Prominence and Locality in Grammar: The Syntax and Semantics of Wh-Questions and Reflexives (Routledge Studies in Chinese Linguistics)

Jianhua Hu

ISBN 10: 1032401451 / ISBN 13: 9781032401454

Published by Routledge 29 A, 2022

About this Item

Prominence and Locality in Grammar: The Syntax and Semantics of Wh-Questions and Reflexives (Routledge Studies in Chinese Linguistics) This book is in very good condition and will be shipped within 24 hours of ordering. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. See all our books here, order more than 1 book and get discounted shipping. .

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Prominence and Locality in Grammar: The Syntax and Semantics of Wh-Questions and Reflexives (Routledge Studies in Chinese Linguistics)
• Publisher: Routledge 29 A
• Publication Date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1032401451
• ISBN 13: 9781032401454
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

This book challenges the current consensus on the analysis of wh-questions and reflexives from the perspective of the syntax-semantics interface. An integrated approach incorporating analyses of the interaction between different levels of linguistic knowledge is proposed. It argues that the derivation and interpretation of wh-questions and reflexives are not purely syntactic in nature but are regulated by principles operating at the syntax-semantics interface. Two general principles underlying our knowledge of language and cognition are proposed in this work. One is the Principle of Locality, and the other is the Principle of Prominence. It shows that although wh-quantification and reflexivization belong to two different domains of study in generative grammar, their derivation and interpretation are basically constrained by the complex interaction between prominence and locality in grammar.

The first part of the book discusses how wh-questions are formed and interpreted in Chinese and English and shows that the formation and interpretation of wh-questions are constrained by the interaction between prominence and locality. It is shown that in wh-interpretation prominence is used to define the set generators so as to licence other wh-words in the pair-list reading in multiple wh-questions. It also discusses wh-island effects in English and Chinese, and unlike previous claims made in the literature (cf. Huang 1982a, 1982b), it argues that the so-called wh-island effects in English are also observed in Chinese.

The second part of the book investigates the role that prominence and locality play in reflexive binding. It is shown that in reflexive binding, the binding domain of the reflexive is defined by prominence. It proposes a unified account for both the noncontrastive compound reflexive and the bare reflexive in Chinese and shows that they are constrained by the same reflexive binding condition proposed in this work, though they employ different definitions of the most prominent NPs to determine their binding domains.

Prominence and Locality in Grammar: The Syntax and Semantics of Wh-Quesitons and Reflexives is an important theoretical contribution to the syntax-semantics interface studies and can serve as a valuable text for graduate students and scholars in the field of Chinese, linguistics, and cognitive science.

About the Author

Jianhua Hu is Professor of Linguistics at the Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China.