By Edwin Williams
ISBN-10: 0262231735
ISBN-13: 9780262231732
ISBN-10: 0262731061
ISBN-13: 9780262731065
ISBN-10: 0585344205
ISBN-13: 9780585344201
This vital monograph summarizes, rethinks, and extends a decade of the author's paintings on therole assignments -- the ways that the jobs implied via verbs of a given sort play out when it comes to place and different syntactic services. The learn of theta roles and the locality of theta-role task leads into many attention-grabbing components of linguistic idea, akin to scope, the ECP, X-bar thought, binding conception, and the susceptible crossover situation; Williams's reconstruction therefore bargains a scientific integration of a remarkably wide selection of syntactic phenomena.
Williams starts off through outlining a concept of the clause,specifically, of the distribution of Nominative Case and annoying. He then develops a formalism for the inspiration of"external argument" that's used in the course of the remainder of the ebook. next chapters assessment the problems surrounding the syntactic expression of the subject-predicate courting, expand the suggestion of exterior argument to incorporate NP flow, and reanalyze the verb circulation structures as deriving from the calculus of theta roles instead of movement.
The final bankruptcy distinguishes referential dependence and coreference, exhibiting normal Leftness governs the previous, whereas the binding conception restated by way of theta relatives governs the latter.
Read Online or Download Thematic Structure in Syntax PDF
Similar grammar books
Download PDF by June Casagrande: Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies: A Guide to Language for
The antidote to Eats, Shoots and Leaves—an uproarious and intensely American language booklet should you are bored with getting pulled over via the grammar police
What do suicidal pandas, doped-up rock stars, and a unadorned Pamela Anderson have in universal? They’re all a heck of much more attention-grabbing than interpreting approximately predicate nominatives and hyphens. June Casagrande understands this and has invented a complete new twist at the grammar booklet. Grammar Snobs Are nice colossal Meanies is a laugh-out-loud humorous selection of anecdotes and essays on grammar and punctuation, in addition to hilarious evaluations of the self-appointed language specialists.
Chapters include:
• I’m scripting this whereas Naked—The Oh-So Steamy Predicate Nominative
• Semicolonoscopy—Colons, Semicolons, Dashes, and different Probing Annoyances
• I’ll Take "I consider Like a Moron" for $200, Alex—When to place Punctuation within citation Marks
• Snobbery Up with that you aren't positioned Up—Prepositions
• Is Dangler on your Memo or Are you simply blissful to work out Me?
• Hyphens—Life-Sucking, Mom-and-Apple-Pie-Hating, Mime-Loving, Nerd- Fight-Inciting Daggers of the Damned
Casagrande can provide useful and enjoyable language classes no longer came across at any place else, demystifying the topic and taking it again from the snobs. in brief, it’s a grammar ebook humans will really are looking to read—just for the thrill of it.
Download e-book for iPad: Functional Structure in DP and IP: The Cartography of by Guglielmo Cinque
This quantity offers the 1st result of a long term learn venture, funded via the Italian govt, which goals at mapping out the wonderful useful constitution of sentences, nominal words, and different significant words making up sentences. particularly, it examines the practical constitution of DPs (determiner words) and IPs (inflection phrases).
- The Handbook of Morphology (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics)
- Language Networks: The New Word Grammar (Oxford Linguistics)
- Genre and Institutions: Social Processes in the Workplace and School (Open Linguistics Series)
- Warriner's Handbook: Introductory Course (Holt Traditions)
- Logical Form: Its Structure and Derivation (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs)
Additional resources for Thematic Structure in Syntax
Sample text
For an NP direct object to belong in a sentence, it is enough that it be an argument of the adjacent verb; for the verb, it is enough that it have such an argument. Hence, the theta relations are at least one kind of licensing relation in syntax. But there are relations that cannot be reduced to theta relations, despite sharing many fundamental properties with them. For example, an adverb bears some sort of relation to the sentence in which it appears. However, the relation of an adverb to the verb or VP that it modifies cannot be a theta relation.
Thus, it cannot be negated, and when it appears at the end of the sentence, it must be intonationally separate: (60) a. The box was cleverly placed over the second hole. b. The box was placed over the second hole, cleverly. Cleverly is not subject-oriented; rather, it is agent-oriented, and it need not c-command the subject position. 1 Preliminaries Theta theory is the linguist's development of the intuitive logical notion "argument of"the relation of John and Mary to loves in John loves Mary. 2 Properties of Theta Roles and Relations The notion "argument" has an intuitively clear content, though the boundaries of the concept and its correct characterization are not only not agreed upon, but seldom discussed.
This should not be surprising, since in effect the VP has a theta role to assign still. The relation of the subject to the verb then consists of two parts. The first part is the relation of the V, which has the external argument, to the VP. This part is given by X-bar theory, in that projections of V inherit the index of the external argument of V. The second part of the relation is predicationbut this is simply another instance of theta role assignment. Thus, the relation of the V to the subject, which looks special and nonlocal, is in fact completely local and not really special, since the two parts that make it upX-bar theory and theta role assignmentexist independently.
Thematic Structure in Syntax by Edwin Williams
by Kenneth
4.0