Majority Quantification And Quantity Superlatives

Author : Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198791240
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Majority Quantification and Quantity Superlatives written by Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the syntax and semantics of proportional most and other majority quantifiers across languages. Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin and Ion Giurgea draw on data from around 40 languages to demonstrate the existence of two distinct semantic types of most: a distributive type, which compares cardinalities of sets of atoms, and a cumulative type, which involves measuring plural and mass entities with respect to a whole. On the syntactic side, the most significant difference is between partitive and non-partitive configurations: certain majority quantifiers are specific to partitive constructions, while others are also allowed in non-partitives. The volume also explores complex expressions of the type the largest part and nominal quantifiers of the type the majority. The authors argue in favour of a quantificational analysis of most, in contrast to many recent studies, but adopt a bipartition-cum-superlative analysis for the largest part. The volume is a large-scale crosslinguistic investigation, offering typological insights as well as case studies from a range of languages, including German, Romanian, Hungarian, Hindi, and Syrian Arabic. The findings have implications for the study of number marking, partitivity, kind reference, (in)definiteness marking, and other crucial issues in linguistic theory.

Author : Mihaela Tănase-Dogaru
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1527571815
Total Pages : 349 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Deconstructing Language Structure and Meaning written by Mihaela Tănase-Dogaru and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2021-07-01 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together a number of researchers working on generative syntax and semantics, language acquisition and phonology to explore various theoretical frameworks, ranging from generative grammar and formal semantics to more descriptive approaches. The contributions gathered here investigate various aspects in the syntax, semantics, phonology and acquisition of Romanian in comparison with other (mainly Romance) languages. The book will be of interest to linguists who are keen on keeping up with the latest advances in the field of Romance studies, as well as those whose research bears on languages such as Hungarian, German, and Maltese, among others.

Author : Alda Mari
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199691800
Total Pages : 458 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Genericity written by Alda Mari and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an up-to-date introduction to the study of generics. It gathers new work from senior and young researchers and is organized along three main areas of study: the generic and individuals; genericity and time; and the sources of genericity and types of judgment.

Author : Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027271356
Total Pages : 930 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Reference Grammar of Romanian written by Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2013-11-15 with total page 930 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on recent research in formal linguistics, this volume provides a thorough description of the whole system of Romanian Noun Phrases, understood in an extended sense, that is, in addition to nouns, pronouns and determiners, it examines all the adnominal phrases: genitive-marked DPs, adjectives, relative clauses, appositions, prepositional phrases, complement clauses and non-finite modifiers. The book focuses on syntax and the syntax-semantics interface but also includes a systematic morphological description of the language. The implicitly comparative description of Romanian contained in the book can serve as a starting point for the study of the syntax/semantics of Noun Phrases in other languages, regardless of whether or not they are typologically related to Romanian. This book will be of special interest to linguists working on Romanian, Romance languages, comparative linguistics and language typology, especially because Romanian is relevant for comparative linguistics not only as a Romance language, but also as part of the so-called Balkan Sprachbund.

Author : Laura J. Downing
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199286396
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Canonical Forms in Prosodic Morphology written by Laura J. Downing and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Prosodic morphology concerns the interaction of morphological and phonological determinants of linguistic form and the degree to which one determines the other. This is the first book devoted to understanding the definition and operation of canonical forms - the invariant syllabic shapes of morphemes - which are the defining characteristic of prosodic morphology. Dr Downing discusses past research in the field and provides a critical evaluation of the current leading theory which, she shows, is empirically inadequate."--BOOK JACKET.

Author : Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199644934
Total Pages : 446 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Ways of Structure Building written by Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-06 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume addresses some of the most important approaches to the following key questions in contemporary generative syntactic theory: What are the operations available for (syntactic) structure-building in natural languages? What are the triggers behind them? and Which constraints are involved in the operations? Internationally recognised scholars and young researchers propose new answers on the basis of detailed discussions of a wide range of phenomena (Gapping, Right-Node-Raising, Comparative Deletion, Across-The-Board movement, Tough-constructions, Nominalizations, Scope interactions, Wh-movement, A-movement, Case and Agreement relations, among others). Their discussions draw on evidence from a rich variety of languages, including Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Croatian, English, German, Icelandic, Japanese, Spanish, Vata, and Vietnamese. The proposals presented illustrate the shift in the locus of the explanation of linguistic phenomena that characterizes contemporary linguistic theory: a shift, in many cases, from a model which relies on properties of systems external to narrow syntax (such as the Lexicon or the Phonetic Form component) to one which relies on properties of the structure-building mechanisms themselves. The volume will interest researchers and students of theoretical linguistics from advanced undergraduate and above.

Author : Jonathan David Bobaljik
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262304597
Total Pages : 333 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Universals in Comparative Morphology written by Jonathan David Bobaljik and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-10-05 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument for, and account of linguistic universals in the morphology of comparison, combining empirical breadth and theoretical rigor. This groundbreaking study of the morphology of comparison yields a surprising result: that even in suppletion (the wholesale replacement of one stem by a phonologically unrelated stem, as in good-better-best) there emerge strikingly robust patterns, virtually exceptionless generalizations across languages. Jonathan David Bobaljik describes the systematicity in suppletion, and argues that at least five generalizations are solid contenders for the status of linguistic universals. The major topics discussed include suppletion, comparative and superlative formation, deadjectival verbs, and lexical decomposition. Bobaljik's primary focus is on morphological theory, but his argument also aims to integrate evidence from a variety of subfields into a coherent whole. In the course of his analysis, Bobaljik argues that the assumptions needed bear on choices among theoretical frameworks and that the framework of Distributed Morphology has the right architecture to support the account. In addition to the theoretical implications of the generalizations, Bobaljik suggests that the striking patterns of regularity in what otherwise appears to be the most irregular of linguistic domains provide compelling evidence for Universal Grammar. The book strikes a unique balance between empirical breadth and theoretical detail. The phenomenon that is the main focus of the argument, suppletion in adjectival gradation, is rare enough that Bobaljik is able to present an essentially comprehensive description of the facts; at the same time, it is common enough to offer sufficient variation to explore the question of universals over a significant dataset of more than three hundred languages.

Author : Johan Rooryck
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0199691339
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Dissolving Binding Theory written by Johan Rooryck and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2011 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the distribution and interpretation of anaphors and pronouns. Through a detailed analysis of simplex and complex anaphors in Dutch and English, as well as other Romance and Germanic languages, the authors show that the relationship between an anaphor and its antecedent can be captured in terms of general Minimalist principles.

Author : Francis Jeffrey Pelletier
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 9789027709318
Total Pages : 326 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Mass Terms: Some Philosophical Problems written by Francis Jeffrey Pelletier and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1979-03-31 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I. MASS TERMS, COUNT TERMS, AND SORTAL TERMS Central examples of mass terms are easy to come by. 'Water', 'smoke', 'gold', etc. , differ in their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties from count terms such as 'man', 'star', 'wastebasket', etc. Syntactically, it seems, mass terms do, but singular count terms do not, admit the quantifier phrases 'much', 'an amount of', 'a little', etc. The typical indefinite article for them is 'some' (unstressed)!, and this article cannot be used with singular count terms. Count terms, but not mass terms, use the quantifiers 'each', 'every', 'some', 'few', 'many'; and they use 'a(n)' as the indefinite article. They can, unlike the mass terms, take numerals as prefixes. Mass terms seem not to have a plural. Semantically, philo sophers have characterized count terms as denoting (classes of?) indi vidual objects, whereas what mass terms denote are cumulative and dissective. (That is, a mass term is supposed to be true of any sum of things (stuff) it is true of, and true of any part of anything of which it is true). Pragmatically, it seems that speakers use count terms when they wish to refer to individual objects, or when they wish to reidentify a particular already introduced into discoursc. Given a "space appropriate" to a count term C, it makes sense to ask how many C's there are in that space.

Author : Jason Merchant
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780199243730
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Syntax of Silence written by Jason Merchant and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A primary goal of contemporary theoretical linguistics is to develop a theory of the correspondence between sound (or gesture) and meaning. This sound-meaning correspondence breaks down completely in the case of ellipsis, and yet various forms of ellipsis are pervasive in natural language:words and phrases which should be in the linguistic signal go missing. How this should be possible is the focus of Jason Merchant's investigation. He focuses on the form of ellipsis known as sluicing, a common feature of interrogative clauses, such as in 'Sally's out hunting - guess what!'; and'Someone called, but I can't tell you who'. It is the most frequently found cross-linguistic form of ellipsis. Dr Merchant studies the phenomenon across twenty-four languages, and attempts to explain it in linguistic and behavioural terms.