4
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What is the difference between a conjunction and a preposition?
Conjuctions, as you say, connect sentences and clauses, but also phrases and single words. Examples are and, or, but, because, neither ... nor, rather ... than, etc.
Single-word conjunctions are ...
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4
votes
What part of speech is the word "that" in "That you be happy!"
Your phrase is a fragment (not a sentence). It might occur as the answer to a question ("What do you want?"). 'That' is a complementizer -- it makes 'you be happy' the complement of 'what'. This is ...
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3
votes
Unusual sentence grouping with conjunctions
The question is concerned with the nature of the strings that can be coordinated. Certainly, coordination (conjunction or disjunction) patterns in many languages similar to how it patterns in English. ...
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3
votes
What is the term for the formation of word groups with single meaning/function (e.g. "in relation to which") in lingustics
The term for such kind of phrase is multiword expression. I am not aware of a special term for the process that creates multiword expression. I am also not aware of some special treatment of them; in ...
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3
votes
Syntactic status of 'than'
In answer to your first question, acting as antecedent or deletee in anaphoric deletion is sometimes taken as evidence for being a constituent. And "than NP" does that:
"I like cookies better than ...
- 12.3k
3
votes
Accepted
Are there languages without subordination/only with parataxis?
First, your question at the end doesn't really make sense, because conjunction is not subordination. I think you're asking for languages without subordination, so you shouldn't add "or conjunctions".
...
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Are there languages that distinguish between inclusive and exclusive "or"?
I think the closest thing you can get in natural languages the distinction between choice-aimed and simple alternative. Finnish and Basque have already been mentioned, and here are some more:
There ...
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3
votes
Are there languages in which AND + OR (conjunction and disjunction) are expressed the same?
In Manchu, and I'm sure in many other languages, they are expressed the same, with a zero, even in English you can do it that way. Without using the actual Manchu words, it looks like that:
AND: I ...
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3
votes
Is the use of abbreviation and ellipsis as codified as the basic syntax of a language?
TL;DR:
with is neither abbreviation nor ellipsis of together with, but together with is a paraphrase of with.
and permits certain forms of ellipsis - with doesn't.
The patterns of ellipsis that ...
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3
votes
Accepted
Drawing tree diagrams of ambiguous sentences generated by a CFG
If you are looking for parse trees according to your grammar, the
first tree seems correct, up to the missing N symbols, and a missing
NOM above fleas.
However your second diagram should look as ...
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3
votes
Are there languages that distinguish between inclusive and exclusive "or"?
Just to coin one more way to express inclusive OR versus exclusive OR.
In Ukrainian, we use "or X, or Y" construct to denote exclusivity:
дай мені яблуко або помаранч — "give me an apple or an ...
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2
votes
Are there languages that distinguish between inclusive and exclusive "or"?
In Azerbaijani language there are separate connectives for both inclusive and exclusive ors.
VƏ YA — inclusive or
YA DA — exclusive or
Qapını ört ya da bağla — Close or open the door (exclusive ...
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2
votes
Which branch of linguistics educates on affirmation, causality, similarity, time, etc…?
Anthropological linguistics. Cultural anthropologists have long had a burning interest in the relationship between a people's worldview and other aspects of their culture. My former teacher, Cora ...
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2
votes
Which branch of linguistics educates on affirmation, causality, similarity, time, etc…?
This is a bit more complicated than just the branch. Both semantics and pragmatics will deal with aspects of this issue but you also need to pick the right school and the right people to read. People ...
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2
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Are there languages without subordination/only with parataxis?
Apparently, all languages signed or spoken have some form of syntactic subordination. However, languages differ significantly in the types of subordinata constructions present, in how heavily they use ...
- 1,066
2
votes
Accepted
Syntactic status of 'than'
The problem with your tests is that the than-phrase is a complement. The PPs that you compare them with are adjuncts (read adverbials). We expect to freely front adverbials, but we don't expect to ...
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2
votes
Are there languages that distinguish between inclusive and exclusive "or"?
In Arabic (classical) ʼam is exclusive, ʼaw is (generally) inclusive.
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2
votes
Accepted
How can you test whether a word is being used as a conjunction?
In The Syntactic Phenomena of English, McCawley uses Ross's CSC (Coordinate Structure Constraint) and RNR as diagnostics for coordinate conjunctions. See, e.g., p. 616, where M. investigates ...
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2
votes
Accepted
What is wrong with this way of looking at conjunctions?
I may have misunderstood the earlier comments (by Rchivers). The type of approach to coordination described with the diagram in the question is indeed how I prefer to view coordination; the diagram ...
- 5,280
2
votes
Whence אֶת between partners' names?
To give a much more global picture abstracting from the history of the Hebrew language: The change of a commitative adposition "with" to a coordinating conjunction "and" is not unusual and often seen ...
- 25.7k
2
votes
Accepted
Distinction between coordinating and subordinating conjunctions
It is difficult to discriminate coordinating and subordinating conjunctions in English¹ on clauses alone, because there aren't easily testable differences between main clauses and subordinate clauses. ...
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1
vote
What languages reinforce imperatives with conjunctions?
The order is really arbitrary or a result of the syntactic constraints of the language.
(Generally SAE requires imperatives take the first position whereas even in neighbouring Eastern European IE ...
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1
vote
Parallel coordination failures
The main issue here concerns the following three parses of the instances of conjunction in the example sentence:
(1) a. You [can [manipulate [lightning], [mist], and [wind]]; [traffic with air ...
- 5,280
1
vote
Is it possible that whole relative clause refers/describes one word/phrase in the main clause (without anaphora)?
No, anaphora is always involved in a relative clause construction, because relative clauses have relative pronouns (not necessarily explicit), and relative pronouns are anaphoric. The "which" of your ...
- 12.3k
1
vote
Grammatical term for inflectable conjunctions as used in the Arabic language(s)
The character ل can be used as a preposition. The preposition means "for".
The word أن means "that".
When you combine the preposition ل and the word أن together, It becomes the word لأن. The ...
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1
vote
Grammatical term for inflectable conjunctions as used in the Arabic language(s)
In Arabic grammar this is called "'inna and its sisters". These encompass a set of particles that are followed by a noun in the accusative case, or by the accusative forms of suffixed pronouns.
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1
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Which branch of linguistics educates on affirmation, causality, similarity, time, etc…?
Affirmation, Causality,
I hereby swear that I will ...tell the truth;
I launch this ship;
I take this man, I take this woman..
An early work of great clarity is How to do Things with Words, J ...
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vote
Are there languages in which AND + OR (conjunction and disjunction) are expressed the same?
Why do you think any language distinguishes. Syntacticians generally use the term "conjunction" to refer to a class of constructions including both "and" and "or", because both of these work the same ...
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