The Semantics of Grammatical Dependencies argues that constraints of interaction from semantic evaluations enforce grammatical dependency patterns that recur across natural languages and within constructions at intra and inter sentential levels as well as discourse levels. The book develops along three lines. Firstly, a handle is gained on why languages are structured around localities, with localities functioning as actions of 'reset' to permit the reuse of grammatical resources that maintain a fixed semantic contribution. Secondly, sensitivity is brought to the linear and hierarchical placement of scope information to capture ordering effects like accessibility, crossover and intervention. Thirdly, an interestingly different perspective is reached on what it means to be grammatical: rather than being a destructive feature that bans or filters out bad structure, grammaticality takes on a role of constructive guidance that keeps languages to what are generally unambiguous canonical forms that moreover guarantee required dependencies. The book will be of interest to advanced undergraduate students, post-graduate and research students and all researchers in the formal analysis of the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of natural language.
Author(s): Alastair Butler
Series: Current Research in the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface 23
Publisher: Emerald
Year: 2010
Language: English
Pages: 248
Cover
Title Page
Contents
Preface
1 Introduction
1.1 Representational distance
1.2 A static perspective
1.3 Accidental hiding or capture
1.4 Canonical representations
1.4.1 de Bruijn indices
1.4.2 Keeping names
1.4.3 End of scope
1.4.4 Summary
1.5 Sequence assignments
1.6 Semantics for canonical representations
1.7 Scope Control Theory
1.8 Scope, binding, accessibility and locality
1.8.1 Creating scopes
1.8.2 Rel
1.8.3 Binding support
1.8.4 Accessibility
1.8.5 Shifting binding name
1.8.6 Locality
1.8.7 Summary
1.9 Book overview
2 Argument Dependencies
2.1 Introducing bindings
2.2 Predicates
2.2.1 Predicates without embedding
2.2.2 Predicates with embedding
2.2.3 Summary
2.3 Constituent order, agreement and noun phrases
2.4 Noun phrase restrictions able to take embeddings
2.5 Prepositions
2.6 Summary
3 Clause Dependencies
3.1 Third person pronouns and reflexives
3.2 Seeming absences of complementarity
3.3 Possessive pronouns
3.4 Covaluation
3.5 Bare stem complements
3.6 Control
3.7 Raising
3.8 Relative clauses
3.9 Scoping possibilities
3.10 Summary
4 Unbounded Dependencies
4.1 Bridge verbs
4.2 Tough constructions
4.3 Stranding and pied-piping
4.4 The complex NP constraint
4.5 Crossover
4.6 Quantifier scope
4.7 Summary
5 Intervention and Binding into Relations
5.1 French interrogatives with a single WH argument
5.2 German constituent questions
5.3 French multiple constituent questions
5.4 English constituent questions
5.5 Binding into relations
5.6 Summary
6 Quantification in Japanese
6.1 Case marked noun phrases
6.2 Adding quantification
6.3 Constituent questions and intervention
6.4 Summary
7 Concluding Remarks
Appendix SCT implementation
References
Index
