Semantics in Generative Grammar


Book Description

Written by two of the leading figures in the field, this is a lucid and systematic introduction to formal semantics.




Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar


Book Description

No detailed description available for "Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar".




Semantics


Book Description




Focus Structure in Generative Grammar


Book Description

The notion of focus structure in this work refers to the distinction between categorical, thetic and identificational sentences. The central claim is that the syntactic representation of every sentence has to encode which of these types of focus structure is realized. This claim is discussed in great detail with respect to syntax, intonation and semantics within the framework of the Minimalist Program. It is shown that the incorporation of focus structure into syntax offers new perspectives for a solution of vexing problems in syntax and semantics. For example, fronting (preposing, 'topicalisation') is treated as a syntactic operation which clearly belongs to core grammar, i.e. is not optional or 'stylistic'; the semantic notion of quantifier raising is dispensed with in favour of a focus structural treatment of phenomena which gave rise to it. The book appeals to generative linguists and to functional linguists who do not believe in an unbridgeable gap between the formal and functional analysis of language.







Deconstructing Language Structure and Meaning


Book Description

This volume brings together a number of researchers working on generative syntax and semantics, language acquisition and phonology to explore various theoretical frameworks, ranging from generative grammar and formal semantics to more descriptive approaches. The contributions gathered here investigate various aspects in the syntax, semantics, phonology and acquisition of Romanian in comparison with other (mainly Romance) languages. The book will be of interest to linguists who are keen on keeping up with the latest advances in the field of Romance studies, as well as those whose research bears on languages such as Hungarian, German, and Maltese, among others.




The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax


Book Description

Syntax – the study of sentence structure – has been at the centre of generative linguistics from its inception and has developed rapidly and in various directions. The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax provides a historical context for what is happening in the field of generative syntax today, a survey of the various generative approaches to syntactic structure available in the literature and an overview of the state of the art in the principal modules of the theory and the interfaces with semantics, phonology, information structure and sentence processing, as well as linguistic variation and language acquisition. This indispensable resource for advanced students, professional linguists (generative and non-generative alike) and scholars in related fields of inquiry presents a comprehensive survey of the field of generative syntactic research in all its variety, written by leading experts and providing a proper sense of the range of syntactic theories calling themselves generative.




Word Meaning and Montague Grammar


Book Description

The most general goal of this book is to propose and illustrate a program of research in word semantics that combines some of the methodology and results in linguistic semantics, primarily that of the generative semantics school, with the rigorously formalized syntactic and semantic framework for the analysis of natural languages developed by Richard Montague and his associates, a framework in which truth and denotation with respect to a model are taken as the fundamental semantic notions. I hope to show, both from the linguist's and the philosopher's point of view, not only why this synthesis can be undertaken but also why it will be useful to pursue it. On the one hand, the linguists' decompositions of word meanings into more primitive parts are by themselves inherently incomplete, in that they deal only in distinctions in meaning without providing an account of what mean ings really are. Not only can these analyses be made complete by a model theoretic semantics, but also such an account of these analyses renders them more exact and more readily testable than they could ever be otherwise.




Metasemantics


Book Description

Metasemantics comprises new work on the philosophical foundations of linguistic semantics, by a diverse group of established and emerging experts in the philosophy of language, metaphysics, and the theory of content. The science of semantics aspires to systematically specify the meanings of linguistic expressions in context. The paradigmatic metasemantic question is accordingly: what more basic or fundamental features of the world metaphysically determine these semantic facts? Efforts to answer this question inevitably raise others. Where are the boundaries of semantics? What is the essence of the meaning relation? Which framework should we use for semantic theorizing? What are the intrinsic natures of semantic values? Are the semantic facts metaphysically determinate? What is semantic competence? Metasemantic inquiry has long been recognized as a central part of the philosophy of language, but recent developments in metaphysics and semantics itself now allow us to approach these classic questions with an unprecedented degree of precision. The essays collected here provide promising new perspectives on old problems, pose questions that suggest novel research projects, and taken together, greatly sharpen our understanding of linguistic representation.




Syntactic Structures


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No detailed description available for "Syntactic Structures".