Locality in Linguistic Theory

Locality in Linguistic Theory PDF

Author: Peter W. Culicover

Publisher:

Published: 1984

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13:

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This book explores the implications of a generalized Locality Condition in linguistic theory. The notion that rules of grammar and fundamental relations on linguistic structures are local has been a persistent one in the Extended Standard Theory. We suggest here that locality is in fact a universal constraint that should be abstracted from particular rules and relations and incorporated into the linguistic theory itself.

Locality principles in syntax

Locality principles in syntax PDF

Author: Jan Koster

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 1981-04-01

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 3110882337

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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. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert

Image, Language, Brain

Image, Language, Brain PDF

Author: Alec Marantz

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 9780262133715

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The papers in this volume discuss the current status of the cognitive/neuroscience synthesis in research on vision, whether and how linguistics and neuroscience can be integrated, and how integrative brain mechanisms can be studied through the use of noninvasive brain-imaging techniques. Recent attempts to unify linguistic theory and brain science have grown out of recognition that a proper understanding of language in the brain must reflect the steady advances in linguistic theory of the last forty years. The first Mind Articulation Project Symposium addressed two main questions: How can the understanding of language from linguistic research be transformed through the study of the biological basis of language? And how can our understanding of the brain be transformed through this same research? The best model so far of such mutual constraint is research on vision. Indeed, the two long-term goals of the Project are to make linguistics and brain science mutually constraining in the way that has been attempted in the study of the visual system and to formulate a cognitive theory that more strongly constrains visual neuroscience. The papers in this volume discuss the current status of the cognitive/neuroscience synthesis in research on vision, whether and how linguistics and neuroscience can be integrated, and how integrative brain mechanisms can be studied through the use of noninvasive brain-imaging techniques. Contributors Noam Chomsky, Ann Christophe, Robert Desimone, Richard Frackowiak, Angela Friederici, Edward Gibson, Peter Indefrey, Masao Ito, Willem Levelt, Alec Marantz, Jacques Mehler, Yasushi Miyashita, David Poeppel, Franck Ramus, John Reynolds, Kensuke Sekihara, Hiroshi Shibasaki

Locality

Locality PDF

Author: Enoch Oladé Aboh

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0199945284

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Locality offers a range of new perspectives on an important aspect of syntactic movement. The papers collected here explore locality in two ways: the first section approaches locality in terms of pure syntax; the second approaches it in terms of psycholinguistics.

Prolific Domains

Prolific Domains PDF

Author: Kleanthes K. Grohmann

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9789027227898

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Standard conceptions of Locality aim to establish that a dependency between two positions may not span too long a distance. This book explores the opposite conception, Anti-Locality: Don't move too close. The model of clause structure, syntactic computation, and locality concerns Kleanthes Grohmann develops makes crucial use of derivational sub-domains, Prolific Domains, each encapsulating particular context information (thematic, agreement, discourse). The Anti-Locality Hypothesis is the attempt to exclude anti-local movement from the grammar by banning movement within a Prolific Domain, a Bare Output Condition. The flexible application of the operation Spell Out, coupled with an innovative view on grammatical formatives, leads to a natural caveat: Copy Spell Out. Grohmann explores a theory of Anti-Locality relevant to all three Prolific Domains in the clausal layer as well as the nominal layer, and offers a unified account of Standard and Anti-Locality regarding clause-internal movement and operations across clause boundaries, revisiting successive cyclicity.

Locality and Logophoricity

Locality and Logophoricity PDF

Author: Isabelle Charnavel

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-10-23

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 0190902116

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Locality and Logophoricity investigates what the distribution of pronominal expressions in various languages can tell us about the structure of the human language faculty. The exploration of this question in the past fifty years has led to the development of a general theory of referential dependency, namely Binding Theory. This book focuses on Condition A of this theory, which concerns referentially dependent expressions such as English herself, French elle-même or Mandarin ziji. Specifically, it tackles an issue of apparent ambiguity presented by many of these reflexives across languages: in a large number of unrelated languages, we observe that the same reflexive form must obey either syntactic constraints or discourse constraints related to perspective. The specific aim of the book is to describe and explain this widespread dual behavior of reflexives. A detailed empirical investigation based mainly on systematically collected French, English, Icelandic, Mandarin, and Korean data leads the author to propose a unified solution to this issue. This proposal has consequences both for Binding Theory and for the theory of logophoricity, which addresses the impact of perspective on linguistic systems.

Locality

Locality PDF

Author: Maria Rita Manzini

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 9780262631402

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In this ambitious monograph, Manzini organizes and clarifies the voluminous evidence that exists on local dependencies according to a single, unified theory of Locality. Locality is a simpler and more comprehensive alternative to the barriers approach, the antecedent-based approach, and the connectedness approach, subsuming all the major locality principles (Subjacency, ECP, and binding theory) invoked in the other approaches and explaining a set of islands that remain refractory to those approaches.The first chapter defines the empirical problem and provides an overview of the solution; it also introduces the three main alternatives to Locality theory. The second chapter presents Manzini's theory in detail and includes a unification of Subjacency and the antecedent-government clause of the ECP and a unification of the ECP internal disjunction between the antecedent-government and the head-government clause. In chapter 3, Manzini argues for the empirical superiority of Locality, offering data predicting that Complex NP islands, Tense islands, and Definiteness islands all belong to the same fundamental type while multiple WH-islands reflect the fact that at most two overlapping extraction paths are available at any given point in a derivation. The final chapter looks at binding, showing that it can be accounted for under the same Locality principle as movement but without the need for anaphors to move at any level of representation.Maria Rita Manzini is Lecturer in the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College, London.

Prominence and Locality in Grammar

Prominence and Locality in Grammar PDF

Author: Jianhua Hu

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-06-06

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 1000008665

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This book challenges the current consensus on the analysis of wh-questions and reflexives from the perspective of the syntax-semantics interface. An integrated approach incorporating analyses of the interaction between different levels of linguistic knowledge is proposed. It argues that the derivation and interpretation of wh-questions and reflexives are not purely syntactic in nature but are regulated by principles operating at the syntax-semantics interface. Two general principles underlying our knowledge of language and cognition are proposed in this work. One is the Principle of Locality, and the other is the Principle of Prominence. It shows that although wh-quantification and reflexivization belong to two different domains of study in generative grammar, their derivation and interpretation are basically constrained by the complex interaction between prominence and locality in grammar. The first part of the book discusses how wh-questions are formed and interpreted in Chinese and English and shows that the formation and interpretation of wh-questions are constrained by the interaction between prominence and locality. It is shown that in wh-interpretation prominence is used to define the set generators so as to licence other wh-words in the pair-list reading in multiple wh-questions. It also discusses wh-island effects in English and Chinese, and unlike previous claims made in the literature (cf. Huang 1982a, 1982b), it argues that the so-called wh-island effects in English are also observed in Chinese. The second part of the book investigates the role that prominence and locality play in reflexive binding. It is shown that in reflexive binding, the binding domain of the reflexive is defined by prominence. It proposes a unified account for both the noncontrastive compound reflexive and the bare reflexive in Chinese and shows that they are constrained by the same reflexive binding condition proposed in this work, though they employ different definitions of the most prominent NPs to determine their binding domains. Prominence and Locality in Grammar: The Syntax and Semantics of Wh-Quesitons and Reflexives is an important theoretical contribution to the syntax-semantics interface studies and can serve as a valuable text for graduate students and scholars in the field of Chinese, linguistics, and cognitive science.

An Introduction to Syntactic Analysis and Theory

An Introduction to Syntactic Analysis and Theory PDF

Author: Dominique Sportiche

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-09-30

Total Pages: 472

ISBN-13: 1118470478

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An Introduction to Syntactic Analysis and Theory offersbeginning students a comprehensive overview of and introduction toour current understanding of the rules and principles that governthe syntax of natural languages. Includes numerous pedagogical features such as‘practice’ boxes and sidebars, designed to facilitateunderstanding of both the ‘hows’ and the‘whys’ of sentence structure Guides readers through syntactic and morphological structuresin a progressive manner Takes the mystery out of one of the most crucial aspects of theworkings of language – the principles and processes behindthe structure of sentences Ideal for students with minimal knowledge of current syntacticresearch, it progresses in theoretical difficulty from basic ideasand theories to more complex and advanced, up to date concepts insyntactic theory