Recent Trends in Meaning–Text Theory: (39 Studies in Language Companion Series)

The present volume contains articles of well-known representatives of the Meaning-Text Theory (MTT) and other related linguistic theories. Founded by I. Mel’cuk and A. Zholkovsky in the sixties in Moscow, MTT soon became known in the West as a “prominent outsider” theory. The picture changed since then, though. MTT gained importance in several areas of linguistics and computational linguistics. It influenced the design of new grammar formalisms such as Dependency Tree Grammars. Also, specific parts of MTT have been directly overtaken into other theories; consider, for example, the work on integrating Lexical Functions into Pustejovsky’s Generative Lexicon. The present volume is a further convincing demonstration of MTT’s liveliness and relevance to the field’s “burning” issues. The focus of the volume is on semantics, semantic representation and relation of semantics to surface in MTT. Six out of eight articles (Polguère; Escalier & Fournier; Paducheva; St.-Germain; Beck; Bogulavsky) deal with problems related to these topics, while the last two articles of the volume (Sgall and Rambow; Joshi) throw a bridge between MTT, or, more precisely, between dependency-based theories of which MTT is one instantiation, and other linguistic theories.

Table of Contents:
1. Preface (by Wanner, Leo); 2. Meaning-Text Semantic Networks as a Formal Language (by Polguere, Alain); 3. 1 Semantic Networks: One of the Languages of Linguistics; 4. 2 Definition of Nine Basic Semantic Concepts; 5. 2.1 General Presentation of the Taxonomy of Linguistic 1 Meanings; 6. 2.2 The Key Concept of MEANING; 7. 2.3 Concepts Belonging to the Specification of the Semantic Structure of MT-Networks; 8. 2.4 The case of PRESUPPOSITION: A Concept Belonging to the Specification of the Communicative Structure of MT-Networks; 9. 3 Specification of the Formal Language of MT-Networks; 10. 4 Conclusion; 11. Towards a Notional Representation of Meaning in the Meaning-Text Model: The Case of the French SI (by Escalier, Marie-Christine); 12. 1 Introduction; 13. 2 Types of Paraphrases and Expression of Causality; 14. 3 The Information in the ECD; 15. 4 The Relation of Causality and Description of Fr.SIconj in the ECD; 16. 4.1 Is SI a Logical Connective?; 17. 4.2 Nature of the Definition Zone in Lexical Entries; 18. 4.3 Analysis of SI: Nine Different Lexemes; 19. 4.4 Description of SI 1 in the extended ECD; 20. 5 Notions and the Notional Dictionary; 21. 5.1 Some Characteristics of Notions; 22. 5.2 Theoretical Status of Notions; 23. 5.3 Advantages of the Notional Representation; 24. 5.4 Relations between a Notional Dictionary and the ECD; 25. 5.5 Notional Representation of the Meaning of Sentences; 26. Verb Categorization and the Format of a Lexicographic Definition (Semantic Types of Causative Relations) (by Paducheva, Elena V.); 27. 1 Introduction; 28. 2 Non-intentional (Non-controlled) Causation; 29. 3 Intentional (Controlled) Causation; 30. 4 Partial Control; 31. 5 Guaranteed Causation; 32. 6 Conclusion; 33. Semantic Communicative Structure of Verbal vs. Conjunctive Causative Expressions ([to] kill/[to] cause to die vs. [to] die because P) (by St.-Germain, Jean); 34. 1 Introduction; 35. 2 Verbal vs. Conjunctive Causative Expressions: Specification, Thematization and Focalization; 36. 2.1 Specification; 37. 2.2 Thematization; 38. 2.3 Focalization; 39. 3 Lexical vs. Syntactic Verbal Causative Expressions: Unitarization; 40. 4 Conclusion; 41. Theme, Rheme, and Communicative Structure in Lushootseed and Bella Coola (by Beck, David); 42. 1 Introduction; 43. 2 Subject and Predicate; 44. 2.1 The Canonical Clause; 45. 2.2 Verbless Sentences; 46. 3 Theme, Rheme, and Syntactic Structure; 47. 3.1 Wh-Questions; 48. 3.2 The Lushootseed Existential Negative; 49. 4 The Communicative Structure of the Verbless Sentence; 50. 4.1 The Syntactic and Semantic Representation of Deixis; 51. 4.2 Sem-Theme, Sem-Rheme, and the DSyntR; 52. 5 Conclusion: Towards a Communicative Typology of Language; 53. Scope of Generic Noun Phrases and Its Correlation with the Verb Meaning in Russian (by Boguslavsky, Igor M.); 54. 1 Introduction; 55. 2 Predicates of Change and Conservation of State and the Problem of Coreferentiality; 56. 3 Coreferentiality of Generic Noun Phrases; 57. 4 Scope of the Genericity Quantifier; 58. 5 Conclusion: Lexicographic Implications; 59. Valency and Underlying Structure: An Alternative View on Dependency (by Sgall, Petr); 60. 1 Introduction; 61. 2 Dependency Syntax and Underlying Structure; 62. 3 Topic-Focus Articulation; 63. 4 Status of Underlying Structure; 64. 5 Lexical and Grammatical Information; 65. 6 Specification of Underlying Representations; 66. A Formal Look at Dependency Grammars and Phrase-Structure Grammars, with Special Consideration of Word-Order Phenomena (by Rambow, Owen); 67. 1 Introduction; 68. 2 Dependency, Phrase Structure and the Lexicon; 69. 3 Formal Aspects of Word Order Variation; 70. 3.1 Computational Properties of Dependency Grammars; 71. 3.2 Word Order Rules and Non-Projectivity; 72. 3.3 Embedded Wh- Words in English; 73. 3.4 Embedded Clauses in Dutch; 74. 3.5 Localizing Syntactic Rules; 75. 4 Conclusion; 76. Subject Index; 77. Name Index