Cases And Thematic Roles

Author : Beatrice Primus
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
ISBN 13 : 3110912465
Total Pages : 301 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Cases and Thematic Roles written by Beatrice Primus and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2010-09-03 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is concerned with the mapping of thematic roles, such as agent and patient, onto syntactic cases, such as nominative or ergative, or onto structural relations. It shows that cases and structural relations code different aspects of thematic structure. The thematic determination of the structural relation of an argument is confined to its position in the thematic structure of the predicate. Case mapping is determined by the number of basic thematic concepts involved in this structure. This fact and other facts presented in the book presuppose an approach to thematic roles that decomposes them into more basic concepts involving volitionality, causation, activity, sentience, possession, etc., and motivate the hypothesis that syntactic cases cannot be derived from structural relations in universal grammar. The phenomena pertaining to relational typology that classifies languages into ergative, accusative and active languages are shown to be restricted to case mapping. The specific thematic determination of case mapping and the hierarchical organization of case systems explain not only the existence of these types of mapping, but also the fact that ergative and active phenomena are typically case-based. The book provides a global cross-linguistic perspective, but German data recurrently serve as an illustration of the main theoretical assumptions.

Author : Beatrice Primus
Publisher : de Gruyter
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Cases and Thematic Roles written by Beatrice Primus and published by de Gruyter. This book was released on 1999 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is concerned with the mapping of thematic roles, such as agent and patient, onto syntactic cases, such as nominative or ergative, or onto structural relations. It shows that cases and structural relations code different aspects of thematic structure. The thematic determination of the structural relation of an argument is confined to its position in the thematic structure of the predicate. Case mapping is determined by the number of basic thematic concepts involved in this structure. This fact and other facts presented in the book presuppose an approach to thematic roles that decomposes them into more basic concepts involving volitionality, causation, activity, sentience, possession, etc., and motivate the hypothesis that syntactic cases cannot be derived from structural relations in universal grammar. The phenomena pertaining to relational typology that classifies languages into ergative, accusative and active languages are shown to be restricted to case mapping. The specific thematic determination of case mapping and the hierarchical organization of case systems explain not only the existence of these types of mapping, but also the fact that ergative and active phenomena are typically case-based. The book provides a global cross-linguistic perspective, but German data recurrently serve as an illustration of the main theoretical assumptions.

Author : Laurel J. Brinton
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027225672
Total Pages : 357 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Structure of Modern English written by Laurel J. Brinton and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text is designed for undergraduate and graduate students interested in contemporary English, especially those whose primary area of interest is English as a second language. Focus is placed exclusively on English data, providing an empirical explication of the structure of the language.

Author : Dorothea Kallfass
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
ISBN 13 : 3638768139
Total Pages : 29 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Grammatical Relevance of Thematic Roles written by Dorothea Kallfass and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2007-11 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,7, Humboldt-University of Berlin, course: Ergativity: A Comparative Perspective, 16 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Thematic roles are a linguistic phenomenon describing the more specific relations between a predicate and its respective arguments. This is especially important in the field of language acquisition, or, more generally stated, for the process of understanding. A discussion of thematic roles is closely linked to one of the most complex questions ever: what is meaning? Thematic roles are a linguistic approach to this question which is characterized by its comparative simplicity. Still, it is a complex theory. It ist acknowledged that if you know the grammar of a language you really know this language. Since grammar takes a closer look at units of speech such as sentences, and smaller chunks of sentences, one has to come up with some strategies for interpreting these chunks and the sort of relation they have with each other in order to know grammar. Theta theory is one of these strategies, focusing on "who does what to whom in a clause". In short: a predicate is able to assign certain thematic roles to its respective arguments - we say that predicates have a thematic structure. The part of grammar whicht regulates the assignment of these roles is called theta theory. As an issue of linguistic interest, thematic roles have gained importance during the last two decades. Theta theory as part of the Government and Binding Theory will be discussed in the following chapters. First, the theory has to be localized in the field of grammar. Then, there follows a brief introduction to Noam Chomsky's current theory of principles and parameters. After these introductory sections the main issues will be addressed, for example the grammatical relevance of thematic roles, and also the question as to which extent theta marking is gram

Author : Wendy Wilkins
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004373217
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Thematic Relations written by Wendy Wilkins and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-01-13 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thematic Relations provides information pertinent to thematic relations, which focus both on what sematic roles are expressible in the grammar and how these roles come to be associated with noun phrases. This book presents the interaction of components of the language faculty and other aspects of cognition. Organized into 13 chapters, this volume begins with an overview of the semantic relations involved in verb-argument structure. This text then examines the predicate-argument representations, which have come to figure prominently in all current generative theories of syntax. Other chapters consider the generalizations about thematic relations that are most insightfully captured at the level of syntax of at the level of semantics. This book discusses as well the importance of thematic roles to the grammar. The final chapter deals with the central role of thematic roles in language comprehension. This book is a valuable resource for linguists, syntacticians, and semanticists with an active involvement in research on natural language.

Author : Martin Everaert
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0191626457
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Theta System written by Martin Everaert and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-05 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before she died in 2007, Tanya Reinhart had gone a long way towards developing the Theta System, a theory in which formal features defining the thematic relations of verbs are encoded in the lexicon, enabling an interface between the lexical component and the computational system/syntax, directly, and the Inference system, indirectly. This book considers the recent results and evaluations of Tanya Reinhart's research in both theoretical and experimental domains. After a comprehensive presentation of the framework by the editors, distinguished linguists from all over the world examine the underpinning of the Theta System, compare the framework to alternative approaches, and consider its implications for the architecture of grammar. In addition, they consider and exemplify the applications of the system and offer improvements and extensions. The book is an important contribution to linguistic research. It engages in the key dialogue between competing lexicalist and syntactic approaches to lexico-semantic problems and does so in the context of an impressive array of new empirical data ranging from Germanic, Romance, and Slavic to Ugro-Finnish, and Semitic languages.

Author : Marcel den Dikken
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107354587
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax written by Marcel den Dikken and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-25 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Syntax – the study of sentence structure – has been at the centre of generative linguistics from its inception and has developed rapidly and in various directions. The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax provides a historical context for what is happening in the field of generative syntax today, a survey of the various generative approaches to syntactic structure available in the literature and an overview of the state of the art in the principal modules of the theory and the interfaces with semantics, phonology, information structure and sentence processing, as well as linguistic variation and language acquisition. This indispensable resource for advanced students, professional linguists (generative and non-generative alike) and scholars in related fields of inquiry presents a comprehensive survey of the field of generative syntactic research in all its variety, written by leading experts and providing a proper sense of the range of syntactic theories calling themselves generative.

Author : Andrew Carnie
Publisher : Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN 13 : 9780631225430
Total Pages : 390 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Syntax written by Andrew Carnie and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2002 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, by one of Spain's most eminent philosophers, provides a lively and very accessible introduction to philosophy. Written for those who have no prior knowledge of the field, it reveals how the central problems of philosophy remain high"

Author : Olga Kagan
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 110841642X
Total Pages : 307 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Semantics of Case written by Olga Kagan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-16 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on data from a wide range of languages, the book discusses the ways in which case interacts with meaning.

Author : Charles J. Fillmore
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 120 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Fillmore's Case Grammar written by Charles J. Fillmore and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: