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Interrogative Phrases and the Syntax-Semantics Interface starts by analyzing the interpretation of interrogative phrases in single and multiple constituent questions, including their interpretation under adverbs of quantification. The results are then put to work in a novel approach to some of the constraints on dependencies between fronted interrogative phrases and the associated gaps: superiority, weak crossover, as well as the so-called `weak islands' (the WH-island, the negative island and the Factive Island). It is argued that the possibility of fronting an interrogative phrase out of these configurations is determined by a semantic/pragmatic condition on questions, which requires them to be answerable. The analysis is worked out principally on Romanian, a language which allows multiple wh-fronting. The results are then extended to English. Audience: Researchers and students in syntax, semantics and their interface, as well as linguists studying the relation between the acceptability of sentences and the larger discourse context.
Interrogative Phrases and the Syntax-Semantics Interface starts by analyzing the interpretation of interrogative phrases in single and multiple constituent questions, including their interpretation under adverbs of quantification. The results are then put to work in a novel approach to some of the constraints on dependencies between fronted interrogative phrases and the associated gaps: superiority, weak crossover, as well as the so-called weak islands' (the WH-island, the negative island and the Factive Island). It is argued that the possibility of fronting an interrogative phrase out of these configurations is determined by a semantic/pragmatic condition on questions, which requires them to be answerable. The analysis is worked out principally on Romanian, a language which allows multiple wh-fronting. The results are then extended to English. Audience: Researchers and students in syntax, semantics and their interface, as well as linguists studying the relation between the acceptability of sentences and the larger discourse context.
This book presents a comprehensive account of quantifier scope in German. The author investigates scope behavior of ordinary quantifiers and negative, adverbial, interrogative, relative and particle quantifiers. The areas which are dealt with include: relative scope in simple sentences, absolute and relative scope in complex sentences, noun-phrase internal scope, and scope behavior of indefinite noun phrases. A theory of explicit and implicit quantification is proposed and a uniform process of scope determination is sketched which encompasses the scope of explicit as well as implicit quantifiers. Quantifier scope is a challenge to linguistic theory as it is a phenomenon which is determined by the interplay of diverse syntactic and semantic factors, which interact in a weighted and cumulative way. The factors' interplay is part of the syntax/semantics-interface, i.e., the constraints relating syntax and semantics, which are considered to be relatively autonomous, parallel levels connected by an interface of correspondence constraints.
Human language is a phenomenon of immense richness: It provides finely nuanced means of expression that underlie the formation of culture and society; it is subject to subtle, unexpected constraints like syntactic islands and cross-over phenomena; different mutually-unintelligeable individual languages are numerous; and the descriptions of individual languages occupy thousands of pages. Recent work in linguistics, however, has tried to argue that despite all appearances to the contrary, the human biological capacity for language may be reducible to a small inventory of core cognitive competencies. The most radical version of this view has emerged from the Minimalist Program: The claim that language consists of only the ability to generate recursive structures by a computational mechanism. On this view, all other properties of language must result from the interaction at the interfaces of that mechanism and other mental systems not exclusively devoted to language. Since language could then be described as the simplest recursive system satisfying the requirements of the interfaces, one can speak of the Minimalist Equation: Interfaces + Recursion = Language. The question whether all the richness of language can be reduced to that minimalist equation has already inspired several fruitful lines of research that led to important new results. While a full assessment of the minimalist equation will require evidence from many different areas of inquiry, this volume focuses especially on the perspective of syntax and semantics. Within the minimalist architecture, this places our concern with the core computational mechanism and the (LF-)interface where recursive structures are fed to interpretation. Specific questions that the papers address are: What kind of recursive structures can the core generator form? How can we determine what the simplest recursive system is? How can properties of language that used to be ascribed to the recursive generator be reduced to interface properties? What effects do syntactic operations have on semantic interpretation? To what extent do models of semantic interpretation support the LF-interface conditions postulated by minimalist syntax?
This pioneering study combines insights from philosophy and linguistics to develop a novel framework for theorizing about linguistic meaning and the role of context in interpretation. A key innovation is to introduce explicit representations of context - assignment variables - in the syntax and semantics of natural language. The proposed theory systematizes a spectrum of 'shifting' phenomena in which the context relevant for interpreting certain expressions depends on features of the linguistic environment. Central applications include local and non-local contextual dependencies with quantifiers, attitude ascriptions, conditionals, questions, and relativization. The result is an innovative philosophically informed compositional semantics compatible with the truth-conditional paradigm. At the forefront of contemporary interdisciplinary research into meaning and communication, Semantics with Assignment Variables is essential reading for researchers and students in a diverse range of fields.
This book looks at how syntax, semantics and pragmatics interact in different ways across human languages.
Syntax of Scope takes up the issue of relative operator scope in generative grammar and offers a comparative study of quantifiers and interrogative wh-operators.
Quantification is a topic which brings together linguistics, logic, and philosophy. Quantifiers are the essential tools with which, in language or logic, we refer to quantity of things or amount of stuff. In English they include such expressions as no, some, all, both, many. Peters and Westerstahl present the definitive interdisciplinary exploration of how they work - their syntax, semantics, and inferential role.
This volume of papers grew out of a research project on "Cross-Linguistic Quantification" originated by Emmon Bach, Angelika Kratzer and Barbara Partee in 1987 at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and supported by National Science Foundation Grant BNS 871999. The publication also reflects directly or indirectly several other related activ ities. Bach, Kratzer, and Partee organized a two-evening symposium on cross-linguistic quantification at the 1988 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in New Orleans (held without financial support) in order to bring the project to the attention of the linguistic community and solicit ideas and feedback from colleagues who might share our concern for developing a broader typological basis for research in semantics and a better integration of descriptive and theoretical work in the area of quantification in particular. The same trio organized a six-week workshop and open lecture series and related one-day confer ence on the same topic at the 1989 LSA Linguistic Institute at the University of Arizona in Tucson, supported by a supplementary grant, NSF grant BNS-8811250, and Partee offered a seminar on the same topic as part of the Institute course offerings. Eloise Jelinek, who served as a consultant on the principal grant and was a participant in the LSA symposium and the Arizona workshops, joined the group of editors for this volume in 1989.