Subjects in Constructions – Canonical and Non-Canonical PDF Download
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Author: Marja-Liisa Helasvuo
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027269181
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 334
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Book Description
This volume analyzes constructions with non-canonical subjects in individual languages and cross-linguistically, drawing on insights from cognitive and discourse-functional linguistics. Prototypical subjects have often been characterized in terms of their semantic, syntactic and discourse features, such as animacy, agentivity, topicality, referentiality, definiteness and autonomy of existence of the subject referent. A non-canonical subject is one that lacks some of these features. This may be reflected in its meaning, grammatical coding, and/or discourse function. In discussing non-canonical subjects in individual languages and cross-linguistically, the chapters in the volume address the following more general topics: What kinds of grammatical, semantic and discourse criteria can be used to distinguish subjects from non-subjects? To what extent are subject criteria construction-specific? What kinds of constructions have non-canonical subjects? What are the semantic and discourse functions of constructions with non-canonical subjects? Are subjects which are grammatically non-canonical also atypical in terms of their discourse features?
Author: Marja-Liisa Helasvuo
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027269181
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 334
Get Book Here
Book Description
This volume analyzes constructions with non-canonical subjects in individual languages and cross-linguistically, drawing on insights from cognitive and discourse-functional linguistics. Prototypical subjects have often been characterized in terms of their semantic, syntactic and discourse features, such as animacy, agentivity, topicality, referentiality, definiteness and autonomy of existence of the subject referent. A non-canonical subject is one that lacks some of these features. This may be reflected in its meaning, grammatical coding, and/or discourse function. In discussing non-canonical subjects in individual languages and cross-linguistically, the chapters in the volume address the following more general topics: What kinds of grammatical, semantic and discourse criteria can be used to distinguish subjects from non-subjects? To what extent are subject criteria construction-specific? What kinds of constructions have non-canonical subjects? What are the semantic and discourse functions of constructions with non-canonical subjects? Are subjects which are grammatically non-canonical also atypical in terms of their discourse features?
Author: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027229502
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 380
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Book Description
In some languages every subject is marked in the same way, and also every object. But there are languages in which a small set of verbs mark their subjects or their objects in an unusual way. For example, most verbs may mark their subject with nominative case, but one small set of verbs may have dative subjects, and another small set may have locative subjects. Verbs with noncanonically marked subjects and objects typically refer to physiological states or events, inner feelings, perception and cognition. The Introduction sets out the theoretical parameters and defines the properties in terms of which subjects and objects can be analysed. Following chapters discuss Icelandic, Bengali, Quechua, Finnish, Japanese, Amele (a Papuan language), and Tariana (an Amazonian language); there is also a general discussion of European languages. This is a pioneering study providing new and fascinating data, and dealing with a topic of prime theoretical importance to linguists of many persuasions.
Author: Ilja A. Serzant
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027271305
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 392
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Book Description
This volume is an important contribution to the diachrony of non-canonical subjects in a typological perspective. The questions addressed concern the internal mechanisms and triggers for various changes that non-canonical subjects undergo, ranging from semantic motivations to purely structural explanations. The discussion encompasses the whole life-cycle of non-canonical subjects: from their emergence out of non-subject arguments to their expansion, demise or canonicization, focusing primarily on syntactic changes and changes in case-marking. The volume offers a number of different case studies comprising such languages as Italian, Spanish, Old Norse and Russian as well as languages less studied in this context, such as Latin, Classical Armenian, Baltic languages and some East Caucasian languages. Typological generalizations in the form of recurrent developmental paths are offered on the basis of data presented in this volume and in the literature.
Author: Artemis Alexiadou
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027272271
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
This volume contains a selection of papers dealing with constructions that have a passive-like interpretation but do not seem to share all the properties with canonical passives. The fifteen chapters of this volume raise important questions concerning the proper characterization of the universal properties of passivization and reflect the current discussion in this area, covering syntactic, semantic, psycho-linguistic and typological aspects of the phenomenon, from different theoretical perspectives and in different language families and backed up in most cases by extensive corpora and experimental studies.
Author: Anne Mucha
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027259585
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 298
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Book Description
Control, typically defined as a specific referential dependency between the null-subject of a non-finite embedded clause and a co-dependent of the matrix predicate, has been subject to extensive research in the last 50 years. While there is a broad consensus that a distinction between Obligatory Control (OC), Non-Obligatory Control (NOC) and No Control (NC) is useful and necessary to cover the range of relevant empirical phenomena, there is still less agreement regarding their proper analyses. In light of this ongoing discussion, the articles collected in this volume provide a cross-linguistic perspective on central questions in the study of control, with a focus on non-canonical control phenomena. This includes cases which show NOC or NC in complement clauses or OC in adjunct clauses, cases in which the controlled subject is not in an infinitival clause, or in which there is no unique controller in OC (i.e. partial control, split control, or other types of controllers). Based on empirical generalizations from a wide range of languages, this volume provides insights into cross-linguistic variation in the interplay of different components of control such as the properties of the constituent hosting the controlled subject, the syntactic and lexical properties of the matrix predicate as well as restrictions on the controller, thereby furthering our empirical and theoretical understanding of control in grammar.
Author: Jóhanna Barðdal
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027263515
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
Interest in non-canonically case-marked subjects has been unceasing since the groundbreaking work of Andrews and Masica in the late 70’s who were the first to document the existence of syntactic subjects in another morphological case than the nominative. Their research was focused on Icelandic and South-Asian languages, respectively, and since then, oblique subjects have been reported for language after language throughout the world. This newfangled recognition of the concept of oblique subjects at the time was followed by discussions of the role and validity of subject tests, discussions of the verbal semantics involved, as well as discussions of the theoretical implications of this case marking strategy of syntactic subjects. This volume contributes to all these debates, making available research articles on different languages and language families, additionally highlighting issues like language contact, differential subject marking and the origin of oblique subjects.
Author: Björn Hansen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110529394
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 396
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Book Description
The book is dedicated to the study of the causes and mechanisms of syntactic change in Slavonic languages, including internally motivated syntactic change, syntactic change under contact conditions (structural convergence, pattern replication, shift-induced transfer etc.): It also explores metalinguistic factors such as ideologically driven selection and propagation of syntactic structures.
Author: Thierry Ruchot
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027266255
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 301
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Book Description
This book deals with atypical predicate-argument relations. Although the relations between predicates, especially verbal, and their arguments have been long studied, most studies are concerned with typical telic verbs in the past tense, indicative mood, active voice, with all arguments expressed. Recently, linguists have become interested in other types of predicate-argument relations displaying atypical properties, be they morphological or syntactic, in one language or cross-linguistically. The articles in this book investigate some of these: argument marking with some special groups of verbs, arguments not foreseen in the verb valency and contributed by the construction, verbs in idiomatic constructions, valency-changing operations, arguments in thetic sentences or in participle constructions etc. The authors work within different theoretical frameworks and on various languages, from more current languages like English, Spanish, French or German, to Hebrew or lamaholot, an Austronesian language.
Author: Eric Weidner
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3640335120
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 41
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Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,3, University of Heidelberg (Institut für Anglistik), course: Hauptseminar Functional Syntax, language: English, abstract: In this term paper I will investigate the structure of English sentences with the subject notion as a starting point. It presents a classical notion to analyse clauses and sentences but how exactly can a subject be defined? For this purpose, I will show that the notion is not detailed enough and suggest a distinction into grammatical, logical and psychological subject. This proves useful to analyse sentences which at first glance do not appear to have any subject at all. In a next step I will focus on features of the grammatical subject according to the Cambridge Grammar of the English language (2005). The discussion will prove that the properties given for grammatical subjects do not constitute a fixed frame which sharply distinguishes between elements eligible to be subjects and others that are not. Instead I will argue that the subject category is best analysed as a prototype category and that its features have prototypical character. The second section is concerned with different ways of accounting for particular structures of language. If various syntactic functions can appear at the beginning of sentences then why does a speaker choose a particular construction instead of another? I will argue that this question is closely related to analyses of clauses, sentences and utterances going beyond a mere subject vs. predicate dichotomy. I will start with a discussion of the thematic structure of sentences and clauses and introduce the distinction of topic and comment. The second step complements the thematic structure of language with the information structure, in which constituents can be labelled 'given' and 'new'. This analysis also considers the intra- and extra-linguistic context of clauses and sentences and can thereby account fo
Author: Andre? L?vovich Mal?chukov
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027205914
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 653
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Book Description
Features the contributions that deal with various types of impersonality, namely constructions featuring nonagentive subjects, including those with experiential predicates, presentational constructions with a notional subject deficient in topicality, and constructions with a notional subject lacking in referential properties.
