Thematic Development of English Texts

Thematic Development of English Texts

Author: Mohsen Ghadessy

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 1995-01-01

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 9781855673335

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This text discusses the concept of theme and its application as an analytical tool to a number of spoken and written registers of English. To date, studies of text organization have paid less attention to what is called the method of development of a text, that is thematic organization. The book shows that the study of this organization can reveal many different strategies employed by speakers and writers when texts are created.


Thematic Structure and Para-Syntax: Arabic as a Case Study

Thematic Structure and Para-Syntax: Arabic as a Case Study

Author: James Dickins

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-03-05

Total Pages: 179

ISBN-13: 1000769747

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Thematic Structure and Para-Syntax: Arabic as a Case Study presents a structural analysis of Arabic, providing an alternative to the traditional notions of theme and rheme. Taking Arabic as a case study, this book claims that approaches to thematic structure propounded in universalist linguistic theories, of which Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics is taken as an illustrative example, are profoundly wrong. It argues that in order to produce an analysis of thematic structure and similar phenomena which is not undermined by its own theoretical presuppositions, it is necessary to remove such notions from the domain of linguistic and semiotic theory. The book initially focuses on Sudanese Arabic, because this allows for a beautifully clear exposition of general principles, before applying these principles to Modern Standard Arabic, and some other Arabic varieties. This book will be of interest to scholars in Arabic linguistics, linguistic theory, and information structure.


Describing Morphosyntax

Describing Morphosyntax

Author: Thomas E. Payne

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1997-10-09

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 9780521588058

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Of the 6000 languages now spoken throughout the world around 3000 may become extinct during the next century. This guide gives linguists the tools to describe them, syntactically and grammatically, for future reference.


Thematic Structure in Syntax

Thematic Structure in Syntax

Author: Edwin Williams

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 9780262731065

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This important monograph summarizes, rethinks, and extends a decade of the author's work on therole assignments - the ways in which the roles implied by verbs of a given type play out in terms of position and other syntactic functions. The study of theta roles and the locality of theta-role assignment leads into many interesting areas of linguistic theory, such as scope, the ECP, X-bar theory, binding theory, and the weak crossover condition; Williams's reconstruction thus offers a systematic integration of a remarkably wide range of syntactic phenomena.Williams starts by outlining a theory of the clause,specifically, of the distribution of Nominative Case and Tense. He then develops a formalism for the notion of"external argument" that is used throughout the rest of the book. Subsequent chapters review the issues surrounding the syntactic expression of the subject-predicate relationship, extend the notion of external argument to include NP movement, and reanalyze the verb movement constructions as deriving from the calculus of theta roles rather than movement.The last chapter distinguishes referential dependence and coreference, showing that a general Leftness condition governs the former, while the binding theory restated in terms of theta relations governs the latter.Edwin Williams is Professor of Linguistics at Princeton University.


Cases and Thematic Roles

Cases and Thematic Roles

Author: Beatrice Primus

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2010-09-03

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 3110912465

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This book is concerned with the mapping of thematic roles, such as agent and patient, onto syntactic cases, such as nominative or ergative, or onto structural relations. It shows that cases and structural relations code different aspects of thematic structure. The thematic determination of the structural relation of an argument is confined to its position in the thematic structure of the predicate. Case mapping is determined by the number of basic thematic concepts involved in this structure. This fact and other facts presented in the book presuppose an approach to thematic roles that decomposes them into more basic concepts involving volitionality, causation, activity, sentience, possession, etc., and motivate the hypothesis that syntactic cases cannot be derived from structural relations in universal grammar. The phenomena pertaining to relational typology that classifies languages into ergative, accusative and active languages are shown to be restricted to case mapping. The specific thematic determination of case mapping and the hierarchical organization of case systems explain not only the existence of these types of mapping, but also the fact that ergative and active phenomena are typically case-based. The book provides a global cross-linguistic perspective, but German data recurrently serve as an illustration of the main theoretical assumptions.


Corpus Linguistics, Context and Culture

Corpus Linguistics, Context and Culture

Author: Viola Wiegand

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2019-11-18

Total Pages: 500

ISBN-13: 3110489074

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Corpus Linguistics, Context and Culture demonstrates the potential of corpus linguistic methods for investigating language patterns across a range of contexts. Organised in three sections, the chapters range from detailed case studies on lexico-grammatical patterns to fundamental discussions of meaning as part of the ‘discourse, contexts and cultures’ theme. The final part on ‘learner contexts’ specifically emphasises the need for mixed-method approaches and the consideration of pedagogical implications for real world contexts. Beyond its contribution to current debates in the field, this edited volume indicates new directions in cross-disciplinary work.


Where Lexicon and Syntax Meet

Where Lexicon and Syntax Meet

Author: Doris Schönefeld

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 9783110170481

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The book analyzes and evaluates what major linguistic models say on the interaction of lexicon and syntax in language performance. To check the plausibility of the assumptions, they are compared with what psycholinguists have found out. Moreover, reformulations, situations of speech need, and the use of 'lexical stretches' are analysed for what they can contribute to the discussion, and for one of the main issues also experimental evidence is produced.


Computational Psycholinguistics

Computational Psycholinguistics

Author: Matthew W. Crocker

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 9400916000

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Computational Psycholinguistics: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Study of Language investigates the architecture and mechanisms which underlie the human capacity to process language. It is the first such study to integrate modern syntactic theory, cross-linguistic psychological evidence, and modern computational techniques in constructing a model of the human sentence processing mechanism. The monograph follows the rationalist tradition, arguing the central role of modularity and universal grammar in a theory of human linguistic performance. It refines the notion of `modularity of mind', and presents a distributed model of syntactic processing which consists of modules aligned with the various informational `types' associated with modern linguistic theories. By considering psycholinguistic evidence from a range of languages, a small number of processing principles are motivated and are demonstrated to hold universally. It is also argued that the behavior of modules, and the strategies operative within them, can be derived from an overarching `Principle of Incremental Comprehension'. Audience: The book is recommended to all linguists, psycholinguists, computational linguists, and others interested in a unified and interdisciplinary study of the human language faculty.