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19 results

  • 11 - The RRG Approach to Information Structure

  • from Part Two - Topics in RRG: Simple Sentences
  • Edited by Delia Bentley, University of Manchester, Ricardo Mairal Usón, Universidad National de Educación a Distancia, Madrid, Wataru Nakamura, Tohoku University, Japan, Robert D. Van Valin, Jr, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Role and Reference Grammar
    Published online:
    08 June 2023
    Print publication:
    22 June 2023, pp 456-487

  • Summary

    This chapter introduces the theoretical constructs adopted by Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) in the treatment of information structure and addresses the question of the place of information structure in the architecture of grammar. It is claimed that RRG offers an approach to information structure which is flexible enough to capture the cross-linguistic variation in the role played by discourse in the semantics–syntax and syntax–semantics linking, while also being sufficiently constrained to make important generalizations on the expression of pragmatic states and pragmatic relations, and their interface with prosody, morphology and sentence structure.

The Cambridge Handbook of Role and Reference Grammar
  • Edited by Delia Bentley, Ricardo Mairal Usón, Wataru Nakamura, Robert D. Van Valin, Jr
  • Published online:
    08 June 2023
    Print publication:
    22 June 2023
  • Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) is a theory of language in which linguistic structures are accounted for in terms of the interplay of discourse, semantics and syntax. With contributions from a team of leading scholars, this Handbook provides a field-defining overview of RRG. Assuming no prior knowledge, it introduces the framework step-by-step, and includes a pedagogical guide for instructors. It features in-depth discussions of syntax, morphology, and lexical semantics, including treatments of lexical and grammatical categories, the syntax of simple clauses and complex sentences, and how the linking of syntax with semantics and discourse works in each of these domains. It illustrates RRG's contribution to the study of language acquisition, language change and processing, computational linguistics, and neurolinguistics, and also contains five grammatical sketches which show how RRG analyses work in practice. Comprehensive yet accessible, it is essential reading for anyone who is interested in how grammar interfaces with meaning.

  • Internally caused change as change by inner predisposition: Comparative evidence from Romance

  • DELIA BENTLEY
  • Journal:
    Journal of Linguistics / Volume 60 / Issue 3 / August 2024
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    30 May 2023, pp. 483-525
    Print publication:
    August 2024
    • Article
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  • This article investigates the morphosyntax of verbs of internally caused scalar change and the main facets of their meaning. Availing ourselves of primary evidence from Italian, French, and Spanish corpora, we argue that the verbs under scrutiny divide into three subclasses whose common denominator is that they encode ‘change by inner predisposition’ or change that is possible because of inherent propensities of specific entities. We understand inner predisposition as a feature of the content of the verbs investigated, which has relevance to the choice of the undergoer, alongside the cause of two of the subclasses. Apart from this feature verbs of change by inner predisposition are indistinguishable from other verbs of change. We argue against an agentive or generalized causative analysis, and we advance a proposal for the lexical semantics of representatives of each of the three subclasses and for the alternations in which they participate.

  • Ne-cliticisation and split intransitivity

  • DELIA BENTLEY
  • Journal:
    Journal of Linguistics / Volume 40 / Issue 2 / July 2004
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    01 July 2004, pp. 219-262
    Print publication:
    July 2004

  • I consider a number of constructions with ne-cliticisation, which at first sight would seem to be problematic vis-à-vis the hypothesis that the Italian partitive clitic ne is a diagnostic of unaccusativity. Structures with ne-cliticisation can receive an existential interpretation in sentence focus. I argue that, in the putatively non-canonical domains, ne realises the argument of a stage-level existential predicate (see Carlson 1977; Diesing 1992; Pustejovsky 1995), which is not spelled out in syntax, but only figures in the semantic representation of the sentence. My findings highlight the role of focus structure in unaccusativity phenomena (see Van Valin 1993a; Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1995; Lambrecht 2000, among others), and support the analysis of split intransitivity in terms of non-deterministic correspondence between discourse, semantics and syntax.