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Distributed for Center for the Study of Language and Information

The Semantics of Incorporation

From Argument Structure to Discourse Transparency

Distinguishing between discourse referents and thematic arguments, the analysis of incorporation proposed by Donka Farkas and Henriettë de Swart accounts for the relationship between morphological and semantic number, the contrasts between incorporated singulars and incorporated plurals, and various "shades" of discourse transparency. The framework of Discourse Representation Theory used is a theory well-suited for connecting sentence-level and discourse-level semantics.

The analysis presented in this book has important consequences for a cross-linguistic theory of anaphora. Linguists and logicians interested in discourse structure, cross-linguistic semantics, and the relationship between morpho-syntax and meaning will find this an engaging and innovative work.

150 pages | © 2003

Stanford Monographs in Linguistics

Language and Linguistics: General Language and Linguistics


Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Incorporation: the semantic challenge
2. Discourse referents, thematic arguments and plurality
3. Incorporation as Unification of thematic arguments
4. Incorporation in Hungarian: the case of bare singulars
5. Bare plurals
6. Shades of discourse transparency
7. Comparisons with previous approaches
References
Subject Index
Name Index

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