Icelandic Morphosyntax And Argument Structure

Author : Jim Wood
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3319091387
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Icelandic Morphosyntax and Argument Structure written by Jim Wood and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-01-05 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a detailed study of Icelandic argument structure alternations within a syntactic theory of argument structure. Building on recent theorizing within the Minimalist Program and Distributed Morphology, the author proposes that much of what is traditionally attributed to syntax should be relegated to the interfaces, and adapts the late insertion theory of morphology to semantics. The resulting system forms sound-meaning pairs by generating hierarchical structures that can be translated into morphological representations, on the one hand, and semantic representations, on the other. The syntactic primitives, however, underdetermine both morphophonology and semantics. Without appealing to special stipulations, the theory derives constraints on the external argument of causative-alternation verbs, interpretive restrictions on nominative objects, and the optionally agentive interpretation of verbs denoting self-directed motion.

Author : Jóhanna Barðdal
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027289670
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Productivity written by Jóhanna Barðdal and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008-12-10 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Productivity of argument structure constructions is a new emerging field within cognitive-functional linguistics. The term productivity as used in linguistic research contains at least three subconcepts: ‘extensibility’, ‘regularity’, and ‘generality’. The focus in this study of case and argument structure constructions in Icelandic is on the concept of extensibility, while generality and regularity are regarded as derivative of extensibility. Productivity is considered to be a function of type frequency, semantic coherence, and the inverse correlation between these two. This study establishes productivity as an emergent feature of the grammatical system, in an analysis that is grounded in a usage-based constructional approach, where constructions are organized into lexicality-schematicity hierarchies. The view of syntactic productivity advocated here offers a unified account of productivity, in that it captures different degrees of productivity, ranging from highly productive patterns through various intermediate degrees of productivity to low-level analogical extensions.

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 : 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 : Itamar Kastner
Publisher : Language Science Press
ISBN 13 : 3961102570
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Voice at the interfaces written by Itamar Kastner and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This books presents the most comprehensive description and analysis to date of Hebrew morphology, with an emphasis on the verbal templates. Its aim is to develop a theory of argument structure alternations which is anchored in the syntax but has systematic interfaces with the phonology and the semantics. Concretely, the monograph argues for a specific formal system centered around possible values of the head Voice. The formal assumptions are as similar as possible to those made in work on non-Semitic languages. The first part of the book (four chapters) is devoted to Hebrew; the second part (two chapters) compares the current theory with other approaches to Voice and argument structure in the recent literature.

Author : Dimitra Papangeli
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Morphosyntax of Argument Realization written by Dimitra Papangeli and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Antonio Fábregas
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110670917
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Passives and Middles in Mainland Scandinavian written by Antonio Fábregas and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph explores the properties of passive and middle voice constructions in Norwegian and Swedish, concentrating on the linguistic variation related to these two constructions in Mainland Scandinavian. At an empirical level, we provide a detailed discussion of the morphosyntax and semantics of the two main types of passives in both languages, lexical (s-) and periphrasitic (bli-) passives. At a theoretical level, we propose an architecture of the language faculty where exponents play a central role. Exponents are selected to identify the structures generated by the grammar and provide a platform that make these units interpretable by the sensori-motor and conceptual-intentional interfaces. Exponents this play an essential role in determining the well-formedness of linguistic structures. We demonstrate how different syntactic structures identified and lexicalized by exponents in these two languages are capable of capturing the microvariation observed in the voice systems of these two languages in a straightforward way. The amount of linguistic information (i.e., aspect and mood) identified by each exponent in each language determines the types of complements and specifiers that can be integrated into and lexicalized by a given exponent. Although our approach shares certain affinities with other neo-constructionist approaches, a novel proposal we advance in this book is that exponents are housed in an intermediate level of structure that exists between the narrow syntax and its external interfaces. This exponency-level (Ʃ-structure) allows for a more parsimonious theoretical analysis that does not sacrifice descriptive adequacy.

Author : Giuliano Bocci
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198889488
Total Pages : 481 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rich Descriptions and Simple Explanations in Morphosyntax and Language Acquisition written by Giuliano Bocci and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-27 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers new perspectives on the tension between the rich patterns of language variation that emerge from comparative studies and the quest for simple theoretical primitives. The chapters explore the debate between Cartography and Minimalism: on the one hand, the need for detailed and articulated descriptions of the clausal architecture, and on the other, the endeavor to reduce the theoretical apparatus to fundamental computational mechanisms. The first part of the book begins with a reflection on the goals of modern linguistic theory, and investigates the principles of human language, in an effort to subsume the regularities of particular grammars under a small set of morphosyntactic and semantic primitives. The second part examines the clausal structure - both the CP-layer and the IP-layer - from a comparative perspective, which directly relates to the fundamental questions of universality, linguistic variation, and learnability addressed in the first part of the book. With chapters written by world-leading linguists who analyze a wide range of old and new phenomena, the volume will be a valuable resource for researchers and students interested in theoretical linguistics and language development.

Author : Artemis Alexiadou
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192634941
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Nominalization written by Artemis Alexiadou and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 352 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. In the last 50 years of research into the division of labour between the mental lexicon and syntax, the specific properties of nominalized structures have remained a particularly central question. The chapters in this volume take stock of developments in this area and offer new perspectives on a range of issues, including the representation of morphological complexity in the syntax, the correlation of nominal affixes with different types of nominalizations, and the modelling of non-compositional meaning within syntactic approaches to word formation. Crucially, the contributors base their analyses on data from typologically diverse languages, such as Archi, Greek, Hiaki, Icelandic, Mebengokre, Turkish, and Udmurt, and explore the question of whether, cross-linguistically, nominalizations have a uniform core to their structure that can be syntactically described.

Author : Michael T. Putnam
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108386350
Total Pages : 1176 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Germanic Linguistics written by Michael T. Putnam and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-16 with total page 1176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive overview of the structure of modern Germanic languages. Written by a team of internationally-renowned experts, it is a vital resource for students and researchers investigating the Germanic family of languages and dialects, covering key topics such as phonology, morphology, syntax, heritage and minority languages.