Syntax And The Lexicon

Presenting a dynamic investigation into the role of the lexicon in syntactic theory, this book provides an insightful overview and introduction to lexical theory. It discusses the nature of argument and structure and debates the relation of argument nature to constituent structure and binding theory.

As a typical interface phenomenon, clitics have become increasingly important in linguistic theory during the last decade. The present book contributes to the recent discussion and first provides a comprehensive overview of clitic sequencing, clitic placement and clitic doubling in the major Romance languages. In addition, new data from a northern Italian dialect are introduced. The author then gives a critical summary of the current morphological analyses of clitic phenomena. She also discusses recent Optimality-theoretical analyses of clitic combinations and clitic placement and shows how these analyses can be improved upon when we also consider a morphological treatment of clitics. This book provides innovative solutions to clitic phenomena within the framework of a constraint-based morphological theory and will be of interest not only to morphologists, syntacticians and those working on the grammar of Romance languages, but also to linguists who are interested in the organisation of the grammar and the lexicon.

Syntax and the Lexicon is a dynamic investigation into the role of the lexicon in syntactic theory. Twelve chapters, authored by leaders in syntactic theory, provide a detailed yet easily understandable analysis of differing views on the lexicon in the field. Lively debates pepper the volume with interactive dialogue, and volume editors Tim Stowell and Eric Wehrli provide an insightful overview and introduction to lexical theory. It presents an overview of the role of the lexicon in syntactic theory and debates between major practitioners in the field. It discusses the nature of argument and structure and debates the relation of argument nature to constituent structure and binding theory. It examines the role of NP-movement vs. lexical rules in accounting for alternations in grammatical functions.

In functional grammar, the lexicon plays a central role. Lexical items form the basic building blocks around which the structure of a clause is built. This book examines 5 aspects of the role of the lexicon in functional grammar.

The present collection offers fresh perspectives on the lexicon-syntax interface, drawing on novel data from South Asian languages like Bangla, Hindi-Urdu, Kashmiri, Kannada, Malayalam, Manipuri, Punjabi, and Telugu. It covers different phenomena like adjectives, nominal phrases, ditransitives, light verbs, middles, passives, causatives, agreement, and pronominal clitics, while trying to settle the theoretical tensions underlying the interaction of the lexicon with the narrow syntactic component. All the chapters critically survey previous analyses in detail, suggesting how these may or may not be extended to South Asian languages. Novel explanations are proposed, which handle not only the novel data presented here, but also pave alternative ways to look at issues of minimalist architecture.

The essays in this volume explore the relationship between lexical and grammatical categories, calling into question the strict dichotomy between the two that is sometimes assumed.

The lexicon represents the building blocks of language: words and vocabulary. Most of us think of language in terms of words, and words are also integral to the way in which linguists approach language as an object of study. The lexicon and lexical issues must be taken in consideration in every domain of language study and, conversely, the lexicon cannot be viewed in isolation from other aspects of language. 'Language and the Lexicon' provides a comprehensive yet accessible overview of lexicology, introducing the reader to the lexicon by exploring the lexical aspects of a range of different areas of language: syntax, morphology, semantics, phonology, language variation, language change, language acquisition and language processing. Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, the book introduces the key concepts employing examples from a wide variety of languages in order to illustrate the points made. This book is ideally suited to those approaching lexicology for the first time. With its wide breadth of focus and diverse topics, it can equally serve as a first introduction to linguistics.

This book focuses on the linguistic representation of temporality in the verbal domain and its interaction with the syntax and semantics of verbs, arguments, and modifiers. Leading scholars explore the division of labour between syntax, compositional semantics, and lexical semantics in the encoding of event structure, encompassing event participants and the temporal properties associated with events. They examine the interface between event structure and the systems with which it interacts, including the interface between event structure and the syntactic realization of arguments and modifiers. Deploying a variety of frameworks and theoretical perspectives they consider central issues and questions in the field, among them whether argument-structure is specified in the lexical entries of verbs or syntactically constructed so that syntactic position determines thematic status; whether the hierarchical structure evidenced in argument structure find parallels in sign language; should the relation between members of an alternation pair, such as the causative-inchoative alternation, be understood lexically or derivationally; and the role of syntactic category in determining the configuration of argument structure.

The architecture of the human language faculty has been one of the main foci of the linguistic research of the last half century. This branch of linguistics, broadly known as Generative Grammar, is concerned with the formulation of explanatory formal accounts of linguistic phenomena with the ulterior goal of gaining insight into the properties of the 'language organ'. The series comprises high quality monographs and collected volumes that address such issues. The topics in this series range from phonology to semantics, from syntax to information structure, from mathematical linguistics to studies of the lexicon.

The relationship between the meaning of words and the structure of sentences is an important area of research in linguistics. Studying the connections between lexical conceptual meaning and event structural relations, this book arrives at a modular classification of verb types within English and across languages. Ramchand argues that lexical encyclopedic content and event structural aspects of meaning need to be systematically distinguished, and that thematic and aspectual relations belong to the latter domain of meaning. The book proposes a syntactic decompositional view of core verbal meaning, and sets out to account for the variability and systematicity of argument structure realisation across verb types. It also proposes an interesting view of lexical insertion.