Clausal Architecture and Subject Positions
Clausal Architecture and Subject Positions

Author: Sabine Mohr

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2005-01-01

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9789027233523

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This book offers a comparative study of the Germanic languages. It promotes a new approach to the OV vs. VO classification, according to which all clauses have a universal base where the internal argument is always merged in SpecVP. Word order differences and their correlates result from an interaction of checking conditions, the EPP and different types of verb movement, and from parametric variation concerning the location of the subject of predication in the I- or in the C-system. In the discussion of a range of impersonal constructions in German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Yiddish, Icelandic, the Mainland Scandinavian languages and English, it is shown that crosslinguistic variation as regards, e.g., the distribution of the expletive in impersonal passives and the occurrence of a Definiteness Effect in Transitive Expletive Constructions is mainly due to the choice of different kinds of 'expletive' elements (each associated with different featural make-ups which force them to show up in different positions), namely true expletives, event arguments and quasi-arguments, whereas expletive pro is shown not to exist.

Clause Structure and Word Order in Hebrew and Arabic
Clause Structure and Word Order in Hebrew and Arabic

Author: Ur Shlonsky

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0195108671

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Looking at the grammars of Hebrew and several varieties of Arabic, Shlonsky examines clausal architecture and verb movement and the role of agreement in natural language, using Chomsky's Government and Binding Approach.

Grammatical Change and Linguistic Theory
Grammatical Change and Linguistic Theory

Author: Thórhallur Eythórsson

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2008-03-06

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13: 9027291578

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This book contains 15 revised papers originally presented at a symposium at Rosendal, Norway, under the aegis of The Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. The overall theme of the volume is ‘internal factors in grammatical change.’ The papers focus on fundamental questions in theoretically-based historical linguistics from a broad perspective. Several of the papers relate to grammaticalization in different ways, but are generally critical of ‘Grammaticalization Theory’. Further papers focus on the causes of syntactic change, pinpointing both extra-syntactic (exogenous) causes and – more controversially – internally driven (endogenous) causes. The volume is rounded up by contributions on morphological change ‘by itself.’ A wide range of languages is covered, including Tsova-Tush (Nakh-Dagestan), Zoque, and Athapaskan languages, in addition to Indo-European languages, both the more familiar ones and some less well-studied varieties.

Explorations in English Historical Syntax
Explorations in English Historical Syntax

Author: Hubert Cuyckens

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2018-08-15

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 9027263841

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The papers in this volume cover a wide range of interrelated syntactic phenomena, from the history of core arguments, to complements and non-finite clauses, elements in the clause periphery, as well as elements with potential scope over complete sentences and even larger discourse chunks. In one way or another, however, they all testify to an increasing awareness that even some of the most central phenomena of syntax – and the way they develop over time – are best understood by taking into account their communicative functions and the way they are processed and represented by speakers’ cognitive apparatus. In doing so, they show that historical syntax, and historical linguistics in general, is witnessing a convergence between formerly distinct linguistic frameworks and traditions. With this fusion of traditions, the trend is undeniably towards a richer and more broadly informed understanding of syntactic change and the history of English. This volume will be of great interest to scholars of (English) historical syntax and historical linguistics within the cognitive-linguistic as well as the generative tradition.

Semantic and syntactic aspects of impersonality
Semantic and syntactic aspects of impersonality

Author: Peter Herbeck

Publisher: Helmut Buske Verlag

Published: 2019-08-01

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 3875489624

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Peter Herbeck, Bernhard Pöll & Anne C. Wolfsgruber: Foreword Hubert Haider: On expletive, semantically void, and absent subjects Janayna Carvalho: Incorporated subjects in Existential Impersonal Sentences in Brazilian Portuguese Thórhallur Eythórsson, Anton Karl Ingason & Einar Freyr Sigurðsson: Flavors of reflexive arguments in Icelandic impersonals Sigríður Sigurjónsdóttir & Joan Maling: From passive to active: diachronic change in impersonal constructions Anne C. Wolfsgruber: Impersonal interpretations of Medieval Romance se - tracing initial contexts Eduardo Amaral & Wiltrud Mihatsch: Incipient impersonal pronouns in colloquial Brazilian Portuguese based on pessoa, pessoal and povo

Selected Papers from the 2006 Cyprus Syntaxfest
Selected Papers from the 2006 Cyprus Syntaxfest

Author: Kleanthes K. Grohmann

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2009-03-26

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 144380858X

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This volume presents a selection of contributions from the week-long Cyprus Syntaxfest in 2006, which brought together research in syntax by several respected and prolific theoretical linguists from all over the world. During the six days of the Syntaxfest, work from a variety of viewpoints in modern generative grammar was presented, and the research discussed and debated followed diverse methodological paths, with the thematic focus on left peripheries in linguistic structures and (their) interface interpretation. The current collection of expanded versions of selected research presented at the Cyprus Syntaxfest reflects a wide variety of approaches to these topics; it also provides a glimpse of the rich sample of cross-linguistic data that informed the discussions of syntactic peripheries and their interface interpretation. It offers eleven studies on clausal and nominal left-peripheral phenomena and their (role in) interpretation in a variety of typologically unrelated languages. More significantly, the contributions collected here underscore the by now established importance and theoretical interest of studying the edge of constituents, whether phasal or not. In every chapter, the blueprint of a general interpretive hierarchy driving and constraining syntax is also retraced throughout.

Overt and Null Subjects in Bulgarian and in L1 Bulgarian-L2 German Interlanguage
Overt and Null Subjects in Bulgarian and in L1 Bulgarian-L2 German Interlanguage

Author: Dobrinka Genevska-Hanke

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2019-01-24

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 1527527034

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This book addresses the realization of pronominal subjects in Bulgarian and its implications for late near-native competence of German as a second/foreign language. Since Bulgarian is under-researched, typological investigations were carried out prior to the empirical study of L2 subject use. The book covers the adequate classification of Bulgarian, ascertaining its pro-drop nature, and explores the possible impact of related cross-linguistic differences on near-native interlanguage grammars of speakers with the language combination L1-Bulgarian/L2-German. Although German is not pro-drop, it allows null topics and requires some obligatory null expletives, so that null subject contexts superficially overlap for the two languages. This is a source of interlanguage deficits if no proper differentiation between subject types is made.

The Syntax of German
The Syntax of German

Author: Hubert Haider

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-01-07

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 0521865255

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A broad coverage of German syntax, providing an in-depth look at object-verb sentence formation in comparison with other languages.

Subject Positions and Interfaces
Subject Positions and Interfaces

Author: João Costa

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 3110181126

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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.