Ewald Lang

This study is an attempt to explain coordinate conjoining as a rule-governed process of establishing specific semantic relations within and between sentences. Coordination is thus conceived of both as a basic device of linguistic complex formation and as a rather fundamental principle underlying the creation of the text. From the point of view of achieving coherence, coordinate conjoining is described in this monograph as an integrative process. Described are the conditions governing this process, the rules according to which take place, in short: the complex interaction of various linguistically identifiable features displayed by coordinate structures. Coordinate conjoining is regarded here as the result of the interplay of three factors which belong to distinct levels of semantic description: the meaning of the conjuncts, the relation between the meaning of the conjuncts and the meaning of the connectors. The step-by-step explication of the interaction of these levels in determining the semantic interpretation of coordinate structures forms the core of the present study.

The Semantics of Coordination

Cathrine Fabricius-Hansen

Claudia Maienborn

Fabricius-Hansen Catherine

This series consists of collected volumes and monographs about specific issues dealing with interfaces among the subcomponents of linguistic structure: phonology-morphology, phonology-syntax, syntax-semantics, syntax-morphology, and syntax-lexicon. Recent linguistic research has recognized that the subcomponents of grammar interact in non-trivial ways. What is currently under debate is the actual range of such interactions and their most appropriate representation in grammar, and this is precisely the focus of this series. Specifically, it provides a general overview of various topics by examining them through the interaction of grammatical components. The books function as a state-of- the-art report of research.

Modifying Adjuncts

Unlike the notion of "argument" that is central to modern linguistic theorizing, the phenomena that are commonly subsumed under the complementary notion "adjunct" so far have not attracted the attention they deserve. In this volume, leading experts in the field present current approaches to the grammar and pragmatics of adjuncts. The contributions scrutinize i.a. the argument-adjunct distinction, specify conditions of adjunct placement, discuss compositionality issues, and propose new analyses of event-related modification. They are meant to shed new light on an area of linguistic structure that is deemed to be notoriously overlooked.

Gisela Zifonun

Deutsch - typologisch

Manfred Bierwisch

The present volume is the result of a project which concentrated on a selected subset of linguistic knowledge with the aim of giving a systematic account of the various aspects of structure and process in this subset and the interpretation of these. The subset that for a number of reasons appeared appropriate to this undertaking centres around the dimensional adjectives of German. That the en terprise ultimately produced a less integrated and complete result than expected is due to several reasons. Some of these are of an intrinsic nature, ever present, and not particularly surprising. Some, however, are related to the character of the project itself and are worth commenting upon, as they reflect specific expe riences and difficulties which we encountered during several years of working on the project. We started from the assumption that the dimensional adjectives constitute a sufficiently rich, but nevertheless limited domain of grammatical and concep tual structure which is fairly well understood and explored in relevant aspects. Consequently we expected that summarizing, integrating, and extending the nu merous results that were available should quickly lead to a more complete picture of the interaction of the components involved. However, even had the premise of this assumption been correct, the conclusion turned out to be wrong fairly early in the project. On closer inspection, the investigations of the phenomena were much less complete, the facts agreed upon less systematic, and the proposed anal yses far less convincing than supposed initially.

Ewald Lang

Books

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