Prominence And Locality In Grammar

Author : Jianhua Hu
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 207 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2019-06-06
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 9781000008661

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Prominence and Locality in Grammar by Jianhua Hu Pdf

This book challenges the current consensus on the analysis of wh-questions and reflexives from the perspective of the syntax-semantics interface. An integrated approach incorporating analyses of the interaction between different levels of linguistic knowledge is proposed. It argues that the derivation and interpretation of wh-questions and reflexives are not purely syntactic in nature but are regulated by principles operating at the syntax-semantics interface. Two general principles underlying our knowledge of language and cognition are proposed in this work. One is the Principle of Locality, and the other is the Principle of Prominence. It shows that although wh-quantification and reflexivization belong to two different domains of study in generative grammar, their derivation and interpretation are basically constrained by the complex interaction between prominence and locality in grammar. The first part of the book discusses how wh-questions are formed and interpreted in Chinese and English and shows that the formation and interpretation of wh-questions are constrained by the interaction between prominence and locality. It is shown that in wh-interpretation prominence is used to define the set generators so as to licence other wh-words in the pair-list reading in multiple wh-questions. It also discusses wh-island effects in English and Chinese, and unlike previous claims made in the literature (cf. Huang 1982a, 1982b), it argues that the so-called wh-island effects in English are also observed in Chinese. The second part of the book investigates the role that prominence and locality play in reflexive binding. It is shown that in reflexive binding, the binding domain of the reflexive is defined by prominence. It proposes a unified account for both the noncontrastive compound reflexive and the bare reflexive in Chinese and shows that they are constrained by the same reflexive binding condition proposed in this work, though they employ different definitions of the most prominent NPs to determine their binding domains. Prominence and Locality in Grammar: The Syntax and Semantics of Wh-Quesitons and Reflexives is an important theoretical contribution to the syntax-semantics interface studies and can serve as a valuable text for graduate students and scholars in the field of Chinese, linguistics, and cognitive science.

Author : Harold W. Stubblefield
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 1988-01-01
Category : Adult education
ISBN : 0415005639

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Towards a History of Adult Education in America by Harold W. Stubblefield Pdf

Author : Jan Koster
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 1981-04-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783110882339

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Locality principles in syntax by Jan Koster Pdf

The architecture of the human language faculty has been one of the main foci of the linguistic research of the last half century. This branch of linguistics, broadly known as Generative Grammar, is concerned with the formulation of explanatory formal accounts of linguistic phenomena with the ulterior goal of gaining insight into the properties of the 'language organ'. The series comprises high quality monographs and collected volumes that address such issues. The topics in this series range from phonology to semantics, from syntax to information structure, from mathematical linguistics to studies of the lexicon. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert

Author : Jianhua Hu,Haihua Pan
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
Page : 379 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2019-04-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027262684

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Interfaces in Grammar by Jianhua Hu,Haihua Pan Pdf

This volume is an important contribution to the theoretical and empirical study of the interactions of grammatical components in Chinese and other languages. With contributions by Edward L. Keenan, Henk van Riemsdijk, Alain Rouveret, and scholars in Chinese Linguistics, this volume investigates the common structural properties that may be considered as possible candidates for UG. It addresses syntactic and semantic issues such as anaphora universals over non-isomorphic languages, the role that the forces of attraction and repulsion play in the grammar of natural languages, computational and semantic aspects of resumption, the dichotomy between inner and outer reflexive adverbials, system repairing strategies at interfaces, the v-copy construction in Chinese, the scope of disjunction, interactions between focus, negation and event quantification, null object constructions and VP-Ellipsis, child language acquisition of nominal structure, word order and referentiality as well as second language acquisition of interface properties in Chinese double NP constructions. This volume will be of interest to students and researchers of syntax, semantics, theoretical linguistics, and language acquisition, as well as scholars in Chinese linguistics.

Author : Ruya Li
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2024-05-10
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 9781315281032

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The Acquisition of Anaphora in Child Mandarin by Ruya Li Pdf

The Acquisition of Anaphora in Child Mandarin explores how Mandarin-speaking children’s interpretation of the reflexive ziji and their use of null arguments can be understood under the notions of locality and prominence. This book investigates the interpretation of ziji and the use of null subjects and null objects by experimenting on Mandarin-speaking children and adults using a range of experimental techniques such as the truth value judgment task, the picture identification task, and the story-telling task. The book provides evidence to show that reflexive binding and argument dropping are determined by the interplay between universal principles and language-specific properties. It shows that children at the age of 4 make an adult-like distinction between the anaphoric and logophoric interpretations of ziji. The former is subject to the locality condition manifested by the blocking effect on the long-distance binding of ziji, whereas the latter is free from the locality condition and closely related to the understanding of the false beliefs of others. This book is an important contribution to language acquisition research and can serve as a valuable reference for graduate students and researchers in the field of language acquisition, Chinese linguistics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive science.

Author : Adams Bodomo,Kang Kwong Luke
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 204 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2003
Category : Chinese language
ISBN : STANFORD:36105132819918

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Lexical-functional Grammar Analysis of Chinese by Adams Bodomo,Kang Kwong Luke Pdf

Author : Darcy Sperlich
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2021-01-04
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783030638757

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Reflexive Pronouns: A Theoretical and Experimental Synthesis by Darcy Sperlich Pdf

This book presents a comprehensive picture of reflexive pronouns from both a theoretical and experimental perspective, using the well-researched languages of English, German, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. In order to understand the data from varying theoretical perspectives, the book considers selected syntactic and pragmatic analyses based on their current importance in the field. The volume consequently introduces the Emergentist Reflexivity Approach, which is a novel theoretical synthesis incorporating a sentence and pragmatic processor that accounts for reflexive pronoun behaviour in these six languages. Moreover, in support of this model a vast array of experimental literature is considered, including first and second language acquisition, bilingual, psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic and clinical studies. It is through both the intuitive and experimental data linguistic theorizing relies upon that brings out the strengths of the modelling adopted here, paving new avenues for future research. In sum, this volume unites a diverse array of the literature that currently sits largely divorced between the theoretical and experimental realms, and when put together a better understanding of reflexive pronouns under the auspices of the Emergentist Reflexivity Approach is forged.

Author : Yehuda N. Falk
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2006-08-10
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781139458566

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Subjects and Universal Grammar by Yehuda N. Falk Pdf

The 'subject' of a sentence is a concept that presents great challenges to linguists. Most languages have something which looks like a subject, but subjects differ across languages in their nature and properties, making them an interesting phenomenon for those seeking linguistic universals. This pioneering volume addresses 'subject' nature from a simultaneously formal and typological perspective. Dividing the subject into two distinct grammatical functions, it shows how the nature of these functions explains their respective properties, and argues that the split in properties shown in 'ergative' languages (whereby the subject of intransitive verbs is marked as an object) results from the functions being assigned to different elements of the clause. Drawing on data from a typologically wide variety of languages, including English, Hebrew, Tagalog, Inuit and Acehnese, it explains why, even in the case of very different languages, certain core properties can be found.

Author : Bethwyn Evans,Åshild Næss,Jozina Vander Klok
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2024-01-29
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783110730753

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Prominence in Austronesian by Bethwyn Evans,Åshild Næss,Jozina Vander Klok Pdf

The cognitive concept of prominence is increasingly seen as key to understanding the organisation of grammar. This volume explores the encoding of prominence in languages from across the Austronesian family. The contributions show how prominence is relevant to understanding asymmetries at different levels of grammatical structure, from discourse and information structure to argument expression and socio-pragmatics. Moreover, common themes across contributions point to crosslinguistic tendencies that underpin the conventionalisation of communicative patterns for coordinating interlocutors' attention, and to points of departure for further crosslinguistic exploration of how grammatical asymmetries can be explained in terms of prominence.

Author : Dorothee Beermann,David LeBlanc,Henk van Riemsdijk
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 417 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 1997-12-11
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027282347

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Rightward Movement by Dorothee Beermann,David LeBlanc,Henk van Riemsdijk Pdf

Symmetries and asymmetries have always played an important role in linguistic theorizing. From the early works on potentially universal properties of transformational processes, differences between rightward and leftward movement processes were noted and constituted a challenge to theories of conditions on transformations. The upward boundedness of extraposition rules vs. the successive cyclic character of question word movement, for example, remains a vexing problem. An idea which has gained considerable prominence in the most recent syntactic work, in particular Noam Chomsky's 'Minimalist Program' and Richard Kayne's 'Antisymmetry' proposal, is that rightward movement simply does not exist. This means, in essence, that what looks like an element that has been moved rightward is either base-generated in its surface position, or it is actually moved leftward but all its surrounding materials have been moved leftward even further. Clearly, these radical proposals have generated a large number of new analyses of the relevant phenomena, and they have fostered considerable controversy about the viability and desirability of this type of approach. The present volume brings together a representative group of articles discussing a variety of aspects of (apparent) rightward movement processes, including considerations having to do with parsing, and representing the various opposing lines of thought on this matter. Empirically, they cover a wide array of constructions (extraposition, scrambling, quantifier-floating, etc.) and languages ( American Sign Language, Bengali, Dutch, French, Frisian, German, Hindi, Japanese, Marathi, etc.).

Author : Harald Clahsen
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 362 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 1991-10-31
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027277633

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Child Language and Developmental Dysphasia by Harald Clahsen Pdf

The subject of this two part work is the acquisition of language structure in which the development of syntax and morphology is examined by investigations on children without language problems and on children with developmental dysphasia. The author uses a comparative acquisition study to provide insights into the structure and development of the language acquisition device, which cannot be obtained by isolated analysis of only one type of learning. The theoretical framework used for the investigations is the learnability theory, in which acquisition models are proposed which are heavily influenced by theoretical linguistics. Part I shows how child grammar acquisition can be explained in the framework of learnability theory and Part II deals with deficiencies in normal grammar acquisition using the learnability theory.

Author : András Bárány,Oliver Bond,Irina Nikolaeva
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2019-03-28
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780192540157

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Prominent Internal Possessors by András Bárány,Oliver Bond,Irina Nikolaeva Pdf

This volume is the first to provide a comprehensive cross-linguistic overview of an understudied typological phenomenon, the clause-level argument-like behaviour of internal possessors. In some languages, adnominal possessors - or a subset thereof - figure more prominently than expected in the phrase-external syntax, by controlling predicate agreement and/or acting as a switch-reference pivot in same-subject relations. There is no independent evidence that such possessors are external to the possessive phrase or that they assume head status within it. This creates a puzzle for virtually all syntactic theories, as it is generally believed that agreement and switch-reference target phrasal heads rather than dependents. Following an introduction to the typology of the phenomenon and an overview of possible syntactic analyses, chapters in the volume offer more focussed case studies from a wide range of languages spoken in the Americas, Eurasia, South Asia, and Australia. The contributions are largely based on novel data collected by the authors and present thorough discussions of the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties of prominent internal possessors in the relevant languages. The volume will be of interest to researchers and students from graduate level upwards in the fields of comparative linguistics, syntax, typology, and semantics.

Author : Maria Garraffa
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 140 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2011-05-25
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781443830874

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The Grammatical Nature of Minimal Structures by Maria Garraffa Pdf

An important development in linguistic models is the shift from construction-oriented rules to elementary computations that generate complex grammatical expressions. In this monograph, the author presents a systematic linguistic examination of an Italian aphasic speaker focusing on locality conditions as configurational restrictions on syntactic computations and on functional elements as fundamental triggers for computational processes. The explanatory framework which has been adopted considers the grammar to be an integral part of language processing; it is a derivational model compatible with well-known parsing strategies such as the minimal link condition and the minimal chain principle. This approach to aphasia supports the hypothesis that linguistic deficit is an impoverishment of procedural capacities that manifests itself in reduced syntactic structures. The book is recommended for advanced undergraduates and graduate students in neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics and theoretical linguistics, as well as medical researchers and speech therapists interested in the same fields. It can be adopted as principal text for the specific domain (syntax and aphasia).

Author : Gerard O'Grady
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 269 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2010-12-09
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781441147172

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A Grammar of Spoken English Discourse by Gerard O'Grady Pdf

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Author : Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald,R. M. W. Dixon,Nathan M. White
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 325 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2020-11-05
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780198865681

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Phonological Word and Grammatical Word by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald,R. M. W. Dixon,Nathan M. White Pdf

This volume examines the concept of 'word' as a phonological unit and as an item with both meaning and grammatical function. The chapters explore how this concept can be applied to a range of typologically diverse languages, from Lao and Hmong in Southeast Asia to Yidiñ in northern Australia and Murui in the Amazonian jungle.