Seenku is a Western Mande language of the Samogo group spoken in southwestern Burkina Faso by approximately 17,000 speakers. It has undergone a lot of phonological reduction, leading to a rich segmental and tonal phoneme inventory but mainly mono- and sesquisyllabic roots. The language has four contrastive levels of tone that combine to create over a dozen contours. Tone has a high functional load lexically and grammatically, permeating all aspects of grammar. Most verbs have two stem forms: a realis form and an irrealis form. The realis is derived from the irrealis by infixing a high vowel before the stem vowel, creating a diphthong. The use of a particular stem form is determined by aspect and construction type, but most other morphosyntactic meanings (e.g. progressive aspect or causative) are expressed analytically. Like most Mande languages, Seenku has an S Aux O V X word order in addition to areal clause-final negation. It displays a reduced set of post-subject "predicate markers" compared to other Mande languages, and those that are attested are variably realized only by tone changes and lengthening on the subject itself.

Pragmatic Particles sheds new light on the linguistic theory and application of Asian languages with a particular focus on the role of particles and their socio-pragmatic nature. Drawing on a range of data that spans Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Turkish and beyond, the multidimensionality of Asian languages is brought to attention. Particles are central in this discourse and their constructive, expressive and attitudinal behaviours are revealed to be neither arbitrary nor peripheral. By branching away from a predominantly Euro-centric discussion and covering the relevant formal and functional foundations of syntax and semantics, this book offers an alternative lens to the appropriate treatment of Asian languages in contemporary linguistics.

This book sets out a new reconstruction for the Semitic case system. It is based on a detailed analysis of the expression of grammatical roles and relations in the attested Semitic languages and, for the first time, brings typological methods to bear in the study of these features in Semitic languages and their reconstruction for proto-Semitic. Professor Hasselbach supports her argument with detailed analyses of a wide range of data and presents it in a way that will be accessible to both Semitists and typologists. The volume is divided into seven chapters: the first discusses basic methodologies used in Semitic linguistics and the limitations thereof. The second presents the evidence for morphological case-marking in the individual Semitic languages, the conventional reconstruction of Proto-Semitic, and the evidence which conflicts with it. The third introduces typological concepts and methods and their deployment in Semitic. Chapter 4 considers the case alignment of early Semitic. Chapter 5 presents a detailed study of marking structures and patterns and considers what these reveal about the nature of the original case system. Chapter 6 looks at the functions of case markers, considers the light they cast on the nominal system, and shows that the reconstruction of early Semitic as ergative is implausible. In the final chapter the author argues that early Semitic had a different nominal system from that of the later Semitic languages. She shows that the course of its development has parallels in other Afroasiatic languages, including Berber and Cushitic. Her book sheds important new light on the history of the Semitic languages and on the early development of the Afro-Asiatic language family as a whole.

Felicity Meakins was awarded the Kenneth L. Hale Award 2021 by the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) for outstanding work on the documentation of endangered languages Gurindji is a Pama-Nyungan language of north-central Australia. It is a member of the Ngumpin subgroup which forms a part of the Ngumpin-Yapa group. The phonology is typically Pama-Nyungan; the phoneme inventory contains five places of articulation for stops which have corresponding nasals. It also has three laterals, two rhotics and three vowels. There are no fricatives and, among the stops, voicing is not phonemically distinctive. One striking morpho-phonological process is a nasal cluster dissimilation (NCD) rule. Gurindji is morphologically agglutinative and suffixing, exhibiting a mix of dependent-marking and head-marking. Nominals pattern according to an ergative system and bound pronouns show an accusative pattern. Gurindji marks a further 10 cases. Free and bound pronouns distinguish person (1st inclusive and exclusive, 2nd and 3rd) and three numbers (minimal, unit augmented and augmented). The Gurindji verb complex consists of an inflecting verb and coverb. Inflecting verbs belong to a closed class of 34 verbs which are grammatically obligatory. Coverbs form an open class, numbering in the hundreds and carrying the semantic weight of the complex verb

Drawing on usage-based theory, neurocognition, and complex systems, Languaging Beyond Languages elaborates an elegant model accommodating accumulated insights into human language even as it frees linguistics from its two-thousand-year-old, ideological attachment to reified grammatical systems. Idiolects are redefined as continually emergent collections of context specific, probabilistic memories entrenched as a result of domain-general cognitive processes that create and consolidate linguistic experience. Also continually emergent, conventionalization and vernacularization operate across individuals producing the illusion of shared grammatical systems. Conventionalization results from the emergence of parallel expectations for the use of linguistic elements organized into syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships. In parallel, vernacularization indexes linguistic forms to sociocultural identities and stances. Evidence implying entrenchment and conventionalization is provided in asymmetrical frequency distributions.

The monograph presents the Meaning-Text approach applied to the domain of syntax from a typological angle; it deals with several long-standing syntactic problems on the basis of a dependency description. Its content can be presented in five parts + an Introduction: The Introduction explains the architecture of the book and sketches the Meaning-Text linguis-tic model, underlying the subsequent discussion. I. Surface-syntactic relations in the languages of the world, with special studies of subjects and objects. II. Grammatical voice in the dependency framework: the "passive" construction in Chinese. III. The relative clause: a calculus and analysis of possible types; the pseudo-relative ("headless") clause. IV. Binary conjunctions (such as IF ..., THEN ...), free indefinite pronouns ([He went] nobody knows where), and syntactic idioms. V. Word order: linearization of dependency structures. The monograph offers a new perspective in syntactic studies. It is strongly typology-oriented (using the data from typologically diverse languages: English, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Basque, Georgian, etc.) and based on a system of rigorous definitions of the notions involved, which ensures a link with computational linguistics and Natural Language Processing

This volume gathers nine contributions dealing with Aorists and Perfects. Drinka challenges the notion of Aoristic Drift in Romance languages. Walker considers two emergent uses of the Perfect in British English. Jara seeks to determine the constraints on tense choice within narrative discourse in Peruvian Spanish. Henderson argues for a theory based on Langacker's 'sequential scanning' in Chilean and Uruguayan Spanish. Delmas looks at 'Ua in Tahitian, a polysemic particle with a range of aspectual and modal meanings. Bourdin addresses the expression of anteriority with just in English. Yerastov examines the distribution of the transitive be Perfect in Canadian English. Fryd offers a panchronic study of have-less perfect constructions in English. Eide investigates counterfactual present perfects in Mainland Scandinavian dialects.

The Semantics of Grammatical Dependencies argues that constraints of interaction from semantic evaluations enforce grammatical dependency patterns that recur across natural languages and within constructions at intra and inter sentential levels as well as discourse levels. The book develops along three lines. Firstly, a handle is gained on why languages are structured around localities, with localities functioning as actions of 'reset' to permit the reuse of grammatical resources that maintain a fixed semantic contribution. Secondly, sensitivity is brought to the linear and hierarchical placement of scope information to capture ordering effects like accessibility, crossover and intervention. Thirdly, an interestingly different perspective is reached on what it means to be grammatical: rather than being a destructive feature that bans or filters out bad structure, grammaticality takes on a role of constructive guidance that keeps languages to what are generally unambiguous canonical forms that moreover guarantee required dependencies. The book will be of interest to advanced undergraduate students, post-graduate and research students and all researchers in the formal analysis of the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of natural language.

After a "first wave" of traditional studies on prepositional accusatives and a "second wave" exploring the typological dimensions of Differential Object Marking in Bossong's footsteps, a new line of research is currently introducing new methods, deepening the level of analysis, and offering new perspectives on the issue. This volume presents 11 innovative, original contributions representative of this "third wave" of studies on DOM in Romance.

"Understanding Minimalist Syntax" introduces the logic of the Minimalist Program by analyzing well-known descriptive generalizations about long-distance dependencies.
An introduction to the logic of the minimalist program - arguably the most important branch of syntax
Proposes a new theory of how long-distance dependencies are formed, with implications for theories of locality, and the minimalist program as a whole
Introduces the logic of the minimalist program by analyzing well-known descriptive generalizations about long-distance dependencies, and asks why they should be true of natural languages
Rich in empirical coverage, which will be welcomed by experts in the field, yet accessible enough for students looking for an introduction to the minimalist program.

This book compares the historical development of ideas about language in two major traditions of linguistic scholarship from either end of Eurasia - the Graeco-Roman and the Sinitic - as well as their interaction in the modern era. It locates the emergence of language analysis in the development of writing systems, and examines the cultural and political functions fulfilled by traditional language scholarship. Moving into the modern period and focusing specifically on the study of "grammar" in the sense of morph syntax/ lexico grammar, it traces the transformation of "traditional" Latin grammar from the viewpoint of its adaptation to Chinese, and discusses the development of key concepts used to characterize and analyze grammatical patterns.

This book presents the first systematic typological analysis of applicatives across African, American Indian, and East Asian languages. It is also the first to address their functions in discourse, the derivation of their semantic and syntactic properties, and how and why they have changed over time. Applicative constructions are typically described as transitivizing because they allow an intransitive base verb to have a direct object. The term originates from the seventeenth-century missionary grammars of Uto-Aztecan languages. Constructions designated as prepositional, benefactive, and instrumental may refer to the same or similar phenomena. Applicative constructions have been deployed in the development of a range of syntactic theories which have then often been used to explain their functions, usually within the context of Bantu languages. Dr Peterson provides a wealth of cross-linguistic information on discourse-functional, diachronic, and typological aspects of applicative constructions. He documents their unexpected synchronic variety and the diversity of diachronic sources about them. He argues that many standard assumptions about applicatives are unfounded, and provides a clear guide for future language-specific and cross-linguistic research and analysis.

Linguists have typically studied language change at the aggregate level of speech communities, yet key mechanisms of change such as analogy and automation operate within the minds of individual language users. Drawing on lifespan data from 50 authors and the intriguing case of the special passives in the history of English, this study addresses three fundamental issues relating to individuality in language change: (i) how variation and change at the individual level interact with change at the community level; (ii) how much innovation and change is possible across the adult lifespan; (iii) and to what extent related linguistic patterns are associated in individual cognition. As one of the first large-scale empirical studies to systematically link individual- and community-based perspectives in language change, this volume breaks new ground in our understanding of language as a complex adaptive system.

How can insights from Construction Grammar (CxG) be applied to foreign language learning (FLL) and foreign language teaching (FLT)? This volume explores several aspects of Pedagogical Construction Grammar, with a specific look at issues relevant to second language acquisition, FLL, and FLT. The contributions in this volume discuss a wide range of constructions, as well as different resources, methodologies, and data used to learn constructions in the language classroom. More specifically, they seek to provide answers to the following questions: What do new constructional approaches to teaching and learning foreign language look like that take the insights of CxG seriously? What should electronic resources using constructions and semantic frames for foreign language instruction look like? How should constructions (pairings of form with meaning/function) in the foreign language classroom be introduced? What role does frequency play in learning constructions in the language classroom? What types of strategies does CxG offer to facilitate the acquisition of a second language? This volume is relevant for anyone interested in second language acquisition, foreign language pedagogy, Construction Grammar, and Cognitive Linguistics. Endorsements: If first language learning flows forth from language use, teaching language should be based on relevant usage-patterns, modified in accordance with the advanced cognitive and linguistic knowledge of older learners. The current volume shows how insights from first and second language learning and usage-based Construction Grammar can be turned into evidence-based teaching strategies. Heike Behrens, University of Basel Usage-based Construction Grammar has changed our view of language learning, but it is only recently that researchers have begun to apply the insights of the constructionist approach to language pedagogy. This volume brings together a collection of articles in which experts of Construction Grammar and Usage-based Linguistics make concrete proposals for teaching constructions by using corpora and other resources. A must read for everybody interested in grammar teaching. Holger Diessel, University of Jena With Directions for Pedagogical Construction Grammar, Boas has produced an impressive and much-needed volume which excels at illustrating the immense potential of constructionist approaches to improve language pedagogy. The contributions to this volume, all authored by leading cognitive and corpus linguists, convincingly describe what a successful future of language teaching could look like-one that is founded in usage-based linguistics and takes language patterns seriously. I consider this volume essential reading for any applied linguist. Ute Roemer, Georgia State University

In The Dura Language: Grammar & Phylogeny Nicolas Schorer provides the definite descriptive account of this hitherto poorly documented language of Lamjung, Nepal. The Dura language is effectively extinct, although attempts at revival may be undertaken by well-intentioned members of Dura ethnicity. On the basis of a comprehensive study and analysis of all of the extant Dura language material, the book outlines the phonology, nominal and verbal morphology, lexical and syntactic properties as well as the phylogenetic position of the language in unprecedented detail. The result of the phylogenetic inquiry will help explain some of the sociocultural realities associated with the Dura community in Nepal and is a significant contribution to our understanding of the linguistic landscape of the Himalayas.

Exponence refers to the mapping of morphosyntactic structure to phonological representations, a research area which is not only highly controversial, but also approached in fundamentally different ways in theoretical morphology and phonology. This volume brings together leading specialists from morphosyntax and morphophonology. The authors address common problems, questions and solutions in both areas, and formulate a coherent research program for exponence which integrates the central insights of the last decades and provides important new challenges for the future. The book is aimed at phonologists, morphologists, and syntacticians of all theoretical persuasions at graduate level and above.

This introduction to Japanese linguistics is designed to introduce students to all of the main areas of the subject. What makes this book distinct from other textbooks on Japanese linguistics is that linguistics is introduced by means of authentic texts which students might encounter in contemporary Japan. The book covers: * Speech sounds and sound structures * Japanese vocabulary * Writing in Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana and Roman letters * Word structures, ideograms, morphemes and compounding * Sentence structure * Word meaning Each chapter contains an explanation of the key concepts of Japanese linguistics, followed by activities, which are designed to promote the students' active understanding of the forms and functions of the language in authentic texts. This textbook will be an essential introduction to Japanese linguistics for advanced undergraduates, and postgraduates, studying either Japanese language, or linguistics.

Ellipsis is the non-expression of one or more sentence elements whose meaning can be reconstructed either from the context or from a person's knowledge of the world. In speech and writing, ellipsis is pervasive, contributing in various ways to the economy, speed, and style of communication. Resolving ellipsis is a particularly challenging issue in natural language processing, since not only must meaning be gleaned from missing elements but the fact that something meaningful is missing must be detected in the first place.
Marjorie McShane presents a comprehensive theory of ellipsis that supports the formal, cross-linguistic description of elliptical phenomena taking into account the various factors that affect the use of ellipsis. A methodology is suggested for creating a parameter space describing and treating ellipsis in any language. Such "ellipsis profiles" of languages will serve a wide range of practical applications, including but not limited to natural language processing. In contrast to earlier work, this theory focuses not only on what can, in principle, be elided but in what circumstances a given category actually would or would not be elided--that is, what renders ellipsis mandatory or infelicitous.
A theory of ellipsis has been elusive because to produce an adequate account of this ubiquitous phenomenon one needs to address and integrate data from a wide variety of linguistic research areas. Using data primarily from Russian, English, and Polish, McShane looks at the big picture of ellipsis, integrating the syntactic, semantic, morphological, and pragmatic heuristics and bridges work on ellipsis with the larger study of reference. This is groundbreaking linguistic scholarship that bridges the theoretical and the applied, and will interest scholars in the fields of computational, descriptive, and theoretical linguistics.

This book makes an original contribution to the understanding of perception verbs and the treatment of argument structure, and offers new insights on lexical causation, evidentiality, and processes of cognition. Perception verbs - such as look, see, taste, hear, feel, sound, and listen - present unresolved problems for theories of lexical semantics. This book examines the relations between their semantics and syntactic behaviour, the different kinds of polysemy they exhibit, and the role of evidentiality in verbs like seem and sound. In unravelling their complexity Nikolas Gisborne looks closely at their meanings, modality, semantic relatedness, and irregularity. He frames his exposition in Word Grammar, and draws extensively on work in cognitive linguistics and construction grammar.
After an opening chapter explaining the nature of the issues, Dr Gisborne presents a concise introduction to Word Grammar. He then considers the implications of his approach for a general theory of event structure. He looks at how the framework may be applied to causation, argument linking, and the modelling of polysemy. He examines the semantic similarities and differences between listen- and hear-class verbs, and analyses the cognate patterns of sound-class verbs. He concludes by drawing together his findings and exploring their implications for linguistic theory.
Clearly and readably written, with each point of the argument illustrated with well-chosen examples, this book will appeal to linguists of all theoretical persuasions at graduate level and above.

The last decade has seen a rise in popularity in construction-based approaches to grammar. Put simply, the various approaches within the rubric 'construction grammar' all see grammar (morphemes, words, idioms, etc.) as fundamentally constructions - pairings of form and meaning. This is distinct from formal syntax which sees grammar as a system of atomized units governed by formal rules. Construction Grammar is connected to cognitive linguistics and shares many of its philosophical and methodological assumptions. Advocates of Construction Grammar see it as a psychologically-plausible, generative theory of human language that can also account for all kinds of linguistic data. The research programs it has spawned range from theoretical morphological and syntactic studies to multidisciplinary cognitive studies in psycho-, neuro-, and computational linguistics. This Handbook is the first authoritative reference work solely dedicated to the theory, method, and applications of Construction Grammar, and will be a resource that students and scholars alike can turn to for a representative overview of its many sub-theories and applications. It has 24 chapters divided into 7 sections, with an introduction covering the theory's basic principles and its relationship with other theories including Chomskyan syntax. The book's readership lies in a variety of diverse fields, including corpus linguistics, thoeretical syntax, psycho and neurolinguistics, language variation, acquisition, and computational linguistics.

This book shows that every language has an adjective class and examines how these vary in size and character. The opening chapter considers current generalizations about the nature and classification of adjectives and sets out the cross-linguistic parameters of their variation. Thirteen chapters then explore adjective classes in languages from North, Central and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. Studies of well-known languages such as Russian, Japanese, Korean and Lao are juxtaposed with the languages of small hunter-gatherer and slash-and-burn agriculturalist groups. All are based on fine-grained field research. The nature and typology of adjective classes are then reconsidered in the conclusion. This pioneering work shows, among other things, that the grammatical properties of the adjective class may be similar to nouns or verbs or both or neither; that some languages have two kinds of adjectives, one hard to distinguish from nouns and the other from verbs; that the adjective class can sometimes be large and open, and in other cases small and closed. The book will interest scholars and advanced students of language typology and of the syntax and semantics of adjectives. Each book in this series focuses on an aspect of language that is of current theoretical interest and for which there has not previously or recently been any full-scale cross-linguistic study. The series is for typologists, fieldworkers, and theory developers at graduate level and above. The books will be suited for use as the basis for advanced seminars and courses. The subjects of next three volumes will be serial verb constructions, complementation, and grammars in contact.

Until recently, collaborative efforts between formal linguistics and literary studies have been relatively sparse; this book is an attempt to bridge this gap and add to the hitherto small pool of studies that combine the two disciplines. Our study concentrates on Emily Dickinson's poetry, since it displays a highly uncommon and therefore challenging use of language. We argue this to be part of her poetic strategy and consider Dickinson an intuitive linguist: her apparent non-compliance with linguistic rules is a productive exploration of linguistic expression to reveal the flexibility and potential of grammar, leading to complex processes of interpretation. Our study includes a number of in-depth analyses of individual poems, which combine formal linguistic methods and literary scholarship and focus on specific aspects such as ambiguity, reference, and presuppositions. One of our findings concerns the dynamic interpretation of lyrical texts in which the pragmatic step of establishing what a poem means for the reader is postponed to text level. We provide readers with a tool-box of methods for the formal linguistic analysis not just of Emily Dickinson's poetry but of linguistically complex literary texts in general.

This is the first book to cover the grammar of clitics from all points of view, including their phonology and syntax and relation to morphology. In the process, it deals with the relation of second position clitics to verb-second phenomena in Germanic and other languages, the grammar of contracted auxiliary verbs in English, noun incorporation constructions, and several other much discussed topics in grammar. Stephen Anderson includes analyses of a number of particular languages, and some of these - such as Kwakw'ala ("Kwakiutl") and Surmiran Rumantsch - are based on his own field research. The study of clitics has broad implications for a general understanding of sentence structure in natural language. Stephen Anderson's clearly-written, wide-ranging, and original account will be of wide interest to scholars and advanced students of phonology, morphology, and syntax.

Ten Lectures on Cognitive Linguistics as an Empirical Science details the relationship between form and meaning in language, especially at the systematic level of morphology. The role of metaphor and metonymy in elaborating meaning are investigated, as well as the structuring of semantics in terms of prototypes and radial categories. Implications for cultural studies and pedagogical applications are explored. The bulk of examples and data are drawn from the Slavic languages.