On the Grammar of Optative Constructions
On the Grammar of Optative Constructions

Author: Patrick Georg Grosz

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2012-08-15

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 9027273456

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This monograph is one of the first theoretical studies of optatives. Optative constructions express desire without an overt lexical item that means ‘desire’. The author specifically investigates optatives with the syntax of embedded clauses that contain prototypical particles such as ‘only’. He rejects the view that optativity arises compositionally from the standard semantics of embedded clauses and prototypical particles. The following system is proposed: Desirability is due to a generalized scalar exclamation operator EX. Furthermore, clausal properties such as factivity/counterfactuality are encoded in a Mood head, which co-determines morphological mood and complementizer choice. Finally, the prototypical particles that optatives contain are truth-conditionally vacuous presupposition triggers. As a result, these meaning components do not interact directly, but their meanings converge, with the consequence that they prototypically co-occur. This monograph is of interest for formal semanticists, syntacticians, pragmaticists and morphologists, and especially relevant for research on mood and particle semantics.

The Grammar of Emphasis
The Grammar of Emphasis

Author: Andreas Trotzke

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2017-05-22

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1501505866

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This book reconsiders the linguistic notion of emphasis. For many, the concept of emphasis is confined to information structure. However, our understanding of the grammatical reflexes of emphasis is only partial as long as the expressive side of utterances is not taken into account. The book explores similarities, differences, and interactions between information structure and the expressive dimension of language in the domain of natural language grammar. Specifically, this monograph demonstrates that specific word order options, sometimes in combination with discourse particles, yield meaning effects that are typical for the expressive side of utterances and endow them with an exclamative flavor. Approaching this issue from a syntactic point of view, the book shows that there are syntactic categories (e.g., a certain class of particle verbs) and word orders (e.g., certain fronting patterns involving discourse particles) that directly connect to expressive meaning components. The work presented in this monograph combines theoretical analysis with experimental evidence from both perception and production studies.

Insubordination
Insubordination

Author: Nicholas Evans

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2016-11-18

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 9027266549

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The phenomenon of insubordination can be defined diachronically as the recruitment of main clause structures from subordinate structures, or synchronically as the independent use of constructions exhibiting characteristics of subordinate clauses. Long marginalised as uncomfortable exceptions, insubordinated clause phenomena turn out to be surprisingly widespread, and provide a vital empirical testing ground for various central theoretical issues in current linguistics – the interplay of langue and parole, the emergence of structure, the question of where productive syntactic rules give way to constructions, the role of prosody in language change, and the question of how far grammars are produced by isolated speakers as opposed to being collaboratively constructed in dialogue. This volume – the first book-length treatment on the topic – assembles studies of languages on all continents, by scholars who bring a range of approaches to bear on the topic, from historical linguistics to corpus studies to typology to conversational analysis.

A Grammar of Dolakha Newar
A Grammar of Dolakha Newar

Author: Carol Genetti

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2009-02-26

Total Pages: 618

ISBN-13: 3110198819

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A Grammar of Dolakha Newar is the first fully comprehensive reference grammar of a Newar variety. Dolakha Newar is of particular interest as it is member of the mutually unintelligible eastern branch of the family, so allows for an important comparative perspective on this significant Tibeto-Burman language. In addition to a chapter on phonetics and phonology, the book contains a separate chapter on prosody. There are also distinct chapters on each word class, with full discussion of the morphological and syntactic properties of each class. The book provides an extensive study of syntax, including complete chapters on constructions, clause structure, constituent order, grammatical relations, nominalization, complementation, the participial construction, and the complex sentence, as well as a detailed chapter on tense and aspect. Brimming with examples from natural discourse, the book couples rigorous description of the language's structures with full discussion of how the structures are used in connected speech. Each analysis is presented with full argumentation and competing analyses are contrasted and discussed. The result is a rich, readable, and beautifully argued portrait of a language and how it works.

Insubordination in Germanic
Insubordination in Germanic

Author: Sarah D’Hertefelt

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2018-02-19

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 3110546663

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This book studies insubordination using Germanic data. On a descriptive level, it distinguishes a wide number of (previously undescribed) types of complement and conditional insubordination in English, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish and Icelandic. On a theoretical level, these data are used to investigate the boundaries of insubordination, and the degree to which insubordination is a constructionally and semantically unified phenomenon.

Handbook of Japanese Semantics and Pragmatics
Handbook of Japanese Semantics and Pragmatics

Author: Wesley M. Jacobsen

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-10-12

Total Pages: 887

ISBN-13: 1614512078

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The volume on Semantics and Pragmatics presents a collection of studies on linguistic meaning in Japanese, either as conventionally encoded in linguistic form (the field of semantics) or as generated by the interaction of form with context (the field of pragmatics), representing a range of ideas and approaches that are currently most influentialin these fields. The studies are organized around a model that has long currency in traditional Japanese grammar, whereby the linguistic clause consists of a multiply nested structure centered in a propositional core of objective meaning around which forms are deployed that express progressively more subjective meaning as one moves away from the core toward the periphery of the clause. The volume seeks to achieve a balance in highlighting both insights that semantic and pragmatic theory has to offer to the study of Japanese as a particular language and, conversely, contributions that Japanese has to make to semantic and pragmatic theory in areas of meaning that are either uniquely encoded, or encoded to a higher degree of specificity, in Japanese by comparison to other languages, such as conditional forms, forms expressing varying types of speaker modality, and social deixis.

Insubordination
Insubordination

Author: Karin Beijering

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2019-10-08

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 3110638282

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Insubordinate clauses present a challenge for grammatical analysis. This is owed to their unusual combination of subordinate structure with main clause use. This volume brings together a collection of articles on the form and function of insubordination in a range of languages – providing an up-to-date overview of current research on the topic.

Expressive Meaning Across Linguistic Levels and Frameworks
Expressive Meaning Across Linguistic Levels and Frameworks

Author: Andreas Trotzke

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 019887121X

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This volume is the first to explore the formal linguistic expressions of emotions at different levels of linguistic complexity. Research on the language-emotion interface has to date concentrated primarily on the conceptual dimension of emotions as expressed via language, with semantic and pragmatic studies dominating the field. The chapters in this book, in contrast, bring together work from different linguistic frameworks: generative syntax, functional and usage-based linguistics, formal semantics and pragmatics, and experimental phonology. The volume contributes to the growing field of research that explores the interaction between linguistic expressions and the 'expressive dimension' of language, and will be of interest to linguists from a range of theoretical backgrounds who are interested in the language-emotion interface.

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.