Bloomsbury Studies in Theoretical Linguistics – serie

Taking as a point of departure ideas and principles from the 18th and 19th century Danish tradition, and from 20th century traditions of the Copenhagen School of linguistics, this book attempts to set up a formal theory of syntax that addresses some of the weak points of other formal grammars, notably Chomskyan grammar. After introductions to the ideas of Brøndal, Hjelmslev and Diderichsen, Götzsche lays the philosophical and theoretical foundations of his formalism, based on a theory of universal pragmatics and on the invention of a special kind of formal logic called 'occurrence logic', and elaborates this formal system in detail. In order to justify the adequacy of the theory, the theoretical apparatus is applied to the general structures of Danish and Swedish and illustrated by linguistic material from these languages. Furthermore, the ambition is to propose solutions to traditional problems concerning more inferior grammatical categories like prepositions, infinitive markers and particles. The concluding chapter of the book presents some ideas about how the formal system can be transformed into a model of the cognitive mechanism that handles syntax.This book will be of interest to linguists, philosophers and scholars in theoretical linguistics and in Modern Languages.

This book discusses existential and possessive constructions in two important, yet under-studied, language families, Slavic and Finno-Ugric. Using data from the Slavic languages of Polish, Belarusian and Russian, and the Finno-Ugric languages of Finnish, Hungarian, Meadow Mari, Komi-Permiyak and Udmurt, as well as the closely related Selkup of the Samoyedic family, the chapters in this volume analyse predicative possession in current syntactic terms. Seeking an answer to the theoretical question of whether BE-possessives and HAVE-possessives are just accidental values of the 'Possessive Parameter' or are intrinsically related, this book takes a comparative approach to a whole range of syntactic and semantic phenomena that appear in these constructions, including the definiteness restriction, genitive of negation, person/number agreement, argument structure and extractability. The individual case studies can be easily integrated into the Principles & Parameters framework in terms of parametric variation. Approaches to Predicative Possession is an important contribution to our understanding of predicative possession across languages, with findings that can be fruitfully extended to other language families. It is an equally useful source of information for theoretical linguists, typologists, and graduate students of linguistics.

Using different theoretical approaches and frameworks, this book addresses a broad range of themes in contrastive linguistics, including inflection, derivation and compounding, tense, wh-questions, post-verbal subjects, focus and clitics, among others. Comparing English, German, Greek, Romance, Slavic and South Pacific languages, the book highlights the significance of the contrastive perspective for language-specific description and general interface issues, casting light on contrasts between languages at the levels of morphology and syntax. In this respect, it makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of language typology and language universals.

Pragmatic Particles sheds new light on the linguistic theory and application of Asian languages with a particular focus on the role of particles and their socio-pragmatic nature. Drawing on a range of data that spans Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Turkish and beyond, the multidimensionality of Asian languages is brought to attention. Particles are central in this discourse and their constructive, expressive and attitudinal behaviours are revealed to be neither arbitrary nor peripheral. By branching away from a predominantly Euro-centric discussion and covering the relevant formal and functional foundations of syntax and semantics, this book offers an alternative lens to the appropriate treatment of Asian languages in contemporary linguistics.

Pragmatic Particles sheds new light on the linguistic theory and application of Asian languages with a particular focus on the role of particles and their socio-pragmatic nature. Drawing on a range of data that spans Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Turkish and beyond, the multidimensionality of Asian languages is brought to attention. Particles are central in this discourse and their constructive, expressive and attitudinal behaviours are revealed to be neither arbitrary nor peripheral. By branching away from a predominantly Euro-centric discussion and covering the relevant formal and functional foundations of syntax and semantics, this book offers an alternative lens to the appropriate treatment of Asian languages in contemporary linguistics.

Using different theoretical approaches and frameworks, this book addresses a broad range of themes in contrastive linguistics, including inflection, derivation and compounding, tense, wh-questions, post-verbal subjects, focus and clitics, among others. Comparing English, German, Greek, Romance, Slavic and South Pacific languages, the book highlights the significance of the contrastive perspective for language-specific description and general interface issues, casting light on contrasts between languages at the levels of morphology and syntax. In this respect, it makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of language typology and language universals.

This book discusses existential and possessive constructions in two important, yet under-studied, language families, Slavic and Finno-Ugric. Using data from the Slavic languages of Polish, Belarusian and Russian, and the Finno-Ugric languages of Finnish, Hungarian, Meadow Mari, Komi-Permiyak and Udmurt, as well as the closely related Selkup of the Samoyedic family, the chapters in this volume analyse predicative possession in current syntactic terms. Seeking an answer to the theoretical question of whether BE-possessives and HAVE-possessives are just accidental values of the 'Possessive Parameter' or are intrinsically related, this book takes a comparative approach to a whole range of syntactic and semantic phenomena that appear in these constructions, including the definiteness restriction, genitive of negation, person/number agreement, argument structure and extractability. The individual case studies can be easily integrated into the Principles & Parameters framework in terms of parametric variation. Approaches to Predicative Possession is an important contribution to our understanding of predicative possession across languages, with findings that can be fruitfully extended to other language families. It is an equally useful source of information for theoretical linguists, typologists, and graduate students of linguistics.

This book presents a study of various important aspects of Tamazight Berber syntax within the generative tradition. Work on Berber linguistics from a generative perspective remains in many ways uncharted territory. There has been hardly any published research on this languageand its different dialects, especially in English -- this book fills some of these gaps and lays down the foundations forfurther research.Ouali looks at three seemingly disparate ranges of syntactic phenomena, namely Subject-verb agreement, Clitic-doubling and Negative Concord. These phenomena have received different analytical treatments, but Ouali proposes that they are all forms of agreement derived under the same Chomskian 'Agree' mechanism. The book addresses a fundamental question in the ongoing debate in recent Minimalism with regard to how subject-verb agreement is obtained and proposes a new analysis of the so-called Anti-Agreement Effect.Itwill be of interest to all syntacticians and to researchers in Afroasiatic languages.

This book provides new insights into the acquisition of functional categories in child language. Operating within the Minimalist Framework (Chomsky 1995) it examines in particular the availability of Determiner Phrases in the grammar of young children acquiring Spanish as a first language.The analysis reveals an interaction in child grammar around the production of bare nominals, proto-determiners and full determiner phrases. Socarrás performs both qualitative and quantitative analyses to point to a link between the development stages children go through, and the occurrence of these elements in their speech.The work goes on to address the language acquisition debate between the continuity and discontinuity hypotheses, aligning the findings with a conclusion on how best to organise the theory.

Creolelanguages have in recent years become a valuable source of data for currenttheories of syntax and theories of child/adult languageacquisition. However, grammars of these languages, particularly thosecouched within theoretical frameworks of one kind of another, are few and farbetween. This book contributes directly to creole linguistics by providing adetailed study of different aspects of the syntax of Mauritian creole withinthe theoretical framework of Principles and Parameters (Chomsky, 1981) andMinimalism (1995). It gives the reader a detailed account of the structureof this language and insight into the nature of creole languages, withimplications for current cartographic and minimalist thinking on the structureand derivation of phrases and clauses. It will appeal to researchers ofgrammar and syntax, language acquisition, contact linguistics andsociolinguistics.

This volume contains a detailed, precise and clear semantic formalism designed to allow non-programmers such as linguists and literary specialists to represent elements of meaning which they must deal with in their research and teaching. At the same time, by its basis in a functional programming paradigm, it retains sufficient formal precision to support computational implementation.The formalism is designed to represent meaning as found at a variety of levels, including basic semantic units and relations, word meaning, sentence-level phenomena, and text-level meaning. By drawing on fundamental principles of program design, the proposed formalism is both easy to read and modify yet sufficiently powerful to allow for the representation of complex semantic phenomena.In this monograph, the authors introduce the formalism and show its basic structure, apply it to the analysis of the semantics of a variety of linguistic phenomena in both English and French, and use it to represent the semantics of a variety of texts ranging from single sentences, to textual excepts, to a full story.

This book presents a study of various important aspects of Tamazight Berber syntax within the generative tradition.  Work on Berber linguistics from a generative perspective remains in many ways uncharted territory.  There has been hardly any published research on this language and its different dialects, especially in English -- this book fills some of these gaps and lays down the foundations for further research.Ouali looks at three seemingly disparate ranges of syntactic phenomena, namely Subject-verb agreement, Clitic-doubling and Negative Concord.  These phenomena have received different analytical treatments, but Ouali proposes that they are all forms of agreement derived under the same Chomskian 'Agree' mechanism.The book addresses a fundamental question in the ongoing debate in recent Minimalism with regard to how subject-verb agreement is obtained and proposes a new analysis of the so-called Anti-Agreement Effect.  It will be of interest to all syntacticians and to researchers in Afroasiatic languages.

Creole languages have in recent years become a valuable source of data for current theories of syntax and theories of child/adult language acquisition. However, grammars of these languages, particularly those couched within theoretical frameworks of one kind of another, are few and far between. This book contributes directly to creole linguistics by providing a detailed study of different aspects of the syntax of Mauritian creole within the theoretical framework of Principles and Parameters (Chomsky, 1981) and Minimalism (1995). It gives the reader a detailed account of the structure of this language and insight into the nature of creole languages, with implications for current cartographic and minimalist thinking on the structure and derivation of phrases and clauses. It will appeal to researchers of grammar and syntax, language acquisition, contact linguistics and sociolinguistics.

This volume contains a detailed, precise and clear semantic formalism designed to allow non-programmers such as linguists and literary specialists to represent elements of meaning which they must deal with in their research and teaching. At the same time, by its basis in a functional programming paradigm, it retains sufficient formal precision to support computational implementation.The formalism is designed to represent meaning as found at a variety of levels, including basic semantic units and relations, word meaning, sentence-level phenomena, and text-level meaning. By drawing on fundamental principles of program design, the proposed formalism is both easy to read and modify yet sufficiently powerful to allow for the representation of complex semantic phenomena.In this monograph, the authors introduce the formalism and show its basic structure, apply it to the analysis of the semantics of a variety of linguistic phenomena in both English and French, and use it to represent the semantics of a variety of texts ranging from single sentences, to textual excepts, to a full story.

Taking as a point of departure ideas and principles from the 18th and 19th century Danish tradition, and from 20th century traditions of the Copenhagen School of linguistics, this book attempts to set up a formal theory of syntax that addresses some of the weak points of other formal grammars, notably Chomskyan grammar. After introductions to the ideas of Brøndal, Hjelmslev and Diderichsen, Götzsche lays the philosophical and theoretical foundations of his formalism, based on a theory of universal pragmatics and on the invention of a special kind of formal logic called 'occurrence logic', and elaborates this formal system in detail. In order to justify the adequacy of the theory, the theoretical apparatus is applied to the general structures of Danish and Swedish and illustrated by linguistic material from these languages. Furthermore, the ambition is to propose solutions to traditional problems concerning more inferior grammatical categories like prepositions, infinitive markers and particles. The concluding chapter of the book presents some ideas about how the formal system can be transformed into a model of the cognitive mechanism that handles syntax.This book will be of interest to linguists, philosophers and scholars in theoretical linguistics and in Modern Languages.

Jieun Kiaer puts forward an argument in this book that the grammar of a language directly underpins the processing of the language, in real time. This is a view that runs against the orthodoxy of linguistic theorizing for the last 50 years, which has insisted that languages have to be characterized in terms that make little or no reference to the dynamics of language use.This orthodox view fails to fit languages in which the verb has to be at the end of the clause - which encompasses more than half of the world's languages. Thus, as this book shows, these languages remain very problematic for conventional theories. Using a mixture of corpus methods, sentence structure analysis, prosody and psycholinguistic theory, Kiaer redresses this imbalance. The data features both Korean and English example and it functions as one of the very first general introductions to Dynamic Syntax available.