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Echo Questions
An echo question is a question that seeks to confirm or clarify another speaker's utterance (the ''stimulus''), by repeating it back in some form. For example: A: I'm moving to Greenland. B: You're moving ''where''?? In English, echo questions have a distinctive prosody, featuring a rising intonation (linguistics), intonation. A speaker may use an echo question to seek confirmation because they find the stimulus surprising, or simply because they did not hear it clearly. Echo questions have unusual syntactic properties (including a lack of wh-movement), which have made them a challenge to account for in linguistic theories of questions. Function Echo questions are primarily used to seek a confirmation or repetition of some portion of the stimulus, either because the listener finds what they thought they heard surprising or was unable to hear the speaker clearly. The ''Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' identifies another use, where the listener seeks a reformulation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intonation (linguistics)
In linguistics, intonation is variation in pitch used to indicate the speaker's attitudes and emotions, to highlight or focus an expression, to signal the illocutionary act performed by a sentence, or to regulate the flow of discourse. For example, the English question "Does Maria speak Spanish or French?" is interpreted as a yes-or-no question when it is uttered with a single rising intonation contour, but is interpreted as an alternative question when uttered with a rising contour on "Spanish" and a falling contour on "French". Although intonation is primarily a matter of pitch variation, its effects almost always work hand-in-hand with other prosodic features. Intonation is distinct from tone, the phenomenon where pitch is used to distinguish words (as in Mandarin) or to mark grammatical features (as in Kinyarwanda). Transcription Most transcription conventions have been devised for describing one particular accent or language, and the specific conventions therefore need t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Preposition
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various semantic roles (''of'', ''for''). A preposition or postposition typically combines with a noun phrase, this being called its complement, or sometimes object. A preposition comes before its complement; a postposition comes after its complement. English generally has prepositions rather than postpositions – words such as ''in'', ''under'' and ''of'' precede their objects, such as ''in England'', ''under the table'', ''of Jane'' – although there are a few exceptions including "ago" and "notwithstanding", as in "three days ago" and "financial limitations notwithstanding". Some languages that use a different word order have postpositions instead, or have both types. The phrase formed by a preposition or postposition together with its comp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Speech
''American Speech'' is a quarterly academic journal of the American Dialect Society, established in 1925 and currently published by Duke University Press. It focuses primarily on the English language used in the Western Hemisphere, but also publishes contributions on other varieties of English, outside influences on the language, and linguistic theory. The current editor is Thomas Purnell (University of Wisconsin–Madison). The ''Chronicle of Higher Education's Lingua Franca'' considers it a "consistently reliable peer-reviewed source of information" and states that "though it is scholarly and research based, there’s a surprising amount of information that is intelligible to anyone, even without special training in linguistics." History The journal was established in 1925 by Kemp Malone, Louise Pound, and Arthur G. Kennedy "to present information about English in America in a form appealing to general readers", and was inspired by H. L. Mencken. According to Mencken: ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Cambridge Grammar Of The English Language
''The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' (''CGEL'') is a descriptive grammar of the English language. Its primary authors are Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum. Huddleston was the only author to work on every chapter. It was published by Cambridge University Press in 2002 and has been cited more than 7,000 times. History Huddleston published a very critical review of ''A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language'' in 1988. In his review, he wrote,there are some respects in which it is seriously flawed and disappointing. A number of quite basic categories and concepts do not seem to have been thought through with sufficient care; this results in a remarkable amount of unclarity and inconsistency in the analysis, and in the organization of the grammar.The University of Queensland provided a special projects grant to launch the project in 1989, when Huddleston began work on CGEL. From 1989 to 1995, "workshops were held regularly in Brisbane and Sydney to develo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Echo Answer
In linguistics, an echo answer or echo response is a way of answering a polar question without using words for yes and no. The verb used in the question is simply echoed in the answer, negated if the answer has a negative truth-value. For example: * "Did you go to the cinema?" (or "Didn't you go to the cinema?") * "I did not." or "I didn't go." Finnish The Finnish language is one language that employs echo answers in response to yes-no questions. It does not answer them with either adverbs or interjections. So the answer to "Tuletteko kaupungista?" ("Are you coming from town?") is the verb form itself, "Tulemme" ("We are coming."). Negatively phrased questions are answered similarly. Negative answers use the negative verb ''en'' in coordination with the infinitive. The negative answer to "Tunnetteko herra Lehdon?" ("Do you know Mr Lehto?") is "En tunne" ("I don't know.") or simply "En" ("I don't."). Celtic languages The Celtic languages also primarily employ echo answers. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Particles
Japanese particles, or , are suffixes or short words in Japanese grammar that immediately follow the modified noun, verb, adjective, or sentence. Their grammatical range can indicate various meanings and functions, such as speaker affect and assertiveness. Orthography and diction Japanese particles are written in hiragana in modern Japanese, though some of them also have kanji forms ( or for ''te'' ; for ''ni'' ; or for ''o'' ; and for ''wa'' ). Particles follow the same rules of phonetic transcription as all Japanese words, with the exception of (written ''ha'', pronounced ''wa'' as a particle), (written ''he'', pronounced ''e'') and (written using a hiragana character with no other use in modern Japanese, originally assigned as ''wo'', now usually pronounced ''o'', though some speakers render it as ''wo''). These exceptions are a relic of historical kana usage. Types of particles There are eight types of particles, depending on what function they serve. : : ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Illocutionary Act
The concept of illocutionary acts was introduced into linguistics by the philosopher J. L. Austin in his investigation of the various aspects of speech acts. In his framework, ''locution'' is what was said and meant, ''illocution'' is what was done, and ''perlocution'' is what happened as a result. When somebody says "Is there any salt?" at the dinner table, the ''illocutionary act'' is a request: "please give me some salt" even though the ''locutionary act'' (the literal sentence) was to ask a question about the presence of salt. The ''perlocutionary act'' (the actual effect), might be to cause somebody to pass the salt. Overview The notion of an illocutionary act is closely connected with Austin's doctrine of the so-called 'performative' and 'constative utterances': an utterance is "performative" ''if, and only if'' it is issued in the course of the "doing of an action" (1975, 5), by which, again, Austin means the performance of an illocutionary act (Austin 1975, 6 n2, 133). Acco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rodney Huddleston
Rodney D. Huddleston (born 4 April 1937) is a British linguist and grammarian specializing in the study and description of English. Huddleston is the primary author of ''The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' (), which presents a comprehensive descriptive grammar of English. After graduating from Cambridge in 1960 with a First Class Honors degree in Modern and Medieval Languages, Huddleston earned his PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Edinburgh in 1963 under the supervision of Michael Halliday. He held lectureships at the University of Edinburgh, University College London, and the University of Reading. He moved to The University of Queensland in 1969, where he remained for the rest of his career. He was the recipient of the first round of 'Excellence in Teaching' awards at the University of Queensland in 1988. In 1990 he was awarded a Personal Chair. He is currently an Emeritus Professor at the University of Queensland, where he taught until 1997. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pro-forms
In linguistics, a pro-form is a type of function word or expression that stands in for (expresses the same content as) another word, phrase, clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable from the context. They are used either to avoid repetitive expressions or in quantification (limiting the variables of a proposition). Pro-forms are divided into several categories, according to which part of speech they substitute: * A pronoun substitutes a noun or a noun phrase, with or without a determiner: ''it'', ''this''. * A pro-adjective substitutes an adjective or a phrase that functions as an adjective: ''so'' as in "It is less ''so'' than we had expected." * A pro-adverb substitutes an adverb or a phrase that functions as an adverb: ''how'' or ''this way''. * A pro-verb substitutes a verb or a verb phrase: ''do'', as in: "I will go to the party if you do". * A prop-word: ''one'', as in "the blue one" * A pro-sentence substitutes an entire sentence or subsentence: ''Yes'', or '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Focus (linguistics)
In linguistics, focus (abbreviated ) is a grammatical category that conveys which part of the sentence contributes new, non-derivable, or contrastive information. In the English sentence "Mary only insulted BILL", focus is expressed prosodically by a pitch accent on "Bill" which identifies him as the only person Mary insulted. By contrast, in the sentence "Mary only INSULTED Bill", the verb "insult" is focused and thus expresses that Mary performed no other actions towards Bill. Focus is a cross-linguistic phenomenon and a major topic in linguistics. Research on focus spans numerous subfields including phonetics, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics. Functional approaches Information structure has been described at length by a number of linguists as a grammatical phenomenon. Lexicogrammatical structures that code prominence, or focus, of some information over other information has a particularly significant history dating back to the 19th century. Recent attempts to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Accusative Case
The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘them’. The spelling of those words will change depending on how they are used in a sentence. For example, the pronoun ''they'', as the subject of a sentence, is in the nominative case ("They wrote a book"); but if the pronoun is instead the object, it is in the accusative case and ''they'' becomes ''them'' ("The book was written by them"). The accusative case is used in many languages for the objects of (some or all) prepositions. It is usually combined with the nominative case (for example in Latin). The English term, "accusative", derives from the Latin , which, in turn, is a translation of the Greek . The word may also mean "causative", and this may have been the Greeks' intention in this name, but the sense of the Roman translation has ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wh-movement
In linguistics, wh-movement (also known as wh-fronting, wh-extraction, or wh-raising) is the formation of syntactic dependencies involving interrogative words. An example in English is the dependency formed between ''what'' and the object position of ''doing'' in "What are you doing?" Interrogative forms are sometimes known within English linguistics as '' wh-words'', such as ''what, when, where, who'', and ''why'', but also include other interrogative words, such as ''how''. This dependency has been used as a diagnostic tool in syntactic studies as it can be observed to interact with other grammatical constraints. In languages with wh- movement, sentences or clauses with a wh-word show a non-canonical word order that places the wh-word (or phrase containing the wh-word) at or near the front of the sentence or clause ("''Who'' are you thinking about?") instead of the canonical position later in the sentence ("I am thinking about ''you''"). Leaving the wh-word in its canonical positi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
