Configurationality

Configurationality PDF

Author: László Marácz

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2019-11-05

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 3110884887

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The architecture of the human language faculty has been one of the main foci of the linguistic research of the last half century. This branch of linguistics, broadly known as Generative Grammar, is concerned with the formulation of explanatory formal accounts of linguistic phenomena with the ulterior goal of gaining insight into the properties of the 'language organ'. The series comprises high quality monographs and collected volumes that address such issues. The topics in this series range from phonology to semantics, from syntax to information structure, from mathematical linguistics to studies of the lexicon.

Grammaticalization and the Rise of Configurationality in Indo-Aryan

Grammaticalization and the Rise of Configurationality in Indo-Aryan PDF

Author: Uta Reinöhl

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-04-14

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0191056375

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This book examines historical changes in the grammar of the Indo-Aryan languages from the period of their earliest attestations in Vedic Sanskrit (around 1000 bc) to contemporary Hindi. Uta Reinöhl focuses specifically on the rise of configurational structure as a by-product of the grammaticalization of postpositions: while Vedic Sanskrit lacks function words that constrain nominal expressions into phrasal units - one of the characteristics of a non-configurational language - New Indo-Aryan languages have postpositions which organize nominal expressions into postpositional phrases. The grammaticalization of postpositions and the concomitant syntactic changes are traced through the three millennia of Indo-Aryan attested history with a focus on Vedic Sanskrit, Middle Indic Pali and Apabhramsha, Early New Indic Old Awadhi, and finally Hindi. Among the topics discussed are the constructions in which the postpositions grammaticalize, the origins of the postpositional template, and the paradigmatization of the various elements involved into a single functional class of postpositions. The book outlines how it is semantic and pragmatic changes that induce changes on the expression side, ultimately resulting in the establishment of phrasal, and thus low-level configurational, syntax.

Topic, Focus and Configurationality

Topic, Focus and Configurationality PDF

Author: Werner Abraham

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1986-01-01

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 9027282498

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Some fundamental questions regarding sentence structure in linguistics concern whether all languages, at some level of abstraction, have the same structure, and what are the basic categories with which to describe sentence structure. The contributors of this volume are specialized in two quite different languages: Hungarian and German. Of the German papers three are mainly about focus (Abraham, Jacobs, and Stechow-Uhman), whereas the remaining ones (Haider and Scherpenisse) are mainly about V-second. The Hungarian papers are all about focus, of which those of Kálman, Kiefer, Marácz, and De Mey-Marácz are about focussing in the stricter sense. Hunyadi, Kenesei and É. Kiss focus on the pre-verbal area in general and the interpretation of operators in Hungarian in particular. The remaining papers (Horvath, Komlósy, and Szabolczi) are on the position of the PRE-V, the position immediately after the finite verb.

Configurationality in Hungarian

Configurationality in Hungarian PDF

Author: Katalin E. Kiss

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-06-29

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 9400937032

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The purpose of this book is to argue for the claim that Hungarian sentence structure consists of a non-configurational propositional component, preceded by configurationally determined operator positions. In the course of this, various descriptive issues of Hungarian syntax will be analyzed, and various theoretical questions concerning the existence and nature of non configurational languages will be addressed. The descriptive problems to be examined in Chapters 2 and 3 center around the word order of Hungarian sentences. Chapter 2 identifies an invariant structure in the apparently freely permutable Hungarian sentence, pointing out systematic correspondences between the structural position, interpre tation, and stressing and intonation of the different constituents. Chapter 3 analyzes the word order phenomenon traditionally called 'sentence inter- I twining' of complex sentences, and shows that the term, in fact, covers two different constructions (a structure resulting from operator movement, and a base generated pattern) with differences in constituent order, operator scope and V-object agreement. Chapter 4 deals interpretation, case assignment, with the coreference possibilities of reflexives, reciprocals, personal pro nouns, and lexical NPs. Finally, Chapter 5 assigns structures to the two major sentence types containing an infinitive. It analyzes infinitives with an AGR marker and a lexical subject, focusing on the problem of case assignment to the subject, as well as subject control constructions, accounting for their often paradoxical, simultaneously mono- and biclausal behaviour in respect to word order, operator scope, and V-object agreement.

The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure

The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure PDF

Author: Caroline Féry

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-08-25

Total Pages: 1133

ISBN-13: 019100541X

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This book provides linguists with a clear, critical, and comprehensive overview of theoretical and experimental work on information structure. Leading researchers survey the main theories of information structure in syntax, phonology, and semantics as well as perspectives from psycholinguistics and other relevant fields. Following the editors' introduction the book is divided into four parts. The first, on theories of and theoretical perspectives on information structure, includes chapters on focus, topic, and givenness. Part 2 covers a range of current issues in the field, including quantification, dislocation, and intonation, while Part 3 is concerned with experimental approaches to information structure, including language processing and acquisition. The final part contains a series of linguistic case studies drawn from a wide variety of the world's language families. This volume will be the standard guide to current work in information structure and a major point of departure for future research.

Structures of Focus and Grammatical Relations

Structures of Focus and Grammatical Relations PDF

Author: Jorunn Hetland

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2013-02-06

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 3110949482

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The seven articles of this volume take up crucial aspects of information structure and grammatical form. Special attention is paid to the definition of topic, focus and contrast, to the language specific devices for expressing different types of these information structural notions, and to the typological characterisation of languages as to discourse configurationality. The investigation of grammatical relations includes the interplay between syntactic functions, morphological case and thematic structure, and the study of the functional and formal complexity of passive in Germanic languages.

Diachronic Treebanks for Historical Linguistics

Diachronic Treebanks for Historical Linguistics PDF

Author: Hanne Martine Eckhoff

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2020-08-28

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 9027260451

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Over the last few decades, the widespread diffusion of digital technology has increased availability of primary textual sources, radically changing the everyday life of scholars in the humanities, who are now able to access, query and process a wealth of empirical evidence in ways not possible before. Also for ancient languages, corpora enhanced with increasingly complex layers of metalinguistic information, such as part-of-speech tagging and syntactic annotation (called 'treebanks') are now available. In particular, diachronic treebanks, which provide data for a language across several historical stages of a given language, allow for a new approach to diachronic studies of syntactic phenomena where scholars previously had to content themselves with empirical work on a much smaller scale. This volume brings together a set of papers that report research on various diachronic matters supported by evidence from diachronic treebanks. The contents of the papers cover a wide range of languages, including English, French, Russian, Old Church Slavonic, Latin and Ancient Greek. Originally published as special issue of Diachronica 35:3 (2018).

A Grammar of Warrongo

A Grammar of Warrongo PDF

Author: Tasaku Tsunoda

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011-12-23

Total Pages: 783

ISBN-13: 3110238772

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Warrongo is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language that used to be spoken in northeast Australia. This volume is largely based on the rich data recorded from the last fluent speaker. It details the phonology, morphology and syntax of the language. In particular, it provides a truly scrutinizing description of syntactic ergativity - a phenomenon that is rare among the world's language. It also shows that, unlike some other Australian languages, Warrongo has noun phrases that are configurational. Overall this volume shows what can be documented of a language that has only one speaker.

Discourse Configurational Languages

Discourse Configurational Languages PDF

Author: Katalin É Kiss

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0195088344

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Comprising eleven studies on languages with designated structural topic and focus positions, this volume includes an introduction surveying the empirical and theoretical problems involved in the description of this language type. Focusing on languages outside the traditional Indo-European group, the essays look at Chadic, Somali, Basque, Catalan, Old Romance, Greek, Hungarian, Finnish, Korean, and Quechua. The papers provide interesting new empirical data, as well as a variety of means and alternatives of representing them structurally. At the same time, they address important theoretical questions in the framework of generative theory. This is the first study to apply methods of comparative syntax to the study of topic and focus.

Phrase Structure and Grammatical Relations in Tagalog

Phrase Structure and Grammatical Relations in Tagalog PDF

Author: Paul Kroeger

Publisher: Center for the Study of Language (CSLI)

Published: 1993-07-30

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780937073865

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Over the last twenty years or so, most of the work on the syntax of Philippine languages has been focused on the question of whether or not these languages can be said to have grammatical subjects, and if so which argument of a basic transitive clause should be analysed as being the subject. Paul Kroeger's contribution to this debate asserts that grammatical relations such as subject and object are syntactic notions, and must be identified on the basis of syntactic properties, rather than by semantic roles or discourse functions. A large number of syntactic processes in Tagalog uniquely select the argument which bears the nominative case. On the other hand, the data which have been used in the debate to assert the ambiguity of subjecthood are best analysed in terms of semantic rather than syntactic constraints. Together these facts support an analysis that takes the nominative argument as the subject. Kroeger examines the history of the subjecthood debate and uses data from Tagalog to test the theories that have been put forth. His conclusions entail consequences for certain linguistic concepts and theories, and lead Kroeger to assert that grammatical relations are not defined in terms of surface phrase structure configurations, contrary to the assumptions of many approaches to syntax including the Government-Binding theory. Paul Kroeger is presently doing fieldwork in Austronesian languages and teaching linguistics to fieldworkers from around the world.