225 research outputs found

    Modifying (the grammar of) adjuncts : an introduction

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    One aspect of the progress being made is that the focus of attention has widened. Adverbials, though still the heart of the matter, now form part of a much larger set of constituent types subsumed under the general syntactic label of adjunct; while modifier has become the semantic counterpart on the same level of generality. So one of the readings of Modifying Adjuncts stands for the focus on this intersection. Moreover, recent years have seen a number of studies which attest an increasing interest in adjunct issues. There is an impressive number of monographs, e.g. Alexiadou (1997), Laenzlinger (1998), Cinque (1999), Pittner (1999), Ernst (2002), which, by presenting in-depth analyses of the syntax of adjuncts, have sharpened the debate on syntactic theorizing. Serious attempts to gain a broader view on adjuncts are witnessed by several collections, see Alexiadou and Svenonius (2000), Austin, Engelberg and Rauh (in progress); of particular importance are the contributions to vol. 12.1 of the Italian Journal of Linguistics (2000), a special issue on adverbs, the Introductions to which by Corver and Delfitto (2000) and Delfitto (2000) may be seen as the best state-of-the-art article on adverbs and adverbial modification currently on the market. To try and test a fresh view on adjuncts was the leitmotif of the Oslo Conference “Approaching the Grammar of Adjuncts” (Sept 22–25, 1999), which provided the initial forum for the papers contained in this volume and initiated a period of discussion and continuing interaction among the contributors, from which the versions published here have greatly profited. The aim of the Oslo conference, and hence the focus of the present volume, was to encourage syntacticians and semanticists to open their minds to a more integrative approach to adjuncts, thereby paying attention to, and attempting to account for, the various interfaces that the grammar of adjuncts crucially embodies. From this perspective, the present volume is to be conceived of as an interim balance of current trends in modifying the views on adjuncts. In introducing the papers, we will refrain from rephrasing the abstracts, but will instead offer a guided tour through the major problem areas they are tackling. Assessed by thematic convergence and mutual reference, the contributions form four groups, which led us to arrange them into subparts of the book. Our commenting on these is intended (i) to provide a first glance at the contents, (ii) to reveal some of the reasons why adjuncts indeed are, and certainly will remain, a challenging issue, and thereby (iii) to show some facets of what we consider novel and promising approaches

    A pragmatic explanation of the stage level/individual level contrast in combination with locatives

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    One important difference between stage level predicates (SLPs) and individual level predicates (ILPs) is their behavior with respect to locative modifiers. It is commonly assumed that SLPs but not ILPs combine with locatives. The present study argues against a semantic account for this behavior (as advanced by e.g. Kratzer 1995, Chierchia 1995) and proposes a genuinely pragmatic explanation of the observed stage level/individual level contrast instead. The proposal is spelled out using Blutners (1998, 2000) optimality theoretic version of the Gricean maxims. Building on the observation that the respective locatives are not event-related but frame-setting modifiers, the preference for main predicates that express temporary properties is explained as a side-effect of “synchronizing” the main predicate with the locative frame in the course of finding an optimal interpretation. By emphasizing the division of labor between grammar and pragmatics, the proposed solution takes a considerable load off of semantics

    Relating Movement and Adjunction in Syntax and Semantics

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    In this thesis I explore the syntactic and semantic properties of movement and adjunction in natural language, and suggest that these two phenomena are related in a novel way. In a precise sense, the basic pieces of grammatical machinery that give rise to movement, also give rise to adjunction. In the system I propose, there is no atomic movement operation and no atomic adjunction operation; the terms "movement" and "adjunction" serve only as convenient labels for certain combinations of other, primitive operations. As a result the system makes non-trivial predictions about how movement and adjunction should interact, since we do not have the freedom to stipulate arbitrary properties of movement while leaving the properties of adjunction unchanged, or vice-versa. I focus first on the distinction between arguments and adjuncts, and propose that the differences between these two kinds of syntactic attachment can be thought of as a transparent reflection of the differing ways in which they contribute to neo-Davidsonian logical forms. The details of this proposal rely crucially on a distinctive treatment of movement, and from it I derive accurate predictions concerning the equivocal status of adjuncts as optionally included in or excluded from a maximal projection, and the possibility of counter-cyclic adjunction. The treatment of movement and adjunction as interrelated phenomena furthermore enables us to introduce a single constraint that subsumes two conditions on extraction, namely adjunct island effects and freezing effects. The novel conceptions of movement and semantic composition that underlie these results raise questions about the system's ability to handle semantic variable-binding. I give an unconventional but descriptively adequate account of basic quantificational phenomena, to demonstrate that this important empirical ground is not given up. More generally, this thesis constitutes a case study in (i) deriving explanations for syntactic patterns from a restrictive, independently motivated theory of compositional semantics, and (ii) using a computationally explicit framework to rigourously investigate the primitives and consequences of our theories. The emerging picture that is suggested is one where some central facts about the syntax and semantics of natural language hang together in a way that they otherwise would not

    Interrogative Verb Sequencing Constructions in Amis

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    Without Specifiers: Phrase Structure and Events

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    This dissertation attempts to unify two reductionist hypotheses: that there is no relational difference between specifiers and complements, and that verbs do not have thematic arguments. I argue that these two hypotheses actually bear on each other and that we get a better theory if we pursue both of them. The thesis is centered around the following hypothesis: Each application of Spell-Out corresponds to a conjunct at logical form. In order to create such a system, it is necessary to provide a syntax that is designed such that each Spell-Out domain is mapped into a conjunct. This is done by eliminating the relational difference between specifiers and complements. The conjuncts are then conjoined into Neo-Davidsonian representations that constitute logical forms. The theory is argued to provide a transparent mapping from syntactic structures to logical forms, such that the syntax gives you a logical form where the verb does not have any thematic arguments. In essence, the thesis is therefore an investigation into the structure of verbs. This theory of Spell-Out raises a number of questions and it makes strong predictions about the structure of possible derivations. The thesis discusses a number of these: the nature of linearization and movement, left-branch extractions, serial verb constructions, among others. It is shown how the present theory can capture these phenomena, and sometimes in better ways than previous analyses. The thesis closes by discussing some more foundational issues related to transparency, the syntax-semantics interface, and the nature of basic semantic composition operations

    Grammatical relations, thematic roles and verb semantics

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    Grammatical relations have always constituted a primary focus of attention in the study of language. Within the last three decades, the topicality of this trend has increasingly been determined by the quest for a universal characterization of the language faculty which has shaped the goals and directives of most current works in theoretical linguistics. Although the realization patterns and syntactic functionality of grammatical relations are subject to cross-linguistic variation, studies in comparative grammar have provided suggestive evidence that the range of variation found can often be contained within the limits fixed by a discrete set of parameters. The investigation of these parameters has broached the possibility of a universal specification of the nature of grammatical relations. This thesis proposes that such a specification should be achieved by establishing regularities in the syntax-semantics interface within a constraint-based approach to linguistic analysis that integrates a precise computational interpretation. In keeping with this objective, a unification-based categorial grammar framework is developed which incorporates the semantic insights of a Neo-Davidsonian approach to verb semantics and predicate-argument combination, where thematic roles are defined as clusters of entailments of verb meanings. This framework is extended with an integrated approach to argument selection and selection change. Properties of the resulting system are demonstrated with respect to a variety of natural language phenomena concerning grammatical function changing, unaccusativity and clitic dislocation

    The role of state-kinds in the morphosemantics of Spanish deadjectival nominalizations

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    353 p.a presente tesis doctoral aborda el estudio de las nominalizaciones deadjetivales (v.g. belleza, altura) en español. Sobre la base del modelo de semĂĄntica formal de Heim y Kratzer (1998), combinado con un aparato construccionista de formaciĂłn de palabras, el objetivo es explicar las principales propiedades semĂĄnticas y morfolĂłgicas de estas nominalizaciones y proporcionar un anĂĄlisis que dĂ© cuenta de ellas. La hipĂłtesis principal es que nuestra ontologĂ­a de objetos semĂĄnticos debe incluir clases y ejemplares de estados; dicha hipĂłtesis se enmarca en la tradiciĂłn clase-ejemplar surgida desde Carlson (1977) y, en particular, se basa en la propuesta de Anderson y Morzycki (2015), segĂșn la cual las clases de estados desempeñan un papel fundamental en la explicaciĂłn del fenĂłmeno de la gradaciĂłn. En concreto, postulo que las nominalizaciones deadjetivales denotan conjuntos de clases de estados totalmente preordenadas y aquellas pueden expresar ejemplares de estados cuando se predican de un individuo, caso en el cual un nudo aspectual se adjunta a la derivaciĂłn para asociar una clase de estado a un ejemplar. Esta tesis proporciona una mejor comprensiĂłn, tanto en lo empĂ­rico como en lo teĂłrico, sobre la gradaciĂłn, la estatividad y los nombres de masa, y de ella se derivan importantes conclusiones en relaciĂłn con la ontologĂ­a de las lenguas naturales, el aspecto lĂ©xico y el de punto de vista, la estructura interna de las nominalizaciones en cuestiĂłn, su composiciĂłn morfolĂłgica y su distribuciĂłn sintĂĄctica
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