40 search hits
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On the limits of the Davidsonian approach : the case of copula sentences
(2005)
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Claudia Maienborn
- Since Donald Davidson’s seminal work “The Logical Form of Action Sentences” (1967) event arguments have become an integral component of virtually every semantic theory. Over the past years Davidson´s proposal has been continuously extended such that nowadays event(uality) arguments are generally associated not only with action verbs but with predicates of all sorts. The reasons for such an extension are seldom explicitly justified. Most problematical in this respect is the case of stative expressions. By taking a closer look at copula sentences the present study assesses the legitimacy of stretching the Davidsonian notion of events and discusses its consequences. A careful application of some standard eventuality diagnostics (perception reports, combination with locative modifiers and manner adverbials) as well as some new diagnostics (behavior of certain degree adverbials) reveals that copular expressions do not behave as expected under a Davidsonian perspective: they fail all eventuality tests, regardless of whether they represent stage-level or individual-level predicates. In this respect, copular expressions pattern with stative verbs like know, hate, and resemble, which in turn differ sharply from state verbs like stand, sit, and sleep. The latter pass all of the eventuality tests and therefore qualify as true “Davidsonian state” expressions. On the basis of these empirical observations and taking up ideas of Kim (1969, 1976) and Asher (1993, 2000), an alternative account of copular expressions (and stative verbs) is provided, according to which the copula introduces a referential argument for a temporally bound property exemplification (= “Kimian state”). Considerations on some logical properties, viz. closure conditions and the latent infinite regress of eventualities, suggest that supplementing Davidsonian eventualities with Kimian states may yield not only a more adequate analysis of copula sentences but also a better understanding of eventualities in general.
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Review of Regina Pustet : Copulas: universals in the categorization of the lexicon: (Oxford University Press 2003; 262pp)
(2007)
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Claudia Maienborn
- The renowned Grimm Dictionary (1854-1961) makes the statement that the German copula sein (to be) is “the most general and colourless of all verbal concepts” (der allgemeinste und farbloseste aller verbalbegriffe). A more concise summary of the linguistic issues surrounding the copula is hardly possible. These two properties (and the latent tension between them!) make copulas a particularly interesting and vexing subject of linguistic research. Copulas appear to be almost colourless, i.e., devoid of any concrete meaning, thus leading to the question of why such expressions exist at all, not only in German but in the majority of the world’s languages. And at the same time copulas presumably provide the best window into the core of verbal concepts thereby telling us what it actually means to be a verb – at least in a language like German or English. While there is a rather rich body of research on copulas in philosophical and formal semantics including several in-depth studies on the copular systems of individual languages, copulas have received comparably little attention from a typological perspective. The monograph of Regina Pustet sets out to fill this gap. She presents an extensive cross-linguistic study of copula usage based on a sample of 154 languages drawn from the language families of the world. The analysis is embedded in the theoretical framework of functional typology. The study aims at uncovering universal principles that govern the distribution of copulas in nominal, adjectival, and verbal predications. Its major objective is the development of a “semantically-based model of copula distribution” (p.62) by means of which the presence vs. absence of copulas can be motivated through the inherent meaning of the lexical items they potentially combine with. Drawing mainly on the work by Givón (1979, 1984) and Croft (1991, 2001), who provide a functional foundation of the traditional parts of speech, Pustet identifies four semantic parameters which, if taken together, are claimed to support substantial generalisations on copula distribution – within a given language as well as crosslinguistically. These parameters are DYNAMICITY, TRANSIENCE, TRANSITIVITY, and DEPENDENCY. Pustet goes on to argue – and this is in fact the driving force behind the overall monograph – that the distributional behaviour of copulas, in turn, yields a useful methodology for developing a general approach to lexical categorization. Thus, in the long run Pustet aims at contributing to a better understanding of the traditional parts of speech, noun, adjective, and verb by defining them in terms of “semantic feature bundles, which can be arranged in [a] coherent semantic similarity space” (p.193).
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Algunos apuntes acerca de la cuestión de la "hibridez" y de la "dignidad" de las lenguas iberorrománicas
(2008)
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Johannes Kabatek
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Grammatik des Deutschen im europäischen Vergleich
(2001)
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Gisela Zifonun
- In der Abteilung Grammatik des Instituts für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, wird derzeit ein neues Projekt entwickelt, und zwar das einer Grammatik des Deutschen im europäischen Vergleich (GDE). Dieses Projekt fügt sich ein in die kontrastive Tradition des IDS, ist jedoch andererseits auch in vieler Hinsicht innovativ. Bevor ich das Projekt im Einzelnen vorstelle, versuche ich den Bogen zurück zu den kontrastiven Grammatiken zu schlagen. Gerade die Leserschaft polnischer Germanisten braucht an die Tradition kontrastiver Grammatikschreibung sicher nicht eigens erinnert zu werden. Denn diese Tradition, die untrennbar mit dem Namen Ulrich Engel verknüpft ist, ist gerade erst in der neu erschienenen deutsch-polnischen kontrastiven Grammatik kulminiert. Im Bereich der kontrastiven Grammatiken zu Sprachenpaaren, von denen das Deutsche ein Element ist, verfügt das IDS also über eine vergleichsweise reiche Tradition. Am IDS oder in Kooperation mit dem IDS wurden kontrastive Grammatiken zu den Sprachenpaaren Deutsch – Französisch (Zemb 1978), Deutsch – Serbokroatisch , Deutsch – Spanisch (Cartegena/Gauger 1989), Deutsch – Rumänisch (Engel u.a. 1993) erarbeitet. Zum Sprachenpaar Englisch – Deutsch liegt mit Hawkins 1986 eine typologisch-vergleichende Grammatik vor. Die deutsch-polnische kontrastive Grammatik, die unter der Leitung von Ulrich Engel erarbeitet wurde, ist 1999 erscheinen. Abraham 1994 und Glinz 1994 konfrontieren das Deutsche, mit durchaus unterschiedlicher Akzentsetzung, mit mehreren anderen europäischen Sprachen. An der Berliner Humboldt-Universität laufen derzeit die Vorarbeiten zu einer deutsch-russischen kontrastiven Grammatik (Initiative Wolfgang Gladrow und Michail Kotin). Die Aufgabe einer 'Grammatik des Deutschen im europäischen Kontext' ist also hinlänglich vorbereitet.
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On embedded implicatures
(2004)
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Uli Sauerland
- The Gricean approach explains implicatures by assumptions about the pragmatics of entire utterances. The phenomenon of embedded implicatures remains a challenge for this approach since in such cases apparently implicatures contribute to the truth-conditional content of constituents smaller than utterances. In this paper, I investigate three areas where embedded implicatures seem to differ from implicatures at the utterance level: optionality, epistemic status, and implicated presuppositions. I conclude that the differences between the two kinds of implicatures justify an approach that maintains Gricean assumptions at the utterance level, and assumes a special operator for embedded implicatures.
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Unpronounced heads in relative clauses
(2001)
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Uli Sauerland
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On the morphosyntax of (anti-)causative verbs
(2009)
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Artemis Alexiadou
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No objections to backward control?
(2009)
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Artemis Alexiadou
Elena Anagnostopoulou
Gianina Nicoleta Iordăchioaia
Mihaela Adriana Marchis
- The aim of this paper is to address two main counterarguments raised in Landau (2007) against the movement analysis of Control, and especially against the phenomenon of Backward Control. The paper shows that unlike the situation described in Tsez (Polinsky & Potsdam 2002), Landau's objections do not hold for Greek and Romanian, where all obligatory control verbs exhibit Backward Control. Our results thus provide stronger empirical support for a theoretical approach to Control in terms of Movement, as defended in Hornstein (1999 and subsequent work).
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In support of long distance agree
(2009)
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Artemis Alexiadou
Elena Anagnostopoulou
Gianina Nicoleta Iordăchioaia
Mihaela Adriana Marchis
- In the recent literature the phenomenon of long distance agreement has become the focus of several studies as it seems to violate certain locality conditions which require that agreeing elements in general stand in clause-mate relationships. In particular, it involves a verb agreeing with a constituent which is located in the verb's clausal complement and hence poses a challenge for theories that assume a strictly local relationship for agreement. In this paper we present empirical evidence from Greek and Romanian for the reality of long distance agreement. Specifically, we focus on raising constructions in these two languages and we show that they do not involve movement but rather instantiate long distance agreement. We further argue that subjunctives allowing long distance agreement lack both a CP layer and semantic Tense. However, since the embedded verb also bears phi-features, these constructions pose a further problem for assumptions that view the presence of phi-features as evidence for the presence of a C layer. Finally, we raise the question of the common properties that these languages have that lead to the presence of long distance agreement.
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Un algorithme d'analyse de type earley pour grammaires à concaténation d'intervalles
(2009)
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Laura Kallmeyer
Yannick Parmentier
Wolfgang Maier
- Nous présentons ici différents algorithmes d’analyse pour grammaires à concaténation d’intervalles (Range Concatenation Grammar, RCG), dont un nouvel algorithme de type Earley, dans le paradigme de l’analyse déductive. Notre travail est motivé par l’intérêt porté récemment à ce type de grammaire, et comble un manque dans la littérature existante
