Crosslinguistic Studies on Noun Phrase Structure and Reference PDF Download

Author: Patricia Cabredo Hofherr
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004261443
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description
Crosslinguistic Studies on Noun Phrase Structure and Reference contains 11 studies on the grammar of noun phrases. Part One explores NP-structure and the impact of information structure, countability and number marking on interpretation, using data from Russian, Armenian, Hebrew, Brazilian Portuguese, Karitiana, Turkish, English, Catalan and Danish. Part Two examines language specific definiteness marking strategies in spoken and signed languages—differentiated definiteness marking in Germanic, double definiteness in Greek, adnominal demonstratives in Japanese, ‘weak’ definiteness in Martiniké and the special referring options made avilable by signing. Part Three examines the second-language acquisition of genericity in English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. This volume will be of interest to researchers and students in syntax, formal semantics, and language acquisition. Contributors include: Željko Bošković, Patricia Cabredo Hofherr, Edit Doron, Nomi Erteschik Shir, Brigitte Garcia, Elaine Grolla, Tania Ionin, Loïc Jean-Louis, Makoto Kaneko, Marika Lekakou, Silvina Montrul, Ana Müller, Asya Pereltsvaig, Marie-Anne Sallandre, Helade Santos, Serkan Şener, Rebekka Studler, Kriszta Szendröi, Anne Zribi-Hertz.

Author: Antonia Petronella Sleeman
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027255547
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
One of the recurrent questions in historical linguistics is to what extent languages can borrow grammar from other languages. It seems for instance hardly likely that each 'average European' language developed a definite article all by itself, without any influence from neighbouring languages. It is, on the other hand, by no means clear what exactly was borrowed, since the way in which definiteness is expressed differs greatly among the various Germanic and Romance languages and dialects. One of the main aims of this volume is to shed some light on the question of what is similar and what is different in the structure of the noun phrase of the various Romance and Germanic languages and dialects, and what causes this similarity or difference.

Author: Josep Quer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501511807
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 896

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Book Description
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology), funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union. Current grammatical knowledge about particular sign languages is fragmentary and of varying reliability, and it appears scattered in scientific publications where the description is often intertwined with the analysis. In general, comprehensive grammars are a rarity. The SignGram Blueprint is an innovative tool for the grammar writer: a full-fledged guide to describing all components of the grammars of sign languages in a thorough and systematic way, and with the highest scientific standards. The work builds on the existing knowledge in Descriptive Linguistics, but also on the insights from Theoretical Linguistics. It consists of two main parts running in parallel: the Checklist with all the grammatical features and phenomena the grammar writer can address, and the accompanying Manual with the relevant background information (definitions, methodological caveats, representative examples, tests, pointers to elicitation materials and bibliographical references). The areas covered are Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon, Syntax and Meaning. The Manual is endowed with hyperlinks that connect information across the work and with a pop-up glossary. The SignGram Blueprint will be a landmark for the description of sign language grammars in terms of quality and quantity.

Author: Adrian Czardybon
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110720426
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
The aim of this book is to investigate how definiteness is expressed in Polish, a language which is claimed to have no definite and in-definite articles. The central question is how the difference in definiteness is indicated between 'a woman' and 'the woman' in Polish. In English, the definite article 'the' and the indefinite article 'a' express the category of definiteness explicitly. Since definiteness is also relevant in articleless languages, there are other means to indicate that a nominal phrase is definite or indefinite. This study is delimited to four means for expressing definiteness in Polish, which are demonstratives, aspect, case alternation, and information structure. Each strategy is investigated independently from the others, although they interact in a complex way, which is shown at the end of this book resulting in a decision tree. Polish is not investigated in isolation, however, the study is complemented by comparisons with other Slavic languages and also with a Polish dialect called 'Upper Silesian', which differs from Polish. The analysis in this book is based on Lèobner's theory of 'Concept Types and Determination' (CTD). Lèobner's distinction of the four concept types (sortal, relational, functional, individual) is crucial since definiteness phenomena under discussion can be explained. Therefore, the interaction of the four concept types with the four definiteness strategies plays a central role in this book. This series explores issues of mental representation, linguistic structure and representation, and their interplay. The research presented in this series is grounded in the idea explored in the Collaborative Research Center 'The structure of representations in language, cognition and science' (SFB 991) that there is a universal format for the representation of linguistic and cognitive concepts.

Author: Ana Aguilar-Guevara
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961101922
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description
Definiteness has been a central topic in theoretical semantics since its modern foundation. However, despite its significance, there has been surprisingly scarce research on its cross-linguistic expression. With the purpose of contributing to filling this gap, the present volume gathers thirteen studies exploiting insights from formal semantics and syntax, typological and language specific studies, and, crucially, semantic fieldwork and cross-linguistic semantics, in order to address the expression and interpretation of definiteness in a diverse group of languages, most of them understudied. The papers presented in this volume aim to establish a dialogue between theory and data in order to answer the following questions: What formal strategies do natural languages employ to encode definiteness? What are the possible meanings associated to this notion across languages? Are there different types of definite reference? Which other functions (besides marking definite reference) are associated with definite descriptions? Each of the papers contained in this volume addresses at least one of these questions and, in doing so, they aim to enrich our understanding of definiteness.

Author: Terry Janzen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110703890
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
This volume represents the first time that researchers on signed language and gesture have come together with a coherent focus under the framework of cognitive linguistics. The pioneering work of Sherman Wilcox is highlighted throughout, scaffolding much of the research of these contributors. The five sections of the volume reflect critical areas of Dr. Wilcox’s own research in cognitive linguistics: Guiding research principles in signed language, gesture, and cognitive linguistics; iconicity across signed and spoken linguistics; multimodality; blending, depiction and metaphor in signed languages; and specific grammatical constructions as form-meaning pairings. The authors of this volume exemplify and continue Dr. Wilcox’s work of bridging signed and spoken language disciplines by contributing chapters that represent a multiplicity of perspectives on signed, spoken, and gesture data. This volume presents a unified collection of cognitive linguistics research by leading authors that will be of interest to readers in the fields of signed and spoken language linguistics, gesture studies, and general linguistics.

Author: Valentina Cuccio
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2832505341
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 511

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Book Description

Author: Susan Rothstein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107001277
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
The book is an investigation of the semantics of numericals, counting and measuring, and its connection to the mass/count distinction from a theoretical and crosslinguistic perspective. It reviews some recent major linguistic results in these topics, and presents the author's new research including in-depth case studies of a number of typologically unrelated languages.

Author: Ana Aguilar-Guevara
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027269386
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
This volume brings together studies in the domain of weak referentiality, the phenomenon that a definite or indefinite noun phrase lacks its usual referential force. Several papers investigate syntactic or semantic properties of indefinite noun phrases, such as modality, number neutrality, narrow scope, incorporation, predication, and case marking, and that in a range of languages (Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Catalan, German, Papiamentu, Russian). Other papers deal with weakly referential definite noun phrases in various languages (Basque, Dutch, English, French) involving scrambling, modification, possession, and accessibility. The papers demonstrate a range of empirical methods and theoretical models. This volume will not only be of interest to researchers and students in syntax and semantics, but also in psycholinguistics and language typology.

Author: Myriam Dali
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 902725964X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
The objective of this book is to develop a deeper understanding of the form and interpretation of number. Using insights from Generative syntax and Distributed Morphology, we develop a theory of distributed number, arguing that number can be associated with several functional heads and that these projections exist depending on the features they specify. In doing so, we make a strong claim for a close mapping between the syntactic structure and the semantics in the noun phrase, since each node corresponds to a different interpretation of number. Despite some technical implementations, the book is accessible to linguists working outside any particular syntax-semantic framework, since we propose generalizations that are applicable in many, if not all, models of grammar. The book focuses on Arabic, but also discusses a number of languages including English, French, Ojibwe, Blackfoot, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Turkish, Persian, and Western Armenian.