No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
The English Noun Phrase: The Nature of Linguistic Categorization
Abstract
English has an interesting variety of noun phrases, which differ greatly in structure. Examples are ‘binominal’ (two-noun) phrases ('a beast of a party'); possessive constructions ('the author's opinion'); and discontinuous noun phrases ('the review [came out yesterday] of his book'). How are these different noun phrases structured? How do we produce and understand them? These questions are central to this original study, which explores the interaction between the form of noun phrases, their meaning, and their use. It shows how, despite the need in linguistic analysis for strict categories, many linguistic constructions in fact defy straightforward classification - and concludes that in order to fully explain the internal structure of utterances, we must first consider the communicative, pragmatic and cognitive factors that come into play. Drawing on a range of authentic examples, this book sheds new light not only on the noun phrase itself but also the nature of linguistic classification.
... As pointed out in previous studies, pseudo-partitives in English form a heterogenous group (see e.g. Vos 1999;Keizer 2007;Brems 2011;Partee and Borschev 2012). us, depending on the exact denotation of the rst noun, dierent subtypes can be distinguished, each characterized by its own combination of semantic and syntactic features (e.g. ...
... Keizer (2007) and ten Wolde (2019) use the term 'head-qualier'. For reasons that will become clear in Sect. ...
A considerable amount of research has been devoted to binominal constructions, including pseudo-partitives, evaluative binominal constructions, and sort/kind constructions. This chapter discusses another, as yet largely ignored binominal construction, the head-classifier construction. Unlike regular N+PP constructions, head-classifiers are characterized by the fact that the second noun does not head a referential NP but indicates a (taxonomic) subcategory (bird of prey), an intrinsic property (a wall of clay), or a qualification (a man of honour). In this chapter, data from the British National Corpus are used (1) to define the head-classifier construction in terms of function and form, and (2) to clearly delineate head-classifier constructions (HCCs) from conventional N+PP constructions (e.g. the wall of my house), pseudo-partitive constructions (e.g. a piece of clay) and N-N compounds (e.g. a clay wall). Finally, the theory of Functional Discourse Grammar is used to propose analyses reflecting the differences and similarities between the head classifier and related constructions.
... Carnie (2013) acknowledges that PP complements can be distinguished from adjuncts on the basis that PP complements in an NP are sisters to the head nouns dominated by a noun bar (N`) but they are not sister to an N`, whereas the adjuncts are sister to an N` and daughter of another N` as it is shown in the tree diagram in 12 that the PPs about medicine and for life are considered as the complement of their head nouns book and education; they are sisters to their head nouns since the first branching node which dominates the head nouns book and education also dominates the PPs about medicine and for life whereas in 13 the PP 2 with the green title is an adjunct since it is not the sister to the head noun book but it is sister to an N` and daughter of an N`. Keizer (2007) also states that PP complements are closer to the noun that acts as the head in comparison with modifiers. ...
... 14) [ NP the rumour that the village had been invaded] ...
... Adjective phrases are (an extremely strong man, the very beautiful scene, that really difficult task). For a detailed discussion of premodification and types of premodifiers, see Keizer (2007), Biber et al. (2002), Huddleston and Pullum (2002), and Feist (2012). ...
... In English, as Quirk and Greenbaum (1973: 377-394) mention, postmodifiers that describe nouns and function as adjectives come in different formats: prepositional phrases (across the street, through the forest, in the blue coat), -ing present participles (holding her hand, spending money, talking to him), past participles (written by his mother, stolen last month, taken to hospital), infinitival clauses (to arrive, to visit, to follow), relative clauses (which is new, that we watched, where we lived), adverbs (the man upstairs, the people there, the children outside), appositives (my sports teacher, John Smith; their friends, Tom and Jack; her roommate, Nancy Dickens), and occasionally adjectives (something useful, someone rich, somewhere safe). For a detailed discussion of postmodification and types of postmodifiers, see Keizer (2007), Biber et al. (2002), Huddleston and Pullum (2002), and Haan (1989). ...
This study investigates the significance of the construal of specificity in syntax, particularly in modification. In Cognitive Grammar, conceptualizing a situation can be either specific or conversely schematic. Namely, the two conceptualizations focus attention on greater or lesser detail of certain aspects of a situation. Each conceptualization describes the same content but in a peculiar way, and thus results in a distinct meaning. Making use of the language resources, the speaker can map the conceptualizations into different modes of modification: syntactic device by which a noun is accompanied by preceding and/or following modifiers. The aim of the study is to show that the use of a linguistic expression is motivated by the particular construal imposed on its conceptual content relative to communicative purposes. One of the key findings of the study is that specificity intensifies a description and makes it concrete, whereas schematicity attenuates a description and makes it abstract.
... A number of accounts, including those in Guéron (1980) and Keizer (2007), differ from Kirkwood's (1977) theticity analysis in not explicitly relating the presentational function of the extraposition from subject construction to an information structure category of sentence focus or theticity. Instead, only the subjectand sometimes only the extraposed sub-constituent (see e.g., Keizer 2007: 286;Francis 2010: 38)is regarded as focal, rather than the entire clause. ...
... This is not to claim that extraposition constructions cannot also convey other information structural values: as also pointed out in Section 1, extraposition from subject, with a salient primary accent only on the nominal or within the extraposed constituent, is also compatible with narrow/contrastive focus in English (Göbbel 2013b) as well as crosslinguistically, and extraposition from object as in (1b) clearly does not indicate theticity (though it may have a preferred broad focus interpretation). Indeed, the account presented here is not incompatible with the claim that complexity (weight) also influences the choice of extraposed constructions, as has been widely argued, and shown on the basis of corpus data by Keizer (2007) and Francis (2010). Since no corpus or experimental study to date has directly targeted the relative influence of weight and information structure, the interaction of these factors remains an issue for further empirical research. ...
This article builds on observations from several research areas which hitherto have been pursued relatively independently of one another, to argue that discontinuous nominal expressions are one of the attested strategies for marking a subtype of sentence focus constructions known as thetic constructions. This analysis can be applied to the type of discontinuity termed extraposition from subject NP/DP in languages with otherwise strongly configurational nominal expressions such as English. For these constructions, however, it cannot be ruled out that weight/length is an alternative or additional motivation. Evidence from several Australian languages, where discontinuous subjects usually just involve a semantic head and a modifier, can be used to show that this strategy is attested even where weight is not a plausible factor. Like other construction types that are associated with theticity crosslinguistically, discontinuous nominal expressions are saliently distinct from topic-comment (“categorical”) constructions and thus obey the principle of detopicalization identified by Lambrecht, Knud. 2000. When subjects behave like objects: An analysis of the merging of S and O in sentence-focus constructions across languages. Studies in Language 24(3). 611–682. The findings support the hypothesis that the principle of iconicity of distance, which ensures contiguity of the subconstituents of a phrase under most circumstances, will only be overridden if another principle motivates this violation. Such competing principles include highlighting a contrastive modifier and the distribution of weight, both discussed in previous literature. Here it will be argued that detopicalization can be added to this list since discontinuity prevents the assignment of topic status to the subject expression. Moreover, a construction where a discontinuous subject frames the entire clause is itself iconically motivated by the principle of informational integration which results in the unitary, non-bipartite nature of the construction generally associated with theticity.
... Head constructions in Russian correspond primarily to the 'referential SKT constructions' 8 in English as they are labelled in Keizer (2007), or 'binominal constructions' as they are referred to in Denison (2002), or lexical head uses discussed in Davidse, Brems & De Smedt (2008). I will show in this section that, unlike tip, rod can also be part of constructions functionally comparable to the English nominal qualifying construction, or the 'approximator' uses in French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish (Mihatsch 2016). ...
... gosudarstv-o tem bolee t-ogo tip-a kotor-oe state-NOM.n.sg all the more that-GEN.m.sg type-GEN.m.sg which-NOM.n.sg 'Of course, it is naive to expect that a bourgeois state -especially of the type that has developed in Russia by now -will allow the use of its own institutions to defeat itself.' (RNC, 2003) 11 Keizer (2007) refers to them as 'constructions of the third kind', as opposed to referential and qualifying types, or as "a highly conventionalized subtype of the referential SKT-construction". ...
Against the background of crosslinguistic research on the grammaticalization of type nouns in Germanic and Romance languages, this article examines nominal constructions with the Russian rod (‘genus’, ‘genre’, ‘kind’) and tip (‘type’). The study proposes a comprehensive typology of constructions based on their functional-structural properties and semantic characteristics. Generalization of meaning, decrease in semantic substance and compositionality, pragmaticalization and lexicalization concern mainly constructions with rod. Rod is argued to be overall more advanced on the path of desemanticization, conceivably because tip is a relatively recent borrowing and features a more specific meaning. While tip retains its taxonomic meaning in most contexts, constructions with rod are shown to fulfil more diverse functions and to be used predominantly for the purposes of hedging, textual cohesion (anaphoric reference) and indication of variety and quantification.
... Ce que nous appelons « construction qualitative », suivant Hulk et Tellier (2000) qui la nomment également « qualitative DP », se présente en anglais (2) et en français (3) Cette structure reçoit de nombreuses appellations dans la littérature : "adjectival nouns" (McCawley, 1987), « construction affective de type A et B » pour Gaatone (1988), qui l'appelle également « apposition inverse », « épithète antéposée » pour Larrivée (1994), « construction indirecte de l'apposition » dans des « désignations affectives » pour Le Bon Usage 2008 : 424), "N of a N" pour Corver (1998), qui est rejoint par Alexiadou, Haegeman & Stavrou (2008) avec l'appellation "NoN"; on trouve également "binominal noun phrase" (Aarts, 1998, Keizer, 2007, Kim & Sells, 2015, "expressive binominal noun phrase" (Foolen, 2004), "qualitative binominal noun phrase" (Den Dikken, 2006 :162), "EBNP" pour "evaluative binominal noun phrase" (Trousdale, 2012), « construction évaluative » (Vinet, 2003, Polguère, 2014, et le même Polguère (2014) l'appelle également « complétive évaluative ». ...
To cite this version: Maruszka Eve-Marie Meinard. Vers une typologie des interjections dans la construction qualitative : Une étude introductive, français/anglais. 2023. hal-04009615 1
Abstract The aim of this paper is to offer a typological and a descriptive account of interjections and onomatopoeias that can be found in the qualitative construction. In this preliminary study, we hope to challenge the view that interjections are always syntactically isolated. We will also show that, in this construction, some lexemes have what we call a "predominant" interpretation and a "minor" one, depending on their syntactic and lexical context. We will make use of different metalinguistic discourses (Meaning-text Theory, Generative Grammar, Construction Grammars) in order to understand how these theoretical frameworks can explain the presence of interjections in these complex noun phrases.
... The differences in the means of expressing the possessive relation in English and Ukrainian, as well as the peculiarities of the functioning of these means in English, require detailed study. Therefore, the patterns representing the semantic relation of possession in English substantive constructions include the pre-nominal genitive and the post-nominal genitive (Keizer, 2007;Korunets, 2004). ...
The paper deals with the category of possession as a linguistic category and the semantics of English possessive substantive constructions. Possession is a linguistic universal, a fundamental linguistic category with a complex and heterogeneous meaning and a plane of expression, therefore there are several directions of its study in linguistics. In a broad sense, possession expresses spatial relations between two objects, when one of them is considered as an element of the “personal sphere” of another object, or when one object (person) has the right to own, use and dispose of another object. In this paper the author reveals relevant features of the category of possession (‘activity’ – ‘subordination’, ‘alienability’ – ‘inalienability’, ‘static’ – ‘dynamic’, ‘entry’ – ‘inclusion’) and outlines differences between possessive predicative and substantive constructions in English. It is noted that predicative constructions are unambiguous: the subject of the possessive relation is expressed, and the possessive information is embedded in the construction itself. Substantive constructions are polysemic: the object of the possessive relation is expressed, and possessive information is asserted. The paper also examines the main semantic relations of possessive substantive constructions and the peculiarities of their functioning. The English language demonstrates the variability of lexical and grammatical means of expressing possessive relations. Models that represent the semantic relation of possession in substantive constructions include pre-nominal genitive and the post-nominal genitive. English has two canonical constructions for attributive possession. The first one uses the clitic /-’s/ or a possessive pronoun and it is known as ‘the s-genitive’ (or ‘Saxon genitive’). The second one uses the preposition /of/ and it is known as ‘the of-genitive’. The choice of one or another design depends on various factors, such as: possessor’s belonging to the category of beings / non-beings; the number of the noun expressing the attribute; complexity of the attribute; the attribute / core significance, etc.
... Both items have been associated in prior studies with the grammaticalization of taxonomic nouns, 1 extensively discussed in recent crosslinguistic research. In parallel to their counterparts in other languages, such as English kind, type and sort (Aijmer 2002;Brems 2011;Brems and Davidse 2010;Holmes 1988;Keizer 2007 to name just a few), Dutch soort (De Troij and Van de Velde 2020), Norwegian and Swedish typ (Odden 2019), Danish slags (Müller et al. 2020), French genre, espèce, sorte and style (Chauveau-Thoumelin 2018, 2020Rosier 2002Rosier , 2005, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese tipo (Fernández 2017;Mihatsch 2016Mihatsch , 2018aMihatsch , 2018bThompson 2019Thompson , 2021Voghera 2013), Romanian gen and tip (Terian 2018), Czech typ (Janebová et al. Forthcoming) and Polish typ and rodzaj (Kisiel 2019;Kisiel and Kolyaseva Forthcoming), the Russian nouns tip 'type' and rod 'kind' have given rise to units with non-nominal functions. ...
This article scrutinizes the use of two competing Russian prepositions, tipa and vrode ‘like, such as’, in online student discourse. Both are associated with the crosslinguistically attested grammaticalization of taxonomic nouns, with tipa having derived from the noun tip ‘type’ and vrode from the noun rod ‘kind’. A prior study contemporary to the fairly recent grammaticalization of tipa forecasted a substitution scenario for the two competing forms. Forty years later, the present article shows that in the current discourse of younger speakers (i) there is indeed a selectional bias in favor of the prepositional tipa (which does not extend to the items’ particle uses) and (ii) the two prepositions demonstrate a high degree of attraction. However, this article also provides quantitative evidence that suggests the presence of a counterforce – subjectification. The selection is modeled on the basis of the items’ functions, realizations of the right- and left-side slots, the speaker’s gender, their evaluative attitude to the referent of the construction, and the perceived casualness of the discourse situation proxied by neutral or markedly informal expression styles.
... The basic syntax of measurement structures is still under debate, much like with other binominal constructions (see, e.g., Alexiadou et al. 2007;Keizer 2007). Earlier work encodes the relationship between the measure noun N1 and the substance noun N2 in three different ways, illustrated in (10): (i) a modifier-modifee relation where N2 projects the complex noun phrase (Jackendoff 1977;Selkirk 1977); (ii) a functional head-complement relation within the broad DP where N2 is selected by a functional Q head containing N1 (Löbel 1986(Löbel , 1990; van Riemsdijk 1998); and (iii) a complex phrase projected not by N1 or N2, but by a predicational head like English of (Abney 1987, 294;Corver 1998;Schwarzschild 2006). ...
This paper addresses the syntactic and semantic analysis of nominal measurement structures like two liters of black coffee in German. German allows the case-marking on the substance noun phrase black coffee to vary: it can appear in genitive case or in the same case as the measure noun liter . The choice of case lacks semantic import with absolute measures like liter , but a semantic distinction does arise for proportional measures like percent , with the interpretation in the case-matching configuration serving as a prima facie counterexample to Keenan and Stavi’s Conservativity Hypothesis of DP quantification. We argue that ( i ) measurement structures do not have different syntactic configurations depending on the choice of measure noun (e.g., liter vs. percent ); ( ii ) genitive and case-matching structures do, however, have different syntactic configurations; ( iii ) the semantic contrast between absolute and proportional measure nouns can be traced to their lexical interpretations; and ( iv ) the apparent violation of the Conservativity Hypothesis is only a surface-level phenomenon, and at LF all DP quantification is conservative.
... Furthermore, such items lose compatibility with other quantifiers (cf. Keizer, 2007), e.g. seven lots of land vs. *seven lots of fun, although exceptional in this respect are 'small size' nouns functioning as negative polarity items, capable of combining with the numeral one, which, in this context, plays as emphatic role (cf. ...
While the grammaticalization of English size nouns into vague quantifiers has already received a considerable amount of scholarly attention, their subsequent syntactic expansion beyond the nominal domain remains an under-researched area. In particular, little has hitherto been written about the possible factors contributing to the emergence of additional adverbial uses of such items. Based on synchronic corpus data, this paper therefore aims to partially fill in this gap by providing an analysis of the adverbialization patterns of nine nominal forms of this kind, namely bit, scrap, shred, heap, heaps, load, loads, lot, and lots, whose empirical tokens have been classified into six categories: (i) verbal inherent modification, (ii) verbal extent modification, (iii) adverbial ambiguous, (iv) object-pronominal, (v) adjectival modification of positives, and (vi) adjectival modification of comparatives. The results demonstrate that in the verbal domain, most of the analyzed forms reveal a preference for pronominal uses, in which they function as an argument of the verb rather than a genuine degree adverb, while in the adjectival domain, a majority of the items, especially ‘large size’ nouns, exhibit a conspicuous propensity to combine with the comparative forms of adjectives/adverbs. Moreover, it is shown that there exists a strong positive correlation between the items’ respective degrees of grammaticalization in the quantifier function and their extents of adverbialization, operationalized as the proportion of pertinent attestations in corpus samples. Thus, the study underscores the role of frequency in grammaticalization on the one hand, and points to the importance of paradigmatic analogy on the other.
... dans la grammaire Le Bon Usage, on trouve l'appellation construction indirecte de l'apposition dans des désignations affectives (Le Bon Usage 2008 : 424) ; pour Corver, il s'agit d'une N of a N (Corver, 1998), il est rejoint par Alexiadou, Haegeman & Stavrou (2008), qui parlent de NoN ; on trouve également binominal noun phrase (Aarts, 1998, Keizer, 2007, Kim & Sells, 2015, expressive binominal noun phrase (Foolen, 2004), qualitative binominal noun phrase (Den Dikken, 2006 :162), EBNP pour evaluative binominal noun phrase (Trousdale, 2012), construction évaluative (Vinet, 2003, Polguère, 2014, et le même Polguère (2014) l'appelle également complétive évaluative. ...
Les définitions actuelles des interjections et des onomatopées ne permettent manifestement pas de circonscrire ces faits de langue avec précision, ce qui aboutit à des classifications hétéroclites dans la littérature et à des extractions d’occurrences contenant nécessairement des faux positifs pour certains et laissant des faux négatifs pour d’autres. Les raisons sont multiples : tout d’abord, parce que les différentes écoles de linguistique ne sont pas prioritairement conçues pour décrire des faits de langue isolés syntaxiquement, ensuite, parce que certaines propriétés traditionnellement attribuées à ces faits de langue font écran à leur description. Par exemple, l’interjection serait la manifestation d’une émotion, elle serait un indice, un marqueur de modalité d’énonciation, quand l’onomatopée serait un signe motivé, iconique, servant à imiter un référent. Nous défendrons l’idée que ces propriétés masquent la fonction première de ces faits de langue, qui est de permettre au locuteur, au moment même de la production effective du discours, de réduire la distance entre l’énoncé qu’il vise (son énoncé idéal) et l’énoncé qu’il parvient à formuler. Nous avons intégralement repris la démarche définitionnelle, en commençant par une définition en intension, élaborée à partir d’un travail à très forte dimension théorique, pour ensuite proposer une classification des types d’interjections et d’onomatopées en fonction des matrices lexicogéniques dont elles sont issues. Cette méthode nous a permis de mettre en lumière une stratégie d’intégration de l’interjection dans la structure phrastique, que nous avons nommée le rattrapage syntaxique. Nous montrerons que cette stratégie est la version syntaxique d’un phénomène que l’on retrouve déjà au niveau du phonème et au niveau du lexème. La dernière partie de notre thèse est consacrée à la description du rattrapage syntaxique et à la recherche des contraintes qui s’y appliquent. Pour ce faire, nous analyserons un corpus d’interjections intégrées à des structures phrastiques et aurons recours à des outils conceptuels élaborés par la Linguistique Générative, la Linguistique Cognitive et la Théorie des Opérations Énonciatives.
... Moreover, the author claims that a proper name cannot be under the scope of restrictive modifiers, and because they are inherently definite, 1 they are not accompanied by a definite article. Finally, a proper name does not refer back to another noun phrase (Np), as shown in (1) Previous studies in FDG (English: Keizer, 2007; Portuguese: Lemson, 2016;Serafim, 2019) show that, in close appositions such as the poet Burns ('o poeta Burns'), both names are used ascriptively and only the noun phrase as a whole is used to refer. Thus, to assume that close appositions are crucial to defining proper names is inconsistent, because of the precedence of pragmatics over semantics and morphosyntax in FDG. ...
A generally accepted view regarding proper names is that they have reference, but no lexical meaning (Lyons, 1977). This idea is the basis for the Functional Discourse Grammar (Hengeveld & Mackenzie, 2008) view of proper names as primitives of the Interpersonal Level and the lexical head of Subacts of Reference. At the Representational Level, the entity is designated by an absent head, which captures the fact that proper names do not have a meaning. Although this approach accounts for the most prototypical use of proper names, it fails to explain a range of other uses. In addition to the referential use of non-modified proper names, this paper analyses other uses of proper names in Portuguese: modified proper names, metaphorical proper names, and proper names in naming constructions. The proposal presented here explains cases of restrictive modification and metaphorical uses of proper names as instances of reflexive language and coercion, respectively. As for proper names in naming constructions, they are considered to have a third, different, function, in addition to the vocative and referential use.@font-face{font-family:"Cambria Math";panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;mso-font-charset:0;mso-generic-font-family:roman;mso-font-pitch:variable;mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face{font-family:Times;panose-1:0 0 5 0 0 0 0 2 0 0;mso-font-charset:0;mso-generic-font-family:auto;mso-font-pitch:variable;mso-font-signature:-536870145 1342185562 0 0 415 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal{mso-style-unhide:no;mso-style-qformat:yes;mso-style-parent:"";margin:0in;mso-pagination:none;text-autospace:none;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}.MsoChpDefault{mso-style-type:export-only;mso-default-props:yes;font-size:11.0pt;mso-ansi-font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}.MsoPapDefault{mso-style-type:export-only;mso-pagination:none;text-autospace:none;}div.WordSection1{page:WordSection1;}
... Moreover, the author claims that a proper name cannot be under the scope of restrictive modifiers, and because they are inherently definite, 1 they are not accompanied by a definite article. Finally, a proper name does not refer back to another noun phrase (Np), as shown in (1) Previous studies in FDG (English: Keizer, 2007; Portuguese: Lemson, 2016;Serafim, 2019) show that, in close appositions such as the poet Burns ('o poeta Burns'), both names are used ascriptively and only the noun phrase as a whole is used to refer. Thus, to assume that close appositions are crucial to defining proper names is inconsistent, because of the precedence of pragmatics over semantics and morphosyntax in FDG. ...
A generally accepted view regarding proper names is that they have reference, but no lexical meaning (Lyons, 1977). This idea is the basis for the Functional Discourse Grammar (Hengeveld & Mackenzie, 2008) view of proper names as primitives of the Interpersonal Level and the lexical head of Subacts of Reference. At the Representational Level, the entity is designated by an absent head, which captures the fact that proper names do not have a meaning. Although this approach accounts for the most prototypical use of proper names, it fails to explain a range of other uses. In addition to the referential use of non-modified proper names, this paper analyses other uses of proper names in Portuguese: modified proper names, metaphorical proper names, and proper names in naming constructions. The proposal presented here explains cases of restrictive modification and metaphorical uses of proper names as instances of reflexive language and coercion, respectively. As for proper names in naming constructions, they are considered to have a third, different, function, in addition to the vocative and referential use.
... dans la grammaire Le Bon Usage, on trouve l'appellation construction indirecte de l'apposition dans des désignations affectives (Le Bon Usage 2008 : 424) ; pour Corver, il s'agit d'une N of a N (Corver, 1998), il est rejoint par Alexiadou, Haegeman & Stavrou (2008), qui parlent de NoN ; on trouve également binominal noun phrase (Aarts, 1998, Keizer, 2007, Kim & Sells, 2015, expressive binominal noun phrase (Foolen, 2004), qualitative binominal noun phrase (Den Dikken, 2006 :162), EBNP pour evaluative binominal noun phrase (Trousdale, 2012), construction évaluative (Vinet, 2003, Polguère, 2014, et le même Polguère (2014) l'appelle également complétive évaluative. ...
Abstract : The current definitions of interjections and onomatopoeias, which are mainly based on semiotic criteria (interjections are indexes, onomatopoeias are icons), are seemingly not precise enough to draw up a list of items belonging to these categories. This results in heterogeneous classifications in the literature and different data extraction strategies, which in turn entails the presence of items that some will regard as “false positives” or “false negatives”. We will defend the idea that the primary function of these words is to enable the speaker to reduce the distance between their actual speaking performance (the actual utterances) and their intended speech (the ideal utterances). We will devise the defining enterprise from the very beginning, starting with the intension of the words interjection and onomatopoeia. Then, we will focus on their extension and will classify different types of interjections and onomatopoeias. The classification will be based on the word formation process they stem from. We will show that interjections and onomatopoeias have different definitions “en langue”, “en parole” and “en corpus”. “En langue”, these words are tools, “en parole”, they are performances, since the speaker reshapes or moulds his/her vocal production, and “en corpus”, interjections and onomatopoeias are imprints of the above-mentioned performance. Our method will also reveal a word formation strategy that we call “Syntactic Adjustment” (“SA”), and which consists in incorporating interjections into syntactic structures. We will show that this SA is merely the syntactic version of a strategy that can also be observed at the phonemic and at the lexical level and that could be described as a word formation process. In part III of our dissertation, we will describe the SA and will expose some of the rules that restrict its use. To do this, we will compare the SA with converted interjections (yuck! > yucky ; oh God! > to be oh-Godding at something) and will also analyze a corpus of syntactically integrated interjections. We will make use of concepts developed in different theoretical frameworks, mainly in Cognitive Grammar, Generative Linguistics and Theory of Enunciative Operations.
Keywords : interjection, onomatopoeia, definition, classification, syntax, inferences
... In dealing with the BNP, the first puzzle is what is the head of the overall structure. The headedness issue is central in three different approaches to the preposition of: as a preposition selecting the following NP headed by N2 in ((2a), Abney 1987, Napoli 1989, as a pragmatic marker forming a unit with the preceding N1 and following a/an ((2b), Aarts 1998, Keizer 2007, and as a prepositional complementizer F selecting a small clause ((2c), Kayne 1994, Den Dikken 2006: ...
English Binominal NPs (BNP) (e.g., a hell of a problem) are of empirical and theoretical interest due to their complex syntactic and semantic properties. In this paper, we review some basic properties of the BNP construction, focusing on its headedness, semantic relations, and the role of the preposition of. We argue that these properties suggest an account in the spirit of construction grammar. In particular, we show that English BNP is a nominal juxtaposition construction whose special syntactic constraints are linked to semantic relations like a subject-predicate relation.
... Selain dua faktor tersebut, informasi lama juga dapat diketahui dari tiga kriteria, yaitu kesadaran informasi, pengetahuan bersama, pemulihan informasi (Keizer, 2007). Kesadaran informasi berkaitan dengan kesadaran mitra tutur atas informasi yang diasumsikan oleh penutur menjadi pengetahuan mitra tutur. ...
This study was aimed at describing the shape and type of old information marker. This research used descriptive method. The data source of this research were the languages used in student's thesis in FBS, UNY. This data collection technique was done through comprehensive reading followed by data recording into the data card. The data analysis methods used were padan and agih methods. The results show that, first, the results of information research are expressed in two forms, namely word and phrase forms. Second, the old information is expressed in the five forms of old information-marking types, namely (1) nouns, (3) pronouns, (3) personal identity, and (4) FN Takrif.EKSPRESI INFORMASI LAMADALAM WACANA TULIS ILMIAH BERBAHASA INDONESIAPenelitian ini bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan bentuk dan jenis pemarkah informasi lama. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode deskriptif. Sumber data penelitian ini adalah bahasa yang digunakan dalam skripsi mahasiswa di FBS, UNY. Teknik pengumpulan data ini dilakukan dengan cara membaca secara seksama sumber data yang dilanjutkan dengan pencatatan data ke dalam kartu data. Metode analisis data yang digunakan adalah metode padan dan metode agih. Berdasarkan analisis data dapat ditarik dua simpulan. Pertama hasil penelitian informasi diekspresikan dalam dua bentuk, yaitu kata dan bentuk frasa. Kedua, informasi lama diekspresikan dalam lima bentuk, yaitu Jenis pemarkah informasi lama ada lima jenis, yaitu (1) nomina, (3) pronomina persona, (3) nama diri, dan (4) FN Takrif.
... Partitivos foram considerados como uma estrutura complexa única (cf.KEIZER, 2007) e nomes próprios compostos foram considerados como um único item lexical. Ambos, portanto, não foram contabilizados como encaixe.d) ...
... Partitivos foram considerados como uma estrutura complexa única (cf.KEIZER, 2007) e nomes próprios compostos foram considerados como um único item lexical. Ambos, portanto, não foram contabilizados como encaixe. ...
... In other words, an NP is a phrase that its head is a noun that can be replaced by a pronoun. An NP may have modifiers, including determiners, quantifiers, adjectives and, adjective phrases and clauses, nouns and NPs, and appositions (Evelien, 2007): The given examples show that the most crucial element of the NP is the noun baby which is called the head and which can be substituted by a pronoun. The noun (N) is the only obligatory element in the NP and serves as head; the other elements are all optional. ...
... Melˈ cuk 2009, 32); one makes decisions about head status based on as many criteria and observations as possible. Keizer's (2007) extensive study of heads in English nominal groups is instructive in this regard. Keizer characterizes her approach to identifying heads as follows: ...
This paper considers the NP vs. DP debate from the perspective of dependency grammar (DG). The message is delivered that given DG assumptions about sentence structure, the traditional NP-analysis of nominal groups is preferable over the DP-analysis. The debate is also considered from the perspective of phrase structure grammar (PSG). While many of the issues discussed here do not directly support NP over DP given PSG assumptions, some do. More importantly, one has to accept the widespread presence of null determiner heads for the DP analysis to be plausible on PSG assumptions. The argument developed at length here is that the traditional NP-analysis of nominal groups is both more accurate and simpler than the DP-analysis, in part because it does not rely on the frequent occurrence of null determiners.
Although the category of nouns, or “substantives” (for a long time, the word “noun” was used for a broader category that included more subparts of speech, especially adjectives), has been described in grammars since at least Dionysius Thrax c. 100 BC (Robins 1989: 39), the exact relationship between formal and semantic characteristics, both in language and discourse, still requires investigation. This is the aim of the present volume. This relationship matters because nouns, along with verbs, are commonly regarded as a universal linguistic category. In the 1980s and 1990s, a few typological studies questioned the existence of a class of “nouns” in a small minority of languages such as Salish, Wakasham, Austronesian or Iroquoian languages (Mithun 2000; Baker 2003; Lobeck and Denham 2013). But crucially, linguists found that this conclusion was due to an understanding of parts of speech that was too restrictive: a multi-criterial approach shows evidence that the noun/verb distinction is indeed robust in these languages (ibid.). Nouns stand at the interface of morphology, syntax and semantics, and there might be misalignments of these levels. These misalignments trigger a definitional complexity that requires further theorization. Understanding how morphology, syntax and semantics interact is also crucial for nominal interpretation in discourse, which is under-researched to date as well. A number of effects of context on interpretation have been made out; for instance, a generic reading might yield a kind interpretation of the NP (e.g. The dinosaur is now extinct). The dynamic interaction of nouns with their syntactic and semantic environment is central to language processing.
As has been noted in grammaticalization literature, partitives, i. e. nominals encoding parts, portions, and sets, tend to evolve into vague quantifiers, and then into degree adverbs. However, while this grammaticalization path has already received a fair amount of scholarly attention in English, the extension of such items beyond the nominal domain in Swedish remains an empirically unexplored territory. Thus, based on random samples of attestations extracted from selected Språkbanken corpora, this paper offers a synchronic glimpse into the syntactic expansion of nine Swedish nominal quantifiers, namely droppe 'drop' , nypa 'pinch' , smula 'crumb' , hop 'heap' , hopar 'heaps' , hög 'pile' , högar 'piles' , massa 'mass' , and massor 'masses'. The Swedish results largely coincide with those obtained for English, and demonstrate that in the verbal domain, most of the scrutinized elements reveal a preference for pronominal uses, in which they function as an argument of the verb rather than a genuine degree adverb, but which nonetheless give rise to secondary scalar inferences, whereas in the adjectival domain, a majority of the items exhibit a propensity to combine with the comparative forms of adjectives/adverbs. Both of these environments may therefore be assumed to constitute bridging contexts in the emergence of full-blown degree modifier uses of grammaticali-zed partitives. It is further shown that there exists a strong positive correlation between the items' respective degrees of grammaticalization in the quantifier function and their extents of adverbialization, which testifies to the importance of frequency of use in the scrutinized instance of grammaticalization.
This contribution examines semantico-cognitive aspects of the spatio-temporal distance between the noun and other constituents, both inside and outside the noun phrase. This paper argues that certain syntactic phenomena, namely constituency, a subset of the Greenbergian word order correlations, and scoping, i.e., placement of adnominal modifiers according to their scopal relations, can be attributed to diachronic developments driven by cognitive processes where speakers attempt to place together what belongs together semantically (‘iconicity of distance’). (Notice that in the current approach the category of Modifiers includes both lexical or phrasal members [e.g., adjectives, possessive NPs, relative clauses] as well as bound and free grammatical material [e.g., articles, demonstratives, inflectional number affixes].) The synchronic result of these historical processes was already captured by Behaghel’s first law (Deutsche Syntax / Band 4. Wortstellung, Periodenbau. Heidelberg: Winter, 1932: 4): “The principal law is this: that what belongs together mentally is also placed close together” (Das oberste Gesetz ist dieses, daß das geistig eng Zusammengehörige auch eng zusammengestellt wird).
Three more specific ordering principles can be formulated on the basis of Behaghel’s first law: (1) the Principle of Domain Integrity, which can ultimately lead to the formation of hierarchically organized syntactic units (‘constituents’), (2) the Principle of Head Proximity, which may explain certain Greenbergian word order correlations, and (3) the Principle of Scope, which accounts for global ordering tendencies among adnominal modifiers in hierarchically structured noun phrases. It will be argued that these ordering principles are formal manifestations of a single cognitive, semantico-functional motivation or ‘diachronic force’ which is deemed to facilitate language processing: iconicity of distance, where “syntactic proximity mirrors semantic closeness” (Dyer, Integration Complexity and the Order of Cosisters. Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Universal Dependencies (UDW 2018). Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (Brussels, October 31–November 4). Brussels, Belgium, November 1, 2018: 55). This type of iconicity is now widely recognized as a universal principle underlying language structure (Schultze-Berndt, Linguistics 60(3), 865–898, 2022). Notice, finally, that for a convincing presentation of the effects of three general ordering principles mentioned above (each of which crucially involves nouns), it will be necessary to go beyond the noun and also take into account aspects of the syntactic organization of noun phrases and clauses.
The binomial noun phrase, or of-binomial, is an important phenomenon in the English language. Defined as a noun phrase that contains two related nouns, linked by the preposition of, examples include a hell of a day and a beast of a storm. This pioneering book provides the first extensive study of the evaluative binominal noun phrases (EBNP) in English, exploring the syntactic rules that govern them, and the (functional) semantic and pragmatic links between the two nouns. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, corpus data, and two different theoretical approaches (Construction Grammar and Functional Discourse Grammar), it argues that the EBNP now functions as a stage in a grammaticalization path that begins with a prototypical N+PP construction, continues with the head-classifier, and ends with two new of-binominal constructions: the evaluative modifier and binominal intensifier. Comprehensive in its scope, it is essential reading for researchers in syntax, semantics, and English corpus linguistics.
This paper is a corpus-based study of Slavic appositional constructions. Out of material taken from seven Slavic languages, two aspects of the morphosyntax of close appositions in Slavic are considered: case concord and definiteness marking. The first section of the paper considers the factors that affect case concord in appositions in Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Czech, Polish, Croatian, and Slovenian. Based on the data of the corpora it is shown that in all seven languages, inherent plurality and frequency of proper names significantly affect the probability of concord being present. Moreover, it is shown that the likelihood of concord differs across cases, and almost all languages considered follow the case hierarchy GEN>DAT>LOC>INS. The second portion of the paper considers definiteness marking in Bulgarian and Macedonian appositional constructions. Based on the obtained data, it is argued that appositions with different lexemes can have different syntactic structures in these languages.
Pseudo-partitives are strings of the form [N 1 – of – N 2 ] in which N 1 denotes a quantity or amount of whatever it is that N 2 denotes and in which N 2 is a bare nominal. Such strings come in two types, depending on whether the combination shares the number value of N 1 or N 2 . The first type can be analyzed along familiar lines, but the second one is a hard nut to crack. The article presents existing treatments, showing that they all involve departures from independently motivated principles. As an alternative we propose an analysis that is cast in the Typed Feature Structure notation of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar. It handles both types of pseudo-partitives, arguing that N 1 and the preposition of are complement-selecting heads if the number value is shared with N 1 , while N 1 and the preposition are head-selecting functors if the number value is shared with N 2 . The switch from head to functor status is characteristic of grammaticalization and is shown to affect pseudo-partitives with a quantifier noun or a collection noun as N 1 , but not pseudo-partitives with a measure noun or collection noun. Examples and quantitative data are extracted from COCA.
Hands-on, theory-neutral and non-technical, this textbook is a basic introduction to the structure of English words and sentences. Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistic analysis, it presents the facts in a straightforward manner and offers a step-by-step guide from small to large building blocks of language. Every chapter contains numerous exercises and discussion questions, which provide essential self-study material, as well as in-chapter tasks which lead students to a more comprehensive understanding of linguistic issues. The book also features concise chapter summaries, suggestions for further reading, an inclusive glossary and two consolidation chapters which encourage students to secure their understanding of the English language. The dedicated companion website includes further exercises, answers and solutions to the exercises, as well as useful links.
The notion of a 'standard' variety of English has been the subject of a considerable body of research. Studies have tended to focus on the standard features of British and American English. However, more recently interest has turned to the other varieties of English that have developed around the world and the ways in which these have also been standardised. This volume provides the first book-length exploration of 'standard Englishes', with chapters on areas as diverse as Canada, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, New Zealand and the South Pacific. This is a timely and important topic, edited by a well-known scholar in the field, with contributions by the leading experts on each major variety of English discussed. The book presents in full the criteria for defining a standard variety, and each chapter compares standards in both spoken and written English and explores the notion of register within standard varieties.
The present paper discusses the concept of gradience and fuzziness from the perspective of Diachronic Construction Grammar. It does so by investigating verb-attached PPs in the history of English, with a focus on their semantic and syntactic functions and features over time. Specifically, the paper uses the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpora of Historical English, including texts from Middle English (PPCME2), Early Modern English (PPCEME), and Late Modern English (PPCMBE) to revisit the distinction between adjuncts and complements. In particular, I address the question whether this traditionally binary classification finds support in diachronic data, or whether PPs rather represent a gradience between prototypical adjunct- and complementhood. Furthermore, the paper assesses whether any change in the distribution and features of PPs (specifically an increase in complementhood) can be observed over time. Ultimately, the findings suggest a multi-level network of PPs that is diachronically very stable.
Màda, a Platoid language of West Benue-Congo sub-family, is spoken mainly in Akwanga Local Government Area of Nasarawa State. This paper is an attempt to examine the grammatical structures of noun phrase in Màda within the background of generative syntax, more specifically, the Principles and Parameters approach. It examines the order of noun dependents, word categories and other functional constituents of the NP such as demonstratives, modifiers and associative constituents. The technique employed in collecting data for this study is direct elicitation from competent speakers of the language. The major findings show that a typical NP in Màda may consist of a head noun only or a head noun with optionally occurring modifiers. All modifiers are post head items with a strictly ordered pattern. The study concludes by noting that the structural configuration of a typical NP in Màda is N + [(Poss)(Dem)(Adj)(Quant)(Num)] + [(Rel Clause)].
The synchronic degrees of grammaticalization of size nouns are traditionally measured based on proportionate frequencies of their quantificational attestations in corpus samples. However, grammaticalization, in general, is associated not only with an increased frequency of grammaticalized uses but also with a rise in productivity and distributional expansion. Thus, drawing on corpus data encompassing selected English size nouns which originally individuate concrete inanimate nominals, this paper investigates the relationship between the three aforementioned parameters. Productivity is operationalized as the arithmetic mean of two measures, namely type-token ratio (TTR) and hapax-token ratio (HTR), i.e. the number of, respectively, types of quantified collocates and hapax legomena N2s divided by the number of all quantifier tokens of each expression, while host-class expansion is construed as the proportion of animate and abstract collocates among the respective items’ quantifier uses. Contrary to expectations, the results reveal only a weak positive correlation between the elements’ frequency values and their levels of productivity, and the same holds for the relation between frequency and distributional extension. Also surprising is the moderate negative correlation observed between productivity and expansion, which can nevertheless be elucidated in terms of a high type frequency of semantically general animate and abstract N2-collocates of the most distributionally extended expressions.
This paper aims to explore from a technofeminist standpoint this failure to enunciate a ‘feminine’ technoscientific praxis in the Puttermesser and Xanthippe episode of Cynthia Ozick’s 1997 ‘serial’ novel The Puttermesser Papers. In particular, there is a tragic failure to integrate procreative ethos and creative technoscience: when the latter is placed in the service of the former, the curse of Frankenstein rears its ugly head, and catastrophe ensues. The female scientist, a Jewish polymath like Ruth Puttermesser who creates a female golem to save New York, in releasing procreativity from the necessity of heterosexual reproduction, unwittingly unleashes a plague of ‘hyperfemininity’ that threatens to destroy culture. Thus, the break from the biological restraints of procreation and the establishment of a utopian femarche (female rule) are deconstructed, parodied, and retrospectively opposed as destructive, while the figure of the female savant / scientist emerges as a tragic one, torn between the need to nurture, and the catastrophic consequences of that need.
Hausa is the language spoken in Northern Nigeria which is classified into various number of dialects which are Kananci, Katsinanci, Dauranci, Bausanci, Guddiranci, Sakkwatanci and Zazzaganci. These Hausa varieties are still in use in different parts of Northern Nigeria today-Keffi inclusive. The data for this study were collected primarily from native North Central Hausa (NCH) speakers" speeches in Low-cost JIBWIS Mosque of Keffi Local Government area in Nasarawa State, via tape-recording, and some structures were isolated, transcribed and translated into English for analysis. The translated data were analysed contrastively and structurally to ascertain the points of similarities and/or dissimilarities between the two languages under study, hence, the study used Contrastive Analysis and Structural Grammar. It is found out that the two languages, being English and North Central Nigerian Hausa, have distinguishing elements characterising them, even though they share some identical boundaries and that some NPs in NCH variety in Keffi, when translated directly into English, become ungrammatical and vice versa. Though, the two languages share some identical linguistic phenomena but still differ in some aspects of rules. This implies that what defines an NP in North Central Nigerian Hausa is not what defines NP in English. Furthermore, it is found out that some phrases in NCH can be considered sentences especially the VPs (i.e having both subject and predicate and expressing completeness of meaning) in another linguistic context which is not explicit in the English language.
This study contributes to the existing body of research that aims at showing the impact of metonymy in grammar. In this case, new evidence will be provided by exploring the English pseudo-partitive construction of time measurement, illustrated by ten years of marriage . By using corpus data, it will be shown that metonymy is at work in many instantiations of this construction. The second noun in these expressions should prima facie be semantically eligible for time measurement, that is, a temporal entity or a second-order entity. However, this is not the only type of noun that appears in the second noun slot, which can also be occupied by first and third-order entities as well as places. The presence of an expression of time-measurement in the first part of the construction coerces different ontological categories into a second-order reading and can be regarded as a guide for the correct interpretation when the second noun includes several facets, illustrating the cognitive process of cueing.
The aim of this study is to delineate the functional category of English secondary determiners more precisely than in current reference grammars and in my own previous work. To provide a principled basis for a functional typology of secondary determiners, I firstly develop a typology of primary determiner (or ‘grounding’) types within the framework of Cognitive Grammar. Following Langacker, four main types are distinguished, and their referential and discursive properties are characterized: indefinite grounding, relative quantification, possessive grounding, and definite grounding. This typology then forms the starting point for drawing up a typology of the main types of instructions given by secondary determiners, i.e. to retrieve the type specifications of an instance newly introduced by an indefinite NP, to identify the correct antecedent of a definite NP, to relate a referent to another instance of the same type, or to refer to a generalized referent. Thirdly, modifier types that had been confused with secondary determiners in earlier work are distinguished from them on the basis of their semantics and formal behaviour, viz. focus markers, nominal aspectual modifiers, modal and temporal modifiers, and metadesignatives.
Here's a brief summary of my PhD dissertation on the defining properties of Interjections and Onomatopoeias (and it's in English) >> don't forget to select the "read mode".
This article develops foundations for a new typology of nominal expressions. Despite the significant diversity attested in languages around the world, a view traditionally and sometimes still found holds that languages either have ‘classic’, rigidly structured noun phrases (NPs) or lack them. A simple dichotomy, however, does not adequately represent the significant language-internal and crosslinguistic diversity of forms and functions of nominal expressions. While many linguists may not in fact think in such binary terms, a comprehensive typology is still wanting. This article offers foundations towards such a typology, with a particular emphasis on language-internal diversity. This diversity within languages has received little attention in previous studies, even while it reveals much about the actual complexity in the nominal domain. Besides surveying structural types and their motivating factors across as well as within languages from around the world, this article approaches nominal expressions also from a variety of other perspectives to enrich our understanding of them. This includes approaching nominal expressions from the perspective of word class systems as well as diachronically. We round off the article by looking at the impact of orality-literacy dimensions and communicative modes.
A plethora of second-language (L2) acquisition studies have tested the acquisition of English determiners in relation to simple noun phrases (NPs) of the generic versus non-generic type (e.g., Ionin., et al., 2008; Momenzadea & Youhanaeeb, 2014) rather than complex NPs, such as the ‘of-phrase’ construction, as in ‘the concept of love’. This study, therefore, contributes to our knowledge by addressing how first-language (L1) transfer from Jordanian-Arabic or Cypriot-Greek to English may influence the use of the definite and zero articles in relation to the configuration of the ‘of-phrase’ construction. This construction is comprised of two nominals (Ns): N1: definite noun+of+N2: bare noun. However, the definiteness feature in the equivalent L1 constructions is realised via an Arabic syntactic construct phrase and a Greek spreading feature. The statistical analyses of the data collected by a questionnaire and a forced-choice elicitation task indicated misuse of the before both Ns by the L2 groups at lower proficiency levels of English and provided evidence of L1 negative transfer, which resulted from the syntax-semantics mismatch between the participants’ L1s and L2. The results supported the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2008, 2009). With the increase in the quality and quantity of input in the form of daily exposure to English, the L2 groups figured out how to restructure their L1 features to match the configuration of the L2 regarding their use of the. The age of the Jordanian participants and exposure to English at university/school/work of both groups influenced the use of zero and the; respectively.
The purpose of this chapter is to identify and analyze the ambivalent representations of motherhood in Sylvia Plath’s poetry in relation to various anthropological and mythological concepts regarding female reproductive power. By observing the author’s allusions to pregnancy and childbirth, it is possible to draw a connection between these processes and the recurrent themes of transformation and regeneration which are present in her texts. The poet blends diverse traditions, tones and styles, blurring the line between a distant legendary past and the mundane elements of everyday life, in such a way that it is intriguing for the reader to determine which view is prominent, or to find out whether the poetic persona eventually embraces the identification with an archetypal view of motherhood. It is precisely this ambiguity which makes Plath’s approach on the matter so innovative. Her poems foreground a polyphonic narrative in which archetypal notions
of female biology are reshaped in order to grasp the complexity and diversity of maternal
experience, thus offering several intriguing—and, occasionally, contradictory—depictions of a reality that was a source of simultaneous anxiety and fascination for the poet.
The so-called ‘Big Mess Construction’ (BMC) frustrates standard assumptions about the structure of nominal groups. The normal position of an attributive adjective is after the determiner and before the noun, but in the BMC, the adjective precedes the determiner, e.g. that strange a sound , so big a scandal , too lame an excuse . Previous accounts of the BMC are couched in ‘Phrase Structure Grammar’ (PSG) and view the noun or the determiner (or the preposition of ) as the root/head of the BMC phrase. In contrast, the current approach, which is couched in a ‘Dependency Grammar’ (DG) model, argues that the adjective is in fact the root/head of the phrase. A number of insights point to the adjective as the root/head, the most important of which is the optional appearance of the preposition of , e.g. that strange of a sound , so big of a scandal , too lame of an excuse .
This paper concludes that there is evidence in favor of handling the derived nominals of Predicate AP's with a lexicalist theory, in conjunction with a base schema of the form (1)-(2). The transformation NP-Postposing is proposed to explain variations. (Available from North-Holland Publishing Co., P. O. Box 211, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.) (CHK)
An interesting development in the last decade or so has been the increasing use that theoretical linguists have made of the notion ‘head’ – or rather, in order not to beg the question, of notions to which they have given the name ‘head’. The term has been around for a long time in linguistics, of course – for example Bloomfield uses it in relation to endocentric constructions (1933: 195), where the head is the daughter constituent which has the same distribution as the mother. Before that, Sweet had used ‘head-word’ to refer to any word to which another is subordinate (1891: 16, quoted in Matthews, 1981: 165). However, theoretical linguists made very little use of the term, or of the constellation of associated concepts, until quite recently. Its present status is due largely to work on X-bar syntax dating from Chomsky (1970), and especially to its recent manifestation in Generalised Phrase Structure Grammar (Gazdar & Pullum, 1981; Gazdar et al., 1985)–and even more so in the ‘head-driven’ variant of this (Pollard, 1985). But the improved status of ‘head’ is also due to some extent to the renewed interest in dependency grammar (Anderson, 1971, 1977; Matthews, 1981; Atkinson, et al, 1982; Hudson, 1984; Nichols, 1986). All these treatments agree not only in using the term ‘head’, but also in using it to refer to the element in some construction to which all the other parts of that construction are (in some sense) subordinate.(Received July 22 1986)
The terms definite and indefinite, when used in relation to NPs, can be handled in two different ways. One can treat definiteness as a formal (syntactico-morphological) category and make use of the syntactic features [±definite], as in Chomsky (1965). One can also go into the question of how definite and indefinite NPs are used, i.e. the question of when and why a (formally) definite NP is preferred to an indefinite one, or vice versa. If we take the latter approach, we are investigating definiteness as a semantico-pragmatic category.(Received March 20 1985)
The production of collections of grammatically analysed linguistic samples, or corpora, entails a parallel research effort in tools for exploiting such collections. This paper summarizes the new one million-word parsed British Component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB). We then introduce a tool designed for annotating, managing, and investigating the parsed corpus, called ICECUP III. Effective grammatical exploration is driven by a query. We therefore pose the question, what is the optimum representation for expressing queries on a parsed corpus? We review existing grammatical query systems and a feasible representation in logic. We describe ICECUP's query representation, the Fuzzy Tree Fragment (FTF), which has proven extremely effective in supporting the manual correction of automatically annotated material in ICE-GB and is currently used for linguistic research. Central to the idea of FTFs is that they should be as easy to understand as possible and support researchers as they engage with the complexity of the parsed analysis. An FTF, therefore, is a kind of 'abstracted model' of a tree. We argue that FTFs are highly applicable to general linguistic research and teaching with grammatically analysed corpora. They support an exploratory approach that does not presume a detailed knowledge of the grammar in advance of search. Exploration is supported by a number of facilities, including a tool that abstracts a query from part of a corpus tree. Finally, we discuss how FTFs may be used to perform 'key construction in line' concordancing, and the use of logic to combine queries.
Words and Rules The Ingredients of Language. Steven Pinker. Basic Books, New York, 1999. 362 pp. $26, C$39.50. ISBN 0-465-07269-0.
Pinker presents a popular exposition of his research into how children learn language. Although his account, focused on English
past-tense verb forms, is engaging and informative, our reviewers argue that it does not grant neural network models the importance
they warrant.
We consider the process we call Pattern Recognition. By this we mean the extraction of the significant features of data from a background of irrelevant detail. What we are interested in is simulating this process on digital computers. We give examples on three levels of complexity corresponding to the subjects of the other three speakers here today. We examine in detail the problem on the second level, visual recognition of simple shapes.
Outlines the properties that any adequate theory of language should have and the questions that the theory must address to be of scientific interest. The artificial intelligence (AI) approach to these questions is examined, and it is demonstrated that the proponents of AI have misconceived the essential objectives of language research. The works of T. Winograd, M. Minsky, R. C. Schank, E. Wanner, and their associates, which constitute four influential trends of computer-based research into language, are reviewed in detail. It is argued that these works do not in fact contribute to the development of scientific theories of language or increase the understanding of human linguistic behavior. It is concluded that the fundamental problems of a scientific theory of language have not been solved and that, because of the great complexity of the human mind, an explanation of the human language facility will involve the elaboration of unanticipated theories of great complexity. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Recent work on morphology – Lieber, 1981; Williams, 1981; Kiparsky, 1982; and Selkirk, 1982, in particular – has extended the notion of HEAD from syntax into new areas in morphology. In particular, these writers propose that in forms with derivational affixes, like English happiness, the affix is the head of the combination; for instance, Kiparsky assumes (following Lieber) ‘that all word formation is endocentric’, meaning by this ‘that the category of a derived word is always non-distinct from the category of its head, in English usually the rightmost constituent (cf. Williams, 1981)’ (133).(Received August 29 1984)
1. Efforts to limit the power of transformations, and thereby reduce the class of possible grammars, have been concentrated in two areas: the conditions which restrict the application of the transformational rules, and the examination of the consequences of placing the burden of description on the non-transformational components of the grammar. Recent work on the non-transformational components has led to some interesting conclusions about how this power can be reduced. An article by Bresnan (1978) is a good example of this line of research. She cites a number of cases where transferring the burden of description from the transformational component to the lexicon and semantic interpretive components not only leads to a simplification in the from of the transformational rules, but also captures generalizations not adequately explained by transformations.(Received July 06 1980)
By contrasting the different explanations offered by two approaches - Generative Grammar and Form-Content analysis - for the same linguistic data (the non-occurrence of ∗se se sequences in Spanish) it is demonstrated that analytical practice is indeed dependent on theoretical principles. Generative Grammar's view of language as a unique, species-specific phenomenon, is shown to be coherent both with an acceptance of traditional categories and with a purely model-like, ‘internal’ explanation. Form-Content's view of language as a tool for communication manipulated by human beings results in an ‘external’ type explanation: the non-occurrence of se se is only to be expected, given the Form-Content (non-traditional) account of the observed uses of se in Spanish.
The emphasis in the connectionist sentence-processing literature on distributed representation and emergence of grammar from such systems can easily obscure the often close relations between connectionist and symbolist systems. This paper argues that the Simple Recurrent Network (SRN) models proposed by Jordan (1989) and Elman (1990) are more directly related to stochastic Part-of-Speech (POS) Taggers than to parsers or grammars as such, while auto-associative memory models of the kind pioneered by Longuet–Higgins, Willshaw, Pollack and others may be useful for grammar induction from a network-based conceptual structure as well as for structure-building. These observations suggest some interesting new directions for specifically connectionist sentence processing research, including more efficient representations for finite state machines, and acquisition devices based on a distinctively connectionist basis for grounded symbolist conceptual structure.
This article describes an approach to connectionist language research that relies on the development of grammar formalisms rather than computer models. From formulations of the fundamental theoretical commitments of connectionism and of generative grammar, it is argued that these two paradigms are mutually compatible. Integrating the basic assumptions of the paradigms results in formal theories of grammar that centrally incorporate a certain degree of connectionist computation. Two such grammar formalisms—Harmonic Grammar and and Optimality Theory and —are briefly introduced to illustrate grammar-based approaches to connectionist language research. The strengths and weaknesses of grammar-based research and more traditional model-based research are argued to be complementary, suggesting a significant role for both strategies in the spectrum of connectionist language research.
This paper explores the effect of manipulating the internal structure of a complex subject on the incidence of subject--verb agreement errors. Using the sentence completion task (Bock & Miller, 1991), this study followed up on Vigliocco and Nicol's (1995) finding that the syntactic distance between a head noun and a number-mismatching noun contained within a modifier has an impact on error incidence: the greater the distance, the lower the error rate. The study presented in this paper investigated whether this distance effect is purely syntactic; if so, then it would be expected that there would be fewer errors following The owner of the house which charmed the realtors... than following The owner of the house who charmed the realtors..., since in the latter, the mismatch is syntactically nearer the head noun. Results show no hint of a difference between the two, suggesting that the distance effect is more likely due to temporal distance rather than syntactic distance per se.