The Syntax and Semantics of a Determiner System
Title | The Syntax and Semantics of a Determiner System PDF eBook |
Author | Diana Guillemin |
Publisher | John Benjamins Publishing |
Pages | 329 |
Release | 2011 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 9027252602 |
Within the framework of Chomsky's Minimalism and Formal Semantics, this work documents the development of the Mauritian Creole (MC) determiner system from the mid 18th century to the present. Guillemin proposes that the loss of the French quantificational determiners, which agglutinated to nouns, resulted in the occurrence of bare nouns in argument positions. This triggered a shift in noun denotation, from predicative in French to argumental in MC, and accounts for the very different determiner systems of the creole and its lexifier. MC nouns are lexically stored as Kind denoting terms, that share some of the distributional properties of English bare plurals. New MC determiners are analyzed as 'type shifting operators' that shift Kinds into predicates, and serve to establish the referential properties of noun phrases. The analysis provides evidence for the universality of semantic features like Definiteness and Specificity, and the mapping of their form and function.
The Semantics of Determiners (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar)
Title | The Semantics of Determiners (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar) PDF eBook |
Author | Johan Van Der Auwera |
Publisher | Routledge |
Pages | 310 |
Release | 2014-01-21 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 1317933478 |
This book is a collection of linguistic and philosophical papers dealing with the semantic problems of determiners. The language under investigation is mostly English, although a few papers deal with French and German, and, to a lesser extent, with Dutch, Polish, Russian and Hebrew. The majority of the contributions focus on the semantics of the definite and indefinite articles, leading into discussions of anaphoricness, specificness, opacity and transparency, referentiality and attributiveness and genericness. The relation of the determiners to other parts of grammar, in particular relativisation and predication, is also investigated. Some attention is also given to quantifiers. In the spirit of pluralism, there is no single paradigm unifying all the papers, rather, the volume reflects elements of the Extended Standard Theory, Generative Semantics, Montague Grammar, (Gricean) Pragmatics and Speech Act Theory.
Determiners
Title | Determiners PDF eBook |
Author | Jila Ghomeshi |
Publisher | John Benjamins Publishing |
Pages | 257 |
Release | 2009 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 902725530X |
This volume brings together recent work on the formal and interpretational properties of determiners across a variety of typologically and geographically unrelated languages. It seeks to answer the core question of modern linguistic theory: Which properties of languages are universal and which are variable? In recent theorizing, much of language variation is argued to stem from differences in the properties of features associated with functional heads. As such, this volume can be viewed as a case study of one such category: the determiner (D). The contributions all investigate the status of D as a language universal by examining the language-specific syntactic and semantic properties associated with this category. This volume will appeal to researchers and students in syntax and semantics, as well as to those who have more a specific interest in determiners and noun phrases.
Determiners and Quantifiers
Title | Determiners and Quantifiers PDF eBook |
Author | |
Publisher | BRILL |
Pages | 333 |
Release | 2021-11-15 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 9004473327 |
This volume explores the interface between morphosyntax and semantics-pragmatics in the domain of referential and quantificational nominal expressions, by means of synchronic and diachronic case studies from Romance and Germanic languages.
The Semantics of Determiners
Title | The Semantics of Determiners PDF eBook |
Author | Carrie Gillon |
Publisher | Cambridge Scholars Publishing |
Pages | 290 |
Release | 2014-07-03 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 1443863483 |
This book investigates the properties of determiners in Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) Salish. Determiners in Skwxwú7mesh are shown to behave significantly differently from the definite determiner the in English, as Skwxwú7mesh lacks a definite/indefiniteness distinction. All Skwxwú7mesh DPs can be used in both familiar and novel contexts, and are not required to refer to a unique entity. Instead, Skwxwú7mesh determiners are split along deictic/non-deicticlines. Determiners can therefore vary in terms of their semantics. However, determiners are argued to universally encode contextual sensitivity (domain restriction). A strict correlation between the syntax and semantics of determiners is proposed: if an article occupies D, it is context sensitive. Conversely, articles that do not occupy D are not context sensitive. This book also explores determiner systems in other Salish languages. Deixis is a part of most of the Salish determiner systems, but the systems vary quite a bit from one another. Other languages discussed include Inuttut (Labrador Inuktitut), Lithuanian and Maori.
The Semantics of Determiners
Title | The Semantics of Determiners PDF eBook |
Author | Johan van der Auwera |
Publisher | |
Pages | 309 |
Release | 2014 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 9781315857350 |
Analyzing Syntax and Semantics
Title | Analyzing Syntax and Semantics PDF eBook |
Author | Virginia A. Heidinger |
Publisher | Gallaudet University Press |
Pages | 250 |
Release | 1984 |
Genre | Education |
ISBN | 9780913580912 |
This 22-chapter text explores the structure of language and the meaning of words within a given structure. The text/workbook combination gives students both the theory and practice they need to understand this complex topic. Analyzing Syntax and Semantics features the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) approach. This method uses student performance objectives, practice, feedback, individualization of pace, and repeatable testing as instructional strategies.