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This edited monograph provides a compelling analysis of the interplay between neuroscience and aesthetics. The book broaches a wide spectrum of topics including, but not limited to, mathematics and creator algorithms, neurosciences of artistic creativity, paintings and dynamical systems as well as computational research for architecture. The international authorship is genuinely interdisciplinary and the target audience primarily comprises readers interested in transdisciplinary research between neuroscience and the broad field of aesthetics.
In this book, leading linguists explore the empirical scope of syntactic theory, by concentrating on a set of phenomena for which both syntactic and nonsyntactic analyses appear plausible. The volume is organized into four thematic sections: architectures; syntax and information structure; syntax and the lexicon; and lexical items at the interfaces
A groundbreaking, comprehensive formal theory of grammatical person that recasts its empirical foundations and re-envisions its theoretical core. Impossible Persons, Daniel Harbour's comprehensive and groundbreaking formal theory of grammatical person, upends understanding of a universal and ubiquitous grammatical category. Breaking with much past work, Harbour establishes three core theses, one empirical, one theoretical, and one metatheoretical. Together, these redefine the data subsumed under the rubric of “person,” simplify the feature inventory that a theory of person must posit, and restructure the metatheory in which feature theory as a whole resides. At its heart, Impossible Pers...
This book investigates the morphosyntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties of language, and the interactions between them, from the perspective of Optimality Theory. It integrates optimization processes into the formal and functional study of grammar, interpreting optimization as the result of conflicting, violable ranked constraints. Unlike previous work on the topic, this book also takes into account the question of directionality of grammar. A model of grammar in which optimization processes interact bidirectionally allows both language generation-the process of selecting the optimal form of a given meaning-and language interpretation-the process of optimal interpretation of a given f...
This book introduces formal grammar theories that play a role in current linguistic the- orizing (Phrase Structure Grammar, Transformational Grammar/Government & Binding, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Gram- mar, Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Construction Grammar, Tree Adjoining Grammar). The key assumptions are explained and it is shown how the respective the- ory treats arguments and adjuncts, the active/passive alternation, local reorderings, verb placement, and fronting of constituents over long distances. The analyses are explained with German as the object language. The second part of the book compares these approaches with respect ...
This book focuses on the semantic phenomenon of evaluativity and its consequences across constructions. Evaluativity has traditionally been associated exclusively with the positive construction, a term for sentences with a gradable adjective but with no overt degree morphology. John is tall is evaluative because it entails that John is tall relative to a contextually valued standard. John is taller than Sue and John is as tall as Sue are not evaluative because both could be used even if John and Sue were short. Previous accounts of evaluativity have assumed that it is not part of the inherent meaning of adjectives, but is contributed by a null morpheme. Jessica Rett argues against this analysis, proposing that no null morpheme is required. Instead, evaluativity is explained on the basis of assumptions that speakers and hearers make about the relationship between the simplicity of a situation and the simplicity of the language used to describe that situation; the analysis is couched in recent approaches to Gricean conversational implicature.
The first in-depth investigation of gapping and negation shows accepted accounts do not explain differences across languages, and available readings of the negation. The author questions basic assumptions in the analysis of gapping and presents a new syntactic analysis with implications for the interpretation of scope, and the theory of ellipsis.
Available online or as a five-volume print set, The Blackwell Companion to Phonology is a major reference work drawing together 124 new contributions from leading international scholars in the field. It will be indispensable to students and researchers in the field for years to come. Key Features: Full explorations of all the most important ideas and key developments in the field Documents major insights into human language gathered by phonologists in past decades; highlights interdisciplinary connections, such as the social and computational sciences; and examines statistical and experimental techniques Offers an overview of theoretical positions and ongoing debates within phonology at the ...
This book addresses recent developments in the study of quantifier phrases, nominalizations, and the linking definite determiner. It reflects the intense reconsideration of the nature of quantification, and of fundamental aspects of the syntax and semantics of quantifier phrases. Leading international scholars explore novel and challenging ideas at the interfaces between syntax and morphology, syntax and semantics, morphology and the lexicon. They examine core issues in the field, such as kind reference, number marking, partitivity, context dependence and the way presuppositions are built into the meanings of quantifiers. They also consider how in this context definiteness and the definite d...
In this book, Ian Roberts argues that the essential insight of the principles-and-parameters approach to variation can be maintained - albeit in a somewhat different guise - in the context of the minimalist programme. The book represents a significant new contribution to the formal study of cross-linguistic morphosyntactic variation.