THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS

The many facets of agreement Pavel Caha, Pavel Rudnev, Svetlana Toldova (eds.) Masaryk University, HSE University, HSE University Agreement is a phenomenon that spans multiple areas of linguistic theorizing. On the one hand, agreement has been regarded as purely syntactic/morphological phenomenon because it has no clear contribution to meaning. However, this clashes with the observation that agreement may also influence interpretation in subtle ways, allowing languages to express nuances in meaning that would otherwise get lost. The book addresses the phenomenon of agreement and its place in the grammar from multiple linguistic perspectives. The individual chapters in this book investigate the question what we can learn about the general process of agreement based on the detailed study of its syntax, semantics and morphology, including its production/processing by the human brain. ISBN 9783969391433 (Hardbound). LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 68. 184pp. 2023. Language as sound with meaning A dual model of language Jackie Nordström Goethe-Universität Frankfurt This book argues that the language faculty merely consists of the semantic and phonological components and linking between these and other systems. Thus, there is no third intermediate component, narrow syntax, it is argued. Syntax, as a phenomenon, is instead distributed among the semantic and phonological components, the semantic component containing lexical semantics, abstract universal categories, argument structures and information structures and the phonological component containing the concrete assembly of phonological morphemes into words and phonological words into phrases and sentences. Thus, language can be defined as "sound with meaning", as pointed out by Aristotle, "signifier and signified" (Saussure 1916), or more precisely the pair <phonology, semantics> (Chomsky 2004). The hypothesis is a continuation of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995), which is a rationalistic and evolutionary enterprise within the framework of Generative Grammar aiming to reduce the machinery assumed to be needed for the language faculty to operate. The hypothesis is also an elaboration of Culicover and Jackendoff’s (2005) theory of a minimal syntactic component and a semantic and a phonological component that also have combinatorial processes. Lastly, it builds further on Stroik and Putnam’s (2013) theory of a syntax that is located in an intersection between the CI- and SM-systems. ISBN 9783969391327 (Hardbound). LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 67. 213 pp. 2022. La operación PERSONA José Luis Iturrioz Leza (Coord.) Universidad de Guadalajara, México La operación persona va más allá de los actos de habla singulares y de secuencias de actos de habla. La actividad verbal o logogénesis es interactividad y como tal implica transitar de los aspectos personales a los interpersonales, de un modelo secuencial a un modelo circular de intercambios, de un paradigma de roles discursivos fijos a una operación que es esencialmente co-operación, de una secuencia de notas a los acordes polifónicos. El encabalgamiento de roles discursivos y roles participativos genera una relación circular entre los roles discursivos o enunciativos y los roles participativos, así como una relación dialéctica entre los dos principios fundamentales, constitutivos de todas operación lingüística, el semántico y el pragmático. El concepto de persona es inseparable del concepto de modalidad. Si la investigación de la persona en castelano nos llevó a la modalidad, al revés la investigación de la modalidad en wixárika desembocó en el dominio de la persona. Una visión dinámica de la modalidad es imprescindible para entender la co-construcción de textos o conversaciones. En el caso parrticular de los textos académicos que llamamos tesis, se muestra que la certeza se construye de manera colaborativa, dinámica y gradual. ISBN 9783969391280 (Hardbound). LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 66. 240pp. 2022.