Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics
About the Book Series
*This series is no longer actively adding new titles.*
On Economizing the Theory of A-Bar Dependencies
1st Edition
By Wei-Tien Dylan Tsai
June 23, 2015
First Published in 1999. This book is divided into two parts. The first part is essentially a response to a minimalist question: how perfect is language? There are so many factors involved in hiding the true nature of a language from casual observers. On the other hand, it is a lot easier to put a ...
Pragmatics of Conditional Marking: Implicature, Scalarity, and Exclusivity
1st Edition
By Scott Schwenter
June 23, 2015
First Published in 1999. This book investigates the meaning of conditional protasis markers like Spanish si 'if' and English if from a pragmatic perspective. A standard assumption in linguistics is that these words encode as part of their semantics notions like hypothetical, irrealis, or, from the ...
Definitions: Implications for Syntax, Semantics, and the Language of Thought
1st Edition
By Annabel Cormack
May 21, 2015
The answer to the question "How can we understand and use a definition?" provides new constraints on natural language and on the internal language in which meaning is mentally represented. Most syntax takes the sentence as the basic unit for well-formedness, but definitions force us to focus on ...
The Inflected Infinitive in Romance Languages
1st Edition
By Emily E. Scida
April 23, 2015
This book investigates two prominent issues with regard to the inflected infinitive-the syntactic distribution of the Portuguese inflected infinitive, and its origin and development from Early Romance. The syntactic analysis offered here differs from traditional descriptions of the inflected ...
The Syntax of Possession in Japanese
1st Edition
By Takae Tsujioka
April 23, 2015
First Published in 2002. This volume is part of the 'Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics' series. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the syntax of possession expressions in Japanese at the sentential level. It starts with a background of possessive syntax and illustrates how Japanese ...
Manifestations of Genericity
1st Edition
By Yael Greenberg
December 22, 2014
In this book, Yael Greenberg discusses and clarifies a number of controversial issues and phenomena in the generic literature, including the existence of "episodic genericity," existential presuppositions, and contextual restrictions of generics. ...
Existential Faithfullness: A Study of Reduplicative TETU, Feature Movement and Dissimulation
1st Edition
Edited
By Laurence Horn, Caro Struijke
September 11, 2014
First Published in 2003. Initially a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Maryland at College Park in August 2000, this book is a revised version with an expanded discussion on dissimilation, as well as looking at existential faithfulness relations in reduplicative TETU and feature ...
The Syntax of Negation and the Licensing of Negative Polarity Items in Hindi
1st Edition
By Rajesh Kumar
August 12, 2014
This books studies syntax of NPIs and their interaction with sentential negatives in Hindi. It outlines the clause structure of Hindi and locates the syntactic position of sentential negatives as well as constituent negatives within the structure. It is argued that sentential negative in Hindi ...
The Articulatory Basis of Locality in Phonology
1st Edition
By Adamantios I. Gafos
April 08, 2014
This work elucidates the nature of the notion of Locality in phonology, describing the minimal conditions under which sounds assimilate to one another. The central thesis is that a sound can assimilate to another sound only if gestural contiguity is established between these two sounds. The ...
The Phonetics and Phonology of Gutturals: A Case Study from Ju|'hoansi
1st Edition
By Amanda Miller-Ockhuizen
March 13, 2014
This book is the first detailed investigation and description of phonotactic sound patterns affecting Khoesan click consonant inventories. It also includes the first quantitative study of phonation types in Khoesan languages, and the first study of phonation types associated with pharyngeal ...
Toward Logical Form: An Exploration of the Role of Syntax in Semantics
1st Edition
By Lisa A. Reed
March 05, 2014
First Published in 1997. This book is devoted to an in-depth investigation of some of the properties of Logical Form (LF). The syntactic analyses argued for in this book are couched in terms of Chomsky’s Principles and Parameters approach prior to its most recent version known as “Minimalism” (...
True to Form: Rising and Falling Declaratives as Questions in English
1st Edition
By Christine Gunlogson
February 13, 2014
This book is concerned with the meaning and use of two kinds of declarative sentences:1) It's raining?2) It's raining.The difference between (1) and (2) is intonational: (1) has a final rise--indicated by the question mark--while (2) ends with a fall.Christine Gunlogson's central claim is that the ...