Linguistik-Klassifikation: Grammatikforschung / Grammar research
10 search hits
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Grammatical properties of pronouns and their representation : an exposition
(2002)
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Heike Wiese
Horst Simon
- This volume brings together a cross-section of recent research on the grammar and representation of pronouns, centering around the typology of pronominal paradigms, the generation of syntactic and semantic representations for constructions containing pronouns, and the neurological underpinnings for linguistic distinctions that are relevant for the production and interpretation of these constructions. In this introductory chapter we first give an exposition of our topic (section 2). Taking the interpretation of pronouns as a starting point, we discuss the basic parameters of pronominal representations, and draw a general picture of how morphological, semantic, discourse-pragmatic and syntactic aspects come together. In section 3, we sketch the different domains of research that are concerned with these phenomena, and the particular questions they are interested in, and show how the papers in the present volume fit into the picture. Section 4 gives summaries of the individual papers, and a short synopsis of their main points of convergence.
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WH-words are not ‘interrogative’ pronouns : the derivation of interrogative interpretations for constituent questions
(2001)
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Heike Wiese
- I discuss the status of WH-words for interrogative interpretations, and show that the derivation of constituent questions evolves from a specific interplay of syntactic and semantic representations with pragmatics. I argue that WH-pronouns are not ‘interrogative’. Rather, they are underspecified elements; due to this underspecification, WH-words can form a constitutive part not only of interrogative, but also of exclamative and declarative clauses. WH-words introduce a variable of a particular conceptual domain into the semantic representation. Accordingly, they have to be specified for interpretation. Different WH-contexts give rise to different interpretations. In a cross-linguistic overview, I discuss the characteristic elements contributing to the derivation of interrogatives. I argue that specific particles or their phonologically empty counterparts in the head of CP contribute the interrogative aspect. The speech act of ‘asking’ is then carried out via an intonational contour that identifies a question. By default, this intonational contour operates on interrogative sentences; however, other sentence formats – in particular, those of declarative sentences – are possible as well. The distinction of (a) grammatical (syntactic, semantic and phonological) sentence formats for interrogative and declarative sentences, and (b) intonational contours serving the discrimination of speech acts like questions and assertions, can be related to psychological and neurological evidence.
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Inhalt und Aufbau deskriptiver Grammatiken : (How to write a grammar)
(1987)
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Ulrike Mosel
- Das vorliegende Arbeitspapier ist das Skript einer Vorlesung, die ich während des Wintersemesters 1986/87 am Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität zu Köln gehalten habe. […] Das Arbeitspapier gliedert sich in zwei Teile. Im ersten Teil, Kapitel 1 - 4, werden die bei der Untersuchung und Beschreibung einer Sprache auftretenden soziolinguistischen Probleme besprochen, während im zweiten Teil, Kapitel 5 - 11, behandelt wird, wie eine Grammatik geschrieben werden sollte. Es geht dabei also nicht um die grammatische Analyse sprachlicher Daten, sondern um die Darstellung einer Sprache, d.h. um die schriftstellerische Aufgabe des Linguisten, des Grammatikers im eigentlichen Sinn.
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Grammaticalization and Grammar
(1992)
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Nikolaus P. Himmelmann
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Verbal Noun or Verbal Adjective? The Case of the Latin Gerundive and Gerund
(1987)
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Martin Haspelmath
- It is the aim of this paper to present and elaborate a new solution to the old syntactic problems connected with the Latin gerundive and gerund, two verbal categories which have been interpreted variously either as adjective (or participle) or noun (or infinitive). These questions have been much discussed for quite a number of years […] but for the most part from a philological or purely diachronic point of view. All these linguists try to explain the peculiarities of these categories and their syntax by showing that the gerund is historically prior to the gerundive. [...] It is our thesis […] that in order to arrive at a unified account of gerundive and gerund we do not have to go back to prehistoric times. Even for the classical language gerund and gerundive represent the same category, in the sense that the gerund can be shown to be a special case of the gerundive. Additional evidence from a parallel construction in Hindi is adduced to make the Latin facts more plausible. It is only in the post-classical language that certain tendencies which had shown up already in Old Latin poetry become stronger and finally lead to a reanalysis of the gerundive and a split into two distinct syntactic constructions. The propositional meaning of the gerundive in its attributive use is explained with reference to a conflict between syntactic and cognitive principles. Special constructions which are the effects of such conflicts can be found in other parts of grammar. Languages differ with respect to the degree of syntacticization (or conventionalization) of these special constructions.
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Pfade der Grammatikalisierung : ein systematischer Überblick
(1993)
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Isabel Compes
Silvia Kutscher
Carmen Rudorf
- In der Forschung zu Grammatikalisierungsphänomenen wurden die Untersuchungsergebnisse häufig in Form grafischer Schemata dargestellt. Die einschlägige Forschungsliteratur spricht daher von 'grammaticalization paths', 'chains' und 'channels'. Wir möchten in dieser Arbeit erstens einen Überblick darüber bieten, welche Grammatikalisierungspfade – und zu welchen traditionellen grammatischen Domänen – bisher vorgeschlagen wurden. Zweitens möchten wir mittels der Zusammmenstellung der Pfade in einem Gesamtbild veranschaulichen, wie ein Grammatik-Modell aussehen könnte, dem die Grammatikalisierungstheorie zugrunde liegt. Ein solcher Überblick ist aus mehreren Gründen problematisch: Zum einen liegen für einige Grammatikalisierungsentwicklungen verschiedene Vorschläge vor, von denen wir jeweils die auswählten, für die ausreichend Belegmaterial angeführt wurde. Ein anderes Problem stellt die Heterogenität der grafischen Schemata dar, für die wir versucht haben, ein einheitliches Format zu erarbeiten, um sie in unser Gesamtmodell zu integrieren. In gleicher Weise wurden die Vorschläge einbezogen, die nicht in grafischer Gestalt vorlagen. Ein grundlegendes Kriterium für die Auswahl aus der vielfältigen Literatur war, daß die Bewegung eines sprachlichen Elements entlang seines historisch belegten Pfades betrachtet wurde. Im ersten Teil der Arbeit wird die Gesamtgrafik in Bezug auf die von Himmelmann 1992 skizzierte Grammatikalisierungtheorie in einzelnen Aspekten erläutert. Der zweite Teil dient der Einordnung der historisch belegten Entwicklungen in das Gesamtschema, wobei zwei Pfade gesondert behandelt werden. Zum Abschluß möchten wir kurz auf die Möglichkeiten und die Mängel des Modells eingehen.
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Grammatical relations typology
(2007)
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Balthasar Bickel
- Traditionally, the term "grammatical relation" (GR) refers to the morphosyntactic properties that relate an argument to a clause, as, for example, its subject or its object. Alternative terms are "syntactic function" or "syntactic role", and they highlight the fact that GRs are defined by the way in which arguments are integrated syntactically into a clause, i.e. by functioning as subject, object etc. Whatever terminology one prefers, what is crucial about the traditional notion of GRs is (a) that they are identified by syntactic properties, and (b) that they relate an argument to the clause.
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On the scope of the referential hierarchy in the typology of grammatical relations
(2008)
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Balthasar Bickel
- In the late seventies, Bernard Comrie was one of the first linguists to explore the effects of the referential hierarchy (RH) on the distribution of grammatical relations (GRs). The referential hierarchy is also known in the literature as the animacy, empathy or indexibability hierarchy and ranks speech act participants (i.e. first and second person) above third persons, animates above inanimates, or more topical referents above less topical referents. Depending on the language, the hierarchy is sometimes extended by analogy to rankings of possessors above possessees, singulars above plurals, or other notions. In his 1981 textbook, Comrie analyzed RH effects as explaining (a) differential case (or adposition) marking of transitive subject ("A") noun phrases in low RH positions (e.g. inanimate or third person) and of object ("P") noun phrases in high RH positions (e.g. animate or first or second person), and (b) hierarchical verb agreement coupled with a direct vs. inverse distinction, as in Algonquian (Comrie 1981: Chapter 6).
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Principles of event framing : genetic stability in grammar and discourse
(1999)
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Balthasar Bickel
- Ever since Wilhelm von Humboldt’s (1836) pioneering study of Nahuatl, linguists have recurrently recognized that languages differ fundamentally in the syntactic weight they attribute to noun-phrases as the arguments of a verb. Currently, the most prominent attempts to turn this intuition into a precise hypothesis revolve around the notion of ‘configurationality’.
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Grammatical relations, agreement, and genetic stability
(1999)
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Balthasar Bickel
- Languages vary in whether or not primary grammatical relations (PGRs) are sensitive to information from clause-level case or phrase structures. This variation correlates with a difference between verb agreement systems based on feature unification and systems based on feature composition. The choice between different PGR and agreement principles is found to be highly stable genetically and to characterize Indo-European as systematically different from Sino-Tibetan. Although the choice is partially similar to the Configurationality Parameter, it is shown that Indo-European languages of South Asia are nonconfigurational due to areal pressure but follow their European relatives in PGR and agreement principles.
