Experimental investigations on the syntax and usage of fragments

This book investigates the syntax and usage of fragments (Morgan 1973), apparently subsentential utterances like "A coffee, please!" which fulfill the same communicative function as the corresponding full sentence "I'd like to have a coffee, please!". Even though such uttera...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Lemke, Robin (auth)
Format: Electronic Book Chapter
Language:English
Published: Language Science Press 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:OAPEN Library: download the publication
OAPEN Library: description of the publication
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

MARC

LEADER 00000naaaa2200000uu 4500
001 oapen_2024_20_500_12657_52597
005 20220127
003 oapen
006 m o d
007 cr|mn|---annan
008 20220127s2021 xx |||||o ||| 0|eng d
020 |a /doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5596236 
020 |a 9783961103317 
040 |a oapen  |c oapen 
024 7 |a https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5596236  |c doi 
041 0 |a eng 
042 |a dc 
072 7 |a CF  |2 bicssc 
100 1 |a Lemke, Robin  |4 auth 
245 1 0 |a Experimental investigations on the syntax and usage of fragments 
260 |b Language Science Press  |c 2021 
336 |a text  |b txt  |2 rdacontent 
337 |a computer  |b c  |2 rdamedia 
338 |a online resource  |b cr  |2 rdacarrier 
506 0 |a Open Access  |2 star  |f Unrestricted online access 
520 |a This book investigates the syntax and usage of fragments (Morgan 1973), apparently subsentential utterances like "A coffee, please!" which fulfill the same communicative function as the corresponding full sentence "I'd like to have a coffee, please!". Even though such utterances are frequently used, they challenge the central role that has been attributed to the notion of sentence in linguistic theory, particularly from a semantic perspective. The first part of the book is dedicated to the syntactic analysis of fragments, which is investigated with experimental methods. Currently there are several competing theoretical analyses of fragments, which rely almost only on introspective data. The experiments presented in this book constitute a first systematic evaluation of some of their crucial predictions and, taken together, support an in situ ellipsis account of fragments, as has been suggested by Reich (2007). The second part of the book addresses the questions of why fragments are used at all, and under which circumstances they are preferred over complete sentences. Syntactic accounts impose licensing conditions on fragments, but they do not explain, why fragments are sometimes (dis)preferred provided that their usage is licensed. This book proposes an information-theoretic account of fragments, which predicts that the usage of fragments in constrained by a general tendency to distribute processing effort uniformly across the utterance. With respect to fragments, this leads to two predictions, which are empirically confirmed: Speakers tend towards omitting predictable words and they insert additional redundancy before unpredictable words. 
536 |a Knowledge Unlatched 
540 |a Creative Commons  |f https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode  |2 cc  |4 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode 
546 |a English 
650 7 |a linguistics  |2 bicssc 
653 |a Language Arts & Disciplines 
653 |a Linguistics 
856 4 0 |a www.oapen.org  |u https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/b6dd6244-3df3-437c-995d-5b7a16a32b09/external_content.pdf  |7 0  |z OAPEN Library: download the publication 
856 4 0 |a www.oapen.org  |u https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/52597  |7 0  |z OAPEN Library: description of the publication