Icelandic Nominalizations and Allosemy

Icelandic Nominalizations and Allosemy PDF

Author: Jim Wood

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-08-15

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0198865155

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This book brings a basic yet detailed description of Icelandic nominalizations to bear on the general theoretical and architectural issues that nominalizations have raised since the earliest work in generative syntax. While nominalization has long been central to theories of argument structure, and Icelandic has been an important language for the study of argument structure and syntax, Icelandic has not been brought into the general body of theoretical work on nominalization. In this work, Jim Wood shows that Icelandic-specific issues in the analysis of derived nominals have broad implications that go beyond the study of that one language. In particular, Icelandic provides special evidence that Complex Event Nominals (CENs), which seem to inherit their argument structure from the underlying verbs, can be formed without nominalizing a full verb phrase. This conclusion is at odds with prominent theories of nominalization that claim that CENs have the properties that they have precisely because they involve the nominalization of full verb phrases. The book develops a theory of allosemy within the framework of Distributed Morphology, showing how one single syntactic structure can get distinct semantic interpretations corresponding to the range of readings that are available to derived nominals. The resulting proposal demonstrates how the study of Icelandic nominalizations can both further our understanding of argument structure and shed new light on the syntax-semantics interface.

Icelandic Nominalizations and Allosemy

Icelandic Nominalizations and Allosemy PDF

Author: Jim Wood

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-08-15

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0192634445

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book brings a basic yet detailed description of Icelandic nominalizations to bear on the general theoretical and architectural issues that nominalizations have raised since the earliest work in generative syntax. While nominalization has long been central to theories of argument structure, and Icelandic has been an important language for the study of argument structure and syntax, Icelandic has not been brought into the general body of theoretical work on nominalization. In this work, Jim Wood shows that Icelandic-specific issues in the analysis of derived nominals have broad implications that go beyond the study of that one language. In particular, Icelandic provides special evidence that Complex Event Nominals (CENs), which seem to inherit their argument structure from the underlying verbs, can be formed without nominalizing a full verb phrase. This conclusion is at odds with prominent theories of nominalization that claim that CENs have the properties that they have precisely because they involve the nominalization of full verb phrases. The book develops a theory of allosemy within the framework of Distributed Morphology, showing how one single syntactic structure can get distinct semantic interpretations corresponding to the range of readings that are available to derived nominals. The resulting proposal demonstrates how the study of Icelandic nominalizations can both further our understanding of argument structure and shed new light on the syntax-semantics interface.

Nominalization

Nominalization PDF

Author: Artemis Alexiadou

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-11-10

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0192634941

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This volume explores the progress of cross-linguistic research into the structure of complex nominals since the publication of Chomsky's 'Remarks on Nominalization' in 1970. In the last 50 years of research into the division of labour between the mental lexicon and syntax, the specific properties of nominalized structures have remained a particularly central question. The chapters in this volume take stock of developments in this area and offer new perspectives on a range of issues, including the representation of morphological complexity in the syntax, the correlation of nominal affixes with different types of nominalizations, and the modelling of non-compositional meaning within syntactic approaches to word formation. Crucially, the contributors base their analyses on data from typologically diverse languages, such as Archi, Greek, Hiaki, Icelandic, Mebengokre, Turkish, and Udmurt, and explore the question of whether, cross-linguistically, nominalizations have a uniform core to their structure that can be syntactically described.

On the syntax of deverbal nominalizations in English and Romanian

On the syntax of deverbal nominalizations in English and Romanian PDF

Author: DIANA ȘTEFAN-DINESCU

Publisher: Editura Universității din București - Bucharest University Press

Published: 2023-01-01

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 6061613962

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The book offers a syntactic and semantic perspective on the nominalization system in both English and Romanian. The three main types of deverbal nominalizations analysed here are complex event nominalizations (CENs), simple event nominals (SENs) and result nominals (RNs), according to the well-known distinction made by Grimshaw (1990). The hypothesis furthered in the present book is that in both languages deverbal nominalizations form a squish (see Ross 1972), i.e. an implicational hierarchy which is built on two dimensions, a syntactic dimension, i.e., the presence or absence of a complete VP, including some functional structure (AspP), and a semantic dimension, i.e., whether or not the nominalization expresses an event (see Wood 2020). Thus, all the properties of CENs, SENs and RNs described in the literature (Grimshaw 1990, Alexiadou 2001, Borer 2011, a.o.) are accounted for on the basis of these two dimensions and are illustrated on a vast corpus of authentic English and Romanian examples gathered from dictionaries and online corpora such as Corpusul computațional de referință pentru limba română contemporană (CoRoLa), the British National Corpus (BNC) and Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA).

Voice at the interfaces

Voice at the interfaces PDF

Author: Itamar Kastner

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published:

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 3961102570

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This books presents the most comprehensive description and analysis to date of Hebrew morphology, with an emphasis on the verbal templates. Its aim is to develop a theory of argument structure alternations which is anchored in the syntax but has systematic interfaces with the phonology and the semantics. Concretely, the monograph argues for a specific formal system centered around possible values of the head Voice. The formal assumptions are as similar as possible to those made in work on non-Semitic languages. The first part of the book (four chapters) is devoted to Hebrew; the second part (two chapters) compares the current theory with other approaches to Voice and argument structure in the recent literature.

Definiteness in Balkan Romance

Definiteness in Balkan Romance PDF

Author: Daniela Isac

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-03-01

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0192635204

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This book is a study of the micro-variation in the realization of definiteness across languages belonging to the Balkan Romance family: Romanian, Aromanian, Istro-Romanian, and Megleno-Romanian. The definite article is a suffix in all of these languages, but nominal constituents show considerable variation with respect to the overt realization of the definite article: in some instances, the definite article is spelled out only once, in other situations it is spelled out multiple times, and in still other cases it can be phonologically null. Daniela Isac offers a unified analysis of these options based on a post-syntactic spell-out rule that specifies the conditions under which the definite article can be pronounced on various heads within the nominal constituent. Micro-variation in the patterns displayed by specific languages in this family is accounted for exclusively by lexicon-related differences (the feature specification of lexical and functional items may vary across languages) and by differences related to externalization (syntactic relations such as Agree may have various morpho-phonological overt expressions across languages). Crucially, the computational system is assumed to be invariant, a result that is consistent with the generative understanding of the knowledge and acquisition of language.

The Place of Case in Grammar

The Place of Case in Grammar PDF

Author: Christina Sevdali

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-07-16

Total Pages: 641

ISBN-13: 0192635417

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This book deals with the category of case and where to place it in grammar. The crux of the debate lies in how the morphological expression of grammatical function should relate to formal syntax. In the generative tradition, this issue was addressed by the influential proposal that abstract syntactic Case should be dissociated from the morphological expression of case. The chapters in this book deal with a number of key issues in the ongoing debates that have emerged from this proposal. The first part discusses the modes that we need for structural case assignment, and how Case would relate to a theory of parameters. In the second part, contributors explore the division of labour between structural and inherent case, synchronically and diachronically, while the third part investigates individual cases and how they can illuminate case theory. The chapters discuss a wide range of phenomena, including differential object marking (DOM), global case splits, prepositional genitives and other prepositional phrases, nominative infinitival subjects, nominalizations of deponent verbs, and three-place predicates. They also draw on data from a variety of languages and language families, such as Hindi, Lithuanian, Kashmiri, Kinande, Greek, Hiberno-English, Romance, and Sahapatin.

A Natural History of Infixation

A Natural History of Infixation PDF

Author: Alan C. L. Yu

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2007-07-05

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 0191535443

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This book presents the first cross-linguistic study of the phenomenon of infixation, typically associated in English with words like "im-bloody-possible", and found in all the world's major linguistic families. Infixation is a central puzzle in prosodic morphology: Professor Yu explores its prosodic, phonological, and morphological characteristics, considers its diverse functions, and formulates a general theory to explain the rules and constraints by which it is governed. He examines 154 infixation patterns from over a hundred languages, including examples from Asia, Europe, Africa, New Guinea, and South America. He compares the formal properties of different kinds of infix, explores the range of diachronic pathways that lead to them, and considers the processes by which they are acquired in first language learning. A central argument of the book concerns the idea that the typological tendencies of language may be traced back to its origins and to the mechanisms of language transmission. The book thus combines the history of infixation with an exploration of the role diachronic and functional factors play in synchronic argumentation: it is an exemplary instance of the holistic approach to linguistic explanation. Alan Yu's pioneering study will interest phonologists and morphologists of all theoretical persuasions, as well as typologists and historical linguists.

Icelandic Morphosyntax and Argument Structure

Icelandic Morphosyntax and Argument Structure PDF

Author: Jim Wood

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-01-05

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 3319091387

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This book provides a detailed study of Icelandic argument structure alternations within a syntactic theory of argument structure. Building on recent theorizing within the Minimalist Program and Distributed Morphology, the author proposes that much of what is traditionally attributed to syntax should be relegated to the interfaces, and adapts the late insertion theory of morphology to semantics. The resulting system forms sound-meaning pairs by generating hierarchical structures that can be translated into morphological representations, on the one hand, and semantic representations, on the other. The syntactic primitives, however, underdetermine both morphophonology and semantics. Without appealing to special stipulations, the theory derives constraints on the external argument of causative-alternation verbs, interpretive restrictions on nominative objects, and the optionally agentive interpretation of verbs denoting self-directed motion.

Events, Phrases, and Questions

Events, Phrases, and Questions PDF

Author: Robert Truswell

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-01-20

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0199577773

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Uniting work from philosophical, cognitive and linguistic perspectives, Dr Truswell develops a model of the structure of events as perceptual and cognitive units. He predicts the acceptability of particular formulations, considers the individuation of events in the light of the model, and provides a novel account of patterns of question formation.