First published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The questions as to why most languages appear to have more trouble borrowing verbs than nouns, and as to the possible mechanisms and paths by which verbs can be borrowed or the obstacles for verb borrowing, have been a topic of interest since the late 19th century. However, no truly substantial typological research had been undertaken in this field before the present study. The present work is the first in-depth cross-linguistic study on loan verbs and the morphological, syntactic and sociolinguistic aspects of loan verb accommodation. It applies current methodologies on database management, quantitative analysis and typological conventions and it is based on a broad global sample of data from over 400 languages and the typological data from the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS). One major result of the present study is the falsification, on empirical grounds, of long-standing claims that verbs generally are more difficult to borrow than other parts of speech, or that verbs could never be borrowed as verbs and always needed a re-verbalization in the borrowing language.

This book was first published in 1954.

This book was first published in 1954.

Winner of the Swedish National Language Council s Erik Wellander Prize, 2003

Swedish: A Comprehensive Grammar is an award-winning complete reference guide to modern Swedish grammar. Systematic and accessible, the volume is organised to promote a thorough understanding of Swedish grammar, presenting the complexities of Swedish in a concise and readable form. Explanations are full, clear and free of jargon, and an extensive index, numbered paragraphs, cross-references and summary charts provide readers with easy access to the information they require.

Now in its third edition, the text has been comprehensively updated to conform to new standards set in the description of language and to reflect the recommendations of the Language Council of Sweden. It offers an improved layout, completely revised index and more user-friendly paragraph structure. Continuing the tradition of previous editions, the emphasis remains fixed on Swedish in everyday communication, drawing on modern corpus material, the internet and the media to provide high frequency words and expressions. Examples have been modernised throughout and new content takes account of recent trends resulting from the increasing democratisation of written Swedish.

Features include:

• detailed treatment of grammatical structures and parts of speech
• a wealth of examples from present-day Swedish
• particular attention to areas of confusion and difficulty for learners
• Swedish/English contrasts highlighted throughout the book
• chapters on word formation, orthography and punctuation.

Swedish: A Comprehensive Grammar is the most thorough and detailed Swedish grammar available in English and is an essential reference source for the learner and user of Swedish, irrespective of level. It is ideal for use in schools, colleges, universities and adult classes of all types.

This book provides the first systematic descriptive analysis of the phonological system of Romanian, one of the less studied Romance languages, from the perspective of recent phonological theory. The author offers an account of some of the major phonological processes of modern standard Romanian, set in the framework of Optimality Theory and Correspondence Theory. The book begins with an overview of Romanian phonology - segment inventory, phonotactics, inflectional and derivational morphology. The main part of the study focuses on processes involving vocalic segments: glide-vowel and diphthong-vowel alternations, vowel harmony, palatalization. The major issues addressed include feature theory, syllable structure, metrical structure and stress, the interaction between phonology and morphology. Acoustic phonetic data is used as supporting evidence for the phonological patterning of diphthongs and glide-vowel sequences. Interesting complexities of the system are pointed out and discussed, as they pose certain challenges to the theoretical model. The book contains an abundance of systematically organized data, which makes it a solid reference for students and scholars of general and Romance phonology, and a strong basis for further study.

In this book, contributors have been brought together to discuss the role of two major factors shaping the grammars of different varieties of English (and of other languages) all over the world: so-called vernacular universals and contact-induced change. Rather than assuming a general typological perspective, the studies in this volume focus on putative universal vernacular features - significant phonological or (morpho-) syntactic parallels found in non-standard varieties of English, English-based Creoles, and also varieties of other languages, all of which represent widely differing sociolinguistic and historical backgrounds. These universals are then set against the other major explanatory factor: contact-induced change, by which we understand both the possibility of dialect contact (or dialect diffusion) and language contact (including superstratal, substratal and adstratal influences).

This book is an extremely detailed and comprehensive examination of conditional sentences in English, using many examples from actual language-use. The syntax and semantics of conditionals (including tense and mood options) and the functions of conditionals in discourse are examined in depth, producing an all-round linguistic view of the subject which contains a wealth of original observations and analyses. Not only linguists specializing in grammar but also those interested in pragmatics and the philosophy of language will find this book a rewarding and illuminating source.

Recent developments in generative grammar have been very stimulating. The current theory defines a small set of principles that apply to all human languages. Efforts have been made to demonstrate the adequacy of this theory for a wide range of languages. We thus see an interesting interface of theory and empirical data: the study of natural languages contributes to defining the properties of Universal Grammar and the predictions of the theory help in uncovering generalizations regarding natural languages. This book aims to add to this exciting development by showing how the analysis of Mandarin Chinese constituent structures helps to define Case Theory and how interesting generalizations concerning Chinese grammar are uncovered through verification of the theoretical predictions. Starting from the inadequacy of work by Koopman, Li, and Travis on the effect of Case directionality on word order, the book shows that a detailed study of Chinese constituent structures allows us to reduce the phrase structure component to a minimal statement concerning the position of the head in a given phrase. It argues that in a given language the constituent structures can be adequately captured by the interaction of Case Theory, Theta Theory, Government Theory, and X Theory. Long standing controversies concerning Chinese basic word order are resolved by showing that underlying word order generalizations can differ from surface word order generalizations."

Fully updated and revised, this fourth edition of Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar explains the principles of systemic functional grammar, enabling the reader to understand and apply them in any context. Halliday's innovative approach of engaging with grammar through discourse has become a worldwide phenomenon in linguistics. Updates to the new edition include: Recent uses of systemic functional linguistics to provide further guidance for students, scholars and researchers More on the ecology of grammar, illustrating how each major system serves to realise a semantic system A systematic indexing and classification of examples More from corpora, thus allowing for easy access to data Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar, Fourth Edition, is the standard reference text for systemic functional linguistics and an ideal introduction for students and scholars interested in the relation between grammar, meaning and discourse.

Introducing Functional Grammar, third edition, provides a user-friendly overview of the theoretical and practical aspects of the systemic functional grammar (SFG) model. No prior knowledge of formal linguistics is required as the book provides: An opening chapter on the purpose of linguistic analysis, which outlines the differences between the two major approaches to grammar - functional and formal. An overview of the SFG model - what it is and how it works. Advice and practice on identifying elements of language structure such as clauses and clause constituents. Numerous examples of text analysis using the categories introduced, and discussion about what the analysis shows. Exercises to test comprehension, along with answers for guidance. The third edition is updated throughout, and is based closely on the fourth edition of Halliday and Matthiessen's Introduction to Functional Grammar. A glossary of terms, more exercises and an additional chapter are available on the product page at: https://www.routledge.com/9781444152678. Introducing Functional Grammar remains the essential entry guide to Hallidayan functional grammar, for undergraduate and postgraduate students of language and linguistics.

Moseten belongs to the small, unclassified language family Mosetenan and is spoken by roughly 800 people in the foothills of the Bolivian Andes and the adjoining lowland region. This book provides a grammatical description of Moseten in the form of a descriptive reference grammar. It is based on the author's extensive fieldwork in Bolivia and is intended to be comprehensive and aimed at linguists from all backgrounds. Belonging to an unclassified language family, Moseten is of special interest to typologists, historical linguists, contact linguists and South Americanists. The grammar is divided into a chapter on phonology (2.) and six chapters on the morphology: morphological processes (3.) the nominal system (4.), pronouns and reference (5.), adjectives and adverbs (6.), quantification (7.) and the verbal system (8.). These chapters are followed by voice (9.), negation (10.) and modality and discourse markers (11.). Finally, there are two syntactically oriented chapters on clause types (12.) and clause combinations (13.). In the appendix, three types of texts, a list of morphemes, a list of references and further bibliographical notes are added. Furthermore, there is an index. This grammar is the first accessible and comprehensive description of a Mosetenan language.

This book studies the linguistic representation of events by examining the relevance of two salient event characteristics-- telicity and durativity-- to the grammatical system of natural language. The study of events, and of event characteristics, is an important testing ground for theories on the boundary between extralinguistic and linguistic knowledge, and on the relation between semantics and syntax. Telicity and durativity are notions which have become increasingly influential in both the semantic and the syntactic, i.e., grammaticalized, representation of events. The book furthers the understanding of events through the comparison of two genetically and typologically distinct languages, German and Dene Suline (Chipewyan/Athapaskan), an indigenous language of Northwestern Canada. It contains the first in-depth documentation of the aspectual system of Dene Suline, and a careful analysis of the aspectual behaviour of German particle verbs. A stringent methodology considers semantic, pragmatic, and grammatical factors in both languages. The data reveal that telicity and durativity belong to profoundly different semantic and grammatical domains, and that neither notion is grammaticalized universally. While both notions are represented semantically in German as well as in Dene Suline, telicity is grammaticalized only in the former and durativity is grammaticalized only in the latter.

The analysis is a contribution to contemporary linguistics, particularly the theory of syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Within the theoretical framework of predicate-argument syntax (also known as semantic syntax), the author analyses the role of the adjective as an adjunctive predicative expression. The aim of the research is to create a description of an adjective which could be prospectively useful as a point of departure for analyses of phenomena analogous from the communication point of view in other languages. The book contains a rich text material and a large number of valuable pragmatic insights into Polish nominal syntagmas with an adjective.

This is the second volume of the multi-volume set A Contemporary Grammar of British English Dialects. The book again offers qualitative as well as corpus-based quantitative studies on grammatical variation in the British Isles. The three parts investigate complement clauses (Daniela Kolbe), personal pronouns (Nuria Hernandez) and modals (Monika Edith Schulz). The volume is of interest to dialectologists, sociolinguists, typologists, historical linguists, grammarians, and anyone working on the structure of spontaneous spoken English.

The book is the first systematic exploration of a series of phonological phenomena previously thought to be unified under the rubric of syllable weight. Drawing on a typological survey of 400 languages, it is shown that the traditional conception that languages are internally consistent in their weight criteria across weight-based processes is not corroborated by the cross-linguistic survey. Rather than being consistent across phenomena within individual languages, weight turns out to be sensitive to the particular processes involved such that different phenomena display different distributions in weight criteria. The book goes on to explore the motivations behind the process-specific nature of weight, showing that phonetic factors explain much of the variation in weight criteria between phenomena and also the variation in criteria between languages for a single process. The book is unlike other studies in combining an extensive typological survey with detailed phonetic analysis of many languages. The finding that the widely studied phenomenon of syllable weight is not a unified phenomenon, contrary to the established view, is a significant result for the field of theoretical phonology. The book is also an important contribution to the field of phonetically-driven phonology, since it establishes a close link between the phonology of weight and various quantitative phonetic parameters.

This book was first published in 1954.

This book is the first major cross-linguistic study of 'flexible words', i.e. words that cannot be classified in terms of the traditional lexical categories Verb, Noun, Adjective or Adverb. Flexible words can - without special morphosyntactic marking - serve in functions for which other languages must employ members of two or more of the four traditional, 'specialised' word classes. Thus, flexible words are underspecified for communicative functions like 'predicating' (verbal function), 'referring' (nominal function) or 'modifying' (a function typically associated with adjectives and e.g. manner adverbs). Even though linguists have been aware of flexible world classes for more than a century, the phenomenon has not played a role in the development of linguistic typology or modern grammatical theory. The current volume aims to address this gap by offering detailed studies on flexible word classes, investigating their properties and what it means for the grammar of a language to have such a word class. It includes new cross-linguistic studies of word class systems as well as original descriptive and theoretical contributions from authors with an expert knowledge of languages that have played - or should play - a role in the debate about flexible word classes, including Kharia, Riau Indonesian, Santali, Sri Lanka Malay, Lushootseed, Gooniyandi, and Late Archaic Chinese.

This groundbreaking collection showcases Jenny Cheshire's influential work in bringing greater attention to quantitative analysis of socio-grammatical variation and builds upon her contributions with new lines of inquiry pushing sociolinguistic research forward. Featuring contributions from leading experts in the field, the volume is structured in six parts with a particular focus on syntactic, morpho-syntactic, and discourse-pragmatic variation and change, each section turning a lens on a different aspect of socio-grammatical variation. The first sections of the volume focus on the role of structure, its relevance for sociolinguistic production and perception and the impact of social structure on formal structure. Two sections look at the interface of variationist research with other aspects of linguistic research, including generative syntax and discourse-pragmatic features. The final sections consider the importance of integrating broader external factors in socio-grammatical variation, exploring the impact of interactional pressures in the sociolinguistic environment and the role of multi-ethnic contact varieties. Taken together, this volume demonstrates the critical role of socio-grammatical variation in our understanding of language change as a holistic process.

This book analyzes the form and function of the English passive from a verb-based point of view. It takes the position that the various surface forms of the passive (with or without thematic subject, with or without object, with or without by-phrase, with or without auxiliary) have a common source and are determined by the interplay of the syntactic properties of the verb and general syntactic principles. Each structural element of the passive construction is examined separately, and the participle is considered the only defining component of the passive. Special emphasis is put on the existence of an implicit argument (ususally an agent) and its representation in the passive. A review of data from syntax, language acquisition, and psycholinguistics shows that the implicit agent is not just a conceptually understood argument. It is argued that it is represented at the level of argument structure and that this is what sets the passive apart from other patient-subject constructions. A corpus-based case study on the use of the passive in academic writing analyzes the use of the passive in this particular register. One of the findings is that about 20-25% of passives occur in constructions that do not require an auxiliary, a result that challenges corpus studies on the use of the passive that only consider full be-passives. It is also shown that new active-voice constructions have emerged that compete with the passive without having a more visible agent. The emergence of these constructions (such as "This paper argues...") is discussed in the context of changes in the rhetoric of scientific discourse. The book is mainly of interest to linguists and graduate students in the areas of English syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

This book assembles a collection of papers in two different domains: formal syntax and neurolinguistics. Here Moro provides evidence that the two fields are becoming more and more interconnected and that the new fascinating empirical questions and results in the latter field cannot be obtained without the theoretical base provided by the former. The book is organized in two parts: Part 1 focuses on theoretical and empirical issues in a comparative perspective (including the nature of syntactic movement, the theory of locality and a far reaching and influential theory of copular sentences). Part 2 provides the original sources of some innovative and pioneering experiments based on neuroimaging techniques (focusing on the biological nature of recursion and the interpretation of negative sentences). Moro concludes with an assessment of the impact of these perspectives on the theory of the evolution of language. The leading and pervasive idea unifying all the arguments developed here is the role of symmetry (breaking) in syntax and in the relationship between language and the human brain.

Matheus Miller's Memoir reconstructs the world and worldview of a Lutheran merchant from the city of Augsburg in the 17th century. This story of his experience is based on his memoir and associated documents which explores universal institutions of early modern Europe: patriarchy, hierarchy, honor, community, and confession. Though Miller lived through some of the great events of his age, he scarcely mentioned them; though he was raised in the standard values of his age, he understood and applied them idiosyncratically.

This book presents a detailed analysis of structural as well as pragmatic aspects underlying the phenomenon of noun ellipsis in English. Here Gunther examines the structure of elliptical noun phrases to account for the conditions on noun ellipsis and those on one-insertion, with special emphasis on the (oft-neglected) parallels between the two. She also examines the use of noun ellipsis with adjectives in order to shed light on this under-researched phenomenon, drawing on data from the British National Corpus.

The concept of 'trigger' is a core concept of Chomsky's Minimalist Program. The idea that certain types of movement are triggered by some property of the target position is at least as old as the notion that the movement of noun phrases to the subject position is triggered by their need to receive nominative case. In more recent versions of syntactic theory, triggering mechanisms are thought to regulate all of movement. Furthermore, a quite narrow range of triggering mechanisms is permitted. As is to be expected, such a restrictive approach meets a variety of difficulties. Specifically, the question is whether all triggering elements required to cover displacement of all kinds in natural language can be independently motivated. Further, how can a trigger theory, which crucially relies on the idea that all movement is obligatory, deal with apparently optional movement processes? Are features an adequate means to express the triggering function in all cases? More radically, are all movement phenomena really the result of the checking of trigger features? And what about apparent triggering factors that are 'external' to syntax such as prosody - can they be captured in a rigid trigger theory? In other words, could certain aspects of triggered movement be due to interface conditions? Such is the range of questions addressed by the fourteen contributions to this book. They cover a considerable range of languages (including Afrikaans, Breton, Bulgarian, Dutch, English, French, German, Gungbe, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Kiswahili, Romanian). These papers present materials, both empirical and theoretical, that will not fail to have considerable impact on the further development of the concept of trigger in syntactic theory.

Again firmly rooted in Leonard Talmy's Cognitive Semantics, this new study moves beyond the analysis of single schematic systems in language contributing to the linguistic task of conceptual integration. It investigates for the first time effects of linking up Force Dynamics, a conceptual category generalizing over the traditional notion of the causative, and the Attention system of language, as detailed in Talmy's most recent extended draft version. To accommodate the conceptual and formal complexities involved at the interface of Attention, Force Dynamics, and Cognitive State and to allow for an appropriate degree of fine-grainedness the analytical framework affords, the exposition has been constrained to the golf scenario, where forces are at work in the physical and sociodynamic domains.