First Language Acquisition of Morphology and Syntax
First Language Acquisition of Morphology and Syntax

Author: Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2008-06-26

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9027290601

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The papers comprising this volume focus on a broad range of acquisition phenomena (subject dislocation, structural case, word order, determiners, pronouns, quantifiers and logical words) from different languages and language combinations. These include languages with large numbers of speakers (French, German, Spanish) and less frequently spoken ones (Norwegian, Russian, Swiss-German, Hebrew, Basque and Serbo-Croatian) within different language acquisition scenarios and a wide range of populations. Most contributions adopt a common theoretical background within the generative approach with the aim to advance, discuss and critically analyse other research on first, bilingual and language impaired acquisition. The various sections of this stimulating volume reflect different theoretical and methodological perspectives of current research investigating morphology and syntax and offer diverging interpretations.

Understanding Interfaces
Understanding Interfaces

Author: Laura Domínguez

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2013-06-27

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 9027271992

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By combining theoretical analysis and empirical investigation, this monograph investigates the status of interfaces in Minimalist linguistic theory, second language acquisition and native language attrition. Two major questions are currently under debate: (1) what exactly makes a linguistic phenomenon an ‘interface phenomenon’, and (2) what is the specific role that the interfaces play in explaining language loss and persistent problems in second language acquisition? Answers to these questions are provided by a theoretical examination of the role that economy and computational efficiency play in recent Minimalist models of the language faculty, as well as by evidence obtained in two empirical studies examining the acquisition and attrition of two interface phenomena: Spanish subject realization and word order variation. The result is a new definition of ‘interface phenomena’ which deemphasizes syntactic complexity and focuses on the effect of interface interpretive conditions on syntactic structure. This work also shows that representational deficits cannot be ruled out in the acquisition and attrition of interface structures.

Rethinking Syntactocentrism
Rethinking Syntactocentrism

Author: Andreas Trotzke

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2015-09-15

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 9027268061

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The term ‘syntactocentrism’ has been used to criticize the claim that syntax, as regarded in generative linguistics, plays the central role in modeling the mental architecture of the human language faculty. This research monograph explores the conjecture that many of the objections to the generative perspective, as they are formulated in alternative frameworks such as construction grammar, disappear once the consequences of recent minimalist theory are taken seriously. To show this, the book applies recent concepts of minimalist grammar to phenomena like the syntactic flexibility of idioms, the pragmatics of left-periphery-movement, or opacity effects involved in subextraction patterns. The book makes a new contribution to the field, as existing monographs on architectural matters in minimalism neither discuss alternative frameworks at length nor place a premium on pragmatic explanations for syntactic facts. The primary audience of this book are researchers and graduate students interested in a state-of-the-art discussion of grammatical architecture.

Modality in Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics
Modality in Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics

Author: Werner Abraham

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-09-17

Total Pages: 455

ISBN-13: 1108861083

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What do we mean when we say things like 'If only we knew what he was up to!' Clearly this is more than just a message, or a question to our addressee. We are expressing simultaneously that we don't know, and also that we wish to know. Several modes of encoding contribute to such modalities of expression: word order, subordinating subjunctions, sentences that are subordinated but nevertheless occur autonomously, and attitudinal discourse adverbs which, far beyond lexical adverbials of modality, allow the speaker and the listener to presuppose full agreement, partial agreement under presupposed conditions, or negotiation of common ground. This state of the art survey proposes a new model of modality, drawing on data from a variety of Germanic and Slavic languages to find out what is cross-linguistically universal about modality, and to argue that it is a constitutive part of human cognition.

Potential Questions at the Semantics-Pragmatics Interface
Potential Questions at the Semantics-Pragmatics Interface

Author: Edgar Onea

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2016-02-02

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 9004217932

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In Potential Questions at the Semantics-Pragmatics Interface Edgar Onea proposes a novel component for question under discussion based discourse pragmatic theories thereby combining such theories with new ideas from inquisitive semantics. He shows how potential questions account for an entire range of grammatical phenomena. These phenomena include the semantics of indefinite determiners, the meaning contribution of nominal appositives, specificational constructions and non restrictive relative clauses. This book delivers a comprehensive and empirically rich investigation into the role of questions in natural language interpretation. Drawing on data from German, English, Hungarian and Russian, Edgar Onea's study significantly broadens our understanding of conventional sensitivity to questions through formally rigorous analyses of specificational particles, parentheticals and indefinites. The Potential Questions framework offers a new and exciting perspective on utterance meanings as not just addressing, but also raising questions, with important consequences for integrated analyses of discourse structure and discourse relations. This book is essential reading for anybody interested in the semantics-pragmatics interface. Judith Tonhauser, The Ohio State University

Strategies of Quantification
Strategies of Quantification

Author: Kook-Hee Gil

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2013-02-21

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0199692432

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Quantification has been at the heart of research in the syntax and semantics of natural language since Aristotle. The last few decades have seen an explosion of detailed studies of the syntax and semantics of quantification and its relation to the rest of the theory of grammar, resulting in a highly sophisticated understanding of the mechanisms of quantification. This book considers the ways natural languages vary with respect to their realisation of quantificational notions. Drawing on data from English, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Hausa and others, the authors also link the variation in the expression of quantification to the notions of polarity sensitivity, free-choice and indefiniteness.

The Structure of CP and IP
The Structure of CP and IP

Author: Luigi Rizzi

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2004-06-17

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 0195159497

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The purpose of this edited volume is to study the structure of the inflectional field and the left peripheral field of clauses, often described as the systems of IP (Inflection Phrase) and CP (Complementizer Phrase).

Manual of Grammatical Interfaces in Romance
Manual of Grammatical Interfaces in Romance

Author: Susann Fischer

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2016-09-12

Total Pages: 702

ISBN-13: 3110311860

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Different components of grammar interact in non-trivial ways. It has been under debate what the actual range of interaction is and how we can most appropriately represent this in grammatical theory. The volume provides a general overview of various topics in the linguistics of Romance languages by examining them through the interaction of grammatical components and functions as a state-of-the-art report, but at the same time as a manual of Romance languages.

Syntactic Structures after 60 Years
Syntactic Structures after 60 Years

Author: Norbert Hornstein

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2018-01-09

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 1501506927

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This volume explores the continuing relevance of Syntactic Structures to contemporary research in generative syntax. The contributions examine the ideas that changed the way that syntax is studied and that still have a lasting effect on contemporary work in generative syntax. Topics include formal foundations, the syntax-semantics interface, the autonomy of syntax, methods of data analysis, and detailed discussions of the role of transformations. New commentary from Noam Chomsky is included.

Japanese Modality
Japanese Modality

Author: B. Pizziconi

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2009-10-15

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 0230245757

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This book explores the nature and scope of modality in Japanese. It contains a review of the history of Japanese modality studies, as well as theoretical and empirical research and is the first collection of studies on Japanese modality written in English and offers a stimulating contrast to existing studies on Western languages.