Copular Constructions in Syntax

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel den Dikken ◽  
Teresa O’Neill
Keyword(s):  
Research Agenda ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Linear Ordering ◽  
Theory Construction ◽  
Surface Distribution ◽  
Considerable Controversy ◽  
Copular Sentences ◽  
Copular Sentence

Copular sentences (sentences of the form A is B) have been prominent on the research agenda for linguists and philosophers of language since classical antiquity, and continue to be shrouded in considerable controversy. Central questions in the linguistic literature on copulas and copular sentences are (a) whether predicational, specificational, identificational, and equative copular sentences have a common underlying source; and, if so, (b) how the various surface types of copular sentences are derived from that underlier; (c) whether there is a typology of copulas; and (d) whether copulas are meaningful or meaningless. The debate surrounding the postulation of multiple copular sentence types relies on criteria related to both meaning and form. Analyses based on meaning tend to focus on the question of whether or not one of the terms is a predicate of the other, whether or not the copula contributes meaning, and the information-structural properties of the construction. Analyses based on form focus on the flexibility of the linear ordering of the two terms of the construction, the surface distribution of the copular element, the restrictions imposed on the extraction of the two terms, the case and agreement properties of the construction, the omissibility of the copula or one of the two terms, and the connectivity effects exhibited by the construction. Morphosyntactic variation in the domain of copular elements is an area of research with fruitful intersections between typological and generative approaches. A variety of criteria are presented in the literature to justify the postulation of multiple copulas or underlying representations for copular sentences. Another prolific body of research concerns the semantics of copular sentences. In the assessment of scholarship on copulas and copular sentences, the article critiques the ‘multiple copulas’ approach and examines ways in which the surface variety of copular sentence types can be accounted for in a ‘single copula’ analysis. The analysis of copular constructions continues to have far-reaching consequences in the context of linguistic theory construction, particularly the question of how a predicate combines with its subject in syntactic structure.

Syntactic structures of Mandarin purposives

Linguistics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-126
Author(s):  
Wei-wen Roger Liao ◽  
Tzong-hong Jonah Lin
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Linear Ordering ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
The Right

Abstract This paper investigates three constructions in Mandarin, all of which convey a purposive/teleological meaning, including the lai purposive, the hao purposive, and the bare purposive. Despite the fact that each type of purposive clause in Mandarin occurs at the right edge of a sentence, it is argued that none of the purposive clause is a genuine right adjunct in the underlying syntactic structure. On the other hand, our analysis shows that the lai purposive employs complementation of a secondary predicate, the hao purposive involves conjunction of two clauses, and the bare purposive should be analyzed as left adjunction that is stranded in the right edge after verb movement. The evidence for our analysis is drawn from subject and object gaps, the ba-construction in Mandarin, agentivity, and linear ordering of multiple purposive clauses. This work thus demonstrates representative cases where a structure that appears to involve right adjunction may in fact employ no right adjunction at all. The conclusion is thus consistent with the prediction of Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA).

Aspects of the syntax of ce in French copular sentences

2019 ◽  
pp. 153-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabelle Roy ◽  
Ur Shlonsky
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Syntactic Analysis ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Relativized Minimality ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Syntactic Constraints ◽  
Copular Sentences ◽  
Copular Sentence

This chapter offers a syntactic analysis of French ce in copular constructions. It is argued that the distribution of ce is best understood in terms of the conditions on the agree operation inside the copular sentence. The proform ce, an expletive, is inserted whenever an agreement relationship cannot be established between an element in the subject position and an element from the PredP (Bowers 1993). Two sources of agreement failure are considered. In one case, agreement failure results from syntactic constraints on movement (Relativized Minimality, criterial freezing) together with focalization. In the other case, agreement failure results from the absence of accessible phi-features on the subject, possibly as the result of a grammatical shift taking place at the interface. This chapter further highlights the relevance of two subject positions (Subj1 and Subj2) each with their own interpretational properties.

Spanning versus Constituent Lexicalization

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Knut Tarald Taraldsen
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Input Tree ◽  
Bantu Languages

This chapter seeks to evaluate the relative merits of two competing views of how lexical insertion should work in a nanosyntactic framework. One view holds that a sequence of heads meeting certain conditions, a “span,” can be replaced by a single morpheme even when those heads do not form a constituent in the input tree. The other view allows lexical insertion only to target constituents. The article focuses on certain properties of portmanteau prefixes identified by investigating the nominal class prefixes in Bantu languages. Accounting for portmanteau prefixes looks like a serious challenge to the theory restricting lexical insertion to constituents. They can be accommodated by positing only a richer syntactic structure than is usual. However, various empirical arguments show that the richer syntactic structure is in fact needed in an analysis of the nominal class prefixes in Bantu and that this conclusion extends to class prefixes in other languages.

Middle Knowledge and the Soteriological Problem of Evil

1991 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
David P. Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Other ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Subjunctive Conditionals ◽  
Middle Knowledge ◽  
Divine Knowledge ◽  
Considerable Controversy

According to the thesis of divine ‘middle knowledge’, first propounded by the Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina in the sixteenth century, subjunctive conditionals stating how free agents would freely respond under counter-factual conditions (call such expressions ‘counterfactuals of freedom’) may be straightforwardly true, and thus serve as the objects of divine knowledge. This thesis has provoked considerable controversy, and the recent revival of interest in middle knowledge, initiated by Anthony Kenny, Robert Adams and Alvin Plantinga in the 1970s, has led to two ongoing debates. One is a theoretical debate over the very intelligibility of middle knowledge;1 the other is a practical debate over its philosophical and theological utility.2

Semantic and pragmatic effectsof negative markers

2019 ◽  
pp. 66-103
Author(s):  
Ahmad Alqassas
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Clausal Structure ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Negative Statements ◽  
The One ◽  
Structural Positions

This chapter focuses on the semantic and pragmatic effects associated with the various positions of negation. Particularly, presuppositional readings for negative statements follow from different structural positions of negation (higher in the TP) as opposed to the non-presuppositional interpretations associated with the lower NegP below TP. This chapter also analyses contrasts between SA maa on the one hand and laa and its variants on the other hand. These contrasts are related to scope readings, presupposition, mood and speech acts (commissive, directive, volitive, and (ir)realis). I argue that presuppositional negation is a product of the interplay between syntax and pragmatics. Specifically, I propose that presuppositional negative markers are higher in the syntactic structure. They occupy a position above the tense phrase in the clausal structure, namely NegP above TP (cf. Zanuttini 1997 for similar effects in various Romance). Pragmatically marked negation includes presuppositional negation, categorical negation and cleft-negation. The former two are in a NegP above TP, while the latter is in CP.

Dinneen’s Irish Virgil

2020 ◽  
pp. 137-155
Author(s):  
Fiachra Mac Góráin
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Irish Language ◽  
Civil Strife ◽  
Irish Context ◽  
The One ◽  
Back To The Land

This chapter discusses the cultural and political reception of Virgil by the nationalist scholar, cleric, and Irish-language expert Patrick Dinneen. Dinneen forges connections between classical antiquity and the Irish experience, seeing himself as a latter-day Virgil, similarly dispossessed of his lands but engaged in the production of a national literature. Among his domesticating receptions of Virgil to the Irish context, he read the Georgics as a model for calling a people back to the land after civil strife. In Dinneen’s reading of Aeneid 6 as recommending a benign form of empire, however, the chapter pinpoints a tension between his favourable view of the Roman Empire as spreading civilization and Christianity, on the one hand, and the potential of empire for injustice and oppression, on the other.

scholarly journals Explanations of Institutional Change: Reflecting on a “Missing Diagonal”

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHANNES GERSCHEWSKI
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Time Horizon ◽  
Path Dependency ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Gradual Change ◽  
Exogenous Shocks ◽  
Critical Junctures

Previous research on institutional change has concentrated on two types of explanations. On one hand, the dualism of path dependency and critical junctures has advanced our understanding of how institutional change occurs due to sudden exogenous shocks. On the other hand, more recent critiques have established a better understanding of endogenous, gradual change. This article is motivated by observations that current research tends to overlook what I call the “missing diagonal.” I argue that we need to disentangle the sources of a cause (exogenous vs. endogenous) from its time horizon (sudden vs. gradual). By cross-tabulating these two dimensions, the proposed typology of institutional change explanations is able to capture complex multilayered as well as sequential arguments of institutional change. The typology urges scholars to be more precise with their social science language of erosion and decay, while serving as a generator for an innovative research agenda on endogenous ruptures.

Christian Viaticum: A Study of its Cultural Background

Traditio ◽  
1953 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 1-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Grabka
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Spontaneous Growth ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Religious Convictions ◽  
Christian Worship ◽  
Other World ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Expression ◽  
The Church

Two ideas, the Divine and the Other-World, seem to have dominated much of the life of the ancient Greeks and Romans and to have claimed their best energies. To a great extent the culture of classical antiquity is the natural expression of these two predominant religious convictions. When Christianity entered the Graeco-Roman world and gathered its adherents from among both the cultured class and the unlettered masses, it made no violent break with ancient culture but preserved whatever was best in it. On the one hand, the Church sought to suppress whatever militated against its own teaching in these matters; on the other, it readily embraced a number of purely folk customs and practices of virtually spontaneous growth and gave them a new orientation in conformity with Christian principles. In a word, some of the pagan usages and rites were purified and, whenever possible, adapted to Christian worship.

scholarly journals How Circular Are the European Economies? A Taxonomic Analysis Based on the INEC (Index of National Economies’ Circularity)

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 7613
Author(s):  
Armand Kasztelan
Keyword(s):  
Circular Economy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Linear Ordering ◽  
Multi Criteria Decision Making ◽  
Taxonomic Analysis ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Aggregate Index ◽  
The One ◽  
European Economies ◽  
National Economies

In this paper, the aggregate index of national economies’ circularity (INEC) was proposed and empirically verified. For this purpose, the taxonomic linear ordering method was used, which is a multi-criteria decision-making procedure. This method replaces the analysis of the phenomenon described by a set of indicators with an analysis using one aggregate indicator: the so-called ‘synthetic metric’. Based on 14 circular economy indicators that are available in the Eurostat database, the circularity indexes were constructed for 24 EU countries (including the United Kingdom). This allowed the author, on the one hand, to create a ranking of the countries, and on the other, to assign them to four groups, which were characterized by a similar level of circularity. This paper attempts to answer the following questions: how circular are the European economies? What are the main challenges in achieving circularity in Europe? Taking into account the INEC range [0,1], it should be noted that the level of circularity in the analysed European countries is low (an average of 0.3021). Therefore, the paper indicates the areas requiring improvement in this respect.

scholarly journals How outward investment from emerging markets affects economic development at home: using the eclectic paradigm to synthesize two IB literatures

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 463-482
Author(s):  
Guus Hendriks
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
International Business ◽  
Foreign Investment ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Emerging Market ◽  
The Other ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Important Policy ◽  
Eclectic Paradigm ◽  
Development Outcomes

Purpose This paper aims to use the eclectic paradigm as a broad organizing framework to bring together two somewhat parallel international business (IB) literatures, one on the development effects of multinational enterprise activity and the other on the internationalization of emerging market multinationals (EMNEs). The author does so to better understand how outward foreign investment shapes economic development in firms’ home countries. Design/methodology/approach Considering that the characteristics of foreign investment by EMNEs likely differ from that of their developed economy counterparts and that such characteristics may have unique development consequences, the author revisits one of IB’s overarching theories to rethink how ownership, location and internalization advantages take shape and stimulate diverse development outcomes. Findings My narrative review and conceptual analysis indicate that the eclectic paradigm is a valuable framework that can be used to shed light on underexplored phenomena and thereby inform important policy debates. The analysis suggests that unique characteristics of EMNE investment simultaneously have positive and negative development consequences in their home countries. Practical implications The author sets out a research agenda that revolves around six propositions that separately relate one of these three distinct characteristics of EMNE investment to two development outcomes, namely, spillovers and direct effects on home-country employment. My propositions suggest that important policy dilemmas potentially apply, in that each of the three characteristics positively affects one of the aspects of development, but negatively the other. Originality/value My research agenda presents international business scholars with new opportunities to build on a history of policymaking impact, now geared toward resolving society’s grand challenge of underdevelopment.

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