This monograph gives a unified account of the syntactic distribution of subjunctive mood across languages, including Romance, Balkan (South Slavic and Modern Greek), and Hungarian, among others. Starting from a close scrutiny of the environments in which subjunctive mood occurs and of its semantic contribution, we present a feature-based approach which reveals the common properties of the class of verbs which embed subjunctive, and which takes into account the variation in subjunctive-related complementizers. Two main proposals can be highlighted: (i) the lexical semantics of the main clause predicate plays a crucial role in mood selection. More specifically subjunctive mood is regulated by a specific property of the main predicate, the emotive property, which is associated with the external argument of the embedding verb (usually the Subject). The book proposes a nanosyntactic analysis of the internal structure of embedding verbs. (ii) Cross- and intra-linguistic variations are dealt with according to different patterns of lexicalization, i.e., variations depend on what portions of the verb's and complementizer's functional sequence is lexicalized and on how it is packaged by languages. In doing so, this approach provides a uniform account of the phenomenon of embedded subjunctives. The monograph takes a novel, feature-based approach to the question of subjunctive licensing, providing a detailed analysis of the features of the matrix verb, of the complementizer and of the embedded subjunctive clause. It is also based on a wide empirical coverage, ranging from the relatively well-studied groups of Romance and Balkan languages to less explored languages from non-Indo-European families (Hungarian).

Predicates and their Subjects is an in-depth study of the syntax-semantics interface focusing on the structure of the subject-predicate relation. Starting from where the author's 1983 dissertation left off, the book argues that there is syntactic constraint that clauses (small and tensed) are constructed out of a one-place unsaturated expression, the predicate, which must be applied to a syntactic argument, its subject. The author shows that this predication relation cannot be reduced to a thematic relation or a projection of argument structure, but must be a purely syntactic constraint. Chapters in the book show how the syntactic predication relation is semantically interpreted, and how the predication relation explains constraints on DP-raising and on the distribution of pleonastics in English. The second half of the book extends the theory of predication to cover copular constructions; it includes an account of the structure of small clauses in Hebrew, of the use of be' in predicative and identity sentences in English, and concludes with a study of the meaning of the verb be'.

This volume offers theoretically informed surveys of topics that have figured prominently in morphosyntactic and syntactic research into Romance languages and dialects. We define syntax as being the linguistic component that assembles linguistic units, such as roots or functional morphemes, into grammatical sentences, and morphosyntax as being an umbrella term for all morphological relations between these linguistic units, which either trigger morphological marking (e.g. explicit case morphemes) or are related to ordering issues (e.g. subjects precede finite verbs whenever there is number agreement between them). All 24 chapters adopt a comparative perspective on these two fields of research, highlighting cross-linguistic grammatical similarities and differences within the Romance language family. In addition, many chapters address issues related to variation observable within individual Romance languages, and grammatical change from Latin to Romance.

Contact Languages: Pidgins and Creoles aims to introduce the reader to the exciting and important field of pidgin and creole studies. The book deals with the linguistic, historical and social aspects of the development of pidgin and creole languages. Detailed case studies of individual pidgins and creoles are based around texts drawn from a range of different types and contexts (mainly contemporary), with discussion and grammatical notes. Chapters are interspersed with exercises to consolidate and develop the reader's understanding.

This collection of new work focuses on issues at the lexicon-syntax interface. It presents innovative analyses of theoretical issues of aspectual interpretation in a variety of languages. The authors address questions such as to what extent can variation in verbal meaning, and thematic information can be determined in the syntax, and how the interpretation of various syntactic constructions is derived, once lexical information is minimized. A subset of the articles develops theories that take as their starting point the lexical-syntactic framework of the late Ken Hale and Jay Keyser, prominent among which is their own chapter.

Depictive secondary predicates such as raw in George ate the fish raw are important for current issues in syntactic and semantic theory, in particular predication theory, phrase structure theories, issues of control and grammatical relations, and verbal aspect. This is the first book to approach depictive secondary predication from a crosslinguistic perspective. It maps out all the relevant phenomena and brings together critical surveys and new contributions on their morphosyntactic and semantic properties. In particular it considers similarities and differences between secondary predicates and other types of adjuncts, including adverbials of manner, comparison, quantity, and location. The authors are leading scholars with a first-hand knowledge of the languages they discuss. Their approach is theory-neutral and pragmatic: they draw on insights and research traditions ranging from the minimalist program to semantic maps methodology. The book will interest scholars working on the semantics or syntax of secondary predicates, adverbials, and the role of agreement and other morphological marking. It has also beeen designed for use in advanced syntax and typology classes.

This book presents an overview of sociolinguistic research in England. Showcasing developments in sociolinguistic theory, method and application, the chapters examine sociolinguistic topics on different linguistic levels and in different geographical areas across the country. Allowing the reader to engage with contemporary research in the field, each chapter is unique in the topic or geographical area explored. Topics include historical sociolinguistics, British Sign Language, lexical variation, life-span change, and variation and innovation in urban and peripheral areas; while the regions covered range from Cornwall to West Cumbria. Edited and authored by a range of international scholars, this is sure to be a key research resource for students and scholars interested in language use in England.

This book explores the concept of complementation in the adjectival domain of English grammar. Alternation between non-finite complements, especially to infinitives and gerundial complements, has been investigated intensively on the basis of large corpora in the last few years. With very few exceptions, however, such work has hitherto been based on univariate analysis methods. Using multivariate analysis, the authors present methodologically innovative case studies examining a large array of explanatory factors potentially impacting complement choice in cases of alternation. This approach yields more precise information on the impact of each factor on complement choice as well as on interactions between different explanatory factors. The book thus presents a methodologically new perspective on the study of the system of non-finite complementation in recent English and variation within that system, and will be relevant to academics and students with an interest in English grammar, predicate complementation, and statistical approaches to language.

With a wide range of contributors from all over the world and from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, this handbook offers a truly global perspective on developments in research on writing. The new edition draws greater attention to writing and human development within a range of cultures, from childhood through adulthood. Attention to multimodalities, and writing/learning to write in digital spaces.

A systematic examination of Chinese complex sentences Compares the syntactical differences between Chinese and English Gives insights into Chinese langauge information processing

This is the first account of Jarawara, a Southern Amazonia language of great complexity and unusual interest, and now spoken by less than two hundred people. It has only two open lexical classes, noun and verb, and a closed adjective class with fourteen members which can only modify a noun. Verbs have a complex structure with three prefix and some twenty-five suffix slots. There is an eleven-term tense-modal system with an evidentiality contrast (eyewitness/non-eyewitness) in the three past tenses. Of the two genders, feminine and masculine, feminine is unmarked. There are at least eight types of subordinate clause constructions, including complement clauses, relative clauses, coreferential dependent clauses, and 'when', 'if', 'due to the lack of' and 'because of' clauses.There are only eleven consonants and four vowels but an extensive set of ordered phonological rules of lenition, vowel assimilation and unstressed syllable omission. There are four imperative inflections (with different meanings) and three explicit interrogative suffixes within the mood system. The book is entirely based on field work by the authors.

Book 3 of the book series is designed for intermediate to advanced learners of Cantonese. This volume provides an authentic and contextualized approach to the learning of the language. This volume includes language scenarios various language functions, such as expressing views, summarizing, suggesting, persuading, and presenting data. The language examples in Book 3 contain speeches, connected discourses and narrations. Some sample discourse structures are presented in the 'Learning points' sections. Learners can apply the structure templates to build up longer connected discourses. Book 3 of the book series can be used by universities, colleges, schools in Hong Kong, and by institutions around the world. This book is suitable for learners who are looking for self-study materials.

Georgian: A Comprehensive Grammar constitutes a complete reference work addressing all major elements of Modern Georgian grammar and usage. It provides a systematic and accessible description of the language's phonology, orthography, morphology, and syntax. The focus is on contemporary spoken and written usage, with attention devoted throughout to differences of register and genre. Points are illustrated with examples drawn from a range of authentic written and recorded sources such as press, radio, and television. The grammar is designed for a wide readership including students of Georgian, particularly at the intermediate and advanced levels, as well as scholars of Georgian and theoretical linguistics.

The world's greatest authority on language explains the secrets and subtleties of the grammar of English. David Crystal explores its history and varieties, explains its rules and irregularities and shows how to navigate its snares and pitfalls. He gives practical guidance on how grammar is used in different ways for different purposes and in different social settings. In a series of revealing illustrations he also considers what learned and prominent people have said about English grammar over the centuries. Like its three companion volumes Making Sense will appeal to everyone interested in the English language and how to use it.

This volume comprises the first comprehensive grammar of a language from the Aslian subgroup, within the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic family. Spoken by approximately 4,000 people in the lowland forests of the Malay Peninsula, Semelai has many distinctive features of interest to linguistic typologists, phonologists, morphologists and syntacticians. The volume provides a unique reference resource for South-East Asian language specialists, as well as general linguists.

The phenomenon of unaccusativity is a central focus for the study of the complex properties of verb classes. The Unaccusative Hypothesis, first formulated in 1978, claimed that there are two classes of intransitive verbs, the unaccusative (Jill arrived) and the unergative or agentive (Jill sings). The hypothesis has provided a rich context for debating whether syntactic behaviour is semantically or lexically determined, the consequence of syntactic context, or a combination of these factors. No consensus has been reached. This book combines contemporary approaches to the subject with several papers that have achieved a significant status even though formally unpublished.

This text explores the consequences for language acquisition, language evolution and linguistic theory of taking the underlying architecture of the language faculty to be that of a dynamical system. The authors investigate whether it is possible for a complex adaptive system to identify the categories, structures and rules of a language given access only to instances of grammatical utterances of that language. The linguistic tradition says that this is impossible, but there is a growing body of literature in psychology and computer science arguing that grammar can be uncovered using purely statistical techniques applied to the distribution of forms in a string of words. The book goes on to discuss whether a learner requires information about structure that goes beyond the information that is contained in the meaning. Does the learner have to have knowledge of grammar per se prior to language acquisition, as has been traditionally assumed? The authors ask whether it is possible to adequately describe and explain linguistic phenomena if we restrict ourselves to the relatively impoverished apparatus that we require for language acquisition. They explore the consequences of adopting a radical form of minimalism to try to reconcile the linguistic facts with the book's perspective of language acquisition. Culicover and Nowak investigate to what extent it is possible to account for language variation in dynamical terms, as a consequence of the behaviour of the complex social network in which languages and the properties of languages are acquired by learners through interactions with other speakers over time.

The book contributes to a fuller description and a uniformed analysis of Mandarin cleft constructions. The book provides the first Mandarin empirical data towards some heated theoretical debates. The book yields a good combination of theoretical formal semantics, semantic-pragmatic interface studies, corpus analyses, and the newly emerging experimental semantics. Typologically speaking, Mandarin shi...(de) presents some characteristics of the that are rarely found with its counterparts in other languages.

In their book, the authors describe the usage of and attitudes towards English in Asia since the 19th century, as well as the creative and dynamic ways in which Asians of the 21st century continually reinvent the lexicon of English, and the lexicons of their native tongues. The current biggest source of loanwords for many of the world's languages is English, the once obscure Germanic language that has risen to the role of a global lingua franca. However, the overwhelming influence of English is far from being entirely one-sided, at least from a lexical perspective. Many have decried the way that English has "invaded" the vocabularies of their languages, without realising that the English word stock is to some extent also being invaded by these languages. This book explores the phenomenon of word exchange by examining its occurrence between English and some of the major languages spoken in Asia-highly multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multilingual region where English is the predominant medium of international and intraregional communication. Students and researchers from various linguistic areas such as world Englishes, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, lexicology, and contact linguistics will find this book appealing.

The first usage-based approach of its kind, this volume contains twelve studies on key issues in Spanish syntax: word order, null arguments, grammatical-relation marking, inalienable possession, "ser" and "estar," adjective placement, small clauses and causatives. The studies are approached within a broad functionalist perspective. The studies strengthen the view that components of grammar intricately interact and that a usage-based approach to analyzing them offers new and insightful perspectives on some stubborn problems.

This book investigates paradigms of person - both independent pronouns as well as bound person marking. Based on empirical and theoretical grounds, the author argues that the notion 'number' has to be redefined to deal with the cross-linguistic variation of person marking. Equipped with a new definition, a typology of the paradigmatic structure of person marking is presented, incorporating data from around 400 languages. Nothing appears to be impossible for the paradigmatic structure, although some patterns are clearly more probable than others are. Starting from the more commonly occurring patterns, the diachronic dynamics of paradigmatic structure are investigated by comparing close relatives that differ slightly in the structure of their person paradigms.

There are far more syntactically distinct languages than we might have thought; yet there are far fewer than there might have been. Questions of Syntax collects sixteen papers authored by Richard S. Kayne, a preeminent theoretical syntactician, who has sought over the course of his career to understand why both these facts are true. With a particular emphasis on comparative syntax, these chapters collectively consider how wide a range of questions the field of syntax can reasonably attempt to ask and then answer. At issue, among other topics, are the relation between syntax and (certain aspects of) semantics, the relation between syntax and what appear to be lexical questions, the relation between syntax and morphology, the relation between syntax and certain aspects of phonology (insofar as silent elements and their properties play a substantial role), and the extent to which comparative syntax can provide new and decisive evidence bearing on these different kinds of questions. To Kayne, comparative syntax can shed light on what may initially seem lexical questions, and antisymmetry on the evolution of human language itself. Taken as a whole, these essays elucidate the theoretical contributions of one the most influential scholars in linguistics.

• Practical, with easy to follow rules, without getting into the technicalities of linguistics. • Includes examples of correct and incorrect ways to report stories, as well as examples of common mistakes, problem words, and real journalism headlines. • Suitable for practicing journalists as well as students of journalism. • Written by a respected and well known journalist, experienced in working on national newspapers and in teaching.

This edited book focuses on the role of different types of pedagogical solutions in the acquisition of the Japanese grammatical system by reviewing, assessing and measuring current theory and research. Findings from this research have implications for the way Japanese grammar is learned and taught in a classroom context. The editors and contributors address a number of questions around the role of Japanese grammar learning and teaching such as: what is the role of instruction in Japanese second language acquisition? What are the main findings of empirical research into the acquisition of Japanese grammar? Is any one particular pedagogical intervention or solution to the teaching of Japanese grammar more effective than another? What pedagogical options do we have for the teaching of Japanese grammar? This book offers a unique insight into its practical implications for Japanese language learning and teaching for applied linguists, researchers, language teaching professionals and curriculum developers alike.

This book collects research contributions concerning quantitative approaches to characterize originality and universality in language. The target audience comprises researchers and experts in the field but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students. Creativity might be considered as a morphogenetic process combining universal features with originality. While quantitative methods applied to text and music reveal universal features of language and music, originality is a highly appreciated feature of authors, composers, and performers. In this framework, the different methods of traditional problems of authorship attribution and document classification provide important insights on how to quantify the unique features of authors, composers, and styles. Such unique features contrast, and are restricted by, universal signatures, such as scaling laws in word-frequency distribution, entropy measures, long-range correlations, among others. This interplay between innovation and universality is also an essential ingredient of methods for automatic text generation. Innovation in language becomes relevant when it is imitated and spread to other speakers and musicians. Modern digital databases provide new opportunities to characterize and model the creation and evolution of linguistic innovations on historical time scales, a particularly important example of the more general problem of spreading of innovations in complex social systems. This multidisciplinary book combines scientists from various different backgrounds interested in quantitative analysis of variations (synchronic and diachronic) in language and music. The aim is to obtain a deeper understanding of how originality emerges, can be quantified, and propagates.