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C-command
In generative grammar and related frameworks, a node in a parse tree c-commands its sister node and all of its sister's descendants. In these frameworks, c-command plays a central role in defining and constraining operations such as syntactic movement, Binding (linguistics), binding, and scope (formal semantics), scope. Tanya Reinhart introduced c-command in 1976 as a key component of her theory of Anaphora (linguistics), anaphora. The term is short for "Constituent (linguistics), constituent command". Definition and examples Standard Definition Common terms to represent the relationships between nodes are below (refer to the tree on the right): *M is a parent or mother to A and B. *A and B are children or daughters of M. *A and B are sisters or siblings. *M is a grandparent or grandmother to C and D. The standard definition of c-command is based partly on the relationship of dominance: ''Node N1 dominates node N2 if N1 is above N2 in the tree and one can trace a path from N1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Binding Theory
In linguistics, binding is the phenomenon in which anaphoric elements such as pronouns are grammatically associated with their antecedents. For instance in the English sentence "Mary saw herself", the anaphor "herself" is bound by its antecedent "Mary". Binding can be licensed or blocked in certain contexts or syntactic configurations, e.g. the pronoun "her" cannot be bound by "Mary" in the English sentence "Mary saw her". While all languages have binding, restrictions on it vary even among closely related languages. Binding has been a major area of research in syntax and semantics since the 1970s and, as the name implies, is a core component of government and binding theory. Some basic examples and questions The following sentences illustrate some basic facts of binding. The words that bear the index i should be construed as referring to the same person or thing. ::a. Fredi is impressed with himselfi. – Indicated reading obligatory ::b. *Fredi is impressed with himi. – In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antisymmetry
In linguistics, antisymmetry, is a theory of syntax described in Richard S. Kayne's 1994 book ''The Antisymmetry of Syntax''. Building upon X-bar theory, it proposes a universal, fundamental word order for phrases (Branching (linguistics), branching) across languages: specifier-head-complement. This means a phrase typically starts with an introductory element (Specifier (linguistics), specifier), followed by the core (Head (linguistics), head, often a verb or noun), and then additional information (Complement (linguistics), complement). The theory argues that any sentence structure that deviates from this order results from rearrangements (Syntactic movement, syntactic movements) of this underlying structure. For instance, a sentence like "Eat the cake quickly" might be analyzed as a rearrangement of a more basic specifier-head-complement structure "Quickly eat the cake". While Kayne proposes specifier-head-complement as the base order, some linguists have suggested alternative bas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
M-command
In generative grammar and related frameworks, m-command is a syntactic relation between two nodes in a syntactic tree. A node X m-commands a node Y if the maximal projection of X dominates Y, but neither X nor Y dominates the other. In government and binding theory, m-command was used to define the central syntactic relation of ''government''. However, it has been largely replaced by c-command in current research. M-command is a broader relation than c-command, since a node m-commands every node that it c-commands, as well as the specifier of the phrase In grammar, a phrasecalled expression in some contextsis a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English language, English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adject ... that it heads. Like c-command, m-command is defined over constituency-based trees and plays no role in frameworks which adopt a different notion of syntactic structure. Referen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scope (formal Semantics)
In formal semantics (linguistics), formal semantics, the scope of a semantic operator is the semantic object to which it applies. For instance, in the sentence "''Paulina doesn't drink beer but she does drink wine''," the proposition that Paulina drinks beer occurs within the scope of negation, but the proposition that Paulina drinks wine does not. Scope can be thought of as the semantic order of operations. One of the major concerns of research in formal semantics is the relationship between operators' syntax, syntactic positions and their semantic scope. This relationship is not transparent, since the scope of an operator need not directly correspond to its Deep structure and surface structure, surface position and a single surface form can be semantic ambiguity, semantically ambiguous between different scope construals. Some theories of scope posit a level of syntactic structure called Logical form (linguistics), logical form, in which an item's syntactic position corresponds t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tanya Reinhart
Tanya Reinhart (; 1943 – 17 March 2007) was an Israeli linguist and political activist. A frequent writer on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, she contributed columns to the Israeli centrist newspaper '' Yedioth Ahronoth'' and longer articles to the American left-wing magazines '' CounterPunch'' and '' ZNetwork'' and the global open publishing network Indymedia. Biography Reinhart was born in Haifa in 1943 and was raised by her mother. Victoria Brittain"Tanya Reinhart" ''The Guardian'', 21 March 2007. She studied philosophy and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem as an undergraduate, where she later received an M.A. in comparative literature and philosophy. In 1976 she obtained a Ph.D. in linguistics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her thesis supervisor was Noam Chomsky. She was active in the Communist Youth League, following in the steps of her mother. Reinhart was a professor of linguistics and literary theory at Tel-Aviv University. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lexical Functional Grammar
Lexical functional grammar (LFG) is a constraint-based grammar framework in theoretical linguistics. It posits several parallel levels of syntactic structure, including a phrase structure grammar representation of word order and constituency, and a representation of grammatical functions such as subject and object, similar to dependency grammar. The development of the theory was initiated by Joan Bresnan and Ronald Kaplan in the 1970s, in reaction to the theory of transformational grammar which was current in the late 1970s. It mainly focuses on syntax, including its relation with morphology and semantics. There has been little LFG work on phonology (although ideas from optimality theory have recently been popular in LFG research). Some recent work combines LFG with Distributed Morphology in Lexical-Realizational Functional Grammar.Ash Asudeh, Paul B. Melchin & Daniel Siddiqi (2021). ''Constraints all the way down: DM in a representational model of grammar''. In ''WCCFL 39 Proc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Word Order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how languages employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic sub-domains are also of interest. The primary word orders that are of interest are * the ''constituent order'' of a clause, namely the relative order of subject, object, and verb; * the order of modifiers (adjectives, numerals, demonstratives, possessives, and adjuncts) in a noun phrase; * the order of adverbials. Some languages use relatively fixed word order, often relying on the order of constituents to convey grammatical information. Other languages—often those that convey grammatical information through inflection—allow more flexible word order, which can be used to encode pragmatic information, such as topicalisation or focus. However, even languages with flexible word order ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Syntactic Function
In linguistics, grammatical relations (also called grammatical functions, grammatical roles, or syntactic functions) are functional relationships between constituents in a clause. The standard examples of grammatical functions from traditional grammar are subject, direct object, and indirect object. In recent times, the syntactic functions (more generally referred to as grammatical relations), typified by the traditional categories of subject and object, have assumed an important role in linguistic theorizing, within a variety of approaches ranging from generative grammar to functional and cognitive theories. Many modern theories of grammar are likely to acknowledge numerous further types of grammatical relations (e.g. complement, specifier, predicative, etc.). The role of grammatical relations in theories of grammar is greatest in dependency grammars, which tend to posit dozens of distinct grammatical relations. Every head-dependent dependency bears a grammatical function. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
Head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG) is a highly lexicalized, constraint-based grammar developed by Carl Pollard and Ivan Sag. It is a type of phrase structure grammar, as opposed to a dependency grammar, and it is the immediate successor to generalized phrase structure grammar. HPSG draws from other fields such as computer science (type system, data type theory and knowledge representation) and uses Ferdinand de Saussure's notion of the sign (linguistics), sign. It uses a uniform formalism and is organized in a modular way which makes it attractive for natural language processing. An HPSG includes principles and grammar rules and lexicon entries which are normally not considered to belong to a grammar. The formalism is based on lexicalism. This means that the lexicon is more than just a list of entries; it is in itself richly structured. Individual entries are marked with types. Types form a hierarchy. Early versions of the grammar were very lexicalized with few grammatica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Generative Grammar
Generative grammar is a research tradition in linguistics that aims to explain the cognitive basis of language by formulating and testing explicit models of humans' subconscious grammatical knowledge. Generative linguists, or generativists (), tend to share certain working assumptions such as the competence–performance distinction and the notion that some domain-specific aspects of grammar are partly innate in humans. These assumptions are rejected in non-generative approaches such as usage-based models of language. Generative linguistics includes work in core areas such as syntax, semantics, phonology, psycholinguistics, and language acquisition, with additional extensions to topics including biolinguistics and music cognition. Generative grammar began in the late 1950s with the work of Noam Chomsky, having roots in earlier approaches such as structural linguistics. The earliest version of Chomsky's model was called Transformational grammar, with subsequent itera ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
