[PDF] The Evolution Of Case Grammar eBook

Author : Remi van Trijp
Publisher :
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 27,79 MB
Release : 2020-10-09
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781013286322

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"There are few linguistic phenomena that have seduced linguists so skillfully as grammatical case has done. Ever since Panini (4th Century BC), case has claimed a central role in linguistic theory and continues to do so today. However, despite centuries worth of research, case has yet to reveal its most important secrets. This book offers breakthrough explanations for the understanding of case through agent-based experiments in cultural language evolution. The experiments demonstrate that case systems may emerge because they have a selective advantage for communication: they reduce the cognitive effort that listeners need for semantic interpretation, while at the same time limiting the cognitive resources required for doing so." This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

Author : Remi van Trijp
Publisher : Language Science Press
Page : 254 pages
File Size : 47,71 MB
Release : 2016
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 394623433X

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There are few linguistic phenomena that have seduced linguists so skillfully as grammatical case has done. Ever since Panini (4th Century BC), case has claimed a central role in linguistic theory and continues to do so today. However, despite centuries worth of research, case has yet to reveal its most important secrets. This book offers breakthrough explanations for the understanding of case through agent-based experiments in cultural language evolution. The experiments demonstrate that case systems may emerge because they have a selective advantage for communication: they reduce the cognitive effort that listeners need for semantic interpretation, while at the same time limiting the cognitive resources required for doing so.

Author : Remi Van Trijp
Publisher :
Page : 252 pages
File Size : 31,31 MB
Release : 2017-06-26
Category : Case grammar
ISBN : 9783944675848

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There are few linguistic phenomena that have seduced linguists so skillfully as grammatical case has done. Ever since Panini (4th Century BC), case has claimed a central role in linguistic theory and continues to do so today. However, despite centuries worth of research, case has yet to reveal its most important secrets. This book offers breakthrough explanations for the understanding of case through agent-based experiments in cultural language evolution. The experiments demonstrate that case systems may emerge because they have a selective advantage for communication: they reduce the cognitive effort that listeners need for semantic interpretation, while at the same time limiting the cognitive resources required for doing so.

Author : Joan Bybee
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 420 pages
File Size : 32,30 MB
Release : 1994-11-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0226086658

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Joan Bybee and her colleagues present a new theory of the evolution of grammar that links structure and meaning in a way that directly challenges most contemporary versions of generative grammar. This study focuses on the use and meaning of grammatical markers of tense, aspect, and modality and identifies a universal set of grammatical categories. The authors demonstrate that the semantic content of these categories evolves gradually and that this process of evolution is strikingly similar across unrelated languages. Through a survey of seventy-six languages in twenty-five different phyla, the authors show that the same paths of change occur universally and that movement along these paths is in one direction only. This analysis reveals that lexical substance evolves into grammatical substance through various mechanisms of change, such as metaphorical extension and the conventionalization of implicature. Grammaticization is always accompanied by an increase in frequency of the grammatical marker, providing clear evidence that language use is a major factor in the evolution of synchronic language states. The Evolution of Grammar has important implications for the development of language and for the study of cognitive processes in general.

Author : Walter A. Cook
Publisher : Sil International, Global Publishing
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 30,22 MB
Release : 1998
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN :

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An unusually clear, simple guide for sentence analysis which lends itself well to displaying the way syntactic features are associated with semantic structures.

Author : Walter Anthony Cook
Publisher :
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 22,87 MB
Release : 1979
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN :

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The case grammar model is essentially a description of predicates and the arguments required by the meaning of those predicates in the semantic description of sentences. By probing into semantic structures, case systems can relate one surface structure to many semantic structures and one semantic structure to many surface structures. It is in the area of explaining paraphrase and ambiguity that the model is able to establish relationships which cannot be established on the basis of syntax alone. Yet these semantic realities have important syntactic correlates and help to reveal regularities not otherwise apparent. This volume contains thirteen papers, published between 1970 and 1978, which trace the development of the case grammar matrix model, its relation to tagmemics, generative semantics, and interpretive semantics, and its application to such areas as the analysis of literature and stylistics -- Page 4 of cover.

Author : John M. Anderson
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 474 pages
File Size : 42,33 MB
Release : 2006-06-22
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 019929707X

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This book addresses fundamental issues in linguistic theory, including the relation between formal and cognitive approaches, the autonomy of syntax, the content of universal grammar, and the value of generative and functional approaches to grammar. It focuses on the grammar of case relations, signalled by morphological case, prepositions, and word order. Part I offers a critical history of modern grammars of case, focussing on the last four decades and setting this in the context ofearlier, including ancient, developments. The subjects considered include the evolution of ideas concerning deep structure and semantic and grammatical relations, and arguments for the maintenance of the traditional central position of case in the grammar. In parts II and III Professor Andersonexamines the category of case and central unresolved issues in the grammar of case. The latter include questions relating to the idea of an ontologically-based grammar, particularly the degree to which syntactic categories and relationships are grounded in meaning, and the notion of linguistic creativity. This involves a consideration of the way in which cases may be identified and whether their distribution is determined through semantics. The book sheds new light on the interactions betweenmeaning and grammar and on the structure and development of lexical and grammatical systems. The argument and its far-reaching consequences will be of wide interest to linguists, philosophers and others seeking to understand the workings of language.

Author : Robert C. Berwick
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 229 pages
File Size : 20,80 MB
Release : 2017-05-12
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0262533499

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Berwick and Chomsky draw on recent developments in linguistic theory to offer an evolutionary account of language and humans' remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire it. “A loosely connected collection of four essays that will fascinate anyone interested in the extraordinary phenomenon of language.” —New York Review of Books We are born crying, but those cries signal the first stirring of language. Within a year or so, infants master the sound system of their language; a few years after that, they are engaging in conversations. This remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire any human language—“the language faculty”—raises important biological questions about language, including how it has evolved. This book by two distinguished scholars—a computer scientist and a linguist—addresses the enduring question of the evolution of language. Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky explain that until recently the evolutionary question could not be properly posed, because we did not have a clear idea of how to define “language” and therefore what it was that had evolved. But since the Minimalist Program, developed by Chomsky and others, we know the key ingredients of language and can put together an account of the evolution of human language and what distinguishes us from all other animals. Berwick and Chomsky discuss the biolinguistic perspective on language, which views language as a particular object of the biological world; the computational efficiency of language as a system of thought and understanding; the tension between Darwin's idea of gradual change and our contemporary understanding about evolutionary change and language; and evidence from nonhuman animals, in particular vocal learning in songbirds.

Author : Robert Freidin
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 514 pages
File Size : 40,91 MB
Release : 2007-05-07
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 1134322100

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Generative Grammar presents a substantial contribution to the field of linguistics in drawing together for the first time the author's most significant work on the theory of generative grammar. The essays collected here display Freidin's role in moving the theory forward in terms of new proposals, and analyse the efforts to understand the evolution and history of the theory by careful investigation of how and why it has changed over the years.