Investigating syntactic and semantic variation in exceptive-additive constructions from a crosslinguistic perspective

从跨语言学的角度研究例外加法结构中的句法和语义变异

• 批准号: 457168471
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Clemens Steiner-Mayr
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Seminar für Englische Philologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/457168471?language=en
• 关键词: Investigating; syntactic; semantic; variation; exceptive

This project explores the syntax and semantics of exceptive-additive (EA) constructions crosslinguistically. The variants of (1) are instances of such constructions.(1) Every boy but / besides / except Joe came.EA constructions fall into three categories: (i) unambiguously exceptive, (ii) ambiguously exceptive-additive, and (iii) unambiguously additive. On (i) a substantive amount of literature exists. The variants of (1) with “but” and “except” are examples, showing the exceptive meaning ‘Boy Joe did not come and every other boy came’. (ii) and (iii) have received little attention so far despite (ii) being more common crosslinguistically than (i) (and (iii)). For (ii), (1) with “besides” is an example receiving again the exceptive meaning. Crucially, “besides” in (2) yields the additive meaning ‘Boy Joe came and some other boy came’, whereas “but” and “except” are unacceptable.(2) Some boy *but / besides / *except Joe came.For (iii) Spanish “además de” is an example. It is the reverse of “but” and “except” in that it is incompatible with “every” but fine with “some”, where it gets the additive meaning.The project consists of two work packages (WPs) with the following goals. WP1 deals with the considerable variation found both in the (iv) syntax and (v) semantics of EA constructions. This variation has not been systematically studied and is therefore ill understood. WP1 is a large-scale data collection driven by theoretical considerations. It studies both crosslinguistic variation and such within languages. Since WP1 investigates understudied languages it will reveal the true breadth of variation. Regarding (iv), WP1 asks which EAs can precede clausal material and which cannot. E.g., the material in the EA following “besides” and “except” in (1) can be clausal, but not so with “but”. Regarding (v), WP1 asks which exact EA meanings are available in a language and what they depend on. E.g. in (1) and (2) the exceptive reading aligns with “every”, and the additive one with “some”. But in Tundra Nenets both contexts only allow for the exceptive reading.WP2 builds on the data gathered in WP1 to develop a unified formal semantic account of EA constructions of varying syntactic sizes. Since most existing theories of EA constructions build on observations about ”but”, which cannot precede full clauses, they make the wrong predictions for many data. The account built on the basis of the results from WP1 will therefore be descriptively more adequate. It will both capture similarities between languages and model as much of the semantic variation found as possible. The two key ideas underlying WP2 are: the availability of a certain reading of an EA depends on its own logical properties and those of the other functional elements in the sentence; the exceptive-additive ambiguity is structural, i.e., ambiguous EA expressions decompose into two operators with variable scopes, whereas unambiguous EA expressions do not do so.

该项目跨语言地探索例外加法 (EA) 结构的语法和语义。 (1) 的变体是此类结构的实例。(1) 除乔以外的每个男孩都来了。EA 结构分为三类：(i) 明确例外，(ii) 明确例外加法，以及 (iii) 明确加法。关于（i）存在大量文献。 (1) 带有“但是”和“除了”的变体就是例子，显示了“男孩乔没有来，其他男孩都来了”的例外含义。尽管(ii)在跨语言上比(i)（和(iii)）更常见，但（ii）和（iii）迄今为止很少受到关注。对于(ii)，(1)中的“除了”是再次获得例外含义的例子。至关重要的是，(2) 中的“besides”产生附加含义“男孩乔来了，其他男孩来了”，而“但是”和“除了”是不可接受的。(2) 一些男孩*但是/除了/*除了乔来了。对于(iii)西班牙语“además de”就是一个例子。它与“but”和“ except”相反，因为它与“every”不兼容，但与“some”兼容，因此具有附加含义。该项目由两个具有以下目标的工作包（WP）组成。 WP1 处理 EA 结构的 (iv) 语法和 (v) 语义中发现的相当大的变化。这种变异尚未得到系统研究，因此人们对其了解甚少。 WP1是由理论考虑驱动的大规模数据收集。它研究跨语言变异和语言内部的变异。由于 WP1 研究的是未充分研究的语言，因此它将揭示变化的真正广度。关于 (iv)，WP1 询问哪些 EA 可以位于分句材料之前，哪些不能。例如，EA 中 (1) 中“besides”和“ except”后面的材料可以是从句，但“but”则不然。关于 (v)，WP1 询问某种语言中有哪些确切的 EA 含义以及它们依赖于什么。例如。在（1）和（2）中，例外读法与“every”一致，加法读法与“some”一致。但在 Tundra Nenets 中，两种上下文都只允许例外的阅读。WP2 建立在 WP1 中收集的数据的基础上，开发不同句法大小的 EA 结构的统一正式语义说明。由于大多数现有的 EA 构造理论都建立在对“但是”的观察之上，而“但是”不能先于完整的子句，因此它们对许多数据做出了错误的预测。因此，根据 WP1 结果建立的账户在描述上更加充分。它将捕获语言之间的相似性，并尽可能多地对发现的语义变化进行建模。 WP2 的两个关键思想是： EA 的某种读取的可用性取决于其自身的逻辑属性以及句子中其他功能元素的逻辑属性；例外加性歧义是结构性的，即，歧义 EA 表达式分解为两个具有可变范围的运算符，而明确 EA 表达式则不会这样做。