Although the interest in the concept of partitivity has continuously increased in the last decades and has given rise to considerable advances in research, the fine-grained morpho-syntactic and semantic variation displayed by partitive elements across European languages is far from being well-described, let alone well-understood. There are two main obstacles to this: on the one hand, theoretical linguistics and typological linguistics are fragmented in different methodological approaches that hinder the full sharing of cross-theoretic advances; on the other hand, partitive elements have been analyzed in restricted linguistic environments, which would benefit from a broader perspective. The aim of the PARTE project, from which this volume stems, is precisely to bring together linguists of different theoretical approaches using different methodologies to address this notion in its many facets. This volume focuses on Partitive Determiners, Partitive Pronouns and Partitive Case in European languages, their emergence and spread in diachrony, their acquisition by L2 speakers, and their syntax and interpretation. The volume is the first to provide such an encompassing insight into the notion of partitivity.

Among the most prolifically treated topics in grammaticalization approaches to semantic change is the development of periphrastic past constructions, particularly the 'have'-perfects in Romance and other Indo-European languages. This issue is an intriguing one for language researchers since it offers the opportunity to observe language change both as an incipient process that involves the transition of some lexical element into a more 'grammatical' role as well as a process of semantic generalization without the necessity of overt structural reorganization. This book explores the development of the periphrastic past (or preterito perfecto compuesto) in Spanish, with special attention to its cross-dialectal distribution vis-a-vis the simple perfective past (or preterito), and assumes a multi-disciplinary perspective, drawing on insights from semantic and pragmatic as well as sociolinguistic approaches to language change. The resulting proposals, developed on the basis of spoken language data from cross-dialectal samples of Spanish, address the nature of language change and the variable forces that shape it.

Morphology and Lexical Semantics explores the meanings of morphemes and how they combine to form the meanings of complex words, including derived words (writer, unionise), compounds (dog bed, truck driver) and words formed by conversion. Rochelle Lieber discusses the lexical semantics of word formation in a systematic way, allowing the reader to explore the nature of affixal polysemy, the reasons why there are multiple affixes with the same function and the issues of mismatch between form and meaning in word formation. Using a series of case studies from English, this book develops and justifies the theoretical apparatus necessary for raising and answering many questions about the semantics of word formation. Distinguishing between a lexical semantic skeleton that is featural and hierarchically organised and a lexical semantic body that is holistic, it shows how the semantics of word formation has a paradigmatic character.

Both compounds and multi-word expressions are complex lexical units, made up of at least two constituents. The most basic difference is that the former are morphological objects and the latter result from syntactic processes. However, the exact demarcation between compounds and multi-word expressions differs greatly from language to language and is often a matter of debate in and across languages. Similarly debated is whether and how these two different kinds of units complement or compete with each other. The volume presents an overview of compounds and multi-word expressions in a variety of European languages. Central questions that are discussed for each language concern the formal distinction between compounds and multi-word expressions, their formation and their status in lexicon and grammar. The volume contains chapters on German, English, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Russian, Polish, Finnish, and Hungarian as well as a contrastive overview with a focus on German. It brings together insights from word-formation theory, phraseology and theory of grammar and aims to contribute to the understanding of the lexicon, both from a language-specific and cross-linguistic perspective.

Plural marking, numeral classifiers and reduplication constitute the main means of quantification marking in the domain of grammar. The contributions in this book focus onthe typological correlation between the three different strategies for quantification, as well as on some general issues. A better understanding of the quantification strategies in the languages of China will enrich our comprehension of human language and thought. The book is expected to have an impact on the study of linguistic typology, language contact, and patterns of the evolution.

*The first book to provide an accessible introduction to the life and work of the late MAK Halliday, who was one of the world's leading linguists *Halliday's theories changed the way languages are taught and learned, introducing a functional approach and his work is of wide interest within linguistics, applied linguistics and language learning *This is the most accessible and reader-friendly of books about Halliday ,clearly defining key terms, theories and applications of systemic functional linguistics for a student audience

This book defends a version of linguistic idealism, the thesis that the world is a product of language. In the course of defending this radical thesis, Gaskin addresses a wide range of topics in contemporary metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophical logic, and syntax theory. Starting from the context and compositionality principles, and the idea of a systematic theory of meaning in the Tarski-Davidson tradition, Gaskin argues that the sentence is the primary unit of linguistic meaning, and that the main aspects of meaning, sense and reference, are themselves theoretical posits. Ontology, which is correlative with reference, emerges as language-driven. This linguistic idealism is combined with a realism that accepts the objectivity of science, and it is accordingly distinguished from empirical pragmatism. Gaskin contends that there is a basic metaphysical level at which everything is expressible in language; but the vindication of linguistic idealism is nuanced inasmuch as there is also a derived level, asymmetrically dependant on the basic level, at which reality can break free of language and reach into the realms of the unnameable and indescribable. Language and World will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in metaphysics, philosophy of language, and linguistics.

*The first book to provide an accessible introduction to the life and work of the late MAK Halliday, who was one of the world's leading linguists *Halliday's theories changed the way languages are taught and learned, introducing a functional approach and his work is of wide interest within linguistics, applied linguistics and language learning *This is the most accessible and reader-friendly of books about Halliday ,clearly defining key terms, theories and applications of systemic functional linguistics for a student audience

Chinese grammar is characterized by its simple structure, lack of inflections, and wide use of monosyllabic morphemes. With the increased popularity of learning Chinese as a second language, there is a demand for a guide to Chinese grammar that's targeted at second language learners. This four-volume set is one of the earliest and most influential works of Chinese grammar, with a special focus on teaching and learning Chinese as a second language. Drawing on rich teaching experience, the authors analyze a myriad of real-world examples to describe Chinese grammatical phenomena and rules while introducing the general grammar system of Chinese. In addition, the use of notional words in modern Chinese grammar is demonstrated, including nouns, pronouns, numerals, quantifiers, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Since the first edition came out in 1983, this set has been revised twice and has remained one of the best sellers in the field. Practitioners and scholars of teaching Chinese as a second language, as well as students with a basic knowledge of Chinese, will find it to be a handy reference.

Chinese grammar is characterized by its simple structure, lack of inflections, and wide use of monosyllabic morphemes. With the increased popularity of learning Chinese as a second language, there is a demand for a guide to Chinese grammar that's targeted at second language learners. This four-volume set is one of the earliest and most influential works of Chinese grammar, with a special focus on teaching and learning Chinese as a second language. Drawing on rich teaching experience, the authors analyze a myriad of real world examples to describe Chinese grammatical phenomena and rules while introducing the general grammar system of Chinese. This volume introduces sentence constituents in modern Chinese grammar, including subjects, objects, attributes, adverbials, complements, double references, and parentheses. Since the first edition came out in 1983, this set has been revised twice and remained one of the best sellers in the field. Practitioners and scholars of teaching Chinese as a second language, as well as students with a basic knowledge of Chinese, will find it to be a handy reference.

Chinese grammar is characterized by its simple structure, lack of inflections, and wide use of monosyllabic morphemes. With the increased popularity of learning Chinese as a second language, there is a demand for a guide to Chinese grammar that's targeted at second language learners. This four-volume set is one of the earliest and most influential works of Chinese grammar, with a special focus on teaching and learning Chinese as a second language. Drawing on rich teaching experience, the authors analyze a myriad of real-world examples to describe Chinese grammatical phenomena and rules while introducing the general grammar system of Chinese. This volume introduces several simple sentence and compound sentence structures of modern Chinese grammar. In addition, the authors examine discourse and other larger units of sentences in use. Since the first edition came out in 1983, this set has been revised twice and remained one of the best sellers in the field. Practitioners and scholars of teaching Chinese as a second language, as well as students with a basic knowledge of Chinese, will find it to be a handy reference.

The study offers an analysis of three grammatical constructions specifically employed in direct performance of directive speech acts in Polish. Constructions of this type have not yet been widely analyzed, as research pertaining to the relation between the grammatical structure of an utterance and its pragmatic effects has focused mainly on indirect speech acts. The study combines a discussion of a wide range of corpus examples with a detailed analysis of hand-picked examples situated in specific contexts. The aim is to show how the grammatical make-up of a construction functions with contextual factors to bring about a range of pragmatic effects pertaining to the speakers' interaction and their interpersonal relation. The framework of the study is the theory of cognitive grammar.

This volume explores the interpretation of indefinites and the constraints on their distribution by paying particular attention to key issues in the interface between syntax and semantics: the relation between the semantic properties of indefinite determiners and the denotation of indefinite DPs, their scope, and their behaviour in generic and conditional sentences. Examples come from French, other Romance languages and English. Central to the proposed analyses is a distinction between two types of entities, individualized entities and amounts. Weak indefinites are analyzed as existential generalized quantifiers over amounts and strong indefinites as either Skolem terms or generalized quantifiers over individualized entities. The up-to-date review of the literature and the new falsifiable proposals contained in this book will be of particular interest to linguistics students and scholars interested in the cross-linguistic semantics of indefinites.

The speakers of Tariana, an endangered Arawak language from the northwest Amazonian jungle, traditionally marry someone speaking a different language; therefore, most are fluent in five or six languages. This comprehensive grammar reveals how Tariana combines its own features with those borrowed from neighboring languages because of the rampant multilingualism. The language has many unusual properties, making this grammar a valuable sourcebook for linguists and others interested in natural languages.

Formal grammars by definition need two parts: a theory of computation (or derivation), and a theory of representation. While recent attention in mainstream syntactic and phonological theory has been devoted to the former, the papers in this volume aim to show that the importance of representational details is not diminished by the insights of such theories.

This book falls in the broad subject area of psycholinguistics and second-language acquisition. More specifically, this book is written for researchers stepping into the field of morphological processing so that they are not overwhelmed by the large number of individual studies and do not lose sight of the whole picture. With a comprehensive review of the relevant factors that first- and second-language morphological processing researchers need to take into consideration, including material- and procedure-related factors, participant individual differences, and participant group-level differences, this book is a useful theoretical reference work for morphological processing researchers. By considering the various potential confounding factors reviewed in this book, researchers are in a better position to more scientifically and meticulously reduce or eliminate the effects of potential covariates so that they can focus on their independent variables of interest. It may also help researchers in evaluating previous studies and their findings and whether or not these studies may have failed to consider possible confounding factors.

This book sheds new light on the nature of gerunds in English, utilizing data from very large electronic corpora in order to compare pairs of patterns viewed as constructions. It serves as a contribution to the study of complementation, an under-researched area of investigation which bridges observations at the intersection of lexico-grammar, syntax and semantics. As a result, the reader develops their understanding of the meaning and use of each pattern within the system of English predicate complementation as it has evolved in recent times. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of English linguistics, especially English grammar.

In Towards a Theory of Denominals, Adina Camelia Bleotu takes a comparative look at denominal verbs in English and Romanian from various theoretical frameworks such as lexical decomposition, distributed morphology, nanosyntax and spanning. The book proposes a novel spanning analysis, arguing for its explanatory superiority to incorporation/conflation or nanosyntax in accounting for the formation and behaviour of denominals. It provides useful empirical insights, drawing from rich data from English discussed widely in the relevant literature, but also presenting novel data from Romanian not explored in detail before. Many interesting theoretical issues are also discussed, such as the (lack of) correlation between the (un)boundedness of the nominal root and the (a)telicity of the resulting verb, the verb/ satellite-framed distinction and others.

Interrogative Phrases and the Syntax-Semantics Interface starts by analyzing the interpretation of interrogative phrases in single and multiple constituent questions, including their interpretation under adverbs of quantification. The results are then put to work in a novel approach to some of the constraints on dependencies between fronted interrogative phrases and the associated gaps: superiority, weak crossover, as well as the so-called weak islands' (the WH-island, the negative island and the Factive Island). It is argued that the possibility of fronting an interrogative phrase out of these configurations is determined by a semantic/pragmatic condition on questions, which requires them to be answerable. The analysis is worked out principally on Romanian, a language which allows multiple wh-fronting. The results are then extended to English. Audience: Researchers and students in syntax, semantics and their interface, as well as linguists studying the relation between the acceptability of sentences and the larger discourse context.

Traditional grammars have stated that clitics are subject or object pronouns whose distributional features make them different from personal pronouns. This book focuses on the acquisition of personal and demonstrative pronouns as well as clitics with respect to determinative phrases in a variety of languages of the Romance family and several indigenous languages, such as Quechua. A particularlyoriginal aspect of the present volume is that it not only addresses syntactic issues, but also semantic and pragmatic questions that have been widely neglected in the literature. It also reports on acquisition data of languages, such as Quechua, which have not attracted the attention of researchers until very recently.

This book provides an overview of the role of the syllable in Optimality Theory (OT) and ways in which problems that relate to the analysis of syllable structure can be solved in OT. The contributions to the book show that the syllable not only sheds light on certain properties of OT itself. They also show that OT is capable of describing and adequately analyzing many issues that are problematic in other theories. The analyses are based on a wealth of languages.

Not all sentences encode their subjects in the same way. Some languages overtly mark some subjects depending on certain features of the subject argument or the sentence in which the subject figures. This is known as Differential Subject Marking (DSM). Containing illuminating discussions of DSM from languages all over the world, this book shows that DSM is often the result of interactions between conflicting constraints on language use.

It is widely recognized that language is humanity's most distinctive and valuable faculty. In this work, originally published in 1974, Roger Fowler explains the character and absorbing interest of language. Designed as an introductory text for students and others concerned with human communication, the book is clearly and concisely written, yet it in no way oversimplifies its rich and complicated subject. The opening chapters set the scene by a discussion of the power of language in the social and psychological life of a man, while the main body of the book is an introduction to linguistics, the science of language study. Coverage is provided of the main topics in linguistic description - semantics, syntax, phonetics - as well as of the functions of language, its status in society and its relation to the individual. The reader is invited to participate in some advanced thinking within an up-to-date and consistent linguistic theory. Particular attention is given to the individual as language-learner, since the process of language acquisition illuminates most clearly the naturalness and the complexity of language. The author's arguments are illustrated with hundreds of examples from English and other languages. Suggestions for further reading are included in the exposition, and the reader who follows the arguments and pursues the carefully arranged bibliographical recommendations will acquire a substantial insight into contemporary linguistics - the most important and advanced of the modern human sciences.

The volume is a collection of papers in diverse areas of Slavic linguistics, selected from the 14th annual meeting of the Slavic Linguistics Society, held at the University of Potsdam on 11-13 September 2019. The volume is dedicated to Peter Kosta, longtime chair of Slavic linguistics at the Department of Slavic languages and literatures at the University of Potsdam, in recognition of his enormous contributions to the field. Contents: Publications of Peter Kosta - Vrinda Subhalaxmi Chidambaram: A Case of Parasitic Attrition: The disappearance of the degree morpheme - s in Bulgarian and Macedonian superlative adjectives - Steven Franks: Reflexive Typology, Movement, and the Structure of NP - Jadranka Gvozdanovic:'Have' + infinitive in Czech: A long multilingual history - Iliyana Krapova and Tomislav Socanac: Factivity in South Slavic languages: Complement and relative clauses - Alexander Letuchiy: 'Missed TAM': The lack of tense and mood marking in Russian argument conditionals - semantic and formal motivation - Franc Lanko Marusic and Rok Zaucer: Investigation of Slovenian copular agreement - James Joshua Pennington: Today's Grammaticalization Theory is Yesterday's Grammaticalization: The BCMS Future as An(other) Strike Against the Unidirectionality Hypothesis - Katrin Schlund: On the origin of East Slavic Elemental Constructions/Adversity Impersonals. Evidence from town chronicles of Old Rus' - Luka Szucsich and Karolina Zuchewicz: Incrementality and (non)clausal complementation in Slavic - Alan Timberlake: String Syntax - Beata Trawinski: Polish zeby under Negation - Mladen Uhlik and Andreja Zele: Reflexive Possessive Pronouns in Slovene: A Contrastive Analysis with Russian - Vladislava Warditz: Structural Variation in Heritage Russian in Germany: Language Usage or Language Change? - Jacek Witkos: On Some Aspects of Agree, Move and Bind in the Nominal Domain - Ilse Zimmermann: On Pronouns Relating to Clauses

The Accurate Use of Chinese: Practical Sentence Structures and Word Usage for English Speakers is a unique learning resource for learners of Chinese who are English speakers. The primary goal is twofold: to help these learners leverage their existent knowledge in English and navigate the Chinese system with fewer obstacles; and also to help them prevent errors of which the underlying cause may be English. This is done through comparisons of selected grammar topics, language rules and word usages between the two languages. Grammar topics in English serve as the comparison points from which learners can gain a deeper understanding of the comparable, but differing structures in Chinese. The book's comparative approach is unique and innovative, designed to build a more nuanced and instinctive approach to grammar. A valuable resource for beginners to advanced learners and instructors of Chinese, the book contextualizes grammar structures and provides in-depth information not covered in Chinese language textbooks.