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For decades, a small set of major world languages have formed the
basis of the vast majority of linguistic theory. However,
minoritized languages can also provide fascinating contributions to
our understanding of the human language faculty. This pioneering
book explores the transformative effect minoritized languages have
on mainstream linguistic theory, which, with their typically
unusual syntactic, morphological and phonological properties,
challenge and question frameworks that were developed largely to
account for more widely-studied languages. The chapters address the
four main pillars of linguistic theory - syntax, semantics,
phonology, and morphology - and provide plenty of case studies to
show how minoritized language can disrupt assumptions, and lead to
modifications of the theory itself. It is illustrated with examples
from a range of languages, and is written in an engaging and
accessible style, making it essential reading for both students and
researchers of theoretical syntax, phonology and morphology, and
language policy and politics.
Recursion and self-embedding are at the heart of our ability to
formulate our thoughts, articulate our imagination and share with
other human beings. Nonetheless, controversy exists over the extent
to which recursion is shared across all domains of syntax. A
collection of 18 studies are presented here on the central
linguistic property of recursion, examining a range of
constructions in over a dozen languages representing great areal,
typological and genetic diversity and spanning wide latitudes. The
volume expands the topic to include prepositional phrases,
possessives, adjectives, and relative clauses - our many vehicles
to express creative thought - to provide a critical perspective on
claims about how recursion connects to broader aspects of the mind.
Parallel explorations across language families, literate and
non-literate societies, children and adults are investigated and
constitutes a new step in the generative tradition by
simultaneously focusing on formal theory, acquisition and
experimentation, and ecologically-sensitive fieldwork, and
initiates a new community where these diverse experts collaborate.
This volume of new work by prominent phonologists goes to the heart
of current debates in phonological and linguistic theory: should
the explanation of phonological variety be constraint or rule-based
and, in the light of the resolution of this question, how in the
mind does phonology interface with other components of the grammar.
The book includes contributions from leading proponents of both
sides of the argument and an extensive introduction setting out the
history, nature, and more general linguistic implications of
current phonological theory.
A recurrent issue in linguistic theory and psychology concerns the
cognitive status of memorized lists and their internal structure.
In morphological theory, the collections of inflected forms of a
given noun, verb, or adjective into inflectional paradigms are
thought to constitute one such type of list. This book focuses on
the question of which elements in a paradigm can stand in a
relation of partial or total phonological identity. Leading
scholars consider inflectional identity from a variety of
theoretical perspectives, with an emphasis on both case studies and
predictive theories of where syncretism and other "paradigmatic
pressures" will occur in natural language. The authors consider
phenomena such as allomorphy and syncretism while exploring
questions of underlying representations, the formal properties of
markedness, and the featural representation of conjugation and
declension classes. They do so from the perspective of contemporary
theories of morphology and phonology, including Distributed
Morphology and Optimality Theory, and in the context of a wide
range of languages, among them Amharic, Greek, Romanian, Russian,
Saami, and Yiddish. The subjects addressed in the book include the
role of featural decomposition of morphosyntactic features, the
status of paradigms as the unit of syncretism, asymmetric effects
in identity-dependence, and the selection of a base-of-derivation.
The Bases of Inflectional Identity will interest linguists and
cognitive scientists, especially students and scholars of
phonological theory and the phonology-morphology and mind-language
interfaces at graduate level and above.
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