Download or read book A Grammar of Goemai written by Birgit Hellwig and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 617 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first description of Goemai, a West Chadic language of Nigeria. Goemai is spoken in a language contact area, and this contact has shaped Goemai grammar to the extent that it can be considered a fairly untypical Chadic language. The grammar presents the structure of the present-day language, relates it to its diachronic sources, and adds a semantic perspective to the description.

Download or read book A Grammar of Mbembe written by Doris Richter and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-11-27 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Grammar of Mbembe is a description of a little studied Jukunoid language which is spoken in the borderland of Nigeria and Cameroon. Present-day structures of different dialects are described and discussed with respect to diachronic developments. It is based on extensive fieldwork, but also takes into consideration previous work on Mbembe and other Jukunoid languages. The main topics in the chapters on the noun phrase and the verb and simple sentence structures are nominal classification and number marking based on Ablaut phenomena and tone, argument structure, and serial verb constructions. The remaining chapters cover phonology, complex structures, information structure and requesting information, and other word classes. This is complemented by example texts and a word list in the appendix.

Download or read book Catching Language written by Felix K. Ameka and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2008-08-22 with total page 671 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Descriptive grammars are our main vehicle for documenting and analysing the linguistic structure of the world's 6,000 languages. They bring together, in one place, a coherent treatment of how the whole language works, and therefore form the primary source of information on a given language, consulted by a wide range of users: areal specialists, typologists, theoreticians of any part of language (syntax, morphology, phonology, historical linguistics etc.), and members of the speech communities concerned. The writing of a descriptive grammar is a major intellectual challenge, that calls on the grammarian to balance a respect for the language's distinctive genius with an awareness of how other languages work, to combine rigour with readability, to depict structural regularities while respecting a corpus of real material, and to represent something of the native speaker's competence while recognising the variation inherent in any speech community. Despite a recent surge of awareness of the need to document little-known languages, there is no book that focusses on the manifold issues that face the author of a descriptive grammar. This volume brings together contributors who approach the problem from a range of angles. Most have written descriptive grammars themselves, but others represent different types of reader. Among the topics they address are: overall issues of grammar design, the complementary roles of outsider and native speaker grammarians, the balance between grammar and lexicon, cross-linguistic comparability, the role of explanation in grammatical description, the interplay of theory and a range of fieldwork methods in language description, the challenges of describing languages in their cultural and historical context, and the tensions between linguistic particularity, established practice of particular schools of linguistic description and the need for a universally commensurable analytic framework. This book will renew the field of grammaticography, addressing a multiple readership of descriptive linguists, typologists, and formal linguists, by bringing together a range of distinguished practitioners from around the world to address these questions.

Download or read book Demonstratives in Cross Linguistic Perspective written by Stephen C. Levinson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-19 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive guide to demonstratives, which play a key role in language acquisition and use.

Download or read book Complementation written by R. M. W. Dixon and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2006-06-22 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the variety of types of complementation found across the languages of the world and their grammatical properties and meanings. It shows how languages differ in the grammatical properties of complement clauses and in the types of verbs which take them, and explores the complement strategies deployed by languages which lack a complement clause construction. The book includes detailed studies of particular languages, including Akkadian, Israeli, Jarawara, and Pennsylvania German. These are framed by R. M. W. Dixon's introduction, which sets out the range of issues, and his conclusion, which draws together the evidence and the arguments.

Download or read book Mouth Actions in Sign Languages written by Susanne Mohr and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2014-07-28 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mouth actions in sign languages have been controversially discussed but the sociolinguistic factors determining their form and functions remain uncertain. This first empirical analysis of mouth actions in Irish Sign Language focuses on correlations with gender, age, and word class. It contributes to the linguistic description of ISL, research into non-manuals in sign languages, and is relevant for the cross-modal study of word classes.

Download or read book How Languages Work written by Carol Genetti and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-08 with total page 709 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fully revised introduction to language in use, containing in-depth language profiles, case studies, and online multimedia resources.

Download or read book The Semantics of Clause Linking written by R. M. W. Dixon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-06 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a cross-linguistic examination of the grammatical means languages employ to represent a set of semantic relations between clauses. Professor Dixon's opening discussion is followed by fourteen case studies of languages ranging from Korean and Kham to Iquito and Ojibwe. The book's concluding synthesis is provided by Professor Aikhenvald.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Language Prosody written by Carlos Gussenhoven and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021-01-07 with total page 957 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook presents detailed accounts of current research in all aspects of language prosody, written by leading experts from different disciplines. The volume's comprehensive coverage and multidisciplinary approach will make it an invaluable resource for all researchers, students, and practitioners interested in prosody.

Download or read book World Lexicon of Grammaticalization written by Tania Kouteva and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-08 with total page 647 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on analysis of more than 1,000 languages, this volume reconstructs more than 500 processes of grammatical change in the languages of the world.

Download or read book The Negative Existential Cycle written by Ljuba Veselinova and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2022-12-20 with total page 670 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1991, William Croft suggested that negative existentials (typically lexical expressions that mean ‘not exist, not have’) are one possible source for negation markers and gave his hypothesis the name Negative Existential Cycle (NEC). It is a variationist model based on cross-linguistic data. For a good twenty years following its formulation, it was cited at face-value without ever having been tested by (historical)-comparative data. Over the last decade, Ljuba Veselinova has worked on testing the model in a comparative perspective, and this edited volume further expands on her work. The collection presented here features detailed studies of several language families such as Bantu, Chadic and Indo-European. A number of articles focus on the micro-variation and attested historical developments within smaller groups and clusters such as Arabic, Mandarin and Cantonese, and Nanaic. Finally, variation and historical developments in specific languages are discussed for Ancient Hebrew, Ancient Egyptian, Moksha-Mordvin (Uralic), Bashkir (Turkic), Kalmyk (Mongolic), three Pama-Nyungan languages, O’dam (Southern Uto-Aztecan) and Tacana (Takanan, Amazonian Bolivia). The book is concluded by two chapters devoted to modeling cyclical processes in language change from different theoretical perspectives. Key notions discussed throughout the book include affirmative and negative existential constructions, the expansion of the latter into verbal negation, and subsequently from more specific to more general markers of negation. Nominalizations as well as the uses of negative existentials as standalone negative answers figure among the most frequent pathways whereby negative existentials evolve as general negation markers. The operation of the Negative Existential Cycle appears partly genealogically conditioned, as the cycle is found to iterate regularly within some families but never starts in others, as is the case in Bantu. In addition, other special negation markers such as nominal negators are found to undergo similar processes, i.e. they expand into the verbal domain and thereby develop into more general negation markers. The book provides rich information on a specific path of the evolution of negation, on cyclical processes in language change, and it show-cases the historical-comparative method in a modern setting.

Download or read book Proceedings of the 7th World Congress of African Linguistics Buea 17 21 August 2012 written by G. Atindogbe and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2016-12-19 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a composite of 40 purely scientific and peer-reviewed papers presented during the Seventh World Congress of African Linguistics (WOCAL7) at the University of Buea, Cameroon, in 2012. The different chapters of the volume fall within the scope of African languages in relation to linguistics and other related disciplines, where a varied range of theoretical examinations, investigations and/or discussions as well as pure description of aspects of language are offered. For the purpose of clarity and easy accessibility of the content, the chapters are further subcategorized into nine sections, which include: Borrowing, Discourse Analysis, Historical Linguistics, Intercultural Communication, Language Documentation, Language in Education, Morpho-syntax, Phonetics and Phonology, and Sociolinguistics.

Download or read book A Typological Study of the Existential Clause written by Wang Yong and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-21 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the existential clause (EC) from a cross-linguistic perspective and within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics. The prototypical EC in the less familiar languages is identified through its functional equivalents in the more familiar ones, which share the common semantic basis of ‘there exists something in some location’. Topics addressed include the morpho-syntactic features of the EC, the subject of the EC, the definiteness effect and its manifestations in the EC, the EC as impersonals, the distinction between entity- vs. event-existentials, and the EC and its related constructions. Drawing on both cross-linguistic observations based on the language sample and in-depth investigations in particular languages (e.g., in Chinese and English), the study aims to unravel how the lexico-grammar of EC is related to its meanings and functions, that is, how meaning is realised in form. The title will appeal to scholars and students in the field of linguistics, especially functional linguistics, and syntax.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact written by Anthony P. Grant and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-10 with total page 788 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every language has been influenced in some way by other languages. In many cases, this influence is reflected in words which have been absorbed from other languages as the names for newer items or ideas, such as perestroika, manga, or intifada (from Russian, Japanese, and Arabic respectively). In other cases, the influence of other languages goes deeper, and includes the addition of new sounds, grammatical forms, and idioms to the pre-existing language. For example, English's structure has been shaped in such a way by the effects of Norse, French, Latin, and Celtic--though English is not alone in its openness to these influences. Any features can potentially be transferred from one language to another if the sociolinguistic and structural circumstances allow for it. Further, new languages--pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages--can come into being as the result of language contact. In thirty-three chapters, The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact examines the various forms of contact-induced linguistic change and the levels of language which have provided instances of these influences. In addition, it provides accounts of how language contact has affected some twenty languages, spoken and signed, from all parts of the world. Chapters are written by experts and native-speakers from years of research and fieldwork. Ultimately, this Handbook provides an authoritative account of the possibilities and products of contact-induced linguistic change.

Download or read book A Grammar of Kuuk Thaayorre written by Alice R. Gaby and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This grammar offers a comprehensive description of Kuuk Thaayorre, a Paman language spoken on the west coast of Cape York Peninsula, Australia. The Paman languages of Cape York have long been recognized for their exhibition of considerable phonological, semantic and morphosyntactic change (e.g. Hale 1964, Dixon 1980). Yet there has until now been no published full reference grammar of a language from this area (some excellent dictionaries, theses and sketch grammars notwithstanding, e.g. Hall 1972, Alpher 1973, 1991, Crowley 1983, Kilham et al. 1986, Sutton 1995, Smith & Johnson 2000). On the basis of elicited data, narrative and semi-spontaneous conversation recorded between 2002 and 2008, as well as archival materials, this grammar details the phonetics and phonology, morphosyntax, lexical and constructional semantics and pragmatics of one of the few indigenous Australian languages still used as a primary means of communication. Kuuk Thaayorre possesses features of typological interest at each of these levels.

Download or read book Unity and diversity in grammaticalization scenarios written by Walter Bisang and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume contains a selection of papers originally presented at the symposium on “Areal patterns of grammaticalization and cross-linguistic variation in grammaticalization scenarios” held on 12-14 March 2015 at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. The papers, written by leading scholars combining expertise in historical linguistics and grammaticalization research, study variation in grammaticalization scenarios in a variety of language families (Slavic, Indo-Aryan, Tibeto-Burman, Bantu, Mande, "Khoisan", Siouan, and Mayan). The volume stands out in the vast literature on grammaticalization by focusing on variation in grammaticalization scenarios and areal patterns in grammaticalization. Apart from documenting new grammaticalization paths, the volume makes a methodological contribution as it addresses an important question of how to reconcile universal outcomes of grammaticalization processes with the fact that the input to these processes is language-specific and construction-specific.

Download or read book Sociolinguistic and Typological Perspectives on Language Variation written by Silvia Ballarè and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-10-04 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linguistic variation, loosely defined as the wholesale processes whereby patterns of language structures exhibit divergent distributions within and across languages, has traditionally been the object of research of at least two branches of linguistics: variationist sociolinguistics and linguistic typology. In spite of their similar research agendas, the two approaches have only rarely converged in the description and interpretation of variation. While a number of studies attempting to address at least aspects of this relationship have appeared in recent years, a principled discussion on how the two disciplines may interact has not yet been carried out in a programmatic way. This volume aims to fill this gap and offers a cross-disciplinary venue for discussing the bridging between sociolinguistic and typological research from various angles, with the ultimate goal of laying out the methodological and conceptual foundations of an integrated research agenda for the study of linguistic variation.