Topics In The Syntax And Semantics Of Infinitives And Gerunds

This title, first published in 1988, is an inquiry into the nature of predication in natural language. The study is based on the hypothesis that infinitives and gerunds are not clausal or propositional constructions and attempts to provide support for such a hypothesis, whilst also drawing from analysis of various anaphoric phenomena. This title will be of interest to students of language and linguistics.

The major aim of this volume is to investigate infinitival structures from a diachronic point of view and, simultaneously, to embed the diachronic findings into the ongoing theoretical discussion on non-finite clauses in general. All contributions subscribe to a dynamic approach to infinitival clauses by investigating their origin, development and loss in miscellaneous patterns and across different languages.

This volume presents a collection of specially commissioned papers devoted to analyzing the linguistics of Modern Hebrew from a number of perspectives. Various aspects of Modern Hebrew grammar are discussed including the structure of the lexicon, grammatical features and inflectional morphology, as well as the grammaticalization of semantic and pragmatic distinctions. The psycholinguistic issues addressed include the acquisition of morphological knowledge, the pro-drop parameter and question formation, as well as language use in hearing-impaired native speakers. The collection of these papers together in a single volume allows these phenomena to be considered not in isolation but in the context of the grammatical system of which the language is an expression. As a consequence, more general issues connected to Modern Hebrew begin to emerge, such as the role of the inflectional morphological system in the grammar, and a rich set of facts and analyses relevant for many related issues are made available to the reader.

*** Pre-Order The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, second edition, publishing December 2017. Find out more at www.companiontosyntax.com *** This long-awaited reference work marks the culmination of numerous years of research and international collaboration by the world’s leading syntacticians. There exists no other comparable collection of research that documents the development of syntax in this way. Under the editorial direction of Martin Everaert and Henk van Riemsdijk, this 5 volume set comprises 70 case studies commissioned specifically for this volume. The 80 contributors are drawn from an international group of prestigious linguists, including Joe Emonds, Sandra Chung, Susan Rothstein, Adriana Belletti, Jim Huang, Howard Lasnik, and Marcel den Dikken, among many others. A unique collection of 70 newly-commissioned case studies, offering access to research completed over the last 40 years. Brings together the world’s leading syntacticians to provide a large and diverse number of case studies in the field. Explores a comprehensive range of syntax topics from an historical perspective. Investigates empirical domains which have been well-documented and which have played a prominent role in theoretical syntax at some stage in the development of generative grammar. Serves as a research tool for not only theoretical linguistics but also the various forms of applied linguistics. Contains an accessible alphabetical structure, with an index integral to each volume featuring keywords and key figures. Each multi-volume set is also accompanied by a CD Rom of the entire Companion. Like the prestigious Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics series, this multi-volume work, in the new The Wiley Blackwell Companions to Linguistics series, can be relied upon to deliver the quality and expertise with which Blackwell Publishing’s linguistics list is associated.

This study deals with the so-called Light Verb Construction in Japanese, which consists of the verb “suru” ‘do’ and an accusative (“o”) marked verbal noun (VN). There have been unresolved debates on the role of “suru”: whether “suru” in “VN-o suru” functions as a light or heavy verb. The previous studies attempt to disambiguate “VN-o suru” formations by relying solely on examining whether “suru” can be thematically light or not. This study argues that the ambiguity does not stem from the ‘weight’ of “suru” but from its accusative phrase: whether it is headed by a thematic (complex event) VN or non-thematic (simple event) VN. Using a principles and parameters approach and employing ideas from conceptual semantics and theories of aspect, this study demonstrates that the characterization of “VN-o suru” formations arises not from the dichotic behavior of “suru” but from the dichotic behavior of the accusative phrase.

Discover vital research on the lexical and cognitive meanings of words. In this exciting book from a team of world-class researchers, in-depth articles explain a wide range of topics, including thematic roles, sense relation, ambiguity and comparison. The authors focus on the cognitive and conceptual structure of words and their meaning extensions such as coercion, metaphors and metonymies. The book features highly cited material – available in paperback for the first time since its publication – and is an essential starting point for anyone interested in lexical semantics, especially where it meets other cognitive and conceptual research.

This volume presents studies on pronouns in embedded contexts, and offers fundamental insights into this central area of research. Much of the recent research on pronouns has shown that embedded environments, such as clausal complements of attitude predicates, provide a window into the nature of pronouns. Pronouns in such environments not only exhibit familiar distinctions such as that between bound and referential pronouns; if they refer to the attitude holder, they also participate in a broader range of phenomena, e.g., distinguishing between a de se reading (involving a conscious self-directed belief) and a de re reading (involving an accidental belief about oneself). Topics covered include: the semantics of attitude reports that contain pronominal elements, the semantics of pronominal features and their connection to indexicality, new insights in the connection of pronominal typology and logophoricity or anti-logophoricity, and finally, the localization of embedded pronouns within a bigger picture involving the nature of perspective and the analysis of quasi-pronominal phenomena such as sequence of tense.