1,721,149 research outputs found
The parallelisms of coordination
No full textThe aim of this paper is to analyze whether and under what conditions clausal coordination may be characterized in terms of some internal parallelism. It will first of all be shown that every coordination relation is characterized by an inherent functional parallelism, based on the conceptual and pragmatic symmetry of the linked states of affairs. Secondly, the semantic level will be taken into account and the main semantic types of coordination relation will be examined along the two dimensions of cooccurrence vs. non-cooccurrence. Finally, the syntactic parallelism of the attested coordinating constructions will be analyzed, and it will be shown that the variation attested in the cross-linguistic coding of specific subtypes of combination, contrast and alternative is motivated by the different semantic properties that characterize the relations expressed. In particular, based on the syntactic parallelism of the attested constructions, it will be argued that certain semantic types of coordination relations can be argued to be ‘more parallel’ than others
Coordination Relations in the Languages of Europe and Beyond
No full textThis work investigates the cross-linguistic coding of the three conceptual relations
of combination, contrast and alternative between functionally
equivalent states of affairs, that is, states of affairs characterized by
an autonomous cognitive profile (neither is presented in the perspective of the
other) and by the presence of some illocutionary force. These conceptual relations are usually discussed within the traditional approach
to coordination under the labels ‘conjunction’, ‘adversativity’ and
‘disjunction’ respectively, by virtue of their being often coded by means of
similar structurally symmetric constructions. In this work however, the notion
of coordination will not be defined in the traditional way, i.e. in structural
terms, but it will be identified on the basis of functional criteria
recensione di M. Haspelmath (ed.), Coordinating Constructions, Amsterdam, Philadeplhia: John Benjamins (2004)
No full textCoordinating Constructions è un interessante raccolta di articoli riguardanti la coordinazione, che ha avuto origine da un seminario tenutosi al Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology nel 2001. Questa recensione ne discute i meriti e ne riassume il contenuto
The irreality of alternatives: towards a typology of disjunction
No full textL'articolo presenta una tipologia delle costruzioni disgiuntive in un campione di 74 lingue e costituisce il primo studio sistematico delle proprietà morfosintattiche e semantiche dei connettivi disgiuntivi
The added value of the Connectivity Hypothesis for the map of parts of speech. Comment on ‘An implicational map of parts of speech’ by Kees Hengeveld and Eva van Lier (2010)
No full textIn questo articolo vengono commentati e discussi dei punti critici dell'analisi condotta in ‘An implicational map of parts of speech’, scritto da Kees Hengeveld e Eva van Lier (2010
Semantic Maps or Coding Maps? Towards a Unified Account of the Coding Degree, Coding Complexity, and Coding Distance of Coordination Relations
No full textThe aim of this paper is to explore the degree to which semantic maps and conceptual spaces may comprehensively describe cross-linguistic variation by discussing the types of phenomena that may be consistently represented in a unified account. By analyzing the cross-linguistic coding of coordination relations, it will be argued that the degree to which every conceptual situation is explicitly coded by means of dedicated markers and the cross-linguistic possibility that two conceptual situations are coded by means of the same construction (coding degree) are not the only dimensions of cross-linguistic variation that may be described on a semantic map. On the contrary, it is possible to build a unified coding map accounting also for the presence and morphophonological complexity of overt markers coding the conceptual situations at issue (coding complexity). The integration of this representation with the Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) technique will provide a representation for a further dimension of variation, namely the frequency with which two conceptual situations are coded by means of the same marker across languages (coding distance). It will be argued that the coding map and the MDS map are compatible and complementary and therefore highlight the possibility of building a unified representation of the coding degree, coding distance, and coding complexity of coordination relations
Senza e la connessione anticircostanziale: tra variazione tipologica e usi discorsivi
No full textThe purpose of this work is to describe the connective function of 'senza', which encodes the absence of a relation, instead of its presence. After examining the privative function of 'senza' at the prepositional level, we will analyze its connective function as anticircumstantial: the two clauses connected by 'senza' are indeed linked by virtue of their not being a circumstance one for the other. After exploring the linguistic diversity attested in the expression of this function and discussing the most important trends, we will place the Italian construction within a broader typo-logical picture. The corpus-based analysis of 'senza' in spoken Italian will then allow us to describe more thoroughly the anticircumstantial semantics of the connective, revealing the central role of speakers’ expectations. The use of connective 'senza' indeed activates a frame of habituality, which in turn generates an expectation of circumstantiality between the two linked clauses. It will be argued that the denial of this circumstantiality by means of 'senza' leads to deny an expectation present in the context, giving rise to oppositive and counterexpectative readings
Why use or?
Full text linkOr constructions introduce a set of alternatives into the discourse. But alternativity does not exhaust speakers' intended messages. Speakers use the profiled or alternatives as a starting point for expressing a variety of readings. Ever since (Grice, H. Paul. 1989. Studies in the way of words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) and (Horn. 1972. On the semantic properties of the logical operators in English. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Los Angeles dissertation), the standard approach has assumed that or has an inclusive lexical meaning and a predominantly exclusive use, thus focusing on two readings. While another, "free choice", reading has been added to the repertoire, accounting for the exclusive reading remains a goal all or theorists must meet. We here propose that both "inclusive" and "exclusive" interpretations, as currently defined, do not capture speakers' intended readings, which we equate with the relevance-theoretic explicature. Adopting a usage-based approach to language, we examined all the or occurrences in the Santa Barbara Corpus of spoken American English (1053 tokens), and found that speakers use or utterances for a far richer variety of readings than has been recognized. In line with Cognitive Linguistics, we propose that speakers' communicated intentions are better analyzed in terms of subjective construals, rather than the objective conditions obtaining when the or proposition is true. We argue that in two of these readings speakers are not necessarily committed to even one of the alternatives being the case. In the most frequent reading, the overt disjuncts only serve as pointers to a higher-level concept, and it is that concept that the speaker intends to refer to
Uno, l’altro e un altro ancora: ambiguità dell’alterità tra sincronia e diacronia
Full text linkIn italiano, altro mostra una dimensione di ambiguità poco esplorata, secondo cui si distingue un’interpretazione come ‘diverso’ da un’interpretazione come ‘ulteriore’. Il contributo si occupa di individuare gli elementi del significato che danno origine a questa ambiguità e le condizioni contestuali che conducono alla disambiguazione. La questione è affrontata per mezzo di un confronto tra la situazione del latino arcaico e classico e la situazione che per l’italiano emerge dall’analisi di dati del parlato. L’analisi evidenzia la presenza di un nucleo di tratti comuni a latino e italiano, che corrobora la pervasività della dimensione di ambiguità oggetto di studio e pone le basi per un’indagine diacronica. I dati del parlato permettono, inoltre, di studiare nel dettaglio i meccanismi inferenziali che mettono gli interlocutori in grado di gestire l’ambiguità e di risolverla nel contesto.
In Italian, altro ‘other’ shows a dimension of ambiguity that has been little explored, according to which the reading ‘different’ is distinguished from the reading ‘further’. This contribution singles out the meaning elements that produce this ambiguity and the contextual conditions that lead to disambiguation. The issue is approached by means of a comparison between the situation in Archaic and Classical Latin and the situation that emerges from data of spoken Italian. The analysis highlights the presence of a core of features shared by Latin and Italian, which corroborates the pervasive character of the investigated ambiguity and lays the groundwork for a diachronic investigation. Furthermore, the data from spoken Italian enable a detailed study of the inferential mechanisms that allow the speakers to manage ambiguity and resolve it in context
Exemplification and categorization: the case of Japanese
Full text linkThis research investigates the linguistic coding and functions of exemplifying constructions (i.e., linguistic constructions that signify exemplification), with a special focus on their role in constructing on-line contextually relevant categories at the cognitive level (cf. Barsalou 1983, 2010, Mauri 2016). More specifically, we argue that exemplifying constructions are used as overt strategies to make explicit the online construction of conceptual categories, allowing the hearer to identify relevant exemplars as starting points for inferential and abstraction processes
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