A Semantic Account of Matrix Scope of a wh-phrase in a wh-island in Korean and English

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 644-667
Author(s):  
Hae-Kyung Wee
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Account ◽  
Korean And English

A Semantics of Exceptive Constructions in Korean and English

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Jae-Hak Yoon
Keyword(s):  
Korean And English

The “bundling” hypothesis and the disparate functions of little v

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi Harley
Keyword(s):  
External Argument ◽  
Event Argument ◽  
Accusative Case ◽  
Form Part ◽  
Korean And English

Following Pylkkänen (2002), among others, many of the functions of the vP have been distributed between two independent projections: VoiceP and vP. Pylkkänen proposed a “bundling” parameter: some languages project a single bundled Voice/vP, and all functions depend on that single projection, and others project VoiceP and vP separately, and functions are distributed. The chapter first reviews the roles ascribed to these projections: (i) external argument introduction, (ii) event argument introduction, (iii) accusative case checking, (iv) introduction of causative or inchoative semantics, (v) verbalizing of nonverbal material, and (vi) demarcating a cycle. The chapter then reviews support for Pylkkänen’s parametric view of Voice-bundling from, e.g., Hiaki, Turkish, Korean, and English. Results on causatives from Key (2013) and Jung (2014) suggest that the projection sequence dominating v may form part of a predetermined projection hierarchy. The constraint against stacking productive morphological causatives may thus be attributed to the extended verbal projection.

Expressivism and Crossed Disagreements

2019 ◽  
Vol 86 ◽  
pp. 111-132
Author(s):  
Javier Osorio ◽  
Neftali Villanueva
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Theory ◽  
Semantic Level ◽  
Semantic Account ◽  
Evaluative Language ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
Pragmatic Strategies

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to explore the connection between expressivism and disagreement. More in particular, the aim is to defend that one of the desiderata that can be derived from the study of disagreement, the explanation of ‘crossed disagreements’, can only be accommodated within a semantic theory that respects, at the meta-semantic level, certain expressivistic restrictions. We will compare contemporary dynamic expressivism with three different varieties of contextualist strategies to accommodate the specificities of evaluative language –indexical contextualism – truth-conditional pragmatics –, pragmatic strategies using implicatures, and presuppositional accounts. Our conclusion will be that certain assumptions of expressivism are necessary in order to provide a semantic account of evaluative uses of language that can allow us to detect and prevent crossed disagreements.

Two puzzles on the nominative particle ga in Japanese

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-243
Author(s):  
Noriko Kawasaki
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Japanese Language ◽  
Conversational Implicature ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Nominative Case ◽  
Semantic Account ◽  
The Subject

Abstract Back in the 1970s, Kazuko Inoue observed that some active sentences in Japanese allow a prepositional subject. Along with impersonal sentences pointed out by S.-Y. Kuroda, such examples suggest that the nominative subject is not an obligatory element in Japanese sentences. While this observation supports the hypothesis that important characteristics of the Japanese language follow from its lack of (forced-)agreement, Japanese potential sentences require the nominative ga on at least one argument. The present article argues that the nominative case particle ga is semantically vacuous even where a ga-marked phrase is indispensable or the ga-marked phrase is construed as exhaustively listing. Stative predicates require a ga-marked phrase because they can ascribe a property to an argument only by function application. The exhaustive listing reading arises by conversational implicature when the presence of a ga-marked phrase signals that a topic phrase is being avoided. The discussion leads to a semantic account of subject honorification whereby the honorification only concerns the semantic content of the predicate, and does not involve agreement with the subject. It is also shown that sentences with a prepositional subject allow zibun only as a long-distance anaphor, which indicates that they do lack a subject with the nominative Case.

scholarly journals Stem Alternation in Tłı̨chǫ Yatıì Classificatory Verbs: A Cognitive Semantic Account

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hussein Al-Bataineh
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Feature ◽  
The Other ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Semantic Account ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Feature Geometry ◽  
Cognitive Semantic ◽  
Field Notes

This paper investigates the phenomenon of ‘classificatory verbs,’ i.e., a set of motion and positional verbs that show stem alternation depending on the semantic features of one of their arguments. The data is drawn mainly from Tłı̨chǫ Yatıì Multimedia Dictionary, Nicholas Welch’s field notes, and other documentary sources of the language. Tłı̨chǫ classificatory verbs are presented and analyzed in detail. The paper argues that Tłı̨chǫ Yatıì classificatory verbs belong to four semantic subclasses and that these subclasses show a decreasing degree of stem alternations related to argument classification. The inconsistency in stem alternation is triggered by the presence or absence of some semantic features that determine the number of stem allomorphs. Locative verbs are affected by the [COMFORT] feature, and the other three sets are influenced by [TRANSFER], [INITIAL AGENTIVE] and [FINAL AGENTIVE] features. Moreover, the paper outlines a semantic feature geometry that accounts for the observed regularities in classificatory verb stems and their possible variations intra- and cross-linguistically.

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