During the last thirty years, most linguists and philosophers have assumed that meaning can be represented symbolically and that the mental processing of language involves the manipulation of symbols. Scholars have assembled strong evidence that there must be linguistic representations at several abstract levels—phonological, syntactic, and semantic—and that those representations are related by a describable system of rules. Because meaning is so complex, linguists often posit an equally complex relationship between semantic and other levels of grammar. The Semantics of Syntax is an elegant and powerful analysis of the relationship between syntax and semantics. Noting that meaning is underdetermined by form even in simple cases, Denis Bouchard argues that it is impossible to build knowledge of the world into grammar and still have a describable grammar. He thus proposes simple semantic representations and simple rules to relate linguistic levels. Focusing on a class of French verbs, Bouchard shows how multiple senses can be accounted for by the assumption of a single abstract core meaning along with background information about how objects behave in the world. He demonstrates that this move simplifies the syntax at no cost to the descriptive power of the semantics. In two important final chapters, he examines the consequences of his approach for standard syntactic theories.

This book focuses on the linguistic representation of temporality in the verbal domain and its interaction with the syntax and semantics of verbs, arguments, and modifiers. Leading scholars explore the division of labour between syntax, compositional semantics, and lexical semantics in the encoding of event structure, encompassing event participants and the temporal properties associated with events. They examine the interface between event structure and the systems with which it interacts, including the interface between event structure and the syntactic realization of arguments and modifiers. Deploying a variety of frameworks and theoretical perspectives they consider central issues and questions in the field, among them whether argument-structure is specified in the lexical entries of verbs or syntactically constructed so that syntactic position determines thematic status; whether the hierarchical structure evidenced in argument structure find parallels in sign language; should the relation between members of an alternation pair, such as the causative-inchoative alternation, be understood lexically or derivationally; and the role of syntactic category in determining the configuration of argument structure.

"The semantics of grammar" presents a radically semantic approach to syntax and morphology. It offers a methodology which makes it possible to demonstrate, on an empirical basis, that syntax is neither "autonomous" nor "arbitrary," but that it follows from "semantics." It is shown that every grammatical construction encodes a certain semantic structure, which can be revealed and rigorously stated, so that the meanings encoded in grammar can be compared in a precise and illuminating way, within one language and across language boundaries. The author develops a semantic metalanguage based on lexical universals or near-universals (and, ultimately, on a system of universal semantic primitives), and shows that the same semantic metalanguage can be used for explicating lexical, grammatical and pragmatic aspects of language and thus offers a method for an integrated linguistic description based on semantic foundations. Analyzing data from a number of different languages (including English, Russian and Japanese) the author explores the notion of ethnosyntax and, via semantics, links syntax and morphology with culture. She attemps to demonstrate that the use of a semantic metalanguage based on lexical universals makes it possible to rephrase the Humboldt-Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in such a way that it can be tested and treated as a program for empirical research.

This collection of essays grew out of the workshop ‘Existence: Semantics and Syntax’, which was held at the University of Nancy 2 in September 2002. The workshop, organized by Ileana Comorovski and Claire Gardent, was supported by a grant from the Reseau ́ de Sciences Cognitives du Grand Est (‘Cognitive Science Network of the Greater East’), which is gratefully acknowledged. The ?rst e- tor wishes to thank Claire Gardent, Fred Landman, and Georges Rebuschi for encouraging her to pursue the publication of a volume based on papers presented at the workshop. Among those who participated in the workshop was Klaus von Heusinger, who joined Ileana Comorovski in editing this volume. Besides papers that developed out of presentations at the workshop, the volume contains invited contributions. We are grateful to Wayles Browne, Fred Landman, Paul Portner, and Georges Rebuschi for their help with reviewing some of the papers. Our thanks go also to a Springer reviewer for the careful reading of the book manuscript. We wish to thank all the participants in the workshop, not only those whose contributions appear in this volume, for making the workshop an int- active and constructive event. Ileana Comorovski Klaus von Heusinger vii ILEANA COMOROVSKI AND KLAUS VON HEUSINGER INTRODUCTION The notion of ‘existence’, which we take to have solid intuitive grounding, plays a central role in the interpretation of at least three types of linguistic constructions: copular clauses, existential sentences, and (in)de?nite noun phrases.

First published in 1979, this book develops a grammatically orientated semantics (as opposed to a semantically orientated grammar) of mood and condition in English. It seeks to establish correspondences between areas of semantic organisation (‘planes’) and surface grammar, without reverting to an intermediate notion of deep grammar. The chapters explore topics including the differences between ‘literal meaning’ and ‘significance’, speech roles, and constructions of condition and reason in terms of the four panes discussed earlier in the volume.

The articles in this volume present original research on the encoding of meaning in a variety of constructions and languages. Many of the contributions take the framework of Role and Reference Grammar as a point of reference, either by applying it to the analysis of linguistic data or by discussing, extending, and challenging some of its assumptions. The topics of the articles range from general questions concerning the relation of meaning and its syntactic realization to the study of specific grammatical phenomena in a number of typologically diverse languages, including Yucatec Maya, Kabardian, Tagalog, Murik-Kopar, Avatime, Whitesands, Tundra Yukaghir, and various Indo-European languages. The articles will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on the interface between syntax, semantics and pragmatics. This series 'Studies in Language and Cognition' explores issues of mental representation, linguistic structure and representation, and their interplay. The research presented in this series is grounded in the idea explored in the Collaborative Research Center `The structure of representations in language, cognition and science' (SFB 991) that there is a universal format for the representation of linguistic and cognitive concepts.

A guide to the relations between a predicate and its arguments, for researchers and advanced students in linguistics. Engages foundational issues in both syntax and semantics, with attention to the correspondence between structure at the two levels. Chapters include discussion questions and suggestions for further reading.

Exploring the relevance of principles of optimization to the interface between syntax and semantics. In Economy and Semantic Interpretation, Danny Fox investigates the relevance of principles of optimization (economy) to the interface between syntax and semantics. Supporting the view that grammar is restricted by economy considerations, Fox argues for various economy conditions that constrain the application of covert operations. Among other things, he argues that syntactic operations that do not affect phonology cannot apply unless they affect the semantic interpretation of a sentence. This position has a number of consequences for the architecture of grammar. For example, it suggests that the modularity assumption, according to which a language's syntax must be characterized independently of its semantics, needs to be revised. Another consequence concerns new answers to the question of exactly where in the syntactic derivation the various constraints on interpretation apply. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph No. 35Copublished with the MIT Working Papers in Linguistics series.

This book is the first and so far only formally precise machinery converting well-motivated semantic sentence representations into actual sentences of English, French, German and Dutch. It focuses on the auxiliary and complementation systems of the languages concerned.