Searching the Invariant. Semiotactic Explorations into Meaning

This book is a follow-up on the Semiotactics Workshop, held on March 26th 2010 at Leiden University. Semiotactics, as developed by the Dutch linguist Carl Ebeling, is a linguistic theory which provides an analytical tool for the description and understanding of meaning in relation to syntax. This relation is discussed in the collection of articles in this book, written by eight different authors and covering a wide range of topics from various living languages, i.e.Dutch, English, Russian, Modern Japanese, Makassarese, Indonesian, and two extinct languages that are only known from written sources, i.e. Classical Mongolian and Old Javanese. In the introduction an overview is given of the most important features of the theory and its descriptive notation system. In the subsequent papers various linguistic structures are analyzed, using the Semiotactic framework. The subjects that are analyzed and discussed are: verbal ellipsis, partitive genitives, lexical stratification of adjectives, gerunds, passives and transitivity, verb phrase constructions, the morphology and syntax of number, and prepositional polysemy. This book is of interest for both theoretical and descriptive linguists studying the relation between syntax and semantics. Contents: Introduction: a bird's eye view on Semiotactics Hetty Geerdink-Verkoren and Aone van Engelenhoven Meaning without form? Verbal ellipsis within Semiotactics Egbert Fortuin Drinking water in Russian: Twelve ways to handle the partitive genitive Andries van Helden Lexical stratification? Wim Honselaar and Evelien Keizer Function and meaning of gerunds in Modern Japanese and Classical Mongolian Hetty Geerdink-Verkoren A semiotactic approach to Indonesian passives Aone van Engelenhoven A semiotactic description of Makassarese verb phrases Francesca Moro Prepositional polysemy in Old Javanese? A semiotactic analysis of ri Maaike van Naerssen Number in Indonesian Hein Steinhauer