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This paper discusses the syntax of relative clauses in European Portuguese (EP) by focussing on the status of the relativizer que in restrictive and appositive relative clauses. We propose a unified account of que in terms of a D-element and discuss the syntactic implications of this assumption for an adequate analysis of relative clauses in EP. We assume that relative que has properties of demonstrative and interrogative determiners. In restrictive object and subject relative clauses, que occurs as a transitive determiner [DP que [NP e]], which selects for a nominal complement, whereas in prepositional and appositive relative clauses, [DP que] is an intransitive determiner parallel to an e-type pronoun. We discuss the position of restrictive relative clauses in the DP containing the modified noun, and propose that they are merged pre-nominally, in the same fashion as demonstratives.
O kognitivnim temeljima položaja modifikatora, determinatora i kvantifikatora u imenskoj sintagmi
(2014)
U središtu je pozornosti ovoga rada redoslijed pridjevnih (premodifikacijskih), determinacijskih te kvantifikacijskih sastavnica višestrukosloženih imenskih sintagmi u hrvatskom jeziku. Metodologijom kognitivne gramatike (Langacker 1987, 1991, Taylor 2002, Radden i Dirven 2007) na nekoliko se tipičnih primjera najprije objašnjavaju značenjski aspekti koji uvjetuju neutralan redoslijed njihovih sastavnica, a zatim se preispituje manja ili veća neovjerenost pojedinih konstrukcija pri promjeni redoslijeda sastavnica. Ključnim semantičko-pragmatičkim čimbenikom koji uvjetuje veću ili manju ovjerenost takvih konstrukcija, a uvjetovanu promjenom redoslijeda sastavnica, smatra se referencija odnosno ‘usidrenje’ (engl. grounding) koja se odnosi na uspostavljanje „mentalnoga kontakta” sudionika govornoga čina s referentom imenske sintagme. S obzirom na to posebna se pozornost posvećuje značenjskim razlikama između elemenata referencije – determinatora, relativnih i neodređenih apsolutnih kvantifikatora – te pridjevnih premodifikatora i određenih apsolutnih kvantifikatora (brojeva) koji to nisu.
Counter to the often assumed division of labour between content and function words, we argue that both types of words have lexical content in addition to their logical content. We propose that the difference between the two types of words is a difference in degree. We conducted a preliminary study of quantificational determiners with methods from Distributional Semantics, a computational approach to natural language semantics. Our findings have implications both for distributional and formal semantics. For distributional semantics, they indicate a possible avenue that can be used to tap into the meaning of function words. For formal semantics, they bring into light the context-sensitive, lexical aspects of function words that can be recovered from the data even when these aspects are not overtly marked. Such pervasive context-sensitivity has profound implications for how we think about meaning in natural language.