Jacqueline Guéron - Böcker

This book looks at the relationship between the structure of the sentence and the organization of discourse. While a sentence obeys specific grammatical rules, the coherence of a discourse is instead dependent on the relations between the sentences it contains. In this volume, leading syntacticians, semanticists, and philosophers examine the nature of these relations, where they come from, and how they apply. Chapters in Part I address points of sentence grammar in different languages, including mood and tense in Spanish, definite determiners in French and Bulgarian, and the influence of aktionsart on the acquisition of tense by English, French, and Chinese children. Part II looks at modes of discourse, showing for example how discourse relations create implicatures and how Indirect Discourse differs from Free Indirect Discourse. The studies conclude that the relations between sentences that make a discourse coherent are already encoded in sentence grammar and that, once established, these relations influence the meaning of individual sentences.

This book looks at the relationship between the structure of the sentence and the organization of discourse. While a sentence obeys specific grammatical rules, the coherence of a discourse is instead dependent on the relations between the sentences it contains. In this volume, leading syntacticians, semanticists, and philosophers examine the nature of these relations, where they come from, and how they apply. Chapters in Part I address points of sentence grammar in different languages, including mood and tense in Spanish, definite determiners in French and Bulgarian, and the influence of aktionsart on the acquisition of tense by English, French, and Chinese children. Part II looks at modes of discourse, showing for example how discourse relations create implicatures and how Indirect Discourse differs from Free Indirect Discourse. The studies conclude that the relations between sentences that make a discourse coherent are already encoded in sentence grammar and that, once established, these relations influence the meaning of individual sentences.

This book is intended primarily for undergraduate students of English, though it will also be useful for undergraduates in linguistics focusing on English. It shows how a restricted set of principles can account for a wide range of the phenomena of English syntax. While the main focus of the book is empirical, it introduces important theoretical concepts: theta theory, X-bar theory, case theory, locality, binding theory, economy, full interpretation, functional projections. In doing so it prepares the student for more advanced theoretical work. The authors integrate many recent insights into the nature of syntactic structure into their discussion. They present information in a gradual way: hypotheses developed in early chapters are reviewed and modified in subsequent ones. The authors also pay attention to the relation between structure and interpretation and to language variation, and particularly to register variation. They include a wide range of diverse exercises, giving the student an opportunity for creative individual work on English.

This book is intended primarily for undergraduate students of English, though it will also be useful for undergraduates in linguistics focusing on English. It shows how a restricted set of principles can account for a wide range of the phenomena of English syntax. While the main focus of the book is empirical, it introduces important theoretical concepts: theta theory, X-bar theory, case theory, locality, binding theory, economy, full interpretation, functional projections. In doing so it prepares the student for more advanced theoretical work. The authors integrate many recent insights into the nature of syntactic structure into their discussion. They present information in a gradual way: hypotheses developed in early chapters are reviewed and modified in subsequent ones. The authors also pay attention to the relation between structure and interpretation and to language variation, and particularly to register variation. They include a wide range of diverse exercises, giving the student an opportunity for creative individual work on English.

The papers in this volume were ?rstpresented at the International Round Table Time and Modality held in Paris in December of 2005 and organized by the Jeune ' Equipe B 368 Syntaxe anglaise et syntaxe comparative (Universite ' Paris3-Sorbonne Nouvelle) and by the Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle (Centre National dela Recherche Scienti?que (CNRS) and UniversiteP ' aris 7). We wish to thank the institutions that provided ?nancial support for the Round Table: the CNRS, the Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle,the Conseil Sci- ti?que(Universite 's Paris3 and Paris 7) and the Bureaudes Relations Internationales (UniversiteP ' aris3). vii Contents Preface ...vii Contributors ...xv Introduction ...1 1Tense ...2 2Aspect ...3 2. 1 Perfectand Perfectivity ...3 2. 2 Eventuality Type ...4 3 Modals and Modal Verbs ...5 3. 1 Subject/Speaker Orientation ...5 3. 2 The Temporal Location of Modal Verbs ...6 3. 3 The Temporal/Causal Function of Modal Verbs ...7 3. 4 The Temporal Syntax of Non-Root Modals ...8 3. 5 Weak Necessity Modals ...9 4 The Role of Past Morphology in Modal Contexts ...9 5 The Subjunctive ...10 6 Genericity ...11 7Copular Clauses ...11 8Conclusions and Open Problems...12 References ...14 Patterns in the Semantics of Generic Sentences ...17 Greg Carlson 1 The Setting ...17 2TheIssues ...18 3 Induction and Stipulation ...22 3. 1 Rules and Induction ...22 3. 2 What do Generic Sentencesdo? ...23 3. 3 Inductive Generalizations Again ...24 ix x Contents 4 Patterns ...25 4. 1 Patterns and Non-Patterns ...25 4. 2 Generic Sentences ...27 4. 3 Restriction ...