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Causative Alternation
In linguistics, causative alternation is a phenomenon in which certain verbs that express a change of state (or a change of degree) can be used transitively or intransitively.Levin, Beth. "Causative Alternation". ''English Verb Classes and Alternations''. Chicago: University Press of Chicago, 1993. 26–27. Print.Schäfer, Florian. 2009. "The Causative Alternation". Language and Linguistics Compass 3.2: 641. Print. A causatively alternating verb, called a labile or ergative verb, such as "open", has both a transitive meaning ("I opened the door") and an intransitive meaning ("The door opened"). When causatively alternating verbs are used transitively they are called causatives since, in the transitive use of the verb, the subject is ''causing'' the action denoted by the intransitive version. When causatively alternating verbs are used intransitively, they are referred to as anticausatives or inchoatives because the intransitive variant describes a situation in which the ''the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguistics is concerned with both the cognitive and social aspects of language. It is considered a scientific field as well as an academic discipline; it has been classified as a social science, natural science, cognitive science,Thagard, PaulCognitive Science, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). or part of the humanities. Traditional areas of linguistic analysis correspond to phenomena found in human linguistic systems, such as syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences); semantics (meaning); morphology (structure of words); phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages); phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language); and pragmatics (how social con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Burzio's Generalization
In generative linguistics, Burzio's generalization is the observation that a verb can assign a theta role to its subject (grammar), subject position if and only if it can assign an accusative case to its grammatical object, object. Accordingly, if a verb does not assign a theta role to its subject, then it does not assign accusative case to its object. The generalization is named after Italian linguist Luigi Burzio, based on work published in the 1980s, but the seeds of the idea are found in earlier scholarship. The generalization can be logically written in the following equation: θ ↔ A Where: θ = Subject Theta Role A = Accusative Case Burzio’s generalization has two major consequences: # Burzio's generalization recognizes two classes of intransitive verbs. With unaccusative intransitive verbs (e.g., ''fall''), the single argument bears the theme theta role, and the subject is understood ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ergative Verb
In general linguistics, a labile verb (or ergative verb) is a verb that undergoes causative alternation; it can be used both transitively and intransitively, with the requirement that the direct object of its transitive use corresponds to the subject of its intransitive use, as in "I ring the bell" and "The bell rings." Labile verbs are a prominent feature of English, but they also occur in many other languages. Terminology The terminology in general linguistics is not stable yet. Labile verbs can also be called "S=O- ambitransitive" (following R.M.W. Dixon's usage), or "ergative", following Lyons's influential textbook from 1968. However, the term "ergative verb" has also been used for unaccusative verbs,Keyser, Samuel Jay & Thomas Roeper. 1984. On the middle and ergative constructions in English. Linguistic Inquiry 15(3). 381–416. and in most other contexts, it is used for ergative constructions. In English Most English verbs can be used intransitively, but ordinarily thi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Affix
In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes. Affixation is the linguistic process that speakers use to form different words by adding morphemes at the beginning (prefixation), the middle (infixation) or the end (suffixation) of words. Positional categories of affixes ''Prefix'' and ''suffix'' may be subsumed under the term ''adfix'', in contrast to ''infix.'' When marking text for interlinear glossing, as in the third column in the chart above, simple affixes such as prefixes and suffixes are separated from the stem with hyphens. Affixes which disrupt the stem, or which themselves are discontinuous, are often marked off with angle brackets. Reduplication is often shown with a tilde. Affixes which c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a word, but depends phonologically on another word or phrase. In this sense, it is syntactically independent but phonologically dependent—always attached to a host.SIL International (2003). SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms: What is a clitic? "This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003." Retrieved from . A clitic is pronounced like an affix, but plays a syntactic role at the phrase level. In other words, clitics have the ''form'' of affixes, but the distribution of function words. For example, the contracted forms of the auxiliary verbs in ''I'm'' and ''we've'' are clitics. Clitics can belong to any grammatical category, although they are commonly pronouns, determiners ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reflexive Pronoun
A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that refers to another noun or pronoun (its antecedent) within the same sentence. In the English language specifically, a reflexive pronoun will end in ''-self'' or ''-selves'', and refer to a previously named noun or pronoun (''myself'', ''yourself'', ''ourselves'', ''themselves'', etc.). English intensive pronouns, used for emphasis, take the same form. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent (see binding). In a general sense, it is a noun phrase that obligatorily gets its meaning from another noun phrase in the sentence. Different languages have different binding domains for reflexive pronouns, according to their structure. Origins and usage In Indo-European languages, the reflexive pronoun has its origins in Proto-Indo-European. In some languages, some distinction exists between normal object and reflexive pronouns, mainly in the third person: whether one says "I like me" or "I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Regularization (linguistics)
Regularization is a linguistic phenomenon observed in language acquisition, language development, and language change typified by the replacement of irregular forms in morphology or syntax by regular ones. Examples are "gooses" instead of "geese" in child speech and replacement of the Middle English plural form for "cow", "kine", with "cows". Regularization is a common process in natural languages; regularized forms can replace loanword forms (such as with "cows" and "kine") or coexist with them (such as with "formulae" and "formulas" or " hepatitides" and " hepatitises"). Erroneous regularization is also called ''overregularization''. In overregularization the regular ways of modifying or connecting words are mistakenly applied to words that require irregular modifications or connections. It is a normal effect observed in the language of beginner and intermediate language-learners, whether native-speaker children or foreign-speaker adults. Because most natural languages have some ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gillian Ramchand
Gillian Ramchand is a linguist and Professor of Linguistics at the University of Tromsø, Norway. Biography Ramchand grew up in Jamaica and Trinidad and received her PhD in linguistics from Stanford University in 1994, with a dissertation entitled, "Aspect and Argument Structure in Modern Scottish Gaelic." She subsequently spent 10 years working at the University of Oxford as a lecturer in general linguistics before moving to Tromsø in 2004, where she became full professor two years later in 2006. Her widely cited research focuses on the syntax-semantics interface, especially argument structurebr>She has worked on a variety of languages, including Scottish Gaelic, Bengali, and English. Honors and distinctions Since 2017 Ramchand has been President of Generative Linguistics in the Old World GLOW is an international organization to further the study of generative grammar, founded in 1977 and based in the Netherlands. Its activities include its annual spring linguistics confere ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
(the Stick) CHANGE
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of the archaic pron ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guglielmo Cinque
Guglielmo Cinque (born 1948 in La Spezia) is an Italian linguistics, linguist and professor of linguistics at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice. He is one of the leading figures in modern minimalist program, minimalist syntax. Cinque studied literature and linguistics at the University of Venice, at the University of Padua, and at the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1981 he has been a professor at the Ca' Foscari University. He is an honorary member of the Linguistic Society of America. Cinque works in the fields of generative grammar and language typology. Together with Luigi Rizzi (linguist), Luigi Rizzi he belongs to the founding figures of cartographic syntax, a research area devoted to the fine structure of languages. Selected bibliography * Cinque, G. (1999): Adverbs and Functional Heads. A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Oxford University Press. * Cinque, G. (1990): Types of Ā-dependencies. MIT Press. External linksPersonal webpage {{DEFAULTSORT:Cinque, Gu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transitive Verb
A transitive verb is a verb that accepts one or more objects, for example, 'cleaned' in ''Donald cleaned the window''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not have objects, for example, 'panicked' in ''Donald panicked''. Transitivity is traditionally thought of as a global property of a clause, by which activity is transferred from an agent to a patient. Transitive verbs can be classified by the number of objects they require. Verbs that accept only two arguments, a subject and a single direct object, are monotransitive. Verbs that accept two objects, a direct object and an indirect object, are ''ditransitive'', or less commonly ''bitransitive''. An example of a ditransitive verb in English is the verb ''to give'', which may feature a subject, an indirect object, and a direct object: ''John gave Mary the book''. Verbs that take three objects are ''tritransitive''. In English a tritransitive verb features an indirect object, a direct object, and a prepositional ph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Causative Alternation Flow Chart (revised)
In linguistics, a causative (abbreviated ) is a valency-increasing operationPayne, Thomas E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 173–186. that indicates that a subject either causes someone or something else to do or be something or causes a change in state of a non-volitional event. Normally, it brings in a new argument (the causer), A, into a transitive clause, with the original subject S becoming the object O. All languages have ways to express causation but differ in the means. Most, if not all, languages have specific or ''lexical'' causative forms (such as English ''rise'' → ''raise'', ''lie'' → ''lay'', ''sit'' → ''set''). Some languages also have morphological devices (such as inflection) that change verbs into their causative forms or change adjectives into verbs of ''becoming''. Other languages employ periphrasis, with control verbs, idiomatic expressions or auxiliary verbs. There tends to be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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