Focus and Background Marking in Mandarin Chinese

Focus and Background Marking in Mandarin Chinese PDF Author: Daniel Hole
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 113437531X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
This is an investigation into the grammaticalized system of focus-background agreement in Mandarin Chinese. The particles cái, jiù, dou and ye are, in a specific use type, shown to form the core of a highly systematic paradigm. This book is not just a valuable companion for anyone interested in core aspects of Mandarin Chinese grammar. It caters for the interests of theoretical linguists as well as for linguists from other fields with an interest in information-structure, focus and contrastive topics, and quantification. The outstanding characteristic of this book, viz. its effortless integration of findings from formal semantics without heavy formal load, makes it rewarding reading both for linguists with a less formal background, and for researchers with some knowledge of formal semantics.

Focus and Background Marking in Mandarin Chinese

Focus and Background Marking in Mandarin Chinese PDF Author: Daniel Hole
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 113437531X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is an investigation into the grammaticalized system of focus-background agreement in Mandarin Chinese. The particles cái, jiù, dou and ye are, in a specific use type, shown to form the core of a highly systematic paradigm. This book is not just a valuable companion for anyone interested in core aspects of Mandarin Chinese grammar. It caters for the interests of theoretical linguists as well as for linguists from other fields with an interest in information-structure, focus and contrastive topics, and quantification. The outstanding characteristic of this book, viz. its effortless integration of findings from formal semantics without heavy formal load, makes it rewarding reading both for linguists with a less formal background, and for researchers with some knowledge of formal semantics.

Focus and Background Marking in Mandarin Chinese

Focus and Background Marking in Mandarin Chinese PDF Author: Daniel Hole
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134375301
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
This is an investigation into the grammaticalized system of focus-background agreement in Mandarin Chinese. The particles cái, jiù, dou and ye are, in a specific use type, shown to form the core of a highly systematic paradigm. This book is not just a valuable companion for anyone interested in core aspects of Mandarin Chinese grammar. It caters for the interests of theoretical linguists as well as for linguists from other fields with an interest in information-structure, focus and contrastive topics, and quantification. The outstanding characteristic of this book, viz. its effortless integration of findings from formal semantics without heavy formal load, makes it rewarding reading both for linguists with a less formal background, and for researchers with some knowledge of formal semantics.

The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure

The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure PDF Author: Caroline Féry
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199642672
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 993

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Book Description
This book provides linguists with a clear, critical, and comprehensive overview of theoretical and experimental work on information structure. Leading researchers survey the main theories of information structure in syntax, phonology, and semantics as well as perspectives from psycholinguistics and other relevant fields. Following the editors' introduction the book is divided into four parts. The first, on theories of and theoretical perspectives on information structure, includes chapters on topic, prosody, and implicature. Part 2 covers a range of current issues in the field, including focus, quantification, and sign languages, while Part 3 is concerned with experimental approaches to information structure, including processes involved in its acquisition and comprehension. The final part contains a series of linguistic case studies drawn from a wide variety of the world's language families. This volume will be the standard guide to current work in information structure and a major point of departure for future research.

The Expression of Information Structure

The Expression of Information Structure PDF Author: Manfred Krifka
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 311026160X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
Information structure deals with the linguistic forms and techniques that support the integration of what is said into the current informational and attentional state of the addressee. This shows in categories like topic-comment structuring, focus to highlight expressions, marking of givenness and of presupposed information, and ways to indicate that the information provided is restricted. The book relates infor-mation structure to theoretical models of grammar, to computation and modelling and brings together what is known about the expression of information structure in human language with regard to its empirical investigation, its psycholinguistic aspects and the acquisition of information structure. Since the need to integrate what is said into the informational and attentional state of the addressee is central to all human communication, it is not surprising that all natural languages have developed devices to express information structural cate-gories. To illustrate this, the book also provides concrete and theory independent descriptions of the information structural encoding strategies of individual languages of different types . The book can be used as a textbook appropriate for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses; it also provides information for linguists that are not specialists in the field.

Focus Manifestation in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese

Focus Manifestation in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese PDF Author: Peppina Po-lun Lee
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351339664
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
One prominent function of natural language is to convey information. One peculiarity is that it does not do so randomly, but in a structured way, with information structuring formally recognized to be a component of grammar. Among all information structuring notions, focus is one primitive needed to account for all phenomena. Focus Manifestation in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese: A Comparative Perspective aims to examine from a semantic perspective how syntactic structures and focus adverbs in Mandarin Chinese and semantic particles in Cantonese conspire to encode focus structures and determine focus manifestation in Chinese. With both as tonal languages, Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese manifest different morpho-syntactic configurations to mark focus. A general principle governing focus marking in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese is given in the book, which aims to give a better understanding on the underlying principles the two used to mark additive and restrictive meanings, and related focus interpretations. Particular attention is also drawn to the co-occurrence of multiple forms of restrictive and additive particles in Cantonese, including adverbs, verbal suffixes and sentence-final particles. Linearity has shown to be an important parameter to determine how focus is structured in Cantonese. This book is aimed at advanced graduate students, researchers and scholars working on Chinese linguistics, syntax and semantics, and comparative dialectal grammar.

Strategies of Quantification

Strategies of Quantification PDF Author: Kook-Hee Gil
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199692432
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Quantification has been at the heart of research in the syntax and semantics of natural language since Aristotle. The last few decades have seen an explosion of detailed studies of the syntax and semantics of quantification and its relation to the rest of the theory of grammar, resulting in a highly sophisticated understanding of the mechanisms of quantification. This book considers the ways natural languages vary with respect to their realisation of quantificational notions. Drawing on data from English, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Hausa and others, the authors also link the variation in the expression of quantification to the notions of polarity sensitivity, free-choice and indefiniteness.

The polyfunctionality of 'still' expressions

The polyfunctionality of 'still' expressions PDF Author: Bastian Persohn
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961104751
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 783

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Book Description
Expressions from the semasiological domain of phasal polarity (ʻstillʼ, ʻalreadyʼ, etc.) tend to be highly polyfunctional, with their various uses often extending into a wide range of other linguistic domains, both time-related and non-temporal. Yet these patterns have hitherto been investigated mostly for individual languages or smaller groups. This volume presents the first ever larger-scale survey of the numerous functions of expressions whose meanings include the notion of ʻstill’, making use of a global sample of 76 varieties from 45 distinct phyla. It is aimed at semanticists, typologists and descriptive grammarians alike.

Focus and Background Marking in Mandarin Chinese

Focus and Background Marking in Mandarin Chinese PDF Author: Daniel Hole
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780415315968
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
This is an investigation into the grammaticalized system of focus-background agreement in Mandarin Chinese. The particles cai, jiù, dou and yeare in a specific use type, shown to form the core of a highly systematic paradigm. Foci agree with their backgrounds, with the particles being the agreement markers. The semantic categories involved are different types of quantification over alternatives: all alternatives may be true, or some, or not all, or none. This minimal semantics is capable of explaining the use of cai, jiù, dou and ye and two moreparticles (hái and zài) in various contexts that have figured in controversial debates over the past three decades. This book is not just a valuable companion for anyone interested in core aspects of Mandarin Chinese grammar, it caters for the interests of theoretical linguists as well as for linguists from other fields with an interest in information structure, focus and contrastive topics, and quantification. The outstanding characteristics of this book, viz. its effortless integration of findings from formal semantics without heavy formal load, makes it rewarding reading for both linguists with a less formal background, and for researchers with some knowledge of formal semantics.

The Tamil Auxiliary Verb System

The Tamil Auxiliary Verb System PDF Author: Sanford B. Steever
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100008275X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
This book introduces the syntactic process of auxiliary formation and applies it to the grammatical analysis of the indicative, or non-modal, auxiliary verbs of Modern Tamil. Using data from spoken and written registers gathered over several years, the book demonstrates for the first time the systematic nature of auxiliary verb phenomena, and how they are integrated into the grammar of the language. Including fresh information on new verb constructions, verbal categories and tenses, this book will be a welcome addition to the current general linguistics literature, in particular the study of verbal categories and the morphosyntactic processes that instantiate them.

The Role of Alternatives in Language

The Role of Alternatives in Language PDF Author: Sophie Repp
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889668401
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description