The story of zero / T. Givón.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Givón, Talmy, 1936- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Anaphora (Linguistics).

Grammar, Comparative and general--Nominals.

Grammar, Comparative and general.

Grammar, Comparative and general--Verb phrase.

Grammar, Comparative and general--Agreement.

Grammar, Comparative and general--Grammaticalization.

Functional discourse grammar.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (432 pages)

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; Philadelphia : John Benjamins Publishing Company, [2017]

Summary:

The zero coding of referents or other clausal constituents is one of the most natural, communicatively and cognitively-transparent grammatical devices in human language. Together with its functional equivalent, obligatory pronominal agreement, zero is both extremely widespread cross-linguistically and highly frequent in natural text. In the domain of reference, zero represents, somewhat paradoxically, either anaphorically-governed high continuity or cataphorically-governed low topicality. And whether in conjoined/chained or syntactically-subordinate clauses, zero is extremely well-governed, at a level approaching 100% in natural text. The naturalness, cross-language ubiquity and well-governedness of zero have been largely obscured by an approach that, for 30-odd years, has considered it a typological exotica, the so-called "pro-drop" associated with a dubious "non-configurational" language type. The main aim of this book is to reaffirm the naturalness, universality and well-governedness of zero by studying it from four closely related perspectives: (i) cognitive and communicative function; (ii) natural-text distribution; (iii) cross-language typological distribution; and (iv) the diachronic rise of referent coding devices. The latter is particularly central to our understanding the functional interplay between zero anaphora, pronominal agreement and related referent-coding devices.

Contents:

Prelim pages

Table of contents

Preface

Natural zero

Chapter 1: The communicative ecology of zero anaphora

Chapter 2: The grammar of referential coherence as mental processing instructions

Chapter 3: Zero and the rise of pronominal agreement

Chapter 4: Early diachrony of pronominal agreement

Chapter 5: Is zero anaphora a typological exotica?

Chapter 6: Verbal zero anaphora

Chapter 7: Cataphoric zero

Structural zero

Chapter 8: Co-reference in relative clauses

Chapter 9: Co-reference in verb complements

Chapter 10: Co-reference in adverbial clauses

Chapter 11: Zero, pronouns and clause-chaining

Chapter 12: Promiscuous ill-governed zeros?

Chapter 13: Zero and the puzzle of stranded adpositions

Bibliography

General index

Language index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Online version: Givón, Talmy, 1936- author. Story of zero

ISBN:

9789027212399

9027212392

9789027266460

9027266468