Theta Theory

Theta Theory PDF Author: Martin Haiden
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110197472
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Get Book Here

Book Description
Theta Theory explores the lexicon as an interface in the strict sense, as facilitating the flow of information between cognition and the computational system of language. It argues for the traditional concept of a listed lexicon, where semantic roles are encoded as features of verbs, and against event decomposition. Part one of the book discusses the link between cognition and the lexicon. Mainstream theories of lexical semantics are critically reviewed. Furthermore, this part provides an extensive description of the relevant data in German, including agentivity, causation, psychological predicates, and different types of diathesis alternations. Part two is devoted to the link between the lexicon and syntax. It develops a parallel model of grammatical derivation, which allows the formulation of robust generalizations over thematic role assignment, but at the same time acknowledges the relevance of other components, in particular morpho-phonology and narrow syntax. The theory is applied to a wide range of German constructions including modal infinitives, the present and gerundive participle, the past/passive/adjectival participle, verbal particles, auxiliary selection, and unaccusatives/reflexives. The book is of interest for students and scholars of lexical semantics, for descriptive German linguistics, and for linguists concerned with the development of the Minimalist Program.

Theta Theory

Theta Theory PDF Author: Martin Haiden
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110197472
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Get Book Here

Book Description
Theta Theory explores the lexicon as an interface in the strict sense, as facilitating the flow of information between cognition and the computational system of language. It argues for the traditional concept of a listed lexicon, where semantic roles are encoded as features of verbs, and against event decomposition. Part one of the book discusses the link between cognition and the lexicon. Mainstream theories of lexical semantics are critically reviewed. Furthermore, this part provides an extensive description of the relevant data in German, including agentivity, causation, psychological predicates, and different types of diathesis alternations. Part two is devoted to the link between the lexicon and syntax. It develops a parallel model of grammatical derivation, which allows the formulation of robust generalizations over thematic role assignment, but at the same time acknowledges the relevance of other components, in particular morpho-phonology and narrow syntax. The theory is applied to a wide range of German constructions including modal infinitives, the present and gerundive participle, the past/passive/adjectival participle, verbal particles, auxiliary selection, and unaccusatives/reflexives. The book is of interest for students and scholars of lexical semantics, for descriptive German linguistics, and for linguists concerned with the development of the Minimalist Program.

Phase Theory

Phase Theory PDF Author: Ángel J. Gallego
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027255350
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book provides a detailed and up to date review of the framework of phases (Chomsky 2000 and subsequent work). It explores the interaction between the narrow syntactic computation and the external systems from a minimalist perspective. As has sometimes been noted, "Phase Theory" is the current way to study the cyclic nature of the system, and 'phases' are therefore the natural locality hallmark, being directly relevant for phenomena such as binding, agreement, movement, islands, reconstruction, or stress assignment. This work discusses the different approaches to phases that have been proposed in the recent literature, arguing in favor of the thesis that the points of cyclic transfer are to be related to uninterpretable morphology (the ?-features on the heads C and v*). This take on phases is adopted in order to investigate raising structures, binding, subjunctive dependents, and object shift (word order) in Romance languages, as well as the nature of islands.

Chomsky

Chomsky PDF Author: Neilson Voyne Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521546881
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book Here

Book Description
Noam Chomsky is one of the leading intellectual figures of modern times. He has had a major influence on linguistics, psychology and philosophy, and a significant effect on many other disciplines, from anthropology to mathematics, education to literary criticism. In this rigorous yet accessible account of Chomsky's work and influence, Neil Smith analyses Chomsky's key contributions to the study of language and the study of mind. He gives a detailed exposition of Chomsky's linguistic theorizing, discusses the psychological and philosophical implications of Chomsky's work, and argues that he has fundamentally changed the way we think of ourselves, gaining a position in the history of ideas on a par with that of Darwin or Descartes. This second edition has been thoroughly updated to account for Chomsky's most recent work, including his continued contributions to linguistics, his further discussion on evolution, and his extensive work on the events of September 11th, 2001.

Theories of Syntax

Theories of Syntax PDF Author: Koenraad Kuiper
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1137382422
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
Do you want a deeper understanding of syntax and grammar? Theories of Syntax: Concepts and Case Studies is an indispensable student companion. Starting with basic concepts of syntax, Kuiper and Nokes then delve deeper by explaining how we understand syntactic phenomena, and show us how to use different theoretical frameworks. Theories of Syntax: - Explores syntactic phenomena through a scientific lens - Shows how syntactic models are shaped by theoretical frameworks - Summarizes four theories of syntax: Systemic Functional Grammar, the Principles and Parameters Framework, Lexical Functional Grammar and Minimalism - Illustrates seven sets of syntactic phenomena through case studies With questions for revision, reflection and discussion in each chapter, this is an ideal book for students who want to further their studies.

Predication Theory

Predication Theory PDF Author: Donna Jo Napoli
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521368209
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this study Donna Jo Napoli takes a common-sense approach to the notions of argument and predicate. Discussions of predication within Government and Binding theory have stressed the configurational properties of the phrases involved, and Napoli argues that this has led to proposals for more and more elaborate syntactic structures that nevertheless fail to provide genuinely explanatory accounts. She presents a convincing case for viewing the notion of predicate as a semantic primitive which cannot be defined by looking simply at the lexicon or simply at the syntactic structure, and offers a theory or predication where the key to the subject-predicate relationship is theta-role assignment. The book then goes on to offer principles for the coindexing of a predicate with its subject role player. These coindexing principles make use of Chomsky's 1986 notion of barriers, but instead of being sensitive to configurational notions like c-command and governing category, Napoli argues that they are sensitive to thematic structure. In the final chapter of the book Napoli extends the principles for predication coindexing to anaphor binding, by introducing the notion of argument ladders.

Thematic Structure in Syntax

Thematic Structure in Syntax PDF Author: Edwin Williams
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262731065
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Get Book Here

Book Description
This important monograph summarizes, rethinks, and extends a decade of the author's work on therole assignments - the ways in which the roles implied by verbs of a given type play out in terms of position and other syntactic functions. The study of theta roles and the locality of theta-role assignment leads into many interesting areas of linguistic theory, such as scope, the ECP, X-bar theory, binding theory, and the weak crossover condition; Williams's reconstruction thus offers a systematic integration of a remarkably wide range of syntactic phenomena.Williams starts by outlining a theory of the clause,specifically, of the distribution of Nominative Case and Tense. He then develops a formalism for the notion of"external argument" that is used throughout the rest of the book. Subsequent chapters review the issues surrounding the syntactic expression of the subject-predicate relationship, extend the notion of external argument to include NP movement, and reanalyze the verb movement constructions as deriving from the calculus of theta roles rather than movement.The last chapter distinguishes referential dependence and coreference, showing that a general Leftness condition governs the former, while the binding theory restated in terms of theta relations governs the latter.Edwin Williams is Professor of Linguistics at Princeton University.

Explorations of Phase Theory: Features and Arguments

Explorations of Phase Theory: Features and Arguments PDF Author: Kleanthes K. Grohmann
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110213966
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the first volume dedicated to the study of formal features and the expression of arguments within Phase Theory, the latest model of syntactic theorizing within the Minimalist Program. The collection addresses the nature of formal features and their role in the syntactic computation as well as checking mechanisms and configurations. It also investigates theoretical issues underlying the nature of syntactic arguments and their licensing (argument structure at large) and specific grammatical operations involving arguments (abstract and morphological case, empty elements, passivization, negation, and aspect). The chapters presented in this volume provide case studies from several, typologically unrelated languages. Apart from novel analyses of new as well as well-known facts, the contributions also provide interesting aspects of and challenges for Phase Theory in general, by critically exploring a number of theoretical extensions, proposing new syntactic mechanisms, and sharpening our tools for linguistic analysis.

The Theta System

The Theta System PDF Author: Martin Everaert
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199602514
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 424

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book considers the recent results and evaluations of the Theta System in both theoretical and experimental domains. Distinguished linguists from all over the world examine the theory in the context of an impressive array of new empirical data ranging from Germanic, Romance, and Slavic to Ugro-Finnish, and Semitic languages.

Focus and Secondary Predication

Focus and Secondary Predication PDF Author: Susanne Winkler
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110815214
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 493

Get Book Here

Book Description
The architecture of the human language faculty has been one of the main foci of the linguistic research of the last half century. This branch of linguistics, broadly known as Generative Grammar, is concerned with the formulation of explanatory formal accounts of linguistic phenomena with the ulterior goal of gaining insight into the properties of the 'language organ'. The series comprises high quality monographs and collected volumes that address such issues. The topics in this series range from phonology to semantics, from syntax to information structure, from mathematical linguistics to studies of the lexicon.

Syntax - Theory and Analysis. Volume 2

Syntax - Theory and Analysis. Volume 2 PDF Author: Tibor Kiss
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110363704
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 656

Get Book Here

Book Description
This Handbook represents the development of research and the current level of knowledge in the fields of syntactic theory and syntax analysis. Syntax can look back to a long tradition. Especially in the last 50 years, however, the interaction between syntactic theory and syntactic analysis has led to a rapid increase in analyses and theoretical suggestions. This second edition of the Handbook on Syntax adopts a unifying perspective and therefore does not place the division of syntactic theory into several schools to the fore, but the increase in knowledge resulting from the fruitful argumentations between syntactic analysis and syntactic theory. It uses selected phenomena of individual languages and their cross-linguistic realizations to explain what syntactic analyses can do and at the same time to show in what respects syntactic theories differ from each other. It investigates how syntax is related to neighbouring disciplines and investigate the role of the interfaces especially the relationship between syntax and phonology, morphology, compositional semantics, pragmatics, and the lexicon. The phenomena chosen bring together renowned experts in syntax, and represent the consensus reached as to what has to be considered as an important as well as illustrative syntactic phenomenon. The phenomena discuss do not only serve to show syntactic analyses, but also to compare theoretical approaches with each other.