Existentials and Locatives in Romance Dialects of Italy
Existentials and Locatives in Romance Dialects of Italy

Author: Delia Bentley

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 0198745265

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This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book provides the first ever large-scale comparative treatment of there sentences (there copula NP), in over 100 Italo-Romance and Sardinian dialects spoken in Italy. It comprises detailed discussions of focus structure, predication and argument realization, definiteness effects, and the linking between semantics and syntax in there sentences, advancing novel proposals in each case. The authors test influential hypotheses on existential constructions against first-hand dialect evidence; they argue that existential and locative there sentences differ in focus structure and semantics, even though they display similar morphosyntactic features. The volume also provides the historical background of Romance there sentences, relying on the findings of the analysis of a substantial corpus of early Italo-Romance vernacular texts. Couched in the framework of Role and Reference Grammar, the discussion fully engages with the vast available literature on existentials and locatives, thus being of interest to linguists of any theoretical persuasion. Through the investigation of existentials and locatives, the volume addresses key issues in linguistic theory, while offering an invaluable source of data for research on the Romance languages and a model in fieldwork-based microvariational analysis.

A Typological Study of the Existential Clause
A Typological Study of the Existential Clause

Author: Wang Yong

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-06-21

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1040051359

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This book investigates the existential clause (EC) from a cross-linguistic perspective and within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics. The prototypical EC in the less familiar languages is identified through its functional equivalents in the more familiar ones, which share the common semantic basis of ‘there exists something in some location’. Topics addressed include the morpho-syntactic features of the EC, the subject of the EC, the definiteness effect and its manifestations in the EC, the EC as impersonals, the distinction between entity- vs. event-existentials, and the EC and its related constructions. Drawing on both cross-linguistic observations based on the language sample and in-depth investigations in particular languages (e.g., in Chinese and English), the study aims to unravel how the lexico-grammar of EC is related to its meanings and functions, that is, how meaning is realised in form. The title will appeal to scholars and students in the field of linguistics, especially functional linguistics, and syntax.

Impersonal Constructions
Impersonal Constructions

Author: Andrej Malchukov

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2011-07-20

Total Pages: 653

ISBN-13: 9027287163

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This volume offers a much needed typological perspective on impersonal constructions, which are here viewed broadly as constructions lacking a referential subject. The contributions to this volume deal with all types of impersonality, namely constructions featuring nonagentive subjects, including those with experiential predicates (A-impersonals), presentational constructions with a notional subject deficient in topicality (T-impersonals), and constructions with a notional subject lacking in referential properties (R-impersonals), i.e. both meteo-constructions and man-constructions. The typological discussion benefits from a good coverage of impersonality in European languages, but also includes considerations of several African, American, South-East Asian, Australian, and Oceanic languages. The variation in the cross-linguistic realization of impersonality and the diachronic pathways leading to and from impersonality documented in this volume point to a novel perspective on impersonals as transitional structures or an intermediate stage of a more basic diachronic change be it from transitive to intransitive, or from active to passive, or participant-to event-centered construction.

The Syntax of the Be-possessive
The Syntax of the Be-possessive

Author: Hakyung Jung

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 9027255555

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This book is the first attempt to provide a unified account of the "be-"possessive syntax and its extension to the modal and the perfect constructions in Russian/North Russian within a generative framework. Apparently diverse constructions are construed as deriving from the "have/be" parameter, which depends on the utilization of the prepositional complementizer with a Case feature. The "be"-perfect structure provides an adequate environment where ergativity is encoded via verbal nominalization. The relevance of the "be"-perfect structure for a split ergative pattern shows that the ergative system is a syntactically conditioned phenomenon rather than a purely morphological diversity. This volume also offers the diachronic study of the "be"-syntax, investigating the evolution of the "be"-perfect and "be"-modal constructions, which has rarely been explored within a formal framework. Concrete scenarios are proposed for the developmental paths of the "be"-perfect and the "be"-modal constructions, based on textual evidence in old North Russian.

Expletives in Existentials
Expletives in Existentials

Author: Jutta Hartmann

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 9789078328551

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"This thesis refutes the generally accepted claim within Generative Grammar that English there is an expletive (meaningless element) that is only present to satisfy a syntactic requirement. Instead it is argued that there is a proform that picks up a situation (or location) from the context. There is a part of the predication structure in existential sentences, which state about the situation that it contains an individual (or amount of a property) specified by the postverbal noun phrase. New data that are relevant for the definiteness effect are presented and it is demonstrated that we need to distinguish between two types of there-sentences: the results of a Magnitude Estimation Experiment for example show that these so-called there-BE and there-V sentences behave differently with respect to wh-movement (among other differences). Therefore, the two construction types are analysed differently: in there-BE sentences, there is proposed to function as the subject of predication, whereas it functions as the predicate in there-V sentences (just like in the locative inversion construction). The thesis concludes with applying the result of the investigation of English there to German da, and shows that also da is a proform that can pick up locations, times and complex situations in the context. The study offers new insights into the analysis of existential sentences and has implications for the analysis of potential subject positions, the EPP, and the classification of expletives in the Germanic languages. It is therefore interesting for scholars working in these fields and syntax in general."--P. [4] of cover.

Diachronic Syntax
Diachronic Syntax

Author: Susan Pintzuk

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9780198250272

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This text reflects developing trends in linguistic research, specifically the study of syntax and its pivotal position in current theories of language acquisition.

The Syntax of the Be-Possessive
The Syntax of the Be-Possessive

Author: Hakyung Jung

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2011-05-18

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 9027290644

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This book is the first attempt to provide a unified account of the be-possessive syntax and its extension to the modal and the perfect constructions in Russian/North Russian within a generative framework. Apparently diverse constructions are construed as deriving from the have/be parameter, which depends on the utilization of the prepositional complementizer with a Case feature. The be-perfect structure provides an adequate environment where ergativity is encoded via verbal nominalization. The relevance of the be-perfect structure for a split ergative pattern shows that the ergative system is a syntactically conditioned phenomenon rather than a purely morphological diversity. This volume also offers the diachronic study of the be-syntax, investigating the evolution of the be-perfect and be-modal constructions, which has rarely been explored within a formal framework. Concrete scenarios are proposed for the developmental paths of the be-perfect and the be-modal constructions, based on textual evidence in old North Russian.

The Limits of Syntactic Variation
The Limits of Syntactic Variation

Author: Theresa Biberauer

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 536

ISBN-13: 9027255156

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Against the background of the past half century s typological and generative work on comparative syntax, this volume brings together 16 papers considering what we have learned and may still be able to learn about the nature and extent of syntactic variation. More specifically, it offers a multi-perspective critique of the Principles and Parameters approach to syntactic variation, evaluating the merits and shortcomings of the pre-Minimalist phase of this enterprise and considering and illustrating the possibilities opened up by recent empirical and theoretical advances. Contributions focus on four central topics: firstly, the question of the locus of variation, whether the attested variation may plausibly be understood in parametric terms and, if so, what form such parameters might take; secondly, the fate of one of the most prominent early parameters, the Null Subject Parameter; thirdly, the matter of parametric clusters more generally; and finally, acquisition issues.

A Semantics for the English Existential Construction
A Semantics for the English Existential Construction

Author: Louise McNally

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-11-25

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 1315536471

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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.

Comparisons and Contrasts
Comparisons and Contrasts

Author: Richard S. Kayne

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-08-19

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 019978017X

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Comparisons and Contrasts collects eleven of Richard Kayne's recent articles in theoretical syntax, with an emphasis on comparative syntax, which uses syntactic differences among languages to probe the properties of the human language faculty. Kayne attaches particular importance to uncovering the primitives of syntax/semantics, demonstrating the existence of silent elements that are syntactically and semantically active, and showing their distribution and limitations. He attempts to derive the very existence of the noun-verb distinction-and to account for the sharp differences between nouns and verbs and for the lack of parallelism between them-from the antisymmetric character of syntax. The common theme is an exploration of how wide a range of questions the field of syntax can reasonably attempt to ask and then answer. Comparisons and Contrasts will appeal to scholars and graduate students interested in syntax, semantics, and their effects on other areas of linguistics.