Abstract
Discontinuity in natural language is characterized by the linear disruption of a continuous string of linguistic expressions forming a constituent. While dependency relations in Dependency Grammar (DG) can capture discontinuity well, phrase-structure-based approaches such as Phrase Structure Grammar (PSG) face difficulty in accommodating discontinuity. Categorial Grammar (CG) has correspondences with PSG, although it can handle discontinuity, if equipped with wrapping operations. Given the existing literature on discontinuity in natural language, it appears that constituency relations of PSG, dependency relations of DG and functor-argument relations of CG are distinct and independent. Here, we argue for a unified representation achieved by taking into account fundamental representational principles of PSG, DG and CG. For simplicity, we show this by considering an embedded clause from Wan, spoken in Ivory Coast, as an illustrative case. The paper then attempts to explain, based on available empirical pieces of evidence, the plausible connections between the unified representation and the neurocognitive representation of continuity and discontinuity in natural language.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Olga Fischer and Viviana Masia for their editorial guidance and acumen. Also, we express our indebtedness to the two anonymous reviewers for their penetrating and thoughtful comments on the manuscript.
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Indexical meanings of the realization of /sˤ/ ص as [s] س in spoken and written Jordanian Arabic: a language change in progress?
- Nominalizations and its grammaticalization in standard Thai
- VOT in English by bilinguals with 2L1s: different approaches to voiceless and voiced stops
- An investigation of Persian response signals from an interactive perspective
- Another member out of the family: the description of manner of gait in Changana verbs of motion
- On the unified representation of continuity and discontinuity and its neurocognitive grounding
- Interaction and conventionalized expressions create the contexts for bleaching and constructional expansion: the case of GRAB
- The grammaticalization of the existential sign var in Turkish Sign Language: a Construction Grammar approach
- Morphological interpretations of syncretism in the panorama of Greek
- Book Reviews
- István Kecskés: The socio-cognitive approach to communication and pragmatics
- Jim Wood: Icelandic nominalizations and allosemy
- Carlos Acuña-Fariña: Syntactic processing: An overview
- Elly van Gelderen: The linguistic cycle: Economy and renewal in historical linguistics
- Heidrun Dorgeloh and Anja Wanner: Discourse syntax: English grammar beyond the sentence
- Rong Chen: Toward a motivation model of pragmatics
- John W. Schwieter and Julia Festman: The cognitive neuroscience of bilingualism
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Indexical meanings of the realization of /sˤ/ ص as [s] س in spoken and written Jordanian Arabic: a language change in progress?
- Nominalizations and its grammaticalization in standard Thai
- VOT in English by bilinguals with 2L1s: different approaches to voiceless and voiced stops
- An investigation of Persian response signals from an interactive perspective
- Another member out of the family: the description of manner of gait in Changana verbs of motion
- On the unified representation of continuity and discontinuity and its neurocognitive grounding
- Interaction and conventionalized expressions create the contexts for bleaching and constructional expansion: the case of GRAB
- The grammaticalization of the existential sign var in Turkish Sign Language: a Construction Grammar approach
- Morphological interpretations of syncretism in the panorama of Greek
- Book Reviews
- István Kecskés: The socio-cognitive approach to communication and pragmatics
- Jim Wood: Icelandic nominalizations and allosemy
- Carlos Acuña-Fariña: Syntactic processing: An overview
- Elly van Gelderen: The linguistic cycle: Economy and renewal in historical linguistics
- Heidrun Dorgeloh and Anja Wanner: Discourse syntax: English grammar beyond the sentence
- Rong Chen: Toward a motivation model of pragmatics
- John W. Schwieter and Julia Festman: The cognitive neuroscience of bilingualism