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Minimizer
In linguistics, a minimizer is a word or phrase that denotes a very small quantity which is used to reinforce negation. For example, "red cent" in the sentence "I'm not paying him a red cent" (meaning, "I'm not paying him any money") is a minimizer. Minimizers are usually analysed as a subclass of negative polarity items, and are often limited to negative contexts. For example, statements like "I paid him a red cent" or "I care a wit" would be considered unacceptable. In English and other languages, minimizers constitute the largest and most productive class of negative polarity items. History The term ''minimizer'' was coined by linguist Dwight Bolinger in his 1972 book ''Degree Words'', where he described them as "partially stereotyped equivalents of ''any''". The phenomenon had previously been remarked upon by other scholars as far back as August Friedrich Pott in 1859. Quirk et al. use the term in their 1985 ''A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language'', classifying ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Negative Polarity Item
In linguistics, a polarity item is a lexical item that is associated with affirmation and negation, affirmation or negation. An affirmation is a positive polarity item, abbreviated PPI or AFF. A negation is a negative polarity item, abbreviated NPI or NEG. The linguistic environment in which a polarity item appears is a licensing context. In the simplest case, an affirmative statement provides a licensing context for a PPI, while negation provides a licensing context for an NPI. However, there are many complications, and not all polarity items of a particular type have the same licensing contexts. In English As examples of polarity items, consider the English grammar, English lexical items ''somewhat'' and ''at all'', as used in the following sentences: # I liked the film somewhat. # I didn't like the film at all. # *I liked the film at all. # *I didn't like the film somewhat. As can be seen, ''somewhat'' is licensed by the affirmative environment of sentence (1), but it is forbid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polarity Items
In linguistics, a polarity item is a lexical item that is associated with affirmation or negation. An affirmation is a positive polarity item, abbreviated PPI or AFF. A negation is a negative polarity item, abbreviated NPI or NEG. The linguistic environment in which a polarity item appears is a licensing context. In the simplest case, an affirmative statement provides a licensing context for a PPI, while negation provides a licensing context for an NPI. However, there are many complications, and not all polarity items of a particular type have the same licensing contexts. In English As examples of polarity items, consider the English lexical items ''somewhat'' and ''at all'', as used in the following sentences: # I liked the film somewhat. # I didn't like the film at all. # *I liked the film at all. # *I didn't like the film somewhat. As can be seen, ''somewhat'' is licensed by the affirmative environment of sentence (1), but it is forbidden (anti-licensed) by the negative enviro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Affirmation And Negation
In linguistics and grammar, affirmation (abbreviated ) and negation () are ways in which grammar encodes positive and negative polarity into verb phrases, clauses, or other utterances. An affirmative (positive) form is used to express the validity or truth of a basic assertion, while a negative form expresses its falsity. For example, the affirmative sentence "Jane is here" asserts that it is true that Jane is currently located near the speaker. Conversely, the negative sentence "Jane is not here" asserts that it is not true that Jane is currently located near the speaker. The grammatical category associated with affirmatives and negatives is called polarity. This means that a clause, sentence, verb phrase, etc. may be said to have either affirmative or negative polarity (its polarity may be either affirmative or negative). Affirmative is typically the unmarked polarity, whereas a negative statement is marked in some way. Negative polarity can be indicated by negating words or p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Double Negative
A double negative is a construction occurring when two forms of grammatical negation are used in the same sentence. Multiple negation is the more general term referring to the occurrence of more than one negative in a clause. In some languages, double negatives cancel one another and produce an affirmative; in other languages, doubled negatives intensify the negation. Languages where multiple negatives affirm each other are said to have negative concord or emphatic negation. Portuguese, Persian, French, Russian, Greek, Spanish, Old English, Italian, Afrikaans, Hebrew are examples of negative-concord languages. This is also true of many vernacular dialects of modern English. Chinese, Latin, German, Dutch, Japanese, Swedish and modern Standard English are examples of languages that do not have negative concord. Typologically, it occurs in a minority of languages. Languages without negative concord typically have negative polarity items that are used in place of additional nega ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Determiner
A determiner, also called determinative (abbreviated ), is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determiner may indicate whether the noun is referring to a definite or indefinite element of a class, to a closer or more distant element, to an element belonging to a specified person or thing, to a particular number or quantity, etc. Common kinds of determiners include definite and indefinite articles (''the'', ''a''), demonstratives (''this'', ''that''), possessive determiners (''my,'' ''their''), cardinal numerals (''one'', ''two''), quantifiers (''many'', ''both''), distributive determiners (''each'', ''every''), and interrogative determiners (''which'', ''what''). Description Most determiners have been traditionally classed either as adjectives or pronouns, and this still occurs in traditional grammars: for example, demonstrative and possessi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Articles
The articles in English are the definite article ''the'' and the indefinite articles '' a'' and ''an''. The definite article is used when the speaker believes that the listener knows the identity of the noun's referent (because it is obvious, because it is common knowledge, or because it was mentioned in the same sentence or an earlier sentence). The indefinite article is used when the speaker believes that the listener does not have to be told the identity of the referent. No article is used in some noun phrases. English grammar requires that, in most cases, a singular, countable noun phrase start with a determiner. For example, ''I have a box'' is OK, but *''I have box'' is not. The most common determiners are the articles ''the'' and ''a''(''n''), which specify the presence or absence of definiteness of the noun. Other possible determiners include words like ''this'', ''my'', ''each'' and ''many''. There are also cases where no determiner is required, as in the sentence ''J ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Article (grammar)
An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the" and "a(n)" are articles, which combine with nouns to form noun phrases. Articles typically specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun phrase, but in many languages, they carry additional grammatical information such as gender, number, and case. Articles are part of a broader category called determiners, which also include demonstratives, possessive determiners, and quantifiers. In linguistic interlinear glossing, articles are abbreviated as . Types Definite article A definite article is an article that marks a definite noun phrase. Definite articles such as English ''the'' are used to refer to a particular member of a group. It may be something that the speaker has already mentioned or it may be otherwise something uniquely specified. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intensifier
In linguistics, an intensifier (abbreviated ) is a lexical category (but ''not'' a traditional part of speech) for a modifier that makes no contribution to the propositional meaning of a clause but serves to enhance and give additional emotional context to the word it modifies. Intensifiers are grammatical expletives, specifically ''expletive attributives'' (or, equivalently, ''attributive expletives'' or ''attributive-only expletives''; they also qualify as ''expressive attributives''), because they function as semantically vacuous filler. Characteristically, English draws intensifiers from a class of words called ''degree modifiers'', words that quantify the idea they modify. More specifically, they derive from a group of words called ''adverbs of degree'', also known as ''degree adverbs''. When used grammatically as intensifiers, these words cease to be degree adverbs, because they no longer quantify the idea they modify; instead, they emphasize it emotionally. By contrast, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Postal
Paul Martin Postal (born November 10, 1936 in Weehawken, New Jersey) is an American linguist. Biography Postal received his PhD from Yale University in 1963 and taught at MIT until 1965. That year, he moved to the City University of New York. In 1967 he was appointed to a research position at IBM and he remained on their research staff until 1994. An important figure in the early development of generative grammar, he became a proponent of the generative semantics movement along with George Lakoff, James D. McCawley, and Haj Ross. In the 1970s, with David M. Perlmutter, he developed Relational Grammar. Later, with David E. Johnson, he developed Arc Pair Grammar. These non-transformational theories of grammar have had an indirect but major impact on modern syntactic analysis. Since his involvement with generative semantics, he has been a vocal critic of Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Profanity
Profanity, also known as cursing, cussing, swearing, bad language, foul language, obscenities, expletives or vulgarism, is a socially offensive use of language. Accordingly, profanity is language use that is sometimes deemed impolite, rude, indecent, or culturally offensive; in certain religions, it constitutes sin. It can show a debasement of someone or something, or be considered an expression of strong feeling towards something. Some words may also be used as intensifiers. In its older, more literal sense, "profanity" refers to a lack of respect for things that are held to be sacred, which implies anything inspiring or deserving of reverence, as well as behaviour showing similar disrespect or causing religious offense. Etymology The term ''profane'' originates from classical Latin , literally "before (outside) the temple", meaning 'outside' and meaning 'temple' or 'sanctuary'. The term ''profane'' carried the meaning of either "desecrating what is holy" or "with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grammaticalization
In historical linguistics, grammaticalization (also known as grammatization or grammaticization) is a process of language change by which words representing objects and actions (i.e. nouns and verbs) become grammatical markers (such as affixes or prepositions). Thus it creates new function words from content words, rather than deriving them from existing bound, inflectional constructions. For example, the Old English verb 'to want', 'to wish' has become the Modern English auxiliary verb ''will'', which expresses intention or simply futurity. Some concepts are often grammaticalized, while others, such as evidentiality, are not so much. For an understanding of this process, a distinction needs to be made between lexical items or content words, which carry specific lexical meaning, and grammatical items or function words, which serve mainly to express grammatical relationships between the different words in an utterance. Grammaticalization has been defined as "the change whereby l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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