Search results for "phrase"
showing 10 items of 185 documents
Evaluative meaning
2012
Linguistic evaluation has become an important area of inquiry in recent years. In the traditions of, e.g., lexical semantics, phraseology, corpus linguistics, and interactional linguistics, a large inventory of linguistic means have been identified by which speakers can express evaluative meanings. However, the class of German sentential idioms, e.g., Das kannst du dir in die Haare schmieren (lit. ‘You can smear that into your hair’, fig. ‘That is useless’), has not gained much attention. This paper explores how the evaluative meaning of German sentential idioms is constructed syntactically, semantically, and pragmatically. In particular, it is investigated how the meaning of these idioms i…
L'auxiliation en Italien
1997
This article is based on the results of a study dealing with the various classes of Italian verbs (modals, aspectuels, verbs of movement, progressives, avere da + infinitive) that attract the clitic pronouns from their base position. Their "climbing" is accounted for by excluding any sentence boundary in the domain of the clitic movement. Since this is exactly the traditional structure of the verb-auxiliary relationship, the following hypothesis is made: the verb phrases of a single sentence comprise, in addition to the main verb, an indefinite number of complementary verbs (the ones listed above plus the temporal/aspectual and passive auxiliaries). As a result, their distribution becomes u…
Contrasting the form and use of reformulation markers
2007
This article deals with the form and use of reformulation markers in research papers written in English, Spanish and Catalan. Considering the form and frequency of the markers, English papers tend to prefer simple fixed markers and include fewer reformulators than Spanish and Catalan. On the contrary, formal Catalan and Spanish papers include more markers, some of which are complex and allow for some structural variability. As for use, reformulation markers establish dynamic relationships between portions of discourse which can be identified in our corpus with expansion, reduction and permutation. The analysis of the corpus shows that English authors usually reformulate to add more informa…
En torno a la voz "quartonadas"
2017
La historia de la voz quartonadas ofrece un interesante recorrido por la historia del léxico español. Su carácter de voz prestada, junto con su adscripción temática al ámbito de la indumentaria, permiten certificar la persistencia de ciertos entornos socioculturales, entendidos como centros generadores de léxico específico. Tomando como base el verbo del catalán medieval quartonar(-se) (‘henderse’, ‘rajarse’), el castellano adoptó el adjetivo quartonado –da, aunque tuvo una vida muy efímera, pues tan solo se registra, en calidad de forma aislada, en la obra literaria de don Íñigo López de Mendoza, quien precisamente estuvo estrechamente vinculado a la Corona de Aragón. The history of the wo…
La Grant Crónica de Espanya: reflexiones en torno a la incidencia de los procesos de lexicalización en su edición
2020
AbstractThis article aims to offer some methodological reflections in relation to the historical study of phraseology in Juan Fernández de Heredia’s work. Specifically, we intend to reflect on the incidence of lexicalization processes within the framework of the edition project of the Grant Crónica de Espanya by means of the study of the phraseological unit por mal querencia de / por malquerencia de. This is intended to highlight the need to preserve the original state of the text in its graphic aspect and, in the case at hand, at the point referred to the union and separation of words.
Einführung von Diskursreferenten im Bilderbuch
2011
By analyzing 20 picture books that include both a textual narrative and pictures, three types of referent introduction were identified: introduction of referents by use of an indefinite noun phrase; introduction of referents by use of a definite noun phrase or a proper name; introduction of referents by use of a deictic construction. This shows that children are confronted with different strategies of referent introduction from early on. It is argued that the results of studies on the acquisition of the system of reference introduction could possibly be interpreted differently if one takes into account how the experience with literary texts influences children’s own narratives.
Positional influences on information packaging: Insights from topological fields in German
2012
Abstract We present three event-related potential studies that investigated the contribution of givenness and position-induced topicality (what a sentence is about) to information processing. The studies compared two types of referential expressions (given and inferred noun phrases (NPs)) in distinct sentential positions. The data revealed position-specific effects, reflected by an interaction of topicality and givenness: inferred NPs registered a more pronounced Late Positivity than given NPs in the canonical sentence-medial position, but not sentence-initially (Experiment 1). Additionally, there was a stable effect of givenness across positions, reflected by an N400 for inferred over give…
Exploring the nature of the ‘subject’-preference: Evidence from the online comprehension of simple sentences in Mandarin Chinese
2009
In two visual ERP studies, we investigated whether Mandarin Chinese shows a subject-preference in spite of the controversial status of grammatical relations in this language. We compared ERP responses at the position of the verb and the second NP in object-verb-subject (OVS) and subject-verb-object (SVO) structures. While SVO is the basic word order in Chinese and OV with subject-drop is possible, OVS is strongly dispreferred. At the position of the verb, which disambiguated towards an object or a subject reading of NP1, Experiment 1 revealed an N400 for both subject-initial control conditions in comparison with the critical object-initial condition. Experiment 2 showed that this result was…
The same (as what?)
2018
Aquest article adopta un enfocament radicalment contextualista en relació amb la referència de descripcions definides que contenen l?expressió anglesa the same, tant sense complement com amb complement en forma de nucli nominal i/o de sintagma comparatiu del tipus as X. S?argumenta que les descripcions definides que contenen the same no fan referència a una entitat única, encara que el resultat de la prova de comprensió efectuada sembla donar suport a la idea que aquestes descripcions poden afavorir la interpretació que aquests sintagmes definits es refereixen directament a una entitat específica.
<i>Cuesta arriba e por llano</i>: The development of “postpositions” in Spanish and Catalan
2005
In this article we analyze the formation of Spanish and Catalan phrases with an intransitive locative adverb preceded by a bare noun. These constructions can have a meaning of path and direction (i. e. Sp. rio abajo, Cat. riu avall ‘downriver’) as well as body orientation (i. e. Sp. cara abajo, Cat. cara avall ‘face down’). A detailed analysis of the available historical documentation suggests the hypothesis that these constructions derive from more complex expressions headed by a preposition that lost its phonological properties, without losing its semantic and syntactic features. The presence of a phonologically null preposition is licensed both by the meaning of the incorporated noun and…