Semantic Role Universals and Argument Linking
Semantic Role Universals and Argument Linking

Author: Ina Bornkessel

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2009-09-24

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 3110219271

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The concept of semantic roles has been central to linguistic theory for many decades. More specifically, the assumption of such representations as mediators in the correspondence between a linguistic form and its associated meaning has helped to address a number of critical issues related to grammatical phenomena. Furthermore, in addition to featuring in all major theories of grammar, semantic (or 'thematic') roles have been referred to extensively within a wide range of other linguistic subdisciplines, including language typology and psycho-/neurolinguistics. This volume brings together insights from these different perspectives and thereby, for the first time, seeks to build upon the obvious potential for cross-fertilisation between hitherto autonomous approaches to a common theme. To this end, a view on semantic roles is adopted that goes beyond the mere assumption of generalised roles, but also focuses on their hierarchical organisation. The book is thus centred around the interdisciplinary examination of how these hierarchical dependencies subserve argument linking - both in terms of linguistic theory and with respect to real-time language processing - and how they interact with other information types in this process. Furthermore, the contributions examine the interaction between the role hierarchy and the conceptual content of (generalised) semantic roles and investigate their cross-linguistic applicability and psychological reality, as well as their explanatory potential in accounting for phenomena in the domain of language disorders. In bridging the gap between different disciplines, the book provides a valuable overview of current thought on semantic roles and argument linking, and may further serve as a point of departure for future interdisciplinary research in this area. As such, it will be of interest to scientists and advanced students in all domains of linguistics and cognitive science.

Perspectives on Semantic Roles
Perspectives on Semantic Roles

Author: Silvia Luraghi

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2014-08-15

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 9027269858

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Semantic roles have continued to intrigue linguists for more than four decades now, starting with determining their kind and number, with their morphological expression, and with their interaction with argument structure and syntax. The focus in this volume is on typological and historical issues. The papers focus on the cross-linguistic identification of semantic-role equivalents, on the regularity of, and exceptions concerning change and grammaticalization in semantic roles, the variation of encoding the roles of direction and experiencer in specific languages, presenting evidence for identifying a new semantic role of speech addressee in Caucasian languages, on semantic roles in word formation, and finally a cross-linguistic comparison of the functions and the grammaticalization of the ethical dative in some Indo-European languages. The book will be of interest to anyone involved with case and semantic roles, with the syntax-semantics interface, and with semantic change and grammaticalization.

Transitivity
Transitivity

Author: Patrick Brandt

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 9027255490

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What happens when a canonically transitive form meets a canonically transitive meaning, and what happens when this doesn t happen? How do dyadic forms relate to monadic ones, and what are the entailments of the operations that the grammar uses to relate one to the other? Collecting original expert work from acquisition, processing, typological and theoretical syntax-semantics research, this volume provides a state of the art as well as cutting edge discussion of central issues in the realm of Transitivity. These include the definition and role of "Natural Transitivity," the interpretation and repercussions of valency changing operations and differential case marking, and the interactions between (in)transitive Gestalts in different categories and at different levels of representation."

Argument Selectors
Argument Selectors

Author: Alena Witzlack-Makarevich

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2019-03-15

Total Pages: 544

ISBN-13: 9027263027

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Capitalizing on the by now widely accepted idea of the construction-specific and language-specific nature of grammatical relations, the editors of the volume developed a modern framework for systematically capturing all sorts of variations in grammatical relations. The central concepts of this framework are the notions of argument role and its referential properties, argument selector, as well as various conditions on argument selections. The contributors of the volume applied this framework in their descriptions of grammatical relations in individual languages and discussed its limitations and advantages. This resulted in a coherent description of grammatical relations in thirteen genealogically and geographically diverse languages based on original and extensive fieldwork on under-described languages. The volume presents a far more detailed picture of the diversity of argument selectors and effects of predicates, referential properties of arguments, as well as of various clausal conditions on grammatical relations than previously published grammatical descriptions.

Semantics
Semantics

Author: John I. Saeed

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2022-11-29

Total Pages: 597

ISBN-13: 1119709881

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The latest edition of the bestselling introduction to the field of linguistic semantics, updated throughout and featuring a wholly new chapter on inferential pragmatics Semantics, Fifth Edition, is a comprehensive and well-balanced introduction to the study of the communication of meaning in language. Assuming no previous background in semantics and limited familiarity with formal linguistics, this student-friendly textbook describes the concepts, theory, and study of semantics in an accessible and clear style. Concise chapters describe the role of semantics within contemporary linguistics, cover key topics in the analysis of word and sentence meaning, and review major semantic theories such as componential theory, formal semantics, and cognitive semantics. The updated fifth edition incorporates recent theoretical developments and important research in linguistic semantics, featuring an entirely new chapter examining the overlap between inferential pragmatics and Relevance Theory, truth-conditional meaning, and other traditional areas of semantics. Revised and expanded sections discuss the continuing growth and consolidation of cognitive semantics, various contextual features of language, conceptualization and categorization, and construal and perspective. This edition includes new exercises with solutions, up-to-date references to relevant literature, and additional examples with data from a wide range of different languages. Covers basic concepts and methods as well as key theoretical models, current lines of research, and important writers Explains general concepts in semantics before gradually moving to more advanced topics in semantic description and theoretical approaches Highlights the relation between cross-linguistic variation and language universals Provides students with the background necessary to understand more advanced and specialized primary semantics literature Includes a glossary of technical terms and numerous exercises arranged by level of difficulty Highlights the relationship between semantics and cross-linguistic variation, language universals, and pragmatics With detailed examples from a wide range of contexts and a wealth of practical exercises, Semantics, Fifth Edition, remains the perfect textbook for undergraduate students of linguistics, English language, applied linguistics, modern languages, and computer sciences.

Semantics. Volume 1
Semantics. Volume 1

Author: Claudia Maienborn

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011-07-27

Total Pages: 989

ISBN-13: 3110226618

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No detailed description available for "SEMANTICS (MAIENBORN ET AL.) BD. 33.1 HSK E-BOOK".

Relative Clauses in Languages of the Americas
Relative Clauses in Languages of the Americas

Author: Bernard Comrie

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2012-09-20

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 9027273391

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Patterns of relative clause formation tend to vary according to the typological properties of a language. Highly polysynthetic languages tend to have fully nominalized relative clauses and no relative pronouns, while other typologically diverse languages tend to have relative clauses which are similar to main or independent clauses. Languages of the Americas, with their rich genetic diversity, have all been under the influence of European languages, whether Spanish, English or Portuguese, a situation that may be expected to have influenced their grammatical patterns. The present volume focuses on two tasks: The first deals with the discussion of functional principles related to relative clause formation: diachrony and paths of grammaticalization, simplicity vs. complexity, and formalization of rules to capture semantic-syntactic correlations. The second provides a typological overview of relative clauses in nine different languages going from north to south in the Americas.

Semantics - Lexical Structures and Adjectives
Semantics - Lexical Structures and Adjectives

Author: Claudia Maienborn

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2019-02-19

Total Pages: 588

ISBN-13: 3110623137

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Discover vital research on the lexical and cognitive meanings of words. In this exciting book from a team of world-class researchers, in-depth articles explain a wide range of topics, including thematic roles, sense relation, ambiguity and comparison. The authors focus on the cognitive and conceptual structure of words and their meaning extensions such as coercion, metaphors and metonymies. The book features highly cited material – available in paperback for the first time since its publication – and is an essential starting point for anyone interested in lexical semantics, especially where it meets other cognitive and conceptual research.

Argument Realisation in Complex Predicates and Complex Events
Argument Realisation in Complex Predicates and Complex Events

Author: Brian Nolan

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2017-01-26

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 9027266123

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This book offers a comprehensive investigative study of argument realisation in complex predicates and complex events at the syntax-semantic interface across a wide variety of the world’s languages, ranging over languages such as German, Irish, Sicilian and Italian, Lithuanian, Estonian and other Finno-Ugric languages, Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra from Australia’s Western Desert region, Japanese, Tepehua (Totonacan, Mexico), Cheyenne, Mexican Spanish, Boharic Coptic, and Persian. This volume examines the syntactic variation of complex events, complex predicates and multi-verb constructions within a single clause where the clause is view as representing a single event, studying their semantics and syntax within functional, cognitive and constructional frameworks, to arrive at a better understanding of their cross linguistic behaviour and how they resonate in syntax. These constructions manifest considerable variability in cross-linguistic comparisons of complex predicate formation. In European languages, for example, typically one of the verbs in a verb-verb construction highlights a phase of an underspecified event while the matrix verb specifies the actual event. In contrast, serial verbs require each verb to provide a sub-event dimension within a complex event that is viewed holistically as unitary in syntax. This book contributes to an understanding of complex events, complex predicates and multi-verb constructions across languages, their syntactic constructional patterns and argument realisation.

Advances in Research on Semantic Roles
Advances in Research on Semantic Roles

Author: Seppo Kittilä

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2016-06-29

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 9027266794

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Especially in functional-typological linguistics, semantic roles have been studied thoroughly, because they constitute a good starting point for any study on argument marking due to their semantically defined nature. However, the very concept of semantic roles is far from being without problems, and there is still no consensus on how the roles are best defined. In this volume, the notion will be discussed from novel perspectives with the aim of providing new insights into our understanding of semantic roles. Two of the papers deal with semantic role clusters, one with semantic roles in verbless constructions, one with diachrony of semantic roles and two with individual semantic roles that have not been studied in too much detail in previous studies. The book may not offer answers to all questions the readers may have, but at least it raises interesting further questions relevant to arriving at a better understanding of semantic roles. Originally published in Studies in Language Vol. 38:3 (2014).