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This paper discusses the syntactic properties of 'prepositional numeral constructions (PNCs)' in English, which is exemplified by 'about 250 babies' and 'over 16,000 animals'. In PNCs a preposition is followed by a numeral. Previous analyses have claimed that the preposition and the numeral make a prepositional phrase in PNCs, but we argue that this is not a satisfactory approach. In HPSG there are some possible analyses that might be proposed, but there are reasons for supposing that the best analysis is one in which the preposition is a functor, a non-head selecting a numeral head.
The aim of this paper is to provide an adequate analysis in LFG of the prepositional passive, e.g. That problem has been dealt with, My pen has been written with. This construction has been examined in LFG before by Bresnan (1982), Lødrup (1991), and Alsina (2009), but empirical and theoretical problems, some well-documented, some new, mean that such proposals cannot be maintained. Instead, I offer an account couched in recent work on the mapping between grammatical functions and arguments (Asudeh et al., 2014; Findlay, 2014a) that treats the defining characteristic of the prepositional passive not as purely syntactic, but rather as being located at the interface between syntax and semantics.
In Libyan Arabic, the preposition fi 'in' has developed into a marker of continuous or habitual aspect. While structurally remaining a preposition which marks the objects of the non-tensed forms of dynamic transitive verbs, it serves to attribute an aspectual interpretation to the clause as a whole. We argue that this aspectual object marking is naturally modeled by an inside-out functional designator, and provide arguments that the aspectual value contributed by aspectual fi is best treated as an f-structure feature.
Function words like prepositions, adverbs, particles, and complementizers may be assigned more than one category due to the different functions they can have. In this paper I present an approach that assumes unique lexical entries for words that are assigned more than one category. I will focus on prepositions and how they may function as heads of modifying PPs, selected prepositions, or as particles.
Reanalysis of semantically required dependents as complements in the Chinese "ba"-construction
(2011)
The paper aims at a formulation of semantic constraints on the produc- tivity of the Chinese ba-construction and their representation at the syntax-semantics interface. It builds on the observation that requirements on the surface form of the construction may be altered by the choice of the verb. I propose that the semantics of the ba-construction can be treated in terms of a scalar constraint: a ba-sentence must come with a scale and a difference value that holds of the described event. The satisfaction of this constraint largely relies on the lexical semantics of the sentence. Not all verbs are inherently associated with scalar relations; those that are not must combine with an additional dependent which satisfies the scale requirement. Due to the obligatory presence of the additional dependent for some verbs, it is reanalyzed as a complement of ba: being optional on their level of combination with the verb, it becomes obligatory once the verb is used in the ba-construction.
Preposition-noun combinations (PNCs) are compositional and productive, but not fully regular. In school grammars and many theoretical approaches, PNCs are neglected, but they have recently been addressed in an HPSG analysis by Baldwin et al. (2006). After discussing some basic properties of PNCs, we show that statistical methods can be employed to prove that PNCs are indeed productive and compositional, which again implies that PNCs should receive a syntactic analysis. Such an analysis, however, is impeded by the limited regularity of the construction. We will point out why adding semantic conditions to syntactic schemata might be necessary but not sufficient and turn then to a framework which allows the derivation of syntactic (and semantic) generalizations from linguistic data without taking recourse to introspective judgments.
An empirical overview of the properties of English prepositional passives is presented, followed by a discussion of formal approaches to the analysis of the various types of prepositional passives in HPSG. While a lexical treatment is available, the significant number of technical and conceptual difficulties encountered point to an alternative approach relying on constructional constraints. The constructional approach is argued to be the best option for prepositional passives involving adjunct PPs, and this analysis can be extended to create a hierarchy of constructions accommodating all types of prepositional passives in English, and the ordinary NP passive.
In Sorani Kurdish dialects, the complement of a preposition can generally be realized either as a syntactic item (NP, independent pronoun or PP) or a bound personal morpheme (clitic/affix). However, the affixal realization of the complement gives rise to a range of specific phenomena. First, some prepositions display two different phonological forms depending on the realization of their complement: the variant combining with a syntactic item is referred to as ˋsimple', while the variant combining with an affixal complement is called ˋabsolute'. Furthermore, unlike syntactic complements, which are always realized locally, the affixal complement of an absolute preposition can have a non-local realization, attaching to a host with which it has no morphosyntactic relations. In order to deal with these facts, this paper proposes a classification of Sorani prepositions along two lines: the affixal versus non-affixal realization of the complement on the one hand and its local versus non-local realization on the other hand. All cases of non-local realization receive a lexical account, either in terms of argument composition or in terms of linearization constraints on domain objects.
Of all French functional elements, the form de has without question the widest variety of uses, and presents the greatest challenge for linguistic description and analysis. Historically a preposition, it still has a number of prepositional uses in modern French, but in many contexts it calls for an altogether different treatment. We begin by outlining a general distinction between oblique and non-oblique uses of de. We then develop a detailed account of constructions where de combines with an N'. We provide a unitary analysis of de in three constructions (quantifier extraction, "quantification at a distance", and negative contexts) which have been not been considered to be related in previous accounts.
Since the introduction of the X-bar principles it is commonly assumed that prepositions are heads of PPs, in the same way as nouns and pronouns are heads of NPs. However, while this is well motivated for a large majority of the pronouns and the prepositions in many languages, there are also exceptions. More specifically, Van Eynde (1999) argues that the reduced or minor pronouns of Dutch — as opposed to their full or tonic counterparts — cannot head an NP, and the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that there are also prepositions which cannot head a PP. The first section introduces the distinction between major and minor categories. The second shows how it can be applied to the prepositions and presents a way of treating minor prepositions in HPSG. The third singles out the Dutch te(to) as a plausible candidate for a minor preposition treatment, and the fourth provides criteria for the identification of other minor prepositions. The concluding section points out the wider significance of these findings.