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Author: Julia Bacskai-Atkari Publisher: Language Science Press ISBN: 3961100837 Category : English language Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
This book provides a new analysis for the syntax of comparatives, focusing on various deletion phenomena affecting the subclause. In particular, the proposed account shows that Comparative Deletion is merely a surface phenomenon that can be drawn back to the overtness of the comparative operator and the availability of lower copies of a movement chain, and it is thus subject to both language-internal and cross-linguistic variation. The main focus of the book is on English, yet other languages are also discussed for comparative purposes, with the aim of showing what the idiosyncratic properties of English comparatives are.
Author: Julia Bacskai-Atkari Publisher: Language Science Press ISBN: 3961100837 Category : English language Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
This book provides a new analysis for the syntax of comparatives, focusing on various deletion phenomena affecting the subclause. In particular, the proposed account shows that Comparative Deletion is merely a surface phenomenon that can be drawn back to the overtness of the comparative operator and the availability of lower copies of a movement chain, and it is thus subject to both language-internal and cross-linguistic variation. The main focus of the book is on English, yet other languages are also discussed for comparative purposes, with the aim of showing what the idiosyncratic properties of English comparatives are.
Author: Firew Girma Worku Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004449914 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 684
Book Description
This volume contains 14 descriptive chapters and a collection of 4 transcribed texts in Mursi, a highly endangered language spoken in the Lower Omo Valley in Ethiopia.
Author: Julia Bacskai-Atkari Publisher: Universitätsverlag Potsdam ISBN: 386956301X Category : Comparison (Grammar) Languages : en Pages : 332
Book Description
Adopting a minimalist framework, the dissertation provides an analysis for the syntactic structure of comparatives, with special attention paid to the derivation of the subclause. The proposed account explains how the comparative subclause is connected to the matrix clause, how the subclause is formed in the syntax and what additional processes contribute to its final structure. In addition, it casts light upon these problems in cross-linguistic terms and provides a model that allows for synchronic and diachronic differences. This also enables one to give a more adequate explanation for the phenomena found in English comparatives since the properties of English structures can then be linked to general settings of the language and hence need no longer be considered as idiosyncratic features of the grammar of English. First, the dissertation provides a unified analysis of degree expressions, relating the structure of comparatives to that of other degrees. It is shown that gradable adjectives are located within a degree phrase (DegP), which in turn projects a quantifier phrase (QP) and that these two functional layers are always present, irrespectively of whether there is a phonologically visible element in these layers. Second, the dissertation presents a novel analysis of Comparative Deletion by reducing it to an overtness constraint holding on operators: in this way, it is reduced to morphological differences and cross-linguistic variation is not conditioned by way of postulating an arbitrary parameter. Cross-linguistic differences are ultimately dependent on whether a language has overt operators equipped with the relevant – [+compr] and [+rel] – features. Third, the dissertation provides an adequate explanation for the phenomenon of Attributive Comparative Deletion, as attested in English, by way of relating it to the regular mechanism of Comparative Deletion. I assume that Attributive Comparative Deletion is not a universal phenomenon, and its presence in English can be conditioned by independent, more general rules, while the absence of such restrictions leads to its absence in other languages. Fourth, the dissertation accounts for certain phenomena related to diachronic changes, examining how the changes in the status of comparative operators led to changes in whether Comparative Deletion is attested in a given language: I argue that only operators without a lexical XP can be grammaticalised. The underlying mechanisms underlying are essentially general economy principles and hence the processes are not language-specific or exceptional. Fifth, the dissertation accounts for optional ellipsis processes that play a crucial role in the derivation of typical comparative subclauses. These processes are not directly related to the structure of degree expressions and hence the elimination of the quantified expression from the subclause; nevertheless, they are shown to be in interaction with the mechanisms underlying Comparative Deletion or the absence thereof.
Author: Alexandra Aikhenvald Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004207686 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 630
Book Description
The volume brings together important essays on syntax and semantics by Aikhenvald and Dixon, highlighting their expertise in various fields of linguistics. The first part focusses on linguistic typology, covering case markers used on verbs, argument-determined constructions, unusual meanings of causatives, the semantic basis for a typology, word-class-changing derivations, speech reports and semi-direct speech. The second part concentrates on documentation and analysis of previously undescribed languages, from South America and Indigenous Australia. The third part addresses a variety of issues in grammar and lexicography of English. This includes pronouns with transferred reference, comparative constructions, features of the noun phrase, and the discussion of 'twice'. The treatment of Australian Aboriginal words in dictionaries is discussed in the final chapter.
Author: Paul Kent Andersen Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing ISBN: 9027235171 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 264
Book Description
This monograph, discussing various aspects involved with a typology of word order, strives to take a next step towards a better understanding of the profound unity underlying languages. The volume is divided into five sections: 1) Word order typology; 2) A critical analysis of word order typology; 3) Word order within comparative constructions; 4) Word order in the comparative construction in the Rigveda; 5) Diachronic aspects of word order withing comparative constructions.
Author: Peter Ackema Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing ISBN: 9027255741 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 435
Book Description
The present volume contains a selection of papers presented at the 23rd and 24th Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop held at the University of Edinburgh and the Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussels. The contributions provide new perspectives on several topics of current interest for syntactic theory on the basis of comparative data from a wide range of Germanic languages. Among the theoretical and empirical issues explored are various ellipsis phenomena, the internal structure of the DP, the syntax-morphology interface, the syntax-semantics interface, Binding Theory, various diachronic developments, and 'do-support'-type phenomena. This book is of interest to syntacticians with an interest in theoretical, comparative and/or diachronic work, as well as to morphologists and semanticists interested in the connections their fields have with syntax. It will also be of interest to graduate and advanced undergraduate students in linguistic disciplines.
Author: Nuria Yáñez-Bouza Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9781108411424 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 423
Book Description
A pioneering collection of new research that explores categories, constructions, and change in the syntax of the English language. The volume, with contributions by world-renowned scholars as well as some emerging scholars in the field, covers a wide variety of approaches to grammatical categories and categorial change, constructions and constructional change, and comparative and typological research. Each of the fourteen chapters, based on the analysis of authentic data, highlights the wealth and breadth of the study of English syntax (including morphosyntax), both theoretically and empirically, from Old English through to the present day. The result is a body of research which will add substantially to the current study of the syntax of the English language, by stimulating further research in the field.
Author: A. Butler Publisher: Springer ISBN: 0230501605 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 231
Book Description
Split constructions are very widespread in natural languages. The separation of the semantic restriction of a quantifier from that quantifier is a typical example of such a construction. This study addresses the problem that such discontinuous strings exhibit a number of locality constraints, including intervention effects. These are shown to follow from the interaction of a minimalist syntax with a semantics that directly assigns a model-theoretic interpretation to syntactic logical forms. The approach is shown to have wide empirical coverage and a conceptual simplicity. The book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of syntax and semantics.
Author: Jonathan David Bobaljik Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262304597 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 333
Book Description
An argument for, and account of linguistic universals in the morphology of comparison, combining empirical breadth and theoretical rigor. This groundbreaking study of the morphology of comparison yields a surprising result: that even in suppletion (the wholesale replacement of one stem by a phonologically unrelated stem, as in good-better-best) there emerge strikingly robust patterns, virtually exceptionless generalizations across languages. Jonathan David Bobaljik describes the systematicity in suppletion, and argues that at least five generalizations are solid contenders for the status of linguistic universals. The major topics discussed include suppletion, comparative and superlative formation, deadjectival verbs, and lexical decomposition. Bobaljik's primary focus is on morphological theory, but his argument also aims to integrate evidence from a variety of subfields into a coherent whole. In the course of his analysis, Bobaljik argues that the assumptions needed bear on choices among theoretical frameworks and that the framework of Distributed Morphology has the right architecture to support the account. In addition to the theoretical implications of the generalizations, Bobaljik suggests that the striking patterns of regularity in what otherwise appears to be the most irregular of linguistic domains provide compelling evidence for Universal Grammar. The book strikes a unique balance between empirical breadth and theoretical detail. The phenomenon that is the main focus of the argument, suppletion in adjectival gradation, is rare enough that Bobaljik is able to present an essentially comprehensive description of the facts; at the same time, it is common enough to offer sufficient variation to explore the question of universals over a significant dataset of more than three hundred languages.
Author: Julia Bacskai-Atkari 
Author: Julia Bacskai-Atkari 
Author: Firew Girma Worku
Author: Julia Bacskai-Atkari
Author: Alexandra Aikhenvald
Author: Paul Kent Andersen
Author: Peter Ackema
Author: Nuria Yáñez-Bouza
Author: Winfried Lechner
Author: A. Butler
Author: Jonathan David Bobaljik