This volume is a collection of papers that explore the nature of the interfaces of syntax with semantics, phonology, and discourse. The papers investigate the various ways in which elliptical structures are related to these interfaces. As such, they not only make a valuable contribution to generative linguistic research but, more generally, help to deepen our understanding of the relation between form and meaning in natural language.
This volume is a collection of current work at the interface of linguistics and conversation analysis. The focus is on linguistic items in their action contexts: syntactic structures and lexical items in data from natural conversations in six European languages: Danish, English, Finnish, German, Italian and Swedish. Some of the studies deal with similar practices in two different languages, which enables cross-linguistic comparisons.
Analogical Modeling (AM) is an exemplar-based general theory of description that uses both neighbours and non-neighbours (under certain well-defined conditions of homogeneity) to predict language behaviour. This book provides a basic introduction to AM, compares the theory with nearest-neighbour approaches, and discusses the most recent advances in the theory, including psycholinguistic evidence, applications to specific languages, the problem of categorization, and how AM relates to alternative approaches of language description (such as instance families, neural nets, connectionism, and optimality theory).
This book contains case studies relating the experience of bilingual children in various settings in New Zealand primary schools. The contexts include a Maori bilingual school, a Samoan bilingual unit, and mainstream classrooms which cater for immigrant and deaf children. Suggestions for educational policy, teacher development and research are made.
In this work, Paul M. Postal supports the universalist theory of language by examining passive clauses. Contrary to a skeptical tradition, Postal argues that passive clauses are cross-linguistically identifiable and characterizable. This study proposes refinements of the analysis of the natural language grammatical category Passive Clause. These refinements include an account of the notion 'dummy nominal,' central to the analysis of impersonal passive clauses; additions permitting a proper typology of the major known subtypes of Passive Clause; a generalization permitting application to clauses whose subjects are not earlier level direct objects; and, construction of precise rule concepts to represent restrictions on passive clauses............