This book offers the first comprehensive account of the development of the Romanian morphological system. Romanian is one of the most morphologically complex Romance languages, but has remained relatively understudied compared with better-known languages such as French and Spanish. Following an introduction that provides an outline of the history of Romanian, its writing system and major typological characteristics, and the major patterns of allomorphy, chapters in this volume explore a range of fascinatingly complex aspects of Romanian grammar whose structure and history have to date been largely inaccessible to the English-speaking world. Among the most distinctive morphological characteristics of Romanian discussed by the authors are its inflexional case system; the highly unpredictable formation of the plural; the existence of a non-finite verb form that appears to be the continuation of the Latin supine; the near-absence of distinctive subjunctive morphology; and the complex patterns of allomorphy brought about by successive sound change. The frequently controversial origins of many of these developments have important implications for broader historical Romance linguistics and indeed for morphological theory more generally.

This book offers a comprehensive account of adjuncts in generative grammar, seeking to reconcile the differing ways in which they have been treated in the past by proposing a method of analysis grounded in simplification based on Simplest Merge. The volume provides an up-to-date review of the existing literature on adjuncts and outlines their characteristic properties and the subsequent difficulties in adequately defining and treating them. The book compares previous attempts to account for adjuncts which have tended to use additional mechanisms or syntactic operations as a jumping-off point from which to propose a new way forward for analyzing them grounded in minimalist theory. Adopting an approach in the spirit of the strong minimalist thesis (SMT), Bode suggests an analysis of adjuncts which applies a minimalist approach based on theoretical simplicity, one which does not resort to extra mechanisms in capturing the empirical properties of adjuncts. Offering a comprehensive overview of research on adjuncts and foundational minimalist principles, this book will be of particular interest to graduate students and practicing researchers interested in syntax.

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.

This collection showcases the contributions of the study of endangered and understudied languages to historical linguistic analysis, and the broader relevance of diachronic approaches toward developing better informed approaches to language documentation and description. The volume brings together perspectives from both established and up-and-coming scholars and represents a globally and linguistically diverse range of languages.The collected papers demonstrate the ways in which endangered languages can challenge existing models of language change based on more commonly studied languages, and can generate innovative insights into linguistic phenomena such as pathways of grammaticalization, forms and dynamics of contact-driven change, and the diachronic relationship between lexical and grammatical categories. In so doing, the book highlights the idea that processes and outcomes of language change long held to be universally relevant may be more sensitive to cultural and typological variability than previously assumed. Taken as a whole, this collection brings together perspectives from language documentation and historical linguistics to point the way forward for richer understandings of both language change and documentary-descriptive approaches, making this key reading for scholars in these fields.

Grammar and Conceptualization documents some major developments in the theory of cognitive grammar during the last decade. By further articulating the framework and showing its application to numerous domains of linguistic structure, this book substantiates the claim that lexicon, morphology, and syntax form a gradation consisting of assemblies of symbolic structures (form-meaning pairings).

This innovative work highlights interdisciplinary research on phonetics and phonology across multiple languages, building on the extensive body of work of Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk on the study of sound structure and speech. // The book features concise contributions from both established and up-and-coming scholars who have worked with Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk across a range of disciplinary fields toward broadening the scope of how sound structure and speech are studied and how phonological and phonetic research is conducted. Contributions bridge the gap between such fields as phonological theory, acoustic and articulatory phonetics, and morphology, but also includes perspectives from such areas as historical linguistics, which demonstrate the relevance of other linguistic areas of inquiry to empirical investigations in sound structure and speech. The volume also showcases the rich variety of methodologies employed in existing research, including corpus-based, diachronic, experimental, acoustic and online approaches and showcases them at work, drawing from data from languages beyond the Anglocentric focus in existing research. // The collection reflects on Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk's pioneering contributions to widening the study of sound structure and speech and reinforces the value of interdisciplinary perspectives in taking the field further, making this key reading for students and scholars in phonetics, phonology, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and speech and language processing.

In today's global commerce and communication, linguistic diversity is in steady decline across the world as speakers of smaller languages adopt dominant forms. While this phenomenon, known as 'language shift', is usually regarded as a loss, this book adopts a different angle and addresses the following questions: What difference does using a new language make to the way speakers communicate in everyday life? Can the grammatical and lexical architectures of individual languages influence what speakers express? In other words, to what extent does adopting a new language alter speakers' day-to-day communication practices, and in turn, perhaps, their social life and world views? To answer these questions, this book studies the expression of emotions in two languages on each side of a shift: Kriol, an English-based creole spoken in northern Australia, and Dalabon (Gunwinyguan, non-Pama-Nyungan), an Australian Aboriginal language that is being replaced by Kriol. This volume is the first to explore the influence of the formal properties of language on the expression of emotions, as well as the first description of the linguistic encoding of emotions in a creole language. The cross-disciplinary approach will appeal to linguists, psychologists, anthropologists and other social scientists.

This book explores theoretical issues of the syntax-phonology interface within the Minimalist Program of linguistic theory and proposes an entirely new approach to prosodic categories. Conceptual as well as empirical questions are addressed, concerning how syntactic objects are mapped to the sensorimotor system through the processes of externalization. Elaborating on recent progress in the theories of labelling and workspace-based syntactic derivation, this book further develops a null theory of the prosodic domains, and recasts these as the domains of interpretation that are reducible to more fundamental concepts of linguistic theory. Phonological phrases are characterized by Minimal Search, a third factor principle of efficient computation. Intonational phrases are taken to be reflexes of the termination of syntactic derivation, which is formulated in terms of the workspace to which MERGE applies. This book explores the new implications this theory has for the general architecture of grammar as well as for linguistic interfaces. It provides a comprehensive review of the development of theories of the syntax-phonology interface from over the past three decades. The book is well-suited for general linguistic readers as well as phonologists, syntacticians, and any linguist interested in interface research.

Anybody who reads or writes Chinese characters knows that they obey a grammar of sorts: though numerous, they are built out of a much smaller set of constituents, often interpretable in meaning or pronunciation, that are themselves built out of an even smaller set of strokes. This book goes far beyond these basic facts to show that Chinese characters truly have a productive and psychologically real lexical grammar of the same sort seen in spoken and signed languages, with non-trivial analogs of morphology (the combination of potentially interpretable constituents), phonology (formal regularities without implications for interpretation), and phonetics (articulatory and perceptual constraints). Evidence comes from a wide variety of sources, from quantitative corpus analyses to experiments on character reading, writing, and learning. The grammatical approach helps capture how character constituents combine as they do, how strokes systematically vary in different environments, how character form evolved from ancient times to the modern simplified system, and how readers and writers are able to process or learn even entirely novel characters. This book not only provides tools for exploring the full richness of Chinese orthography, but also offers new ways of thinking about the most fundamental question in linguistic theory: what is grammar?

All languages and cultures appear to have one or more "mind-like" constructs that supplement the human body. Linguistic evidence suggests they all have a word for someone, and another word for body, but that doesn't mean that whatever else makes up a human being (i.e. someone) apart from the body is the same everywhere. Nonetheless, the (Anglo) mind is often reified and thought of in universal terms. This volume adds to the literature that denounces such reification. It looks at Japanese, Longgu (an Oceanic language), Thai, and Old Norse-Icelandic, spelling out, in a culturally neutral Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), how the "mind-like" constructs in these languages differ from the Anglo mind.

The Routledge Handbook of Phonological Theory provides a comprehensive overview of the major contemporary approaches to phonology. Phonology is frequently defined as the systematic organisation of the sounds of human language. For some, this includes aspects of both the surface phonetics together with systematic structural properties of the sound system; for others, phonology is seen as distinct from, and autonomous from, phonetics. The Routledge Handbook of Phonological Theory surveys the differing ways in which phonology is viewed, with a focus on current approaches to phonology. Divided into two parts, this handbook: covers major conceptual frameworks within phonology, including: rule-based phonology; Optimality Theory; Government Phonology; Dependency Phonology; and connectionist approaches to generative phonology; explores the central issue of the relationship between phonetics and phonology; features 23 chapters written by leading academics from around the world. The Routledge Handbook of Phonological Theory is an authoritative survey of this key field in linguistics, and is essential reading for students studying phonology.

Paradigmatic gaps ('missing' inflected forms) have traditionally been considered to be the random detritus of a language's history and marginal exceptions to the normal functioning of its inflectional system. Arguing that this is a misperception, Inflectional Defectiveness demonstrates that paradigmatic gaps are in fact normal and expected products of inflectional structure. Sims offers an accessible exploration of how and why inflectional defectiveness arises, why it persists, and how it is learned. The book presents a theory of morphology which is rooted in the implicative structure of the paradigm. This systematic exploration of the topic also addresses questions of inflection class organization, the morphology-syntax interface, the structure of the lexicon, and the nature of productivity. Presenting a novel synthesis of established research and new empirical data, this work is significant for researchers and graduate students in all fields of linguistics.

This book investigates the distribution and interpretation of Covert Modality. Covert Modality is modality which we interpret but which is not associated with any lexical item in the structure that we are interpreting. This dissertation investigates a class of environments that involves covert modality. Examples of covert modality include wh-infinitival complements, infinitival relative clauses, purpose clauses, the 'have to' construction, and the 'is to' construction (cf. 1): 1a. Tim knows [how to solve the problem]. ("Tim knows how one/he could/should solve the problem.") 1b. Jane found [a book to draw cartoons in] for Sara. ("Jane found a book for Sara one could/should draw cartoons in.") 1c. [The man to fix the sink] is here. ("The man whose purpose is to fix the sink is here.") 1d. Sue went to Torino [to buy a violin]. ("Sue went to Torino so that she could buy a violin.") 1e. Bill has to reach Philadelphia before noon. ("Bill must reach Philadelphia before noon.") 1f. Will is to leave tomorrow. ("Will is scheduled/supposed to leave tomorrow.") The interpretation of (1a-f) involves modality; however, there is no lexical item that seems to be the source of the modality. What (1a-f) have in common is that they involve infinitivals. This book addresses the following questions about covert modality: what is the source of this modality, what are its semantic properties, why are some but not all infinitival relatives modal, and why are all infinitival questions modal? The infinitival [+wh] Complementizer is identified as the source of the covert modality. The apparent variability of the force of this modality is related to the particular semantics of this Complementizer. Infinitival relatives that receive a non-modal interpretation are analyzed as being reduced relatives and thus not involving the infinitival [+wh] Complementizer.

A Frequency Dictionary of Korean is an invaluable tool for all learners of Korean, providing a list of the 5000 most frequently used words in the language. Based on the Sejong National Corpora, the largest written and spoken corpora in Korean comprised of 10 million words collected from different genres, the Dictionary provides the user with detailed information for each of the entries, including illustrative examples and English translations. The Dictionary provides a rich resource for language teaching and curriculum design, while a separate CD version provides the full text in a tab-delimited format ideally suited for use by corpus and computational linguists. With entries arranged both by frequency and alphabetically, A Frequency Dictionary of Korean enables students of all levels to get the most out of their study of vocabulary in an engaging and efficient way.

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.

El lexico-gramatica del espanol ofrece una aproximacion alternativa al estudio de la gramatica avanzada del espanol. Este libro brinda al estudiante un enfoque autentico y contextualizado del uso del espanol, basandose en datos provenientes de corpus de espanol-L1 y L2 junto a la investigacion linguistica a fin de describir las caracteristicas lexico-gramaticales fundamentales de la lengua y su variacion. Cada capitulo incluye actividades guiadas para que los estudiantes puedan realizar busquedas en estos corpus con el proposito de llegar a conclusiones fundamentadas en evidencias empiricas sobre como los aprendices de varios niveles de competencia usan ciertos elementos lexico-gramaticales. Este libro representa un recurso ideal para los estudiantes de la gramatica avanzada del espanol a nivel de pregrado y posgrado. El lexico-gramatica del espanol provides an alternative approach to the study of advanced Spanish grammar. Drawing on L1 and L2 Spanish language corpora and linguistic research to describe key lexico-grammatical characteristics of the Spanish language, this book gives students insight into real, variable, and contextualized usage of Spanish. Each chapter includes guided exercises so that students can conduct their own searches of the corpus and draw evidence-based conclusions on how particular grammar structures are used by Spanish speakers at varying levels of proficiency. This is an ideal resource for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of Spanish language and linguistics.

This volume contains the refined proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of University Teachers of German (CAUTG), which took place at Ryerson University, Toronto, as part of the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in May 2017.

Aims to chart the whole realm of the syntax of Old English. The difficulties inherent in the study of old English syntax make a prescriptive analysis virtually impossible at this point. For this reason, the books do not lay down rules but rather make suggestions, demonstrate, where appropriate, the possibility of different interpretation, summarize the present state of knowledge about the phenomena discussed, and indicate possible lines of research in the future.

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.

This book deals with the characterization and history of the reaction object construction (ROC), as in Pauline smiled her thanks. The ROC consists of an intransitive verb followed by a nonprototypical object that expresses a reaction such that the whole syntactic unit acquires the extended meaning "express X by V-ing" (e.g. "Pauline expressed her thanks by smiling"). The hypothesis is put forward that ROCs follow a similar pathway as other valency-increasing constructions such as the cognate object construction and the way-construction, occurring first with more transitive-like verbs and then expanding to intransitives. Historical corpus evidence from several complementary data sources confirms this idea and reveals striking parallelisms with the way-construction.

The subject of nonfinite clauses is often missing, and yet is understood to refer to some linguistic or contextual referent (e.g. 'Bill preferred __ to remain silent' is understood as 'Bill preferred that he himself would remain silent'). This dependency is the subject matter of control theory. Extensive linguistic research into control constructions over the past five decades has unearthed a wealth of empirical findings in dozens of languages. Their proper classification and analysis, however, have been a matter of continuing debate within and across different theoretical schools. This comprehensive book pulls together, for the first time, all the important advances on the topic. Among the issues discussed are: the distinction between raising and control, obligatory and nonobligatory control, syntactic interactions with case, finiteness and nominalization, lexical determination of the controller, and phenomena like partial and implicit control. The critical discussions in this work will stimulate students and scholars to further explorations in this fascinating field.

The most general goal of this book is to propose and illustrate a program of research in word semantics that combines some of the methodology and results in linguistic semantics, primarily that of the generative semantics school, with the rigorously formalized syntactic and semantic framework for the analysis of natural languages developed by Richard Montague and his associates, a framework in which truth and denotation with respect to a model are taken as the fundamental semantic notions. I hope to show, both from the linguist's and the philosopher's point of view, not only why this synthesis can be undertaken but also why it will be useful to pursue it. On the one hand, the linguists' decompositions of word meanings into more primitive parts are by themselves inherently incomplete, in that they deal only in distinctions in meaning without providing an account of what mean ings really are. Not only can these analyses be made complete by a model theoretic semantics, but also such an account of these analyses renders them more exact and more readily testable than they could ever be otherwise."

Introduction When one takes a functional approach to the study of natural languages, the ultimate questions one is interested in can be formulated as: How does the natural language user (NLU) work? How do speakers and addressees succeed ...

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.