Non-Projecting Words: A Case Study of Swedish Particles Softcover Repri Edition Contributor(s): Toivonen, I. (Author) |
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ISBN: 1402015321 ISBN-13: 9781402015328 Publisher: Springer OUR PRICE: $104.49 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: September 2003 Annotation: Focusing primarily on Swedish, a Germanic language whose particles have not previously been studied extensively, Non-Projecting Words: A Case Study on Swedish Particles develops a theory of non-projecting words in which particles are morphologically independent words that do not project phrases. Particles have long constituted a puzzle for Germanic syntax, as they exhibit properties of both morphological and syntactic constructs. Although non-projecting words have appeared in the literature before, it has gone largely unnoticed that such structures violate the basic tenets of X-bar theory. This work identifies these violations and develops a formally explicit revision of X-bar theory that can accommodate the requisite "weak" projections. The resulting theory, stated in terms of Lexical-Functional Grammar, also yields a novel classification of clitics, and it sheds new light on a range of recent theoretical proposals, including economy, multi-word constructions, and the primitives of lexical semantics. At an abstract level, we see that the modular, parallel-projection architecture of LFG is essential to the description of a variety of otherwise recalcitrant facts about non-projecting words. |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Science - Foreign Language Study | Scandinavian Languages (other) - Language Arts & Disciplines | Linguistics - Syntax |
Dewey: 439.756 |
LCCN: 2003058214 |
Series: Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory |
Physical Information: 0.59" H x 6.16" W x 9.66" (0.90 lbs) 237 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Focusing primarily on Swedish, a Germanic language whose particles have not previously been studied extensively, Non-Projecting Words: A Case Study on Swedish Particles develops a theory of non-projecting words in which particles are morphologically independent words that do not project phrases. Particles have long constituted a puzzle for Germanic syntax, as they exhibit properties of both morphological and syntactic constructs. Although non-projecting words have appeared in the literature before, it has gone largely unnoticed that such structures violate the basic tenets of X-bar theory. This work identifies these violations and develops a formally explicit revision of X-bar theory that can accommodate the requisite "weak" projections. The resulting theory, stated in terms of Lexical-Functional Grammar, also yields a novel classification of clitics, and it sheds new light on a range of recent theoretical proposals, including economy, multi-word constructions, and the primitives of lexical semantics. At an abstract level, we see that the modular, parallel-projection architecture of LFG is essential to the description of a variety of otherwise recalcitrant facts about non-projecting words. |