Morphosemantic Number:


Book Description

Number is a major research domain in semantics, syntax and morphology. However, no current theory of number is applicable to all three fields. In this work, the author argues that a unified theory is not only possible, but necessary for the study of Universal Grammar. Through insightful analysis of unfamiliar data, the author shows that one and the same feature set is implicated in semantic and morphological number phenomena alike, with syntax acting as the conduit between the two. At the heart of the study is an original treatment of Kiowa, a North American language with a remarkable constellation of characteristics, including semantically based noun classification and complex agreement morphology. This volume presents: (1) the foundations of a unified morphosemantic theory of number; (2) insight into the flow of information from the lexicon, via syntax, into the morphology; (3) wide-ranging topics: nominal semantics, noun classes, DP syntax, agreement, suppletion, complex morphology.




The Oxford Handbook of Grammatical Number


Book Description

This volume offers detailed accounts of current research in grammatical number in language. Following a detailed introduction, the chapters in the first three parts of the book explore the multiple research questions in the field and the complex problems surrounding the analysis of grammatical number: Part I presents the background and foundational notions, Part II the morphological, semantic, and syntactic aspects, and Part III the different means of expressing plurality in the event domain. The final part offers fifteen case studies that include in-depth discussion of grammatical number phenomena in a range of typologically diverse languages, written by - or in collaboration with - native speakers linguists or based on extensive fieldwork. The volume draws on work from a range of subdisciplines - including morphology, syntax, semantics, and psycholinguistics - and will be a valuable resource for students and scholars in all areas of theoretical, descriptive, and experimental linguistics.




Number in the World's Languages


Book Description

The strong development in research on grammatical number in recent years has created a need for a unified perspective. The different frameworks, the ramifications of the theoretical questions, and the diversity of phenomena across typological systems, make this a significant challenge. This book addresses the challenge with a series of in-depth analyses of number across a typologically diverse sample, unified by a common set of descriptive and analytic questions from a semantic, morphological, syntactic, and discourse perspective. Each case study is devoted to a single language, or in a few cases to a language group. They are written by specialists who can rely on first-hand data or on material of difficult access, and can place the phenomena in the context of the respective system. The studies are preceded and concluded by critical overviews which frame the discussion and identify the main results and open questions. With specialist chapters breaking new ground, this book will help number specialists relate their results to other theoretical and empirical domains, and it will provide a reliable guide to all linguists and other researchers interested in number.




Phi Theory


Book Description

This book brings together the different strands and styles of research on Phi-features, such as person, number, and gender. It presents the core questions, major results, and new directions of this area of linguistic theory and shows how Phi Theory casts light on the nature of interfaces and the structure of the grammar.




Inflectional Defectiveness


Book Description

Paradigmatic gaps ('missing' inflected forms) have traditionally been considered to be the random detritus of a language's history and marginal exceptions to the normal functioning of its inflectional system. Arguing that this is a misperception, Inflectional Defectiveness demonstrates that paradigmatic gaps are in fact normal and expected products of inflectional structure. Sims offers an accessible exploration of how and why inflectional defectiveness arises, why it persists, and how it is learned. The book presents a theory of morphology which is rooted in the implicative structure of the paradigm. This systematic exploration of the topic also addresses questions of inflection class organization, the morphology-syntax interface, the structure of the lexicon, and the nature of productivity. Presenting a novel synthesis of established research and new empirical data, this work is significant for researchers and graduate students in all fields of linguistics.




Agreement and Its Failures


Book Description

A novel proposal regarding predicate-argument agreement that combines detailed empirical investigation with rigorous theoretical discussion. In this book, Omer Preminger investigates how the obligatory nature of predicate-argument agreement is enforced by the grammar. Preminger argues that an empirically adequate theory of predicate-argument agreement requires recourse to an operation, whose obligatoriness is a grammatical primitive not reducible to representational properties, but whose successful culmination is not enforced by the grammar. Preminger's argument counters contemporary approaches that find the obligatoriness of predicate-argument agreement enforced through representational means. The most prominent of these is Chomsky's “interpretability”-based proposal, in which the obligatoriness of predicate-argument agreement is enforced through derivational time bombs. Preminger presents an empirical argument against contemporary approaches that seek to derive the obligatory nature of predicate-argument agreement exclusively from derivational time bombs. He offers instead an alternative account based on the notion of obligatory operations better suited to the facts. The crucial data involves utterances that inescapably involve attempted-but-failed agreement and are nonetheless fully grammatical. Preminger combines a detailed empirical investigation of agreement phenomena in the Kichean (Mayan) languages, Zulu (Bantu), Basque, Icelandic, and French with an extensive and rigorous theoretical exploration of the far-reaching consequences of these data. The result is a novel proposal that has profound implications for the formalism that the theory of grammar uses to derive obligatory processes and properties.




Semantics. Volume 3


Book Description

No detailed description available for "SEMANTICS (MAIENBORN ET AL.) BD. 33.3 HSK E-BOOK".




The Morpheme


Book Description

This book develops a theory of the morpheme in the framework of Distributed Morphology. Particular emphasis is devoted to the way in which functional morphemes receive their phonological form post-syntactically, through the operation of Vocabulary Insertion. In addition to looking closely at syncretism, the primary motivation for Vocabulary Insertion, the book examines allomorphy, blocking, and other key topics in the theory of the morpheme.




Features


Book Description

This book presents a critical overview of current work on linguistic features - gender, number, case, person, etc. - and establishes new bases for their use in the study and understanding of language. It brings together perspectives from phonology to formal syntax and semantics, expounding features in typology, computer applications, and logic.




Ditransitive structures : the English preposition TO and the Romanian preposition LA


Book Description

This book examines the syntactic properties of the English preposition to and the Romanian preposition la ”at/to” within ditransitive structures. Being a study of comparative syntax from a generative perspective, it aims at bringing into discussion the properties of these two functional prepositions, in both English and Romanian. The comparative approach shows that the English to is a functional preposition, fully predictable from the structure of the verb which can be deleted. To is a case marker and the dative arguments introduced by this preposition are DPs. By way of contrast, Romanian la has shifted from a case marker to a [Person] marker. La has a double status, as follows: it has a functional status only when the Dat argument, analysed as DP can be doubled by the clitic, where la is a [Person] marker. In the absence of the clitic, la-phrases are interpreted as PPs and la will be attributed a lexical status. Thus, unlike the functional to, la is both (a) a functional dative marker and (b) a core lexical preposition of the location and movement frames where la assigns accusative case to its object.