A Study of Clause Linkage

Download or read book A Study of Clause Linkage written by Yoko Hasegawa and published by Center for the Study of Language and Information Publications. This book was released on 1996-04-26 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Employing a hybrid theoretical framework of Role and Reference Grammar and Construction Grammar, this volume investigates the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties of the diverse families of Japanese constructions in which the verbal suffix TE (approximately the English 'and') is a linking device. The TE suffix is the most frequent and versatile connective in Japanese, able to link all three types of verbal constituents. Because the semantic relations obtainable between the conjuncts are heterogeneous, the prevailing view is that TE-linkage is a mere syntactic device with no semantic content; and the interpreter must infer intended semantic relations based on extra linguistic knowledge. However, closer examination reveals clear correlations between its syntax and semantics that have been obscured in previous studies which did not investigate TE-constructions as pairings of form and meaning. Detailed analysis of TE-linkage is of special significance to linguistic theory because it inevitably involves the search for an adequate descriptive framework for representing connectives.