This chapter covers how the human brain combines meaning across words (compositional semantics), beginning with pairs of words and working up to sentence processing. Concepts that are easy to combine – such as a “red apple” – appear to rely on the lateral anterior temporal lobe and the angular gyrus. Understanding sentences introduces additional demands during comprehension and is often associated with recruitment of left inferior frontal cortex. Additional regions come in to play for specific types of language challenge. When words are associated with multiple meanings, the correct interpretation must be selected based on the surrounding context. This process of semantic disambiguation is associated with additional activity in posterior temporal cortex and left prefrontal cortex. Compared to simpler sentences, understanding sentences with complex syntactic constructions also engages additional regions of posterior superior temporal gyrus and inferior frontal cortex. Finally, ongoing oscillatory activity, especially in the theta range, has been suggested to play key roles in parsing and understanding connected speech.

The present work adopts a derivational, incremental, phase-based theory of syntax, with the elementary operation Merge at its center, as it has been developed by Chomsky and others within the minimalist program. Against this background, the main goal of this monograph is to develop an approach to the syntax of German that also envisages another primitive operation Remove that is a complete mirror image of Merge: Whereas Merge brings about structure building (both in the form of basic phrase structure generation, and in the form of movement), Remove leads to an elimination of structure. Merge and Remove obey the same constraints, among them the Strict Cycle Condition.

This chapter presents an overview of some of the central concepts of constructional syntax. Focusing on key insights from Berkeley Construction Grammar and Cognitive Construction Grammar, it discusses how construction entries of different types from the inventory of constructions interact with each other to license constructs. This chapter also outlines a novel methodology for discovering constructions in a corpus that allows for a systematic way of compiling construction entries that are relevant for research in Construction Grammar and constructicography.

The ‘linguistic turn’ in twentieth-century philosophy is reflected through Neurath’s writings of his British period. He responded to serious criticism that Bertrand Russell made in his book An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, developing the physicalism of the Vienna Circle into a cautious approach to ‘terminology’. Neurath revealed details of his index verborum prohibitorum, a list of ‘dangerous’ words to be avoided due to their misleading and metaphysical connotations. However, Neurath was resistant to the formalist tendencies evident in the work of Vienna Circle associates, in particular Carnap’s development of semantics. Their disagreement on the matter is examined through their prolific correspondence of the 1940s. While Neurath is often portrayed as losing this battle, we discuss how his own approach to the philosophy of language (including his ‘terminology’ project) prefigured the later development of ‘ordinary language philosophy’ to a certain extent.

This chapter considers the syntax of Hopkins’s poems. It places Hopkins’s syntax in the context of his devotional and artistic life, showing how his sentences negotiate the conflicting pressures exerted by Catholic faith and poetic ambition, personal idiosyncrasy, and the desire to be ‘intelligible’. It also places the poems in the context of larger syntactical trends, showing how Hopkins’s phrasing works with and against the grain of nineteenth-century usage, and addressing Hopkins’s interest in and anticipation of developments in Victorian philology. The chapter pays particular attention to ‘Myself Unholy’, ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’, and ‘Tom’s Garland’.

This chapter provides an introduction to and an overview of the themes and content of the monograph.

This chapter overviews broad issues related to language acquisition research and answers fundamental questions related to first language acquisition, such as What is language? and How do children learn their first language? It begins by introducing some components of language, such as grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, pragmatics, and discourse. It also discusses language varieties (e.g., American English vs. Indian English) and explains their legitimacy. Then, the chapter addresses language learning during the first years of a child’s life. It also discusses bilingualism, especially of those who start learning multiple languages in their early years (simultaneous bilingualism). In order to understand second language acquisition for the rest of the textbook, the chapter focuses on a question: How are children able to learn a language without formal instruction? In order to answer this question, multiple language acquisition theories will be discussed.

The introduction to this volume describes its content. It also provides the rationale for including selected topics and provides comments on the manner of presentation adopted in this volume.

Slavic languages are notorious for rich inflectional systems, allowing substantial freedom in word order. Aside from SVO word order, canonical for the great majority of Slavic languages, orders with arguments surfacing in non-canonical positions are also allowed. We consider two such orders – OVS and OSV. The two orders stem from two different types of argument reordering with distinct syntactic, interpretive and prosodic properties. The first is linked to neutral prosody and is licenced by the object being construed as interpretively prominent compared to the subject. The object undergoing this type of reordering binds into the subject and takes scope over it. This reordering is possible only if the thematic prominence relations of arguments are identified by means other than their relative structural position. The second type is linked to marked prosody and is licenced by the displaced object being disambiguated as contrastive. In this type of reordering the object cannot bind into the subject or take scope over it. This type of reordering is possible only if the object carries a strong prosodic marker.

This chapter provides an overview of the inventory, formation, and use of synthetic and periphrastic tense and mood forms in modern Belarusian, Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian, Bulgarian, Czech, Macedonian, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Slovene, Lower and Upper Sorbian, and Ukrainian. It addresses both characteristics common to all modern languages and features of individual languages.