The Semantics of Clause Linking

This book is a cross-linguistic examination of the different grammatical means languages employ to represent a general set of semantic relations between clauses. The investigations focus on ways of co

This book is a cross-linguistic examination of the different grammatical means languages employ to represent a general set of semantic relations between clauses. The investigations focus on ways of co

Linking - how semantic arguments map to the syntax - is one of the challenges for theories of the syntax-semantics interface. In this new approach, Janet Randall explores the hypothesis that the posi

This book offers detailed empirical coverage of the syntax and semantics of Plains Cree, an Algonquian language of western Canada. It combines careful elicitation with corpus studies to provide the fi

This book presents a study of meaning relations, linking the philosophical tradition of conceptual analysis with recent theories and methodologies in cognitive semantics. Its main concern is the exten

Language is a system of communication in which grammatical structures function to express meaning in context. While all languages can achieve the same basic communicative ends, they each use different means to achieve them, particularly in the divergent ways that syntax, semantics and pragmatics interact across languages. This book looks in detail at how structure, meaning, and communicative function interact in human languages. Working within the framework of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG), Van Valin proposes a set of rules, called the 'linking algorithm', which relates syntactic and semantic representations to each other, with discourse-pragmatics playing a role in the linking. Using this model, he discusses the full range of grammatical phenomena, including the structures of simple and complex sentences, verb and argument structure, voice, reflexivization and extraction restrictions. Clearly written and comprehensive, this book will be welcomed by all those working on the interfac

Argument structure - the pattern of underlying relations between a predicate and its dependents - is at the base of syntactic theory and the theory of the interface with semantics. This comprehensive guide explores the motives for thematic and event-structural decomposition, and its relation to structure in syntax. It also discusses broad patterns in the linking of syntactic to semantic relations, and includes insightful case studies on passive and resultative constructions. Semantically explicit and syntactically impartial, with a careful, interrogative approach, Williams clarifies notions of argument within both lexicalist and nonlexicalist approaches. Ideal for students and researchers in syntactic and semantic theory, this introduction includes: • A comprehensive overview of arguments in syntax and semantics • Discussion questions and suggestions for further reading • A glossary with helpful definitions of key terms.

This is the published version of the author's 2004 Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which investigates the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of the Internally-Headed Rela

Propositional attitude reports are sentences built around clause-embedding psychological verbs, like Kim believes that it's raining or Kim wants it to rain. These interact in many intricate ways with a wide variety of semantically relevant grammatical phenomena, and represent one of the most important topics at the interface of linguistics and philosophy, as their study provides insight into foundational questions about meaning. This book provides a bird's-eye overview of the grammar of propositional attitude reports, synthesizing the key facts, theories, and open problems in their analysis. Couched in the theoretical framework of generative grammar and compositional truth-conditional semantics, it places emphasis on points of intersection between propositional attitude reports and other important topics in semantic and syntactic theory. With discussion points, suggestions for further reading and a useful guide to symbols and conventions, it will be welcomed by students and researc

As children begin to use language in early childhood, they produce increasingly large units of coherent speech, including narrative descriptions of events. This book examines the process of narrative development in young children, focusing on the development of 'cohesion' - the use of speech and gesture to create coherent perspectives on events. Surveying early narrative development in which gesture plays an integral part, the book explores the development of cohesive, clause-linking devices during the period from age two to three. Illustrated with longitudinal cases studies, the book examines the crib-talk of two-year-old Emily and compares it to the discourse patterns of storybooks and nursery rhymes, and to her father's pre-bedtime routines. In a second case study, the authors trace the changing relationships between speech and gesture in the spontaneous narratives of two-year-old Ella. This book will be invaluable to students and researchers in language acquisition, developmental p

Information content and programming semantics are just two of the applications of the mathematical concepts of order, continuity and domains. The authors develop the mathematical foundations of partially ordered sets with completeness properties of various degrees, in particular directed complete ordered sets and complete lattices. Uniquely, they focus on partially ordered sets that have an extra order relation, modelling the notion that one element 'finitely approximates' another, something closely related to intrinsic topologies linking order and topology. Extensive use is made of topological ideas, both by defining useful topologies on the structures themselves and by developing close connections with numerous aspects of topology. The theory so developed not only has applications to computer science but also within mathematics to such areas as analysis, the spectral theory of algebras and the theory of computability. This authoritative, comprehensive account of the subject will be e