front cover of Algebraic Semantics in Language and Philosophy
Algebraic Semantics in Language and Philosophy
Godehard Link
CSLI, 1997
The philosophical approach of this volume is mainly structuralist, using logical tools to investigate the formal structure of various kinds of objects in our world, as characterised by language and as systematised by philosophy. This volume mainly analyses the structural properties of collections or pluralities (with applications to the philosophy of set theory), homogeneous objects like water, and the semantics and philosophy of events. This book thereby complements algebraic work that has been done on other philosophical entities, i.e. propositions, properties, relations, or situations. Located in the triangle of language, logic and philosophy, this volume is unique in combining the resources of different ¹elds in an interdisciplinary enterprise. Half of the fourteen chapters of this volume are original papers, complementing the collection of the author's previously published essays on the subject.
[more]

logo for University of Chicago Press
Alternative Conceptions of Phrase Structure
Edited by Mark R. Baltin and Anthony S. Kroch
University of Chicago Press, 1989
In the early years of generative grammar it was assumed that the appropriate mechanism for generating syntactic structures was a grammar of context-free rewriting rules. The twelve essays in this volume discuss recent challenges to this classical formulation of phrase structure and the alternative conceptions proposed to replace it. Each article approaches this issue from the perspective of a different linguistic framework, such as categorical grammar, government-binding theory, head-driven phrase structure grammar, and tree-adjoining grammar. By contributing to the understanding of the differing assumptions and research strategies of each theory, this volume serves as an important survey of current thinking on the frontier of theoretical and computation linguistics.
[more]

front cover of Analytic Syntax
Analytic Syntax
Otto Jespersen
University of Chicago Press, 1984
Here the great Danish linguist Otto Jespersen puts forward his views on grammatical structure in a kind of shorthand formalism, devising symbols that represent various grammatical elements and then analyzing numerous sentences in terms of these symbols. The contemporaneity of these analyses is remarkable, for they allude to concepts that were uncongenial to linguists in 1937 when the book was first published, but which have come to be generally accepted in the linguistics community during the past twenty-five years.
[more]

front cover of Analyzing Syntax & Semantics Textbook
Analyzing Syntax & Semantics Textbook
Virginia Heidinger
Gallaudet University Press, 1984
This 22-chapter text explores the structure of language and the meaning of words within a given structure. The text/workbook combination gives students both the theory and practice they need to understand this complex topic.

       Analyzing Syntax and Semantics features the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) approach. This method uses student performance objectives, practice, feedback, individualization of pace, and repeatable testing as instructional strategies.
[more]

front cover of Analyzing Syntax & Semantics Workbook
Analyzing Syntax & Semantics Workbook
Virginia Heidinger
Gallaudet University Press, 1984
This 22-chapter text explores the structure of language and the meaning of words within a given structure. The text/workbook combination gives students both the theory and practice they need to understand this complex topic.

       Analyzing Syntax and Semantics features the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) approach. This method uses student performance objectives, practice, feedback, individualization of pace, and repeatable testing as instructional strategies.
[more]

front cover of Anaphora and Conceptual Structure
Anaphora and Conceptual Structure
Karen van Hoek
University of Chicago Press, 1997
Karen van Hoek presents a cogent analysis of the classic problem of constraints on pronominal anaphora within the framework of Cognitive Grammar. Van Hoek proceeds from the position that grammatical structure can be characterized in terms of semantic and phonological representations, without autonomous syntactic structures or principles such as tree structures or c-command. She argues that constraints on anaphora can be explained in terms of semantic interactions between nominals and the contexts in which they are embedded.

Integrating the results of previous work, Van Hoek develops a model in which some nominals function as "conceptual reference points" that dominate over stretches defined by the semantic relations among elements. When a full noun is in the domain of a reference point, coreference is ruled out, since the speaker would be sending contradictory messages about the salience of the noun's referent.

With profound implications for the nature of syntax, this book will interest theoretical linguists of all persuasions.

[more]

front cover of Answer Key for Grammar Choices for Graduate and Professional Writers, Second Edition
Answer Key for Grammar Choices for Graduate and Professional Writers, Second Edition
Nigel A. Caplan
University of Michigan Press, 2019
This answer key, available only as an ebook, is to be used with the Second Edition of Grammar Choices for Graduate and Professional Writers (Caplan, 2019, University of Michigan Press). 
[more]

front cover of Approaching Second
Approaching Second
Second Position Clitics and Related Phenomena
Arnold Zwicky
CSLI, 1996

front cover of Argument Realization
Argument Realization
Edited by Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King
CSLI, 2001

logo for University of Chicago Press
Arguments for a Non-Transformational Grammar
Richard A. Hudson
University of Chicago Press, 1976
For the past decade, the dominant transformational theory of syntax has produced the most interesting insights into syntactic properties. Over the same period another theory, systemic grammar, has been developed very quietly as an alternative to the transformational model. In this work Richard A. Hudson outlines "daughter-dependency theory," which is derived from systemic grammar, and offers empirical reasons for preferring it to any version of transformational grammar.

The goal of daughter-dependency theory is the same as that of Chomskyan transformational grammar—to generate syntactic structures for all (and only) syntactically well-formed sentences that would relate to both the phonological and the semantic structures of the sentences. However, unlike transformational grammars, those based on daughter-dependency theory generate a single syntactic structure for each sentence. This structure incorporates all the kinds of information that are spread, in a transformational grammar, over to a series of structures (deep, surface, and intermediate). Instead of the combination of phrase-structure rules and transformations found in transformational grammars, daughter-dependency grammars contain rules with the following functions: classification, dependency-marking, or ordering.

Hudson's strong arguments for a non-transformational grammar stress the capacity of daughter-dependency theory to reflect the facts of language structure and to capture generalizations that transformational models miss. An important attraction of Hudson's theory is that the syntax is more concrete, with no abstract underlying elements.

In the appendixes, the author outlines a partial grammar for English and a small lexicon and distinguishes his theory from standard dependency theory. Hudson's provocative thesis is supported by his thorough knowledge of transformational grammar.
[more]

front cover of Attribute-Value Logic and the Theory of Grammar
Attribute-Value Logic and the Theory of Grammar
Mark Johnson
CSLI, 1988
Because of the ease of their implementations, attribute-value nased theorires of grammar are becoming increasingly populaar in theoretical linguistics as an alternative to transformational accounts, as well as in computational linguistics. Mark Johnson provides a formal analysis of attribute-value structures, of their use in a theory of grammar, of the representation of grammatical relations in such theories of grammar, and the implications of different representations. A classical treatment of disjunction and negation is alo included. "Essential reading for anyone interested in recent unification-based approcahes to grammar. Johnson lucidly lays out a formal framework in which a sharp distinction is drawn between descriptions of linguistic objects and the objects themselves. Negation and disjuntion over complex features, though linguistically desirable, have given rise to many problems, and one of Johnson's main achievements is to show that they can be interpreted using classic logic." -Ewan Klein, University of Edinburgh MARK JOHNSON is assitant professor of cognitive and linguistic sciences at Brown University.
[more]

front cover of Autolexical Syntax
Autolexical Syntax
A Theory of Parallel Grammatical Representations
Jerrold M. Sadock
University of Chicago Press, 1990
In Autolexical Syntax, Jerrold M. Sadock argues for a radical departure from the derivational model of grammar that has prevailed in linguistics for thirty years. He offers an alternative theory in which the various components of grammar—in particular syntax, semantics, and morphology—are viewed as fully autonomous descriptive devices for various parallel dimensions of linguistic representation. The lexicon in this theory forges the connection between autonomous representations in that a typical lexeme plays a role in all three of the major components of the grammar.

Sadock's principal innovation is the postulation of a uniform set of interface conditions that require the several orthogonal representations of a single natural language expression to match up in certain ways. Through a detailed application of his theory to the twin morphosyntactic problems of cliticization and incorporation, Sadock shows that very straightforward accounts are made possible by the nonderivational model. He demonstrates the empirical success of these accounts by examining more than two dozen morphosyntactic problems in almost as many languages.

Autolexical Syntax will be of interest to those in the fields of theoretical grammar, particularly concerned with the problems of morphology and syntax, as well as philosophers of language, logicians, lexicographers, psychologists of language, and computer scientists.
[more]

front cover of Beyond Alternations
Beyond Alternations
Laura A. Michaelis and Josef Ruppenhofer
CSLI, 2001
Beyond Alternations provides a unified account of the semantic effects of the German applicative ("be-") construction. Using natural data from a variety
of corpora, the authors propose that this pattern is inherently meaningful and that its meaning provides the basis for creative extensions.
[more]


front cover of But Can I Start a Sentence with
But Can I Start a Sentence with "But"?
Advice from the Chicago Style Q&A
The University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff
University of Chicago Press, 2016
Q. Is it “happy medium” or “happy median”? My author writes: “We would all be much better served as stewards of finite public funds if we could find that happy median where trust reigns supreme.” Thanks!
A. The idiom is “happy medium,” but I like the image of commuters taking refuge from road rage on the happy median.
Q. How do I write a title of a song in the body of the work (caps, bold, underline, italics, etc.)? Example: The Zombies’ “She’s Not There” looped in his head.
A. Noooo! Now that song is looping in my head (“but it’s too late to say you’re sorry . . .”). Use quotation marks. Thanks a lot.
 
Every month, tens of thousands of self-declared word nerds converge upon a single site: The Chicago Manual of Style Online's Q&A. There the Manual’s editors open the mailbag and tackle readers’ questions on topics ranging from abbreviation to word division to how to reform that coworker who still insists on two spaces between sentences. Champions of common sense, the editors offer smart, direct, and occasionally tongue-in-cheek responses that have guided writers and settled arguments for more than fifteen years.

But Can I Start a Sentence with “But”? brings together the best of the Chicago Style Q&A. Curated from years of entries, it features some of the most popular—and hotly debated—rulings and also recovers old favorites long buried in the archives.

Questions touch on myriad matters of editorial style—capitalization, punctuation, alphabetizing, special characters—as well as grammar, usage, and beyond (“How do I spell out the sound of a scream?”). A foreword by Carol Fisher Saller, the Q&A’s longtime editor, takes readers through the history of the Q&A and addresses its reputation for mischief. (“It’s not that we set out to be cheeky,” she writes.)

Taken together, the questions and answers offer insights into some of the most common issues that face anyone who works with words. They’re also a comforting reminder that even the best writer or editor needs a little help—and humor—sometimes.
[more]

front cover of The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation
The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation
Bryan A. Garner
University of Chicago Press, 2016
Few people can write on the English language with the authority of Bryan A. Garner. The author of The Chicago Manual of Style’s popular “Grammar and Usage” chapter, Garner explains the vagaries of English with absolute precision and utmost clarity. With The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation, he has written the definitive guide for writers who want their prose to be both memorable and correct.

Throughout the book Garner describes standard literary English—the forms that mark writers and speakers as educated users of the language. He also offers historical context for understanding the development of these forms. The section on grammar explains how the canonical parts of speech came to be identified, while the section on syntax covers the nuances of sentence patterns as well as both traditional sentence diagramming and transformational grammar. The usage section provides an unprecedented trove of empirical evidence in the form of Google Ngrams, diagrams that illustrate the changing prevalence of specific terms over decades and even centuries of English literature. Garner also treats punctuation and word formation, and concludes the book with an exhaustive glossary of grammatical terms and a bibliography of suggested further reading and references.

The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation is a magisterial work, the culmination of Garner’s lifelong study of the English language. The result is a landmark resource that will offer clear guidelines to students, writers, and editors alike.
[more]

front cover of The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th Edition
The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th Edition
The University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff
University of Chicago Press, 2017
Technologies may change, but the need for clear and accurate communication never goes out of style. That is why for more than one hundred years The Chicago Manual of Style has remained the definitive guide for anyone who works with words.

In the seven years since the previous edition debuted, we have seen an extraordinary evolution in the way we create and share knowledge. This seventeenth edition of The Chicago Manual of Style has been prepared with an eye toward how we find, create, and cite information that readers are as likely to access from their pockets as from a bookshelf. It offers updated guidelines on electronic workflows and publication formats, tools for PDF annotation and citation management, web accessibility standards, and effective use of metadata, abstracts, and keywords. It recognizes the needs of those who are self-publishing or following open access or Creative Commons publishing models. The citation chapters reflect the ever-expanding universe of electronic sources—including social media posts and comments, private messages, and app content—and also offer updated guidelines on such issues as DOIs, time stamps, and e-book locators.

Other improvements are independent of technological change. The chapter on grammar and usage includes an expanded glossary of problematic words and phrases and a new section on syntax as well as updated guidance on gender-neutral pronouns and bias-free language. Key sections on punctuation and basic citation style have been reorganized and clarified. To facilitate navigation, headings and paragraph titles have been revised and clarified throughout. And the bibliography has been updated and expanded to include the latest and best resources available.

This edition continues to reflect expert insights gathered from Chicago’s own staff and from an advisory board of publishing experts from across the profession. It also includes suggestions inspired by emails, calls, and even tweets from readers. No matter how much the means of communication change, The Chicago Manual of Style remains the ultimate resource for those who care about getting the details right.
[more]

front cover of Cite Right, Third Edition
Cite Right, Third Edition
A Quick Guide to Citation Styles--MLA, APA, Chicago, the Sciences, Professions, and More
Charles Lipson
University of Chicago Press, 2018
Cite Right is the perfect guide for anyone who needs to learn a new citation style or who needs an easy reference to Chicago, MLA, APA, AMA, and other styles. Each chapter serves as a quick guide that introduces the basics of a style, explains who might use it, and then presents an abundance of examples. This edition includes updates reflecting the most recent editions of The Chicago Manual of Style and the MLA Handbook. With this book, students and researchers can move smoothly among styles with the confidence they are getting it right.
[more]

front cover of Coherence, Reference, and the Theory of Grammar
Coherence, Reference, and the Theory of Grammar
Andrew Kehler
CSLI, 2001
A natural language discourse is more than an arbitrary sequence of utterances; a discourse exhibits coherence. Despite its centrality to discourse interpretation, coherence rarely plays a role in theories of linguistic phenomena that apply across utterances.

In this book, Andrew Kehler provides an analysis of coherence relationships between utterances that is rooted in three types of 'connection among ideas' first articulated by the philosopher David Hume—Resemblance, Cause or Effect, and Contiguity. Kehler then shows how these relationships affect the distribution of a variety of linguistic phenomena, including verb phrase ellipsis, gapping, extraction from coordinate structures, tense, and pronominal reference. In each of these areas, Kehler demonstrates how the constraints imposed by linguistic form interact with those imposed by the process of establishing coherence to explain data that has eluded previous analyses. his book will be of interest to researchers from the broad spectrum of disciplines from which discourse is studied, as well as those working in syntax, semantics, computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, and philosophy of language.
[more]

front cover of Complex Predicates
Complex Predicates
Edited by Alex Alsina, Joan Bresnan, and Peter Sells
CSLI, 1996
Complex predicates can be defined as predicates which are composed of more than one grammatical element (either morphemes or words), each of which contributes a non-trivial part of the information of the complex predicate. The papers collected in this volume, which were presented at a workshop at Stanford in 1993, represent a variety of approaches to the question of the range and nature of complex predicates, and draw on data from a wide spectrum of languages. This collection develops a better understanding of the range of phenomena that a general theory of complex predicates would have to account for, and to see what kinds of linguistic ideas and methodologies would be necessary for such a task.
[more]

front cover of Complex Predicates and Information Spreading in LFG
Complex Predicates and Information Spreading in LFG
Avery D. Andrews and Christopher D. Manning
CSLI, 1999
This book provides a simple but precise framework for describing complex predicates and related constructions, and applies it principally to the analysis of complex predicates in Romance, and certain serial verb constructions in Tariana and Miskitu. The authors argue for replacing the projection architecture of LFG with a notion of differential information spreading within a unified feature structure. Another important feature is the use of the conception of argument-structure in Chris Manning's Ergativity to facilitate the description of how complex predicates are assembled. In both of these aspects the result is a framework that preserves the descriptive parsimony of LFG while taking on key ideas from HPSG.
[more]

front cover of Conceptual Structure, Discourse and Language
Conceptual Structure, Discourse and Language
Edited by Adele Goldberg
CSLI, 1996
This collection of papers is the outcome of the first Conceptual Structure, Discourse and Language conference (CSDL) held at the University of Califronia, San Diego in October 1995.  CSDL was organized with the intention of bringing together researchers from both "cognitive" and "functional" approaches to linguistics.  The papers in this volume span a variety of topics, but there is a common thread running through them: the claim that semantics and discourse properties are fundamental to our understanding of language.
[more]

front cover of Constraints and Resources in Natural Language Syntax and Semantics
Constraints and Resources in Natural Language Syntax and Semantics
Edited by Gosse Bouma, Erhard Hinrichs, Geert-Jan M. Kruijff, and Richard Oehrle
CSLI, 1999
This collection draws together recent work on constraint-based and resource-sensitive approaches to the grammar of natural languages. Some of the issues addressed are: extraction phenomena in a range of languages, the syntax of nominal phrases, the role of argument structure, defining the interface between syntax and morphology and between semantics and prosody, quantifier scope, remnant movement, construction grammar, and formal and computational aspects of grammar formalisms. This volume brings together the leading linguists, logicians, and computer scientists working on Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar and Categorial Grammar. Derived from two recent conferences on Formal Grammar and Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar in Aix (1997) and Saarbrücken (1998), this volume represents the most current work in these frameworks.
[more]

front cover of A Constructional Approach to Resultatives
A Constructional Approach to Resultatives
Hans C. Boas
CSLI, 2003
Providing a unified solution within the frameworks of Construction Grammar and Frame Semantics, Hans Boas develops an account of resultative constructions in English by grouping them in two classes: conventionalized and non-conventionalized. The usage-based model used here proposes that each particular sense of a verb constitutes a conventionalized mini-construction, which is crucial information for the licensing of arguments. In contrast, verbs in non-conventionalized resultative constructions can acquire a novel meaning and thereby a new syntactic frame. English and German resultatives are compared to illustrate the distinct lexical polysemy networks of English and German verbs.
[more]

logo for University of Chicago Press
Deconstructing Morphology
Word Formation in Syntactic Theory
Rochelle Lieber
University of Chicago Press, 1992
One of the major contributions to theoretical linguistics during the twentieth century has been an advancement of our understanding that the information-bearing units which make up human language are organized on a hierarchy of levels. It has been an overarching goal of research since the 1930s to determine the precise nature of those levels and what principles guide interactions among them.

Linguists have typically posited phonological, morphological, and syntactic levels, each with its own distinct vocabulary and organizing principles, but in Deconstructing Morphology Rochelle Lieber persuasively challenges the existence of a morphological level of language. Her argument, that rules and vocabulary claimed to belong to the morphological level in fact belong to the levels of syntax and phonology, follows the work of Sproat, Toman, and others. Her study, however, is the first to draw jointly on Chomsky's Government-Binding Theory of syntax and on recent research in phonology.

Ranging broadly over data from many languages—including Tagalog, English, French, and Dutch—Deconstructing Morphology addresses key questions in current morphological and phonological research and provides an innovative view of the overall architecture of grammar.
[more]

front cover of A Descriptive Approach to Language-Theoretic Complexity
A Descriptive Approach to Language-Theoretic Complexity
James Rogers
CSLI, 1998
Early formal specifications of natural language syntax were quite closely connected to the notion of abstract machines for computing them. This provided a very natural means of gauging the relative difficulty of processing various constructions, as well as offering some insight into the abstract properties of the human language faculty. More recently, this approach has been superseded by one in which languages are specified in terms of systems of constraints on the structure of their sentences. This has made complexity results difficult to obtain. This book introduces a way of obtaining such results. It presents a natural and quite general means of expressing constraints on the structure of trees and shows that the languages that can be specified by systems of such constraints are exactly those computable by a particular standard class of abstract machines. Thus the difficulty of processing a construction can be reduced to the difficulty of expressing the constraints that specify it. The technique is demonstrated by applying it to a fairly complete treatment of English within the framework of Government and Binding theory, with the result of showing that its complexity is much less than has heretofore been assumed.
[more]

front cover of The Design of Agreement
The Design of Agreement
Evidence from Chamorro
Sandra Chung
University of Chicago Press, 1998
Sandra Chung proposes that linguistic theory must recognize not one but two agreement relations—a featural relation that lies behind agreement's impact on the form of words and a configurational relation that lies behind agreement's impact on syntactic structure. She identifies the two relations and argues that neither can be reduced to the other. Chung offers the most comprehensive analysis of the syntax of Chamorro that has appeared to date and relates her proposals to what is known about analogous constructions in English, Italian, Irish, Japanese, Maori, and other languages.
[more]

front cover of Discover Romanian
Discover Romanian
An Introduction to the Language and Culture
RODICA BOTOMAN
The Ohio State University Press, 1995
Discover Romanian's thorough treatment of both language and culture makes it an effective learning tool in classroom and individualized settings.

This comprehensive introduction to Romanian for English-speaking students emphasizes communication with a complete treatment of grammar, an extensive vocabulary, and a focus on the four major language skills—listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Cultural information, an integral part of the textbook, is presented both formally, in sections on culture and civilization, and informally, as the setting for dialogues and exercises. Tables of verb conjugations and a glossary round out the book's primary materials.

Straightforward and accessible, Discover Romanian is an essential textbook for all those teaching and learning the language and provides important information for those seeking to understand Romanian culture.
[more]

logo for University of Chicago Press
The Empirical Base of Linguistics
Grammaticality Judgments and Linguistic Methodology
Carson T. Schütze
University of Chicago Press, 1996
Grammaticality judgments—intuitions about the well-formedness of sentences—often rest on subtle discriminations that are notoriously unstable and unreliable. Carson T. Schütze presents a detailed critical overview of the vast literature on the nature and utility of grammaticality judgments and other linguistic intuitions, and the ways they have been used in linguistic research. He shows how variation in the judgment process can arise and assesses the status of judgments as reliable indicators of a speaker's grammar.

Integrating substantive and methodological findings, Schütze proposes a model in which judgments result from interactions of linguistic competence with general cognitive processes, and offers practical suggestions about collecting more useful data. The result is a work of importance to linguists, cognitive psychologists, and philosophers of language alike.
[more]

front cover of English Verb Classes and Alternations
English Verb Classes and Alternations
A Preliminary Investigation
Beth Levin
University of Chicago Press, 1993
In this rich reference work, Beth Levin classifies over 3,000 English verbs according to shared meaning and behavior. Levin starts with the hypothesis that a verb's meaning influences its syntactic behavior and develops it into a powerful tool for studying the English verb lexicon. She shows how identifying verbs with similar syntactic behavior provides an effective means of distinguishing semantically coherent verb classes, and isolates these classes by examining verb behavior with respect to a wide range of syntactic alternations that reflect verb meaning.

The first part of the book sets out alternate ways in which verbs can express their arguments. The second presents classes of verbs that share a kernel of meaning and explores in detail the behavior of each class, drawing on the alternations in the first part. Levin's discussion of each class and alternation includes lists of relevant verbs, illustrative examples, comments on noteworthy properties, and bibliographic references. The result is an original, systematic picture of the organization of the verb inventory.

Easy to use, English Verb Classes and Alternations sets the stage for further explorations of the interface between lexical semantics and syntax. It will prove indispensable for theoretical and computational linguists, psycholinguists, cognitive scientists, lexicographers, and teachers of English as a second language.
[more]

front cover of Ergativity
Ergativity
Argument Structure and Grammatical Relations
Christopher D. Manning
CSLI, 1996
This volume considers and examines some of the phenomena that have led languages to be considered 'ergative'. Languages considered 'ergative' have only been sparsely studied, and many fundamental questions in their analysis seem at best incompletely answered. This volume fills that void by focussing on some of the basic issues: when ergativity should be analyzed as syntactic or morphological; whether languages can be divided into two classes of syntactically and morphologically ergative languages, and if so where the division should be drawn; and whether ergative arguments are always core roles or not. Christopher Manning's codification of syntactic approaches to dealing with ergative languages is based on a hypothesis he terms the 'Inverse Grammatical Relations hypothesis.' This hypothesis adopts a framework that decouples prominence at the levels of grammatical relations and argument structure. The result is two notions of subject: grammatical subject and argument structure subject and a uniform analysis of syntactically ergative and Philippine languages. These language groups, the syntactically ergative and Philippine languages, allow an inverse mapping in the prominence of the two highest terms between argument structure and grammatical relations. A level of argument structure is shown to be particularly well motivated by the examination of syntactically ergative languages. A study of Inuit, Tagalog, and Dyirbal shows that constraints on imperative addressee and controllee selection, antecendent of anaphors, and the controller of certain adverbial clauses are universally sensitive to argument structure. Thus, these phenomena are always accusative or neutral, explaining why passive agents and causes can generally bind reflexives. However, constraints on relativization, topicalization, focussing or questioning, specificity or wide scope, coreferential omission in coordination, etc. are shown to be universally sensitive to grammatical relations. Examining just these phenomena, which are sensitive to grammatical relations, it becomes evident that many languages are indeed syntactically ergative, and so must be countenanced by linguistic theory. This volume combines good scholarship with innovative ideas into an important work that will appeal to a wide range of linguists and scholars.
[more]

front cover of Essentials of English Grammar
Essentials of English Grammar
Otto Jespersen
University of Alabama Press, 1964
A classic of English grammar, Essentials of English Grammar provides a common ground for the traditionalist and the structural or descriptive linguist. Jespersen’s work provides insight into the fundamental concepts that underlie the linguistic approach, but at the same time the foundation of the traditional approach is retained.
[more]

front cover of The Evolution of Grammar
The Evolution of Grammar
Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World
Joan Bybee, Revere Perkins, and William Pagliuca
University of Chicago Press, 1994
Joan Bybee and her colleagues present a new theory of the evolution of grammar that links structure and meaning in a way that directly challenges most contemporary versions of generative grammar. This study focuses on the use and meaning of grammatical markers of tense, aspect, and modality and identifies a universal set of grammatical categories. The authors demonstrate that the semantic content of these categories evolves gradually and that this process of evolution is strikingly similar across unrelated languages.

Through a survey of seventy-six languages in twenty-five different phyla, the authors show that the same paths of change occur universally and that movement along these paths is in one direction only. This analysis reveals that lexical substance evolves into grammatical substance through various mechanisms of change, such as metaphorical extension and the conventionalization of implicature. Grammaticization is always accompanied by an increase in frequency of the grammatical marker, providing clear evidence that language use is a major factor in the evolution of synchronic language states.

The Evolution of Grammar has important implications for the development of language and for the study of cognitive processes in general.
[more]

front cover of Formal Issues in Lexical-Functional Grammar
Formal Issues in Lexical-Functional Grammar
Edited by Mary Dalrymple, Ronald M. Kaplan, John Maxwell III, and Annie Zaenen
CSLI, 1994
Lexical-Functional Grammar was first developed by Joan Bresnan and Ronald M. Kaplan in the late 1970s, and was designed to serve as a medium for expressing and explaining important generalisations about the syntax of human languages and thus to serve as a vehicle for independent linguistic research. An equally important goal was to provide a restricted, mathematically tractable notation that could be interpreted by psychologically plausible and computationally efficient processing mechanisms. The formal architecture of LFG provides a simple set of devices for describing the common properties of all human languages and the particular properties of individual languages. This volume presents work conducted over the past several years at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Stanford University, and elsewhere. The different sections link mathematical and computational issues and the analysis of particular linguistic phenomena in areas such as wh-constructions, anaphoric binding, word order and coordination.
[more]

front cover of The Generic Book
The Generic Book
Edited by Gregory N. Carlson and Francis Jeffry Pelletier
University of Chicago Press, 1995
In an attempt to address the theoretical gap between linguistics and philosophy, a group of semanticists, calling itself the Generic Group, has worked to develop a common view of genericity. Their research has resulted in this book, which consists of a substantive introduction and eleven original articles on important aspects of the interpretation of generic expressions. The introduction provides a clear overview of the issues and synthesizes the major analytical approaches to them. Taken together, the papers that follow reflect the current state of the art in the semantics of generics, and afford insight into various generic phenomena.
[more]

logo for University of Chicago Press
Grammar and Discourse Principles
Functional Syntax and GB Theory
Susumu Kuno and Ken-ichi Takami
University of Chicago Press, 1993
In Grammar and Discourse Principles, Susumu Kuno and Ken-ichi Takami critically examine recent work in the Government and Binding framework developed by Chomsky, Rizzi, Lasnik and Saito, Huang, Aoun, and others. They demonstrate that this work encounters a variety of empirical and theoretical difficulties when confronted by an expanded range of data. Alternatively, the authors offer independently motivated functional explanations that account for these data and that do not require postulation of concepts like "L-marking" and "blocking category."

Kuno and Takami begin by looking at extraction phenomena, including extraction from complement clauses, the overt subject requirement, and subjacency, and provide functional accounts that improve on the Barriers analysis. Next, they discuss multiple wh questions in English and Japanese, with special reference to why and naze. The authors also examine and ultimately reject the major arguments in support of Larson's "light predicate raising" analysis. Finally, Kuno and Takami discuss coreferentiality of picture noun reflexives and the relation of quantifier scope interpretations, particularly those in sentences involving psychological verbs such as bother, worry, and please.

In this subtly argued book, the authors raise questions of critical importance for theoretical linguists of all persuasions.
[more]

front cover of Grammar Choices for Graduate and Professional Writers, Second Edition
Grammar Choices for Graduate and Professional Writers, Second Edition
Nigel A. Caplan
University of Michigan Press, 2019
Grammar Choices is a different kind of grammar book: It is written for graduate students, including MBA, master’s, and doctoral candidates, as well as postdoctoral researchers and faculty. Additionally, it describes the language of advanced academic writing with more than 300 real examples from successful graduate students and from published texts, including corpora.
 
Each of the eight units in Grammar Choices contains: an overview of the grammar topic; a preview test that allows students to assess their control of the target grammar and teachers to diagnose areas of difficulty;  an authentic example of graduate-student writing showing the unit grammar in use;  clear descriptions of essential grammar structures using the framework of functional grammar, cutting-edge research in applied linguistics, and corpus studies; vocabulary relevant to the grammar point is introduced—for example, common verbs in the passive voice, summary nouns used with this/these, and irregular plural nouns; authentic examples for every grammar point from corpora and published texts; exercises for every grammar point that help writers develop grammatical awareness and use, including completing sentences, writing, revising, paraphrasing, and editing; and a section inviting writers to investigate discipline-specific language use and apply it to an academic genre.
 
Among the changes in the Second Edition are:
  • new sections on parallel form (Unit 2) and possessives (Unit 5)
  • revised and expanded explanations, but particularly regarding verb complementation, complement noun clauses, passive voice, and stance/engagement
  • a restructured Unit 2 and significantly revised/updated Unit 7
  • new Grammar Awareness tasks in Units 3, 5, and 6
  • new exercises plus revision/updating of many others
  • self-editing checklists in the Grammar in Your Discipline sections at the end of each unit
  • representation of additional academic disciplines (e.g., engineering, management) in example sentences and texts and in exercises.

 
[more]

front cover of A Grammar of Akajeru
A Grammar of Akajeru
Fragments of a Traditional North Andamanese Dialect
Raoul Zamponi and Bernard Comrie
University College London, 2021
A definitive guide to an almost extinct North Andamanese language.
 
Originally spoken across the northern Andamanese Islands in the Bay of Bengal, the Akajeru language is spoken today by only three people. A Grammar of Akajeru describes this unique grammatical system as it was reported at the turn of the twentieth century. Based primarily on research conducted by Victorian anthropologists Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown and Edward Horace Man, this book offers a linguistic analysis of all extant Akajeru material as well as the scant documentation of adjacent dialects Akabo and Akakhora. This volume includes a grammatical sketch of Akajeru, an English-Akajeru lexicon, and a comparison between Akajeru and present-day Andamanese.
 
[more]

front cover of The Grammar of Negation
The Grammar of Negation
Jong-Bok Kim
CSLI, 2000
This book addresses three fundamental questions in the study of negation: What are the main ways of expressing sentential negation? What are the distributional properties of lexically-encoded negative elements? And, what implications do the answers to these two questions have for the theory of grammar? In answering these questions, Jong-Bok Kim investigates various aspects of negation in Korean, English, French and Italian. Addressing both empirical and theoretical issues relating to negation in these languages, he develops a nonderivational, lexicalist analysis within the constraint-based framework of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar. This work demonstrates that a constraint-based approach can capture the distributional possibilities of negative elements and explain related phenomena simply through their lexical properties and the interaction of the elementary morphosyntactic and valence properties of syntactic heads. The resulting constraint-based theory allows a conservative division of labor between morphology and syntax.
[more]

front cover of A Grammar of Paraguayan Guarani,
A Grammar of Paraguayan Guarani,
Bruno Estigarribia
University College London, 2020
The history of Guarani is a history of resilience. Paraguayan Guarani is a vibrant, modern language, mother tongue to millions of people in South America. It is the only indigenous language in the Americas spoken by a non-ethnically-indigenous majority, and since 1992, it is also an official language of Paraguay alongside Spanish. This book provides the first comprehensive reference grammar of Modern Paraguayan Guarani written for an English-language audience. It is an accessible yet thorough and carefully substantiated description of the language’s phonology, morphosyntax, and semantics. It also includes information about its centuries of documented history and its current sociolinguistic situation.
 
[more]

front cover of A Grammar Writer's Cookbook
A Grammar Writer's Cookbook
Edited by Miriam Butt, Tracy Holloway King, María-Eugenia Niño, and Frédérique S
CSLI, 1999
A Grammar Writer's Cookbook is an introduction to the issues involved in the writing and design of computational grammars, reporting on experiences and analyses within the ParGram parallel grammar development project. Using the Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) framework, this project implemented grammars for German, French, and English to cover parallel corpora.
[more]

logo for University of Chicago Press
Grammatical Competence and Parsing Performance
Bradley L. Pritchett
University of Chicago Press, 1992
How does a parser, a device that imposes an analysis on a string of symbols so that they can be interpreted, work? More specifically, how does the parser in the human cognitive mechanism operate? Using a wide range of empirical data concerning human natural language processing, Bradley Pritchett demonstrates that parsing performance depends on grammatical competence, not, as many have thought, on perception, computation, or semantics.

Pritchett critiques the major performance-based parsing models to argue that the principles of grammar drive the parser; the parser, furthermore, is the apparatus that tries to enforce the conditions of the grammar at every point in the processing of a sentence. In comparing garden path phenomena, those instances when the parser fails on the first reading of a sentence and must reanalyze it, with occasions when the parser successfully functions the first time around, Pritchett makes a convincing case for a grammar-derived parsing theory.
[more]

front cover of Grammatical Framework
Grammatical Framework
Programming with Multilingual Grammars
Aarne Ranta
CSLI, 2011

Grammatical Framework is a programming language designed for writing grammars, which has the capability of addressing several languages in parallel. This thorough introduction demonstrates how to write grammars in Grammatical Framework and use them in applications such as tourist phrasebooks, spoken dialogue systems, and natural language interfaces. The examples and exercises presented here address several languages, and the readers are shown how to look at their own languages from the computational perspective.

[more]

front cover of Grammatical Interfaces in HPSG
Grammatical Interfaces in HPSG
Edited by Ronnie Cann, Claire Grover, and Philip H. Miller
CSLI, 2001
This collection of recent work in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar focuses on interfaces between different grammatical components; its fifteen papers explore interface phenomena such as auxiliary contraction in English, analysis of illocutionary force in HPSG, syntactic and semantic aspects of Korean relative clause formation, negation in Welsh, and several others.
[more]

front cover of The Grammatical Structures of English and Spanish
The Grammatical Structures of English and Spanish
Robert P. Stockwell, J. Donald Bowen, and John W. Martin
University of Chicago Press, 1965
This series is designed to provide a detailed account of one of the major problems in the teaching of a second language—the interference caused by structural differences between the native language of the learner and the foreign language he is studying. The similarities and differences between English and the language being taught are described in two volumes, one on the sound systems and one on the grammatical systems, for some of the foreign languages most in demand in the United States today.
[more]

front cover of Grammatical Theory
Grammatical Theory
Its Limits and Its Possibilities
Frederick J. Newmeyer
University of Chicago Press, 1983
Newmeyer persuasively defends the controversial theory of transformational generative grammar. Grammatical Theory is for every linguist, philosopher, or psychologist who is skeptical of generative grammar and wants to learn more about it.

Newmeyer's formidable scholarship raises the level of debate on transformational generative grammar. He stresses the central importance of an autonomous formal grammar, discusses the limitations of "discourse-based" approaches to syntax, cites support for generativist theory in recent research, and clarifies misunderstood concepts associated with generative grammar.
[more]

front cover of Grammaticalization
Grammaticalization
A Conceptual Framework
Bernd Heine, Ulrike Claudi, and Friederike Hünnemeyer
University of Chicago Press, 1991
Grammaticalization, the process of converting regular lexical items and structures into conventionally interpreted grammatical morphemes, has traditionally been perceived as a syntactic or morphological process. Presenting a wealth of evidence from African languages, the authors argue that the development of grammatical categories is in fact strongly influenced by pragmatic and cognitive forces, factors that are located outside the confines of language structure. They discuss previous models and relate grammaticalization studies to alternative approaches such as localism and natural grammar theory.

This volume challenges theories which describe language as a static system, as well as those which assume that linguistic categorization is based on discrete morpheme types, word classes, or sentence constituents. In contrast, the book's central argument is that both language structure and language use are dynamic phenomena and that linguistic behavior is essentially a creative activity. That creativity manifests itself, for example, in conceptual transfer leading to the encoding of more abstract concepts and of grammatical categories. Another key element of this theory is captured in the term "grammaticalization chain," which refers to a specific kind of linguistic category which cuts across morpheme types and word classes and has both a synchronic and diachronic dimension.
[more]

front cover of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
Carl Pollard and Ivan A. Sag
University of Chicago Press, 1994
This book presents the most complete exposition of the theory of head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG), introduced in the authors' Information-Based Syntax and Semantics. HPSG provides an integration of key ideas from the various disciplines of cognitive science, drawing on results from diverse approaches to syntactic theory, situation semantics, data type theory, and knowledge representation. The result is a conception of grammar as a set of declarative and order-independent constraints, a conception well suited to modelling human language processing.

This self-contained volume demonstrates the applicability of the HPSG approach to a wide range of empirical problems, including a number which have occupied center-stage within syntactic theory for well over twenty years: the control of "understood" subjects, long-distance dependencies conventionally treated in terms of wh-movement, and syntactic constraints on the relationship between various kinds of pronouns and their antecedents. The authors make clear how their approach compares with and improves upon approaches undertaken in other frameworks, including in particular the government-binding theory of Noam Chomsky.
[more]

front cover of The History of Grammar in Foreign Language Teaching
The History of Grammar in Foreign Language Teaching
Simon Coffey
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
Taking a broadly chronological approach, this volume of original essays traces the origins of the concept of ‘grammar’. In doing so, it charts the social, moral and cultural factors that have shaped the development of grammar from Antiquity, via the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Modern Europe, to current education systems and language learning pedagogy. The chapters examine key turning points in the history of language teaching epistemology, focusing on grammar for language teaching across different European cultural contexts. Bringing together leading scholars of classical and modern languages education, The History of Grammar in Foreign Language Teaching offers the first single-source reference on the evolving concept of grammar across cultural and linguistic borders in Western language education. It therefore represents a valuable resource for teachers, teacher-educators and course designers, as well as students and scholars of historical linguistics, and of second and foreign language education.
[more]

front cover of Interrogative Investigations
Interrogative Investigations
The Form, Meaning, and Use of English Interrogatives
Jonathan Ginzburg and Ivan A. Sag
CSLI, 2001
Interrogative constructions are the linguistic forms by which questions are expressed. Their analysis is of great interest to linguists, as well as to computer scientists, human-computer interface designers, and philosophers. Interrogative constructions have played a central role in the development of modern syntactic theory. Nonetheless, to date most syntactic work has taken place quite separately from formal semantic and pragmatic work on interrogatives. Although there has by now been a significant amount of work on interrogatives across a variety of languages, there exist few syntactic and semantic treatments that provide a comprehensive account of a wide range of interrogative constructions and uses in a single language.

This book closes the gap in research on this subject. By developing the frameworks of Head Driven Phrase Structure Grammar and Situation Semantics, the authors provide an account that rigorously integrates syntactic, semantic, and contextual dimensions of interrogatives. The challenge of providing exhaustive coverage of the interrogative constructions of English, including various constructions that occur solely in dialogue interaction, leads to new insights about a variety of contentious theoretical issues. These include matters of semantic ontology, the quantificational status of wh-phrases, the semantic effect of wh-fronting, the status of constructions in grammatical theory, the integration of illocutionary information in the grammar, and the nature of ellipsis resolution in dialogue. The account is stated with sufficient rigor to enable fairly direct computational implementation.
[more]

front cover of Learnable Classes of Categorial Grammars
Learnable Classes of Categorial Grammars
Makoto Kanazawa
CSLI, 1998
This book investigates the learnability of various classes of classical categorial grammars within the Gold paradigm of identification in the limit from positive data. Learning from structure and learning from flat strings are considered. The class of k-valued grammars, for k = 1,2,3,..., is shown to be learnable both from structures and from strings, while the class of least-valued grammars and the class of least-cardinality grammars are shown to be learnable from structures. In proving these learnable results, crucial use is made of a theorem on the concept known as finite elasticity. The learning algorithms used in this work build on Buszkowski and Penn's algorithm for finding categorial grammars from input consisting of functor-argument structures.
[more]

front cover of Lectures on Contemporary Syntactic Theories
Lectures on Contemporary Syntactic Theories
An Introduction to Government-Binding Theory, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, and Lexical-Function Grammar
Peter Sells
CSLI, 1985
Sells provides an introduction to the most important aspects of three major contemporary syntactic theories. A strong linguiustic background is not presupposed, and a brief introductory chapter is included for the nonlinguist. PETER SELLS is a postdoctoral research affliate at CSLI. 1/1/1985 ISBN (Paperback): 0937073148 ISBN (Cloth): 093707313X Subject: Linguistics; Grammar--Syntax; Government-Binding Theory
[more]

front cover of Lectures on Deixis
Lectures on Deixis
Charles Fillmore
CSLI, 1997
This volume presents the author's view of the scope of linguistic description, insofar as the field of linguistics touches on questions of the meanings of sentences. Fillmore takes the subject matter of linguistics, in its grammatical, semantic and pragmatic sub-divisions, to include the full catalogue of knowledge which the speakers of a language can be said to possess about the structure of the sentences in their language, and their knowledge about the appropriate use of these sentences. In the author's view, the special explanatory task of linguistics is to discover the principles which underlie such knowledge. Fillmore chooses to study the range of information which the speakers of a language possess about the sentences in their language by thoroughly examining one simple English sentence.
[more]

front cover of Lexical and Constructional Aspects of Linguistic Explanation
Lexical and Constructional Aspects of Linguistic Explanation
Edited by Gert Webelhuth, Jean-Pierre Koenig, and Andreas Kathol
CSLI, 1999

front cover of Lexical-Functional Grammar
Lexical-Functional Grammar
An Introduction to Parallel Constraint-Based Syntax
Yehuda N. Falk
CSLI, 2001
With this textbook, Yehuda N. Falk provides an introduction to the theory of Lexical-Functional Grammar, aimed at both students and professionals who are familiar with other generative theories and now wish to approach LFG. Falk examines LFG's relation to more conventional theories—like Government/Binding or the Minimalism Program—and, in many respects, establishes its superiority.
[more]

front cover of Local Constraints vs. Economy
Local Constraints vs. Economy
David E. Johnson and Shalom Lappin
CSLI, 1999
The book offers a detailed critique of the economy-of-derivation model of grammar that has emerged within the framework of Chomsky's Minimalist Program. It looks at the conceptual and computational complexity problems as well as the empirical consequences of both global and local economy principles. The book compares the economy-of-derivation model with a local constraint model of grammar that does not invoke conditions on sets of derivations or on possible operations in a derivation. It argues that the pure local constraint model of grammar avoids the complexity problems resulting from economy-of-derivation principles and provides a more satisfactory explanation of the linguistic facts that economy theorists have cited in support of their approach. The local constraint model also allows for a more natural and empirically well-motivated grammatical architecture than the one postulated by the Minimalist Program.
[more]

front cover of A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Ninth Edition
A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Ninth Edition
Chicago Style for Students and Researchers
Kate L. Turabian
University of Chicago Press, 2018
When Kate L. Turabian first put her famous guidelines to paper, she could hardly have imagined the world in which today’s students would be conducting research. Yet while the ways in which we research and compose papers may have changed, the fundamentals remain the same: writers need to have a strong research question, construct an evidence-based argument, cite their sources, and structure their work in a logical way. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations—also known as “Turabian”—remains one of the most popular books for writers because of its timeless focus on achieving these goals.

This new edition filters decades of expertise into modern standards. While previous editions incorporated digital forms of research and writing, this edition goes even further to build information literacy, recognizing that most students will be doing their work largely or entirely online and on screens. Chapters include updated advice on finding, evaluating, and citing a wide range of digital sources and also recognize the evolving use of software for citation management, graphics, and paper format and submission. The ninth edition is fully aligned with the recently released Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition, as well as with the latest edition of The Craft of Research.

Teachers and users of the previous editions will recognize the familiar three-part structure. Part 1 covers every step of the research and writing process, including drafting and revising. Part 2 offers a comprehensive guide to Chicago’s two methods of source citation: notes-bibliography and author-date. Part 3 gets into matters of editorial style and the correct way to present quotations and visual material.  A Manual for Writers also covers an issue familiar to writers of all levels: how to conquer the fear of tackling a major writing project.

Through eight decades and millions of copies, A Manual for Writers has helped generations shape their ideas into compelling research papers. This new edition will continue to be the gold standard for college and graduate students in virtually all academic disciplines.
  • Bestselling, trusted, and time-tested advice for writing research papers
  • The best interpretation of Chicago style for higher education students and researchers
  • Definitive, clear, and easy to read, with plenty of examples
  • Shows how to compose a strong research question, construct an evidence-based argument, cite sources, and structure work in a logical way
  • Essential for anyone interested in learning about research
  • Everything any student or teacher needs to know concerning paper writing
[more]

front cover of Meaning Versus Grammar
Meaning Versus Grammar
An Inquiry into the Computation of Meaning and the Incompleteness of Grammar
Crit Cremers
Amsterdam University Press
Meaning versus Grammar investigates the complicated relationship between grammar, computation, and meaning in natural languages. It details conditions under which meaning-driven processing of natural language is feasible, discusses an operational and accessible implementation of the grammatical cycle for Dutch, and offers analyses of a number of further conjectures about constituency and entailment in natural language.
[more]

front cover of Mismatch
Mismatch
Form-Function Incongruity and the Architecture of Grammar
Edited by Elaine J. Francis and Laura A. Michaelis
CSLI, 2002
Linguistic mismatch phenomena involve semiotic functions that attach to forms in defiance of grammatical design features. Noun phrases, when used as predicates, provide one example: how do predicate nominals correspond to our theories of what nouns mean? How do such phenomena challenge traditional conceptions of grammar? How do competing theories of the syntax-semantics interface stand up when confronted with mismatch phenomena? Mismatch addresses these questions through the efforts of some of the most original thinkers in syntactic and semantic theory, exploring a wide variety of mismatch phenomena in a broad sampling of languages.
[more]

front cover of Mixed Categories in the Hierarchical Lexicon
Mixed Categories in the Hierarchical Lexicon
Robert P. Malouf
CSLI, 2000
Mixed category constructions like the English verbal gerund involve words that seem to be central members of more that one part of speech. This poses a problem for the standard view of syntactic categories.

This book presents a novel analysis of this and similar mixed category constructions in languages including Quechua, Tibetan, Arabic, Fijian, Dagaare, and Jacaltec. Under this analysis, Robert P. Malouf shows that verbal gerunds share the selectional properties of verbs and the distributional properties of nouns. He further shows that since different dimensions of grammatical information can vary independently, the behavior of mixed categories creates no paradox. These dimensions are in principle independent. However, certain types of mixed categories are quite common in the world's languages, while others are rare or nonexistent. The book discusses how cross-linguistic variation can be accounted for by a lexical categorial prototype. By stating these prototypes as default constraints in a hierarchy of lexical information, Malouf argues that one can bring insights from cognitive and functional approaches to linguistics into a formal analysis, thus building on the strengths of both approaches.
[more]

front cover of Morphology and its Relation to Phonology and Syntax
Morphology and its Relation to Phonology and Syntax
Patrick Farrell
CSLI, 1998
Leading experts in the field have contributed to this volume which explores key issues in current morphology and the interactions of morphology with phonology and syntax. Included here are papers on compounding, argument structure, voice systems, agreement marking, movement of constituents in compounds and derived forms, haplology, affix realization, stem selection and allomorphy, levels in phonology- morphology interactions, and nonisomorphism across grammatical components. These topics are considered from a variety of theoretical perspectives, among them the theory of Lexical Conceptual Structure, the Principles and Parameters framework, Lexical Functional Grammar, Autolexical Syntax, Optimality Theory, Distributed Morphology, Paradigm-Based Realizational Morphology, and the theory of Cophonologies.
[more]

front cover of Morphology and the Web of Grammar
Morphology and the Web of Grammar
Essays in Memory of Steven G. Lapointe
Edited by C. Orhan Orgun and Peter Sells
CSLI, 2003
This collection presents papers in memory of Steven G. Lapointe, a distinguished professor of linguistics at the University of California, Davis, at the time of his death in 1999. Lapointe's work on morphology and its connection to other linguistic subfields was the basis of a workshop held at UC Davis in 2000. This selection of papers from that workshop discusses the relationship of morphology to phonology, syntax, and semantics, as well as the details of modern morphological theory—forming a natural continuation of the intellectual developments in Lapointe et al.'s Morphology and Its Relation to Phonology and Syntax.
[more]

front cover of A Natural History of Negation
A Natural History of Negation
Laurence R. Horn
CSLI, 1989
This book offers a unique synthesis of past and current work on the structure, meaning, and use of negation and negative expressions, a topic that has engaged thinkers from Aristotle and the Buddha to Freud and Chomsky. Horn's masterful study melds a review of scholarship in philosophy, psychology, and linguistics with original research, providing a full picture of negation in natural language and thought; this new edition adds a comprehensive preface and bibliography, surveying research since the book's original publication.
[more]

front cover of The Nature of Explanation in Linguistic Theory
The Nature of Explanation in Linguistic Theory
Edited by John Moore and Maria Polinsky
CSLI, 2003
Elegant analyses by linguists have been a point of pride since the time of the Neogrammarians. But ever since Chomsky's pioneering work on the goals of linguistic theory, this descriptive emphasis has shifted to focus on explanation. What, the contributors to this volume ask, renders a linguistic account explanatorily adequate? What are the empirical and theoretical trade-offs that come into play when linguists aim for explanation? Renowned scholars weigh in here, offering insightful answers to these questions.
[more]

front cover of New Perspectives on Case Theory
New Perspectives on Case Theory
Edited by Ellen Brandner and Heike Zinsmeister
CSLI, 2003
Case is one of the central concepts in modern generative syntax, doing the work of linking arguments to predicates, moving nominal expressions, and in some languages connecting the referential properties of nominal expressions. Different languages, however, make use of overt case distinctions to very different degrees, leaving the principles of case with many open questions. This volume offers analyses of case phenomena in a broad range of languages and frameworks, including some novel approaches to case that will invite much discussion.
[more]

front cover of Nominals
Nominals
Inside and Out
Edited by Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King
CSLI, 2003
Since the early 1970s, the proper treatment and nominals and nominalization has been fundamental to syntactic theory. And yet a satisfactory approach continues to prove elusive. Working within the framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar, this book discusses the precise reasons why pronouns show particular distributions, why nominalized verbs inherit the predicational power of the verbs they're derived from, and what kind of syntactic category derived nominals should be assigned. Recent developments in LFG make it possible to examine discourse clitics and case markers as well, meaning this collection can address both "classic" nominal issues and novel new perspectives.
[more]

front cover of NT Greek
NT Greek
A Systems Approach
John Clabeaux
University of Scranton Press, 2009

For many years now John Clabeaux has been perfecting his technique for teaching New Testament Greek—using his classrooms at St. John’s Seminary College, Harvard Divinity School, and the Pontifical College Josephinum as language laboratories. The comprehensive, meticulous, and user-friendly text NT Greek: A Systems Approach is the fruit of these efforts.

            NT Greek is designed to be used both as a classroom text and as a reference manual for those students pursuing degrees in theological and biblical studies. The text includes a Greek index, an English index, a Greek-to-English glossary, verb maps, noun and adjective declension charts, and a list of helpful hints and rules. A digitally mastered CD of Greek recitations comes with every book to assist students with their pronunciations.

[more]

front cover of On Latin Adverbs
On Latin Adverbs
Harm Pinkster
Amsterdam University Press, 2006
This study deals with a number of aspects of the words which are usually called adverbs in Latin. It contains on the one hand a critical discussion of their treatment in Latin grammatical studies -- the characteristics attributed to them, their relationship to other words -- and on the other hand a discussion of the conditions that have to be met in order to achieve a better (sub)classification -- general problems of classification as well as criteria for affecting such classification -- and a better description of the functions of adverbs in larger constructions. The study contains, therefore, both language-specific sections and more general ones. The author wrote the passages specifically dealing with Latin in such a way that they are clear enough to the non-Latinist, the more general passages in such a way that they are understandable for Latinists who are not acquainted with recent developments in linguistics.
[more]

front cover of On the Placement and Morphology of Clitics
On the Placement and Morphology of Clitics
Aaron Halpern
CSLI, 1995
Using data from a variety of languages, this book investigates the place of clitics in the theory of language structure, and their implications for the relationships between syntax, morphology and phonology. It is argued that the least powerful theory of language requires us to recognise at least two classes of clitics, one with the syntax of independent phrases and the other with the syntax of inflectional affixes. It is also argued that prosodic conditions may influence the surface position of clitics beyond what may be accomplished by filtering potential syntactic structures. Finally, the relationship between syntactic, morphological, and phonological constituents within wordlike elements is explored.
[more]

front cover of Optimality-Theoretic Syntax
Optimality-Theoretic Syntax
A Declarative Approach
Jonas Kuhn
CSLI, 2003
With this book, Jonas Kuhn greatly advances Optimality Theory (OT) by clarifying the significant choices in the design of a formally precise OT approach to syntax. Building on OT work that uses the representation structures of Lexical Functional Grammar (OT-LFG), Kuhn defines the notion of an OT-syntactic grammar in a declarative, non-derivational way.

Along with the standard OT architecture, which is based on a generation metaphor, Kuhn also formalizes parsing-based OT, and goes on to discuss possible combinations of these two architectures. This is followed by an examination of assumptions under which the computational tasks of generation and parsing are decidable for an OT-syntactic grammar.
[more]

front cover of Optimizing Structure in Context
Optimizing Structure in Context
Scrambling and Information Structure
Hye-Won Choi
CSLI, 1999
This book examines the scrambling phenomena in German and Korean from the perspective that different ordering possibilities are motivated and constrained by interactions among syntactic, semantic, and discourse principles. Using Optimality Theory, Optimizing Structure in Context demonstrates how these principles from different modules of grammar interact and thus resolve conflicts among themselves to yield the most optimal output, that is, a sentence with a particular word order, in a given semantic and discoursal context. This way, it explains various meaning-related effects associated with scrambling such as definiteness effect and focus effect. While developing constraints in the discourse domain, it also proposes a new model of information structure based on basic discourse features. By expanding the core idea of constraint interaction in Optimality Theory to interactions 'between' modules of grammar as well as 'between', this book provides a model of interface theory.
[more]

front cover of The Philosophy of Grammar
The Philosophy of Grammar
Otto Jespersen
University of Chicago Press, 1992
This study grew out of a series of lectures Jespersen gave at Columbia
University in 1909-10, called “An Introduction to English Grammar.”
It is the connected presentation of Jespersen's views of the general
principles of grammar based on years of studying various languages
through both direct observation of living speech and written and
printed documents.

“[The Philosophy of Grammar and Analytic Syntax] set
forth the most extensive and original theory of universal grammar
prior to the work of Chomsky and other generative grammarians of the
last thirty years.”—Arne Juul and Hans F. Nielsen, in Otto
Jespersen: Facets of His Life and Work

“Besides being one of the most perceptive observers and original
thinkers that the field of linguistics has ever known, Jespersen was
also one of its most entertaining writers, and reading The
Philosophy of Grammar is fun. Read it, enjoy it.”—James D.
McCawley, from the Introduction

Otto Jespersen (1860-1943), an authority on the growth and structure
of language, was the Chair of the English Department at the University
of Copenhagen. Among his many works are A Modern English
Grammar and Analytic Syntax, the latter published by the
University of Chicago Press.
[more]

logo for University of Chicago Press
The Phonology-Syntax Connection
Edited by Sharon Inkelas and Draga Zec
University of Chicago Press, 1990

front cover of Possessive Descriptions
Possessive Descriptions
Chris Barker
CSLI, 1995
What do possessive noun phrases mean? Although possessives are one of the most commonly used construction types cross-linguistically, they have never received detailed or sustained study from a semantic point of view. Taking work of Abney, May, and Heim as a starting point, this book develops a comprehensive analysis of the contribution of possessive NPs to the truth conditions of the sentences in which they occur.
[more]

front cover of Practical Guide to Syntactic Analysis, 2nd Edition
Practical Guide to Syntactic Analysis, 2nd Edition
Georgia M. Green and Jerry L. Morgan
CSLI, 2001
The Practical Guide to Syntactic Analysis is a resource for students and practitioners of syntax at all levels, addressing matters that textbooks do not explain. Relatively independent sections target issues ranging from the seductive metaphors of generative grammar and the character of linguistic argumentation to practical advice about both getting started and presenting analysis. This second edition adds a reference guide to over sixty grammatical phenomena that every syntactician should be familiar with.
[more]

front cover of Principles of Grammar and Learning
Principles of Grammar and Learning
William O'Grady
University of Chicago Press, 1987
Principles of Grammar and Learning is concerned with the nature of linguistic competence and with the cognitive structures underlying its acquisition and use. During the past several decades many linguists and psychologists have come to the conclusion that genetically determined categories and principles specific to language are needed to account for the form and acquisition of grammatical systems. William O'Grady argues here for quite a different conclusion, proposing that adequate grammars can be constructed from a conceptual base not specific to language.

To support this thesis, O'Grady develops a well-articulated, single level, categorial-type grammar that he uses to analyze syntactic categories, extraction, anaphora, extraposition, and quantifier placement in English and other languages. He shows that such grammars can be constructed via general learning strategies from notions such as dependency, adjacency, precedence, and continuity, and that the available acquisition data points to the emergence of the principles he proposes.

While exploratory, this book provides one of the few serious attempts to develop a theory of grammar and learning that does not posit faculty-specific innate principles. Principles of Grammar and Learning is an exemplary attempt to bring together issues and data from syntactic theory, language acquisition, and the more general study of the human mind.
[more]

front cover of Processing Compound Verbs in Persian
Processing Compound Verbs in Persian
A psycholinguistic approach to complex predicates
Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi
Amsterdam University Press, 2014
Processing Compound Verbs in Persian is the first monograph investigating how Persian compound verbs are processed in the mental lexicon, through which it can be inferred how they are stored, organized, and accessed. The study examines Persian compound verbs in light of psycholinguistic theories on poly-morphemic word processing as well as linguistic theories of complex predicates.
[more]

front cover of The Projection of Arguments
The Projection of Arguments
Lexical and Compositional Factors
Edited by Miriam Butt and Wilhelm Geuder
CSLI, 1998
It is becoming increasingly clear that the standard approach to argument linking in terms of "thematic roles", which are determined by the lexical meaning of verbs, has some serious shortcomings. This volume sets out to explore alternatives to a rigid model of lexical projection. It brings together a set of papers from different backgrounds that converge on the general hypothesis that the many semantic factors which influence the projection of arguments should be attributed to compositional processes rather than to the fixed contents of lexical entries. Proposals for a reassessment of the lexicon-syntax interface include flexible models of lexical meaning with productive derivation of alternants, as well as models where the structural context supplants much of the putative role of lexical entries. The topics addressed include questions of argument hierarchies and adicity of predicates, and the syntax and semantics of argument alternations in a set of very diverse languages, which include English, Dutch, Scottish Gaelic, Finnish, Hebrew, Kannada, Malay, Inuit, and Yaqui.
[more]

front cover of A Reference Grammar of Chinese Sentences with Exercises
A Reference Grammar of Chinese Sentences with Exercises
Henry Hung-Yeh Tiee
University of Arizona Press, 1986
Begins with simple single-word-subject and simple-predicate sentences and moves systematically to transformed simple sentences and finally to compound and complex sentences. Each sentence structure is not only descriptively analyzed, but also formulated in a pedagogical pattern with examples. Exercises are provided in each unit.
[more]

logo for University of Chicago Press
The Semantics of Syntax
A Minimalist Approach to Grammar
Denis Bouchard
University of Chicago Press, 1995
During the last thirty years, most linguists and philosophers have assumed that meaning can be represented symbolically and that the mental processing of language involves the manipulation of symbols. Scholars have assembled strong evidence that there must be linguistic representations at several abstract levels—phonological, syntactic, and semantic—and that those representations are related by a describable system of rules. Because meaning is so complex, linguists often posit an equally complex relationship between semantic and other levels of grammar.

The Semantics of Syntax is an elegant and powerful analysis of the relationship between syntax and semantics. Noting that meaning is underdetermined by form even in simple cases, Denis Bouchard argues that it is impossible to build knowledge of the world into grammar and still have a describable grammar. He thus proposes simple semantic representations and simple rules to relate linguistic levels. Focusing on a class of French verbs, Bouchard shows how multiple senses can be accounted for by the assumption of a single abstract core meaning along with background information about how objects behave in the world. He demonstrates that this move simplifies the syntax at no cost to the descriptive power of the semantics. In two important final chapters, he examines the consequences of his approach for standard syntactic theories.
[more]

front cover of Sign-Based Construction Grammar
Sign-Based Construction Grammar
Edited by Hans C. Boas and Ivan A. Sag
CSLI, 2012
This book offers a long-awaited unified and precise treatise on construction-based grammar. The approach to grammar presented here is the union of Berkeley Construction Grammar, as represented by the early work of Charles J. Fillmore and Paul Kay, with construction HPSG as pioneered by Ivan Sag, Carl Pollard, and others. The presentation of this theory in a detailed chapter by Sag presents the full outlines of a new approach to grammar. It reflects the confluence of two separate, although converging, traditions, and constitutes a novel synthesis.
[more]

front cover of Slavic in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
Slavic in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
Edited by Robert D. Borsley and Adam Przepiórkowski
CSLI, 1999
This book is the first collection of papers on Slavic language within a formal non-transformational linguistic formalism. The articles presented here are concerned with all components of grammar, from semantics, through syntax and morphology, to phonology. In particular, the following phenomena are given HPSG analyses: syntax and semantics of negation, anaphor binding, syntax and morphology of auxiliaries, {\em wh}-extraction, syntax and morphology of case assignment, diathesis and voice, complement vs. adjunct distinction, and syntactic haplology. The main languages dealt with are Polish and Serbo-Croatian, but Russian, Czech and Bulgarian are also represented.
[more]

front cover of A Sourcebook for Classical Logic
A Sourcebook for Classical Logic
John Tomarchio
Catholic University of America Press, 2023
This Sourcebook offers a brief sequence in classical Logic befitting an unspecialized study for students of liberal arts and sciences. The sequence is made up of select texts of the Aristotelian Organon, mostly the opening chapters of each treatise, in the traditional order, where Aristotle lays out the primary elements of reasoning. Study aids accompany these primary texts, providing students with mnemonics and diagrams developed for classroom use in the great books programs St. John’s College. The culmination of this Aristotelian Logic sequence is selections from the Posterior Analytics where Aristotle offers an account of the demonstrative reasoning of theoretical sciences. The interest of this Sourcebook, as of Aristotelian Logic, is search for such knowledge. This Aristotelian sequence is preceded by a sequence of readings in Medieval grammatica speculativa, or philosophy of language. This propaedeutic sequence begins with an ancient source to which that metaphysically minded ‘grammar’ recurred, namely Augustine’s De magistro, or On the Teacher. It is a dialogue between Augustine and his son about the triadic relation of the spoken word to the word thought and the thing thought about. This aporetic dialectic between Augustine and his son proves effective in awakening students to the theoretical stakes of Logic. Similarly, from later theological inquiries into language for purposes of scriptural interpretation more general theories of language emerged. The theoretical uses thus made of Aristotelian Logic by the Jewish theologian Maimonides and the Catholic Thomas Aquinas whet student appetite for the technical matter of the Organon sequence to follow.
[more]

front cover of Specifying Syntactic Structures
Specifying Syntactic Structures
Edited by Patrick Blackburn and Maarten de Rijke
CSLI, 1997
The papers in this book apply mathematical and logical methods to the description of linguistic structures. Such descriptions are useful for a variety of purposes. For example, they make it easier to design and debug software for dealing with human languages. The purpose of the volume is to introduce a number of new and better methods for describing linguistic structures. The volume contains contributions on the logical foundations of current syntactic theories, as well as on logical methods that lead to new ways of describing syntactic structures.
[more]

front cover of Student’s Guide to Writing College Papers, Fifth Edition
Student’s Guide to Writing College Papers, Fifth Edition
Kate L. Turabian
University of Chicago Press, 2019
Students of all levels need to know how to write a well-reasoned, coherent research paper—and for decades Kate L. Turabian’s Student’s Guide to Writing College Papers has helped them to develop this critical skill. For its fifth edition, Chicago has reconceived and renewed this classic work for today’s generation. Addressing the same range of topics as Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations but for beginning writers and researchers, this guide introduces students to the art of formulating an effective argument, conducting high-quality research with limited resources, and writing an engaging class paper.

This new edition includes fresh examples of research topics, clarified terminology, more illustrations, and new information about using online sources and citation software. It features updated citation guidelines for Chicago, MLA, and APA styles, aligning with the latest editions of these popular style manuals. It emphasizes argument, research, and writing as extensions of activities that students already do in their everyday lives. It also includes a more expansive view of what the end product of research might be, showing that knowledge can be presented in more ways than on a printed page.

Friendly and authoritative, the fifth edition of Student’s Guide to Writing College Papers combines decades of expert advice with new revisions based on feedback from students and teachers. Time-tested and teacher-approved, this book will prepare students to be better critical thinkers and help them develop a sense of inquiry that will serve them well beyond the classroom.
[more]

front cover of Student's Guide to Writing College Papers
Student's Guide to Writing College Papers
Fourth Edition
Kate L. Turabian
University of Chicago Press, 2010

High school students, two-year college students, and university students all need to know how to write a well-reasoned, coherent research paper—and for decades Kate Turabian’s Student’s Guide to Writing College Papers has helped them to develop this critical skill. In the new fourth edition of Turabian’s popular guide, the team behind Chicago’s widely respected The Craft of Research has reconceived and renewed this classic for today’s generation. Designed for less advanced writers than Turabian’s Manual of Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Seventh Edition, Gregory G. Colomb and Joseph M. Williams here introduce students to the art of defining a topic, doing high-quality research with limited resources, and writing an engaging and solid college paper.

The Student’s Guide is organized into three sections that lead students through the process of developing and revising a paper. Part 1, "Writing Your Paper," guides students through the research process with discussions of choosing and developing a topic, validating sources, planning arguments, writing drafts, avoiding plagiarism, and presenting evidence in tables and figures. Part 2, "Citing Sources," begins with a succinct introduction to why citation is important and includes sections on the three major styles students might encounter in their work—Chicago, MLA, and APA—all with full coverage of electronic source citation. Part 3, "Style," covers all matters of style important to writers of college papers, from punctuation to spelling to presenting titles, names, and numbers.

With the authority and clarity long associated with the name Turabian, the fourth edition of Student’s Guide to Writing College Papers is both a solid introduction to the research process and a convenient handbook to the best practices of writing college papers. Classroom tested and filled with relevant examples and tips, this is a reference that students, and their teachers, will turn to again and again.

[more]

front cover of Studies in Relational Grammar 1
Studies in Relational Grammar 1
Edited by David M. Perlmutter
University of Chicago Press, 1983
In this long-awaited book—the first in a three-volume work—David M. Perlmutter has co-authored and edited ten essays that introduce relational grammar, a novel conception of sentence structure that offers far-reaching conclusions for universal grammar.

The basic ideas of relational grammar can be simply stated. First, grammatical relations such as 'subject of,' 'direct object of,' and 'indirect object of,' are needed to characterize the class of grammatical constructions in the clausal syntax of natural languages, to formulate universals of grammar, and to construct adequate and insightful grammars of individual languages. Second, the range of linguistic variation in word order and case patterns makes it impossible to define grammatical relations in terms of phrase structure configurations or case. Rather, grammatical relations must be taken as primitive notions of linguistic theory.

The papers collected here take up the first of these ideas. They lay out the basic theoretical constructs of relational grammar and discuss three areas of grammar—advancement construction, raising, and clause union. In his introduction, Perlmutter discusses each of the papers—most of which are published here for the first time—and places them in the context of the whole of linguistic study.
[more]

logo for University of Chicago Press
Studies in Relational Grammar 2
Edited by David M. Perlmutter and Carol Rosen
University of Chicago Press, 1984
This work and its companion volume, Studies in Relational Grammar 1, introduce the theoretical constructs of relational grammar. This framework is known for its straightforwardness, for its ability to account for exotic data, and for having sparked a wide-ranging, innovative program of research on syntactic universals and typology. Studies in Relational Grammar 2 features analyses of constructions long regarded as anomalous or problematic.

This volume shows how theory and data interact. Ideas such as the Unaccusative Hypothesis and the 1-Advancement Exclusiveness Law have led to new discovering, both cross-linguistic and language-internal, which in turn shed light on such questions as the linkage between semantic roles and initial grammatical relations. New solutions to some long-standing problems follow from relational grammar's restrictive clause-structure typology: impersonal passive is an advancement to subject, antipassive a demotion from subject to direct object, and the "dative subject" phenomenon a demotion to indirect object. These analyses find corroboration in a variety of languages, as do other claims, notably that there exist rules (even of case-marking and verb agreement) that refer to nonfinal grammatical relations. While all these findings bear on the basic problem of syntactic representation, the two opening papers confront that issue directly, arguing that linguistic theory must recognize distinct syntactic levels expressed in terms of grammatical relations.

Relational grammar has brought theory together with data from the most diverse languages. It has significantly expanded the data base syntactic theory must account for and has brought its results to bear on fundamental questions of theory design.
[more]

logo for University of Chicago Press
Studies in Relational Grammar 3
Edited by Paul M. Postal and Brian D. Joseph
University of Chicago Press, 1990
This collection of nine original syntactic studies carried out within the framework for syntactic theory and description known as Relational Grammar provides a state-of-the-art survey of this and allied fields. In relational theory, grammatical relations such as subject, direct object, and predicate are taken to be theoretical primitives which permit the definition of formal objects called Arcs, the fundamental building blocks of syntactic structures.

Edited by Paul M. Postal and Brian D. Joseph, this volume is the third in a series highlighting work in Relational Grammar. It extends the foundational studies of the first two volumes to refine and modify the insights, analyses, and theoretical devices developed in earlier connections, while at the same time providing support for some of the earlier constructs and claims.

Of the nine papers, four treat various aspects of advancements to and demotions from indirect object; three deal with raising and clause union constructions, in which initial immediate constituents of one structure are nonimmediate constituents of another; and two are concerned with problems in the description and formalization of verbal agreement systems. The nine articles cover languages ranging from Chamorro to English, French, Georgian, Greek, Japanese, Kek'chi, Korean, Southern Tiwa, Spanish, and Tzotzil.
[more]

front cover of Syntactic Categories and Grammatical Relations
Syntactic Categories and Grammatical Relations
The Cognitive Organization of Information
William Croft
University of Chicago Press, 1990

front cover of The Syntactic Phenomena of English
The Syntactic Phenomena of English
James D. McCawley
University of Chicago Press, 1998
This second edition of James D. McCawley's classic textbook offers in one volume a complete course in the syntactic structure of English. New to this edition are sections on appositive constructions, parasitic gaps, contrastive negation, and comparative conditional sentences, as well as expanded coverage of cleft sentences and free relatives. The presentation is coherent, comprehensive, and systematically organized, beginning with an overview of McCawley's approach to syntactic analysis and progressing through the major constructions and processes of English grammar. No prior special knowledge of syntax is presupposed, and the number and variety of exercises after each chapter have been increased.

And now available from the author! Answers to Selected Exercises.

Instructors using James D. McCawley's The Syntactic Phenomena of English, Second Edition may request a complimentary copy of Answers to Selected Exercises in The Syntactic Phenomena of English by writing on their department's letterhead to the author, James D. McCawley, Department of Linguistics, 1010 E. 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637. [Note: This material is available only from the author and is not available from the University of Chicago Press.]

[more]

front cover of The Syntactic Phenomena of English, Volume 1
The Syntactic Phenomena of English, Volume 1
James D. McCawley
University of Chicago Press, 1988
This second edition of James D. McCawley's classic textbook offers in one volume a complete course in the syntactic structure of English. New to this edition are sections on appositive constructions, parasitic gaps, contrastive negation, and comparative conditional sentences, as well as expanded coverage of cleft sentences and free relatives. The presentation is coherent, comprehensive, and systematically organized, beginning with an overview of McCawley's approach to syntactic analysis and progressing through the major constructions and processes of English grammar. No prior special knowledge of syntax is presupposed, and the number and variety of exercises after each chapter have been increased.

And now available from the author! Answers to Selected Exercises.

Instructors using James D. McCawley's The Syntactic Phenomena of English, Second Edition may request a complimentary copy of Answers to Selected Exercises in The Syntactic Phenomena of English by writing on their department's letterhead to the author, James D. McCawley, Department of Linguistics, 1010 E. 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637. [Note: This material is available only from the author and is not available from the University of Chicago Press.]
[more]

logo for University of Chicago Press
The Syntactic Phenomena of English, Volume 2
James D. McCawley
University of Chicago Press, 1988
This second edition of James D. McCawley's classic textbook offers in one volume a complete course in the syntactic structure of English. New to this edition are sections on appositive constructions, parasitic gaps, contrastive negation, and comparative conditional sentences, as well as expanded coverage of cleft sentences and free relatives. The presentation is coherent, comprehensive, and systematically organized, beginning with an overview of McCawley's approach to syntactic analysis and progressing through the major constructions and processes of English grammar. No prior special knowledge of syntax is presupposed, and the number and variety of exercises after each chapter have been increased.

And now available from the author! Answers to Selected Exercises.

Instructors using James D. McCawley's The Syntactic Phenomena of English, Second Edition may request a complimentary copy of Answers to Selected Exercises in The Syntactic Phenomena of English by writing on their department's letterhead to the author, James D. McCawley, Department of Linguistics, 1010 E. 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637. [Note: This material is available only from the author and is not available from the University of Chicago Press.]
[more]

front cover of Syntactic Theory
Syntactic Theory
A Formal Introduction, 2nd Edition
Ivan A. Sag, Thomas Wasow, and Emily M. Bender
CSLI, 2003
This second edition of Syntactic Theory: A Formal Introduction expands and improves upon a truly unique introductory syntax textbook. Like the first edition, its focus is on the development of precisely formulated grammars whose empirical predictions can be directly tested. There is also considerable emphasis on the prediction and evaluation of grammatical hypotheses, as well as on integrating syntactic hypotheses with matters of semantic analysis.

The book covers the core areas of English syntax from the last quarter century, including complementation, control, "raising constructions," passives, the auxiliary system, and the analysis of long distance dependency constructions. Syntactic Theory's step-by-step introduction to a consistent grammar in these core areas is complemented by extensive problem sets drawing from a variety of languages.

The book's theoretical perspective is presented in the context of current models of language processing, and the practical value of the constraint-based, lexicalist grammatical architecture proposed has already been demonstrated in computer language processing applications. This thoroughly reworked second edition includes revised and extended problem sets, updated analyses, additional examples, and more detailed exposition throughout.

Praise for the first edition:
"Syntactic Theory sets a new standard for introductory syntax volumes that all future books should be measured against."—Gert Webelhuth, Journal of Linguistics
[more]

front cover of Syntax and Human Experience
Syntax and Human Experience
Nicolas Ruwet
University of Chicago Press, 1991
"[Ruwet] raises fundamental questions about the place of grammar in the study of language and provides several studies which suggest the possibility that some core data are outside the realm of grammatical explanation. A very remarkable book, in which the breadth of Ruwet's reflection is both challenging and deeply rewarding."—Denis Bouchard, University of Quebec, Montreal
[more]

front cover of The Syntax of Subjects
The Syntax of Subjects
Koichi Tateishi
CSLI, 1994
Linguists who work on the Japanese language have disagreed about the notion of subject with resopect to Japanese; many linguists argue that there is no formal symtactic position for the subject in Japanese. Tateishi does deeper research on the surface syntax of the subject, and looks in particular at the syntax of the subject and phenomena which have been treated as S-adjunctions. These two have been identified with each other on many occasions in the history of Japanese linguistics and are of interest with respect to the debate over configurationality in the language, which has been revivedd in different forms following the emergence of the VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis, the merits of which Tateishi discusses at length. Tateishi's main claim is that despite all the non-configurational characteristics found in the language, Japanese is in a sense more configurational than the so-called configurational languages. Japanese allows more types of hierarchies to be involved in the subject-predicate relation than English allows, as Japanese does not have the same kind of restrictions on the phrase structure as the configurational languages have. Koichi Tateishi is a professor of linguistics at the Kyoto University of Foreign Studies.
[more]

front cover of Think Generic!
Think Generic!
The Meaning and Use of Generic Sentences
Ariel Cohen
CSLI, 1999
Our knowledge about the world is often expressed by generic sentences, yet their meanings are far from clear. This book provides answers to central problems concerning generics: what do they mean? Which factors affect their interpretation? How can one reason with generics? Cohen proposes that the meanings of generics are probability judgments, and shows how this view accounts for many of their puzzling properties, including lawlikeness. Generics are evaluated with respect to alternatives. Cohen argues that alternatives are induced by the kind as well as by the predicated property, and thus provides a uniform account of the varied interpretations of generics. He studies the formal properties of alternatives and provides a compositional account of their derivation by focus and presupposition. Cohen uses his semantics of generics to provide a formal characterization of adequate default reasoning, and proves some desirable results of this formalism.
[more]

front cover of Time Over Matter
Time Over Matter
Diachronic Perspectives on Morphosyntax
Edited by Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King
CSLI, 2001

front cover of Tree Adjoining Grammars
Tree Adjoining Grammars
Formalisms, Linguistic Analysis and Processing
Edited by Anne Abeillé and Owen Rambow
CSLI, 2000
Past research conducted on natural language syntax has occasionally employed the well-known mathematical formalism Context-Free Grammar, defined by Noam Chomsky in 1957. But recent studies have indicated that this approach may not always be ideal in analyzing all types of natural languages. Researchers in theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive science, and in natural language processing have recently converged on a collective insight: formalizing the syntax of words is central to describing, understanding, and analyzing language. This insight has sparked considerable interest in Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG). Unlike traditional approaches for analyzing natural language syntax, TAG is a lexically-oriented mathematical formalism that can precisely capture the syntactic properties of natural languages such as English, French, and Korean. Tree Adjoining Grammars is the first ever collection of works that discusses the use of the TAG framework in natural language research. The volume begins with an introductory chapter that provides an overview of TAG and key research projects that have utilized the TAG framework in the past. Contributors discuss the formalism itself, its use in analyzing linguistic phenomena, and its use in building natural language processing systems. A glossary and extensive bibliography is included, allowing the volume to be accessible to a broad audience. The selection of works in this volume were presented at the Third International Workshop in Tree Adjoining Grammars and Related Formalisms held in Paris in 1994.
[more]

front cover of The Unity of Unbounded Dependency Constructions
The Unity of Unbounded Dependency Constructions
Robert D. Levine and Thomas E. Hukari
CSLI, 2006
How do languages transmit information about the properties of phrases over large structural distances? This is the difficult question raised by the phenomenon of extraction, and while extraction has driven the development of syntactic theory for decades, there is still no consensus on what form the connectivity mechanism should take. A number of recent theoretical approaches share the view that extraction is not a unitary phenomenon, but this monograph offers data that radically undercuts this view. The grammar of extraction connectivity, the authors conclude, is relatively simple, homogenous in construction type, and uniform in the position of the extractee.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter