The Interrogative Mood
The Interrogative Mood

Author: Padgett Powell

Publisher: Profile Books

Published: 2010-11-11

Total Pages: 126

ISBN-13: 1847652875

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'If Duchamp or maybe Magritte wrote a novel it might look something like this remarkable little book of Padgett Powell's: immensely readable, ingenious, witty, and ultimately important-feeling in a way you can't quite describe but don't need to' Richard Ford Are your emotions pure? Are your nerves adjustable? How do you stand in relation to the potato? Should it still be Constantinople? Does a nameless horse make you more nervous or less nervous than a named horse? In your view, do children smell good? ... Does your doorbell ever ring? Is there sand in your craw? Is it a novel? Whatever it is, The Interrogative Mood is stubbornly memorable. Through a seemingly random but infinitely artful series of questions this small masterpiece mysteriously, elusively, hilariously, compellingly lights up life.

English Grammar
English Grammar

Author: Rodney Huddleston

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1988-06-16

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9780521311526

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A thorough and precise account of all the major areas of English grammar.

Grammar
Grammar

Author: James R. Hurford

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1994-11-03

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780521456272

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This book is an alphabetical guide to one hundred basic grammatical terms, with explanations, examples and exercises.

Interrogative Investigations
Interrogative Investigations

Author: Jonathan Ginzburg

Publisher: Center for the Study of Language and Information Publica Tion

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 472

ISBN-13:

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Interrogative constructions are the linguistic forms by which questions are expressed. Their analysis is of great interest to linguists, as well as to computer scientists, human-computer interface designers, and philosophers. Interrogative constructions have played a central role in the development of modern syntactic theory. Nonetheless, to date most syntactic work has taken place quite separately from formal semantic and pragmatic work on interrogatives. Although there has by now been a significant amount of work on interrogatives across a variety of languages, there exist few syntactic and semantic treatments that provide a comprehensive account of a wide range of interrogative constructions and uses in a single language. This book closes the gap in research on this subject. By developing the frameworks of Head Driven Phrase Structure Grammar and Situation Semantics, the authors provide an account that rigorously integrates syntactic, semantic, and contextual dimensions of interrogatives. The challenge of providing exhaustive coverage of the interrogative constructions of English, including various constructions that occur solely in dialogue interaction, leads to new insights about a variety of contentious theoretical issues. These include matters of semantic ontology, the quantificational status of wh-phrases, the semantic effect of wh-fronting, the status of constructions in grammatical theory, the integration of illocutionary information in the grammar, and the nature of ellipsis resolution in dialogue. The account is stated with sufficient rigor to enable fairly direct computational implementation.

Arabic Indefinites, Interrogatives, and Negators
Arabic Indefinites, Interrogatives, and Negators

Author: David William Wilmsen

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0198718128

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This book traces the origins and development of the Arabic grammatical marker s/sī, which is found in interrogatives, negators, and indefinite determiners in many Arabic dialects. It argues that s/sī does not derive from Arabic say 'thing' but from a Semitic demonstrative pronoun.

Interrogative Phrases and the Syntax-Semantics Interface
Interrogative Phrases and the Syntax-Semantics Interface

Author: I. Comorovski

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-04-17

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 9401586888

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Interrogative Phrases and the Syntax-Semantics Interface starts by analyzing the interpretation of interrogative phrases in single and multiple constituent questions, including their interpretation under adverbs of quantification. The results are then put to work in a novel approach to some of the constraints on dependencies between fronted interrogative phrases and the associated gaps: superiority, weak crossover, as well as the so-called `weak islands' (the WH-island, the negative island and the Factive Island). It is argued that the possibility of fronting an interrogative phrase out of these configurations is determined by a semantic/pragmatic condition on questions, which requires them to be answerable. The analysis is worked out principally on Romanian, a language which allows multiple wh-fronting. The results are then extended to English. Audience: Researchers and students in syntax, semantics and their interface, as well as linguists studying the relation between the acceptability of sentences and the larger discourse context.

The World Atlas of Language Structures
The World Atlas of Language Structures

Author: Martin Haspelmath

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2005-07-21

Total Pages: 712

ISBN-13: 0199255911

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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 ofthe 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 bewithout it.

Introduction to the Grammar of English
Introduction to the Grammar of English

Author: Rodney Huddleston

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1984-09-27

Total Pages: 516

ISBN-13: 9780521297042

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Written for students without knowledge of linguistics and unfamiliar with "traditional" grammar, this text concentrates on providing a much needed foundation in Standard English in preparation for more advanced work in theoretical linguistics.

The Nature of Explanation
The Nature of Explanation

Author: Peter Achinstein

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1985-10-31

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0198020767

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Offering a new approach to scientific explanation, this book focuses initially on the explaining act itself. From that act, a "product" emerges: an explanation. To understand what that product is, as well as how it can be evaluated in the sciences, reference must be made to the concept of the explaining act. Following an account of the explaining act, its product, and the evaluation of explanations, the theory is brought to bear on these issues: Why have the standard models of scientific explanation been unsuccessful, and can there be a model of the type sought? What is causal explanation, and must explanation in the sciences be causal? What is a functional explanation? The "illocutionary" theory of explanation developed at the outset is used in discussing these issues, and contrasting philosophical viewpoints are assessed.

Spatial Interrogatives in Europe and Beyond
Spatial Interrogatives in Europe and Beyond

Author: Thomas Stolz

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2017-08-07

Total Pages: 778

ISBN-13: 3110539519

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The extant generalizations about the grammar of space rely heavily on the analyses of declarative sentences. There is a need to check whether these generalizations also hold in the domain of interrogation. To this end this book analyzes data from some 450 languages (including non-standard varieties). The focus is on paradigms of spatial interrogatives such as English where, whither and whence and their internal organization. These paradigms are checked for recurrent patterns of morphological mismatches (such as syncretism) and different degrees of complexity (e.g. the number of segments). The data-base consists of a large parallel literary corpus (Le petit prince and translations thereof) which is complemented by further sources of information such as descriptive grammars. The data are analyzed from a synchronic perspective. However, diachronic issues are addressed unsystematically, too. It is shown that the distribution of phenomena which characterize paradigms of spatial interrogatives are subject to areal-linguistic factors. This is the first typological study of spatial interrogatives. It provides new insights for students of the grammar of space, morphological paradigms, and language typology.