Resumptive Pronouns at the Interfaces PDF Download

Author: Alain Rouveret
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027208220
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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"This volume is based on a round table on resumptive pronouns which was held at the UFR de Linguistique, Universite Paris-Diderot, on June 21 and 22, 2007."

Author: Alain Rouveret
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027286981
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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Book Description
This book brings together contributions which address a wide range of issues regarding resumption, gathering evidence from a great variety of languages including Welsh, Breton, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, French, Vata, Hebrew, Jordanian and Palestinian Arabic. The topics covered include the interpretive properties of resumptive pronouns and epithets, the featural make-up of resumptive pronouns, as well as the syntactic diversity of resumptive constructions and the nature of A-resumption. The introduction offers a critical survey of early syntactic accounts and recent semantic advancements. One contribution presents the results of experimental research providing a new perspective on the last resort status of resumption. Two seminal papers on resumption, Doron (1982) and McCloskey (1990), have also been included. This volume, which deals with a phenomenon that has given rise to intriguing claims concerning the structure and interpretation of pronouns, will be of great interest to both semanticists and syntacticians, whichever framework they favor.

Author: Ash Asudeh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199206422
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 486

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This book is a cross-linguistic investigation of resumptive pronouns and related phenomena. Pronominal resumption is the realization of the base of a syntactic dependency as a bound pronoun. Resumption occurs in unbounded dependencies, such as relative clauses and questions, and in the variety of raising known as copy raising. Processing factors may also give rise to resumption, even in environments where it does not normally occur in a given language. Ash Asudeh proposes a new theory of resumption based on the use of a resource logic for semantic composition and the typologically robust observation that resumptive pronouns are ordinary pronouns in their morphological and lexical properties. The framework for semantic composition is Glue Semantics and the syntactic framework is Lexical-Functional Grammar. The author introduces these frameworks and the concept of resource logics accessibly and compares results and explanations with those offered by a number of contrasting theoretical frameworks. The theory achieves a novel unification of hitherto heterogeneous resumption phenomena. It unifies two kinds of resumptive pronouns that are found in unbounded dependencies - one kind behaves syntactically like a gap, whereas the other kind does not. It also unifies resumptive pronouns in unbounded dependencies with the obligatory pronouns in copy raising. The theory also provides the basis for a new understanding of processing-based resumption, both in production and in parsing and interpretation. This book makes a substantial contribution to the understanding of the syntax-semantics interface, the nature of unbounded dependencies, and linguistic variation. It is clearly written and includes examples from a wide range of languages, such as English, Hebrew, Irish, Swedish, and Vata. It will interest researchers in syntax and semantics and its results are also relevant to computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, and the logical analysis of language. Short blurb This book is a cross-linguistic investigation of resumptive pronouns and related resumption phenomena. The author proposes a new theory of resumption based on the use of a resource logic for semantic composition and the typologically robust observation that resumptive pronouns are ordinary pronouns in their morphological and lexical properties.

Author: H. Goodluck
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401719802
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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constraints', which serve to block the association of antecedent to gap under specific syntactic conditions. Of the restrictions identified by Ross and others, the ones we will discuss here are the Complex NP Constraint, exemplified with a relative clause in (3b) and with a nominal complement in (4a), the Subject and wh Island Conditions (Chomsky, 1973) in (4b, c) respectively, and the Adjunct Island Condi tion (see Huang, 1982's Condition on Extraction Domain), illustrated in (4d, e). (4) (a) *John, Mary made the claim that Sally plans to recommend_ for ajob. John, Mary claimed that Sally plans to recommend _ for a job. As for John, Mary heard the rumor that Sally intends to marry him. (b) *John, an article about _just appeared in the newspaper. As for John, an article about him just appeared in the news paper. (c) *Bill, I wonder who likes_. As for Bill, I wonder who likes him. (d) *The heat, we left early because of _. As for the heat, we left early because of it. (e) *The money, I lied so that I could keep_. As for the money, I lied so that I could keep it.

Author: Jianhua Hu
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027262683
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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This volume is an important contribution to the theoretical and empirical study of the interactions of grammatical components in Chinese and other languages. With contributions by Edward L. Keenan, Henk van Riemsdijk, Alain Rouveret, and scholars in Chinese Linguistics, this volume investigates the common structural properties that may be considered as possible candidates for UG. It addresses syntactic and semantic issues such as anaphora universals over non-isomorphic languages, the role that the forces of attraction and repulsion play in the grammar of natural languages, computational and semantic aspects of resumption, the dichotomy between inner and outer reflexive adverbials, system repairing strategies at interfaces, the v-copy construction in Chinese, the scope of disjunction, interactions between focus, negation and event quantification, null object constructions and VP-Ellipsis, child language acquisition of nominal structure, word order and referentiality as well as second language acquisition of interface properties in Chinese double NP constructions. This volume will be of interest to students and researchers of syntax, semantics, theoretical linguistics, and language acquisition, as well as scholars in Chinese linguistics.

Author: Pritty Patel-Grosz
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443883883
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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This book is one of the first extensive cross-linguistic theoretical investigations on epithets. Epithets (such as “the bastard”) are anaphoric expressions which take the shape of a definite description, contain an evaluative component, and are typically unstressed. This monograph shows that, in order to understand the perplexing nature of epithets, one must consider what kinds of behavior they exhibit in different components of the language faculty. In this vein, the text adopts a broad approach, analysing epithets from the perspective of the syntax-semantics-pragmatics interface. The empirical focus of this monograph is on epithets in embedded clauses. It unearths new empirical findings and shows that the acceptability of epithets is affected by a variety of influences, including syntactic factors, such as whether the epithet is in the subject position of an embedded clause, or its object position. Semantic-pragmatic restrictions further navigate the nature of epithets, such as whether they are intended to refer to an attitude holder whose beliefs or other attitudes embed the clause that contains them. Based on these findings, the book argues that epithets are a type of pronoun, subject to interface restrictions concerning the semantics and pragmatics of attitude reports. The insights in this monograph raise new questions concerning the division of labour of the language faculty with respect to the processes and mechanisms involved in Binding Theory.

Author: Victor Junnan Pan
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110489759
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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The use of resumptive pronouns is quite productive in Mandarin Chinese; however, their distribution has rarely been studied in a systematic way. This book not only gives a thorough description of the general distribution of resumptive pronouns in different contexts but also offers a theoretical account in the framework of the Minimalist Program. Different types of A'-dependencies, mediated by gaps and by resumptive pronouns, are derived by different minimalist mechanisms, such as Agree, Match and Move. These mechanisms only apply at Narrow Syntax and do not uniformly obey locality constraints. Importantly, interpretative properties of an A'-bound element, such as reconstruction effects, is only related to its internal structure irrespective of how the A'-chain concerned is derived. From this perspective, resumptivity is an exclusively syntactic-related phenomenon and is thus not subject to any interface condition. Adopting a comparative approach, this study improves the general understanding of resumptivity crosslinguistically.

Author: Martin Salzmann
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1614512205
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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This monograph investigates A’-dependencies in Standard German, Alemannic and Dutch where the dislocated constituent is indirectly, i.e. not transformationally, related to the position where it is interpreted. The study focuses on relative clauses and shows that an important part of the relativization system in these languages, long relativization, involves a hitherto ignored construction termed resumptive prolepsis. This construction is characterized by base-generation of the operator in the matrix middle-field and a resumptive pronoun in the position of the variable. It is shown that it involves short A’-movement in the matrix clause, empty operator movement in the complement clause and an ellipsis operation that links the two operators. While the link is directly visible in German and Dutch, Swiss German provides a more abstract version of resumptive prolepsis. Through a detailed examination of reconstruction effects and the properties of resumption in these constructions, the book provides new evidence for the role of ellipsis in A’-movement and for a base-generation analysis of resumption. More generally, it makes an important contribution to the modeling of long-distance dependencies and the study of A'-syntax.

Author: Giuliana Giusti
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443885673
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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This volume offers a new perspective on the syntax of nominal expressions in various European languages, arguing that articles do not directly and biunivocally realise semantic definiteness. The first two chapters provide an accessible introduction to recent developments in generative syntax, namely the cartographic and minimalist approaches, by focusing on the “imperfect” parallels between clauses and nominal expressions. The third chapter shows that feature sharing is not the result of a unique syntactic process, but, rather, the consequence of Merge, which creates syntactic structure instantiating two types of relation: Selection and Modification. It argues for three different ways of transferring features: Agreement allows for an argument (an independent phase, selected by a head) to re-enter the computation as part of the predicate of the new phase. It targets Person features and is not involved in the feature sharing triggered by modification. Concord copies the features of N (notably gender, number and case, where this is present). It is the result of Modification and can coexist with Agreement. Finally, Projection is triggered by multiple internal mergers of the head, bundled with all its interpretable and uninterpretable features, which may be realized in different segments. The fourth chapter focuses on the nature of determiners such as articles, demonstratives, quantifiers, possessive adjectives and pronouns, personal pronouns and proper names, and shows that only articles have the properties to be attributed to “functional heads” because they are a segment of a scattered nominal head. The rest of the volume is devoted to the analysis of syntactic phenomena, such as double definiteness, expletive articles, and weak and strong adjectival inflection, by means of the proposal that (scattered) nominal or adjectival heads concord with their modifiers. This approach reinterprets head movement in a fashion that makes it compatible with minimalist requirements, provides an explanation for the apparent optionality of head movement, eliminates the typology of head movements by adjunction or substitution, and gives an original answer to the doubts raised about the legitimacy of the very notion of “functional category”.

Author: Cedric Boeckx
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027227867
Category : Grammar, Comparative and general
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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The present work provides a detailed analysis of chain formation and locality conditions imposed on it within the Minimalist Program. It does so by analyzing resumptive strategies in great detail. This study claims that resumptive pronouns and their antecedents are first merged as constituents, and are separated via movement (thus forming instances of discontinuous constituents). Resumptive chains are thus akin to the well-known stranding analysis of quantifier float. A taxonomy of islands is developed that crucially ties barriers for movement to agreement possibilities. The stranding of a resumptive pronoun is shown to limit the role of agreement for the moving element, thereby allowing a chain to be formed across an island.