The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics introduces readers to the major facets of research on Arabic and of the linguistic situation in the Arabic-speaking world. The edited collection includes chapters from prominent experts on various fields of Arabic linguistics. The contributors provide overviews of the state of the art in their field and specifically focus on ideas and issues. Not simply an overview of the field, this handbook explores subjects in great depth and from multiple perspectives. In addition to the traditional areas of Arabic linguistics, the handbook covers computational approaches to Arabic, Arabic in the diaspora, neurolinguistic approaches to Arabic, and Arabic as a global language. The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics is a much-needed resource for researchers on Arabic and comparative linguistics, syntax, morphology, computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and applied linguistics, and also for undergraduate and graduate students studying Arabic or linguistics.

This book focuses on the main constructions with infinitives in sports newspaper articles in three different languages. To achieve this, three corpora of sports newspaper articles are contrasted, one corpus in English, one in Spanish and another one in French. Each corpus is constituted by fifty sports newspaper articles. These infinitive constructions are characterized from a syntactic-textual approach. The main roles identified in the corpora are: a) infinitive phrases in a noun role, b) infinitive phrases in a verb role: verbal periphrases, c) infinitive clauses with a junction purpose, d) independent constructions, e) lexicalized and grammaticalized infinitives. Furthermore, the most relevant similarities and differences in the infinitive constructions in each corpus are determined.

The present monograph deals with lexical representation and linking within the framework of Functional Grammar. The notion of predicate frame as originally proposed in 1978 and subsequent refinements of the theory are challenged in that a new format of representing argument taking properties is formulated. This new format opens new lines of research towards the design of a new linking algorithm in Functional Grammar.

Working Welsh offers a new approach to building up and consolidating learners' fluency and confidence, focusing on the mechanics - the words and phrases that build and drive sentences and make them fit together. 200 Welsh words and phrases are listed alphabetically, explained in clear and accessible language, and given ample exemplification to illustrate their meaning and use. All instances of mutation are marked with the usual typographic signs, and cross-references are given throughout to related entries. Grammatical appendices and an English index round off the manual. Working Welsh is an innovative resource for post-beginner students wishing to explore and master the principal discourse-drivers in modern spoken and standard Welsh.

Innovations and Challenges in Grammar traces the history of common understandings of what grammar is and where it came from to demonstrate how 'rules' are anything but fixed and immutable. In doing so, it deconstructs the notion of 'correctness' to show how grammar changes over time thereby exposing the social and historical forces that mould and change usage. The questions that this book grapples with are: Can we separate grammar from the other features of the language system and get a handle on it as an independent entity? Why should there be strikingly different notions and models of grammar? Are they (in)compatible? Which one or ones fit(s) best the needs of applied linguists if we assume that applied linguists address real-world problems through the lens of language? And which one(s) could make most sense to non-specialists? If grammar is not a fixed entity but a set of usage norms in constant flux, how can we persuade other professionals and the general public that this is a positive observation rather than a threat to civilised behaviour? This book draws upon both historical and modern grammars from across the globe to provide a multi-layered picture of world grammar. It will be useful to teachers and researchers of English as a first and second language, though the inclusion of examples from and occasional references to other languages (French, Spanish, Malay, Swedish, Russian, Welsh, Burmese, Japanese) is intended to broaden the appeal to teachers and researchers of other languages. It will be of use to final-year undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral students as well as secondary and tertiary level teachers and researchers in applied linguistics, second language acquisition and grammar pedagogy.

This book provides a summary of Radical Minimalism, putting forth a neurocognitively implementable theory of grammar as I-language. Radical Minimalism tries to give a 'fully explicit' description of syntactic structures mapped into cognitive frames of thought. It focuses on the division of labor between Narrow Syntax and Meaningful Units of the sentence and also on the role of Mental Lexicon (understood as a selection of Roots and Labels), the Labeling Mechanism, and the participation of the Senso-Motoric and Conceptual-Intentional Interfaces within a Crash-proof Grammar of Human Language. The data are taken from the languages of different genetic origins and types. The book is based on the idea that language and thought are closely connected and must be studied within the physical laws of the Anti-Entropy and Dynamical Frustration theory. Peter Kosta's new book touches on an exceptional range of subjects in theoretical syntax and the philosophy of grammar, bearing ample proof of his lifelong engagement with these vital disciplines within the humanities of the 20th/21st centuries. His acute awareness of important insights and discussions in current day minimalism is evident from every page, informing his treatment of a wide diversity of problems in the morphosyntax of Slavic languages and beyond. (Jan-Wouter Zwart, University of Groningen) This book provides a breath of fresh air in linguistic theorising by combining empirically based syntactic innovations with original discussions of long-standing semantic puzzles and a revised architecture of the Faculty of Language. Foundational notions in generative theory are thoroughly revised in the light of detailed comparative analyses. This remarkable work represents the culmination of years of research on what meaning is, how it is structured, and to what extent syntax encodes meaning. (Diego Gabriel Krivochen, University of Verona)

First published in 1994. This study aims to provide evidence for the natural class of sounds comprised of front vowels, front glides and coronal consonants. The author also shows that a revised definition of the articulator feature [coronal] properly characterises this natural class of sounds. The study provides a formal representation of front vowels and coronal consonants and their interaction within a nonlinear model of feature organisation. This title will be of interest to students of language and linguistics.

First published in 1994. In this study, the author proposes that neutralization is the result of a wellformedness condition that the author calls the Laryngeal Constraint: In languages that have laryngeal neutralization, a laryngeal node is only licensed in a particular syllabic configuration; elsewhere the node will delink to repair the violation of well-formedness. This approach to neutralization is required to correctly explain the typology of laryngeal neutralization. This title will be of interest to students of language and linguistics.

First published in 1995. This investigation shows that cliticization is not a totally unified phenomenon. Asymmetries in the behaviour of phonological and syntactic clitics show that no single principle predicts all clitic behaviour. The study explores the idea that modifications to the original five parameter system of analysis can be altered to a more efficient analysis in terms of three parameters. This title will be of interest to students of phonetics and phonology.

First published in 1991. The existence of morphonology had been the subject of intense debate in twentieth-century linguistic theory. Attempts to identify putatively morphonological phenomena had often foundered on the widespread assumption of a rigid dichotomy between synchronic morphological structures and the phonetic processes which historically shared them. With the difficulties of establishing any role for morphonology clearly identified, the author introduces a comparative and historical survey of the morphologization of metaphony in Italian dialects. On the basis of this the existence is argued of authentic synchronic 'morphonological' interaction between morphological structures and phonetic processes, such that inflectional paradigms serve to specify phonetic details of implementation of incipient sound changes. The circumstances under which such interaction may be expected to occur are discussed. This book is an important contribution to our understanding of both morphology and phonology, taking seriously the implications of abandoning a rigid distinction between synchronic morphology and diachronic phonology. It successfully integrates linguistic theory with the analysis of philological data, and indicates the direction for future research on morphonology. This detailed study of Italian dialects also constitutes a valuable addition to the study of Romance dialectology.

First published in 1991. In this study, the author investigates the proper treatment of harmony processes in phonological theory. The data examined lead to a formulation of morphologically governed harmony processes which involves multi-planar representations. The analysis of multi-planar harmony leads into a discussion of Plane Conflation and Bracket Erasure in Lexical Phonology. This title will be of great interest to students of linguistics.

First published in 1976. This title presents a study of Yucatec Maya segmental phonology by children. The aim of the study is to describe the phonological systems revealed in the speech of group of children in order to determine the kinds of structural differences which exist among these pedolectal variants. This title will be of great interest to students of linguistics.

Relying on a wealth of new data, this book argues that long-standing puzzles of Negative Inversion (NI) syntax are not puzzles at all when viewed through the lenses of Gricean pragmatics and Labovian sociolinguistics. Focusing on sentences such as "Can't nobody lift that rock" in African American, Anglo, and Chicano Englishes in Texas, the book provides tidy solutions to problems such as: the NI's relationship to its non-inverted counterpart, its relationship to existential "there" sentences, to modal existential sentences, to the definiteness effects surrounding its NP subject, the emphatic meaning with which it seems to be associated, and more. The book argues that such issues, which have been explored in the syntax and semantics literature since the late 1960s, are handled more fruitfully via Gricean reasoning, demographics of use, and a simple semantics. As such, the book argues that NI can be freed from the "syntactico-semantic straitjacket" into which it has often been forced. It also demonstrates ways in which pragmatic and sociolinguistic thought can be brought together to inform larger linguistic analyses.

This book investigates the lexico-grammatical complementarity in language in its construal of person as a semantic system. Given the vast and wide spectrum of resources for expressing distinctions in the assignment of person roles in language, this book presents person-related system networks covering a rich range of semantic features. It also studies the system of person in relation to other major semantic systems instead of regarding it as one isolated component of language parallel to gender, number, case, etc. Systemic features of person are in turn realized by lexicogrammar, whose components, lexis and grammar form a relationship of complementarity in the process of transforming human experience into meaning. Person-related meaning can be either realized by lexical means, i.e. entity, process, quality, or grammatical means, i.e. pronouns, clitics, affixes, zero forms. Besides, such meaning is also found to be realized at some indeterminate areas along the lexis-grammar continuum. A special feature of this book is that it observes the lexicalization and grammaticalization of person based on evidence from a variety of languages. Readers will be presented a comprehensive look into the meaning of person and will be encouraged to reflect on its realization in their own languages.

Modern Chinese Grammar provides a comprehensive coverage of Chinese grammar through the clause-pivot theory and the double triangle approach, first proposed by Fuyi Xing in 1996. Translated into English for the first time, the book is widely regarded by linguists as a seminal text, and ground-breaking in linguistics research. The book contains discussion of the topics which are essential to Chinese grammar, from words and phrases, to complex sentences and sentence groups. It addresses such controversial issues as word class identification, the distinction between words and phrases, and between clauses and complex sentences. The book also shows, through a wealth of examples, how the clause-pivot theory and the double triangle approach can be applied productively in grammatical studies. Modern Chinese Grammar: A Clause-Pivot Theoretical Approach is an essential purchase for researchers and graduate students of Chinese grammar and syntax.

This book is an invitation to researchers who are committed to social change to look for ideas about transformation in an unexpected place - that is, in the data generated from empirical research. Informed by Critical Discourse Analysis and postmodern theory, it proposes a method of locating, through close grammatical analysis of everyday descriptions of the social world, the desire for alternative transformative structures. Drawing upon insightful analysis of conversational data collected over a period of 12 years from both 'marginalised' and 'mainstream' participants, it reveals innovative ways of imagining social structure. Clark proposes a view of the social world as in an embodied relationship with embodied selves.

Lavukaleve is a Papuan Language spoken on the Russell Islands in the Central Province of the Solomon Islands. The phonology and morpho-phonology of Lavukaleve are described, as well as arguments adjuncts, the Lavukaleve predicate structure (including predicate types and core participant marking, the agreement suffix, focus constructions, tense, aspect and mood, word-level derivation, complex predicates), interclausal syntax, and the Lavukaleve discourse organisation. The book includes a list of affixes, a list of lexemes, and an appendix with Lavukaleve texts. The data used in this work was collected by the author during five field trips.

This book documents changes and trends in English predicate complementation. In-depth case studies of grammatical patterns presented here uncover new links between form and meaning in these constructions, offering fresh insights into explanatory principles to account for variation and change in the system of English predicate complementation.

First published in 1988. This title explores the phonology of Sekani, a northern Athabaskan language, within the framework of Lexical Phonology. After providing an overview of the language of Sekani and the theory of Lexical Phonology, the author goes on to explore various issues in the application of this theory. This title will be of interest to students of language and linguistics.

The functional perspective on Chinese syntax has yielded various new achievements since its introduction to Chinese linguistics in the 1980s. This two-volume book is one of the earliest and most influential works to study the Chinese language using functional grammar. With local Beijing vernacular (Pekingese) as a basis, the information structure and focus structure of the Chinese language are systematically examined. By using written works and recordings from Beijingers, the authors discuss topics such as the relationship between word order and focus, and the distinction between normal focus and contrastive focus. In addition, the authors also subject the reference and grammatical categories of the Chinese language to a functional scrutiny while discussion of word classes and their functions creatively combines modern linguistic theories and traditional Chinese linguistic theories. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese linguistics and linguistics in general.

This book is concerned with the diachronic development of selected topic and focus markers in Spanish, Portuguese and French. On the one hand, it focuses on the development of these structures from their relational meaning to their topic-/ focus-marking meaning, and on the other hand, it is concerned with their current form und use. Thus, Romance topic and focus markers – such as sp. en cuanto a, pt. a propósito de, fr. au niveau de or sentence-initial sp. Lo que as well as clefts and pseudo-clefts – are investigated from a quantitative and qualitative perspective. The author argues that topic markers have procedural meaning and that their function is bound to their syntactic position. An important contribution of this study is the fact that real linguistic evidence (in the form of data from various corpora) is analyzed instead of operating with constructed examples.

This collection investigates the architecture of focus in linguistic theory from different theoretical perspectives. Research on focus and information structure in the last four decades has shown that the phenomenon of focus is highly complex, the theoretical approaches manifold, and the data highly sensitive. The main emphasis has been placed on the integration of the notion of focus in generative grammar. In recent years, however, the approaches to focus and information structure underwent a radical change in perspective. The theoretical concept of focus, its related terms and phenomena became the object of research. Along with it, the research questions shifted: instead of locating focus in the architecture of grammar, linguists investigate the architecture of focus itself. The central underlying idea of this collection is to document this change in perspective with the aim of isolating essential keystones and research areas in both the theoretical and empirical domain. The book is structured accordingly. Following the introduction, there are four main sections: The general section discusses the theoretical foundations of focus within grammar. The second section hosts papers which investigate the representation of focus and topic at the syntax-pragmatics interface. The third section discusses the phonological representation of focus and its relation to meaning. The papers of the final section investigate different types of focus constructions in a variety languages. The collection of papers on the architecture of focus, its interpretation and representation mirror the establishment of the focus research field.

This book is the first cross-linguistic study of clausal negation based on an extensive and systematic language sample. Methodological issues, especially sampling, are discussed at length. Standard negation - the basic structural means languages have for negating declarative verbal main clauses - is typologized from a new perspective, paying attention to structural differences between affirmatives and negatives. In symmetric negation affirmative and negative structures show no differences except for the presence of the negative marker(s), whereas in asymmetric negation there are further structural differences, i.e. asymmetries. A distinction is made between constructional and paradigmatic asymmetry; in the former the addition of the negative marker(s) is accompanied by further structural differences in comparison to the corresponding affirmative, and in the latter the correspondences between the members of (verbal etc.) paradigms used in affirmatives and negatives are not one-to-one. Cross-cutting the constructional-paradigmatic distinction, asymmetric negation can be further divided into subtypes according to the nature of the asymmetry. Standard negation structures found in the 297 sample languages are exemplified and discussed in detail. The frequencies of the different types and some typological correlations are also examined. Functional motivations are proposed for the structural types - symmetric negatives are language-internally analogous to the linguistic structure of the affirmative and asymmetric negatives are language-externally analogous to different asymmetries between affirmation and negation on the functional level. Relevant diachronic issues are also discussed. The book is of interest to language typologists, descriptive linguists and to all linguists interested in negation.

The functional perspective on Chinese syntax has yielded various new achievements since its introduction to Chinese linguistics in the 1980s. This two-volume book is one of the earliest and most influential works to study the Chinese language using functional grammar. With local Beijing vernacular (Pekingese) as a basis, the information structure and focus structure of the Chinese language are systematically examined. By using written works and recordings from Beijingers, the authors discuss topics such as the relationship between word order and focus, and the distinction between normal focus and contrastive focus. In addition, the authors also subject the reference and grammatical categories of the Chinese language to a functional scrutiny while discussion of word classes and their functions creatively combines modern linguistic theories and traditional Chinese linguistic theories. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese linguistics and linguistics in general.

The topic of the book is the relationship between mind and language on all levels of linguistic research. Over the past decade, the cognitive approach to language and its methodology have started to permeate other areas of linguistic study, which, in turn, is opening up room for new types of research and resulting in new knowledge that contributes to explaining not only the linguistic phenomena, but also how they function in a linguistic community and contemporary society. The book tries to reflect these new developments. It consists of 11 chapters organized into three thematic sections: language and mind from linguistic perspective, the language and mind of the translator, and language and mind from the teacher's perspective.