Clefts and Their Relatives

2012 Language Arts & Disciplines

Author : Matthew Reeve
Release : 2012
Genre : Language Arts & Disciplines
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 687/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Clefts and Their Relatives by : Matthew Reeve

Download or read book Clefts and Their Relatives written by Matthew Reeve. This book was released on 2012. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cleft constructions have long presented an analytical challenge for syntactic theory. This monograph argues that clefts and related constructions cannot be analysed in a straightforwardly compositional manner. Instead, it proposes that the locality conditions on modification (for example by a restrictive relative clause) must be reformulated such that they account for the apparent compositionality of DP-internal modification whilst also permitting 'discontinuous' modification of the type which is independently needed for constructions such as relative clause extraposition. The empirical focus of the book is on clefts in English and Russian, which have a similar interpretation but considerably divergent syntactic structures. The author argues that, despite these syntactic differences, both types of cleft are mapped to their semantic interpretations in the same manner. This monograph will be essential reading for those working on cleft constructions and copular sentences more generally, and will be of interest to those working on the syntax-semantics interface.

Clefts and their Relatives

2012-06-06 Language Arts & Disciplines

Author : Matthew Reeve
Release : 2012-06-06
Genre : Language Arts & Disciplines
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 606/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Clefts and their Relatives by : Matthew Reeve

Download or read book Clefts and their Relatives written by Matthew Reeve. This book was released on 2012-06-06. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cleft constructions have long presented an analytical challenge for syntactic theory. This monograph argues that clefts and related constructions cannot be analysed in a straightforwardly compositional manner. Instead, it proposes that the locality conditions on modification (for example by a restrictive relative clause) must be reformulated such that they account for the apparent compositionality of DP-internal modification whilst also permitting ‘discontinuous’ modification of the type which is independently needed for constructions such as relative clause extraposition. The empirical focus of the book is on clefts in English and Russian, which have a similar interpretation but considerably divergent syntactic structures. The author argues that, despite these syntactic differences, both types of cleft are mapped to their semantic interpretations in the same manner. This monograph will be essential reading for those working on cleft constructions and copular sentences more generally, and will be of interest to those working on the syntax-semantics interface.

Specificational and Presentational There-Clefts

2023-07-31 Language Arts & Disciplines

Author : Kristin Davidse
Release : 2023-07-31
Genre : Language Arts & Disciplines
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 703/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Specificational and Presentational There-Clefts by : Kristin Davidse

Download or read book Specificational and Presentational There-Clefts written by Kristin Davidse. This book was released on 2023-07-31. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book proposes a radically new account of clefts in English. Since the 1960s, functional as well as formal linguists have generally restricted clefts to constructions with an identifying matrix (it-clefts) and have claimed that they only code information structure. Clefts are assumed to unpack a simple proposition into a focus – presupposition structure. In this book, the authors reject these theoretical-descriptive assumptions, arguing instead that clefts form a field comprising it-clefts, there-clefts and ‘have’-clefts. They show that, like any other construction, clefts compositionally code propositional semantics, onto which a great variety of prosodically coded focus patterns may be mapped. The authors fundamentally challenge the existing approach by entering the debate with an in-depth account of the neglected specificational and presentational there-clefts, offering the first systematic data-based study of their grammatical and prosodic features. While the study is restricted to English, its findings have significant cross-linguistic relevance. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Functional, Cognitive and Formal Linguistics, Corpus Linguistics, and usage-based study of grammar and prosody.

Cleft Structures

2013-11-15 Language Arts & Disciplines

Author : Katharina Hartmann
Release : 2013-11-15
Genre : Language Arts & Disciplines
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 127/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Cleft Structures by : Katharina Hartmann

Download or read book Cleft Structures written by Katharina Hartmann. This book was released on 2013-11-15. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The phenomenon of clefts is beyond doubt a golden oldie. It has captivated linguists of different disciplines for decades. The fascination arises from the unique syntax of clefts in interaction with their pragmatic and semantic interpretation. Clefts structure sentences according to the information state of the constituents contained in them. They are special as they exhibit a rather uncommon syntactic form to achieve the separation of the prominent part, either focal or topical, from the background of the clause. Despite the long-lasting interest in clefts, linguists have not yet come to an agreement on many basic questions. The articles contained in this volume address these issues from new theoretical and empirical perspectives. Based on data from about 50 languages from all over the world, this volume presents new arguments for the proper derivation of clefts, and contributes to the ongoing debate on the information-structural impact of cleft structures. Theoretically, it combines modern syntactic theorizing with investigations at the interface between grammar and information-structure.

Cleft and Pseudo-Cleft Constructions in English

2015-07-03 Language Arts & Disciplines

Author : Peter C. Collins
Release : 2015-07-03
Genre : Language Arts & Disciplines
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 361/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Cleft and Pseudo-Cleft Constructions in English by : Peter C. Collins

Download or read book Cleft and Pseudo-Cleft Constructions in English written by Peter C. Collins. This book was released on 2015-07-03. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1991, this book examines the communicative properties of ‘cleft’ and ‘pseudo-cleft’ constructions in contemporary English. The book argues that these properties cannot be ignored in any attempt to provide an adequate grammatical description of the constructions. Furthermore, they provide a source of explanations for the patterns of stylistic variation displayed by clefts and pseudo-clefts. The book reports findings from a corpus-based study of clefts and pseudo-clefts in modern British English.

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