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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Grammar, syntax, linguistic structure
This book, first published in 1970, is the reissue of the sixth edition of C. T. Onions' standard introductory text-book, based on the principles and requirements of the Grammatical Society. The Introduction is designed to provide a full scheme of sentence analysis. The rest of the book is arranged in two parts: Part I offers a treatment of syntactical phenomena based on the analysis of sentences, while Part II classifies the use of forms. This book will be of interest to students of English language and linguistics.
First published in 1986, this book focuses on Anaphoric relations in the English and French languages, a phenomenon that involves a complex interaction between grammar and discourse. Studies of anaphora taking a largely 'textual' approach to the subject have tended to underestimate the effect upon its formation of referential and discourse factors, while studies framed within a psycholinguistic and computational perspective have been inclined to minimise the importance of the purely linguistic features connected with anaphora. This volume places the study of anaphora upon a firmer foundation by examining both its nature and functions in discourse, by pinpointing the range of factors relevant to its operation in the two languages under study, and by attempting to relate the textual and interactional perspectives within a more comprehensive framework.
First published in 1991, this book examines the communicative properties of 'cleft' and 'pseudo-cleft' constructions in contemporary English. The book argues that these properties cannot be ignored in any attempt to provide an adequate grammatical description of the constructions. Furthermore, they provide a source of explanations for the patterns of stylistic variation displayed by clefts and pseudo-clefts. The book reports findings from a corpus-based study of clefts and pseudo-clefts in modern British English.
This study, first published in 1982, attempts to show that the foundations of a contextual grammar of English must be firmly based on an adequate definition of the sentence. This book will be of interest to students of language and linguistics.
First published in 1967, this book was based on new descriptions of English emerging from recent research. It provides an introduction to the study of the English language for the first-year university student. It will also be invaluable to all those concerned with the teaching and learning of English as a foreign or second language, particularly the teacher in training and the university student.
This work, first published in 1980, was a doctoral dissertation submitted to the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972. This study concerns certain aspects of the relationship between syntax and phonology in English and French. In particular, it represents an investigation of the universal conventions and language-particular readjustment rules which create the proper surface structure input to the phonological rules operating beyond the level of the word in French and English, and it offers a description of those phonological rules. This title will be of interest to students of language and linguistics.
First published in 1980, this book provides a clear and practical introduction to a wide variety of English structures. It concentrates on a large and crucial area of English grammar, which covers units of higher rank than words, and structures that have verbs rather than nouns as their nuclear elements. Throughout the book, David Young focuses on the English language as it is actually spoken. At every point his discussion of syntax is closely integrated with meaning, and he pays particular attention to the ways in which speakers of English signal their intensions. The author points out how verbal patterning is meaningful, and outlines the criteria used by grammarians to distinguish one structure from another. The result is an analytical framework that can be applied to any real-life text in order to understand its structure. This is a book that will encourage a realistic, exploratory and investigative attitude towards the English language.
First published in 1988, this book is concerned with the definite and indefinite articles in English. It provides an integrated pragmatic-semantic theory of definite and indefinite reference, on the basis of which, many co-occurance restrictions between articles and non-modifiers are explained. At the general theoretical level, the book looks at the role of semantics in the prediction of all and only the grammatical sentences of a language. At a more particular level, it explores the nature of reference, examining an important selection of subjects such as the contrast between definiteness and indefiniteness, the relationship between definite and demonstrative reference, and the relationship between pragmatic and logical aspects of determining meaning.
First published in 1991, this book looks at tense in English, one of the most controversial areas of grammar. Prior to the book's original publication, the problems and interest in the subject led to an impressive number of books and articles. Yet, despite the amount of work produced, nothing approaching a consensus had emerged, merely a series of conflicting theories and analyses. Here, Renaat Declerck provides a framework for a theoretical instrument which will enable the linguist to interpret the data correctly. The book is primarily theoretical in nature, but offers descriptive theory and a discussion of the various tenses which will make it a valuable tool for those teaching English. Theoretical and applied linguists will find this an important contribution to the debate on tense and a worthy starting point for future research. The book is not written from the viewpoint of any particular linguistic theory and does not presuppose any knowledge of tense theory, it is a readable and reliable guide to the area.
First published in 1979, this book develops a grammatically orientated semantics (as opposed to a semantically orientated grammar) of mood and condition in English. It seeks to establish correspondences between areas of semantic organisation ('planes') and surface grammar, without reverting to an intermediate notion of deep grammar. The chapters explore topics including the differences between 'literal meaning' and 'significance', speech roles, and constructions of condition and reason in terms of the four panes discussed earlier in the volume.
First published in 1988, this book explores the grammatical loss of gender in English. It demonstrates that from the end of the Old English period, there was a considerable time period, of about three hundred years, during which there existed "echoes" of the gender classification of nouns. The study records the best known conclusions concerning the behaviour of anaphoric pronouns under grammatical gender "stress" in the late Old English and Middle English periods. It focuses on a discussion of attributive word morphology in the noun phrase.
First published in 2003, this is a study of the syntactic behaviour of personal pronoun subjects and the indefinite pronoun man in Old English. It focuses on differences in word order as compared to full noun phrases. In generative work on Old English, noun phrases are usually divided into two categories: 'nominal' and 'pronominal'. The latter category has typically been restricted to personal pronouns, but despite striking similarities to the behaviour of nominals there were good reasons to believe that man should be grouped with personal pronouns. This book explores the investigation carried out with the aid of the Toronto Corpus, which confirmed this hypothesis.
Philologists aiming to reconstruct the grammar of ancient languages face the problem that the available data always underdetermine grammar, and in the case of gaps, possible mistakes, and idiosyncracies there are no native speakers to consult. The authors of this volume overcome this difficulty by adopting the methodology that a child uses in the course of language acquisition: they interpret the data they have access to in terms of Universal Grammar (more precisely, in terms of a hypothetical model of UG). Their studies, discussing syntactic and morphosyntactic questions of Older Egyptian, Coptic, Sumerian, Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, Classical Greek, Latin, and Classical Sanskrit, demonstrate that descriptive problems which have proved unsolvable for the traditional, inductive approach can be reduced to the interaction of regular operations and constraints of UG. The proposed analyses also bear on linguistic theory. They provide crucial new data and new generalizations concerning such basic questions of generative syntax as discourse-motivated movement operations, the correlation of movement and agreement, a shift from lexical case marking to structural case marking, the licensing of structural case in infinitival constructions, the structure of coordinate phrases, possessive constructions with an external possessor, and the role of event structure in syntax. In addition to confirming or refuting certain specific hypotheses, they also provide empirical evidence of the perhaps most basic tenet of generative theory, according to which UG is part of the genetic endowment of the human species - i.e., human languages do not "develop" parallel with the development of human civilization. Some of the languages examined in this volume were spoken as much as 5000 years old, still their grammars do not differ in any relevant respect from the grammars of languages spoken today.
The volume contains articles that focus on the interface between linguistic and conceptual knowledge. The issues addressed in the volume include the preconditions of every level of the language system that are required for the transformation of linguistic information into conceptual representations. In accordance with Chomsky's Minimalist language model, the language system is embedded into the performative systems where language is a part of the cognitive competence of human beings, i.e. system of articulation and perception (A/P) and the conceptual-intentional system (C/I). During the formation of linguistic structures, every performative system obtains well-formed representations as its input information. The articles of the volume show how interface conditions determine the linguistic representations on each level of the linguistic system. Interface conditions result in requirements for the ordering of linguistic elements. The syntactic transformation achieves a point, where the linguistic structure formation branches to two distinct representational levels. Both levels deliver instructions for the systems of performance A/P and C/I. Linearization takes place on the syntactic surface of a sentence. The linearization of linguistic elements is manifest at the derivational point of Spell-out and also on the level of the phonological form (PF). This means that on the one hand, linearization is relevant to the phonetic aspect of linguistic expressions, and on the other hand, the interpretation of linguistic utterances is based on hierarchical structures. On the level of Logical Form (LF) all operations apply which don't have any influence on the linear order in overt syntax. In addition they affect the generation of hierarchical structures. The structure obtained on LF is the representational format of the semantic form of a sentence.
This study brings together many of the resources needed for the exploration of English historical syntax and deals with many of the important changes in English sentence structure from Old English to present. It also features a survey of published research from both classical and modern linguistic traditions, as well as new research by the author. Provides guidance on methodology, important reference materials, and the general history of the English language.
This is a series which aims to meet the need for books on modern English that are both up-to-date and authoritative. The texts are ideal for the scholar, the teacher, and the student, but especially for English speaking students in overseas universities where English is the language of instruction, or advanced specialist students of English in foreign universities. Although English is probably the most studied language in the world, this is one of the first systematic comparisons of infinitives with and without the use of "to". Patrick Duffley examines these uses adopting the semantic approach, which shows that the two infinitive forms each have a basic meaning which is capable of explaining all of their particular uses. The author has carried out detailed research for this book, examining over 24,000 occurences of the infinitive, as well as taking into account the observations of previous grammarians. The book challenges old assumptions that grammar is independent of meaning and should be dealt with in purely formal terms. It also fulfils a need for literature on an area of English grammar which has sometimes been presumed to be chaotic and unsystematic. The text is aimed specialists in linguistics and advanced students of English as a second language.
This book provides a critical review of the development of generative grammar, both transformational and non-transformational, from the early 1960s to the present, and presents contemporary results in the context of an overall evaluation of recent research in the field. Geoffrey Horrocks compares Chomsky's approach to the study of grammar, culminating in Government and Binding theory, with two other theories which are deliberate reactions to this framework: Generalised Phrase Structure Grammar and Lexical-Functional Grammar. Whilst proponents of all three models regard themselves as generative grammarians, and share many of the same objectives, the differences between them nevertheless account for much of the recent debate in this subject. By presenting these different theories in the context of the issues that unite and divide them, the book highlights the problems which arise in any attempt to establish an adequate theory of grammatical representation.
This new study on modality in English represents a departure from more traditional approaches to the subject, where the modal auxiliaries have been the usual focus of attention, by examining in detail the nature of their association with different categories of modal adverb. Modality is notoriously complex but the present work offers an accessible introduction to the topic, a comprehensive account of modal-adverb co-occurrence, and a reappraisal of the English modal system. The descriptive framework draws fresh insights from syntactic, semantic and pragmatic approaches to the study of language and communication, and from recent work in corpus linguistics. The book includes contrastive reference to the expression of modality in Spanish and a discussion of modality in such applied contexts as language teaching. A major feature is its reliance on authentic spoken and written language data. The study is suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate students of linguistics, English language, communications studies and related disciplines.
This volume contains a collection of studies that survey recent research in developmental linguistics, illustrating the fruitful interaction between comparative syntax and language acquisition. The contributors each analyse a well defined range of acquisition data, aiming to derive them from primitive differences between child and adult grammar. The book covers cross-linguistic and cross-categorial phenomena, shedding light on major developments in this novel and rapidly growing field. Extensions to second language acquisition and neuropathology are also suggested.
Complex Words in English presents a comprehensive account of present-day word formation in English. Starting with a discussion of some basic issues, including the definition of 'word', motivation, lexicalization, productivity, the relevance of historical information and the usefulness of dictionaries and other data-bases, the book then moves on to describe in detail a variety of prefixing, suffixing and compounding patterns - all illustrated with copious up-to-date examples. Other topics that are explored in-depth include diminutives, backformation and other effects of reanalysis, Latin and Greek based formations and sound symbolism. Many examples are given in context: recent writing and the records of OED on CD ROM are drawn on to demonstrate the relationship between spontaneous coinages and familiar items. The comprehensive coverage allows an instructive overview and comparison of patterns and of the many and diverse factors relevant to the notion of productivity. Throughout, the discussions are placed in the context of other recent and less recent work in the area and the book also contains a useful extensive bibliography.
First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
History and Development of the Arabic Language is a general introduction for students to the history of the Arabic language. It is divided into two parts; the pre-Islamic language up to the emergence of the first well-known works of Classical Arabic. Secondly, the transition from the pre-Islamic situation to the complex Arabic language forms after the emergence of Islam and the Arab conquests, both in Arabia and in the diaspora. The book focuses on the pre-Islamic linguistic situation, where the linguistic geography and relevant demographic aspects of pre-Islamic Arabia will be introduced. In addition, the book will also discuss the communicative contexts and varieties of Modern Arabic. The book includes readings, discussion questions and data sets to provide a complete textbook and resource for teachers and students of the history of Arabic.
This volume has its origins in an international conference on emotions organized by the Polish Association for the Study of English and held at the University of Wroclaw in April 2015. In the course of the conference, it became clear that emotions are productively explored with relation to motion for the reason that emotion(s) and motion(s) constitute profoundly intertwined dimensions of physical and cultural embodiment reflected in language. The relationship between motion(s) and emotion(s) became the underlying theme of this volume, which comprises nineteen contributions presenting exploratory and applicative accounts of (e)motion(s) situated in topical research areas of linguistic theory, second language acquisition, and translation studies.
The book offers a detailed account of English influence on German based on a large scale corpus analysis of the newsmagazine 'Der Spiegel'. The study is structured into three parts covering fundamental questions and as of yet unsolved and disputed issues in the domain of anglicism research and language contact. Part 1 discusses the terminological uncertainty in the field, puts forward a model of the influence of English on German, and proposes a principled classification of the term anglicism. Part 2 portrays the numerical impact of anglicisms in an extensive corpus and draws general conclusions about the overall quantitative influence of English on German. Part 3 conclusively investigates the integration of anglicisms in German across the various lexical and syntactic paradigms. Particular focus is attributed to the salient morphological features of gender, plural, genitive case, and to verbal and adjectival inflection. Furthermore, word formational processes are substantively analyzed including compounding, derivation, and peripheral types of word formation. A functional classification of written codeswitching concludes part 3, and the book closes with a brief outlook on future challenges of anglicism research. In its breadth and detailed manner of analysis, the study sets the current standards of research in the field.
Modern Chinese Grammar provides a comprehensive coverage of Chinese grammar through the clause-pivot theory and the double triangle approach, first proposed by Fuyi Xing in 1996. Translated into English for the first time, the book is widely regarded by linguists as a seminal text, and ground-breaking in linguistics research. The book contains discussion of the topics which are essential to Chinese grammar, from words and phrases, to complex sentences and sentence groups. It addresses such controversial issues as word class identification, the distinction between words and phrases, and between clauses and complex sentences. The book also shows, through a wealth of examples, how the clause-pivot theory and the double triangle approach can be applied productively in grammatical studies. Modern Chinese Grammar: A Clause-Pivot Theoretical Approach is an essential purchase for researchers and graduate students of Chinese grammar and syntax. |
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