The handbook of pragmatics , The handbook of pragmatics , کتابخانه دیجیتال جندی شاپور اهواز

Abstract Syntax and Latin Complementation

Handbook of Pragmatics

Evidence is presented to show that the role of a generative grammar of a natural language is not merely to generate the grammatical sentences of that language, but also to relate them to their logical forms. The notion of logical form is to be made sense of in terms a ‘natural logic’, a logical for natural language, whose goals are to express all concepts capable of being expressed in natural language, to characterize all the valid inferences that can be made in natural language, and to mesh with adequate linguistic descriptions of all natural languages. The latter requirement imposes empirical linguistic constraints on natural logic. A number of examples are discussed.

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Linguistics and Natural Logic

The pragmatic force of a sentence and the pragmatic roles of discourse participants have traditionally been considered to be peripheral to the syntactic component of Grammar. Recently, there have been a variety of proposals for syntactic projections that encode information relevant to the interface between syntax and pragmatics. among others). At the same time, linguists have been exploring the various notions of pragmatic prominence or point of view that are relevant to that interface. Studies of this sort naturally raise questions about the extent to which pragmatic information is syntactically represented. After all, the idea that syntax encodes extensive pragmatic information was rejected as being too unconstrained in the 1970s. On a separate track, linguists have observed that sentience (also variously described as animacy, subjectivity or experiencer-hood) plays an interesting role in the grammar. However, these phenomena have been treated as involving pragmatics or Discourse Representation; syntactic representation of sentience has been largely limited to treatments such as associating lexical features for animacy or logphoricity with individual lexical items. Our proposal will unify both tracks: representation of sentience and representation of pragmatic properties, under one syntactic approach. We will argue that basic syntactic principles constrain projections of pragmatic force as well as the inventory of grammatically relevant pragmatic roles. We take our inspiration from the among others, who have explored constraints on the mapping from Lexical Conceptual Structure (LCS) to syntactic structure. Although there are interesting differences among the proposals made by these authors, they seem to be converging on two points: syntactic principles impose constraints on possible lexical items and their projections, and semantic roles are not primitive, but are determined within these basic asymmetric projections. We will argue that the same basic structural principles that constrain lexical primitives and the lexicon-syntax interface also operate on primitives of a Sentience Domain, and restrict the pragmatics-syntax interface. The above authors have offered theories of what can count as a " grammatically relevant " thematic property. Our goal is to use their insights to restrict what will count as a "grammatically-relevant" pragmatic property. We will not be proposing a new theory of the specific structural restrictions on the lexicon-syntax interface, and we don't offer much insight into how one might choose among the existing theories. What we will do is use Hale and Keyser's theory as a point of departure, and show how the constraints they propose mediate the interaction between …

Configurational Properties of Point of View Roles

Everett (2005) has claimed that the grammar of Piraha is exceptional in displaying "inexplicable gaps", that these gaps follow from an alleged cultural principle restricting communication to "immediate experience", and that this principle has "severe" consequences for work on Universal Grammar. We argue against each of these claims. Relying on the available documentation and descriptions of the language (especially the rich material in Everett (1986; 1987b)), we argue that many of the exceptional grammatical "gaps" supposedly characteristic of Piraha are misanalyzed by Everett (2005) and are neither gaps nor exceptional among the world's languages. We find no evidence, for example, that Piraha lacks embedded clauses, and in fact find strong syntactic and semantic evidence in favor of their existence in Piraha. Likewise, we find no evidence that Piraha lacks quantifiers, as claimed by Everett (2005). Furthermore, most of the actual properties of the Piraha constructions discussed by Everett (for example, the ban on prenominal possessor recursion and the behavior of wh-constructions) are familiar from languages whose speakers lack the cultural restrictions attributed to the Piraha. Finally, following mostly Goncalves (1993; 2000; 2001), we also question some of the empirical claims about Piraha culture advanced by Everett in primary support of the "immediate experience" restriction. We are left with no evidence of a causal relation between culture and grammatical structure. Piraha grammar contributes to ongoing research into the nature of Universal Grammar, but presents no unusual challenge, much less a "severe" one. (241 words) 1. How surprising is Piraha grammar? In a recent article in Current Anthropology, Everett (2005; henceforth CA) presents a series of general conclusions about human language, reached as a consequence of his investigations into the grammar of the language Piraha. The focus of Everett's discussion is the syntax and lexicon of Piraha and a "cultural constraint" to which the syntax and lexicon are said to be subject. Piraha is a language spoken by a small community of speakers 1 living by the Maici River in

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Pirahã Exceptionality: A Reassessment

Preface to the Second Edition. Preface to the First Edition. The State of American Linguistics in the Mid 1950s. The Chomskyan Revolution. From Syntactic Structures to Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. The Rise of Generative Semantics. The Linguistic Wars. The Extended Standard Theory. The New Consensus and the New Rift in Generative Syntax. Current Approaches to Syntax. References. Name Index. Subject Index.

Linguistic theory in America

Communication using symbols (such as words) structured with grammar

Abstract Syntax and Latin Complementation

Citations

Handbook of Pragmatics

Linguistics and Natural Logic

Configurational Properties of Point of View Roles

Pirahã Exceptionality: A Reassessment

Linguistic theory in America

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