Using the Principles and Parameters framework, Henry analyses various syntactic constructions in Belfast English, and compares them with their Standard English counterparts to gain insight into both English syntax and general syntactic theory. The study will also make linguistic data on Belfast English readily available for the first time.

This book offers a comprehensive survey of the agreement phenomena found in written and spoken Arabic. It focuses on both the synchronic description of these agreement systems, and the diachronic question of how they evolved. To answer these questions, large amounts of data have been collected and analysed, ranging from 6th century poetry and Quranic Arabic to the contemporary dialects. The results presented by the authors of this research greatly improve our understanding of Arabic syntax, and challenge some well-established views. Can Arabic be envisioned as possessing more than only two genders? Are some contemporary dialects more similar to the pre-Classical version of the language than MSA is? And is the Standard rule prescribing feminine singular agreement with nonhuman plurals a more recent development than previously thought?

In Tense and Text in Classical Arabic, Michal Marmorstein presents a new discourse-oriented analysis of the indicative tense system in Classical Arabic. Critical of commonly held assumptions regarding the binary structure of the tense system and the perfect-imperfect asymmetry, the author redefines the discussion by analysing the extended syntactic and textual environments in which the paradigm of the indicative forms is used.The study shows that the function of Classical Arabic tenses is determined by the interaction of their inherent grammatical meaning and the overall dialogic, narrative, or generic contexts in which they occur. It also demonstrates the particularizing effect of context, so that temporal and aspectual meanings are always more nuanced, delicate, and pragmatically motivated in actual discourse.

This book explores, analyzes, and compares the use of German and Chinese demonstratives. Discourse and textual uses of the forms are considered, as well as their locative and temporal uses. The author observes that in both languages the demonstratives can be used to refer to referents. However, she departs from the common assumption that proximal demonstratives refer to entities or places close to the speaker, while non-proximal demonstratives refer to entities or places far from the speaker. Having analyzed a representative sampling consisting of a German text and a Chinese text, the author argues that both German and Chinese proximal demonstratives can signal the meaning of HIGH DEIXIS in a system of DEIXIS in the Columbia School of linguistics framework, whereas their non-proximal demonstratives can signal the meaning of LOW DEIXIS. In addition, Chinese demonstratives can be used under more circumstances than German demonstratives due to the lack of articles in Chinese. The author also argues that Cognitive Linguistic analysis is more helpful for new language learners, whereas the Columbia School of linguistics may be better suited to advanced learners who wish to know more about the intrinsic differences between words with similar meanings and uses. This book aims to help German learners better understand the German reference system. Readers with a Chinese language background will definitely benefit more from the book, as well as Chinese learners with a German language background. For pure linguistic enthusiasts and multi-linguals, the book offers an extensive introduction to the Columbia School of linguistics, and can open a new horizon for learning a new language comparatively.

This book is a four-volume study on modern Chinese complex sentences, giving an overview and detailed analysis on the key attributes and three major types of this linguistic unit. Complex sentences in modern Chinese are unique in formation and meaning. The author proposes a tripartite classification of Chinese complex sentences according to the semantic relationships between the clauses, i.e., coordinate, causal, and adversative. The first volume defines Chinese complex sentences and makes detailed comparisons between the tripartite and dichotomous systems for the classification of complex sentences. It then thoroughly investigates causal complex sentences in their eight typical forms. The second volume analyses the coordinated type in the broad sense and the relevant forms, while the third focuses on adversative type, examining the major forms and implications for research and language teaching. The final volume looks into attributes of Chinese complex sentences as a whole, discussing the constituents, related sentence forms, and semantic and pragmatic relevance of complex sentences. The book will be a useful reference for scholars and learners of the Chinese language interested in Chinese grammar and language information processing.

This is the first book in a two-volume comparative history of negation in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. The work integrates typological, general, and theoretical research, documents patterns and directions of change in negation across languages, and examines the linguistic and social factors that lie behind such changes. The first volume presents linked case studies of particular languages and language groups, including French, Italian, English, Dutch, German, Celtic, Slavonic, Greek, Uralic, and Afro-Asiatic. Each outlines and analyses the development of sentential negation and of negative indefinites and quantifiers, including negative concord and, where appropriate, language-specific topics such as the negation of infinitives, negative imperatives, and constituent negation. The second volume (to be pubished in 2014) will offer comparative analyses of changes in negation systems of European and north African languages and set out an integrated framework for understanding them. The aim of both is a universal understanding of the syntax of negation and how it changes. Their authors develop formal models in the light of data drawn from historical linguistics, especially on processes of grammaticalization, and consider related effects on language acquisition and language contact. At the same time the books seek to advance models of historical syntax more generally and to show the value of uniting perspectives from different theoretical frameworks.

Word order is not a subject anyone reading Latin can afford to ignore: apart from anything else, word order is what gets one from disjoint sentences to coherent text. Reading a paragraph of Latin without attention to the word order entails losing access to a whole dimension of meaning, or at best using inferential procedures to guess at what is actually overtly encoded in the syntax. This book begins by introducing the reader to the linguistic concepts, formalism and analytical techniques necessary for the study of Latin word order. It then proceeds to present and analyze a representative selection of data in sufficient detail for the reader to develop both an intuitive grasp of the often rather subtle principles controlling Latin word order and a theoretically grounded understanding of the system that underlies it. Combining the rich empirical documentation of traditional philological approaches with the deeper theoretical insight of modern linguistics, this work aims to reduce the intricate surface patterns of Latin word order to a simple and general crosscategorial system of syntactic structure which translates more or less directly into constituents of pragmatic and semantic meaning.

This volume combines psycholinguistic experiments with typological investigations in order to provide a comprehensive exploration of the linguistic structure of verb-number agreement in bilingual speakers, with a particular focus on the Turkish language. It takes as its starting point the question of which linguistic structures pose difficulties for bilingual speakers, and then proceeds to evaluate the question by using the interface phenomenon of optional verb number agreement. In doing so, this volume investigates how the bilingual mind handles grammatical structures that demand high processing sources, working towards a processing-based linguistic framework for the bilingual mind. Beginning with a thorough survey of the current research of the interface phenomenon in the bilingual mind, the volume then proceeds to present two separate studies on each linguistic interface type, namely semantics-syntax interface and syntax-pragmatics interface, thus filling a number of gaps in the bilingualism research with regards to the interface phenomenon The results and conclusions of these studies are then integrated with current knowledge and research from the field within a theoretical and processing-based framework in order to explore new psycholinguistic insights for the bilingual mind, specifically the conclusion that the grammar of bilingual speakers is shaped according to cross linguistic tendencies. Ultimately, it provides a unified account and a comprehensive conclu sion regarding the non-native-like patterns in grammar of bilingual speakers. Serving as a fascinating and timely resource, Competing Structures in the Bilingual Mind: An Investigation of Optional Verb Number Agreement will appeal to bilingualism researchers, clinical linguists, cognitive scientists, experimental linguists, and any linguist specializing in Turkic or Altaic languages.

This book presents a cross-linguistic investigation of the behaviour of negation in gapping sentences. Sophie Repp focusses on German and English with reference to Dutch, Japanese, Polish, Russian, and Slovak. She shows that these languages exhibit important differences in the interaction of gapping and negation and further that no account in the literature explains why this should be. Dr Repp also argues that the precise interpretation of an elided negation depends on varying combinations of syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and prosodic factors. Illustrating her argument by the interpretation of the negation in examples such as "Pete hasn't got a video and John a DVD," "Pete didn't clean the whole flat and John laze around all afternoon," and "To Mary, Pete didn't say anything and to Sue, only that he was hungry," Dr Repp questions a basic assumption in the analysis of gapping: that the meaning of the two conjuncts must be parallel in the elided material. This leads her to a wide-ranging discussion of the interpretation of scope and the nature of negation. She then proposes a syntactic analysis that both takes into account the interaction of the grammatical interfaces and is at the same time compatible with more general assumptions of current generative theory. She concludes by considering the implications of her findings for linguistic theory more generally.

This volume is a collection of previously unpublished articles focusing on the following aspects of Portuguese syntax: clause structure, clitic placement, word order variation, pronominal system, verb movement, quantification, and distribution of particles. The articles are written within the principles and parameters framework and contrast Portuguese with other Romance languages.

This volume is a collection of grammar sketches from several Italo-Romance varieties. The contributions cover various areas of linguistics (phonology, morphology, syntax) and are organized in sections according to the customary geolinguistic classification. Each chapter provides the description of a salient phenomenon for a given language, based on novel data, as well as the state-of-the-art knowledge on that phenomenon. The articles are in-depth studies carried out by prominent experts as well as promising young scholars. The theoretical apparatus is kept to a minimum in order to make the book accessible to scholars without specific expertise. For the same reason, hypotheses and formalisms are introduced gradually, only if necessary for the description of the data.

Moves the analysis of grammar and language structure onto the next stage - interpreting it from a semantic and pragmatic point of view. Clearly shows how grammar works in different literary contexts - literary, non-literary, spoken and written. Explores a wide range of linguistic themes, including sociolinguistics, language acquisition and register. Provides guidance on how people can put their knowledge of grammar into daily practice and how this is interpreted by others. Organised in the same way as Rediscover Grammar for quick reference. Unique, lively writing and clear explanations from the world-class grammar expert.

In this volume leading researchers present new work on the semantics and pragmatics of adjectives and adverbs, and their interfaces with syntax. Its concerns include the semantics of gradability; the relationship between adjectival scales and verbal aspect; the relationship between meaning and the positions of adjectives and adverbs in nominal and verbal projections; and the fine-grained semantics of different subclasses of adverbs and adverbs. Its goals are to provide a comprehensive vision of the linguistically significant structural and interpretive properties of adjectives and adverbs, to highlight the similarities between these two categories, and to signal the importance of a careful and detailed integration of lexical and compositional semantics.
The editors open the book with an overview of current research before introducing and contextualizing the remaining chapters. The work is aimed at scholars and advanced students of syntax, semantics, formal pragmatics, and discourse. It will also appeal to researchers in philosophy, psycholinguistics, and language acquisition interested in the syntax and semantics of adjectives and adverbs.

This volume provides a comprehensive analysis of the syntax of Palauan that will appeal to anyone interested in Austronesian languages or formal syntactic and morphological theory. This volume proposes that words in Palauan are not drawn directly from a mental lexicon, but are instead composed at least partially in the syntax. Using original data from syntactic constructions not previously explored in the language, the author entertains several competing theories of word formation and highlights the compatible and incompatible aspects of each, through an exploration into new corners of Palauan syntax and morphology.

This book provides a state of the art collection of constructional research on syntactic structures in German. The volume is unique in that it offers an easily accessible, yet comprehensive and sophisticated variety of papers. Moreover, various of the papers make explicit connections between grammatical constructions and the concept of valency which has figured quite prominently in Germanic Linguistics over the past half century.

This book provides a detailed exploration of negation and negative polarity phenomena and their implications for linguistic theory. Including new, specially commissioned work from some of the leading European, American, and Japanese scholars, Negation and Polarity covers all of the main approaches to this subjectDSsyntactic, pragmatic, semantic, and cognitiveDSin a variety of language contexts.

Earlier empirical studies on valency have looked at the phenomenon either in individual languages or a small range of languages, or have concerned themselves with only small subparts of valency (e.g. transitivity, ditransitive constructions), leaving a lacuna that the present volume aims to fill by considering a wide range of valency phenomena across 30 languages from different parts of the world. The individual-language studies, each written by a specialist or group of specialists on that language and covering both valency patterns and valency alternations, are based on a questionnaire (reproduced in the volume) and an on-line freely accessible database, thus guaranteeing comparability of cross-linguistic results. In addition, introductory chapters provide the background to the project and discuss its main characteristics and selected results, while a series of featured articles by leading scholars who helped shape the field provide an outside perspective on the volume's approach. The volume is essential reading for anyone interested in valency and argument structure, irrespective of theoretical persuasion, and will serve as a model for future descriptive studies of valency in individual languages.

This book elaborates a theory of ellipsis that sheds new light on a well-known phenomenon, bringing it under the aegis of general and universal principles. Lobeck argues that ellipted categories in IP (VP Ellipsis), DP (N' Ellipsis), and CP (Sluicing) are empty, non-referential pronominals, subject to the same licensing and identification conditions as referential pro. She proposes that both types of empty pronominals must be licensed under head-government to satisfy the Empty Category Principle, and identified through strong agreement. In the case of ellipsis, agreement-type features make the empty category visible to interpretive processes of reconstruction. These licensing and identification conditions derive the result that ellipses are complements of functional categories DET, COMP, and INFL, but not of lexical categories. The analysis is supported by contrastive evidence from ellipsis in French and German, in which licensing and identification interact with Verb Raising, feature checking, and a parameter defining "strong" agreement.

This Handbook represents the development of research and the current level of knowledge in the fields of syntactic theory and syntax analysis. Syntax can look back to a long tradition. Especially in the last 50 years, however, the interaction between syntactic theory and syntactic analysis has led to a rapid increase in analyses and theoretical suggestions. This second edition of the Handbook on Syntax adopts a unifying perspective and therefore does not place the division of syntactic theory into several schools to the fore, but the increase in knowledge resulting from the fruitful argumentations between syntactic analysis and syntactic theory. It uses selected phenomena of individual languages and their cross-linguistic realizations to explain what syntactic analyses can do and at the same time to show in what respects syntactic theories differ from each other. It investigates how syntax is related to neighbouring disciplines and investigate the role of the interfaces especially the relationship between syntax and phonology, morphology, compositional semantics, pragmatics, and the lexicon. The phenomena chosen bring together renowned experts in syntax, and represent the consensus reached as to what has to be considered as an important as well as illustrative syntactic phenomenon. The phenomena discuss do not only serve to show syntactic analyses, but also to compare theoretical approaches with each other.

The foundation of this book is a line-by-line analysis of enjambement, or the syntactical relationship between successive verses, in the Iliad. Such a study develops naturally from Milman Parry's work, which sought to show the importance for oral composition, and specifically for Homer, both of the syntactical link between lines and the frequency of each type of enjambement. In contrast to earlier studies, which utilized only portions of the text, Dr. Higbie's book is unique in presenting analyses of the complete poem. In doing so, she makes material available which can be used to answer larger stylistic questions of genre, effect, and the manipulation and enjambing of formulae. Speeches, similes, battle scenes, and catalogues, for example, can be distinguished by the length and structure of the sentences, as well as by the relationship between the individual sentence and the hexameter verse. Moreover, the flexibility and survival of the formula depend in part upon its grammatical construction. The importance of enjambement to Homeric verse makes this book an essential reference work for scholars and students of Homer alike.

This two-volume set presents a comprehensive syntactical picture of Singapore Mandarin and discusses the distinguishing characteristics of the Chinese language and especially Singapore Mandarin. As a variety of Mandarin Chinese, Singapore Mandarin is characterised by syntactic rules taking precedence over morphological rules. The first volume provides an overview of the grammar of Singapore Mandarin and argues that word order and functional words are specifically important in the study of Singapore Mandarin. It also explains the properties and functions of the nine grammatical components, including phrase types, word classes, sentences, subjects and predicates, predicates and objects, predicates and complements, attributes and adverbials, complex predicate phrases and prepositions and prepositional phrases. The second volume describes expressions of number, quantity, time and place and composite sentences, covering seven types of compound sentences, eight types of complex sentences and connective words with a focus on conjunctions. The concluding part of the study explores the characteristics of Singapore Mandarin grammar compared with Chinese Mandarin (Putonghua) and issues of language standardisation. With rich and authentic language examples, the book will serve as a must read for learners and teachers of Mandarin Chinese and linguistics scholars interested in global Chinese and especially Singapore Mandarin.

In Motion and the English Verb, a study of the expression of motion in medieval English, Judith Huber provides extensive inventories of verbs used in intransitive motion meanings in Old and Middle English, and discusses these in terms of the manner-salience of early English. Huber demonstrates how several non-motion verbs receive contextual motion meanings through their use in the intransitive motion construction. In addition, she analyzes which verbs and structures are employed most frequently in talking about motion in select Old and Middle English texts, demonstrating that while satellite-framing is stable, the extent of manner-conflation is influenced by text type and style. Huber further investigates how in the intertypological contact with medieval French, a range of French path verbs (entrer, issir, descendre, etc.) were incorporated into Middle English, in whose system of motion encoding they are semantically unusual. Their integration into Middle English is studied in an innovative approach which analyzes their usage contexts in autonomous Middle English texts as opposed to translations from French and Latin. Huber explains how these verbs were initially borrowed not for expressing general literal motion, but in more specific, often metaphorical and abstract contexts. Her study is a diachronic contribution to the typology of motion encoding, and advances research on the process of borrowing and loanword integration.

In Grammaticalising the Perfect and Explanations of Language Change: Have- and Be-Perfects in the History and Structure of English and Bulgarian, Bozhil Hristov investigates key aspects of the verbal systems of two distantly related Indo-European languages, highlighting similarities as well as crucial differences between them and seeking a unified approach. The book reassesses some long-held notions and functionalist assumptions and shines the spotlight on certain areas that have received less attention, such as the role of ambiguity in actual usage. The detailed analysis of rich, contextualised material from a selection of texts dovetails with large-scale corpus studies, complementing their findings and enhancing our understanding of the phenomena. This monograph thus presents a happy marriage of traditional philological techniques and recent advances in theoretical linguistics and corpus work.

This pioneering research brings a new insight into derivational processes in terms of theory, method and typology. Theoretically, it conceives of derivation as a three-dimensional system. Methodologically, it introduces a range of parameters for the evaluation of derivational networks, including the derivational role, combinability and blocking effects of semantic categories, the maximum derivational potential and its actualization in relation to simple underived words, and the maximum and average number of orders of derivation. Each language-specific chapter has a unified structure, which made it possible to identify - in the final, typologically oriented chapter - the systematicity and regularity in developing derivational networks in a sample of forty European languages and in a few language genera and families. This is supported by considerations about the role of word-classes, morphological types, and the differences and similarities between word-formation processes of the languages belonging to the same genus/family.

The integration of traditional and modern linguistics as well as diachrony and synchrony is the hallmark of an influential trend in contemporary research on language. It is documented in the present collection of 21 new papers on the history and structure of the sounds and other (sub-) systems of human languages, sharing the common reference point of Theo Vennemann, a leading figure in the above-mentioned trend, whom the authors want to honor with this Festschrift.