Building And Interpreting Possession Sentences

Author : Neil Myler
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262551098
Total Pages : 471 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Building and Interpreting Possession Sentences written by Neil Myler and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-02-06 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging generative analysis of the typology of possession sentences, solving long-standing puzzles in their syntax and semantics. A major question for linguistic theory concerns how the structure of sentences relates to their meaning. There is broad agreement in the field that there is some regularity in the way that lexical semantics and syntax are related, so that thematic roles (the different participant roles in an event: agent, theme, goal, etc.) are predictably associated with particular syntactic positions. In this book, Neil Myler examines the syntax and semantics of possession sentences, which are infamous for appearing to diverge dramatically from this broadly regular pattern. On the one hand, Myler points out, possession sentences have too many meanings; in any given language, the construction used to express archetypal possessive meanings (such as personal ownership) is also often used to express other apparently unrelated notions (body parts, kinship relations, and many others). On the other hand, possession sentences have too many surface structures; languages differ markedly in the argument structures used to convey the same possessive meanings. Myler argues that recent work on the syntax-semantics interface in the generative tradition has developed the tools needed to solve these puzzles. Examining and synthesizing ideas from the literature and drawing on data from many languages (including some understudied Quechua dialects), Myler presents a novel way to understand the apparent irregularity of possession sentences while preserving explanations of general cross-linguistic regularities, offering a unified approach to the syntax and semantics of possession sentences that can also be integrated into a general theory of argument structure.

Author : Ludovico Franco
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN 13 : 9027246629
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Elementary Predicates and Related Categories written by Ludovico Franco and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2024-07-15 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a fresh perspective on how natural languages encode grammatical relations, by delving into the interplay between oblique cases, adpositions, serial verbs, and applicatives. This book reveals, through a series of case studies, the pervasive role of the 'inclusion' relator across diverse linguistic contexts. Departing from traditional views that obliques lack interpretive content, this work presents a unified conceptual framework of relations in grammar. Drawing on minimalist principles, the book posits a preeminence of the lexicon in syntactic projection, shedding light on the underlying ontology of language. By exploring cross-categorial variation and syncretism, it outlines an inventory of primitives shaping morpho-syntactic derivations.

Author : Artemis Alexiadou
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110757346
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Syntax of Argument Structure written by Artemis Alexiadou and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-11-08 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bridging theoretical modelling and advanced empirical techniques is a central aim of current linguistic research. The progress in empirical methods contributes to the precise estimation of the properties of linguistic data and promises new ways for justifying theoretical models and testing their implications. The contributions to the present collective volume take up this challenge and focus on the relevance of empirical results achieved through up-to-date methodology for the theoretical analysis and modelling of argument structure. They tackle issues of argument structure from different perspectives addressing questions related to diverse verb types (unaccusatives, unergatives, (di)transitives, psych verbs), morpho-syntactic operations (prefixation, simple vs. particle verbs), case distinctions (dative vs. accusative, case vs. prepositions), argument and voice alternations (dative vs. benefactive alternation, active vs. passive), word order alternations and the impact of animacy, agentivity, and eventivity on argument structure. The volume will be of interest to theoretical linguists, psycholinguists, and corpus linguists interested in the syntax of argument structure and its modelling using precise empirical methods.

Author : Gréte Dalmi
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350062472
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Approaches to Predicative Possession written by Gréte Dalmi and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses existential and possessive constructions in two important, yet under-studied, language families, Slavic and Finno-Ugric. Using data from the Slavic languages of Polish, Belarusian and Russian, and the Finno-Ugric languages of Finnish, Hungarian, Meadow Mari, Komi-Permiyak and Udmurt, as well as the closely related Selkup of the Samoyedic family, the chapters in this volume analyse predicative possession in current syntactic terms. Seeking an answer to the theoretical question of whether BE-possessives and HAVE-possessives are just accidental values of the 'Possessive Parameter' or are intrinsically related, this book takes a comparative approach to a whole range of syntactic and semantic phenomena that appear in these constructions, including the definiteness restriction, genitive of negation, person/number agreement, argument structure and extractability. The individual case studies can be easily integrated into the Principles & Parameters framework in terms of parametric variation. Approaches to Predicative Possession is an important contribution to our understanding of predicative possession across languages, with findings that can be fruitfully extended to other language families. It is an equally useful source of information for theoretical linguists, typologists, and graduate students of linguistics.

Author : Jim Wood
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198865155
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Icelandic Nominalizations and Allosemy written by Jim Wood and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-08-15 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings a basic yet detailed description of Icelandic nominalizations to bear on the general theoretical and architectural issues that nominalizations have raised since the earliest work in generative syntax. While nominalization has long been central to theories of argument structure, and Icelandic has been an important language for the study of argument structure and syntax, Icelandic has not been brought into the general body of theoretical work on nominalization. In this work, Jim Wood shows that Icelandic-specific issues in the analysis of derived nominals have broad implications that go beyond the study of that one language. In particular, Icelandic provides special evidence that Complex Event Nominals (CENs), which seem to inherit their argument structure from the underlying verbs, can be formed without nominalizing a full verb phrase. This conclusion is at odds with prominent theories of nominalization that claim that CENs have the properties that they have precisely because they involve the nominalization of full verb phrases. The book develops a theory of allosemy within the framework of Distributed Morphology, showing how one single syntactic structure can get distinct semantic interpretations corresponding to the range of readings that are available to derived nominals. The resulting proposal demonstrates how the study of Icelandic nominalizations can both further our understanding of argument structure and shed new light on the syntax-semantics interface.

Author : Artemis Alexiadou
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0198865546
Total Pages : 471 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Nominalization written by Artemis Alexiadou and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-11-19 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the progress of cross-linguistic research into the structure of complex nominals since the publication of Chomsky's 'Remarks on Nominalization' in 1970. The contributors take stock of developments in this area and offer new perspectives based on data from a wide range of typologically diverse languages.

Author : Daniel J. Wilson
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN 13 : 9027260966
Total Pages : 177 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Syntactic and Semantic Variation in Copular Sentences written by Daniel J. Wilson and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2020-07-16 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a novel account of syntactic and semantic variation in copular and existential sentences in Classical Hebrew. Like many languages, the system of Classical Hebrew copular sentences is quite complex, containing zero, pronominal, and verbal forms as well as eventive and inchoative semantics. Approaching this subject from the framework of Distributed Morphology provides an elegant and comprehensive explanation for both the syntactic and semantic variation in these sentences. This book also presents a theoretical model for analyzing copular sentences in other languages included related phenomena– such as pseudo-copulas. It is also a demonstration of what can be gained by applying modern linguistic analyses to dead languages. Citing and building off previous studies on this topic, this book will be of interest to those interested in the theoretical examination of copular and existential sentences and to those interested in Classical Hebrew more specifically.

Author : Alex Silk
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108836011
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Semantics with Assignment Variables written by Alex Silk and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-24 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pioneers an innovative framework for theorizing about meaning in natural language and the role of context in interpretation.

Author : Katrin Axel-Tober
Publisher : Helmut Buske Verlag
ISBN 13 : 3967692892
Total Pages : 266 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book On the nominal nature of propositional arguments written by Katrin Axel-Tober and published by Helmut Buske Verlag. This book was released on 2023-10-16 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Die grammatische Kategorie eingebetteter Sätze zählt seit über 50 Jahren zu den zentralen Themen der theoretischen Syntax. Dabei dreht sich die Diskussion speziell um die Frage, ob manche oder vielleicht alle eingebetteten Sätze als Nominalphrasen zu behandeln sind, sei es, weil sie einen (stummen) nominalen Kopf haben (D oder N), oder sei es, weil der Satzeinleiter selbst als nominal zu betrachten ist. Die Beiträge des Sonderhefts nehmen diese Fragestellung erneut auf und explorieren sie unter verschiedenen, syntaktischen wie semantischen Aspekten im Lichte neuerer theoretischer Ansätze. Das Spektrum an Sprachen, die genauer untersucht oder argumentativ für die Zwecke der Analyse herangezogen werden, umfasst neben Deutsch – einschließlich dialektaler Varietäten wie Bairisch und Alemannisch – Englisch, Niederländisch (einschließlich der Brabanter Varietät), Alt- und Neugriechisch, Jula (Niger-Kongo), Schwedisch, Baskisch sowie eine Reihe anderer genetisch und typologisch unterschiedlicher Sprachen. Inhalt: – Katrin Axel-Tober, Lutz Gunkel, Jutta M. Hartmann & Anke Holler: Introduction Part I: Complementation as relativization – Carlos de Cuba: Relatively nouny? – Gisela Zifonun: Sind Komplementsätze nominal? Positionen der Grammatikschreibung Part II: Complement clauses and nominal structure – Richard Faure: (H)óti-clauses from DP to NPhood. The life of a Greek nouny clause – Kalle Müller: On noun-related complementizer clauses – Alassane Kiemtoré: A syntactic account of clausal complementation in Jula Part III: Semantic aspects – Vesela Simeonova: Definitely factive – Jürgen Pafel: (Argument) clauses and definite descriptions – Patrick Brandt: The real semantic value is propositional: German particle verbs and state change Part IV: Aspects based on dependent verb-second – Andreas Blümel & Nobu Goto: Reconsidering the syntax of correlates and propositional arguments – Frank Sode: On the conditional nature of V2-clauses in desire reports of German

Author : Edit Doron
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN 13 : 9027262438
Total Pages : 402 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Language Contact, Continuity and Change in the Genesis of Modern Hebrew written by Edit Doron and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2019-09-18 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The emergence of Modern Hebrew as a spoken language constitutes a unique event in modern history: a language which for generations only existed in the written mode underwent a process popularly called “revival”, acquiring native speakers and becoming a language spoken for everyday use. Despite the attention it has drawn, this particular case of language-shift, which differs from the better-documented cases of creoles and mixed languages, has not been discussed within the framework of the literature on contact-induced change. The linguistic properties of the process have not been systematically studied, and the status of the emergent language as a (dis)continuous stage of its historical sources has not been evaluated in the context of other known cases of language shift. The present collection presents detailed case studies of the syntactic evolution of Modern Hebrew, alongside general theoretical discussion, with the aim of bringing the case of Hebrew to the attention of language-contact scholars, while bringing the insights of the literature on language contact to help shed light on the case of Hebrew.