Hungarian syntax has played a vital, albeit much debated role in linguistic theory since the early 1980s. Volume 27 of "Syntax and Semantics" is the result of a project on Hungarian syntax launched in the early 1980s at the Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The volume illuminates relevant and insightful aspects of Hungarian syntax. It assumes the basic theoretical claims and the basic methodology of generative linguistic theory, and shows that descriptive grammar is best approached by posing theoretically interesting questions. It features comprehensive...

The present volume is intended to give an overall picture of research in pro gress in the field of generative grammar in various parts of Europe. The term 'generative grammar' must, however, be understood here rather broadly. What seemed to be an easily definable technical term several years ago is becoming more and more vague and imprecise. Research in generative gram mar is carried on according to rather diversified methodological principles and being a generative grammarian is often more a matter of confession than any adherence to the common line of methodology which can be traced back to...

o. Theoretical linguistics is a term not very often used in Soviet Linguistics. The terms 'structural linguistics', 'mathematical linguistics', 'applied lin- guistics' (which, incidentally, has another meaning here than in other parts of the world) all may cover theoretical work in linguistics. In older days serious theoretical work was done under the heading 'machine translation'. Very often the need for a special term for theoretically oriented studies in linguistics does not even arise. Does this mean that there is no real theoretical linguistics in the Soviet Union? This would be, of...

In the study of language, as in any other systematic study, there is no neutral terminology. Every technical term is an expression of the assumptions and theoretical presuppositions of its users; and in this introduction, we want to clarify some of the issues that have surrounded the assumptions behind the use of the two terms "speech acts" and "pragmatics." The notion of a speech act is fairly well understood. The theory of speech acts starts with the assumption that the minimal unit of human communica tion is not a sentence or other expression, but rather the performance of certain kinds of...

In the study of language, as in any other systematic study, there is no neutral terminology. Every technical term is an expression of the assumptions and theoretical presuppositions of its users; and in this introduction, we want to clarify some of the issues that have surrounded the assumptions behind the use of the two terms "speech acts" and "pragmatics." The notion of a speech act is fairly well understood. The theory of speech acts starts with the assumption that the minimal unit of human communica tion is not a sentence or other expression, but rather the performance of certain kinds of...

In almost all principled accounts of questions questions are related to the corresponding answers. Zellig Harris (Harris 1978:1), for example, maintains that" ... all interrogative sentences can be derived, by means of the independently established transformations of the language, from sentences which assert that someone is asking about a disjunction of statements which are the relevant possible answers to that interroga tive." This amounts to the claim that a yes-no question such as Will John stay? is derived from I ask you whether John will stay and a wh question such as Who came is derived...

In the last decade a profound change has occurred in linguistic science. Not only have old problems been tackled from an entirely new point of view but also quite a few new fields of linguistic research have been opened. The common characteristic of the majority of the theories and methods developed recently is the search for a more adequate description of language. Adequacy does not mean simply that the theory must conform to the facts. It must also meet the general requirements of present-day theories: coherence, clear-cut notions, rigor of presentation. It has also become abundantly clear...

A group of authors containing both leading authorities and young researchers addresses a number of issues of contrastiveness, polarity items and exhaustivity, quantificational expressions and the implicatures they generate, and the interaction between semantic operators and speech acts. The 19 contributions provide insights on the interplay between semantics and pragmatics. The volume s reach is cross-linguistic and takes an unorthodox multi-paradigm approach. Languages studied range from European languages including Hungarian and Russian to East Asian languages such as Japanese and Korean,...

This volume offers the reader a singular overview of current thinking on indirect reports. The contributors are eminent researchers from the fields of philosophy of language, theoretical linguistics and communication theory, who answer questions on this important issue. This exciting area of controversy has until now mostly been treated from the viewpoint of philosophy. This volume adds the views from semantics, conversation analysis and sociolinguistics.

Authors address matters such as the issue of semantic minimalism vs. radical contextualism, the attribution of responsibility...