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 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

Get Book Here

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.

On the Role of Contrast in Information Structure

On the Role of Contrast in Information Structure PDF Author: Jorina Brysbaert
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110986590
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
In research on Information Structure, there is an ongoing discussion about the role of contrast. While most linguists consider contrast to be compatible with both focus and topic, some argue that it is an autonomous IS category. Contrast has been shown to be encoded by different linguistic means, such as specific morphemes, adverbials, clefts, prosodic cues. Hence, this concept is also related to other domains, in particular morphosyntax and prosody. The precise way in which they interact is however not yet entirely clear. Moreover, from a methodological point of view, the identification and annotation of contrast in corpora is not straightforward. This volume provides a selection of articles discussing the definition of contrast, the importance of distinguishing different types of contrast, the use of several encoding strategies, and the annotation of contrast in corpora using the Question Under Discussion Model. The contributions offer data on English, French, French Belgian Sign Language, German, Hindi, Italian and Spanish.

When Data Challenges Theory

When Data Challenges Theory PDF Author: Davide Garassino
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027258155
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
This volume offers a critical appraisal of the tension between theory and empirical evidence in research on information structure. The relevance of ‘unexpected’ data taken into account in the last decades, such as the well-known case of non-focalizing cleft sentences in Germanic and Romance, has increasingly led us to give more weight to explanations involving inferential reasoning, discourse organization and speakers’ rhetorical strategies, thus moving away from ‘sentence-based’ perspectives. At the same time, this shift towards pragmatic complexity has introduced new challenges to well-established information-structural categories, such as Focus and Topic, to the point that some scholars nowadays even doubt about their descriptive and theoretical usefulness. This book brings together researchers working in different frameworks and delving into cross-linguistic as well as language-internal variation and language contact. Despite their differences, all contributions are committed to the same underlying goal: appreciating the relation between linguistic structures and their context based on a firm empirical grounding and on theoretical models that are able to account for the challenges and richness of language use.

Language, creoles, varieties

Language, creoles, varieties PDF Author: Cyrille Granget
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3985540888
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
This book offers a selection of papers dealing with second language acquisition, foreign language teaching and creole linguistics inspired by the scientific legacy of Mauritian-born scholar Georges Daniel Véronique (Port-Louis, 1948). An important part of the book is devoted to the description of learner varieties with a focus on sociolinguistic factors, such as the learner situation – from asylum seekers to Erasmus students –, the degree of familiarity with the target language – having or not previous knowledge about a genetically related language –, the degree of literacy, and the type of instruction. Linguistic complexity, case marking, the use of self-positioning pronouns, verbal morphology and aspectual values are among the linguistic phenomena analyzed by the authors having contributed to this part of the volume. Another part of this volume deals with language didactics and addresses the questions of whether manipulating specific constructions from a usage-based perspective and a focus-on-form approach do indeed aid beginner learners to acquire complex forms in L2 German and nominal forms in L2 Polish, respectively. It also explores how some educational policies in Sweden have affected both the offer of French as a Foreign Language and its demand by students. The contributions to creole studies present diachronic analyses targeting the /z/ plural marking in Réunion creole, Fa d’Ambô and spoken French, and a set of NPs found in two speeches pronounced in 1835 on the island of Agaléga by a coconut oil producer whose features are similar to Mauritian creole. Linguistic, social and historical factors are at the center of these contributions.

The Meaning and Translation of ἰδού and ἴδε 'behold'

The Meaning and Translation of ἰδού and ἴδε 'behold' PDF Author: Nicholas A Bailey
Publisher: SIL International
ISBN: 1556714769
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
The Koine Greek particles ἰδού and ἴδε have been traditionally translated as either 'behold' or 'lo'. But such mechanical renderings are inadequate as they suggest these particles can be reduced to a single meaning or function. As argued in this monograph, these particles actually have several distinct uses that are conditioned by their linguistic context, and a translator should find natural idioms in the receptor language that match the meaning and function of these Greek uses.

Non Canonical Questions

Non Canonical Questions PDF Author: Trotzke
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192872281
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
This book is the first to present a comprehensive theory of non-canonical questions, those question types that do not (only) request information from the addressee, but rather (additionally) tell us something about the speaker's epistemic and/or emotional state, such as can't-find-the-value questions, echo questions, rhetorical questions, and surprise questions. While much recent research has explored the formal semantics and the phonetics and phonology of both canonical and non-canonical questions, the literature is still lacking a comprehensive account from a syntax-pragmatics perspective that brings together the multiple findings and strands of research from the last twenty years. The standard view in the syntax-pragmatics literature is that most special interpretations of non-canonical questions involve syntactic projections at or even above the level of illocutionary force. In this work, Andreas Trotzke argues that this approach is a mistake, and proposes a new alternative theory of non-canonical questions in which both their special pragmatics and their syntax, as well as in many cases their emotive component, can be derived solely from propositional-level operators that do not affect the illocutionary level of utterances and can be found across illocutionary forces. This account dramatically simplifies the syntactic analysis of non-canonical questions and is also able to capture some previously unobserved data in the discourse behavior of those question types.

Modality in Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics

Modality in Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics PDF Author: Werner Abraham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108861083
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 455

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Book Description
What do we mean when we say things like 'If only we knew what he was up to!' Clearly this is more than just a message, or a question to our addressee. We are expressing simultaneously that we don't know, and also that we wish to know. Several modes of encoding contribute to such modalities of expression: word order, subordinating subjunctions, sentences that are subordinated but nevertheless occur autonomously, and attitudinal discourse adverbs which, far beyond lexical adverbials of modality, allow the speaker and the listener to presuppose full agreement, partial agreement under presupposed conditions, or negotiation of common ground. This state of the art survey proposes a new model of modality, drawing on data from a variety of Germanic and Slavic languages to find out what is cross-linguistically universal about modality, and to argue that it is a constitutive part of human cognition.

Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar

Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar PDF Author: M.A.K. Halliday
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135983410
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 808

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Book Description
Fully updated and revised, this fourth edition of Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar explains the principles of systemic functional grammar, enabling the reader to understand and apply them in any context. Halliday's innovative approach of engaging with grammar through discourse has become a worldwide phenomenon in linguistics. Updates to the new edition include: Recent uses of systemic functional linguistics to provide further guidance for students, scholars and researchers More on the ecology of grammar, illustrating how each major system serves to realise a semantic system A systematic indexing and classification of examples More from corpora, thus allowing for easy access to data Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar, Fourth Edition, is the standard reference text for systemic functional linguistics and an ideal introduction for students and scholars interested in the relation between grammar, meaning and discourse.

A Systemic Functional Grammar of Chinese

A Systemic Functional Grammar of Chinese PDF Author: Eden Sum-hung Li
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441127496
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
This book presents an analysis of Chinese grammar from a systemic functional perspective. Its main focus is the clausal grammar of Chinese, and Dr Li provides a thorough analysis of Chinese clauses according to their constituent parts. However, uniquely, the second half of the book extends this examination into an analysis of Chinese discourse and text analysis. Professor Halliday's foreword praises Eden Li's thorough analysis, and shows its relevance to the field of systemic functional linguistics in general. Systemic Functional Grammar of Chinese provides the reader with a general theoretical framework of grammar and discourse analysis from a systemic functional perspective.

Trust the Text

Trust the Text PDF Author: John Sinclair
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134369921
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
John Sinclair is one of the major figures in applied linguistics and his work is essential study for students. This accessible book collects in one volume Sinclair's key papers on written discourse structure, lexis patterns, phraseology, corpus analysis, lexicography and linguistic theory from the 1990s. All the papers have been edited and updated for this book. The clear and accessible introduction helps students to navigate his key themes and arguments, making the volume an ideal companion for those coming to Sinclair's more recent writings for the first time.