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1
Tomić, Olga Mišeska. Balkan Sprachbund Morpho-Syntactic Features. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2006. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4488-7.
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Brill, Frances. Analysing syntactic and textual linguistic features in relation to text-type and mode. Manchester: University of Manchester, 1995.
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Volpato, Francesca. Relative Clauses, Phi Features, and Memory Skills. Venice: Edizioni Ca' Foscari, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-392-2.
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This volume deals with the syntactic competence of Italian-speaking individuals with hearing impairment (cochlear implant users and LIS signers) and individuals with normal hearing (children, adolescents, and adults), focusing on relative clauses, a central topic in current research. The volume also presents the participants’ performance in different memory tasks discussing the relationship between sentence comprehension and memory resources in children with hearing impairment and with normal hearing.
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Marcato, Enrico. Personal Names in the Aramaic Inscriptions of Hatra. Venice: Edizioni Ca' Foscari, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-231-4.
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This book offers a comprehensive linguistic evaluation of the 376 personal names attested in the roughly 600 Aramaic inscriptions of Hatra, the famous Northern Mesopotamian city that flourished in the Parthian age, between the 1st century BC and the 3rd century AD. This study benefits from the publication of many Hatran inscriptions during recent decades, which have yielded rich onomastic data, and some fresh readings of these epigraphic sources. This work is subdivided into three main parts: an “Onomastic Catalogue”, a “Linguistic Analysis”, and a “Concordances Section”. The “Catalogue” is organized as a list of entries, in which every name is transliterated, translated (whenever possible), discussed from an etymological perspective, provided with onomastic parallels, and accompanied by its attestations in the Hatran Aramaic corpus. The “Catalogue” is followed by a “Linguistic Analysis” which describes, firstly, the principal orthographic, phonological, morphological, and syntactical features of Hatran names. The linguistic discussion proper is followed by a semantic taxonomy of the names which make up the corpus and an overview of the religious significance of the theophoric names. “Charts of Concordances” end the book.
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Jónsson, Jóhannes Gísli, and Thórhallur Eythórsson, eds. Syntactic Features and the Limits of Syntactic Change. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198832584.001.0001.
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This volume brings together the latest diachronic research on syntactic features and their role in restricting syntactic change. The chapters address a central theoretical issue in diachronic syntax: whether syntactic variation can always be attributed to differences in the features of items in the lexicon, as the Borer-Chomsky conjecture proposes. In answering this question, all the chapters develop analyses of syntactic change couched within a formalist framework in which rich hierarchical structures and abstract features of various kinds play an important role. The first three parts of the volume explore the different domains of the clause, namely the C-domain, the T-domain and the νP/VP-domain respectively, while chapters in the final part are concerned with establishing methodology in diachronic syntax and modelling linguistic correspondences. The contributors draw on extensive data from a large number of languages and dialects, including several that have received little attention in the literature on diachronic syntax, such as Romeyka, a Greek variety spoken in Turkey, and Middle Low German, previously spoken in northern Germany. Other languages are explored from a fresh theoretical perspective, including Hungarian, Icelandic, and Austronesian languages. The volume sheds light not only on specific syntactic changes from a cross-linguistic perspective but also on broader issues in language change and linguistic theory.
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Tomic, Olga Miseska. Balkan Sprachbund Morpho-Syntactic Features. Tomic Olga M, 2010.
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Dworkin, Steven N. Syntactic features of medieval Hispano-Romance. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199687312.003.0004.
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This chapter describes selected issues of noun phrase, verb phrase, and sentential syntax. It emphasizes differences between the selected constructions in Old Spanish and in the modern standard language. Specific issues discussed include the function of determiners, the use of subject pronouns, the preverbal or postverbal placement of clitic object pronouns, direct object marking, and issues involving subject-verb-object and noun-adjective word order. The section on verbal syntax examines the use of the present, imperfect, and preterit tenses in medieval Hispano-Romance, the syntax of analytic or compound tenses, the syntactic differences between the synthetic and analytic futures, the syntax and semantics of the subjunctive, and the syntax of aver/tener and ser/estar.
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Hirst, Daniel. Intonative Features: A Syntactic Approach to English Intonation. De Gruyter, Inc., 2019.
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Tomic, Olga M., and Olga Mišeska Tomić. Balkan Sprachbund Morpho-Syntactic Features (Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory). Springer, 2006.
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10
Arregui, Ana, María Luisa Rivero, and Andrés Salanova, eds. Modality Across Syntactic Categories. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198718208.001.0001.
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This volume explores the extremely rich diversity found under the “modal umbrella” in natural language. Offering a cross-linguistic perspective on the encoding of modal meanings that draws on novel data from an extensive set of languages, the book supports a view according to which modality infuses a much more extensive number of syntactic categories and levels of syntactic structure than has traditionally been thought. The volume distinguishes between “low modality,” which concerns modal interpretations that associate with the verbal and nominal cartographies in syntax, “middle modality” or modal interpretation associated to the syntactic cartography internal to the clause, and “high modality” that relates to the cartography known as the left periphery. By offering enticing combinations of cross-linguistic discussions of the more studied sources of modality together with novel or unexpected sources of modality, the volume presents specific case studies that show how meanings associated with low, middle, and high modality crystallize across a large variety of languages. The chapters on low modality explore modal meanings in structures that lack the complexity of full clauses, including conditional readings in noun phrases and modal features in lexical verbs. The chapters on middle modality examine the effects of tense and aspect on constructions with counterfactual readings, and on those that contain canonical modal verbs. The chapters on high modality are dedicated to constructions with imperative, evidential, and epistemic readings, examining, and at times challenging, traditional perspectives that syntactically associate these interpretations with the left periphery of the clause.
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Ruda, Marta. Syntactic representation of null arguments. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198815853.003.0010.
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Focusing on definite-argument drop, this chapter puts forward the hypothesis that null arguments are minimally represented as [nPn] and maximally as a fully-fledged pronoun ([DP D [PersP Pers [NumP Num [nPn]]]] or [PersP Pers [NumP Num [nPn]]]). The (un)availability of such arguments in a language is a consequence of independent features of its grammar: the lexical specification of its nominalizing n heads (esp. their association with phonetic material) and the avaialbility of post-syntactic type-shifting operations (esp. ι). The working of this approach is illustrated mostly with data from English, Polish, and Kashubian. The two latter languages are argued here to differ from English with respect to the inflectional properties of their nouns, as well as with respect to the mechanisms of NP interpretation. The chapter discusses the predictions thehypothesis makes about the identity of null arguments with respect to cross-linguistic variation in the patterns of argument omission.
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Bjorkman, Bronwyn M., and Daniel Currie Hall, eds. Contrast and Representations in Syntax. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198817925.001.0001.
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Syntactic contrasts, the systems of grammatical oppositions that exist within individual languages, are typically formally encoded in terms of features. The nature of syntactic contrast is tied to a fundamental question in generative syntactic theory: What is universal in syntax (and in language more generally), and what is variable? This volume explores the dual role of features, on the one hand defining a set of paradigmatic contrasts, and other the other hand acting as the building blocks of syntactic structures and the drivers of syntactic operations. In both roles, features are increasingly seen as the locus of parametric variation. The identification of parameters with features has opened up new possibilities for exploring connections between the morphological system of a language and its syntax, and suggests a new role for featural contrast in syntactic theory. The papers collected here represent a diversity of topics, perspectives, and concerns, but are united by an interest in morphosyntactic representations, and in the formal encoding of syntactic contrasts.
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Gutzmann, Daniel. The Grammar of Expressivity. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198812128.001.0001.
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While the expressive function of natural language has received much attention in recent years, the role grammar plays in the interpretation of expressive items has mainly been neglected in the semantic and pragmatic literature. On the other hand, while there have been syntactic studies of some expressive phenomena they do not explicitly connect to recent developments in semantics. This book bridges this gap, showing that semantics and pragmatics alone cannot capture all grammatical particularities of expressive items and that expressivity has strong syntactic reflexes that interact with the semantic interpretation and account for the mismatches between the syntax and semantics of these phenomena. The main thesis he argues for—the hypothesis of expressive syntax—is that expressivity is a syntactic feature, on a par with other established syntactic features like tense or gender. Evidence for this claim is drawn from three detailed case studies of expressive phenomena: expressive adjectives, expressive intensifiers, and expressive vocatives. These expressions exhibit some puzzling properties and by developing an account of them employing minimalist approaches to syntactic features and agreement, the author shows that expressivity, as a syntactic feature, can partake in agreement operations, trigger movement, and syntactically be selected for. This not only provides indirect evidence for the hypothesis of expressive syntax and extends the usefulness of operations on syntactic features operation beyond their traditional domains, but also highlights the hidden role grammar may play for phenomena that are often considered to be solely semantic in nature.
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van der Wal, Jenneke. Bantu Syntax. Oxford University Press, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935345.013.50.
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This chapter provides an overview of the common syntactic features as well as the syntactic microvariation found in the Bantu languages. It particularly highlights the importance of information structure for the analysis of morphosyntax in this language family: word order, valency, voice, tense-aspect marking, subject and object marking can all be influenced and affected by the information structure expressed in the sentence. The chapter furthermore shows how Bantu languages, despite their shared basic SVO word order, noun classes and extensive verbal morphology, display a remarkable variation in the conditions determining agreement relations and word order. This has influenced syntactic theory formation in the past and should continue to do so now that more data and analyses of Bantu syntactic phenomena become available.
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Wood, Jim, and Alec Marantz. The interpretation of external arguments. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198767886.003.0011.
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This chapter examines the syntactic and semantic properties of heads, e.g. Voice, Appl, and little p, that add participants to events. Instead of assuming that such heads exist as distinct primitives in the functional lexicon, it is proposed that there is one such head, which can get different interpretations depending on how it is merged into the structure. The chapter’s approach attributes the relative uniformity of the expression of argument structure to the principles that interpret syntactic structure semantically; thus, syntax is truly autonomous, with the atoms of syntactic representations carrying no inherent semantic values. Once syntactic heads are absolved from the necessity of explicitly carrying certain features relevant to their interpretation, a sparse inventory of functional heads can be developed. The system is applied to a set of constructions that present distinct challenges to theories that demand a kind of transparent reflection of argument structure in underlying syntactic representations.
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Bárány, András. Differential object marking in Hungarian. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198804185.003.0002.
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This chapter provides an overview of differential object agreement in Hungarian. Finite verbs in Hungarian always agree with the subject in person and number, and sometimes agree with the object. Generally, the trigger of object agreement is argued to be related to definiteness. It is argued that while both syntactic and semantic properties are relevant for determining object agreement, the syntactic structure of the object is the main factor: objects have to be DPs to agree, and can sometimes even be indefinite. The focus is on lexical, third person noun phrases, including common nouns and proper names, and modifiers like numerals, different types of quantifiers. The main claim is that objects that trigger agreement have a person feature, which makes them referential, but objects that do not trigger agreement lack person features.
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Alqassas, Ahmad. A Unified Theory of Polarity Sensitivity. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197554883.001.0001.
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This book examines polarity sensitivity—a ubiquitous phenomenon involving expressions such as anybody, nobody, ever, never, and somebody and their counterparts in other languages, with particular focus on Arabic. These expressions belong to different classes such as negative and positive polarity, negative concord, and negative indefinites, which led to examining their syntax and semantics separately. In this book, Ahmad Alqassas pursues a unified approach that relies on examining the interaction between the various types of polarity sensitivity. Treating this interaction is fundamental for scrutinizing their licensing conditions. Alqassas draws on data from Standard Arabic and the major regional dialects represented by Jordanian, Egyptian, Moroccan, and Qatari. The book provides a new perspective on the syntax–semantic interface and develops a unified syntactic analysis for polarity sensitivity. Through the (micro)comparative approach, Alqassas explains the distributional contrasts with a minimal set of universal syntactic operations such as Merge, Move, and Agree, and a fine-grained inventory of negative formal features for polarity items and their licensors. The features are simple invisibles that paint a complex landscape of polarity. The results suggest that syntactic computation of Arabic polarity (externally merged in the left periphery) is subservient to the conceptual–intentional interface. Alqassas argues for last resort insertion of covert negation operators in the CP layer to interpret non-strict NCIs, which is an extra mechanism that serves the semantic interface but adds to the complexity of syntactic computation. Likewise, head NPIs in the left periphery require licensing by operators higher than the tense phrase, adding more constraints on the syntactic licensing.
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Zbikowski, Lawrence M. Music and Emotion. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653637.003.0003.
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This chapter explores the relationship between music and emotion, beginning with a review of research on emotion, followed by a review of research on music and emotion. It is proposed that the connection between music and the emotions reflects music’s capacity to provide sonic analogs for some of the most salient aspects of emotion processes. This proposal is illustrated through analyses of two movements from J. S. Bach’s cantata “Ich habe genug,” which make explicit two important features of musical grammar: syntactic processes and syntactic layers. The chapter concludes with observations about the ways music is used to shape emotional responses within liturgical settings of the kind that motivated and framed Bach’s cantata.
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Pescarini, Diego. Romance Object Clitics. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198864387.001.0001.
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This book focuses on the evolution of object clitic pronouns in the Romance languages. It aims to explore the empirical facets of cliticization and elaborate on the theoretical ramifications of the topic. On the empirical side, the book deals with data ranging from Latin to modern languages and less well-known dialects from all areas of Romance. Medieval vernaculars take centre stage both in the reconstruction of the evolution from Latin to Romance and in the modelling of clitic placement in the modern languages. Syntactic, phonological, and morphological aspects are examined, but the main focus is on syntactic placement, which is the hallmark of Romance clitics. On the theoretical side, the books engage with the previous literature, in particular with Generative literature. In recent decades, our understanding of Romance clitics has grown in symbiosis with the Generative theory, and the importance of most empirical findings cannot be fully appreciated without being acquainted with the terms of the ongoing debate. The book challenges the received idea that cliticization resulted from a form of syntactic deficiency. Instead, it proposes that clitics resulted from the feature endowment of discourse features, which caused freezing of certain pronominal forms first and—through reanalysis—their successive incorporation into verbal hosts. This approach entails revising analyses of well-known phenomena such as interpolation, climbing, and enclisis/proclisis alternations (the so-called Tobler-Mussafia law), and addressing orthogonal phenomena such as V2 syntax, scrambling, and stylistic fronting.
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Yust, Jason. Hypermeter, Form, and Closure. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190696481.003.0008.
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Closural strength of cadences is an important syntactic feature of tonal music, and is traditionally defined by means of harmonic and melodic, but not rhythmic, features. This chapter discusses the importance of hypermeter to the effect of closure, focusing especially on the important role of cadential elision in preventing closure. The denial of closure via elision is important at the end of the sonata form expositions. Separation of rhythmic, formal, and tonal closure as distinct phenomena informs recent debates on this topic. Beethoven’s use of hypermetrical means to deny closure was an important stage in his development of new approaches to musical form in his middle period, specifically the method of open expositions.
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Lavidas, Nikolaos. Case in diachrony: Or, why Greek is not English. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198747840.003.0009.
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Greek demonstrates both a change from inner (Aktionsart) into outer (grammatical) aspect as well as a change from demonstratives into definite articles, as does English. Even though aspect and definiteness are connected with Case, we argue that the tendencies in Greek with regard to the Case system differ in several aspects from the development of the Case system in English. We consider changes in the Case system of Greek in relation to syntactic properties of the clause, and in particular the realization of +/-interpretable features in inner and outer aspect. We argue that the change that takes place in the history of Greek involves a transitional stage in Ancient Greek where the relevant features can appear on the Trans[itivity] head (outer aspect) or the (inner) Asp[ect] head. The completion of the change in Post-Koine Greek involves the loss of the interpretable feature on Asp; thus Case remains (uninterpretable) on the higher Trans head.
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Haspelmath, Martin. Theoretical Approaches to the Functions of Indefinite Pronouns. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198235606.003.0005.
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This chapter focuses on various theoretical approaches to the semantic and syntactic functions of indefinite pronouns. It begins with a discussion of structuralist semantics, which suggests that language is a system whose parts must be defined and described on the basis of their place in the system and their relation to each other, rather than on the basis of their own intrinsic properties. It then considers some of the problems associated with structuralist semantics, including the unclear status of the semantic features; significant overlap of the functions of grammatical items in many areas, including indefinite pronouns; and structuralist semantics makes wrong predictions about semantic change. The chapter proceeds by analysing logical semantics and the issues raised by this approach, along with syntactic approaches, the theory of mental spaces, pragmatic scales and scale reversal. Finally, it explains the relationship between focusing and sentence accent.
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Whitman, John, and Yohei Ono. Diachronic interpretations of word order parameter cohesion. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198747840.003.0004.
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This chapter uses statistical tools to investigate the interrelationship between typological features in the World Atlas of Language Structures Online (Dryer and Haspelmath 2013) in the WALS 201 language sample, with the objective of determining how crosscategorial word order generalizations might emerge as the result of syntactic change. Multiple Correspondence Analysis and a variety of cluster analyses show that word order features tend to group along the familiar lines of the Head Parameter. But there is an important caveat to this, previously noticed by Albu (2006): word order features in NP (e.g. [Order of noun and determiner], [Order of noun and adjective]) group separately from word order features in VP and PP, with the exception of [Order of noun and genitive]. We provide a diachronic explanation for this fact: nouns and their arguments may be reanalysed as PPs, or in the case of reanalysed nominalizations, clauses.
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Watson, Janet. South Arabian and Arabic dialects. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198701378.003.0011.
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This chapter examines phonological, morphological, lexical, and syntactic data from a number of contemporary Arabic varieties spoken within historical Yemen—i.e. within the borders of current Yemen and up into southern ˁAsīr in Saudi Arabia—with (a) data from the Ancient South Arabian language, Sabaic; (b) what has been called ‘Ḥimyaritic’, as spoken during the early centuries of Islam; and (c) the Modern South Arabian languages, Mehri and Śḥerɛ̄t. These comparisons show a significant number of shared features. The density of shared features and the nature of sharing exhibited lead to the tentative suggestion that some of these varieties may be continuations of South Arabian with an Arabic overlay rather than Arabic with a South Arabian substratum.
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Baptista, Marlyse. Pidgins and Creoles. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935345.013.13.
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This chapter offers an overview of the controversies surrounding the study of creole syntax while evaluating representative studies. This overview includes proposals that cast creoles as a “type” of languages, proposals that view creoles as interlanguages and resulting from second language acquisition, and proposals that consider them as hybrid grammars yielding innovative feature recombinations due to language contact. It also discusses the benefits of the Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Structures, as it lays out a promising new direction in the investigation of pidgins and creoles by offering systematic comparisons of a large sample of creoles and their source languages. This collaborative Atlas provides broad empirical coverage, testing the hypotheses reflected by the various positions and schools of thought discussed in this chapter while unveiling the rich diversity of creole syntactic features.
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Elementary Syntactic Structures: Prospects of a Feature-Free Syntax. Cambridge University Press, 2019.
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Boeckx, Cedric. Elementary Syntactic Structures: Prospects of a Feature-Free Syntax. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
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Mooney, Raymond J. Machine Learning. Edited by Ruslan Mitkov. Oxford University Press, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199276349.013.0020.
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This article introduces the type of symbolic machine learning in which decision trees, rules, or case-based classifiers are induced from supervised training examples. It describes the representation of knowledge assumed by each of these approaches and reviews basic algorithms for inducing such representations from annotated training examples and using the acquired knowledge to classify future instances. Machine learning is the study of computational systems that improve performance on some task with experience. Most machine learning methods concern the task of categorizing examples described by a set of features. These techniques can be applied to learn knowledge required for a variety of problems in computational linguistics ranging from part-of-speech tagging and syntactic parsing to word-sense disambiguation and anaphora resolution. Finally, this article reviews the applications to a variety of these problems, such as morphology, part-of-speech tagging, word-sense disambiguation, syntactic parsing, semantic parsing, information extraction, and anaphora resolution.
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Abondolo, Daniel. Uralic Languages. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935345.013.6.
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All but three of the thirty-nine Uralic languages are endangered, most of them seriously so; of the family’s ten main branches, only two have members considered safe (Finnish and Estonian of the Fennic branch, plus Hungarian). This chapter surveys a selection of phonological, morphological, and syntactic features of the Uralic languages; the emphasis is on presenting aspects that are usually ignored, oversimplified, or misrepresented. Among the topics broached are vowel harmony; consonant gradation, which in the Uralic context is of four distinct kinds, three of them quite old; less-than-agglutinative (i.e. fairly fusional features of several languages); problems of phonological reconstruction; the inflection of personal pronouns; person marking on nouns and Subject, Agent, and Object marking on verbs; and kinds of relative, complement, and support clauses.
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Arregui, Ana, María Luisa Rivero, and Andrés Salanova. Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198718208.003.0001.
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This chapter offers an introduction to the book. Modality is a core research topic for most disciplines interested in language, including linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. By putting forward specific case studies across an extensive range of languages, the chapters in this book allow us to gain insights into features that are common across languages in the construction of modal meanings, as well as into constraints that are language-specific. The broad range of syntactic and morphological configurations under study in this book succeed in giving readers a sense of the extremely rich diversity found in natural language under the “modal umbrella.”
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Weiß, Helmut. The Wackernagel complex and pronoun raising. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198813545.003.0008.
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In many Indo-European languages, pronouns (and other clitic-like elements) tend to appear in second position or near it. This phenomenon was first described by Jakob Wackernagel, after whom the position is named the Wackernagel position (WP). This chapter describes the emergence of the WP in German where it is the third position following SpecCP and C. Since subject clitics in the WP interact phonologically and morphologically with verbs and complementizers in C, three additional syntactic features (double agreement, complementizer agreement, partial pro-drop) are associated with the WP in German (forming the so-called Wackernagel complex). The chapter surveys the evidence for the existence of the WP in OHG and, to a lesser extent, in MHG, using the additional features as diagnostics. It also contains a new explanation of how complementizer agreement could have emerged.
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Mathieu, Éric, and Robert Truswell. Micro-change and macro-change in diachronic syntax. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198747840.003.0001.
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This introduction discusses current trends in diachronic linguistics with a focus on syntactic change and reviews the fifteen other chapters included in the volume. In the spirit of modern diachronic syntax, the selected articles show that very general patterns of change, emergent, multigenerational diachronic phenomena, interact with small, discrete, local, intergenerational changes in the lexical specification of grammatical features. General topics include acquisition biases, cross-categorial word order generalizations, typological particularities and universals, language contact, and transitional changes, while specific linguistic topics include tense and viewpoint aspect, directional/aspectual affixes, V2, V3, Stylistic Fronting, directional/aspectual prefixes, negation, accusative and dative marking, analytic passives, complementizer agreement, and control and raising verbs.
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Aboh, Enoch. Information Structure. Edited by Caroline Féry and Shinichiro Ishihara. Oxford University Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199642670.013.004.
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This chapter discusses the cartographic approach to clause structure according to which information structure directly relates to syntactic heads that project within the clausal left periphery. This view is supported by data from languages in which information-structure-sensitive notions (e.g. topic, focus) are encoded by means of discourse markers that trigger various constituent displacement rules. Such empirical facts are compatible with the cartographic view in which lexical choices condition information packaging and clause structure. Put together, the cross-linguistic data presented in this chapter indicate that [FOCUS], [TOPIC], and [INTERROGATIVE] represent formal features that are properties of lexical elements and may sometimes trigger generalized-piping and snowballing movement.
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Nilipour, Reza. Neurolinguistics. Edited by Anousha Sedighi and Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198736745.013.18.
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This chapter summarizes some first neurolinguistic studies conducted in Persian, using patholinguistic data taken from monolingual and bilingual brain-damaged patients, as well as five first neuroimaging studies in healthy native speakers of Persian. The patholinguistic data are extracted from formal clinical linguistic assessments of a heterogeneous group of brain-damaged patients with different etiologies and brain lesion sites. The data are indicative of general agrammatic features of ‘syntactic simplification’ and ‘morphological regression’ reported in cross-language studies, along with language-particular agrammatic features in spoken and written modalities for Persian consequent to brain damage. The present patholinguistic data are also suggestive of a ‘non-unitary’ model of aphasia as a symptom complex phenomenon with disruptions of independent linguistic levels consequent to different lesion sites. The data are not supportive of independent production and comprehension language centres claimed in ‘classical model’ of brain and language but in support of new non-narrow localization brain–language models.
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Sheehan, Michelle. Parameterizing Ergativity: An Inherent Case Approach. Edited by Jessica Coon, Diane Massam, and Lisa Demena Travis. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198739371.013.3.
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This chapter posits a parameter hierarchy to capture micro-parametric variation in ergative (or rather non-accusative) alignment, building on the proposal that ergative is an inherent case, assigned by little vs. Initial parameters determine the distribution of this inherent case across instances of little v in a given language, sensitive to various thematic features, and subsequent dependent parameters determine further properties of ergative-assigning vs such as the presence of a movement trigger and the suppression of structural Case features. This gives rise to a number of distinct ergative types depending on the distribution of ergative case, the presence/absence of syntactic ergativity, and the source of absolutive case in transitive contexts. The resultant parameter hierarchy serves to restrict the space of variation, modeling a number of proposed implicational universals in this domain, and provides a potential solution to the subset problem in acquisition by encoding a notion of relative markedness.
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Filppula, Markku. Convergent Developments between “Old” and “New” Englishes. Edited by Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, and Devyani Sharma. Oxford University Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199777716.013.023.
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This chapter focuses on some features shared by “Old” and “New” varieties of English. “Old” refers here to varieties of English spoken in Britain only (i.e., English English and/or British English). They represent the longest-established varieties of English and are part of the hardcore of the L1 or the “Inner Circle” of Englishes. “New” varieties, in this context, are ones that have arisen in colonial or postcolonial contexts (the “Outer Circle”) and also comprise historically L2 varieties, such as Irish English, that have evolved as a result of language shift. This chapter examines three syntactic features that show similar developments in both New and Old varieties: the use of some modal auxiliaries, especially WILL/SHALL, some “extended” uses of the progressive, and finally, combinations of these two, especially WILL/SHALL + be V-ing. All three display convergent developments that suggest a leading role for the New Englishes rather than the Old varieties.
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Speyer, Augustin. Periphrastic verb forms. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198813545.003.0015.
Full textAbstract:
The origin of periphrastic verb forms in German is seen in the context of an articulated grammaticalization theory, where grammaticalization is understood as a series of a semantic change (‘bleaching’, read as: stripping of semantic features) followed by a syntactic reanalysis with subsequent extension. The development of several German periphrastic forms is illustrated under this view, focusing on the passive, the periphrastic perfect, and the future tense. Two waves of grammaticalization are distinguished, one in OHG (passive, perfect), one in MHG (future tense). Differences in the ordering frequencies of the non-finite and finite part of the verb form between some forms suggest structural differences, which might mirror different stages in the grammaticalization process.
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Axel-Tober, Katrin. Origins of verb-second in Old High German. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198813545.003.0003.
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This chapter investigates the characteristics of the left sentence periphery in Old High German. In the earlier OHG prose texts we still find some archaic characteristics of a non- or pre-verb-second grammar. These include residual and partly productive features of a non-conflated C-domain arguably inherited from Proto-Germanic or even Proto-Indo-European. On the other hand, there is ample evidence that the precursor of the so-called prefield position already existed in OHG and that it was already a target for both operator movement and Stylistic Fronting. All these phenomena shed interesting light on the question of which syntactic steps the language had to take in order consolidate its verb-second grammar.
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Faarlund, Jan Terje. The Syntax of Mainland Scandinavian. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198817918.001.0001.
Full textAbstract:
The term Mainland Scandinavian covers the North Germanic languages spoken in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and parts of Finland. There is a continuum of mutually intelligible standard languages, regional varieties, and dialects stretching from southern Jutland to Eastern Finland. Linguistically, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are thus to be considered one language. Most syntactic patterns and features are shared among the national and regional varieties, but there are also interesting differences. This book presents the main syntactic structures of this language, with the focus on the standard languages, but some widespread or typologically interesting non-standard phenomena are included. This is mainly a descriptive work, with a minimum of technical formalities and theoretical discussion. The theoretical background and descriptive framework is generative grammar in its current version, known as ‘minimalism’. The minimalist architecture partly determines the ‘bottom-up’ organization of the book, with separate chapters or subchapters dealing with each of the phrase types, starting with the lexical phrases. After an introductory chapter, chapter 2 deals with the noun phrase and the determiner phrase. Chapters 3–5 deal with lexical phrase types with adjectives, prepositions. and verbs as their heads. Chapter 6 deals with the TP domain, and chapter 7 with the CP domain. The last three chapters deal with more specific topics, subordination, anaphor binding, and conjunction, and ellipsis.
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Rumph, Stephen. Topical Figurae. Edited by Danuta Mirka. Oxford University Press, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199841578.013.019.
Full textAbstract:
Musical topics have invited comparison with language ever since Leonard Ratner adopted the rhetorical termtopos. Yet topic theory has not addressed the “double articulation” of language: while words function as meaningful signs, they are articulated by meaningless elements, what Louis Hjelmslev referred to collectively as “figurae.” This chapter develops an analogous theory of topical figurae, structural features that articulate multiple topics but do not themselves signify topically, adapting concepts from phonology (deletion, markedness, assimilation, neutralization). The musical analyses explore both the semantic and syntactic implications of topical figurae, focusing on Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony and Mozart’s Piano Sonata in F major, K. 332. Embedded equally in the musical structure and the topical code, figurae bridge the gap between formal analysis and cultural hermeneutics and can lead to a more holistic understanding of topical meaning.
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Dworkin, Steven N. Anthology of texts. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199687312.003.0006.
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This short anthology contains extracts from three Castilian prose texts, one from the second half of the thirteenth century (General estoria IV of Alfonso X the Wise), one from the first half of the fourteenth century (El conde Lucanor of don Juan Manuel), and one from near the mid-point of the fifteenth century (Atalaya de las corónicas of Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, Arcipreste de Talavera). These passages illustrate in context many of the phonological, orthographic, morphological, syntactic, and lexical features of medieval Hispano-Romance described in the body of this book. A linguistic commentary discussing relevant forms and constructions, as well as the meaning of lexical items no longer used or employed with different meanings in modern Spanish, with cross references to the appropriate sections in the five main chapters, accompanies each selection.
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Dworkin, Steven N. A Guide to Old Spanish. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199687312.001.0001.
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This book describes the linguistic structures that constitute Medieval or Old Spanish as preserved in texts written prior to the beginning of the sixteenth century. It emphasizes those structures that contrast with the modern standard language. Chapter 1 presents methodological issues raised by the study of a language preserved only in written sources. Chapter 2 examines questions involved in reconstructing the sound system of Old Spanish before discussing relevant phonetic and phonological details. The chapter ends with an overview of Old Spanish spelling practices. Chapter 3 presents in some detail the nominal, verbal, and pronominal morphology of the language, with attention to regional variants. Chapter 4 describes selected syntactic structures, with emphasis on the noun phrase, verb phrase, object pronoun placement, subject-verb-object word order, verb tense, aspect, and mood. Chapter 5 begins with an extensive list of Old Spanish nouns, adjectives, verbs, and function words that have not survived into the modern standard language. It then presents examples of coexisting variants (doublets) and changes of meaning, and finishes with an overview of the creation of neologisms in the medieval language through derivational morphology (prefixation, suffixation, compounding). The book concludes with an anthology composed of three extracts from Spanish prose texts, one each from the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. The extracts contain footnotes that highlight relevant morphological, syntactic, and lexical features, with cross references to the relevant sections in the body of the book.
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Harabagiu, Sanda, and Dan Moldovan. Question Answering. Edited by Ruslan Mitkov. Oxford University Press, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199276349.013.0031.
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Textual Question Answering (QA) identifies the answer to a question in large collections of on-line documents. By providing a small set of exact answers to questions, QA takes a step closer to information retrieval rather than document retrieval. A QA system comprises three modules: a question-processing module, a document-processing module, and an answer extraction and formulation module. Questions may be asked about any topic, in contrast with Information Extraction (IE), which identifies textual information relevant only to a predefined set of events and entities. The natural language processing (NLP) techniques used in open-domain QA systems may range from simple lexical and semantic disambiguation of question stems to complex processing that combines syntactic and semantic features of the questions with pragmatic information derived from the context of candidate answers. This article reviews current research in integrating knowledge-based NLP methods with shallow processing techniques for QA.
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Downing, Laura J., and Larry M. Hyman. Information Structure in Bantu. Edited by Caroline Féry and Shinichiro Ishihara. Oxford University Press, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199642670.013.010.
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For some 40 years, the role that information structure (IS) plays in the grammatical structure of the ca. 500 Bantu languages has been the topic of considerable research. In this chapter we review the role of prosody, morphology and syntax in expressing IS in Bantu languages. We show that prosodic prominence does not play an important role; rather syntax and morphology are more important. For example, syntactic constructions like clefts and and immediately after the verb position correlate with focus, while dislocations correlate with topic. Among the morphological properties relevant to IS are the “inherently focused” TAM features (progressive, imperative, negative etc.) and the “conjoint-disjoint” distinction on verbs, as well as well as the presence vs. absence of the Bantu augment on nominals. Finally, we consider a range of tonal effects which at least indirectly correlate with IS (tonal domains, metatony, tone cases).
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Bobaljik, Jonathan David, and Heidi Harley. Suppletion is local. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198778264.003.0007.
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Bobaljik (2012) proposes that the insertion of suppletive vocabulary items can be sensitive to features within the same maximal projection, but not across a maximal projection boundary. Among heads (X0 nodes), this condition restricts suppletion to synthetic formations and excludes suppletion in analogous analytic formations. In Hiaki, however, the number of a subject DP can trigger verbal suppletion in certain intransitive verbs. The verbs in question, however, can be shown by language-internal diagnostics to be unaccusative. Suppletion, then, is in fact triggered by an element within the maximal projection of the suppleting verb. The analysis supports the position that internal arguments are base-generated as sisters to their selecting verb (Kratzer 1996; Marantz 1997; Harley 2014). Further, we see that the locality condition does not distinguish between word-internal and word-external triggers of suppletion, but is rather a condition of structural locality, showing that morphological structure is, in a fundamental way, syntactic.
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Reintges, Chris H., and Sonia Cyrino. Analyticization and the syntax of the synthetic residue. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198747307.003.0010.
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Current understanding of syntactic variation and change relies on the notion of parameters of varying magnitude (micro- and macroparameters). This chapter focuses on the flipside of parameter change, namely the retention and survival of synthetic morphological structure in a context of widespread analyticization. The global effects of synthetic-to-analytic drift are examined in two diachronic scenarios: one in which the process has almost, though not entirely been completed (Coptic Egyptian), and another one in which the process is still under way (Brazilian Portuguese). Coptic has gone very far in abandoning its former synthetic features and thus exhibits a high degree of analyticity. In Brazilian Portuguese, the analyticization process is an advanced state, with synthetically inflected tenses exhibiting a decreasing productivity and gradually being replaced by the corresponding auxiliary verb constructions in the spoken language. The restriction on verb movement is a side effect of ongoing analyticization that affects language’s word order.
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Corrigan, Karen P. The Atlantic Archipelago of the British Isles. Edited by Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, and Devyani Sharma. Oxford University Press, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199777716.013.015.
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This chapter discusses contact between English and other languages in the British Isles from the fifth century to the present. Census data and other evidence are examined to assess the impact of migrants on historical and contemporary English dialects in the Celtic regions and elsewhere. As regards the latter, these would include svarabhakti phenomena and fronting devices typical of the syntactic/discourse strategies commonly associated with Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Welsh. Consideration is also given to the extent to which Celtic Englishes retain relic features representing earlier stages of English. Of particular interest is the retention of historical /r/ post-vocalically as well as negative concord and the grammaticality of double modal constructions. There is also some discussion of linguistic innovations in dialects of the British Isles that have been brought about by more recent contacts with newer ethnic minority migrants in large urban areas of this region like Dublin and London.
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Bassene, Mamadou, and Ken Safir. Theory and Description. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190256340.003.0012.
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Jóola-Eegimaa, an endangered Atlantic (Niger-Congo) language, has a rich agglutinative morphology resulting in complex words that often permit multiple readings. The regularity and limitations of these ambiguities suggests they are generated by a speaker’s systematic knowledge. Preserving that knowledge demands not simply cataloguing outward forms but also understanding the organizing principles that permit using that knowledge creatively. Investigation of Eegimaa verb stem structure shows that the superficial linear order of stem affixes, seemingly not compositionally transparent, arises from syntactic movement of sub-stem morphemes in a way that preserves the underlying structure necessary for compositional interpretation. Under this analysis a copy of complex v movement is left behind and has the right contents to predict patterns of possible and impossible verb reduplication. Such research can reveal how general features of the language faculty interact with specific lexical properties of morphemes to predict the order and interpretation of verb stem morphology.
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Zuckermann, Ghil'ad. Revivalistics. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199812776.001.0001.
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This seminal book introduces revivalistics, a new trans-disciplinary field of enquiry surrounding language reclamation, revitalization and reinvigoration. The book is divided into two main parts that represent Zuckermann’s fascinating and multifaceted journey into language revival, from the ‘Promised Land’ (Israel) to the ‘Lucky Country’ (Australia) and beyond: PART 1: LANGUAGE REVIVAL AND CROSS-FERTILIZATION The aim of this part is to suggest that due to the ubiquitous multiple causation, the reclamation of a no-longer spoken language is unlikely without cross-fertilization from the revivalists’ mother tongue(s). Thus, one should expect revival efforts to result in a language with a hybridic genetic and typological character. The book highlights salient morphological, phonological, phonetic, syntactic, semantic and lexical features, illustrating the difficulty in determining a single source for the grammar of ‘Israeli’, the language resulting from the Hebrew revival. The European impact in these features is apparent inter alia in structure, semantics or productivity. PART 2: LANGUAGE REVIVAL AND WELLBEING The book then applies practical lessons (rather than clichés) from the critical analysis of the Hebrew reclamation to other revival movements globally, and goes on to describe the why and how of language revival. The how includes practical, nitty-gritty methods for reclaiming ‘sleeping beauties’ such as the Barngarla Aboriginal language of Eyre Peninsula, South Australia, e.g. using what Zuckermann calls talknology (talk+technology). The why includes ethical, aesthetic, and utilitarian reasons such as improving wellbeing and mental health.
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Ssempuuma, Jude. Morphological and Syntactic Feature Analysis of Ugandan English: Influence from Luganda, Runyankole-Rukiga, and Acholi-Lango. Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, Peter, 2019.
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