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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Grammar, syntax, linguistic structure
First published in 1988, this book explores the grammatical loss of gender in English. It demonstrates that from the end of the Old English period, there was a considerable time period, of about three hundred years, during which there existed "echoes" of the gender classification of nouns. The study records the best known conclusions concerning the behaviour of anaphoric pronouns under grammatical gender "stress" in the late Old English and Middle English periods. It focuses on a discussion of attributive word morphology in the noun phrase.
First published in 2003, this is a study of the syntactic behaviour of personal pronoun subjects and the indefinite pronoun man in Old English. It focuses on differences in word order as compared to full noun phrases. In generative work on Old English, noun phrases are usually divided into two categories: 'nominal' and 'pronominal'. The latter category has typically been restricted to personal pronouns, but despite striking similarities to the behaviour of nominals there were good reasons to believe that man should be grouped with personal pronouns. This book explores the investigation carried out with the aid of the Toronto Corpus, which confirmed this hypothesis.
This study brings together many of the resources needed for the exploration of English historical syntax and deals with many of the important changes in English sentence structure from Old English to present. It also features a survey of published research from both classical and modern linguistic traditions, as well as new research by the author. Provides guidance on methodology, important reference materials, and the general history of the English language.
This is a series which aims to meet the need for books on modern English that are both up-to-date and authoritative. The texts are ideal for the scholar, the teacher, and the student, but especially for English speaking students in overseas universities where English is the language of instruction, or advanced specialist students of English in foreign universities. Although English is probably the most studied language in the world, this is one of the first systematic comparisons of infinitives with and without the use of "to". Patrick Duffley examines these uses adopting the semantic approach, which shows that the two infinitive forms each have a basic meaning which is capable of explaining all of their particular uses. The author has carried out detailed research for this book, examining over 24,000 occurences of the infinitive, as well as taking into account the observations of previous grammarians. The book challenges old assumptions that grammar is independent of meaning and should be dealt with in purely formal terms. It also fulfils a need for literature on an area of English grammar which has sometimes been presumed to be chaotic and unsystematic. The text is aimed specialists in linguistics and advanced students of English as a second language.
This book provides a critical review of the development of generative grammar, both transformational and non-transformational, from the early 1960s to the present, and presents contemporary results in the context of an overall evaluation of recent research in the field. Geoffrey Horrocks compares Chomsky's approach to the study of grammar, culminating in Government and Binding theory, with two other theories which are deliberate reactions to this framework: Generalised Phrase Structure Grammar and Lexical-Functional Grammar. Whilst proponents of all three models regard themselves as generative grammarians, and share many of the same objectives, the differences between them nevertheless account for much of the recent debate in this subject. By presenting these different theories in the context of the issues that unite and divide them, the book highlights the problems which arise in any attempt to establish an adequate theory of grammatical representation.
This new study on modality in English represents a departure from more traditional approaches to the subject, where the modal auxiliaries have been the usual focus of attention, by examining in detail the nature of their association with different categories of modal adverb. Modality is notoriously complex but the present work offers an accessible introduction to the topic, a comprehensive account of modal-adverb co-occurrence, and a reappraisal of the English modal system. The descriptive framework draws fresh insights from syntactic, semantic and pragmatic approaches to the study of language and communication, and from recent work in corpus linguistics. The book includes contrastive reference to the expression of modality in Spanish and a discussion of modality in such applied contexts as language teaching. A major feature is its reliance on authentic spoken and written language data. The study is suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate students of linguistics, English language, communications studies and related disciplines.
This volume contains a collection of studies that survey recent research in developmental linguistics, illustrating the fruitful interaction between comparative syntax and language acquisition. The contributors each analyse a well defined range of acquisition data, aiming to derive them from primitive differences between child and adult grammar. The book covers cross-linguistic and cross-categorial phenomena, shedding light on major developments in this novel and rapidly growing field. Extensions to second language acquisition and neuropathology are also suggested.
Complex Words in English presents a comprehensive account of present-day word formation in English. Starting with a discussion of some basic issues, including the definition of 'word', motivation, lexicalization, productivity, the relevance of historical information and the usefulness of dictionaries and other data-bases, the book then moves on to describe in detail a variety of prefixing, suffixing and compounding patterns - all illustrated with copious up-to-date examples. Other topics that are explored in-depth include diminutives, backformation and other effects of reanalysis, Latin and Greek based formations and sound symbolism. Many examples are given in context: recent writing and the records of OED on CD ROM are drawn on to demonstrate the relationship between spontaneous coinages and familiar items. The comprehensive coverage allows an instructive overview and comparison of patterns and of the many and diverse factors relevant to the notion of productivity. Throughout, the discussions are placed in the context of other recent and less recent work in the area and the book also contains a useful extensive bibliography.
First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
The papers collected in this volume examine selected aspects of the interaction of phonology with phonetics, morphosyntax and the lexicon in a variety of languages including Korean, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, British English, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Dutch and Hawaiian. In order to approach the role and ways of expressing extraphonological information in phonology, the international contributors adopt different methods of analysis (data gathering, experiments, theoretical discussions), couched in various theoretical frameworks (such as Optimality Theory and Government Phonology), which reveal both the multifarious faces and interfaces of modern phonological research.
History and Development of the Arabic Language is a general introduction for students to the history of the Arabic language. It is divided into two parts; the pre-Islamic language up to the emergence of the first well-known works of Classical Arabic. Secondly, the transition from the pre-Islamic situation to the complex Arabic language forms after the emergence of Islam and the Arab conquests, both in Arabia and in the diaspora. The book focuses on the pre-Islamic linguistic situation, where the linguistic geography and relevant demographic aspects of pre-Islamic Arabia will be introduced. In addition, the book will also discuss the communicative contexts and varieties of Modern Arabic. The book includes readings, discussion questions and data sets to provide a complete textbook and resource for teachers and students of the history of Arabic.
This book examines the evidence for the development of adnominal
genitives (the knight's sword, the nun's priest's tale, etc.) in
English. During the Middle English period the genitive inflection
-es developed into the more clitic-like 's, but how, when, why, and
over how long a time are unclear, and have been subject to
considerable research and discussion. Cynthia L. Allen draws
together her own and others' findings in areas such as case
marking, the nature of syntactic and morphological change, and the
role of processing and pragmatics in the construction of grammars
and grammatical change.
Modern Chinese Grammar provides a comprehensive coverage of Chinese grammar through the clause-pivot theory and the double triangle approach, first proposed by Fuyi Xing in 1996. Translated into English for the first time, the book is widely regarded by linguists as a seminal text, and ground-breaking in linguistics research. The book contains discussion of the topics which are essential to Chinese grammar, from words and phrases, to complex sentences and sentence groups. It addresses such controversial issues as word class identification, the distinction between words and phrases, and between clauses and complex sentences. The book also shows, through a wealth of examples, how the clause-pivot theory and the double triangle approach can be applied productively in grammatical studies. Modern Chinese Grammar: A Clause-Pivot Theoretical Approach is an essential purchase for researchers and graduate students of Chinese grammar and syntax.
During the last 15 years, cognitive scientists have discovered
things about the nature and importance of metaphor that are
startling because of their radical implications for metaphor
research and because they require us to rethink some of our most
fundamental received notions of meaning, concepts, and reason. Many
of the theoretical assumptions that guided earlier generations who
worked on metaphor have been undermined by this new research, which
has profound implications for philosophy.
The essays collected in this volume, most previously unpublished, address a number of closely interconnected issues raised by the comparative syntax of functional heads within the Principles-and-Parameters approach. The general theory of head movement, the properties of derived structures created by incorporation, and the parameterization involved are the main theoretical foci. One major empirical area which is addressed concerns head movement in configurations involving certain kinds of operator-like elements, for example, the different manifestations of Verb Second phenomena in Wh and other constructions and the syntax of negative heads and specifiers. In addition, properties of functional heads and head movement in nominal and clausal structures and the causative construction are investigated.
Almost all languages have some ways of categorizing nouns. Languages of South-East Asia have classifiers used with numerals, while most Indo-European languages have two or three genders. They can have a similar meaning and one can develop from the other. This book provides a comprehensive and original analysis of noun categorization devices all over the world. It will interest typologists, those working in the fields of morphosyntactic variation and lexical semantics, as well as anthropologists and all other scholars interested in the mechanisms of human cognition.
A revival of interest in morphology has occurred during recent years. The Yearbook of Morphology, published since 1988, has proven to be an eminent support for this upswing of morphological research, since it contains articles on topics which are central in the current theoretical debates which are frequently referred to. In the Yearbook of Morphology 2004 a number of papers is devoted to the topic 'morphology and linguistic typology'. These papers were presented at the Fourth Mediterranean Morphology Meeting in Catania, in September 2003. Within the context of this denominator, a number of issues are discussed wich bear upon universals and typology. These issues include: universals and diachrony, sign language, syncretism, periphrasis, etc.
This volume has its origins in an international conference on emotions organized by the Polish Association for the Study of English and held at the University of Wroclaw in April 2015. In the course of the conference, it became clear that emotions are productively explored with relation to motion for the reason that emotion(s) and motion(s) constitute profoundly intertwined dimensions of physical and cultural embodiment reflected in language. The relationship between motion(s) and emotion(s) became the underlying theme of this volume, which comprises nineteen contributions presenting exploratory and applicative accounts of (e)motion(s) situated in topical research areas of linguistic theory, second language acquisition, and translation studies.
What is the role of prosody in the generation of sentence structure? A standard notion holds that prosody results from mapping a hierarchical syntactic structure onto a linear sequence of words. A radically different view conceives of certain intonational features as integral components of the syntactic structure. Yet another conception maintains that prosody and syntax are parallel systems that mutually constrain each other to yield surface sentential form. The different viewpoints reflect the various functions prosody may have: On the one hand, prosody is a signal to syntax, marking e.g. constituent boundaries. On the other hand, prosodic or intonational features convey meaning; the concept "intonational morpheme" (as e.g. an exponent of information structural notions like topic or focus) puts prosody and intonation squarely into the syntactic representation. The proposals collected in this book tackle the intricate relationship of syntax and prosody in the encoding of sentences. The contributions build their cases on the basis of solid empirical evidence, adducing data from experiments or from the careful analysis of natural speech. The volume thus represents a state of the art survey of research on the syntax-phonology interface.
Problems and Perspectives- Studies in the Modern French Language looks at a number of interesting or problematic areas in the phonology, morphology, syntax and lexis of the French language and encourages the reader to think critically about different ways of approaching, describing and explaining these issues or data. The book is divided into two parts- the first section is a preliminary to, and contextualises, the discussion of the more specialised topics of the second part. Part two presents problematic and controversial areas in the description and analysis of the contemporary language. Where appropriate historical and sociolinguistic issues are also integrated into the discussion of modern French. Aimed primarily at advanced students and researchers in French linguistics, the introductory sections of part one also make this book accessible to undergraduates beginning their study of French linguistics, and to less specialised readers.
Sardinian Syntax presents the first comprehensive synchronic description of Sardinian syntax available in English. Michael Jones combines a detailed coverage of the language with a theoretical approach that draws on contemporary linguistic theory. The book provides an extensive reference grammar and an invaluable source of information for all linguists whose interests extend beyond the world's major languages.
This is the first comprehensive treatment of the strategies
employed in the world's languages to express predicative
possession, as in "the boy has a bat." It presents the results of
the author's fifteen-year research project on the subject.
Predicative possession is the source of many grammaticalization
paths - as in the English perfect tense formed from to have - and
its typology is an important key to understanding the structural
variety of the world's languages and how they change. Drawing on
data from some 400 languages representing all the world's language
families, most of which lack a close equivalent to the verb to
have, Professor Stassen aims (a) to establish a typology of four
basic types of predicative possession, (b) to discover and describe
the processes by which standard constructions can be modified, and
(c) to explore links between the typology of predicative possession
and other typologies in order to reveal patterns of
interdependence. He shows, for example, that the parameter of
simultaneous sequencing - the way a language formally encodes a
sequence like "John sang and Mary danced" - correlates with the way
it encodes predicative possession. By means of this and other links
the author sets up a single universal model in order to account for
all morphosyntactic variation in predicative possession found in
the languages of the world, including patterns of variation over
time.
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.
This book investigates the theory of locality within the framework of minimalism, with a special focus on restructuring and other related phenomena that exhibit an apparent violation of the strictly local conditions.
First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company. |
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