Resumptive Pronouns at the Interfaces

Resumptive Pronouns at the Interfaces PDF Author: Alain Rouveret
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027286981
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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Book Description
This book brings together contributions which address a wide range of issues regarding resumption, gathering evidence from a great variety of languages including Welsh, Breton, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, French, Vata, Hebrew, Jordanian and Palestinian Arabic. The topics covered include the interpretive properties of resumptive pronouns and epithets, the featural make-up of resumptive pronouns, as well as the syntactic diversity of resumptive constructions and the nature of A-resumption. The introduction offers a critical survey of early syntactic accounts and recent semantic advancements. One contribution presents the results of experimental research providing a new perspective on the last resort status of resumption. Two seminal papers on resumption, Doron (1982) and McCloskey (1990), have also been included. This volume, which deals with a phenomenon that has given rise to intriguing claims concerning the structure and interpretation of pronouns, will be of great interest to both semanticists and syntacticians, whichever framework they favor.

Resumptive Pronouns at the Interfaces

Resumptive Pronouns at the Interfaces PDF Author: Alain Rouveret
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027286981
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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Book Description
This book brings together contributions which address a wide range of issues regarding resumption, gathering evidence from a great variety of languages including Welsh, Breton, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, French, Vata, Hebrew, Jordanian and Palestinian Arabic. The topics covered include the interpretive properties of resumptive pronouns and epithets, the featural make-up of resumptive pronouns, as well as the syntactic diversity of resumptive constructions and the nature of A-resumption. The introduction offers a critical survey of early syntactic accounts and recent semantic advancements. One contribution presents the results of experimental research providing a new perspective on the last resort status of resumption. Two seminal papers on resumption, Doron (1982) and McCloskey (1990), have also been included. This volume, which deals with a phenomenon that has given rise to intriguing claims concerning the structure and interpretation of pronouns, will be of great interest to both semanticists and syntacticians, whichever framework they favor.

The Logic of Pronominal Resumption

The Logic of Pronominal Resumption PDF Author: Ash Asudeh
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199206422
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 486

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Book Description
This book is a cross-linguistic investigation of resumptive pronouns and related phenomena. Pronominal resumption is the realization of the base of a syntactic dependency as a bound pronoun. Resumption occurs in unbounded dependencies, such as relative clauses and questions, and in the variety of raising known as copy raising. Processing factors may also give rise to resumption, even in environments where it does not normally occur in a given language. Ash Asudeh proposes a new theory of resumption based on the use of a resource logic for semantic composition and the typologically robust observation that resumptive pronouns are ordinary pronouns in their morphological and lexical properties. The framework for semantic composition is Glue Semantics and the syntactic framework is Lexical-Functional Grammar. The author introduces these frameworks and the concept of resource logics accessibly and compares results and explanations with those offered by a number of contrasting theoretical frameworks. The theory achieves a novel unification of hitherto heterogeneous resumption phenomena. It unifies two kinds of resumptive pronouns that are found in unbounded dependencies - one kind behaves syntactically like a gap, whereas the other kind does not. It also unifies resumptive pronouns in unbounded dependencies with the obligatory pronouns in copy raising. The theory also provides the basis for a new understanding of processing-based resumption, both in production and in parsing and interpretation. This book makes a substantial contribution to the understanding of the syntax-semantics interface, the nature of unbounded dependencies, and linguistic variation. It is clearly written and includes examples from a wide range of languages, such as English, Hebrew, Irish, Swedish, and Vata. It will interest researchers in syntax and semantics and its results are also relevant to computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, and the logical analysis of language. Short blurb This book is a cross-linguistic investigation of resumptive pronouns and related resumption phenomena. The author proposes a new theory of resumption based on the use of a resource logic for semantic composition and the typologically robust observation that resumptive pronouns are ordinary pronouns in their morphological and lexical properties.

Interfaces in Grammar

Interfaces in Grammar PDF Author: Jianhua Hu
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027262683
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
This volume is an important contribution to the theoretical and empirical study of the interactions of grammatical components in Chinese and other languages. With contributions by Edward L. Keenan, Henk van Riemsdijk, Alain Rouveret, and scholars in Chinese Linguistics, this volume investigates the common structural properties that may be considered as possible candidates for UG. It addresses syntactic and semantic issues such as anaphora universals over non-isomorphic languages, the role that the forces of attraction and repulsion play in the grammar of natural languages, computational and semantic aspects of resumption, the dichotomy between inner and outer reflexive adverbials, system repairing strategies at interfaces, the v-copy construction in Chinese, the scope of disjunction, interactions between focus, negation and event quantification, null object constructions and VP-Ellipsis, child language acquisition of nominal structure, word order and referentiality as well as second language acquisition of interface properties in Chinese double NP constructions. This volume will be of interest to students and researchers of syntax, semantics, theoretical linguistics, and language acquisition, as well as scholars in Chinese linguistics.

Island Constraints

Island Constraints PDF Author: H. Goodluck
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401719802
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
constraints', which serve to block the association of antecedent to gap under specific syntactic conditions. Of the restrictions identified by Ross and others, the ones we will discuss here are the Complex NP Constraint, exemplified with a relative clause in (3b) and with a nominal complement in (4a), the Subject and wh Island Conditions (Chomsky, 1973) in (4b, c) respectively, and the Adjunct Island Condi tion (see Huang, 1982's Condition on Extraction Domain), illustrated in (4d, e). (4) (a) *John, Mary made the claim that Sally plans to recommend_ for ajob. John, Mary claimed that Sally plans to recommend _ for a job. As for John, Mary heard the rumor that Sally intends to marry him. (b) *John, an article about _just appeared in the newspaper. As for John, an article about him just appeared in the news paper. (c) *Bill, I wonder who likes_. As for Bill, I wonder who likes him. (d) *The heat, we left early because of _. As for the heat, we left early because of it. (e) *The money, I lied so that I could keep_. As for the money, I lied so that I could keep it.

Epithets at the Syntax-Semantics Interface

Epithets at the Syntax-Semantics Interface PDF Author: Pritty Patel-Grosz
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443883883
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
This book is one of the first extensive cross-linguistic theoretical investigations on epithets. Epithets (such as “the bastard”) are anaphoric expressions which take the shape of a definite description, contain an evaluative component, and are typically unstressed. This monograph shows that, in order to understand the perplexing nature of epithets, one must consider what kinds of behavior they exhibit in different components of the language faculty. In this vein, the text adopts a broad approach, analysing epithets from the perspective of the syntax-semantics-pragmatics interface. The empirical focus of this monograph is on epithets in embedded clauses. It unearths new empirical findings and shows that the acceptability of epithets is affected by a variety of influences, including syntactic factors, such as whether the epithet is in the subject position of an embedded clause, or its object position. Semantic-pragmatic restrictions further navigate the nature of epithets, such as whether they are intended to refer to an attitude holder whose beliefs or other attitudes embed the clause that contains them. Based on these findings, the book argues that epithets are a type of pronoun, subject to interface restrictions concerning the semantics and pragmatics of attitude reports. The insights in this monograph raise new questions concerning the division of labour of the language faculty with respect to the processes and mechanisms involved in Binding Theory.

Gradient Acceptability and Linguistic Theory

Gradient Acceptability and Linguistic Theory PDF Author:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192898949
Category : Grammar, Comparative and general
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
This book examines a challenging problem at the intersection of theoretical linguistics and the psychology of language: the interpretation of gradient judgments of sentence acceptability in relation to theories of grammatical knowledge. Acceptability judgments constitute the primary source of data on which such theories have been built, despite being susceptible to various extra-grammatical factors. Through a review of experimental and corpus-based research on a variety of syntactic phenomena and an in-depth examination of two case studies, Elaine J. Francis argues for two main positions. The first is that converging evidence from online comprehension tasks, elicited production tasks, and corpora of naturally-occurring discourse can help to determine the sources of variation in acceptability judgments and to narrow down the range of plausible theoretical interpretations. The second is that the interpretation of judgment data depends crucially on the theoretical commitments and assumptions made, especially with respect to the nature of the syntax-semantics interface and the choice of either a categorical or a gradient notion of grammaticality. The theoretical frameworks considered in this book include derivational theories (e.g. Minimalism, Principles and Parameters), constraint-based theories (e.g. Sign-based Construction Grammar, Simpler Syntax), competition-based theories (e.g. Stochastic Optimality Theory, Decathlon Model), and usage-based approaches. The volume shows that while acceptability judgment data are typically compatible with the assumptions of various theoretical frameworks, some gradient phenomena are best captured within frameworks that permit soft constraints-non-categorical grammatical constraints that encode the conventional preferences of language users.

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, 8 Volume Set

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, 8 Volume Set PDF Author: Martin Everaert
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118358724
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 5254

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Book Description
An invaluable reference tool for students and researchers in theoretical linguistics, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Second Edition has been updated to incorporate the last 10 years of syntactic research and expanded to include a wider array of important case studies in the syntax of a broad array of languages. A revised and expanded edition of this invaluable reference tool for students and researchers in linguistics, now incorporating the last 10 years of syntactic research Contains over 120 chapters that explain, analyze, and contextualize important empirical studies within syntax over the last 50 years Charts the development and historiography of syntactic theory with coverage of the most important subdomains of syntax Brings together cutting-edge contributions from a global group of linguists under the editorship of two esteemed syntacticians Provides an essential and unparalleled collection of research within the field of syntax, available both online and across 8 print volumes This work is also available as an online resource at www.companiontosyntax.com

Theory and Experiment in Syntax

Theory and Experiment in Syntax PDF Author: Grant Goodall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000516512
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
This book reflects on key questions of enduring interest on the nature of syntax, bringing together Grant Goodall’s previous publications and new work exploring how syntactic representations are structured and the affordances of experimental techniques in studying them. The volume sheds light on central issues in the theory of syntax while also elucidating the methods of data collection which inform them. Featuring Goodall’s previous studies of linguistic phenomena in English, Spanish, and Chinese, and complemented by a new introduction and material specific to this volume, the book is divided into four sections around fundamental strands of syntactic theory. The four parts explore the dimensionality of syntactic representations; the relationship between syntactic structure and predicate-argument structure; interactions between subjects and wh-phrases in questions; and more detailed investigations of wh-dependencies but from a more overtly experimental perspective. Taken together, the volume reinforces the connections between these different aspects of syntax by highlighting their respective roles in defining what syntactic objects look like and how the grammar operates on them. This book will be a valuable resource for scholars in linguistics, particularly those with an interest in syntax, psycholinguistics, and Romance linguistics.

Language Change at the Syntax-Semantics Interface

Language Change at the Syntax-Semantics Interface PDF Author: Chiara Gianollo
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110394928
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
Bringing together diachronic research from a variety of perspectives, notably typology, formal syntax and semantics, this volume focuses on the interplay of syntactic and semantic factors in language change - an issue so far largely neglected both in (mostly lexical) historical semantics as well as historical syntax, but recently brought into focus by grammaticalization theory as well as Minimalist diachronic syntax. The contributions draw on data from numerous Indo-European languages including Vedic Sanskrit, Middle Indic, Greek as well as English and German, and discuss a range of phenomena such as change in negation markers, indefinite articles, quantifiers, modal verbs, argument structure among others. The papers analyze diachronic evidence in the light of contemporary syntactic and semantic theory, addressing the crucial question of how syntactic and semantic change are linked, and whether both are governed by similar constraints, principles and systematic mechanisms. The volume will appeal to scholars in historical linguistics and formal theories of syntax and semantics.

On Information Structure, Meaning and Form

On Information Structure, Meaning and Form PDF Author: Kerstin Schwabe
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027233646
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 584

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Book Description
This collection of articles offers a new and compelling perspective on the interface connecting syntax, phonology, semantics and pragmatics. At the core of this volume is the hypothesis that information structure represents the common interface of these grammatical components. Information structure is investigated here from different theoretical viewpoints yielding typologically relevant information and structural generalizations. In the volume's introductory chapter, the editors identify two central approaches to information structure: the formal and the interpretive view. The remainder of the book is organized accordingly. The first part examines information structure and grammar, concentrating on generalizations across languages. The second part investigates information structure and pragmatics, concentrating on clause structure and context. Through concrete analyses of topic, focus, and related phenomena across different languages, the contributors add new and convincing evidence to the research on information structure.