12 research outputs found
Morphological variation and development in a Northern Norwegian role play register
This paper investigates the variation in and development of a set of morphological variables in a register known to be used by Norwegian children when engaging in role play. In this register they code-switch to something resembling the standard or Oslo variety for their in-character role utterances. The variation across variables, subjects, and age is demonstrated and discussed, and although most variables are used in the standard variants, their rates vary. A fitted binomial generalised mixed effect analysis on the most frequent variables shows that the rate of standard variants increases significantly as an effect of age
Morphosyntactic change in Late Modern Swedish
This volume explores morphosyntactic change in the Late Modern Swedish period from the 18th century and onwards. This period is interesting, for a number of reasons. This is when Swedish is established as a national standard language. New genres emerge, and the written language becomes more generally available to all speakers. We also sometimes find diverging developments in the different North Germanic languages, and some of the much-discussed differences between Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are established during this period. In addition, during the 19th and 20th centuries, the traditional dialects undergo more dramatic changes than ever. Yet, the Late Modern Swedish period has previously received fairly little attention in the syntactic literature. This volume aims to remedy this, with studies that cover several different grammatical domains, including case and verbal syntax, word order and agreement, and grammaticalization in the nominal domain. The study by Cecilia Falk investigates the possibility of promoting an indirect object to subject in a passive, that emerges during the period. A chapter by Fredrik Valdeson studies change in the use of ditransitive verbs, from a constructional perspective. Three chapters are concerned with word order change. The study by Ida Larsson and Björn Lundquist investigates the development of a strict word order in particle constructions. Adrian Sangfelt studies the possibility of having adverbials (and other constituents) between the separate verbal heads in complex VPs in the final stages of the shift from OV to VO order. Erik M. Petzell investigates embedded verb placement and agreement morphology in the Viskadalian dialect, which on the surface seems to contradict the Rich Agreement Hypothesis. Mikael Kalm discusses the emergence of different kinds of adverbial infinitival clauses in the standard written language compared to Övdalian. Finally, the study by Lars-Olof Delsing is concerned with a case of grammaticalization in the nominal domain, specifically the development of the gradable adjectives mycket ‘much’ and lite ‘little’ into quantifiers
Morphosyntactic change in Late Modern Swedish
This volume explores morphosyntactic change in the Late Modern Swedish period from the 18th century and onwards. This period is interesting, for a number of reasons. This is when Swedish is established as a national standard language. New genres emerge, and the written language becomes more generally available to all speakers. We also sometimes find diverging developments in the different North Germanic languages, and some of the much-discussed differences between Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are established during this period. In addition, during the 19th and 20th centuries, the traditional dialects undergo more dramatic changes than ever. Yet, the Late Modern Swedish period has previously received fairly little attention in the syntactic literature. This volume aims to remedy this, with studies that cover several different grammatical domains, including case and verbal syntax, word order and agreement, and grammaticalization in the nominal domain. The study by Cecilia Falk investigates the possibility of promoting an indirect object to subject in a passive, that emerges during the period. A chapter by Fredrik Valdeson studies change in the use of ditransitive verbs, from a constructional perspective. Three chapters are concerned with word order change. The study by Ida Larsson and Björn Lundquist investigates the development of a strict word order in particle constructions. Adrian Sangfelt studies the possibility of having adverbials (and other constituents) between the separate verbal heads in complex VPs in the final stages of the shift from OV to VO order. Erik M. Petzell investigates embedded verb placement and agreement morphology in the Viskadalian dialect, which on the surface seems to contradict the Rich Agreement Hypothesis. Mikael Kalm discusses the emergence of different kinds of adverbial infinitival clauses in the standard written language compared to Övdalian. Finally, the study by Lars-Olof Delsing is concerned with a case of grammaticalization in the nominal domain, specifically the development of the gradable adjectives mycket ‘much’ and lite ‘little’ into quantifiers
Handbook of Lexical Functional Grammar
Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) is a nontransformational theory of
linguistic structure, first developed in the 1970s by Joan Bresnan and
Ronald M. Kaplan, which assumes that language is best described and
modeled by parallel structures representing different facets of
linguistic organization and information, related by means of
functional correspondences. This volume has five parts. Part I,
Overview and Introduction, provides an introduction to core syntactic
concepts and representations. Part II, Grammatical Phenomena, reviews
LFG work on a range of grammatical phenomena or constructions. Part
III, Grammatical modules and interfaces, provides an overview of LFG
work on semantics, argument structure, prosody, information structure,
and morphology. Part IV, Linguistic disciplines, reviews LFG work in
the disciplines of historical linguistics, learnability,
psycholinguistics, and second language learning. Part V, Formal and
computational issues and applications, provides an overview of
computational and formal properties of the theory, implementations,
and computational work on parsing, translation, grammar induction, and
treebanks. Part VI, Language families and regions, reviews LFG work
on languages spoken in particular geographical areas or in particular
language families. The final section, Comparing LFG with other
linguistic theories, discusses LFG work in relation to other
theoretical approaches
From transformational grammar to constraint-based approaches
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.Third revised and extended editio
Grammatical theory
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.
The book is a translation of the German book Grammatiktheorie, which was published by Stauffenburg in 2010. The following quotes are taken from reviews:
With this critical yet fair reflection on various grammatical theories, Müller fills what was a major gap in the literature. Karen Lehmann, Zeitschrift für Rezensionen zur germanistischen Sprachwissenschaft, 2012
Stefan Müller’s recent introductory textbook, Grammatiktheorie, is an astonishingly comprehensive and insightful survey for beginning students of the present state of syntactic theory. Wolfgang Sternefeld und Frank Richter, Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, 2012
This is the kind of work that has been sought after for a while [...] The impartial and objective discussion offered by the author is particularly refreshing. Werner Abraham, Germanistik, 201
Grammatical theory
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.
The book is a translation of the German book Grammatiktheorie, which was published by Stauffenburg in 2010. The following quotes are taken from reviews:
With this critical yet fair reflection on various grammatical theories, Müller fills what was a major gap in the literature. Karen Lehmann, Zeitschrift für Rezensionen zur germanistischen Sprachwissenschaft, 2012
Stefan Müller’s recent introductory textbook, Grammatiktheorie, is an astonishingly comprehensive and insightful survey for beginning students of the present state of syntactic theory. Wolfgang Sternefeld und Frank Richter, Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, 2012
This is the kind of work that has been sought after for a while [...] The impartial and objective discussion offered by the author is particularly refreshing. Werner Abraham, Germanistik, 201