Syntax and Semantics of Prepositions

Syntax and Semantics of Prepositions

Author: Patrick Saint-Dizier

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2006-01-18

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9781402038495

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This book is the first to provide an integrated view of preposition from morphology to reasoning, via syntax and semantics. It offers new insights in applied and formal linguistics, and cognitive science. It underlines the importance of prepositions in a number of computational linguistics applications, such as information retrieval and machine translation. The reader will benefit from a wide range of views and applications to various linguistic frameworks, among which, most notably, HPSG. The book is for researchers working in the fields of computational linguistics, linguistics, and artificial intelligence.


Prepositions in Their Syntactic, Semantic, and Pragmatic Context

Prepositions in Their Syntactic, Semantic, and Pragmatic Context

Author: Susanne Feigenbaum

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2002-01-01

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 9789027229564

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The growing interest in prepositions is reflected by this impressive collection of papers from leading scholars of various fields. The selected contributions of Prepositions in their Syntactic, Semantic and Pragmatic Context focus on the local and temporal semantics of prepositions in relation to their context, too. Following an introduction which puts this new approach into a thematical and historical perspective, the volume presents fifteen studies in the following areas: The semantics of space dynamics (mainly on French prepositions); Language acquisition (aphasia and code-switching); Artificial intelligence (mainly of English prepositions); Specific languages: Hebrew (from a number of perspectives — syntax, semiotics, and sociolinguistic impact on morphology), Maltese, the Melanesian English-based Creole Bislama, and Biblical translations into Judeo-Greek.


Adpositions

Adpositions

Author: Dennis Kurzon

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 9789027229861

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This book is a collection of articles which deal with adpositions in a variety of languages and from a number of perspectives. Not only does the book cover what is traditionally treated in studies from a European and Semitic orientation – prepositions, but it presents studies on postpositions, too. The main languages dealt with in the collection are English, French and Hebrew, but there are articles devoted to other languages including Korean, Turkic languages, Armenian, Russian and Ukrainian. Adpositions are treated by some authors from a semantic perspective, by others as syntactic units, and a third group of authors distinguishes adpositions from the point of view of their pragmatic function. This work is of interest to students and researchers in theoretical and applied linguistics, as well as to those who have a special interest in any of the languages treated.


Prepositions in Old and Middle English

Prepositions in Old and Middle English

Author: Tom Lundskær-Nielsen

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1993-01-01

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 9027272875

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The present book covers various aspects of prepositional syntax between c. 900-1400, including case relations and the range of prepositional complements; it also examines word order, both within the PP and at clause level, and it explores changes in clausal word order. Furthermore, it provides a detailed semantic analysis of the three prepositions at, in and on in selected Old and Middle English texts, which shows to what extent the relative distribution of these prepositions changed during that period and how they gradually acquired new, extended senses.The front cover illustration renders the 895 entry of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Parker Ms., and has been reproduced with the permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.


Syntax and Semantics of Spatial P

Syntax and Semantics of Spatial P

Author: Anna Asbury

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2008-05-21

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 9027290741

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The category P belongs to a less studied area in theoretical linguistics, which has only recently attracted considerable attention. This volume brings together pioneering work on adpositions in spatial relations from different theoretical and cross-linguistic perspectives. The common theme in these contributions is the complex semantic and syntactic structure of PPs. Analyses are presented in several different frameworks and approaches, including generative syntax, optimality theoretic semantics and syntax, formal semantics, mathematical modeling, lexical syntax, and pragmatics. Among the languages featured in detail are English, German, Hebrew, Igbo, Italian, Japanese, and Persian. This volume will be of interest to students and researchers of formal semantics, syntax and language typology, as well as scholars with a more general interest in spatial cognition.


The Semantics of English Prepositions

The Semantics of English Prepositions

Author: Andrea Tyler

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-06-05

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1139436163

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Using a cognitive linguistics perspective, this book provides a comprehensive, theoretical analysis of the semantics of English prepositions. All English prepositions originally coded spatial relations between two physical entities; while retaining their original meaning, prepositions have also developed a rich set of non-spatial meanings. In this study, Tyler and Evans argue that all these meanings are systematically grounded in the nature of human spatio-physical experience. The original 'spatial scenes' provide the foundation for the extension of meaning from the spatial to the more abstract. This analysis articulates an alternative methodology that distinguishes between a conventional meaning and an interpretation produced for understanding the preposition in context, as well as establishing which of several competing senses should be taken as the primary sense. Together, the methodology and framework are sufficiently articulated to generate testable predictions and allow the analysis to be applied to additional prepositions.


Syntax and the Lexicon

Syntax and the Lexicon

Author: Timothy Angus Stowell

Publisher: Brill

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13:

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Presenting a dynamic investigation into the role of the lexicon in syntactic theory, this book provides an insightful overview and introduction to lexical theory. It discusses the nature of argument and structure and debates the relation of argument nature to constituent structure and binding theory.


Verbal Prepositions and Argument Structure

Verbal Prepositions and Argument Structure

Author: Mai Ellin Tungseth

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 9789027255044

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This book investigates different types of verb-PP combinations and examines the types of meanings which arise when the argument structure of the PP fuses with the verbal argument structure. Focussing mainly on data from Norwegian, the book investigates three different empirical domains of PP-VP combinations and concludes that the arising interpretations result from a combination of the fine-grained structure of the PP, the structure of the verb phrase, and the different modes of combination. The book sheds new light on the syntax-semantics interplay while adding new insight about the properties of the category P in Norwegian. The book also contributes to the debate between Lexicalism and Constructionism, and it concludes that a moderate Constructionist model with a fine-grained syntactic structure determining interpretation is best equipped to handle the enormous flexibility of verb-prepositional phrase combinations of the types explored.


On the Meaning of Prepositions and Cases

On the Meaning of Prepositions and Cases

Author: Silvia Luraghi

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 9789027230775

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Prepositions and cases constitute a fruitful field of research for semantics. The historical development of their meaning can shed light on the relations among the semantic roles of participants and on the organization of conceptual space. Ancient Greek allows an in-depth study of such development. The book, based on a wide, diachronically ordered corpus, aims at providing a usage-based analysis of possible patterns of semantic extension, including the mapping of abstract domains onto the concrete domain of space. An analysis of the Greek data further highlights the interplay between specific spatial relations and the internal structure of the entities involved, and shows how case semantics may account for differences on the referential level, rather than merely express clause internal relations. The first chapter contains a typologically based discussion of semantic roles, which sets the language-specific analysis in a wider framework, showing its general relevance and applicability.


English Prepositions Explained

English Prepositions Explained

Author: Seth Lindstromberg

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2010-08-11

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 9027287899

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This completely revised and expanded edition of English Prepositions Explained (EPE), originally published in 1998, covers approximately 100 simple, compound, and phrasal English prepositions of space and time – with the focus being on short prepositions such as at, by, in, and on. Its target readership includes teachers of ESOL, pre-service translators and interpreters, undergraduates in English linguistics programs, studious advanced learners and users of English, and anyone who is inquisitive about the English language. The overall aim is to explain how and why meaning changes when one preposition is swapped for another in the same context. While retaining most of the structure of the original, this edition says more about more prepositions. It includes many more figures – virtually all new. The exposition draws on recent research, and is substantially founded on evidence from digitalized corpora, including frequency data. EPE gives information and insights that will not be found in dictionaries and grammar handbooks.