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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Grammar, syntax, linguistic structure > General
TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new
perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes
state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across
theoretical frameworks, as well as studies that provide new
insights by approaching language from an interdisciplinary
perspective. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for
cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in
its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards
linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as
well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for
a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the
ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes
monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes,
which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from
different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality
standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.
TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new
perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes
state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across
theoretical frameworks, as well as studies that provide new
insights by approaching language from an interdisciplinary
perspective. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for
cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in
its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards
linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as
well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for
a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the
ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes
monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes,
which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from
different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality
standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.
The architecture of the human language faculty has been one of the
main foci of the linguistic research of the last half century. This
branch of linguistics, broadly known as Generative Grammar, is
concerned with the formulation of explanatory formal accounts of
linguistic phenomena with the ulterior goal of gaining insight into
the properties of the 'language organ'. The series comprises high
quality monographs and collected volumes that address such issues.
The topics in this series range from phonology to semantics, from
syntax to information structure, from mathematical linguistics to
studies of the lexicon. To discuss your book idea or submit a
proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert
Recent years have seen a revival of interest in morphology. The
Yearbook of Morphology series supports and enforces this upswing of
morphological research and gives an overview of the current issues
and debates at the heart of this revival. The Yearbook of
Morphology 1994 focuses on prosodic morphology, i.e. the
interaction between morphological and prosodic structure, on the
semantics of word formation, and on a number of related issues in
the realm of inflection: the structure of paradigms, the relation
between inflection and word formation, and patterns of language
change with respect to inflection. There is also discussion of the
relevance of the notion level ordering' for morphological
generalizations. All theoretical and historical linguists,
morphologists, and phonologists will want to read this book.
Subjectification is a widespread phenomenon and has emerged as a
most pervasive tendency in diachronic semantic change (Traugott)
and in synchronic semantic extension (Langacker). Its importance is
increasingly valued despite the fact that it is an area that has
been treated differently by different scholars. One of the book's
objectives is to generate a clearer understanding of the two major
models of subjectivity, to see where they can meet but also where
intrinsic differences present barriers to any integration. Another
objective is to speculate on whether the notions of subjectivity
and subjectification have reshaped our understanding of grammar.
The goals of the volume are the following: The volume brings
together contributions dealing with particular areas of grammar in
the framework of subjectivity and subjectification. Starting with
Stein and Wright's 1995 edition, publications on the specific
process have broadened the scope of this research. Indeed, the
question 'how far have we come?', addressed in the introduction,
has become central in reaching a clearer understanding of the above
framework and even expanding it. Individual papers explore not only
wider questions and implications on the theoretical status of
subjectivity and subjectification in language, but are empirically
supported by thorough and extensive data from different languages
(Asian languages, German, Spanish, Greek, Dutch, English). These
studies of particular areas of grammar (modals, adjectives) or of
levels of analysis (syntax) can help implement or adapt the
existing accounts of subjectivity made in the literature. The
challenge for every single paper is to show whether the two major
approaches (Langacker's and Traugott's) can possibly be integrated
or whether they are fundamentally different. The papers also
investigate into the questions whether we have a continuum from
highly subjective to more objective, whether subjective need be
opposed to objective, or whether subjective may also be understood
in contrast to neutral (which is often the case in Traugott's
examples of grammaticalization). Furthermore, the issue of
intersubjectivity, i.e., putting the addressee's perspective
onstage, is also discussed.
The book explores Adjunct Control in Assamese, an Indo-Aryan
language spoken in North India by about 15 million people. The
author works within the Minimalist Program of syntactic theory.
Adjunct Control is a relation of co-referentiality between two
subjects, one in the matrix clause and one in the adjunct clause of
the same structure. The relevant adjuncts in Assamese are
non-finite clauses commonly known as Conjunctive Participle (CNP)
clauses. Four types of Adjunct Control are examined: (i) Forward
Control, in which only the matrix subject is pronounced; (ii)
Backward Control, in which only the subordinate subject is
pronounced; (iii) Copy Control, in which both subjects are
pronounced; and (iv) Expletive Control, in which case the two
control elements are expletives. While Forward Control is a
cross-linguistically common control pattern, Assamese also allows
the other three less common structures. The author analyzes Adjunct
Control as movement and provides a detailed account of the
conditions that drive and constrain each of the four types of
control. The theoretical implications are highlighted. The book is
unique both empirically and theoretically. It is the first
monograph which deals with Assamese generative syntax. It is also
the first book to explore control structures in a single
understudied language in such detail. In addition to Assamese, the
book provides data from Telugu, Bengali, Konkani, Marathi, Tamil,
and Hindi.
Our book on nominalizations in Quechua summarizes the work we have
carried out on. this language over the last ten years. We are happy
to offer it as a contribution to linguistic theory. For their
interest, friendship and patience, we thank the numerous Quechua
speakers who gave us access to their language, making it possible
for us to reach an understanding of it which led us to writing this
book. More specifically we would like to thank our Cuzco informants
who contributed directly in the estab- lishment of the data base on
which our analyses are built: Angelica and Justo Leon Baca,
Evaristo Vasquez, Felix Mamani, Jose Rodriguez, Lita Cancino
Chac6n, Mercedes Ordonez Calder6n, Carlos Quispe Centeno. We want
to thank students and colleagues in Amherst, Amsterdam, Cam-
bridge, Lima, Montreal, and Tilburg for fruitful discussions on
several of the issues raised in this book; particularly, Hans den
Besten, Reineke Bok-Bennema, Dan Finer, Anneke Groos, Ken Hale,
Simon van de Kerke, Jaklin Kornfilt, James Pustejovsky, Felix
Quesada, Henk van Riemsdijk, Tom Roeper, Gustavo Solis, Edwin
Williams and the students of the seminar on nominalizations (UQAM,
Fall 1983).
The book contains 30 descriptive chapters dealing with a specific
language contact situation. The chapters follow a uniform
organisation format, being the narrative version of a standard
comprehensive questionnaire previously distributed to all authors.
The questionnaire targets systematically the possibility of contact
influence / grammatical borrowing in a full range of categories.
The uniform structure facilitates a comparison among the chapters
and the languages covered. The introduction describes the setup of
the questionnaire and the methodology of the approach, along with a
survey of the difficulties of sampling in contact linguistics. Two
evaluative chapters, each authored by one of the co-editors, draws
general conclusions from the volume as a whole (one in relation to
borrowed grammatical categories and meaningful hierarchies, the
other in relation to the distribution of Matter and Pattern
replication).
The approximately 250 languages of the Tibeto-Burman family are
spoken by 65 million speakers in ten different countries including
Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Burma and China/Tibet. They are
characterized by a fascinating linguistic, historical and cultural
diversity. The languages spoken in the Himalayas, on their southern
slopes and on the high Tibetan plateau in the north constitute the
core of this diversity. Thus, the 21 papers mainly deal with these
languages and some go even beyond to the area of the Blue Lake in
northern Amdo and to southern Kham within linguistic Tibet. The ten
papers dedicated to Tibetan linguistic studies offer approaches to
the phonological analysis of Balti, to labial place assimilation,
perfective stem renovation and stem alternation connected with
verbal valence in Amdo Tibetan, to directional markers in Tokpe
Gola in northeastern Nepal, to secondary verb constructions in Kham
Tibetan, to narrative texts in Dzongkha, to case-marking patterns
in various Tibetan dialects and to language history of Tibetan in
general. Other papers deal with deictic patterns and narratives in
western Himalayan Kinnauri and with the classification of
neighbouring Bunan. With the Tamangic languages of northern Nepal
the relationship between vowels and consonants and the development
of demonstratives and plural markers are addressed. A further paper
investigates the genetic relationship between Dzala and Dakpa, two
East Bodish languages, and another one case-marking in Rabha and
Manipuri in northeastern India. With the Kiranti languages Sampang,
Limbu, Chaurasia and Sunwar in eastern Nepal, questions of accent,
pronominally marked determiners, subclassification and language
shift are discussed. The impressive selection of languages and
linguistic topics dealt with in this book underlines the diversity
of the Tibeto-Burman languages in Central and South Asia and
highlights their place within present-day linguistic research. The
results achieved by leading experts are remarkable in general, and
the book is of interest to linguists, anthropologists and
geographers.
This book presents a unified formal approach to various
contemporary linguistic formalisms such as Government &
Binding, Minimalism or Tree Adjoining Grammar. Through a careful
introduction of mathematical techniques from logic, automata theory
and universal algebra, the book aims at graduate students and
researchers who want to learn more about tightly constrained
logical approaches to natural language syntax. Therefore it
features a complete and well illustrated introduction to the
connection between declarative approaches formalized in monadic
second-order logic (MSO) and generative ones formalized in various
forms of automata as well as of tree grammars. Since MSO logic (on
trees) yields only context-free languages, and at least the last
two of the formalisms mentioned above clearly belong to the class
of mildly context-sensitive formalisms, it becomes necessary to
deal with the problem of the descriptive complexity of the
formalisms involved in another way. The proposed genuinely new
two-step approach overcomes this limitation of MSO logic while
still retaining the desired tightly controlled formal properties.
The book offers insight into the publication history of
eighteenth-century English grammars in unprecedented detail. It is
based on a close analysis of various types of relevant information:
Alston's bibliography of 1965, showing that this source needs to be
revised urgently; the recently published online database Eighteenth
Century Collections Online (ECCO) with respect to sources of
information never previously explored or analysed (such as book
catalogues and library catalogues); Carol Percy's database on the
reception of eighteenth-century grammars in contemporary periodical
reviews; and so-called precept corpora containing data on the
treatment in a large variety of grammars (and other works) of
individual grammatical constructions. By focussing on individual
grammars and their history a number of long-standing questions are
solved with respect to the authorship of particular grammars and
related work (the Brightland/Gildon grammar and the Bellum
Grammaticale; Ann Fisher's grammar) while new questions are
identified, such as the significant change of approach between the
publication of one grammar and its second edition of seven years
later (Priestley), and the dependence of later practical grammars
(for mothers and their children) on earlier publications. The
contributions present a view of the grammarians as individuals with
(or without) specific qualifications for undertaking what they did,
with their own ideas on teaching methodology, and as writers
ultimately engaged in the common aim presenting practical grammars
of English to the general public. Interestingly - and importantly -
this collection of articles demonstrates the potential of ECCO as a
resource for further research in the field.
The present volume is an edited collection of original
contributions which all deal with the issue of recursion in human
language(s). All contributions originate as papers that were
presented at a conference on the topic of recursion in human
language organized by Dan Everett in March 22, 2007. For the
purpose of this collection all articles underwent a double-blind
peer-review process. The present chapters were written in the
course of 2008. Although the 'recursive' nature of linguistic
expressions, i.e. the apparent possibility of producing an infinite
number of expressions with finite means, has been noted for a long
time, no general agreement seems to exist concerning the empirical
status as well as mathematical formalization of this
'characteristic' of human languages or of the grammars that lie
behind these utterances that make up these languages. Renewed
interest in this subject was sparked by recent claims that
'recursion' is perhaps the sole uniquely human and as such
universal trait of human language (cf. Chomsky, Hauser and Fitch
2000). In this volume, the issue of recursion is tackled from a
variety of angles. Some articles cover formal issues regarding the
proper characterization or definition of recursion, while others
focus on empirical issues by examining the kinds of structure in
languages that suggest recursive mechanism in the grammar. Most
articles discuss syntactic phenomena, but several involve
morphology, the lexicon and phonology. In addition, we find
discussions that involve evolutionary notions and language
disorders, and the broader cognitive context of recursion.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students,
researchers and practitioners in all of the social and
language-related sciences carefully selected book-length
publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings
and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in
its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary
field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical,
supplement and complement each other. The series invites the
attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests,
sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians
etc. to the development of the sociology of language.
When using language, many aspects of our messages are left implicit
in what we say. While grammar is responsible for what we express
explicitly, pragmatics explains how we infer additional meanings.
The problem is that it is not always a trivial matter to decide
which of the meanings conveyed is explicit (grammatical) and which
implicit (pragmatic). Pragmatics and Grammar lays out a methodology
for students and scholars to distinguish between the two. It
explains how and why grammar and pragmatics combine together in
natural discourse, and how pragmatic uses become grammatical in
time.
This collection of articles brings together new research from both
established and emerging international experts in the study of
English grammar, all of whom have engaged with the notion of
'construction' in their work. The research here is concerned with
both synchrony and diachrony, with the relationship between
Construction Grammar and other linguistic theories, and with a
number of issues in the study of grammar, such as raising and
control phenomena, transitivity, relative clause structure, the
syntax of gerunds, attributive and predicative uses of adjectives,
modality, and grammaticalization. Some of the articles are written
within a constructional framework, while others highlight potential
problems with constructional approaches to English grammar; some of
the articles are based on data collected from corpora, some on
introspection; some of the articles suggest potential developments
for diachronic construction grammar, while others seek to compare
Construction Grammar with other cognitive linguistic theories, most
particularly Word Grammar. The research reported in this volume
presents a series of ways of looking at the relationship between
constructions and patterns in English grammar, either now or in the
past. The book addresses scholars and advanced students who are
interested in English grammar, constructional approaches to
language, and the relationship between functional and formal issues
in linguistic description and theory.
Aimed at undergraduate and beginning graduate students, this work
covers the varieties of syntactic phenomena in different languages
and a method of analyzing and describing them. The method is based
on the concept of the syntactic construction, which is shared by
various views of language structure. In this particular
presentation, a construction is characterized as a combination of
obligatory and optional functions, and each of these functions is
related to a class of manifestations. Syntax as a whole is then
seen as interrelating constructions on the ranks (size-levels) of
the phrase, clause, and sentence. Besides the essential features of
phrase, clause, and sentence structures, there are chapters devoted
to special topics such as clitics, negation, clausal organization,
and voice and related devices.
The book is a detailed generative study of a number of derivational
and inflectional processes of suffixation in contemporary English
and Polish. The theoretical focus is on the constraints on
morphological rules. Suffixes are shown to be sensitive to
morphological structure of their hosts in ways which undermine some
major claims of the current mainstream generative theory of the
flexion. Alternative constraints are proposed instead.
This popular introductory textbook offers a lively and
comprehensive introduction to current morphological theory and
analysis, enabling beginners to approach current literature in the
subject with confidence. Part I develops students' understanding of
traditional and structuralist notions of word structure and
provides them with a firm grounding in word structure and word
formation. Part II explores the relationship between morphology and
phonology, while Part III looks at morphology in relation to syntax
and the lexicon. Numerous practical exercises which involve
formulating hypotheses and testing them against linguistic data
cement the reader's understanding of the field. This accessible
introduction to morphology is an ideal resource for students of
English and Linguistics and their teachers.
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.
In almost every part of the world, minority languages are
threatened with extinction. At the same time, dedicated efforts are
being made to document endangered languages, to maintain them, and
even to revive once-extinct languages. The present volume examines
a wide range of issues that concern language endangerment
andlanguage revitalization. Among other things, it is shown that
languages may be endangered to different degrees, endangerment
situations in selected areas of the world are surveyed and
definitions of language death and types of language death
presented. The book also examines causes of language endangerment,
speech behaviour in a language endangerment situation, structural
changes in endangered languages, as well as types of speakers
encountered in a language endangerment situation. In addition,
methods of documentation and of training for linguists are proposed
which will enable scholars to play an active role in the
documentation of endangered languages and in language
revitalization. The book presents a comprehensive overview of the
field. It is clearly written and contains ample references to the
relevant literature, thus providing useful guidance for further
research. The author often draws on his own experience of
documenting endangered languages and of language revival activities
in Australia. The volume is of interest to a wide readership,
including linguists, anthropologists, sociologists, and educators.
TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new
perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes
state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across
theoretical frameworks, as well as studies that provide new
insights by approaching language from an interdisciplinary
perspective. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for
cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in
its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards
linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as
well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for
a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the
ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes
monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes,
which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from
different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality
standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.
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