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The Meaning Text Theory (MTT) is a lexicon-centred and dependency-based theory for the description of language using a holistic model that incorporates semantics, syntax, morphology and lexis. This volume, prepared on the occasion of Igor Mel'čuk’s 70th birthday, offers a cross-section of the current advances in MTT and its applications. The first part of the book focuses on lexical phenomena that are still largely neglected in mainstream linguistics: sound symbolism as manifested by ideophones, and idiosyncratic lexical relations as manifested by lexical functions (LFs). In particular, LFs are addressed from different angles (including the introduction of new “standard” LFs, the argument structure and semantic decomposition of lexical relations captured by LFs, automatic recognition of LF-instances in corpora, and the use of LFs in terminology and natural language processing). The second part of the book deals with such prominent model-oriented issues as semantic paraphrasing in MTT, the role of phrase structure in MTT and syntactic analysis within MTT.
The book is dedicated to linguistic morphology and it contains a sketch of a complete morphological theory, centered around a discussion of fundamental concepts such as morph vs. morpheme, inflectional category, voice, grammatical case, agreement vs. government, suppletion, relationships between linguistic signs, etc.: the hottest issues in modern linguistics! The book introduces rigorous and clear concepts necessary to describe morphological phenomena of natural languages. Among other things, it offers logical calculi of possible grammemes in a given category. The presentation is developed in a typological perspective, so that linguistic data from a large variety of languages are described ...
Presents, in simple and clear terms, the way in which humans express their ideas by talking.
This book presents an innovative approach to linguistic semantics, starting from the idea that language is a mechanism for the expression of linguistic meanings as particular surface forms (texts). Semantics is that system of rules that ensures a transition from a Semantic Representation of the meaning of a family of synonymous sentences to the Deep-Syntactic Representation of a particular sentence. Framed in terms of Meaning-Text linguistics, this volume discusses the Deep-Syntactic Representation and the transition from Semantics to Deep-Syntax via Semantic paraphrasing (the equivalence amongst Semantic Representations), Deep-Syntactic paraphrasing (the equivalence amongst Deep-Syntactic Representations), and the passage between the two. A chapter is dedicated to the Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionary, a semantically based and co-occurrence-centered lexicon. Reflecting the author’s life-long dedication to semantics and syntax, this book is a paradigm-shifting contribution to language studies whose originality and daring will make it essential reading for linguists, anthropologists, semioticians, and computational linguists.
This work presents the first sustained examination of Dependency Syntax. In clear and stimulating analyses Mel'cuk promotes syntactic description in terms of dependency rather than in terms of more familiar phrase-structure. The notions of dependency relations and dependency structure are introduced and substantiated, and the advantages of dependency representation are demonstrated by applying it to a number of popular linguistic problems, e.g. grammatical subject and ergative construction. A wide array of linguistic data is used - the well-known (Dyirbal), the less known (Lezgian), and the more recent (Alutor). Several "exotic" cases of Russian are discussed to show how dependency can be used to solve difficult technical problems. The book is not only formal and rigorous, but also strongly theory-oriented and data-based. Special attention is paid to linguistic terminology, specifically to its logical consistency. The dependency formalism is presented within the framework of a new semantics-oriented general linguistic theory, Meaning-Text theory.
This book presents an innovative and novel approach to linguistic semantics, beginning with the idea that language can be described as a system for the expression of linguistic Meanings as particular surface forms or Texts. Semantics is specifically that system of rules that ensures a correct transition from a Semantic Representation of the Meaning of a family of synonymous sentences to the Deep Syntactic Representation of a particular sentence. Framed in the terms of Meaning-Text linguistics, this volume discusses in detail the problems of Semantic Representation including the semantic structure of utterances, the semantics of Causation in English, and communicative, or information, structure. Based on the author's life-long dedication to the study of the semantics and syntax of natural language, this book is a paradigm-shifting contribution to the language sciences whose originality and daring will make it essential reading for linguists, anthropologists, semioticians, and computational linguists.
Major problems of syntax are addressed from a completely new angle - the dependency perspective of the Meaning-Text approach: syntactic relations in various languages, the main clause elements (subjects and objects), the relative clause, active vs
Lexical Functions in Lexicography and Natural Language Processing is entirely devoted to the topic of Lexical Functions, which have been introduced in the framework of the Meaning-Text Theory (MTT) as a means for describing restricted lexical co-occurrence and derivational relations. It provides detailed background information, comparative studies of other known proposals for the representation of relations covered by Lexical Functions, as well as a selection of most important works done on and with Lexical Functions in lexicography and computational linguistics. This volume provides excellent course material while it also reports on the state-of-the-art in the field.
Over the last twenty years phraseology has become an important field of pure and applied research in Western European and North American linguistics. In this book the world's leading specialists examine the crucial role played by ready-made word-combinations in language acquisition and adult language use. After a wide-ranging introduction, the book presents full, critical accounts of the main theoretical approaches, analyses the corpus data and phrase typology, and finally considers the application of phraseology to associated disciplines including lexicography, language learning, stylistics, and computational analysis. This is the first comprehensive and up-to-date account of the subject to be published in English.
This is a book about the meanings of words and how they can combine to form larger meaningful units, as well as how they can fail to combine when the amalgamation of a predicate and argument would produce what the philosopher Gilbert Ryle called a 'category mistake'. It argues for a theory in which words get assigned both an intension and a type. The book develops a rich system of types and investigates its philosophical and formal implications, for example the abandonment of the classic Church analysis of types that has been used by linguists since Montague. The author integrates fascinating and puzzling observations about lexical meaning into a compositional semantic framework. Adjustments in types are a feature of the compositional process and account for various phenomena including coercion and copredication. This book will be of interest to semanticists, philosophers, logicians and computer scientists alike.