Existential Sentences In English Rle Linguistics D English Linguistics

Author : Gary L. Milsark
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 170 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2014-01-10
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781317931577

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Existential Sentences in English (RLE Linguistics D: English Linguistics) by Gary L. Milsark Pdf

In order to bring some minimal amount of order to the chaos that almost inevitably attends the use of the word ‘existential’ in a linguistic investigation, the author reserved the term existential sentence (ES) to designate all and only those English sentences in which there appears an occurrence of the unstressed, non-deictic, ‘existential’ there. Thus the term will be used as a characterisation of a class of syntactic objects, not as a semantic description. With ES sentences including formations such as ‘There were several people talking’ and ‘There ensued a riot’, perhaps nowhere else do we find so clearly displayed the complexity and subtlety of the syntactic and semantic interactions which determine the nature of human language.

Author : Michael Lumsden
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2014-02-03
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781317933717

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Existential Sentences (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar) by Michael Lumsden Pdf

What is the relationship between the structure of existential sentences and their meaning? How do hearers interpret existential sentences using pragmatic assumptions? This study attempts to account for the relationship between the structure of existential sentences (ES) and their meaning. The study of ES has received a great deal of attention because the construction has complex syntactic properties, is associated with restrictions of a semantic nature, and provides an interesting area for investigation at a pragmatic level.

Author : John M. Kirk,Stewart Sanderson,J.D.A. Widdowson
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2014-01-10
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781317931546

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Studies in Linguistic Geography (RLE Linguistics D: English Linguistics) by John M. Kirk,Stewart Sanderson,J.D.A. Widdowson Pdf

The publication in the past ten years of linguistic atlases of England and Scotland has not only advanced our knowledge of the lexical and morphological variety inherent in the English language, but has made it possible to establish a number of methodological principles for the study of language both in its contemporary distribution and in its historical evolution. The essays in this volume, by contributors to the linguistic atlases and other dialectologists, describe some of the problems that bedevil the study of dialect and the methodological solutions employed to minimise them. They also survey the contributions that linguistic cartography can make to the study of English and of language in general. The considerations it embodies are of major importance for the student of language and, in addition, the book is an invaluable companion to the Atlases.

Author : Adriana Belletti
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2023-09-29
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781000930252

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Structures, Syntactic Computations and Acquisition by Adriana Belletti Pdf

This book collects some of the most significant articles by Adriana Belletti published over the last ten years or so, offering readers a useful tool to see the mutual enrichment between linguistic theory and experimental studies on (modes of) language acquisition through her work. The volume explores domains of theoretical morphosyntax in the generative tradition and theoretically guided studies on language acquisition. An introduction specific to this volume contextualizes these contributions within ongoing developments in the field. Part I presents studies inspired by the illuminating interchange between linguistic theory and experimentation in the domain of language acquisition, leading to the formulation of explicit research questions tested experimentally and guiding in the proper interpretation of the results. Part II offers refined, detailed theoretical analyses of domains in which peripheral positions in the clause structures are crucially involved to express discourse contents, in sometimes not standard ways during development. Demonstrating how refined linguistic analyses play a crucial role in interpretating the peculiar shape of developmental data, this book will be of interest to scholars in syntax, language acquisition, and theoretical linguistics.

Author : Violeta Kalėdaitė
Publisher : Peter Lang Publishing
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : IND:30000087939744

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Existential Sentences in English and Lithuanian by Violeta Kalėdaitė Pdf

Existential sentences in the world's languages tend to develop specific morphological, syntactic, and lexical properties. The present work offers a contrastive functional analysis of these constructions in two typologically unrelated languages, English and Lithuanian. The study focuses on the relationship between the syntactic structure of different existential sentence types and their meaning; it also explores the semantic and pragmatic parameters relevant to the structural differences within a single language and across the two compared languages. Most importantly, a new definition of the existential sentence, which takes into account both semantic and syntactic criteria, is proposed for Lithuanian. The findings are drawn on the basis of the corpus and highlight conspicuous differences in the linguistic representations of the construction in the two languages. With respect to Lithuanian, communicative word order variations, language-specific structures (the BKI and the impersonal passive), and a wider use of lexical verbs present an area of special interest. Contents: The English existential: definition and classification -- General characteristics: structural patterns -- Semantic types -- Word order -- The interpretation of there -- Verbs in the construction -- The definiteness restriction -- Lithuanian existentials: the semantics of the basic sentence patterns -- Types of 'be' existentials -- Communicative types of existential sentences -- Semantic classes of acceptable lexical verbs -- Definite and indefinite subject NPs -- Language-specific existential structures.

Author : Lyle Jenkins
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
Page : 156 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2012-10-25
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783111357188

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The English existential by Lyle Jenkins Pdf

Over the past few decades, the book series Linguistische Arbeiten [Linguistic Studies], comprising over 500 volumes, has made a significant contribution to the development of linguistic theory both in Germany and internationally. The series will continue to deliver new impulses for research and maintain the central insight of linguistics that progress can only be made in acquiring new knowledge about human languages both synchronically and diachronically by closely combining empirical and theoretical analyses. To this end, we invite submission of high-quality linguistic studies from all the central areas of general linguistics and the linguistics of individual languages which address topical questions, discuss new data and advance the development of linguistic theory.

Author : Louise McNally
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 181 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2016-11-25
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781315536477

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A Semantics for the English Existential Construction by Louise McNally Pdf

First published in 1997, this book addresses the question: What is the interpretation of English there-existential construction? One of the principal goals is to develop an interpretation for the construction that will specifically address other properties of the postcopular DP. After outlining the problem, the author goes on to present a syntactic motivation for the claim that the postcopular DP is the sole complement to the existential predicate, as well as for the claim that the optional final phrase is a predictive adjunct. In chapter 3 the interpretation for the basic existential construction is developed and then compared to analyses that take the postcopular DP to denote an ordinary individual or a generalised quantifier of individuals. This analysis is then augmented to account for the contribution of the final XP and shows how the predicate restriction can be derived from a more general condition on depictive/circumstantial VP-adjuncts. The final chapter contain some speculative discussion of the broader implications of the proposal in the context of data such as "list" existential and "presentational-there" sentences.

Author : Michael Hannay
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2017-03-06
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783111334318

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English existentials in functional grammar by Michael Hannay Pdf

Author : Ileana Comorovski,Klaus von Heusinger
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2008-08-20
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781402061981

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Existence: Semantics and Syntax by Ileana Comorovski,Klaus von Heusinger Pdf

This collection of essays grew out of the workshop ‘Existence: Semantics and Syntax’, which was held at the University of Nancy 2 in September 2002. The workshop, organized by Ileana Comorovski and Claire Gardent, was supported by a grant from the Reseau ́ de Sciences Cognitives du Grand Est (‘Cognitive Science Network of the Greater East’), which is gratefully acknowledged. The ?rst e- tor wishes to thank Claire Gardent, Fred Landman, and Georges Rebuschi for encouraging her to pursue the publication of a volume based on papers presented at the workshop. Among those who participated in the workshop was Klaus von Heusinger, who joined Ileana Comorovski in editing this volume. Besides papers that developed out of presentations at the workshop, the volume contains invited contributions. We are grateful to Wayles Browne, Fred Landman, Paul Portner, and Georges Rebuschi for their help with reviewing some of the papers. Our thanks go also to a Springer reviewer for the careful reading of the book manuscript. We wish to thank all the participants in the workshop, not only those whose contributions appear in this volume, for making the workshop an int- active and constructive event. Ileana Comorovski Klaus von Heusinger vii ILEANA COMOROVSKI AND KLAUS VON HEUSINGER INTRODUCTION The notion of ‘existence’, which we take to have solid intuitive grounding, plays a central role in the interpretation of at least three types of linguistic constructions: copular clauses, existential sentences, and (in)de?nite noun phrases.

Author : Leiv Egil Breivik
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 484 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 1983
Category : English language
ISBN : STANFORD:36105039802967

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Existential There by Leiv Egil Breivik Pdf

Author : Karen Zagona
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 214 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789400927179

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Verb Phrase Syntax: A Parametric Study of English and Spanish by Karen Zagona Pdf

This study is concerned with the structure of verb phrases in English and Spanish, and with syntactic processes involving VP and Vo. A primary focus of attention is auxiliary verbs. It is argued that the structure dominating these verbs is essentially the same in English and Spanish, as is the structure dominating auxiliaries and 'main' verbs in each language. It must be concluded that the occurrence of distinct syntactic processes affecting auxiliaries and other VP constituents in the two languages does not follow from parametrization of phrase structure. It is argued that similarities between the two languages with respect to the composition of so-called "V*" constructions derive from the fact that VP is licensed under both clauses of the Principle of Full Interpretation, i. e. , predication and sub categorization. Distinct syntactic processes in English and Spanish are argued to follow from the fact that there are inflectional features related to each of these licensing conditions (including specification for [ ± PAST) and nominal person/number features) which affect government relations in distinct ways, resulting in parametrization of S-structure representa tions. xi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to express my appreCiatIOn to the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Washington for support for preparation of the final manuscript, and to the Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese at the University of Virginia for a leave during which much of this research was accomplished.

Author : Betty Birner
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 163 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2014-05-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781136753978

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The Discourse Function of Inversion in English by Betty Birner Pdf

First published in 1997. This dissertation presents a discourse-functional account of English inversion, based on an empirical study of natural language data. The central finding is that inversion is subject to a pragmatic constraint on the information status of its constituents; specifically, the information represented by the preposed constituent must be at least as familiar within the discourse as is that represented by the postposed constituent.

Author : Robert Austerlitz
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 212 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2015-09-25
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783110857610

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The Scope of American Linguistics by Robert Austerlitz Pdf

Author : Gerald Gazdar
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 1985
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0674344553

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Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar by Gerald Gazdar Pdf

Author : Michael Shaun Rochemont
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 1986-01-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027227911

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Focus in Generative Grammar by Michael Shaun Rochemont Pdf

The topic of this book is the notion of focus and its linguistic characterization. The main thesis is that focus has a uniform grammatical identification only as a syntactic element with in English at least a certain systematic phonological interpretation and presumably universally a range of semantic interpretations. In broad respects, the framework within this investigation is conducted is that of Chomsky & Lasnik (1977) and the subsequent Government and Binding framework. After considering defining the location of prominence in a focused phrase in terms of constituent structure, the author argues that an argument structure approach to the focus phrase/prominence relation is more promising. This is then exemplified in analyses of cleft focus and constructional focus.