Syntax in the Treetops (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs)

A proposal that syntax extends to the domain of discourse in making core syntax link to the conversational context. In Syntax in the Treetops, Shigeru Miyagawa proposes that syntax extends into the domain of discourse by making linkages between core syntax and the conversational participants. Miyagawa draws on evidence for this extended syntactic structure from a wide variety of languages, including Basque, Japanese, Italian, Magahi, Newari, Romanian, and Spanish, as well as the language of children with autism. His proposal for what happens at the highest level of the tree structure used by linguists to represent the hierarchical relationships within sentences--"in the treetops"--offers a unique contribution to the new area of study sometimes known as "syntacticization of discourse." Miyagawa's main point is that syntax provides the basic framework that makes possible the performance of a speech act and the conveyance of meaning; although the role that syntax plays for speech acts is modest, it is critical. He proposes that the speaker-addressee layer and the Commitment Phrase (the speaker's commitment to the addressee of the truthfulness of the proposition) occur together in the syntactic treetops. In each succeeding chapter, Miyagawa examines the working of each layer of the tree and how they interact "A syntactic analysis of and solution to the semantic problem: how can speakers convey the same meaning using different speech acts?"-- Provided by publisher contents inquiry_mon preface abbreviation ch_1 ch_2 ch_3 ch_4 ch_5 ch_6 notes references Name_index_c005400_9780262369091 s_index