An important new volume based on the results of research in language typology, and motivated by the need for a theory to explain them. Professor Croft puts forward a new approach to syntactic

representation and a new model of how language and languages work. He covers a wide range of syntactic phenomena, illustrating these with examples that show the varied grammatical structures of the

world's languages.

This book focuses on the structural diversity, semantic variability, case choice, stylistic characteristics and diachronic distribution of English absolute clauses. The syntactic roles assumed by absolute clauses in the traditional sense can be categorized into clausal adjuncts, attendant circumstances and appositives. These three types of function correspond to the three hypotactic expansions in the relation system of clause complexes in Systemic Functional Linguistics, i.e., elaboration, extension and enhancement. This research, therefore, redefines absolute clauses in the framework of SFL and proposes four syntactic types of absolute clauses: absolute paratactic clauses (elaboration), absolute hypotactic clauses (extension and enhancement), absolute projected clauses (fact and act) and absolute embedded clauses (subject). Based on the Brown family corpora, BNC and COHA, this research finds that different function types of absolute clauses differ in terms of their stylistic and diachronic distributions, and both nominative and accusative cases are acceptable.

Taking as a point of departure ideas and principles from the 18th and 19th century Danish tradition, and from 20th century traditions of the Copenhagen School of linguistics, this book attempts to set up a formal theory of syntax that addresses some of the weak points of other formal grammars, notably Chomskyan grammar. After introductions to the ideas of Brondal, Hjelmslev and Diderichsen, Gotzsche lays the philosophical and theoretical foundations of his formalism, based on a theory of universal pragmatics and on the invention of a special kind of formal logic called 'occurrence logic', and elaborates this formal system in detail. In order to justify the adequacy of the theory, the theoretical apparatus is applied to the general structures of Danish and Swedish and illustrated by linguistic material from these languages. Furthermore, the ambition is to propose solutions to traditional problems concerning more inferior grammatical categories like prepositions, infinitive markers and particles. The concluding chapter of the book presents some ideas about how the formal system can be transformed into a model of the cognitive mechanism that handles syntax.This book will be of interest to linguists, philosophers and scholars in theoretical linguistics and in Modern Languages.

This book presents a detailed formal machinery for the conversion of the Semantic Analyses (SAs) of sentences into surface structures of English, French, German, Dutch, and to some extent Turkish. The SAs are propositional structures consisting of a predicate and one, two or three argument terms, some of which can themselves be propositional structures. The surface structures are specified up to, but not including, the morphology. The book is thus an implementation of the programme formulated first by Albert Sechehaye (1870-1946) and then, independently, by James McCawley (1938-1999) in the school of Generative Semantics. It is the first, and so far the only formally precise and empirically motivated machinery in existence converting meaning representations into sentences of natural languages.

This volume examines the relationship between language and literacy from a systemic functional perspective. The book starts with a retrospective view on the development of systemic functional linguistics hand-in-hand with language education practices, written by eminent linguists Michael Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan, and then shows how this approach has developed, and informed language education policy and theory. The second section presents examples of how considerations of literacy education are carried out in educational systems around the world based on systemic functional linguistics. The contributors examine issues such as metadiscourse, genre, cultural politics, and how systemic functional grammar can help to raise literacy standards. The final section looks at literacy in more specific disciplines at school and university, including history, literature, and student writing. The essays collected here present a comprehensive analysis of language and literacy from a systemic functional perspective, written by academics at the forefront of the field. It will be of interest to researchers in systemic functional linguistics, or language and education.

The pervasive use of dislocations (as in Le chocolat, c'est bon) is a key characteristic of spoken French. This book offers various new and well-motivated insights, based on tests conducted by the author, on the syntactic analysis, prosody, and the interpretation of dislocation in spoken French. It also considers important aspects of the acquisition of dislocation by monolingual children learning different French dialects.
The author argues that spoken French is a discourse-configurational language, in which topics are obligatorily dislocated. She develops a syntactically parsimonious account, which maximizes the import of interfaces involved with discourse and prosody. She proposes clear diagnostics, following a reexamination of the status of subject clitics and a reevaluation of the characteristic prosody of dislocated constituents. The theoretical arguments throughout the book rest on data that comes from corpora of spontaneous production and from various elitication experiments.
This book throws new light on French syntax and prosody and makes an important and original contribution to the study of linguistic interfaces. Clearly expressed and tightly argued it will interest scholars and advanced students of French and of its acquisition as a first language as well as linguistic theorists interested in the interfaces between syntax, discourse, and phonology.

Since 1970-ties in the theory of syntax of natural language quite a number of competing, incommensurable theoretic frameworks have emerged. Today the lack of a leading paradigm and kaleidoscope of perspectives deprives our general understanding of syntax and its relation to semantics and pragmatics. The present book is an attempt to reestablish the most fundamental ideas and intuitions of syntactic well-formedness within a new general account. The account is not supposed to compete with any of today 's syntactic frameworks, but to provide a deeper understanding of why these frameworks succeed or fail when they do and to show a new way for cooperation between logicians and linguists which may lead in future to a unified, yet more specific account.

This book grew out of a concern we have had that very many theoretical and descriptive work on the Kwa languages were not accessible to the general linguistic community. As a result, these languages were only referred to in the context of very specific discussions such as serial verb constructions. But as the reader of this book will notice, syntactic topics discussed in the context of Kwa range from bare nouns, relative clauses, negation, discourse markers and the interaction with the clausal periphery, to argument structure. Many issues remain that need to be brought to the fore of the community and we hope that this book will trigger the curiosity of the reader to get to know more about these languages. Much of the work presented here could not have been possible without the help of many colleagues and the contri- tors whom we thank warmly for joining this enterprise. We are also grateful to the editors of the series, Marcel den Dikken, Joan Maling, Liliane Haegeman to have offered us this platform to initiate the debate about Kwa. We will also like to thank Helen van der Stelt and Jolanda Voogd from Springer for their kind collaboration and patience. We are also very grateful to Joscelyn Essegbey and Leston Buell for helping with editing the manuscript. Enoch, O. Aboh James Essegbey v Contents 1 The Phonology Syntax Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Enoch, O. Aboh and James Essegbey 2 The Morphosyntax of the Noun Phrase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Enoch, O.

This work investigates the syntax of the higher portion of the functional structure of the clause using comparative data from hundreds of Northern Italian dialects. The area contains dialects that are different in most ways yet homogenous syntactically, making it an ideal ground for analyzing micro-variations in syntax. The book sheds new light on debated problems such as subject-clitic inversion, verb movement and subject positions, and the structure of the higher functional phrases.

This collection of essays grew out of the workshop 'Existence: Semantics and Syntax', which was held at the University of Nancy 2 in September 2002. The workshop, organized by Ileana Comorovski and Claire Gardent, was supported by a grant from the Reseau de Sciences Cognitives du Grand Est ('Cognitive Science Network of the Greater East'), which is gratefully acknowledged. The ?rst e- tor wishes to thank Claire Gardent, Fred Landman, and Georges Rebuschi for encouraging her to pursue the publication of a volume based on papers presented at the workshop. Among those who participated in the workshop was Klaus von Heusinger, who joined Ileana Comorovski in editing this volume. Besides papers that developed out of presentations at the workshop, the volume contains invited contributions. We are grateful to Wayles Browne, Fred Landman, Paul Portner, and Georges Rebuschi for their help with reviewing some of the papers. Our thanks go also to a Springer reviewer for the careful reading of the book manuscript. We wish to thank all the participants in the workshop, not only those whose contributions appear in this volume, for making the workshop an int- active and constructive event. Ileana Comorovski Klaus von Heusinger vii ILEANA COMOROVSKI AND KLAUS VON HEUSINGER INTRODUCTION The notion of 'existence', which we take to have solid intuitive grounding, plays a central role in the interpretation of at least three types of linguistic constructions: copular clauses, existential sentences, and (in)de?nite noun phrases."

This book considers the implications of cross-linguistic word-order patterns for linguistic theory. One of the salient results of Joseph Greenberg's pioneering work in language typology was the notion of a 'harmonic' word-order type, whereby if the verb appears at the left or right edge of the verb phrase, other heads (e.g. prepositions, nouns) also tend to do so. Today, however, there is recognition in both the typological and generative literature that very many, and possibly even the majority of languages, fail to be fully harmonic in the sense that all head-complement pairs pattern alike. But does this imply limitless variation? The chapters in this volume, written by international scholars, discuss the issues arising from this basic question, drawing on data from typologically distinct disharmonic languages, including Mandarin Chinese, Basque, Mocheno (a Tyrolean variety spoken in Northern Italy), French, English, Hixkaryana (a Cariban language), Khalkha Mongolian, Uyghur Turkic, and Afrikaans. The volume begins with a substantial introduction to the study of word order and its relation to linguistic theory. It is then divided into sections on the nature of disharmony; the role of prosody; the question of Antisymmetry and novel alternatives to Antisymmetry; and the Final-over-Final Constraint. Aside from introducing new empirical findings, the volume also offers a range of new perspectives on disharmonic word orders, the status of word order in linguistic theory, and theoretical accounts of typological gaps.

Is today's language at an all-time low? Are pronunciations like cawfee and chawklit bad English? Is slang like my bad or hook up improper? Is it incorrect to mix English and Spanish, as in Yo quiero Taco Bell? Can you write Who do you trust? rather than Whom do you trust? Linguist Edwin Battistella takes a hard look at traditional notions of bad language, arguing that they are often based in sterile conventionality.
Examining grammar and style, cursing, slang, and political correctness, regional and ethnic dialects, and foreign accents and language mixing, Battistella discusses the strong feelings evoked by language variation, from objections to the pronunciation NU-cu-lar to complaints about bilingual education. He explains the natural desire for uniformity in writing and speaking and traces the association of mainstream norms to ideas about refinement, intelligence, education, character, national unity and political values. Battistella argues that none of these qualities is inherently connected to language.
It is tempting but wrong, Battistella argues, to think of slang, dialects and nonstandard grammar as simply breaking the rules of good English. Instead, we should view language as made up of alternative forms of orderliness adopted by speakers depending on their purpose. Thus we can study the structure and context of nonstandard language in order to illuminate and enrich traditional forms of language, and make policy decisions based on an informed engagement.
Re-examining longstanding and heated debates, Bad Language will appeal to a wide spectrum of readers engaged and interested in the debate over what constitutes proper language.

Top researchers in prosody and psycholinguistics present their research and their views on the role of prosody in processing speech and also its role in reading. The volume characterizes the state of the art in an important area of psycholinguistics. How are general constraints on prosody ('timing') and intonation ('melody') used to constrain the parsing and interpretation of spoken language? How are they used to assign a default prosody/intonation in silent reading, and more generally what is the role of phonology in reading? Prosody and intonation interact with phonology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics and thus are at the very core of language processes.

A Grammar of Bjokapakha by Selin Grollmann constitutes the first description of Bjokapakha, an endangered language spoken in central Bhutan belonging to the Tshangla branch of Trans-Himalayan. This grammar comprises a description of the phonology, lexicon, nominal morphology, predicate structures and syntax. In addition to the descriptive parts, this book encompasses a historical-comparative account of Bjokapakha. The introductory chapter provides a comparison with the standard variety of Tshangla and corroborates the internal diversity of the Tshangla branch. The present-day structure of Bjokapakha verbal morphology is illuminated by means of an internal reconstruction. Moreover, this book contains a glossary and a text collection.

The volume consists of articles on issues relating to the morphosyntactic development of foreign language learners from different L1 backgrounds, in many cases involving languages which are typologically distant from English, such has Polish, Greek and Turkish. It highlights areas which may be expected to be especially transfer-prone at both the interlingual and intralingual levels. The articles in the first part report empirical studies on word morphology and sentence patterns and also look at the interface of lexis and grammar in the discourse and syntactic processing of foreign language learners. The second part elaborates on pedagogical issues concerning the acquisition of difficult grammatical features such as the English article system or the ‘s’ ending in the third person singular. It also comments more generally on the way pedagogic grammar functions in the learning of the L2.

This volume includes a selection of fifteen papers delivered at the Second International Conference on Late Modern English. The chapters focus on significant linguistic aspects of the Late Modern English period, not only on grammatical issues such as the development of pragmatic markers, for-to infinitive constructions, verbal subcategorisation, progressive aspect, sentential complements, double comparative forms or auxiliary/negator cliticisation but also on pronunciation, dialectal variation and other practical aspects such as corpus compilation, which are approached from different perspectives (descriptive, cognitive, syntactic, corpus-driven).

Controversy over gendered pronouns, for example using the generic "he," has been a staple of feminist arguments about patriarchal language over the last 30 years, and is certainly the most contested political issue in Western feminist linguistics. Most accounts do not extend beyond policy issues like the official institution of non-sexist language. In this volume, Anna Livia reveals continuities both before and after the sexist language refore movement and shows how the creative practices of pronoun use on the part of feminist writers had both aesthetic and political ends. Livia uses the term "pronoun envy" ironically to show that rather being a case of misguided envy, battles over gendered language are central to feminist concerns.
Livia examines a broad corpus of written texts in English and French, concentrating on those texts which problematize the traditional functioning of the linguistic gender system. They range from novels and prose poems to film scripts and personal testimonies, and in time from the 19th century to the present. Some withhold any indication of gender; others have non-gendered characters. Livia's goal is two-fold; to help bridge the divide between linguistic and literary analysis, and to show how careful study of the manipulation of linguistic gender in these texts informs larger concerns. This fresh and highly interdisciplinary work lies at the intersection of several vital areas, including language and gender, sociolinguistics, and feminist literary analysis.

This work is a reference grammar of Hup, a member of the Nadahup family (also known as Maku or Vaupes-Japura), which is spoken in the fascinatingly multilingual Vaupes region of the northwest Amazon. This detailed description and analysis is informed by a functional-typological perspective, with particular reference to areal contact and grammaticalization. The grammar begins with an introduction to the cultural and linguistic background of Hup speakers, gives an overview of the phonology, and follows this with chapters on morphosyntax (nominal morphology, verbs and verb compounding, tense, aspect, modality, evidentiality, etc.); it concludes with discussions of negation, the simple clause, and clause combining. A number of features of Hup grammar are typologically significant, such as its strategy of inversion in question formation, its system of Differential Object Marking, and its treatment of possession. Hup also exhibits several highly unusual paths of grammaticalization, such as the development of a verbal future suffix from the noun 'stick, tree'. The book also includes a selection of texts and a CD-ROM with audio files.

Morphology in English is a text which provides an in-depth analysis of the branch of linguistics which studies the formation of composite words and the form-meaning relationships between their subparts. It takes a cognitive viewpoint and provides full coverage of the essential topics of prefixation, suffixation and compounding. It covers categorization, configuration and conceptualization and enables readers to recognize the complexity of the English lexical system. It demonstrates the pivotal role which morphemes play in the expansion of a languages lexical store. The book combines two aspects of language: word formation and semantic distinctions regarding usage, enabling readers to understand the formation of composite words and their use in natural language. The book features: clear layout accessible style explicit definitions vivid illustrations actual data examples exercises further reading appendices companion website with full answer set

The volume features a selection of new work presented at the 2004 meeting of the International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL). Main conference themes reflected in this volume are: the maturation and broadening of historical corpus linguistics, a new interest in English for Specific Purposes as a diachronic phenomenon, and the role of grammar writing in the process of change. A further thematic strand of this book is the significance of functional aspects in the development of grammar and discourse, especially in domains beyond phonology and morphology. Several contributions focus on the operation of socio-pragmatic and functional factors in historically identifiable social networks, especially in the 18th century. Apart from that there is also a strong emphasis on developments in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The alignment splits in the Neo-Aramaic languages display a considerable degree of diversity, especially in terms of agreement. While earlier studies have generally oversimplified the actual state of affairs, Paul M. Noorlander offers a meticulous and clear account of nearly all microvariation documented so far, addressing all relevant morphosyntactic phenomena. By means of fully glossed and translated examples, the author shows that this vast variation in morphological alignment, including ergativity, is unexpected from a functional typological perspective. He argues the alignment splits are rather the outcome of several construction-specific processes such as internal system harmonization and grammaticalization, as well as language contact.

This book is an introduction to Word Grammar, a theory of language structure founded and developed by Dick Hudson. In this theory, language is a cognitive network - a network of concepts, words and meanings containing all the elements of a linguistic analysis. The theory of language is therefore embedded in a theory of knowledge, in which there are no boundaries between one form of knowledge and any other. Contributors to this volume are primarily Word Grammar grammarians from across the world. All the chapters here manifest theoretical potentialities of Word Grammar, exploring how powerful Word Grammar is to offer analysis for linguistic phenomena in various languages. The chapters come from varying perspectives and include work on a number of languages, including English, German, Japanese, Swahili, Turkish and Ancient Greek. Phenomena studied include verbal inflection, case agreement, extraction, construction and code-mixing. This new collection will be of interest to academics encountering Word Grammar for the first time, or for those who are already familiar with this theory and are interested in reading how it has evolved and what its future may hold.

This comprehensive introduction presents the basic goals and tools of syntactic analysis. The conceptual framework is theory-neutral, presenting a scientific introduction to the field. The chapters in the first half of the book present a detailed introduction to synchronic description. The second half of the book examines variation and change, syntactic typology, and language acquisition, and possible explanations from structural, evolutionary and functional perspectives.

This collection of papers is a product of the first international conference of the Society of Historical English Language and Linguistics (SHELL) held at Chiba University, Japan, in September 2005. The society aims at the reunion of linguistics and philology. The papers discuss current issues in the area of syntax, semantics and stylistics.

It is the aim of INDICES to document recent explorations in the various fields of philosophical logic and formal linguistics and their applications in other disciplines. The main emphasis of this series is on self-contained monographs covering particular areas of recent research and surveys of methods, problems, and results in all fields of inquiry where recourse to logical analysis and logical methods has been fruitful. INDICES will contain monographs dealing with the central areas of philosophical logic (extensional and intensional systems, indexical logics, non-classical logics, philosophy of logic, etc.) as well as studies in which these systems are applied to specific issues in philosophy, in the formal semantics of natural languages, the foundations of linguistic theory, in computational linguistics, and in theoretical computer science. Constructive type theory was first presented in 1970, by the Swedish logician Per Martin-Lof. It has become one of the main approaches used in the foundations of mathematics and computer science. But it has remained relatively unknown among linguists and philosophers, although it provides a considerable extension of the concepts and techniques of logic. The book first gives an introduction to type theory from the point of view of linguistics and the philosophy of language. Type theory is then applied in the areas of quantification, anaphora, temporal reference, and the structure of text and discourse. By virtue of the type-theoretical concepts of proof object and context, various phenomena of dependence and progression in language can be discussed in precise terms, and several well-known problems can be solved. A categorial grammar is presented togenerate formally a fragment of English, together with an example of a computer implementation.