369 research outputs found

    Derivation-Graph-Based Characterizations of Decidable Existential Rule Sets

    Full text link
    This paper establishes alternative characterizations of very expressive classes of existential rule sets with decidable query entailment. We consider the notable class of greedy bounded-treewidth sets (gbts) and a new, generalized variant, called weakly gbts (wgbts). Revisiting and building on the notion of derivation graphs, we define (weakly) cycle-free derivation graph sets ((w)cdgs) and employ elaborate proof-theoretic arguments to obtain that gbts and cdgs coincide, as do wgbts and wcdgs. These novel characterizations advance our analytic proof-theoretic understanding of existential rules and will likely be instrumental in practice.Comment: accepted to JELIA 202

    Headedness and/or grammatical anarchy?

    Get PDF
    Synopsis: In most grammatical models, hierarchical structuring and dependencies are considered as central features of grammatical structures, an idea which is usually captured by the notion of “head” or “headedness”. While in most models, this notion is more or less taken for granted, there is still much disagreement as to the precise properties of grammatical heads and the theoretical implications that arise of these properties. Moreover, there are quite a few linguistic structures that pose considerable challenges to the notion of “headedness”. Linking to the seminal discussions led in Zwicky (1985) and Corbett, Fraser, & Mc-Glashan (1993), this volume intends to look more closely upon phenomena that are considered problematic for an analysis in terms of grammatical heads. The aim of this book is to approach the concept of “headedness” from its margins. Thus, central questions of the volume relate to the nature of heads and the distinction between headed and non-headed structures, to the process of gaining and losing head status, and to the thought-provoking question as to whether grammar theory could do without heads at all. The contributions in this volume provide new empirical findings bearing on phenomena that challenge the conception of grammatical heads and/or discuss the notion of head/headedness and its consequences for grammatical theory in a more abstract way. The collected papers view the topic from diverse theoretical perspectives (among others HPSG, Generative Syntax, Optimality Theory) and different empirical angles, covering typological and corpus-linguistic accounts, with a focus on data from German

    Parametric Syntactic Reconstruction. Noun Phrases in Iranian, Proto-Indo-Iranian and Proto-Indo-European

    Get PDF
    This dissertation is a defense of the hypothesis that syntax can be reconstructed using the time-tested Comparative Method and structural analogues to phonological features, so-called parameters. Any application of the Comparative Method depends on a systematic comparison of basic units which are finite in number and have discrete values. This dissertation argues that syntactic parameters might equal distinctive phonological features and that different combinations or rather bundles of parameters might constitute syntactic ‘phonemes’. Building upon the noun phrase (NP) properties and behavior of nine Old and Middle Iranian languages, namely Old and Young Avestan, Old and Middle Persian, Parthian, Bactrian, Chorasmian, Sogdian and Khotanese Saka as well as the corresponding NP characteristics of three ancient Indo-European relatives, namely Vedic, Archaic (i.e., Mycenaean and Epic) Greek and Old Latin, this study tries to reconstruct, based on a parametric feature matrix, (a) the nominal syntactic behavior (formally representable in terms of parametric settings) of the last common ancestor of all Iranian languages, Proto-Iranian, (b) the parametric profile of the still earlier Proto-Indo-Iranian (PIIr.) language, and it makes (c) an educated first guess on the NP parameters of Proto-Indo-European (PIE). Key findings of this dissertation are (I) the insight that parametric syntactic reconstruction parallels phonological reconstruction(s); (II) the observation that PIIr. and PIE had a right-branching nominal configurational syntax with a high amount of noun-raising (no rigid head-finality); (III) the inference that the non-IE substrate language(s) of the early towns of Bronze Age Central Asia (BMAC and related cultures) may have had articles

    Headedness and/or grammatical anarchy?

    Get PDF
    In most grammatical models, hierarchical structuring and dependencies are considered as central features of grammatical structures, an idea which is usually captured by the notion of “head” or “headedness”. While in most models, this notion is more or less taken for granted, there is still much disagreement as to the precise properties of grammatical heads and the theoretical implications that arise of these properties. Moreover, there are quite a few linguistic structures that pose considerable challenges to the notion of “headedness”. Linking to the seminal discussions led in Zwicky (1985) and Corbett, Fraser, & Mc-Glashan (1993), this volume intends to look more closely upon phenomena that are considered problematic for an analysis in terms of grammatical heads. The aim of this book is to approach the concept of “headedness” from its margins. Thus, central questions of the volume relate to the nature of heads and the distinction between headed and non-headed structures, to the process of gaining and losing head status, and to the thought-provoking question as to whether grammar theory could do without heads at all. The contributions in this volume provide new empirical findings bearing on phenomena that challenge the conception of grammatical heads and/or discuss the notion of head/headedness and its consequences for grammatical theory in a more abstract way. The collected papers view the topic from diverse theoretical perspectives (among others HPSG, Generative Syntax, Optimality Theory) and different empirical angles, covering typological and corpus-linguistic accounts, with a focus on data from German

    Contacts of languages and peoples in the Hittite and Post-Hittite world

    Get PDF
    Ever since the early 2nd millennium BCE, Pre-Classical Anatolia has been a crossroads of languages and peoples. Indo-European peoples – Hittites, Luwians, Palaeans – and non-Indo-European ones – Hattians, but also Assyrians and Hurrians – coexisted with each other for extended periods of time during the Bronze Age, a cohabitation that left important traces in the languages they spoke and in the texts they wrote. By combining, in an interdisciplinary fashion, the complementary approaches of linguistics, history, and philology, this book offers a comprehensive, state-of-the-art study of linguistic and cultural contacts in a region that is often described as the bridge between the East and the West

    Differential Object Marking and Role Semantics in Romance

    Get PDF
    This study provides a fine-grained approach to the impact of agentivity on Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Romance languages. While verbal factors have been considered relevant for the understanding of DOM since decades, this dissertation is the first to systematically motivate and investigate communicated agentivity for the direct object as an influencing factor. As a first step, clear role-semantic criteria are elaborated to analyze DOM from a verb-based perspective, independently of animacy. For this purpose, the proto-role model of Blume (1998, 2000) is adopted, which is a modified version of Dowty’s (1991) and Primus’ (1999) proto-role model. Blume distinguishes between entailed, presupposed and conversationally implicated proto-agent properties for the object. This differentiation is adopted, underpinned by semantic tests allowing to isolate the type of proto-agent properties assigned to the object for a given predicate. Together with a fourth option that is defined by the absence of any proto-agent property, the different types of communicated agentivity for the object are arranged on a four-point scale (entailed agentivity > presupposed agentivity > potential agentivity > unspecified for agentivity). As a second step, experimental evidence for the impact of agentivity on DOM is presented for a Western Sicilian variety (Alcamo) and two Central Catalan varieties (Barcelona and Girona). Four verb classes are defined in accordance with the agentivity scale, while the direct object’s animacy is kept constant. Both acceptability judgement studies provide further evidence for treating agentivity as a co-influential factor on DOM. As a third step, the findings for Sicilian and Catalan are related to synchronic and diachronic evidence of further Romance languages. It is sketched how role-semantic factors interact with referentiality-based and information-structural parameters (e.g. definiteness and topicality) in early stages of grammaticalization. In sum, the dissertation makes both a theoretical and an empirical contribution to the impact of agentivity on DOM in Romance languages

    Distribution of distributivity in syntax and discourse

    Get PDF
    In this thesis, I will explore the semantics of overt distributors and investigate how it interfaces with syntax and discourse. The main claims are as follows. (1) a. Syntax-semantics interface: Denotations of quantifiers over individuals are type-ambiguous with respect to their restrictor NP, while denotations of quantifiers over situations are constant across different syntactic positions. b. Semantics-discourse interface: Overt distributors are classified into two types: one partitions variable assignments and the other partitions situations. As a case study, I discuss two overt distributors in Japanese, “sorezore” and “zutsu.” As for the first thesis, I will propose that quantifiers over individuals in Japanese has several type-variants which differ in (i) whether its restrictor NP occurs local to it or nonlocal to it, and (ii) whether its restrictor NP is predicative or argumental. Furthermore, I claim that idiosyncratic properties of quantifiers over individuals are also related with this variation with respect to the restrictor update. On the other hand, quantifiers over situations do not need a set of individuals for its restrictor and do not take a restrictor NP. Accordingly, they are not type-ambiguous and have the same denotation at the prenominal position and the floating position. Their interpretive difference comes from an independent difference between nominal predicates and verbal predicatess with respect to applicability of type-shifting principles and insertablity of situation pronouns. As for the second thesis, I claim that the semantic difference between “sorezore” and “zutsu” are best understood from the perspective of anaphoricity in dynamic semantics versus uniqueness requirement in situation semantics. “Sorezore” is anaphoric and partitions variable assignment, but “zutsu” involves uniqueness presupposition and partitions situations. Accordingly, this suggests that there are two types of overt distributors. The upshot is anaphoricity and uniqueness are two basic strategies to pick up an individual from the context because they respectively rely on two types of information content stored in the context, namely the anaphoric content and the propositional content. Thus, the dichotomy in overt distributivity can be taken as a reflection of the bipartite structure of the discourse context

    From transformational grammar to constraint-based approaches

    Get PDF
    Synopsis: This book introduces formal grammar theories that play a role in current linguistic theorizing (Phrase Structure Grammar, Transformational Grammar/Government & Binding, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Head-​Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Construction Grammar, Tree Adjoining Grammar). The key assumptions are explained and it is shown how the respective theory treats arguments and adjuncts, the active/passive alternation, local reorderings, verb placement, and fronting of constituents over long distances. The analyses are explained with German as the object language. The second part of the book compares these approaches with respect to their predictions regarding language acquisition and psycholinguistic plausibility. The nativism hypothesis, which assumes that humans posses genetically determined innate language-specific knowledge, is critically examined and alternative models of language acquisition are discussed. The second part then addresses controversial issues of current theory building such as the question of flat or binary branching structures being more appropriate, the question whether constructions should be treated on the phrasal or the lexical level, and the question whether abstract, non-visible entities should play a role in syntactic analyses. It is shown that the analyses suggested in the respective frameworks are often translatable into each other. The book closes with a chapter showing how properties common to all languages or to certain classes of languages can be captured.This book is a new edition of http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/25, http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/195, http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/255 , and http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/287.Fifth revised and extended editio

    Reflexive constructions in the world's languages

    Get PDF
    Synopsis: This landmark publication brings together 28 papers on reflexive constructions in languages from all continents, representing very diverse language types. While reflexive constructions have been discussed in the past from a variety of angles, this is the first edited volume of its kind. All the chapters are based on original data, and they are broadly comparable through a common terminological framework. The volume opens with two introductory chapters by the editors that set the stage and lay out the main comparative concepts, and it concludes with a chapter presenting generalizations on the basis of the studies of individual languages

    Methods in Contemporary Linguistics

    Get PDF
    The present volume is a broad overview of methods and methodologies in linguistics, illustrated with examples from concrete research. It collects insights gained from a broad range of linguistic sub-disciplines, ranging from core disciplines to topics in cross-linguistic and language-internal diversity or to contributions towards language, space and society. Given its critical and innovative nature, the volume is a valuable source for students and researchers of a broad range of linguistic interests
    • 

    corecore