scholarly journals Semantic and Pragmatic Structures in Chomsky’s Binding Theory

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (II) ◽  
pp. 16-33
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Model ◽  
Binding Theory ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Syntactic Representation ◽  
Form Model

The central question that this paper attempts is to describe the conditions under which the anaphor can be determined grammatically or contextually. The issue at hand is whether anaphoric forms can be distinguished from indexical ones within Binding theory. The syntactic representation of bindees are characterized by the use of indices. But what role does the context play in assigning co-referential or non-coreferential properties to anaphors? Furthermore, ellipses are also context-bound. An elliptical structure is indexical, rather than anaphoric. The study analyzes the syntactic structures of Chomsky’s Binding theory within Bolinger’s (1979) semantic model Meaning and Form. It seeks the support of other semanticists in order to fill possible semantic gaps in Binding theory. Keywords: binding theory, elliptical structures, meaning and form model

Acts and the relationship between discourse and grammar

2005 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Hannay ◽  
Caroline Kroon
Keyword(s):  
Considerable Extent ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Grammatical Structure ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Intonation Units ◽  
The Status ◽  
Discourse Grammar ◽  
Discourse Organization ◽  
The Relationship

In modelling the discourse–grammar interface, a central question concerns the status of discourse act as the minimal unit of discourse organization and its relation to units of grammatical structure. This paper seeks to clarify the notion of act by defining it as a strategic rather than a conceptual unit, and by setting out a classification of strategic acts. Illustration is then offered for the position that discourse acts are to a very considerable extent realized in English by intonation units and punctuation units. This is done by considering how punctuational variation and cases of intonation/syntax mismatch can be explained in terms of the specific discourse contribution of the units concerned. Although the correlation between discourse acts and intonation/punctuation units remains problematic, in that there may not be a 1 : 1 correspondence, it is still attractive — at least for English — to see the linguistic correlate of acts in intonation and punctuation units rather than in syntactic structures. The paper finishes by considering the implications for the formalizing of relations between discourse, semantics and syntax in Functional Discourse Grammar.

A Government-Binding perspective on the imperative in English

1989 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 417-436 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frits Beukema ◽  
Peter Coopmans
Keyword(s):  
Structural Properties ◽  
English Language ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Binding Theory ◽  
Syntactic Representation ◽  
Government Binding

Culicover (1976:152) states that ‘the imperative is an idiosyncratic construction in most languages’. One of the aims of this article is to show that as far as this construction in the English language is concerned, this is an overstatement if we give careful consideration to the structural properties of this construction in a restrictive framework such as Government-Binding theory. Given the proposals in current generative grammar concerning the relations between COMP, INFL, V and their corresponding projections, it is worth investigating what the syntactic representation of the imperative may look like.

scholarly journals Writing Units or Decades First in Two Digit Numbers Dictation Tasks: The Case of Arabic—An Inverted Language

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 1518
Author(s):  
Deia Ganayim ◽  
Ann Dowker
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
High School ◽  
Junior High School ◽  
Junior High ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Education Students ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Arabic Speakers ◽  
Syntactic Representation

This study investigated the effect of educational level and of the syntactic representation of numbers in Arabic on the task of transcoding two-digit numbers from dictation. The participants were primary, junior-high, and high school pupils and higher education students. All spoke Arabic as a mother tongue. They performed a transcoding task, namely writing two-digit numbers from dictation. Units first\decades first writing patterns were collected depending on the differential syntactic structures of the two-digit number dictated (decades first: whole tens; units first: teen numbers; identical units and decades, remaining two-digit numbers). The findings reveal that in general, Arabic speakers adopt a decades-first writing pattern for two-digit numbers, especially when it is consistent with the syntactic structure of two-digit numbers, as in whole-tens numbers. This decade-first writing pattern is more evident and consistent in junior-high school, high school, and higher education than in primary school due to the improvement in mathematical skills and second and third languages. However, this pattern is modulated by the syntactic complexity of the unit–decade structure. This complexity is more pronounced in two-digit numbers whose processing is more dependent on numerical syntax. Thus, whole-tens numbers, teen numbers, and identical-decade–unit numbers are less complex than the remaining two-digit numbers.

scholarly journals “Expletives” as Discourse Markers: Semantic and Pragmatic Considerations in “It” and “There”

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (I) ◽  
pp. 108-127
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Form Model ◽  
Syntactic Theories

This paper explores the syntactic and semantic configurations of expletives “it” and “there.” It attempts to show that expletives are not just syntactic fillers; they are semantic markers and are pragmatically bound NPs that can be co-indexed with covert referents. The study follows a theoretical approach and applies Bolinger’s (1977) Meaning and Form model to the syntactic configurations of expletives. The syntactic structures of expletives are based on the syntactic theories of generativist linguists, namely Chomsky (1986). Chomskyan syntactic theories describe the various formal characteristics of expletives without analyzing their semantic and pragmatic implications. This study premises that Bolinger’s theoretical modal can fill these missing gaps and can provide a conclusive yet not final description of these gaps. The study recognizes expletives as discourse-bound markers and authenticates their contextual and sociological significance.

Acquiring Syntactic Structures

1984 ◽  
Vol 29 (7) ◽  
pp. 551-551
Author(s):  
Rosemary J. Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structures

Ruler Visibility and Popular Belonging in the Ottoman Empire, 1808-1908

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darin Stephanov
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
Group Consciousness ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Point Model ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
National Movements ◽  
Tanzimat Reforms ◽  
The One

‘What do we really speak of when we speak of the modern ethno-national mindset and where shall we search for its roots?’ This is the central question of a book arguing that the periodic ceremonial intrusion into the everyday lives of people across the Ottoman Empire, which the annual royal birthday and accession-day celebrations constituted, had multiple, far-reaching, and largely unexplored consequences. On the one hand, it brought ordinary subjects into symbolic contact with the monarch and forged lasting vertical ties of loyalty to him, irrespective of language, location, creed or class. On the other hand, the rounds of royal celebration played a key role in the creation of new types of horizontal ties and ethnic group consciousness that crystallized into national movements, and, after the empire’s demise, national monarchies. The book discusses the themes of public space/sphere, the Tanzimat reforms, millet, modernity, nationalism, governmentality, and the modern state, among others. It offers a new, thirteen-point model of modern belonging based on the concept of ruler visibility.

The Tribal Impact on Political Stability in Sudan

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 167-188
Author(s):  
Abdu Mukhtar Musa
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Third World ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Conflict Escalation ◽  
Islamic Movement ◽  
Patterns Of Behavior ◽  
Cultural Structure

As in most Arab and Third World countries, the tribal structure is an anthropological reality and a sociological particularity in Sudan. Despite development and modernity aspects in many major cities and urban areas in Sudan, the tribe and the tribal structure still maintain their status as a psychological and cultural structure that frames patterns of behavior, including the political behavior, and influence the political process. This situation has largely increased in the last three decades under the rule of the Islamic Movement in Sudan, because of the tribe politicization and the ethnicization of politics, as this research reveals. This research is based on an essential hypothesis that the politicization of tribalism is one of the main reasons for the tribal conflict escalation in Sudan. It discusses a central question: Who is responsible for the tribal conflicts in Sudan?

Modelling of Semantic Processes and Evolutional Semantic Model

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (27) ◽  
pp. 197-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Fedorova
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Dynamic Models ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Semantic Model ◽  
Vast Array ◽  
Special Procedure ◽  
Semantic Models ◽  
Semantic Evolution ◽  
Semantic Processes ◽  
The Way

In Linguistics the terms model and modelling have a vast array of meanings, which depends on the purpose and the object, and the type of the scientific research. The article is dedicated to the investigation of a special procedure of semantic processes modelling, deducing and substantiating the notion “evolutional semantic model”, the content and operational opportunities of which differ drastically from the essence and purpose of the known from the scientific literature phenomenon of the same name. In the proposed research this variety of modelling is oriented towards the description of the dynamics of the legal terms content loading, the estimation of possible vectors of the semantic evolution on the way of its terminalization/determinalization. The evolutional model of semantics has here as its basis the succession of sememes or series of sememes, the order of which is determined with accounting of a number of parameters. The typical schemes of the meaning development, illustrated by the succession of sememes, are considered to be the models of semantic laws (evolutional semantic models = EMS). Their function is the explanation of the mechanism and the order of the stages of the semantic evolution of the system of the words which sprung from one root on the way of its legal specialization, and, therefore, the proposed in the paper experience of semantic laws modelling differs from the expertise of the “catalogue of semantic derivations”, proposed by H. A. Zaliznjak, which doesn’t have as its purpose the explanation of meaning displacements, and from the notion of semantic derivation, models of derivation, dynamic models, worked out by O. V. Paducheva, which also only state such a displacement, without proving its reality. Key words: evolutional semantic model (EMS), modelling, semantic law, sememe, pre(law).

Similarities in the Syntactic Structure of the German and Croatian Language

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-118
Author(s):  
Manuela Svoboda
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Foreign Language Teaching ◽  
Subordinate Clause ◽  
German Language ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Subordinate Clauses

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to analyse any potential similarities between the Croatian and German language and present them adopting a contrastive approach with the intent of simplifying the learning process in regards to the German syntactic structure for Croatian German as foreign language students. While consulting articles and books on the theories and methods of foreign language teaching, attention is usually drawn to differences between the mother tongue and the foreign language, especially concerning false friends etc. The same applies to textbooks, workbooks and how teachers behave in class. Thus, it is common practice to deal with the differences between the foreign language and the mother tongue but less with similarities. This is unfortunate considering that this would likely aid in acquiring certain grammatical and syntactic structures of the foreign language. In the author's opinion, similarities are as, if not more, important than differences. Therefore, in this article the existence of similarities between the Croatian and German language will be examined closer with a main focus on the segment of sentence types. Special attention is drawn to subordinate clauses as they play an important role when speaking and/or translating sentences from Croatian to German and vice versa. In order to present and further clarify this matter, subordinate clauses in both the German and Croatian language are defined, clarified and listed to gain an oversight and to present possible similarities between the two. In addition, the method to identify subordinate clauses in a sentence is explained as well as what they express, which conjunctions are being used for each type of subordinate clause in both languages and where the similarities and/or differences between the two languages lie.

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