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Aspects of modality and ellipsis have become prominent in theoretical linguistics over the last years. What has remained under-investigated is the fact that modals tend to make excellent ellipsis licensers and, conversely, that many of the naturally occurring cases of ellipsis are licensed by modals. The book concentrates on the syntax of the modal auxiliaries with special focus on English and investigates the grammatical relationship with the process of ellipsis that interacts most relevantly with the modals in grammaticalized fashion by including a special emphasis on verb-phrase ellipsis. After a critical discussion of pertinent approaches in the two domains, the book focuses on establishing the connection between the two areas by essentially drawing on the history of English and on observable effects in modern grammars, which it puts into perspective with semantically grounded features on the modals involved. Two major generalizations are proposed in the monograph. The first generalization concerns the treatment of the interaction between modals and ellipsis as determined by the features located in the licensing modal heads. To this end, the syntactic effects of the main semantic factors are explored in detail in English and partial effects obtaining in other languages are discussed. The second generalization concerns the syntactic component involved in ellipsis licensing. It is suggested that ellipsis types with the distributional features of verb-phrase ellipsis are licensed by interpretable features of the licensing head. The two generalizations are intertwined with one another and derive a series of further legitimate ellipsis licensers beyond the modals. The role of formal features that are interpretable is distinguished from agreement features, which are claimed not to be in charge of ellipsis licensing.
This monograph presents a theory of ellipsis licensing in terms of Agree and applies it to several elliptical phenomena in both English and Dutch. The author makes two main claims: The head selecting the ellipsis site is checked against the head licensing ellipsis in order for ellipsis to occur, and ellipsis i.e., sending part of the structure to PF for non-pronunciation occurs as soon as this checking relation is established. At that point, the ellipsis site becomes inaccessible for further syntactic operations. Consequently, this theory explains the limited extraction data displayed by Dutch modals complement ellipsis as well as British English "do" These ellipses allow subject extraction out of the ellipsis site, but not object extraction. The analysis also extends to phenomena that do not display such a restricted extraction, such as sluicing, VP ellipsis, and pseudogapping. Hence, this work is a step towards a unified analysis of ellipsis."
Like its companion volume, this book offers a detailed description and comparison of three major structural-functional theories: Functional Grammar, Role and Reference Grammar and Systemic Functional Grammar, illustrated throughout with corpus-derived examples from English and other languages. Whereas Part 1 confines itself largely to the simplex clause, Part 2 moves from the clause towards the discourse and its context. The first three chapters deal with the areas of illocution, information structuring (topic and focus, theme and rheme, given and new information, etc.), and clause combining within complex sentences. Chapter 4 examines approaches to discourse, text and context across the three theories. The fifth chapter deals with the learning of language by both native and non-native speakers, and applications of the theories in stylistics, computational linguistics, translation and contrastive studies, and language pathology. The final chapter assesses the extent to which each theory attains the goals it sets for itself, and then outlines a programme for the development of an integrated approach responding to a range of criteria of descriptive and explanatory adequacy.
Syntax – the study of sentence structure – has been at the centre of generative linguistics from its inception and has developed rapidly and in various directions. The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax provides a historical context for what is happening in the field of generative syntax today, a survey of the various generative approaches to syntactic structure available in the literature and an overview of the state of the art in the principal modules of the theory and the interfaces with semantics, phonology, information structure and sentence processing, as well as linguistic variation and language acquisition. This indispensable resource for advanced students, professional linguists (generative and non-generative alike) and scholars in related fields of inquiry presents a comprehensive survey of the field of generative syntactic research in all its variety, written by leading experts and providing a proper sense of the range of syntactic theories calling themselves generative.
Research into the “grammar of language death” is often biased toward formal processes (e.g. paradigmatic levelling). In this study the author changes the perspective and shows that the relative susceptibility of linguistic elements to loss, change and innovation in language death circumstances can be dependent on meaning and thus organized along semantic notions rather than along structure.
Volume one of a two volume set outlining and comparing three approaches to the study of language labelled 'structural-functionalist': functional grammar (FG); role and reference grammar (RRG); and systemic functional grammar (SFG).
This volume explores the linguistic expression of modality in natural language from a cross-linguistic perspective. Modal expressions provide the basic tools that allow us to dissociate what we say from what is actually going on, allowing us to talk about what might happen or might have happened, as well as what is required, desirable, or permitted. Chapters in the book demonstrate that modality involves many more syntactic categories and levels of syntactic structure than traditionally assumed. The volume distinguishes between three types of modality: 'low modality', which concerns modal interpretations associated with the verbal and nominal cartographies in syntax; 'middle modality', or modal interpretation associated with the syntactic cartography internal to the clause; and 'high modality', relating to the left periphery. It combines cross-linguistic discussions of the more widely studied sources of modality with analyses of novel or unexpected sources, and shows how the meanings associated with the three types of modality are realized across a wide range of languages.
Ideal in introductory courses dealing with grammatical structure and linguistic analysis, Introduction to Typology overviews the major grammatical categories and constructions in the world's languages. Framed in a typological perspective, the constant concern of this primary text is to underscore the similarities and differences which underlie the vast array of human languages.
Cohesion in English is concerned with a relatively neglected part of the linguistic system: its resources for text construction, the range of meanings that are speciffically associated with relating what is being spoken or written to its semantic environment. A principal component of these resources is 'cohesion'. This book studies the cohesion that arises from semantic relations between sentences. Reference from one to the other, repetition of word meanings, the conjunctive force of but, so, then and the like are considered. Further, it describes a method for analysing and coding sentences, which is applied to specimen texts.
Ellipsis occurs when certain portions of a sentence are not spoken - for example 'Mary has read more books than Bill has [read books]' and 'Jack called, but I don't know where [he called] from'. These constructions interest linguists because the meaning of the sentence cannot be traced directly to the words it contains. This volume brings together a team of leading syntacticians to propose new and original solutions to some key questions in the study of ellipsis: What characterises ellipsis? Under what conditions is it possible? What kinds of meanings are allowed to go unspoken? Drawing on a variety of authentic constructions, they examine ellipsis in the context of a range of syntactic phenomena such as binding, raising, anaphora, movement and scrambling. Making significant progress towards solving some central problems in syntactic theory, this volume will be of key interest to anyone working on theoretical syntax, semantics and psycholinguistics.