Diachronic Clues To Synchronic Grammar

Author : Eric Fuss
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9789027227966
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Diachronic Clues to Synchronic Grammar written by Eric Fuss and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume emphasizes a new line of thinking in generative grammar which acknowledges that certain synchronic properties of languages can only be fully understood if diachronic data is taken into consideration. The central topics addressed in this collection of papers are (1) a critical assessment of the hypothesis that certain apparently synchronic generalizations are actually the result of the mechanisms of language change, (2) an inquiry into how diachronic data can be used to evaluate and shape formal analyses of particular synchronic phenomena. Reviving the interest in diachronic explanations for synchronic data, the contributions provide novel and original diachronic accounts of phenomena that up to now have escaped a deeper synchronic explanation, including the nature of EPP features, gaps in the distribution of complementizer agreement, and counterexamples to the generalization that rich verbal inflection correlates with verb movement.

Author : T. Givón
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN 13 : 9027268886
Total Pages : 928 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Diachrony of Grammar written by T. Givón and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 928 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The case-studies assembled in these two volumes span a lifetime of research into the diachrony of grammar. That is, into the rise and fall of syntactic constructions and their attendant grammatical morphology. While focused squarely on the data, the studies are nonetheless cast in an explicit theoretical perspective – adaptive, developmental, variationist. Taken as a whole, this work constitutes a frontal assault on Ferdinand de Saussure's corrosive legacy in linguistics. Over the years, reviewers slapped the author's wrist periodically for having dared to commit that most heinous of sins against de Saussure's hallowed legacy – panchronic grammar. In this work he pleads guilty, having never seen a piece of synchronic data that didn't reek, to high heaven, of the diachrony that gave it rise. Reek in two distinct ways: first with the frozen relics of the past that prompt us to reconstruct prior diachronic states; and second with the synchronic variation that hints at ongoing change. Conversely, the author confesses to having never seen a diachronic explanation that did not hinge on the synchronic principles – Carnap's general propositions – that govern language behavior. The synchrony and diachrony of grammar are twin faces of the same coin. To study one without the other is to gut both. By understanding how synchronic grammars come into being we also understand the cognitive, communicative, neurological and developmental universals that constrain diachronic change – and through it synchronic typology.

Author : Federica Cognola
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198815859
Total Pages : 379 pages
Book Rating : 4.53/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Null Subjects in Generative Grammar written by Federica Cognola and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers the null-subject phenomenon, whereby some languages lack an overtly realized referential subject in specific contexts. It explores novel empirical data and new theoretical analyses covering the major approaches to null subjects in generative grammar, and examines a wide range of languages from different families.

Author : Antonio Fábregas
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000371603
Total Pages : 857 pages
Book Rating : 4.04/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Morphology written by Antonio Fábregas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-05-03 with total page 857 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Morphology presents a state-of-the-art, detailed and exhaustive overview of all aspects of Spanish morphology, paying equal attention to the empirical complexities of the morphological system and the theoretical issues that they raise. As such, this handbook is relevant both for those interested in the facts of Spanish morphology and those interested in general morphology that want to explore how the Spanish facts illuminate our understanding of human language and current theories of morphology. This volume is also unique in its extent and coverage. Written by an international team of leading experts in the field, it contains 42 chapters divided into four sections, covering all synchronic and diachronic aspects of Spanish morphology, including inflection; derivation; compounding and other processes of word formation; the interaction of morphology with other modules of grammar and the role of morphology in language acquisition, psycholinguistics and language teaching.

Author : Günther Grewendorf
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN 13 : 9027269351
Total Pages : 347 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Bavarian Syntax written by Günther Grewendorf and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2014-11-15 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dialect syntax has proven to be an invaluable data source for theoretical syntax, and theoretical syntax has provided useful analytical tools for uncovering fascinating grammatical properties of dialects. In the 1980s, the assumption that there must be more than one structural position in the left periphery of the clause was confirmed (among others) by so-called "doubly filled COMPs" in Bavarian (e.g. the co-occurrence of a wh-phrase and a complementizer), and in the 1990s, Northern Italian dialects provided the main empirical evidence for Rizzi’s extended theory of the left clausal periphery (the so-called "Split-C-hypothesis"). Among German dialects, Bavarian played a prominent role from the beginning: in addition to doubly-filled COMPs we find phenomena such as complementizer agreement, partial pro-drop, pronominal clitics, extractions from finite clauses introduced by complementizers, negative concord, parasitic gaps, or double possessors, all of which are fascinating and highly relevant for theoretical syntax. The contributions in this volume investigate and analyze a wide range of topics from Bavarian syntax with the focus on implications for general theoretical questions. This volume is of interest for any linguist interested in syntactic theory and dialect syntax.

Author : Bela Brogyanyi
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 902723504X
Total Pages : 1009 pages
Book Rating : 4.46/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Studies in Diachronic, Synchronic, and Typological Linguistics written by Bela Brogyanyi and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1979 with total page 1009 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Ian Roberts
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0191643688
Total Pages : 720 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Universal Grammar written by Ian Roberts and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-12 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook provides a critical guide to the most central proposition in modern linguistics: the notion, generally known as Universal Grammar, that a universal set of structural principles underlies the grammatical diversity of the world's languages. Part I considers the implications of Universal Grammar for philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, and examines the history of the theory. Part II focuses on linguistic theory, looking at topics such as explanatory adequacy and how phonology and semantics fit into Universal Grammar. Parts III and IV look respectively at the insights derived from UG-inspired research on language acquisition, and at comparative syntax and language typology, while part V considers the evidence for Universal Grammar in phenomena such as creoles, language pathology, and sign language. The book will be a vital reference for linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists.

Author : Eric Fuß
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027294143
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.42/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Rise of Agreement written by Eric Fuß and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2005-10-13 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the historical paths leading from pronouns to markers of verbal agreement and proposes a unified formal account of this grammaticalization process. In opposition to beliefs widely held in the literature, it is argued that new agreement formatives can be coined in a multitude of syntactic environments. Still, the individual paths toward agreement are shown to exhibit a set of underlying similarities which are attributed to universal principles that govern the reanalysis of pronominal clitics as exponents of verbal agreement across languages. It is claimed that syntactic principles impose only a set of necessary conditions on the reanalysis in question, while its ultimate trigger is morphological in nature. More specifically, it is argued that the acquisition of inflectional morphology is governed by blocking effects which operate during language acquisition and promote the grammaticalization of new markers if this change serves to replace ‘worn-out’, underspecified forms with new, more specified candidates.

Author : Roland Hinterhölzl
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
ISBN 13 : 3110205912
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.16/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Information Structure and Language Change written by Roland Hinterhölzl and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2009 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume presents new approaches to explaining word order variation and change in the Germanic languages and thus relates to one of the most prominent and widely discussed topics in the theory of language change and diachronic syntax. The novelty of our approach consists in three main points. First of all, we aim at describing functional variety in the field of word order and verb placement in the early Germanic languages not as a result of language contact, but rather as a language-internal phenomenon related to stylistic and grammatical conditions in information packaging. Second, given that information structure is not directly accessible in texts from historical corpora that are available only in written form and bear no or little information on prosody and intonation, it presents various methods of retrieving information-structural categories in such texts. Third, it presents empirical studies on the relation between word order and information structure of the four main texts of the Old High German period and embeds these results in the wider picture of word order change in Germanic. The volume will be of interest to students of German, English, and general linguistics as well as to researchers interested in diachronic syntax, philology of Older German, language change, information structure, discourse semantics, language typology, computational linguistics, and corpus studies.

Author : Rochelle Lieber
Publisher : Oxford Handbooks
ISBN 13 : 0199641641
Total Pages : 961 pages
Book Rating : 4.42/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology written by Rochelle Lieber and published by Oxford Handbooks. This book was released on 2014 with total page 961 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology is intended as a companion volume to the Oxford Handbook of Compounding (OUP 2009), aiming to provide a comprehensive and thorough overview of the study of derivational morphology. Written by distinguished scholars, its 41 chapters are devoted to theoretical and definitional matters, formal and semantic issues, interdisciplinary connections, and detailed descriptions of derivational processes in a wide range of language families. It presents the reader with the current state of the art in the study of derivational morphology. The handbook begins with an overview and a consideration of definitional matters, distinguishing derivation from inflection on the one hand and compounding on the other. From a formal perspective, the handbook treats affixation (prefixation, suffixation, infixation, circumfixation, etc.), conversion, reduplication, root and pattern and other templatic processes, as well as prosodic and subtractive means of forming new words. From a semantic perspective, it looks at the processes that form various types of adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and verbs, as well as evaluatives and the rarer processes that form function words. Chapters are devoted to issues of theory, methodology, the historical development of derivation, and to child language acquisition, sociolinguistic, experimental, and psycholinguistic approaches. The second half of the book surveys derivation in fifteen language families that are widely dispersed in terms of both geographical location and typological characteristics. It ends with a consideration of both areal tendencies in derivation and the issue of universals.