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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Grammar, syntax, linguistic structure > General
This volume presents articles that focus on the application of formal models in the study of language in a variety of innovative ways, and is dedicated to Jacques Moeschler, professor at University of Geneva, to mark the occasion of his 60th birthday. The contributions, by seasoned and budding linguists of all different linguistic backgrounds, reflect Jacques Moeschler's diverse and visionary research over the years. The book contains three parts. The first part shows how different formal models can be applied to the analysis of such diverse problems as the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of tense, aspect and deictic expressions, syntax and pragmatics of quantifiers and semantics and pragmatics of connectives and negation. The second part presents the application of formal models to the treatment of cognitive issues related to the use of language, and in particular, demonstrating cognitive accounts of different types of human interactions, the context in utterance interpretation (salience, inferential comprehension processes), figurative uses of language (irony pretence), the role of syntax in Theory of Mind in autism and the analysis of the aesthetics of nature. Finally, the third part addresses computational and corpus-based approaches to natural language for investigating language variation, language universals and discourse related issues. This volume will be of great interest to syntacticians, pragmaticians, computer scientists, semanticians and psycholinguists.
A revival of interest in morphology has occurred during recent years. The aim of the Yearbook of Morphology series is to support and enforce this upswing of morphological research and to give an overview of the current issues and debates at the heart of this revival. The Yearbook of Morphology 1995 focuses on an important issue in the current morphological debate: the relation between inflection and word formation. What are the criteria for their demarcation, in which ways do they interact and how is this distinction acquired by children? The papers presented here concur in rejecting the split morphology hypothesis' that claims that inflection and word formation belong to different components of the grammar. This volume also deals with the marked phenomenon of subtractive morphology and its theoretical implications. Theoretical and historical linguists, morphologists, phonologists and psycholinguists interested in linguistic issues will find this book of interest.
Bridging theoretical modelling and advanced empirical techniques is a central aim of current linguistic research. The progress in empirical methods contributes to the precise estimation of the properties of linguistic data and promises new ways for justifying theoretical models and testing their implications. The contributions to the present collective volume take up this challenge and focus on the relevance of empirical results achieved through up-to-date methodology for the theoretical analysis and modelling of argument structure. They tackle issues of argument structure from different perspectives addressing questions related to diverse verb types (unaccusatives, unergatives, (di)transitives, psych verbs), morpho-syntactic operations (prefixation, simple vs. particle verbs), case distinctions (dative vs. accusative, case vs. prepositions), argument and voice alternations (dative vs. benefactive alternation, active vs. passive), word order alternations and the impact of animacy, agentivity, and eventivity on argument structure. The volume will be of interest to theoretical linguists, psycholinguists, and corpus linguists interested in the syntax of argument structure and its modelling using precise empirical methods.
This book represents the culmination of an extended period of field work on the Palauan language, carried out while I was a graduate student at the University of California at San Diego. The book was born as a short term paper written in 1982; from a forgettable infancy, that paper grew and grew, reaching the age of majority in my dissertation at the end of 1985. Some of its offspring have gone off on their own, as indepen dent papers, as course materials, or as thoughts that have not yet com pletely materialized. Some have been disowned. The full adulthood of this study of Palauan is realized in the present book. Virtually every section of the dissertation has been rewritten, updated, or otherwise (I hope) improved. Where the dissertation was still struggling with various problems, the book has found solutions. The aim of the book remains, however, to give broad coverage of Palauan, with emphasis on A' binding, rather than to focus narrowly on a few highly specific theoretical issues. I hope to have achieved a balance between presenting the language clearly and nonprejudicially, and deal ing with various of its properties in current theoretical terms. If I have, the book should prove to be a resource for further typological study of the phenomena it describes."
Essential German Grammar is a student-friendly grammar and workbook designed to give learners a firm foundation on which to build a real understanding of both spoken and written German. The reference grammar section offers clear explanations of key grammar points while a separate exercise section gives students the opportunity to test themselves and put into practice what they have learned. This new edition has been revised and updated throughout. Explanations, tables and exercises have been improved and a number of the authentic texts and illustrations have been replaced by new material. Key features of this second edition include: User-friendly layout with updated 2 colour design, engaging illustrations and visually appealing tables throughout to aid the learning process Clear and accessible explanations with memorable examples informed by the latest research on the German language and presented in accordance with current teaching methodology Helpful parallels between English and German provided where relevant End-of-chapter extracts taken from contemporary journalistic or authentic literary sources, illustrating grammar in context, with model translations provided at the back of the book Material to enable better strategic learning and understanding, including a Why Grammar? FAQ section, a glossary of grammatical terms in both English and German and a complete answer key to exercises Created especially for the new edition, a companion website at www.routledge.com/cw/kaiser offering a wealth of additional materials, including interactive exercises, quizzes and flashcards to test student understanding, downloadable PDF sheets for classroom use, PowerPoint slides for instructors and audio recordings illustrating the sounds of spoken German. Written by highly e
The future of English linguistics as envisaged by the editors of Topics in English Linguistics lies in empirical studies which integrate work in English linguistics into general and theoretical linguistics on the one hand, and comparative linguistics on the other. The TiEL series features volumes that present interesting new data and analyses, and above all fresh approaches that contribute to the overall aim of the series, which is to further outstanding research in English linguistics.
The future of English linguistics as envisaged by the editors of Topics in English Linguistics lies in empirical studies which integrate work in English linguistics into general and theoretical linguistics on the one hand, and comparative linguistics on the other. The TiEL series features volumes that present interesting new data and analyses, and above all fresh approaches that contribute to the overall aim of the series, which is to further outstanding research in English linguistics.
In its evolution from a synthetic to an analytic language, Bulgarian acquired a grammaticalized category of definiteness. The book presents the first attempt to explore in detail how this happened by comparing the earliest Modern Bulgarian texts with contemporary dialect and standard Bulgarian data. The basic units of analysis are the various types of nominal structures headed by nouns or pronouns. The analysis requires the strict terminological disentanglement of form from content and the adoption of a default inheritance model of definiteness that allow the exhaustive classification and tagging of nominal structures encountered in the texts. Tagging makes it possible to apply quantitative analysis to nominal structure and to assess the types available in the early texts from a current native-speaker perspective. Based on an S-curve model of language change, the study establishes that overt markers of definiteness were first made available to identifiability-based definites, then to inclusiveness-based definites, quantitative generics and unique referents. The overt markers of indefiniteness followed suit, separating indefinites from non-specifics and typifying generics. This progression of definiteness was directed by variables such as person, animacy, gender, number and noun-class, and started in contexts in which definiteness closely interacted with possessivity. Such an analysis leads to the realization that the two-dimensional S-curve model does not account for all language change and that there is a need for a three-dimensional model. It also demonstrates that, contrary to previous assumptions, there is continuity between the early Slavic marker of definiteness (long-form adjectives) and the Modern Bulgarian article. This discovery, in conjunction with geolinguistic arguments, sheds new light on the role that relations inside the Balkan Sprachbund played in the grammaticalization of Bulgarian definiteness.
This is the first comprehensive account of Hungarian stress and intonation to appear in English. The emphasis is on description, but a large number of theoretical issues are also dealt with in an original way. Hungarian is a Uralic or Finno-Agric language spoken by over 13 million people in Central Europe. The study of its stress and intonation will be of special interest to intonationists, phonologists, Hungarian language specialists, and their students at intermediate level and above.
"Adverbs, Events, and Other Things" treats issues in the semantics of manner adverbs. Part I takes up the Davidsonian claim that manner adverbs are predicates of events. The book investigates the subtle interplay of event individuation and various kinds of event modification and claims that manner adverbs play a core role in singling out both simple and complex events. Part II of the book is devoted to word order phenomena involving manner adverbs in German. Presenting a general theory of predication structure for German sentences, the author shows how the position of manner adverbs - in interplay with other factors - determines the division of an utterance into topic and comment. She thereby gives semantic evidence in favour of the claim that manner adverbs in German have a syntactic base position.
The future of English linguistics as envisaged by the editors of Topics in English Linguistics lies in empirical studies which integrate work in English linguistics into general and theoretical linguistics on the one hand, and comparative linguistics on the other. The TiEL series features volumes that present interesting new data and analyses, and above all fresh approaches that contribute to the overall aim of the series, which is to further outstanding research in English linguistics.
The series builds an extensive collection of high quality descriptions of languages around the world. Each volume offers a comprehensive grammatical description of a single language together with fully analyzed sample texts and, if appropriate, a word list and other relevant information which is available on the language in question. There are no restrictions as to language family or area, and although special attention is paid to hitherto undescribed languages, new and valuable treatments of better known languages are also included. No theoretical model is imposed on the authors; the only criterion is a high standard of scientific quality. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert.
1. Two main themes connect the papers on Japanese syntax collected in this volume: movements of noun phrases and case marking, although each in turn relates to other issues in syntax and semantics. These two themes can be traced back to my 1965 MIT dissertation. The problem of the so-called topic marker wa is a perennial problem in Japanese linguistics. I devoted Chapter 2 of my dissertation to the problem of wa. My primary concern there was transformational genera tive syntax. I was interested in the light that Chomsky'S new theory could shed on the understanding of Japanese sentence structure. I generalized the problem of deriving wa-phrases to the problem of deriving phrases accompanied by the quantifier-like particles mo, demo, sae as well as wa. These particles, mo, demo and sae may roughly be equated with a/so, or something like it and even, respectively, and are grouped together with wa under the name of huku-zyosi as a subcategory of particles in Kokugogaku, Japanese scholarship on Japanese grammar. This taxonomy itself is a straightforward consequence of distributional analysis, and does not require the mechanisms of transformational grammar. My transformational analysis of wa, and by extension, that of the other huku zyosi, consisted in formally relating the function of the post-nominal use of wa to that of the post-predicative use by means of what I called an attachment transformation."
Hdi is a hitherto undescribed language spoken in northern Cameroon. The language belongs to the Central Branch of Chadic. The aim of the book is to provide a fairly complete description of the grammar of this language. Consequently, the grammar describes the phonology, morphology and syntax of Hdi and the semantic and discourse functions coded in this language. Most clauses in Hdi are verb-initial, with the subject directly following the verb. The object is often marked by a preposition. What makes Hdi unusual is that the object-marking preposition is unique and does not function elsewhere as a locative preposition. Another interesting feature of Hdi is that there are two types of clauses, pragmatically independent and pragmatically dependent, and that the difference between these is coded by different tense and aspectual systems. In addition, there are two clausal orders for complex sentences: The order embedded clause-matrix clause codes one type of modality, while the order matrix clause-embedded clause codes another. The language also has a rich system of verbal extensions coding the semantic roles of arguments and adjuncts and the direction of movement. The grammar is of interest not only to linguists working in African, Chadic and Afroasiatic linguistics, but also to general linguists, since it describes phenomena rarely seen in other languages of the world. The grammar is described in terms accessible to linguists working within various theoretical frameworks.
This book presents a study of various important aspects of Tamazight Berber syntax within the generative tradition. Work on Berber linguistics from a generative perspective remains in many ways uncharted territory. There has been hardly any published research on this languageand its different dialects, especially in English -- this book fills some of these gaps and lays down the foundations forfurther research.Ouali looks at three seemingly disparate ranges of syntactic phenomena, namely Subject-verb agreement, Clitic-doubling and Negative Concord. These phenomena have received different analytical treatments, but Ouali proposes that they are all forms of agreement derived under the same Chomskian 'Agree' mechanism. The book addresses a fundamental question in the ongoing debate in recent Minimalism with regard to how subject-verb agreement is obtained and proposes a new analysis of the so-called Anti-Agreement Effect.Itwill be of interest to all syntacticians and to researchers in Afroasiatic languages.
Serial verbs are a recently recognized construction in which a string of verbs or verb-like items is used to convey a single meaning within one clause, for example, 'go get your hair cut'. Though the construction is rare in English, it is common in many languages. This book shows what serial verbs are, where they are found (particularly in the Oceanic languages of the Pacific), and how current theory accounts for them. The author argues that their formation is a consequence of contact between different languages.
The fourth volume in a series on the languages of Amazonia. This volume includes grammatical descriptions of Wai Wai, Warekena, a comparative survey of morphosyntactic features of the Tupi-Guarani languages, and a paper on interclausal reference phenomena in Amahuaca.
Saramaccan has been central to various debates regarding the origin and nature of creole languages. Being the most removed of all English-based creoles from European language structure in terms of phonology, morphology and syntax, it has been seen as one of the most extreme instantiations of the creolization process. This is the first full-length description of Saramaccan. The grammar documents, in particular, a valence-sensitive system of indicating movement and direction via serial verb constructions, hitherto overlooked amidst the generalized phenomenon of serialization itself.
French Creoles: A Comprehensive and Comparative Grammar is the first complete reference to present the morphology, grammar and syntax of a representative selection of French Creoles in one volume. The book is organised to promote a thorough understanding of the grammar of French Creoles and presents its complexities in a concise and readable form. An extensive index, cross-referencing and a generous use of headings provides readers with immediate access to the information they require. The varieties included within the volume provide a representative collection of French Creoles from the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, including: Mauritian Creole, Seychelles Creole, Reunion Creole (where relevant), Haitian Creole, Martinique Creole, Guadeloupe Creole, Guyanese French Creole, Karipuna, St. Lucia Creole, Louisiana Creole and Tayo. By providing a comprehensive description of a range of French Creoles in a clear and non-technical manner, this grammar is the ideal reference for all linguists and researchers with an interest in Creole studies and in French, descriptive and historical linguistics.
As a contribution to the ongoing discussion of the genesis of the Germanic language, this book investigates the strong verbs of Proto-Germanic using a new approach that combines historical and typological morphology with quantitative etymology. It reveals that the morphological peculiarities and the etymological problems of the strong verbs have been considerably underestimated. The first part of the book explains how drastically the inherited verb system was transformed when it was uniformized and simplified around a functionalized verbal ablaut. In particular, it is shown that the systemic position of ablaut is typologically different from that in the verb morphology of the Indo-European parent language. Moreover, the origin of the lengthened grade preterits and other well-known morphological problems of the strong verbs are discussed. After developing a methodological framework, the second part of the book presents a quantitative analysis of the etymological situation of the strong verbs. It demonstrates that the etymological relations of the strong verbs are significantly less clear than commonly assumed, as almost half of them have no accepted etymology. A comparative quantification of the primary verbs of Sanskrit and Ancient Greek, both of which possess much better etymological connections within the Indo-European language family, underlines the significance of the Germanic data and the validity of the analytical framework. Taken together, the investigations presented in this book put the Germanic strong verbs in a new and markedly different light. Their largely obscure etymological situation in combination with their far-reaching morphological restructuring has telling implications for the prehistory of the Germanic languages and suggests new pathways for future research.
This set reissues 22 books on syntax, originally published between 1971 and 1994. Together, the volumes cover key topics within the larger subject of syntax, including reflexivization, morphology and syntactical theory. Written by an international set of scholars, particular volumes focus on languages such as French and Spanish, whilst other volumes are devoted specifically to syntax in the English language. This collection provides insight and perspective on various elements of syntax over a period of over 20 years and demonstrates its enduring importance as a field of research.
This book, first published in 1990, is a study of both the specific syntactic changes in the more recent stages of Greek and of the nature of syntactic change in general. Guided by the constraints and principles of Universal Grammar, this hypothesis of this study allows for an understanding of how these changes in Greek syntax occurred and so provides insight into the mechanism of syntactic change. This title will be of interest to students of language and linguistics.
In this book, leading linguists explore the empirical scope of syntactic theory, by concentrating on a set of phenomena for which both syntactic and nonsyntactic analyses initially appear plausible. Exploring the nature of such phenomena permits a deeper understanding of the nature of syntax and of neighbouring modules and their interaction. The book contributes to both traditional work in generative syntax and to the recent emphasis placed on questions related to the interfaces. The major topics covered include areas of current intensive research within the Minimalist Program and syntactic theory more generally, such as constraints on scope and binding relations, information-structural effects on syntactic structure, the structure of words and idioms, argument- and event-structural alternations, and the nature of the relations between syntactic, semantic, and phonological representations. After the editors' introduction, the volume is organized into four thematic sections: architectures; syntax and information structure; syntax and the lexicon; and lexical items at the interfaces. The volume is of interest to syntactic theorists, as well as linguists and cognitive scientists working in neighbouring disciplines such as lexical and compositional semantics, pragmatics and discourse structure, and morphophonology, and anyone with an interest in the modular architecture of the language faculty. |
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