Definiteness in a Language without Articles – A Study on Polish
Definiteness in a Language without Articles – A Study on Polish

Author: Adrian Czardybon

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2017-06-13

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 3110720426

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The aim of this book is to investigate how definiteness is expressed in Polish, a language which is claimed to have no definite and in-definite articles. The central question is how the difference in definiteness is indicated between 'a woman' and 'the woman' in Polish. In English, the definite article 'the' and the indefinite article 'a' express the category of definiteness explicitly. Since definiteness is also relevant in articleless languages, there are other means to indicate that a nominal phrase is definite or indefinite. This study is delimited to four means for expressing definiteness in Polish, which are demonstratives, aspect, case alternation, and information structure. Each strategy is investigated independently from the others, although they interact in a complex way, which is shown at the end of this book resulting in a decision tree. Polish is not investigated in isolation, however, the study is complemented by comparisons with other Slavic languages and also with a Polish dialect called 'Upper Silesian', which differs from Polish. The analysis in this book is based on Lèobner's theory of 'Concept Types and Determination' (CTD). Lèobner's distinction of the four concept types (sortal, relational, functional, individual) is crucial since definiteness phenomena under discussion can be explained. Therefore, the interaction of the four concept types with the four definiteness strategies plays a central role in this book. This series explores issues of mental representation, linguistic structure and representation, and their interplay. The research presented in this series is grounded in the idea explored in the Collaborative Research Center 'The structure of representations in language, cognition and science' (SFB 991) that there is a universal format for the representation of linguistic and cognitive concepts.

Definiteness in a Language Without Articles - a Study on Polish
Definiteness in a Language Without Articles - a Study on Polish

Author: Adrian Czardybon

Publisher: Düsseldorf University Press

Published: 2017-06-13

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9783957580474

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The aim of this book is to investigate how definiteness is expressed in Polish, a language which is claimed to have no definite and in-definite articles. The central question is how the difference in definiteness is indicated between 'a woman' and 'the woman' in Polish. In English, the definite article 'the' and the indefinite article 'a' express the category of definiteness explicitly. Since definiteness is also relevant in articleless languages, there are other means to indicate that a nominal phrase is definite or indefinite.0This study is delimited to four means for expressing definiteness in Polish, which are demonstratives, aspect, case alternation, and information structure. Each strategy is investigated independently from the others, although they interact in a complex way, which is shown at the end of this book resulting in a decision tree. Polish is not investigated in isolation, however, the study is complemented by comparisons with other Slavic languages and also with a Polish dialect called 'Upper Silesian', which differs from Polish.0The analysis in this book is based on Löbner?s theory of 'Concept Types and Determination' (CTD). Löbner?s distinction of the four concept types (sortal, relational, functional, individual) is crucial since definiteness phenomena under discussion can be explained. Therefore, the interaction of the four concept types with the four definiteness strategies plays a central role in this book.

Advances in formal Slavic linguistics 2018
Advances in formal Slavic linguistics 2018

Author: Andreas Blümel

Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand

Published: 2021-09-09

Total Pages: 462

ISBN-13: 3985540187

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Advances in Formal Slavic Linguistics 2018 offers a selection of articles that were prepared on the basis of talks presented at the conference Formal Description of Slavic Languages (FDSL 13) or at the parallel Workshop on the Semantics of Noun Phrases, which were held on December 5–7, 2018, at the University of Göttingen. The volume covers a wide array of topics, such as situation relativization with adverbial clauses (causation, concession, counterfactuality, condition, and purpose), clause-embedding by means of a correlate, agreeing vs. transitive ‘need’ constructions, clitic doubling, affixation and aspect, evidentiality and mirativity, pragmatics coming with the particle li, uniqueness, definiteness, maximal interpretation (exhaustivity), kinds and subkinds, bare nominals, multiple determination, quantification, demonstratives, possessives, complex measure nouns, and the NP/DP parameter. The set of object languages comprises Russian, Czech, Polish, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, and Torlak Serbian. The numerous topics addressed demonstrate the importance of Slavic linguistics. The original analyses prove that substantial progress has been made in major fields of research.

Nominal anchoring
Nominal anchoring

Author: Kata Balogh

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published:

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 3961102848

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The papers in this volume address to different degrees issues on the relationship of articles systems and the pragmatic notions of definiteness and specificity in typologically diverse languages: Vietnamese, Siwi (Berber), Russian, Mopan (Mayan), Persian, Danish and Swedish. The main questions that motivate this volume are: How do languages with and without an article system go about helping the hearer to recognize whether a given noun phrase should be interpreted as definite, specific or non-specific? Is there clear-cut semantic definiteness without articles or do we find systematic ambiguity regarding the interpretation of bare noun phrases? If there is ambiguity, can we still posit one reading as the default? What exactly do articles in languages encode that are not analyzed as straightforwardly coding (in)definiteness? Do we find linguistic tools in these languages that are similar to those found in languages without articles? Most contributions report on research on different corpora and elicited data or present the outcome of various experimental studies. One paper presents a diachronic study of the emergence of article systems. On the issue of how languages with and without articles guide the hearer to the conclusion that a given noun phrase should be interpreted as definite, specific or non-specific, the studies in this paper argue for similar strategies. The languages investigated in this volume use constructions and linguistic tools that receive a final interpretation based on discourse prominence considerations and various aspects of the syntax-semantics interface. In case of ambiguity between these readings, the default interpretation is given by factors (e. g., familiarity, uniqueness) that are known to contribute to the salience of phrases, but may be overridden by discourse prominence. Articles that do not straightforwardly mark (in)definiteness encode different kinds of specificity. In the languages studied in this volume, whether they have articles or do not have an article system, we find similar factors and linguistic tools in the calculation process of interpretations. The volume contains revised selected papers from the workshop entitled Specificity, definiteness and article systems across languages held at the 40th Annual Conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS), 7-9 March, 2018 at the University of Stuttgart.

Cross-Linguistic Perspectives on the Semantics of Grammatical Aspect
Cross-Linguistic Perspectives on the Semantics of Grammatical Aspect

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-05-27

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 9004401008

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The volume proposes original semantic analyses on items marking grammatical aspect. The contributions deal with structurally divergent languages, setting to the fore some less studied forms coding aspect, revisiting or challenging certain conventionalized views on aspectual categories and shedding light on interactions between aspect and modality, another multifaceted semantic category. In doing so, the volume is intended to emphasize the diversity of aspectual systems and the fuzzy semantics of grammatical aspect and help the reader to make their own mind on a topic traditionally viewed as a subcategory of verbal aspect together with lexical aspect. Contributors are Denis Apothéloz, Trang Phan and Nigel Duffield, Galia Hatav, Jens Fleischhauer and Ekaterina Gabrovska, Stephen M. Dickey, Adeline Patard, Laura Baranzini, Jaroslava Obrtelova.

Formal approaches to number in Slavic and beyond
Formal approaches to number in Slavic and beyond

Author: Mojmír Dočekal

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published:

Total Pages: 506

ISBN-13: 3961103143

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The goal of this collective monograph is to explore the relationship between the cognitive notion of number and various grammatical devices expressing this concept in natural language with a special focus on Slavic. The book aims at investigating different morphosyntactic and semantic categories including plurality and number-marking, individuation and countability, cumulativity, distributivity and collectivity, numerals, numeral modifiers and classifiers, as well as other quantifiers. It gathers 19 contributions tackling the main themes from different theoretical and methodological perspectives in order to contribute to our understanding of cross-linguistic patterns both in Slavic and non-Slavic languages.

Linguistic Relativity in SLA
Linguistic Relativity in SLA

Author: ZhaoHong Han

Publisher: Multilingual Matters

Published: 2010-06-18

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1847693997

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Crosslinguistic influence is an established area of second language research, and as such, it has been subject to extensive scrutiny. Although the field has come a long way in understanding its general character, many issues still remain a conundrum, for example, why does transfer appear selective, and why does transfer never seem to go away for certain linguistic elements? Unlike most existing studies, which have focused on transfer at the surface form level, the present volume examines the relationship between thought and language, in particular thought as shaped by first language development and use, and its interaction with second language use. The chapters in this collection conceptually explore and empirically investigate the relevance of Slobin’s Thinking-for-Speaking Hypothesis to adult second language acquisition, offering compelling and enlightening evidence of the fundamental nature of crosslinguistic influence in adult second language acquisition.

Definiteness in Bulgarian
Definiteness in Bulgarian

Author: Olga M. Mladenova

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2008-09-25

Total Pages: 485

ISBN-13: 3110198894

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In its evolution from a synthetic to an analytic language, Bulgarian acquired a grammaticalized category of definiteness. The book presents the first attempt to explore in detail how this happened by comparing the earliest Modern Bulgarian texts with contemporary dialect and standard Bulgarian data. The basic units of analysis are the various types of nominal structures headed by nouns or pronouns. The analysis requires the strict terminological disentanglement of form from content and the adoption of a default inheritance model of definiteness that allow the exhaustive classification and tagging of nominal structures encountered in the texts. Tagging makes it possible to apply quantitative analysis to nominal structure and to assess the types available in the early texts from a current native-speaker perspective. Based on an S-curve model of language change, the study establishes that overt markers of definiteness were first made available to identifiability-based definites, then to inclusiveness-based definites, quantitative generics and unique referents. The overt markers of indefiniteness followed suit, separating indefinites from non-specifics and typifying generics. This progression of definiteness was directed by variables such as person, animacy, gender, number and noun-class, and started in contexts in which definiteness closely interacted with possessivity. Such an analysis leads to the realization that the two-dimensional S-curve model does not account for all language change and that there is a need for a three-dimensional model. It also demonstrates that, contrary to previous assumptions, there is continuity between the early Slavic marker of definiteness (long-form adjectives) and the Modern Bulgarian article. This discovery, in conjunction with geolinguistic arguments, sheds new light on the role that relations inside the Balkan Sprachbund played in the grammaticalization of Bulgarian definiteness.

Variability and Stability in Foreign and Second Language Learning Contexts
Variability and Stability in Foreign and Second Language Learning Contexts

Author: Liliana Piasecka

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2011-12-08

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 1443836001

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This book contains a wide spectrum of topics organized within a relatively fixed framework of Applied Linguistics theory and practice, revolving around the concepts of stability and variability that capture the dynamic nature of the phenomena characterizing language, learning and teaching. The primary strength of individual chapters lies in the fact that the vast majority report original empirical studies carried out in diverse second/foreign language learning contexts – investigating interesting issues across various nationalities, ages, educational and professional groups of language learners, and teachers. The issues under scrutiny entail the ‘classic’ recurrent topics related to language learning and teaching, such as communicative competence, input, orality and literacy, learner characteristics and strategies, and teacher development – to mention just a few. In addition, ‘recent arrivals,’ to borrow a marketing metaphor, are also present, as the authors consider learning and teaching implications resulting from the status of English as a language of international communication, and discuss related concepts of intercultural competence along with language learners’ identity and creativity. The multilingual and multicultural contributors to the present volume are researchers – foreign and second language learners and teachers themselves – who offer the reader a range of methodological designs that have been successfully used in Applied Linguistics research. The framework of stability and variability suggests that changes leading to progress and development derive from stable foundations that account for the sense of continuity and belonging in applied linguists’ communities of practice.

Advances in Natural Language Processing
Advances in Natural Language Processing

Author: Adam Przepiórkowski

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-09-05

Total Pages: 506

ISBN-13: 3319108883

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This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Advances in Natural Language Processing, PolTAL 2014, Warsaw, Poland, in September 2014. The 27 revised full papers and 20 revised short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 83 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on morphology, named entity recognition, term extraction; lexical semantics; sentence level syntax, semantics, and machine translation; discourse, coreference resolution, automatic summarization, and question answering; text classification, information extraction and information retrieval; and speech processing, language modelling, and spell- and grammar-checking.