language philosophy as it is part of a larger project developing an alternative approach to Universal Grammar that is compatible with functionalist approaches.

Modality in Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics

Modality in Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics PDF Author: Werner Abraham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107021227
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 455

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Book Description
An innovative survey that covers the linguistic questions of modality and mood, offering a new model for the phenomenon.

Modality and Propositional Attitudes

Modality and Propositional Attitudes PDF Author: Michael Hegarty
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316467783
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
This book shows that the semantic analysis of modal notions of possibility and necessity can be used to enhance our understanding of the interpretation of reports of belief or emotional state. It introduces intuitive notation and terminology to express ideas in modern theories of modal interpretation that are normally represented in complex logical formulas, effectively updates the 1960s-era link between possible worlds and the semantics of propositional attitude ascriptions, and reconciles two disparate views of the role of events in semantic interpretation, that of Donald Davidson and that of David Lewis. It reduces a host of variable behaviors of propositional attitude ascription to an intuitive and precise distinction between ascriptions that merely express a commitment to propositional content versus ones that attribute a mental state to the holder of the propositional attitude. This leads to an explanation of the nature and effects of the language disorder of fluent aphasia.

The Grammatical Realization of Polarity Contrast

The Grammatical Realization of Polarity Contrast PDF Author: Christine Dimroth
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027263388
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
The polarity of a sentence is crucial for its meaning. It is thus hardly surprising that languages have developed devices to highlight this meaning component and to contrast statements with negative and positive polarity in discourse. Research on this issue has started from languages like German and Dutch, where prosody and assertive particles are systematically associated with polarity contrast. Recently, the grammatical realization of polarity contrast has been at the center of investigations in a range of other languages as well. Core questions concern the formal repertoire and the exact meaning contribution of the relevant devices, the kind of contrast they evoke, and their relation to information structure and sentence mood. This volume brings together researchers from a theoretical, an empirical, and a typological orientation and enhances our understanding of polarity with the help of in-depth analyses and cross-linguistic comparisons dealing with the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and/or prosodic aspects of the phenomenon.

The Oxford Handbook of English Grammar

The Oxford Handbook of English Grammar PDF Author: Bas Aarts
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198755104
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 854

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Book Description
This handbook provides an authoritative, critical survey of current research and knowledge in the grammar of the English language. The volume's expert contributors explore a range of core topics in English grammar, covering a range of theoretical approaches and including the relationship between 'core' grammar and other areas of language.

Turn Initiating Elements in Everyday Conversations

Turn Initiating Elements in Everyday Conversations PDF Author: Peter Kosta
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498588050
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
This book focuses on conversation analysis in Czech, including the prosody-syntax-interface and online-syntax in real time that deals with turn initiating elements in everyday conversations. By combining a pragmatic formal theory with a formal syntax model, this book serves as a guide to the problems of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of spoken everyday talk and as a handbook on conversational analysis.

Brazilian Portuguese, Syntax and Semantics

Brazilian Portuguese, Syntax and Semantics PDF Author: Roberta Pires De Oliveira
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027261202
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
This book opens with Angelika Kratzer and Luigi Rizzi talking about contemporary issues, such as non-recursiveness of focus and the semantics of topics. The chapters climb down the spine from the left periphery to DP: the value of subjunctive across the history of German, expressive expressions in Brazilian Portuguese, left and right dislocation and the speaker’s perspective in Italian, Brazilian double subjects and left dislocated topic, long versus short wh-movement in Brazilian Portuguese and Quebec French, low adverbs and the raising of the verb in Brazilian Portuguese, ellipsis and null objects in Brazilian and European Portuguese, and bare singulars in Brazilian Portuguese. The chapters propose original accounts for language variation and historical changes, most of them focusing on Brazilian Portuguese, a challenge to syntax and semantics. Thus, the volume contributes to Brazilian and Portuguese Linguistics, as well as to general and contemporary research on syntax and semantics of natural languages.

Converging Grammars

Converging Grammars PDF Author: Debra Ziegeler
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501500635
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
This volume provides a much-needed, critical overview of the field of constructions and construction grammar in the context of Singapore English, and poses the question of identifying a construction in contact when the lexicon is derived from one language and the syntax from another. Case studies are illustrated in which the possibility of a 'merger'-construction is offered to resolve such problems. The book is intended for students of construction theories, variation studies, or any researcher of contact grammars

Linguistic Foundations of Narration in Spoken and Sign Languages

Linguistic Foundations of Narration in Spoken and Sign Languages PDF Author: Annika Hübl
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027263981
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
In recent years, the focus of linguistic research has shifted from sentence to larger units such as text and discourse and accordingly from syntax to semantics and pragmatics. This has led to the development and application of corresponding discourse semantic and pragmatic theories such as, for instance, (S)DRT, Centering Theory, Accessibility Theory, QUD, Generalized Conversational Implicatures, Super Monsters and Gesture Semantics and new empirical approaches in the framework of experimental semantics and pragmatics or corpus linguistic discourse analysis. The contributions to this collected volume build on these developments and investigate the linguistic foundations of narration from various perspectives. The contributions address topics such as speech and thought representation, free indirect speech, information structure, anaphora resolution, co-speech gestures, classifier constructions as well as role shift and constructed action. The volume provides new insights in the linguistic structures underlying narration in written, spoken, and sign languages from an experimental, developmental, historical, typological, and theoretical perspective. The contributions will appeal to theoretical linguists, sign language linguists, typologists, literary scholars, psycholinguists, and philosophers.

Directional Particles in Cantonese

Directional Particles in Cantonese PDF Author: Winnie Chor
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027264430
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
This book is the first on Cantonese that deals with the grammaticalization phenomenon systematically. Focusing on a group of twelve directional particles, this book tracks their grammaticalization pathways from full-fledged directional verbs, to directional particles indicating meanings relating to tense-aspect, modality, and quantification, in the post-verbal position. Some of these particles have undergone further grammaticalization to convey speaker’s subjective as well as intersubjective stances. This book is also unique in its diachronic component. Examples in the book are drawn from various sources including early Cantonese pedagogical texts, Cantonese films, and contemporary Cantonese corpora, with data ranging from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. This book will be a valuable resource not only for all linguists interested in the development of grammatical forms, but also for teachers and students in conversation/discourse analysis, psychology, and anthropology interested in deepening their understanding of the interaction between language structure and use.