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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Grammar, syntax, linguistic structure
This book is the first comprehensive grammar in English of present-day standard Romanian. Its descriptive framework is modern in conception, terminology, topics, and bibliography, while eschewing excessively theoretical approaches and overly technical presentations. The book also offers a special system of notes which contain additional diachronic and comparative information, as well as discussions of dialectal and sociolinguistic usage. The Grammar of Romanian is an indispensable resource for Romance linguists, from advanced undergraduate level and above.
This volume is the first book-length presentation of the grammatical category of Associated Motion. It provides a framework for understanding a grammatical phenomenon which, though present in many languages, has gone unrecognized until recently. Previously known primarily from languages of Australia and South America, grammatical AM marking has now been identified in languages from most parts of the world (except Europe) and is becoming an important topic in linguistic typology. The chapters provide a thorough introduction to the subject, discussion of the relation between AM and related grammatical concepts, detailed descriptions of AM in a wide range of the world's languages, and surveys of AM in particular language families and areas.
The book series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur romanische Philologie, founded by Gustav Groeber in 1905, is among the most renowned publications in Romance Studies. It covers the entire field of Romance linguistics, including the national languages as well as the lesser studied Romance languages. The editors welcome submissions of high-quality monographs and collected volumes on all areas of linguistic research, on medieval literature and on textual criticism. The publication languages of the series are French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian as well as German and English. Each collected volume should be as uniform as possible in its contents and in the choice of languages.
European Portuguese, like other Romance languages, display a great amount of word order variation. Out of the six logically possible permutations between Subject, Verb and Complement in a transitive sentence, five are possible: SVO, VSO, VOS, OVS and OSV. The primary goal of this book is to provide an analysis of the several positions where the subject may surface in European Portuguese. Departing from an architecture of the clause as sketched in early minimalist work, containing two subject-related functional categories above VP (AgrP and TP), it is shown that the subject may surface in all potential landing sites: Spec,AgrP, Spec,TP and Spec,VP. Moreover, just like any other argument of the clause, it is claimed that subjects also have the possibility of surfacing in a left-dislocated position, arguably adjoining to the clause's left periphery. It is shown that there is no free variation. Each of these positions may be occupied by the subject, only if two requirements are met: i) The position is made available by syntax; ii) The position does not violate any interface condition. In other words, the following model is argued for: syntax generates legitimate outputs. At the interface levels, each output may be selected or filtred out, according to requirements of the interface. The picture emerging from the proposal made in this book is the following: syntax proper does not need to refer to conditions best placed at the interface. All that is needed from syntax is that it generates an array of well-formed outputs. Such outputs may be evaluated a posteriori by each of the interfaces. If they meet requirements of the interface, they are selected as legitimate. If, on the contrary, some interface condition is violated, they are ruled out. Under this approach, three in-dependent results are derived: i) an explanation is found for the patterns of word order variation; ii) syntax proper may be reduced to its own tools, not having to manipulate semantic, discourse or prosodic variables; iii) the intuition that European Portuguese is an SVO language is derived: this word order corresponds to the one in which the subject occupies the only specifier position in which the other interfaces play no role.
Practical Chinese Usage offers post-beginner to near advanced students of Chinese a guide to the most frequently misused and confusing words in the language. Entries are arranged in alphabetical order for ease of reference. Sample sentences with pinyin and English translations are provided after each explanation. Examples of typical mistakes made by students are clearly marked throughou. Each entry is annotated in accordance with the New HSK guidelines, indicating the level of difficulty. Practical Chinese Usage provides students of Chinese with the necessary tools to refine their use of expressions and synonyms in order to communicate effectively in the Chinese language.
Variation in Datives collects new research on the nature of
syntactic micro-variation in datives. The papers in this volume
examine different aspects of internal variation in dative marking,
such as agreement and case alternations, distribution of
adpositional structures and dative case-marking, the different
structural positions of dative arguments and their semantic
contribution, and patterns of syncretism in the clitic and/or
agreement system. Interest in these topics has grown significantly
in the past 20 years. Variation in Datives makes a significant
contribution to our understanding of language variation, as it adds
the micro-comparative perspective to the general discussion and
includes 10 new articles on a wide range of European languages,
including Greek, Basque, Icelandic, and Serbo-Croatian.
Every linguistic theory has to come to grips with a fundamental property of human language: the existence of exceptions, i.e. phenomena that do not follow the standard patterns one observes otherwise. The contributions to this volume discuss and exemplify a variety of approaches to exceptionality within different formal and non-formal frameworks. Topics include criteria for exceptionality, the diachronic rise of exceptions, the relevance of different grammatical subsystems and their interaction in the explanation of exceptions, and the crucial characteristics of grammatical models that can accommodate exceptions. A special feature of the book is that the articles are accompanied by peer-commentaries and responses thereupon, thus opening up the papers to further discussion.
The Anglia Book Series (ANGB) offers a selection of high quality work on all areas and aspects of English philology. It publishes book-length studies and essay collections on English language and linguistics, on English and American literature and culture from the Middle Ages to the present, on the new English literatures, as well as on general and comparative literary studies, including aspects of cultural and literary theory.
Adverbial Clauses, Main Clause Phenomena, and Composition of the Left Periphery uses the cartographic theory to examine the left periphery of the English clause and compare it to the left-peripheral structures of other languages. Liliane Haegeman argues that the dissimilar surface characteristics of these languages (primarily English and Romance, but also Gungbe, Hungarian, Hebrew, Dutch, and others) can be explained by universal constraints, and that the same structures apply across the languages. Haegeman focuses on main clause transformations--movement operations that can only take place in main clauses.
Routledge's Modern Grammar series is an innovative reference guide combining traditional and function-focused grammar in a single volume, with an accompanying workbook. The aim of the Modern Korean Grammar is to provide an overview of the structures and functions of the Korean language. Designed for those who have already acquired the basics of the language, the book combines a comprehensive description of the grammatical structures of Korean with a functional/usage approach to the language. All target grammatical and functional points will be illustrated with examples in Hangul with English translations for better understanding. In addition, the use of linguistic terminology is limited, to facilitate quick and easy comprehension.
The book is a qualitative and quantitative investigation into the Catalan clitic system from Old to Modern Catalan. Building on the Minimalist Program, the author shows that a number of facts about Old Romance clitic placement that previously have either not been accounted for or have received unsatisfactory treatment can be explained in a principled way once a strict division of labor between syntax and phonology is adopted.
This timely intervention into composition studies presents a case for the need to teach all students a shared system of communication and logic based on the modern globalizing ideals of universality, neutrality, and empiricism. Based on a series of close readings of contemporary writing by Stanley Fish, Asao Inoue, Doug Downs and Elizabeth Wardle, Richard Rorty, Slavoj Zizek, and Steven Pinker, this book critiques recent arguments that traditional approaches to teaching writing, grammar, and argumentation foster marginalization, oppression, and the restriction of student agency. Instead, it argues that the best way to educate and empower a diverse global student body is to promote a mode of academic discourse dedicated to the impartial judgment of empirical facts communicated in an open and clear manner. It provides a critical analysis of core topics in composition studies, including the teaching of grammar; notions of objectivity and neutrality; empiricism and pragmatism; identity politics; and postmodernism. Aimed at graduate students and junior instructors in rhetoric and composition, as well as more seasoned scholars and program administrators, this polemical book provides an accessible staging of key debates that all writing instructors must grapple with.
Ever since Chomsky's Barriers, functional heads have been the privileged object of research in generative linguistics. But over the last two decades, two rival approaches have developed. The cartographic project, as represented by the collections in this Oxford series, considers evidence for a functional head in one language as evidence for it in universal grammar. On the other hand, minimalist accounts tend to consider structural economy as literally involving as few heads as possible. In the present volume, some of the most influential linguists who have participated in this long-lasting debate offer their recent work in short, self contained case studies. The contributions cover all the main layers of recently studied syntactic structure, including such major areas of empirical research such as grammaticalization and language change, standard and non-standard varieties, interface issues, and morphosyntax. Functional Heads attempts to map aspects of syntactic structure following the cartographic approach, and in doing so demonstrate that the differences between the cartographic approach and the minimalist approach are more apparent than substantial.
Split constructions are widespread in natural languages. The
separation of the semantic restriction of a quantifier from that
quantifier is a typical example of such a construction. This study
addresses the problem that such discontinuous strings
exhibit--namely, a number of locality constraints, including
intervention effects. These are shown to follow from the
interaction of a minimalist syntax with a semantics that directly
assigns a model-theoretic interpretation to syntactic logical
forms. The approach is shown to have wide empirical coverage and a
conceptual simplicity. The book will be of interest to scholars and
advanced students of syntax and semantics.
A new edition of a successful undergraduate textbook on contemporary international Standard English grammar, based on Huddleston and Pullum's earlier award-winning work, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002). The analyses defended there are outlined here more briefly, in an engagingly accessible and informal style. Errors of the older tradition of English grammar are noted and corrected, and the excesses of prescriptive usage manuals are firmly rebutted in specially highlighted notes that explain what older authorities have called 'incorrect' and show why those authorities are mistaken. Intended for students in colleges or universities who have little or no background in grammar or linguistics, this teaching resource contains numerous exercises and online resources suitable for any course on the structure of English in either linguistics or English departments. A thoroughly modern undergraduate textbook, rewritten in an easy-to-read conversational style with a minimum of technical and theoretical terminology.
The book is dedicated to linguistic morphology and it contains a sketch of a complete morphological theory, centered around a discussion of fundamental concepts such as morph vs. morpheme, inflectional category, voice, grammatical case, agreement vs. government, suppletion, relationships between linguistic signs, etc.: the hottest issues in modern linguistics! The book introduces rigorous and clear concepts necessary to describe morphological phenomena of natural languages. Among other things, it offers logical calculi of possible grammemes in a given category. The presentation is developed in a typological perspective, so that linguistic data from a large variety of languages are described and analyzed (about 100 typologically very different languages). The main method is deductive: the concepts proposed in Aspects of the Theory of Morphology are based on a small set of indefinibilia and each concept is defined in terms of these indefinibilia and/or other concepts defined previously; as a result, logical calculi can be constructed (similar to Mendeleev's Periodical Table of Elements in chemistry). Then the concept is applied to the actual linguistic data to demonstrate its validity and advantages. Thus, Aspects of the Theory of Morphology combines metalinguistic endeavor (a system of concepts for morphology) with typological and descriptive orientation. It reaches out to all students of language, including the border fields and applications.
This engaging textbook bridges the gap between traditional and functional grammar. Starting with a traditional approach, students will develop a firm grasp of traditional tools for analysis and learn how SFG (Systemic Functional Grammar) can be used to enrich the traditional formal approach. Using a problem-solving approach, readers explore how grammatical structures function in different contexts by using a wide variety of thought-provoking and motivating texts including advertisements, cartoons, phone calls and chatroom dialogue. Each chapter focuses on a real world issue or problem that can be investigated linguistically, such as "mis"-translation or problems arising from a communication disorder. By working on these problems, students will become equipped to understand and analyze formal and functional grammar in different genres and styles. With usable and accessible activities throughout, Exploring English Grammar is ideal for upper undergraduate and postgraduate students of English language and linguistics.
The 1987 landmark publications by G. Lakoff and M. Johnson made image schema one of the cornerstone concepts of the emerging experientialist paradigm of Cognitive Linguistics, a framework founded upon the rejection of the mind-body dichotomy and stressing the fundamentally embodied nature of meaning, imagination and reason - hence language. Conceived of as the pre-linguistic, dynamic and highly schematic gestalts arising directly from motor movement, object manipulation, and perceptual interaction, image schemas served to anchor abstract reasoning and imagination to sensori-motor patterns in the conceptual theory of metaphor. Being itself informed by preceding crosslinguistic work on semantic primitives in the linguistic representations of spatial relations (carried out by L. Talmy, R. Langacker, and others), the notion has inspired a large amount of subsequent research and debate on diverse issues ranging from the meaning, structure and acquisition of natural languages to the embodied mind itself. From Perception to Meaning is the first survey of current image-schema theory and offers a collection of original and innovative essays by leading scholars, many of whom have shaped the theory from the very beginning. The edition unites essays on major issues in recent research on image-schemas - from aspects of their definition and linguistic formalization, their psychological status and neural grounding to their role as semantic universals and primitives in language acquisition. The book will thus not only be welcomed by linguists of a cognitive orientation, but will prove relevant to philosophers, psychologists, and anthropologists interested in language, and indeed to anyone studying the embodied mind.
This book presents empirical research of grammatical collocations of the type: verb and the prepositions "of" and "to". It is based on comparisons of English and Czech sentences containing verbs and prepositions that are followed by the object. The author creates English-Czech verbal prepositional counterparts and groups on the grounds of the similar semantic, syntactic features. She identifies the features that are the same for each verb group and generalizes them. The book determines trends and tendencies for verbs when they collocate with a certain preposition.
Aspects of modality and ellipsis have become prominent in theoretical linguistics over the last years. What has remained under-investigated is the fact that modals tend to make excellent ellipsis licensers and, conversely, that many of the naturally occurring cases of ellipsis are licensed by modals. The book concentrates on the syntax of the modal auxiliaries with special focus on English and investigates the grammatical relationship with the process of ellipsis that interacts most relevantly with the modals in grammaticalized fashion by including a special emphasis on verb-phrase ellipsis. After a critical discussion of pertinent approaches in the two domains, the book focuses on establishing the connection between the two areas by essentially drawing on the history of English and on observable effects in modern grammars, which it puts into perspective with semantically grounded features on the modals involved. Two major generalizations are proposed in the monograph. The first generalization concerns the treatment of the interaction between modals and ellipsis as determined by the features located in the licensing modal heads. To this end, the syntactic effects of the main semantic factors are explored in detail in English and partial effects obtaining in other languages are discussed. The second generalization concerns the syntactic component involved in ellipsis licensing. It is suggested that ellipsis types with the distributional features of verb-phrase ellipsis are licensed by interpretable features of the licensing head. The two generalizations are intertwined with one another and derive a series of further legitimate ellipsis licensers beyond the modals. The role of formal features that are interpretable is distinguished from agreement features, which are claimed not to be in charge of ellipsis licensing.
This book presents the latest work in the field of complementation studies. Leading scholars and upcoming researchers in the area approach complementation from various perspectives and different frameworks, such as Cognitive Grammar and construction grammars, to offer a broad survey of the field and provide thought-provoking reading.
This book offers the first account of Old Norse syntax for almost a
hundred years and the first ever in a non-Scandinavian language.
The language of the Vikings and of the Old Icelandic sagas is the
best documented medieval Germanic language and the author is able
to present a comprehensive analysis of its syntax and overviews of
its phonology and morphology. He supports his analyses with
examples taken from Norwegian and Icelandic manuscript editions.
Professor Faarlund's approach is descriptive, in a generative
framework with a minimum of technical detail. He includes a
complete bibliography of Old Norse syntax.
Discourse and Power: An Introduction to Critical Narratology: Who Narrates Whom? is both an introduction to discourse research and an application of the concept of discourse to the problem of power. Divided into two sections, Part One is a presentation of the most important theories of discourse in which the link between discourse and power or language and power is central. It provides a critical overview of the most important discourse theories: Foucault, Bourdieu, Fairclough and Greimas' structural semiotics. In Part two, the section on practice, the insights gained in the first part of the book are applied to analyses of particular discourses and their involvement in power relations. Ranging from psychiatric, legal, political, literary and scientific discourses, examples include the presidential speeches of Obama, Trump and Biden and the novels of Camus and Pirandello. The book demonstrates it is possible to reduce the power factor to a minimum, improve theoretical innovation and thus pave the way for new insights in social sciences. This is an important and timely text from a leading scholar, suitable for use on discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis and rhetoric courses.
The future of English linguistics as envisaged by the editors of Topics in English Linguistics lies in empirical studies which integrate work in English linguistics into general and theoretical linguistics on the one hand, and comparative linguistics on the other. The TiEL series features volumes that present interesting new data and analyses, and above all fresh approaches that contribute to the overall aim of the series, which is to further outstanding research in English linguistics. |
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