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Clefting
A cleft sentence is a complex sentence (one having a main clause and a dependent clause) that has a meaning that could be expressed by a simple sentence. Clefts typically put a particular Constituent (linguistics), constituent into Focus (linguistics), focus. In spoken language, this focusing is often accompanied by a special Intonation (linguistics), intonation. In English language, English, a cleft sentence can be constructed as follows: :''it'' + conjugated form of ''to be'' + ''X'' + subordinate clause where ''it'' is a cleft pronoun and ''X'' is the cleft constituent, usually a noun phrase (although it can also be a prepositional phrase, and in some cases an adjectival or adverbial phrase). The focus is on ''X'', or else on the subordinate clause or some element of it. For example: *''It's Joey (whom) we're looking for.'' *''It's money that I love.'' *''It was from John that she heard the news.'' Furthermore, one might also describe a cleft sentence as inverted. That is to s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Constituent (linguistics)
In syntactic analysis, a constituent is a word or a group of words that function as a single unit within a hierarchical structure. The constituent structure of sentences is identified using ''tests for constituents''. These tests apply to a portion of a sentence, and the results provide evidence about the constituent structure of the sentence. Many constituents are phrases. A phrase is a sequence of one or more words (in some theories two or more) built around a head lexical item and working as a unit within a sentence. A word sequence is shown to be a phrase/constituent if it exhibits one or more of the behaviors discussed below. The analysis of constituent structure is associated mainly with phrase structure grammars, although dependency grammars also allow sentence structure to be broken down into constituent parts. Tests for constituents in English Tests for constituents are diagnostics used to identify sentence structure. There are numerous tests for constituents that are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Complex Sentence
In grammar, sentence and clause structure, commonly known as sentence composition, is the classification of sentences based on the number and kind of clauses in their syntactic structure. Such division is an element of traditional grammar. Typology of clauses In standard English, sentences are composed of five ''clause'' patterns: # Subject + Verb (intransitive)''Example:'' She runs. # Subject + Verb (transitive) + Object''Example:'' She runs the meeting. # Subject + Verb (linking) + Subject Complement (adjective, noun, pronoun)''Example:'' Abdul is happy. Jeanne is a person. I am she. # Subject + Verb (transitive) + Indirect Object + Direct Object''Example:'' She made me a pie.This clause pattern is a derivative of S+V+O, transforming the object of a preposition into an indirect object of the verb, as the example sentence in transformational grammar is actually "She made a pie for me". # Subject + Verb (transitive) + Object + Object Complement''Example:'' They made him happy.They ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Pro-form
In linguistics, a pro-form is a type of function word or expression (linguistics) that stands in for (expresses the same content as) another word, phrase, clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable from the context. They are used either to avoid repetitive expressions or in quantification (limiting the variables of a proposition). Pro-forms are divided into several categories, according to which part of speech they substitute: * A pronoun substitutes a noun or a noun phrase, with or without a determiner: ''it'', ''this''. * A prop-word: ''one'', as in "the blue one" * A pro-adjective substitutes an adjective or a phrase that functions as an adjective: ''so'' as in "It is less ''so'' than we had expected." * A pro-adverb substitutes an adverb or a phrase that functions as an adverb: ''how'' or ''this way''. * A pro-verb substitutes a verb or a verb phrase: ''do'', as in: "I will go to the party if you do". * A pro-sentence substitutes an entire sentence or subsentenc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Andrea Moro
Andrea Carlo Moro (; born 24 July 1962) is an Italian linguist, neuroscientist and novelist. He is currently full professor of general linguistics at the Institute for Advanced Study IUSS Pavia and the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, and founder and former director of NeTS and of the Department of Cognitive Behavioural and Social Sciences. He studied at the University of Pavia for his laurea, then he got a Ph.D. at the University of Padua; he has been visiting a scientist several times at MIT, first with a Fulbright grant, then at Harvard. He was a professor at the University of Bologna and the Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele. He is a member of the Academia Europaea and the Pontifical Academy of Fine Arts and Letters of the Virtuosi al Pantheon. Academic biography Moro's main fields of research are syntax and neurolinguistics. He has pursued at least two distinct lines of research: the theory of syntax and the neurological correlates of syntax with the brain. F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Deictics
In linguistics, deixis () is the use of words or phrases to refer to a particular time (e.g. ''then''), place (e.g. ''here''), or person (e.g. ''you'') relative to the context of the utterance. Deixis exists in all known natural languagesLyons, John (1977) "Deixis, space and time" in ''Semantics'', Vol. 2, pp. 636–724. Cambridge University Press. and is closely related to anaphora, with a sometimes unclear distinction between the two. In linguistic anthropology, deixis is seen as the same as, or a subclass of, indexicality. The term's origin is . To this, Chrysippus () added the specialized meaning ''point of reference'', which is the sense in which the term is used in contemporary linguistics. Types There are three main types of deictic words, as described by Charles J. Fillmore: personal, spatial, and temporal.Fillmore, Charles J (1971) ''Lectures on Deixis''. CSLI Publications (reprinted 1997). In some languages, these may overlap, such as spatial and personal deixis i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Phrase Structure Rules
Phrase structure rules are a type of rewrite rule used to describe a given language's syntax and are closely associated with the early stages of transformational grammar, proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1957. They are used to break down a natural language sentence into its constituent parts, also known as syntactic category, syntactic categories, including both lexical categories (part of speech, parts of speech) and phrase, phrasal categories. A grammar that uses phrase structure rules is a type of phrase structure grammar. Phrase structure rules as they are commonly employed operate according to the constituent (linguistics), constituency relation, and a grammar that employs phrase structure rules is therefore a phrase structure grammar, ''constituency grammar''; as such, it stands in contrast to dependency grammar, ''dependency grammars'', which are based on the government (linguistics), dependency relation. Definition and examples Phrase structure rules are usually of the following ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Relative Clause
A relative clause is a clause that modifies a noun or noun phrase and uses some grammatical device to indicate that one of the arguments in the relative clause refers to the noun or noun phrase. For example, in the sentence ''I met a man who wasn't too sure of himself'', the Dependent clause, subordinate clause ''who wasn't too sure of himself'' is a relative clause since it modifies the noun ''man'' and uses the pronoun ''who'' to indicate that the same "MAN" is referred to in the subordinate clause (in this case as its subject (grammar), subject). In many languages, relative clauses are introduced by a special class of pronouns called ''relative pronouns'', such as ''who'' in the example just given. In other languages, relative clauses may be marked in different ways: they may be introduced by a special class of conjunctions called ''relativizers'', the main verb of the relative clause may appear in a special morphological variant, or a relative clause may be indicated by word o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Dummy Pronoun
A dummy pronoun, also known as an expletive pronoun, is a deictic pronoun that fulfills a syntactical requirement without providing a contextually explicit meaning of its referent. As such, it is an example of exophora. A dummy pronoun is used when a particular verb argument (or preposition) is nonexistent, but when a reference to the argument (a pronoun) is nevertheless syntactically required. This is commonly the case if the verb is an impersonal verb, but it could also be that the argument is unknown, irrelevant, already understood, or otherwise taboo (as in naming taboo). For example, in the phrase " is obvious that the violence will continue", the term 'it' is a dummy pronoun, not referring to any agent. Unlike a regular pronoun of English, it cannot be replaced by any noun phrase. The term 'dummy pronoun' refers to the function of a word in a particular sentence, not a property of individual words. For example, 'it' in the example from the previous paragraph is a d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Word Order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how languages employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic sub-domains are also of interest. The primary word orders that are of interest are * the ''constituent order'' of a clause, namely the relative order of subject, object, and verb; * the order of modifiers (adjectives, numerals, demonstratives, possessives, and adjuncts) in a noun phrase; * the order of adverbials. Some languages use relatively fixed word order, often relying on the order of constituents to convey grammatical information. Other languages—often those that convey grammatical information through inflection—allow more flexible word order, which can be used to encode pragmatic information, such as topicalisation or focus. However, even languages with flexible word order ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Topicalization
Topicalization is a mechanism of syntax that establishes an expression as the sentence or clause topic (linguistics), topic by having it appear at the front of the sentence or clause (as opposed to in a canonical position later in the sentence). This involves a phrasal movement of determiners, prepositions, and verbs to sentence-initial position. Topicalization often results in a discontinuity (linguistics), discontinuity and is thus one of a number of established discontinuity types, the other three being wh-movement, ''wh''-fronting, Scrambling (linguistics), scrambling, and extraposition. Topicalization is also used as a Constituent (linguistics), constituency test; an expression that can be topicalized is deemed a constituent. The topicalization of Argument (linguistics), arguments in English is rare, whereas circumstantial Adjunct (grammar), adjuncts are often topicalized. Most languages allow topicalization, and in some languages, topicalization occurs much more frequently an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Quantifier (linguistics)
In formal semantics, a generalized quantifier (GQ) is an expression that denotes a set of sets. This is the standard semantics assigned to quantified noun phrases. For example, the generalized quantifier ''every boy'' denotes the set of sets of which every boy is a member: \ This treatment of quantifiers has been essential in achieving a compositional semantics for sentences containing quantifiers. Type theory A version of type theory is often used to make the semantics of different kinds of expressions explicit. The standard construction defines the set of types recursively as follows: #''e'' and ''t'' are types. #If ''a'' and ''b'' are both types, then so is \langle a,b\rangle #Nothing is a type, except what can be constructed on the basis of lines 1 and 2 above. Given this definition, we have the simple types ''e'' and ''t'', but also a countable infinity of complex types, some of which include: \langle e,t\rangle;\qquad \langle t,t\rangle;\qquad \langle\langle e,t\rangl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (Interlinear gloss, glossed ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the part of speech, parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not consider them to form a single class, in view of the variety of functions they perform cross-linguistically. An example of a pronoun is "you", which can be either singular or plural. Sub-types include personal pronoun, personal and possessive pronouns, reflexive pronoun, reflexive and reciprocal pronoun, reciprocal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, relative pronoun, relative and interrogative pronouns, and indefinite pronouns. The use of pronouns often involves anaphora (linguistics), anaphora, where the meaning of the pronoun is dependent on an antecedent (grammar), antecedent. For example, in the sentence ''That poor man looks as if he needs a new coat'', the meaning of the pronoun ''he'' is dependent on its ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |