A Semantics For The English Existential Construction
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A Semantics For The English Existential Construction
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Author : Louise McNally
language : en
Publisher: Routledge
Release Date : 2016-11-25
A Semantics For The English Existential Construction written by Louise McNally and has been published by Routledge this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2016-11-25 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
First published in 1997, this book addresses the question: What is the interpretation of English there-existential construction? One of the principal goals is to develop an interpretation for the construction that will specifically address other properties of the postcopular DP. After outlining the problem, the author goes on to present a syntactic motivation for the claim that the postcopular DP is the sole complement to the existential predicate, as well as for the claim that the optional final phrase is a predictive adjunct. In chapter 3 the interpretation for the basic existential construction is developed and then compared to analyses that take the postcopular DP to denote an ordinary individual or a generalised quantifier of individuals. This analysis is then augmented to account for the contribution of the final XP and shows how the predicate restriction can be derived from a more general condition on depictive/circumstantial VP-adjuncts. The final chapter contain some speculative discussion of the broader implications of the proposal in the context of data such as "list" existential and "presentational-there" sentences.
Existence Semantics And Syntax
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Author : Ileana Comorovski
language : en
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Release Date : 2008-08-20
Existence Semantics And Syntax written by Ileana Comorovski and has been published by Springer Science & Business Media this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2008-08-20 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
This collection of essays grew out of the workshop ‘Existence: Semantics and Syntax’, which was held at the University of Nancy 2 in September 2002. The workshop, organized by Ileana Comorovski and Claire Gardent, was supported by a grant from the Reseau ́ de Sciences Cognitives du Grand Est (‘Cognitive Science Network of the Greater East’), which is gratefully acknowledged. The ?rst e- tor wishes to thank Claire Gardent, Fred Landman, and Georges Rebuschi for encouraging her to pursue the publication of a volume based on papers presented at the workshop. Among those who participated in the workshop was Klaus von Heusinger, who joined Ileana Comorovski in editing this volume. Besides papers that developed out of presentations at the workshop, the volume contains invited contributions. We are grateful to Wayles Browne, Fred Landman, Paul Portner, and Georges Rebuschi for their help with reviewing some of the papers. Our thanks go also to a Springer reviewer for the careful reading of the book manuscript. We wish to thank all the participants in the workshop, not only those whose contributions appear in this volume, for making the workshop an int- active and constructive event. Ileana Comorovski Klaus von Heusinger vii ILEANA COMOROVSKI AND KLAUS VON HEUSINGER INTRODUCTION The notion of ‘existence’, which we take to have solid intuitive grounding, plays a central role in the interpretation of at least three types of linguistic constructions: copular clauses, existential sentences, and (in)de?nite noun phrases.
Existential Sentences In English
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Author : Gary L. Milsark
language : en
Publisher: Routledge
Release Date : 2014-01-10
Existential Sentences In English written by Gary L. Milsark and has been published by Routledge this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2014-01-10 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
In order to bring some minimal amount of order to the chaos that almost inevitably attends the use of the word ‘existential’ in a linguistic investigation, the author reserved the term existential sentence (ES) to designate all and only those English sentences in which there appears an occurrence of the unstressed, non-deictic, ‘existential’ there. Thus the term will be used as a characterisation of a class of syntactic objects, not as a semantic description. With ES sentences including formations such as ‘There were several people talking’ and ‘There ensued a riot’, perhaps nowhere else do we find so clearly displayed the complexity and subtlety of the syntactic and semantic interactions which determine the nature of human language.
The English Existential
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Author : Lyle Jenkins
language : en
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Release Date : 2012-10-25
The English Existential written by Lyle Jenkins and has been published by Walter de Gruyter this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2012-10-25 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
Over the past few decades, the book series Linguistische Arbeiten [Linguistic Studies], comprising over 500 volumes, has made a significant contribution to the development of linguistic theory both in Germany and internationally. The series will continue to deliver new impulses for research and maintain the central insight of linguistics that progress can only be made in acquiring new knowledge about human languages both synchronically and diachronically by closely combining empirical and theoretical analyses. To this end, we invite submission of high-quality linguistic studies from all the central areas of general linguistics and the linguistics of individual languages which address topical questions, discuss new data and advance the development of linguistic theory.
Existential Constructions Across Languages
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Author : Laure Sarda
language : en
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Release Date : 2023-07-15
Existential Constructions Across Languages written by Laure Sarda and has been published by John Benjamins Publishing Company this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2023-07-15 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
This volume reflects the centrality of the existential construction in current linguistic research and offers studies that both consolidate and challenge established research agendas. It addresses (i) a variety of constructions related to ‘prototypical’ existentials (including the have-possessive construction), and investigates (ii) the relationships between locative, existential, and information structure, (iii) the quantification of the pivot and (iv) the issue of negative existentials. It brings together different and complementary approaches (functional, cognitive, pragmatic, typological, comparative, diachronic, philosophical) based on a wide variety of data sources. The contributions illustrate how the so-called existential construction can take a variety of forms – more or less grammaticalized – and functions – ranging from the expression of literal existence to that of localization and discursive focus – in a wide range of languages. The book will be valuable for linguists, researchers or students, interested in the cross-linguistic manifestations of existential constructions at the interface between syntax, semantics and information structure.
Existential Sentences
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Author : Michael Lumsden
language : en
Publisher: Routledge
Release Date : 2014-02-03
Existential Sentences written by Michael Lumsden and has been published by Routledge this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2014-02-03 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
What is the relationship between the structure of existential sentences and their meaning? How do hearers interpret existential sentences using pragmatic assumptions? This study attempts to account for the relationship between the structure of existential sentences (ES) and their meaning. The study of ES has received a great deal of attention because the construction has complex syntactic properties, is associated with restrictions of a semantic nature, and provides an interesting area for investigation at a pragmatic level.
Existential Sentences In English And Lithuanian
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Author : Violeta Kalėdaitė
language : en
Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing
Release Date : 2002
Existential Sentences In English And Lithuanian written by Violeta Kalėdaitė and has been published by Peter Lang Publishing this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2002 with Foreign Language Study categories.
Existential sentences in the world's languages tend to develop specific morphological, syntactic, and lexical properties. The present work offers a contrastive functional analysis of these constructions in two typologically unrelated languages, English and Lithuanian. The study focuses on the relationship between the syntactic structure of different existential sentence types and their meaning; it also explores the semantic and pragmatic parameters relevant to the structural differences within a single language and across the two compared languages. Most importantly, a new definition of the existential sentence, which takes into account both semantic and syntactic criteria, is proposed for Lithuanian. The findings are drawn on the basis of the corpus and highlight conspicuous differences in the linguistic representations of the construction in the two languages. With respect to Lithuanian, communicative word order variations, language-specific structures (the BKI and the impersonal passive), and a wider use of lexical verbs present an area of special interest. Contents: The English existential: definition and classification -- General characteristics: structural patterns -- Semantic types -- Word order -- The interpretation of there -- Verbs in the construction -- The definiteness restriction -- Lithuanian existentials: the semantics of the basic sentence patterns -- Types of 'be' existentials -- Communicative types of existential sentences -- Semantic classes of acceptable lexical verbs -- Definite and indefinite subject NPs -- Language-specific existential structures.
English Existentials In Functional Grammar
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Author : Michael Hannay
language : en
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Release Date : 2017-03-06
English Existentials In Functional Grammar written by Michael Hannay and has been published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2017-03-06 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
Existential Sentences In English
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Author : Gary L. Milsark
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 1979
Existential Sentences In English written by Gary L. Milsark and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1979 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
Grammaticalization Paths Of English And High German Existential Constructions
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Author : Simone E. Pfenninger
language : en
Publisher: Peter Lang
Release Date : 2009
Grammaticalization Paths Of English And High German Existential Constructions written by Simone E. Pfenninger and has been published by Peter Lang this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2009 with English language categories.
Existential constructions are a fundamental feature of many Indo-European languages, and constructions with non-referential subjects have developed in all of the latter, albeit at different stages in their histories. High German does not feature a prototypical existential construction that is equivalent in syntactic and pragmatic function and semantic meaning to the English existential there-construction. How did a prototypical existential structure originate in English? Why is it that High German has never developed such a construction? Has it ever shown a tendency towards developing one? How did two closely related languages such as English and High German come to differ so much with respect to these constructions? By means of investigating a variety of historical and contemporary data this study shows that not only semantic, pragmatic and syntactic factors are involved, which decide the choice of a certain construction, but also very much the more general different linguistic development that the two languages underwent in the course of time.