The volume investigates various approaches to mood distribution and mood variation in lexically selected complement clauses with special reference to Hungarian data. Its primary aim is to show that semantic factors play a crucial role in mood choice. The analysis focuses on the indicative/non-indicative opposition, the latter category includes the subjunctive, the imperative and the conditional. Critical discussion, revision and elaboration of previous semantic approaches pertaining to mood choice are presented, with particular emphasis on the applicability of the various analyses to mood phenomena in Hungarian. The author proposes two novel hypotheses about mood choice in Hungarian complement clauses.

This volume offers insight into different aspects of an interesting but fairly understudied language family, opens a path to new inquiries, and provides valuable contribution to linguistics, in general, and to Iranian linguistics, in particular. The articles in this volume offer novel analyses of significant properties of some of the Iranian languages, and contribute to various linguistic subareas such as experimental and historical linguistics as well as the morphology, syntax and semantics of several members of this language family. Specifically, this volume features a few articles on the Ezafe construction which shed new light on this interesting phenomenon of Western Iranian languages from historical, comparative and syntactic points of view. Moreover, a few articles address the syntax and formal semantics of properties of Persian, offering new insight into particular constructions in this language which are also fruitful for the general theory of linguistics. Crucially, all authors raise important questions, opening up the path for further investigations.

Complementizers may be defined as conjunctions that have the function of identifying clauses as complements. In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that they have additional functions. Some of these functions are semantic in the sense that they represent conventional contributions to the meanings of the complements. The present book puts a focus to these semantic complementizer functions.

A critical survey of key issues in the analysis of propositional attitude reports, a central topic in natural language semantics.

This collective volume contains a selection of research contributions, presented at the 30th Deutscher Romanistentag [German Conference on Romance languages and literatures] in 2007 in Vienna in the section “Mood and Modality in Romance”. The Romance languages studied here include Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, Catalan and French. All contributions thematically explore the status and importance of modality and mood and their reciprocal relationships with reference to theoretical approaches.

Although the notion of procedural meaning is found in areas such as discourse markers, reference, tense, modality and intonation, until now there has been no single volume entirely devoted to it. Over 25 years, since the initial proposal by Blakemore, a number of refinements have been suggested, yet some criticisms have also been raised. The role and status of the conceptual / procedural distinction within a theory of human communication and the nature of procedural encoding were in need of reassessment in the light of current research in linguistic theory, cognitive science, experimental pragmatics and language acquisition. The papers collected here serve this general purpose from different standpoints. Some of them consider the topic from the angle of its theoretical foundations and put forth original proposals aimed at clarifying the most controversial issues. Others take a more data-driven orientation and offer novel analyses illustrating how encoded instructions work and how much can be gained from approaching certain linguistic phenomena in procedural terms. The contributions in this volume represent an inflection point in the delimitation and understanding of the notion of procedural meaning and open new paths for future research.

The authors bridge the gap between the semantic and syntactic properties of verb tense and aspect, suggest a unified account of tense and aspect using Chomsky's Principles and Parameters Framework and compare tense and aspect systems in Romance languages with Germanic ones. In the OXFORD STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE SYNTAX series.

The authors bridge the gap between the semantic and syntactic properties of verb tense and aspect, and suggest a unified account of tense and aspect using Chomsky's Principles and Parameters Framework. They compare tense and aspect systems in Romance languages with Germanic ones.

In recent years, we have witnessed, on the one hand, an increased interest in cross-linguistic data in formal semantic studies, and, on the other hand, an increased concern for semantic issues in language typology. However, only few studies combine semantic and typological research for a particular semantic domain (such as the papers in Bach et al. (1995) on quantification and Smith (1997) on aspect). This book brings together formal semanticists with a cross-linguistic perspective and/or those working on lesser-known languages, and typologists interested in semantic theory, to discuss semantic variation in the specific domain of Tense, Aspect, and Mood/Modality.