Some Aspects of Text Grammars: A Study in Theoretical Linguistics and Poetics (Janua Linguarum. Series Maior, 63)

## The progress of a science does not depend merely upon the amassing of individual insights, but above all upon the formulation of new relationships and the posing of new questions. Manfred Bierwisch, "Linguistics and Poetics" ## CONTENTS Preface ν PART I: GENERAL PROPERTIES OF TEXT GRAMMARS 1. Towards a Theory of Text Grammars 8 For recursion and its specific conditions in generative grammars, cf. e.g. Chomsky and Miller (1963) 290 ff., Chomsky (1963) 394 ff. and the references cited therein. 7 The discussion on rule-schemata is recent and has shown important shortcomings in the traditional models of transformational grammar, for example in the description of phrasal conjunctions. It was shown that linear conjunction could not be produced by transformational reduction, for example. Since rule-schemata are abbreviations of (infinite) sequences of rules, the grammar ceases to be finite in the strict sense, although we may say that a grammar has a finite set of rules and a finite set of rule- Preface PART I: GENERAL PROPERTIES OF TEXT GRAMMARS 1. Towards a Theory of Text Grammars 1. Some arguments for text grammars 1.1. Introduction 1.2. Empirical arguments 1.3. Grammatical arguments 2. S-grammars and T-grammars 2.1. S-grammars and linear recursion 2.2. Sentences and sequences 2.3. The form of T-grammars 2.4. “On the natural domain of grammar” 3. Textual linguistics: some classical approaches 3.1. Introduction 3.2. Ancient rhetorics 3.3. The structural analysis of discourse 3.4. Generative-transformational approaches to text structure 2. Textual Surface Structures: Relations Between Sentences 1. Introduction: methodological procedures 2. Terminological issues 3. Relations between sentences 4. Surface relations between sentences 4.1. Introduction 4.2. Noun phrases and (in)definite descriptions 4.3. Pronominalization 4.4. Concluding remarks 4.5. Verb phrases/predicates, tense/time 4.6. Place adverbials and the topological logic of texts 4.7. Final remarks 5. Semantic relations between sentences 5.1. Introduction 5.2. Properties of relations 5.3. Relations between lexical elements 5.4. Relations between sentences: presupposition and entailment 5.5. Other semantic relations between sentences 5.6. Topic and comment 6. A specimen of description 7. Conclusions and speculations on the form of the surface grammar 3. Textual Deep Structure: Macro-Structures 1. Introduction: why textual deep structure? 2. Some informal models for macro-structures 3. Towards a model for macro-derivation 4. A specimen of description 5. Conclusion and final remarks PART II: ASPECTS OF LITERARY TEXT GRAMMARS 4. The Foundations of Poetics. Methodological Preliminaries 1. Introduction. About a discipline 2. Terminology, scope and tasks 3. Poetics and the philosophy of science 3.1. Poetics as an empirical science 3.2. Poetics as a theoretical science 3.3. Poetics as a social science 4. Foundations of a theory of literary text structures 5. Linguistics and Poetics 1. Grammars of natural language and their empirical scope 2. Language, literature and grammar 3. Linguistics and poetics 6. Surface Operations 1. Introduction 2. Phonological operations 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Non-metrical structures 2.3 Metrical structures 2.4 Morphematic structures 3. Syntactic operations 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Some syntactic rules for modern poetry 4. Concluding remarks 7. Semantic Operations. Processes of Metaphorization 1. Introduction 2. The structure of semantic representations 3. Metaphorical structures in literature: preliminary observations 4. Transformational processes of metaphorization 5. Some further examples 6. Some theoretical conclusions 8. Semantic Macro-Operations. Narrative Structures 1. Macro-structures and literary texts 2. The linear coherence of literary texts 3. Structural analysis of narrative 4. Aspects of a generative grammar of narrative 5. Narrative transformations and literary operations 5.4. Deletion transformations 5.5. Addition transformations 5.6. Permutative transformations 5.7. Some final remarks PART III: TOWARDS A THEORY OF TEXTUAL COMMUNICATION 9. Context. Performance. Pragmatics 1. Linguistic theory and the status of pragmatics 2. Psychological implications of text grammars 3. Sociological implications of text grammars 4. Aspects of a theory of literary performance 5. Some final remarks References Index of names Subject index

The questions as to why most languages appear to have more trouble borrowing verbs than nouns, and as to the possible mechanisms and paths by which verbs can be borrowed or the obstacles for verb borrowing, have been a topic of interest since the late 19th century. However, no truly substantial typological research had been undertaken in this field before the present study.

The present work is the first in-depth cross-linguistic study on loan verbs and the morphological, syntactic and sociolinguistic aspects of loan verb accommodation. It applies current methodologies on database management, quantitative analysis and typological conventions and it is based on a broad global sample of data from over 400 languages and the typological data from the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS).

One major result of the present study is the falsification, on empirical grounds, of long-standing claims that verbs generally are more difficult to borrow than other parts of speech, or that verbs could never be borrowed as verbs and always needed a re-verbalization in the borrowing language.