Indefinites

Author : Luis Alonso-Ovalle,Paula Menéndez-Benito
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2015
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780199665297

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Epistemic Indefinites by Luis Alonso-Ovalle,Paula Menéndez-Benito Pdf

This book brings together novel work on the semantics and pragmatics of certain indefinite expressions that also convey modality. These epistemic indefinites are determiners or pronouns that signal ignorance on the part of the speaker, such as German irgendein and Spanish algun: the sentence Maria se caso con algun medico ('Maria married some doctor or other') both makes an existential statement that there is a doctor that Maria married and signals the speaker's inability or unwillingness to identify the doctor in question. Although epistemic indefinites have featured in recent semantic literature, a full understanding of the phenomenon is still lacking: there is currently no agreement on the source of their epistemic component; there is insufficient cross-linguistic data to develop a semantic typology of these items; and the parallelisms and differences between epistemic indefinites and other expressions that convey epistemic modality have not been explored in depth. In this volume, a team of experts in the field offer novel empirical observations and important theoretical insights on epistemic indefinites and related topics such as modal free relatives, modified numerals, and epistemic modals. They provide a coherent overview of the issues that shape the subject as well as placing them in the context of current semantic research, moving towards the development of a semantic typology of epistemic indefinites that explores the place of these expressions within a general typology of modal items.

Author : Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin,Claire Beyssade
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 278 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2012-04-27
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 9789400730021

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Redefining Indefinites by Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin,Claire Beyssade Pdf

This volume explores the interpretation of indefinites and the constraints on their distribution by paying particular attention to key issues in the interface between syntax and semantics: the relation between the semantic properties of indefinite determiners and the denotation of indefinite DPs, their scope, and their behaviour in generic and conditional sentences. Examples come from French, other Romance languages and English. Central to the proposed analyses is a distinction between two types of entities, individualized entities and amounts. Weak indefinites are analyzed as existential generalized quantifiers over amounts and strong indefinites as either Skolem terms or generalized quantifiers over individualized entities. The up-to-date review of the literature and the new falsifiable proposals contained in this book will be of particular interest to linguistics students and scholars interested in the cross-linguistic semantics of indefinites.

Author : Jae-Il Yeom
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 278 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2015-12-22
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781317776536

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A Presuppositional Analysis of Specific Indefinites by Jae-Il Yeom Pdf

First published in 1998. In this book the author presents the view that although many linguists have been interested in specific indefinites, their theories are not quite satisfactory in that they have only tried to explore some aspects of specific indefinites. This paper assumes a standard notion of specificity, i.e., the notion of someone having-in-mind an individual or a relation. Under this assumption, there is an attempt to review previous studies on specific indefinites, and propose a new theory of specificity which I believe can capture all aspects which the previous studies have explored. This leads us to a new information theory which is partially representational and partially denotational., and which is useful for dealing with conversational aspects, like the distinction between the speaker and the audience.

Author : Chiara Gianollo
Publisher : Oxford Studies in Diachronic a
Page : 342 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2019-01-29
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780198812661

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Indefinites Between Latin and Romance by Chiara Gianollo Pdf

This book investigates the syntactic and semantic development of a selection of indefinite pronouns and determiners (such as aliquis 'some', nullus 'no', and nemo 'no one') between Latin and the Romance languages. Although these elements have undergone significant diachronic change since the Classical Latin period, the modern Romance languages show a remarkable degree of similarity in the way their systems of indefinites have evolved and are structured today. In this volume, Chiara Gianollo draws on data from Classical and Late Latin texts, and from electronic corpora of the early stages of various Romance languages, to propose a new account of these similarities. The focus is primarily on Late Latin: at this stage, the grammar of indefinites already shows a number of changes, which are homogeneously transmitted to the daughter languages, leading to parallelism in the various emerging Romance systems. The volume demonstrates the value of using methods and models from synchronic theoretical linguistics for investigating diachronic phenomena, as well as the importance of diachronic research in understanding the nature of crosslinguistic variation and language change.

Author : Sofiana Lindemann
Publisher : Narr Francke Attempto Verlag
Page : 253 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2020-03-09
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9783823393818

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Special Indefinites in Sentence and Discourse by Sofiana Lindemann Pdf

Das vorliegende Buch untersucht die semantischen und diskurs-pragmatischen Eigenschaften indefiniter Nominalphrasen. Dabei wird der Zusammenhang zwischen den folgenden zwei Faktoren untersucht: (i) der referenziellen Form (markierte indefinite Nominalphrasen vs. unmarkierte indefinite Nominalphrasen), und (ii) dem diskursstrukturierenden Potential. Durch eine sprachvergleichende Studie mit Schwerpunkt auf Englisch, Deutsch und Rumänisch, wird die Analyse der Funktionen unterschiedlicher indefiniten Nominalphrasen empirisch gestützt und weiterentwickelt. Damit wird die Arbeit zu einem besseren Verständnis von Textstruktur, den kognitiven Grundlagen von Textproduktion und Textverständnis, sowie den allgemeinen Prinzipien der Kommunikation zwischen Gesprächsteilnehmern beitragen.

Author : Martin Haspelmath
Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand
Page : 385 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 1997
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780198235606

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Indefinite Pronouns by Martin Haspelmath Pdf

This book is the first comprehensive and encyclopaedic investigation of indefinite pronouns (expressions like someone, anything, nowhere) in the languages of the world. It shows that the range of variation in the functional and formal properties of indefinite pronouns is subject to a set of universal implicational constraints, and proposes explanations for these universals.

Author : Horst J. Simon,Heike Wiese
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 314 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 902722773X

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Pronouns by Horst J. Simon,Heike Wiese Pdf

The contributions of this thematic collection center around the typology of pronominal paradigms, the generation of syntactic and semantic representations for constructions containing pronouns, and the neurological underpinnings for linguistic distinctions that are relevant for the production and interpretation of these constructions. They come from different theoretical approaches and methodological backgrounds and take into account data from a wide range of Indoeuropean and non-Indoeuropean languages. Bringing together a cross-section of recent research on the grammar and representation of pronouns, the volume offers a kaleidoscope of studies united by the common topic of pronouns as a domain of language that exemplarily shows the interaction of different components responsible for computational (syntactic and semantic), lexical, and discourse-pragmatic processes.

Author : Martin Haspelmath,Matthew S. Dryer,David Gil,Bernard Comrie
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 712 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2005-07-21
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780191531248

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The World Atlas of Language Structures by Martin Haspelmath,Matthew S. Dryer,David Gil,Bernard Comrie Pdf

The World Atlas of Language Structures is a book and CD combination displaying the structural properties of the world's languages. 142 world maps and numerous regional maps - all in colour - display the geographical distribution of features of pronunciation and grammar, such as number of vowels, tone systems, gender, plurals, tense, word order, and body part terminology. Each world map shows an average of 400 languages and is accompanied by a fully referenced description of the structural feature in question. The CD provides an interactive electronic version of the database which allows the reader to zoom in on or customize the maps, to display bibliographical sources, and to establish correlations between features. The book and the CD together provide an indispensable source of information for linguists and others seeking to understand human languages. The Atlas will be especially valuable for linguistic typologists, grammatical theorists, historical and comparative linguists, and for those studying a region such as Africa, Southeast Asia, North America, Australia, and Europe. It will also interest anthropologists and geographers. More than fifty authors from many different countries have collaborated to produce a work that sets new standards in comparative linguistics. No institution involved in language research can afford to be without it.

Author : Balk?z Öztürk
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2005-01-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9027228019

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Case, Referentiality, and Phrase Structure by Balk?z Öztürk Pdf

This book proposes that the two independent conditions on argumenthood, namely, case and referentiality, are strongly correlated and have to be associated with each other in syntax as syntactic features. It shows that languages exhibit variation in the way this association is implemented in their syntax, which presents an explanation for the differences observed in their phrase structure in terms of (non-)configurationality. Thus, this book not only presents an innovative overarching theory for case and referentiality, but also aims to bring a new look at the issues of (non-)configurationality. It specifically argues for parameterization of functional categories associated with case and referentiality, which has certain implications not only for the acquisition but also for the diachronic development of functional categories. Providing rich comparative data from typologically different languages such as Turkish, Chinese, Hungarian, English and Japanese, this book is of particular interest to typologists as well.

Author : Ileana Comorovski,Klaus Heusinger
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2007-09-04
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781402061974

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Existence: Semantics and Syntax by Ileana Comorovski,Klaus 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 : Eduard Gerbrandus Ruys
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 282 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : Definiteness (Linguistics)
ISBN : STANFORD:36105009231072

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The Scope of Indefinites by Eduard Gerbrandus Ruys Pdf

Author : Molly Diesing
Publisher : Mit Press
Page : 175 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0262540665

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Indefinites by Molly Diesing Pdf

Indefinites investigates the relationship between the syntactic and semantic representations of sentences within the framework of generative grammar. It proposes a means of relating government-binding theory, which is primarily syntactic, to the semantic theory of noun phrase interpretation developed by Kamp and Heim, and introduces a novel mapping algorithm that describes the relation between syntactic configurations and logical representations.Diesing focuses on the problem of deriving logical representations from syntactic representations of sentences, with an emphasis on issues of quantification and the interpretation of indefinites. The two central questions addressed are the possible semantic interpretations of indefinites and quantificational noun phrases, and the role played by syntactic representation in deriving the semantic representation of noun phrases. The mapping algorithm used is applied to derive the logical representations of indefinites to a wide range of syntactic and semantic phenomena in German including scrambling, VP-deletion, and extraction from NP.Molly Diesing is Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Assistant Research Social Scientist in Cognitive Science at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Author : William J. Byrne
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 406 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : Spanish language
ISBN : UCSD:31822025809674

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Information Structure, Judgment Forms, and the Interpretation of Indefinites in Spanish by William J. Byrne Pdf

Author : Martin Haspelmath
Publisher : Clarendon Press
Page : 385 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Comparative linguistics
ISBN : 9780198299639

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Indefinite Pronouns by Martin Haspelmath Pdf

Presents an encyclopaedic investigation of indefinite pronouns in the languages of the world. This book shows that the range of variation in the functional and formal properties of indefinite pronouns is subject to a set of universal implicational constraints, and proposes explanations for these universals.

Author : FLORENCE GRAY BEALL
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 1932
Category : Electronic
ISBN : UOM:39015069625609

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CONCORD OF NUMBER IN MODERN ENGLISH WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE INDEFINITES. by FLORENCE GRAY BEALL Pdf