Syntactic theories typically distinguish 2 types of word or phrase accompanying verbs: arguments are accompaniments that can be present if the verb permits them to be present (‘licences’ them). Some arguments of some verbs are mandatory but others are optional. adjuncts are optional accompaniments that can be present without needing permission from that particular verb.…… Continue reading Arguments and adjuncts
Tag: Syntax
Language in Project Hail Mary
Last week, I saw the new Ryan Gosling film Project Hail Mary. It highlights some interesting questions about how a human can learn to communicate with an extraterrestrial. The film is based on a 2021 sci-fi novel of the same name by Andy Weir. Ryan Gosling’s character Ryland Grace is a scientist on a…… Continue reading Language in Project Hail Mary
‘Syntactic doubling’ of Italian consonants
Single Italian consonants become pronounced as double (long) consonants (‘geminates’) if they follow: a stressed vowel some short unstressed words The Italian name for this process is raddoppiamento syntattico (‘syntactic (re)doubling’), or sometimes rafforzamento fonosyntactico (‘phonosyntactic stregntening’). ‘Syntactic’ refers to the fact that the doubling crosses word boundaries, unlike in word-internal geminate consonants as in [gattto] ‘cat’…… Continue reading ‘Syntactic doubling’ of Italian consonants
Antecedents of reflexives and pronouns
Theories about ‘binding’ try to explain when a noun phrase must, may or must not refer to the same item as an earlier noun phrase in the same sentence (an antecedent). Binding theories typically identify 3 types of noun phrases: anaphors, such as herself in example 1 below. An anaphora must have an antecedent in…… Continue reading Antecedents of reflexives and pronouns
Selecting the auxiliary for French and Italian anticausatives
In forming the perfect tense, both French and Italian use the auxiliary ‘have’ (Italian avere, French avoir) for most verbs, but the auxiliary ‘be’ (Italian essere, French être) for some verbs. Both languages use ‘have’ for all (non-reflexive) transitive verbs and use ‘be’ for reflexive verbs. For some intransitive verbs, both languages use ‘have’, but…… Continue reading Selecting the auxiliary for French and Italian anticausatives
All of which
A sentence like (1) contains a relative clause which seems stilted and unnecessarily clumsy. (1) The Apollo spaceships, all of which returned safely, …. Sentence (1a) is perhaps slightly better, but still a little clumsy. (1a) The Apollo spaceships, of which all returned safely, …. A cleaner version is (2). (2) The Apollo spaceships, which…… Continue reading All of which
C-command
Linguists often refer to a relation called c-command. Some types of syntactic operation are often analysed as being possible only if one item c-commands another item. Examples of such operations include relations between quantifiers (such as all and some) and the items they qualify. What is c-command? C-command is a relation between some of the…… Continue reading C-command
When ‘irrelevant’ cannot replace ‘not relevant’
A recent short post on Language Log pointed drew attention to sentence (1): ‘The patch is irrelevant, but the events that follow are.’ (1) Language Log » When “irrelevant” is not “not relevant” (upenn.edu) Although the post didn’t say so explicitly, sentence (1) is clearly odd in some way. The title of the Language Log…… Continue reading When ‘irrelevant’ cannot replace ‘not relevant’
Schock prize for linguists
The 2024 Rolf Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy has been awarded jointly to Hans Kamp (University of Stuttgart, Germany) and Irene Heim (MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology). It as awarded ‘for (mutually independent) conception and early development of dynamic semantics for natural language.’ The laureates are selected by collaboration between three Swedish royal academies: the Royal…… Continue reading Schock prize for linguists
ISOs on translation
In February 2024, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published ISO 5060 Translation services, Evaluation of translation output—General guidance. It gives guidance on evaluating human translation output, post-edited machine translation output, and unedited machine translation output. I searched the ISOs online store for other ISOs dealing with translation. I have prepared summaries below from the…… Continue reading ISOs on translation