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Paraphrase Grammars

Paraphrase Grammars

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Formal Linguistics Series

Paraphrase Grammars

R.M. Smaby

Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / General

The recent rapid development of transformational grammars has incorpo­ rated some strong claims in the areas of semantics and co-occurrence. The earlier structuralists relied on a minimum of information about the meaning of strings of a language. They asked only if strings of sounds were different in meaning - or simply were different words or phrases. Current transfor­ mational grammars, on the other hand, set as their goal the production of exactly the meaningful strings of a language. Stated slightly differently, they wish to specify exactly which strings of a language can occur together (meaningfully) in a given order. The present book purports to show that transformational grammar is in­ dependent of the current trends in semantics. I claim that exciting and sophisticated transformational grammars are required for describing when strings of a language mean the same, that is, for describing when strings of a language are paraphrases of each other. This task can be quite naturally limited to a project of much weaker semantic claims than those which are current in transformational linguistics.

Publication Date: 12 October 2011
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Imprint: Springer
ISBN-13: 9789401033404
Format: Paperback / softback
Page Count: 145

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