Download or read book A New Grammar of Dyirbal written by R. M. W. Dixon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-27 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: R. M. W. Dixon's landmark 1972 grammar of the Dyirbal language of North Queensland is one of the best-known and most widely-cited language descriptions in the history of linguistics. In the fifty years since its publication, Dixon has continued his detailed work on the language, extending and refining the descriptions in light of more recent theoretical advances. The resulting A New Grammar of Dyirbal offers a comprehensive contemporary grammar of the language, reanalysed in myriad ways and drawing on an extensive corpus of texts. Among its many new features are further discussion of the applicative/causative derivation; a fresh focus on the role of the pervasive 'pivot', the syntactic linking of S and O functions; a detailed account of the two antipassives and their semantic contrast and phonological conditioning; and an extended account of relative clauses. The volume is accompanied by a companion website hosting the full set of textual data on which the grammar is based, as well as a thesaurus/dictionary of nouns, adjectives, and verbs across ten dialects of Dyirbal.
Download or read book A New Grammar of Dyirbal written by R. M. W. Dixon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-27 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: R. M. W. Dixon's landmark 1972 grammar of the Dyirbal language of North Queensland is one of the best-known and most widely-cited language descriptions in the history of linguistics. In the fifty years since its publication, Dixon has continued his detailed work on the language, extending and refining the descriptions in light of more recent theoretical advances. The resulting A New Grammar of Dyirbal offers a comprehensive contemporary grammar of the language, reanalysed in myriad ways and drawing on an extensive corpus of texts. Among its many new features are further discussion of the applicative/causative derivation; a fresh focus on the role of the pervasive 'pivot', the syntactic linking of S and O functions; a detailed account of the two antipassives and their semantic contrast and phonological conditioning; and an extended account of relative clauses. The volume is accompanied by a companion website hosting the full set of textual data on which the grammar is based, as well as a thesaurus/dictionary of nouns, adjectives, and verbs across ten dialects of Dyirbal.
Download or read book The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland written by R. M. W. Dixon and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1972-12-14 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1972, this study is dedicated to the surviving speakers of the Dyirbal, Giramay and Mamu dialects. For more than ten thousand years they lived in harmony with each other and with their environment. Over one hundred years ago many of them were shot and poisoned by European invaders. Those allowed to survive have been barely tolerated tenants on their own lands, and have had their beliefs, habits and language help up to ridicule and scorn. In the last decade they have seen their remaining forests taken and cleared by an American company, with the destruction of sites whose remembered antiquity is many thousands of years older than the furthest event in the shallow history of their desecrators. The survivors of the three tribes have stood up to these diversities with dignity and humour. They continue to look forward to the day when they may again be allowed to live in peaceful possession of some of their own lands, and may be accorded a respect that they have been denied, but which they have been forcibly made to accord to others.
Download or read book Edible Gender Mother in Law Style and Other Grammatical Wonders written by R. M. W Dixon and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-05-21 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book builds on R. M. W. Dixon's most influential work on the indigenous languages of Australia over the past forty years, from his trailblazing grammar of Dyirbal published in 1972 to later grammars of Yidiñ (1971) and Warrgamay (1981). Edible Gender, Mother-in-Law Style, and Other Grammatical Wonders includes further studies on these languages, and the interrelations between them. Following an account of the anthropological and linguistic background, Part I provides a thorough examination of, and comparison between, the gender system in Dyirbal (one of whose members refers to 'edible vegetables') and the set of nominal classifiers in Yidiñ. The chapters in Part II describe Dyirbal's unusual kinship system and the 'mother-in-law' language style, and examines the origins of 'mother-in-law' vocabulary in Dyirbal and in Yidiñ. There are four grammatical studies in Part III, dealing with syntactic orientation, serial verb constructions, complementation strategies, and grammatical reanalysis. Part IV covers grammatical and lexical variation across the dialects of Dyirbal, compensatory phonological changes, and a study of language contact across the Cairns rainforest region. The two final chapters, in Part V, recount the sad stories of how the Yidiñ and Dyirbal languages slowly slipped into oblivion.
Download or read book A Grammar of Yidin written by R. M. W. Dixon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1977-10-06 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Professor Dixon examines the grammar of Yidin, an Australian dying language, through phonology, syntax and of a 'mixed ergative' type that cannot easily be accommodated in terms of standard syntactic theory.
Download or read book A Semantic Approach to English Grammar written by R. M. W. Dixon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-06-30 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows how grammar helps people communicate and looks at the ways grammar and meaning interrelate. The author starts from the notion that a speaker codes a meaning into grammatical forms which the listener is then able to recover: each word, he shows, has its own meaning and each bit of grammar its own function, their combinations creating and limiting the possibilities for different words. He uncovers a rationale for the varying grammatical properties of different words and in the process explains many facts about English - such as why we can say I wish to go, I wish that he would go, and I want to go but not I want that he would go. The first part of the book reviews the main points of English syntax and discusses English verbs in terms of their semantic types including those of Motion, Giving, Speaking, Liking, and Trying. In the second part Professor Dixon looks at eight grammatical topics, including complement clauses, transitivity and causatives, passives, and the promotion of a non-subject to subject, as in Dictionaries sell well. This is the updated and revised edition of A New Approach to English Grammar on Semantic Principles. It includes new chapters on tense and aspect, nominalizations and possession, and adverbs and negation, and contains a new discussion of comparative forms of adjectives. It also explains recent changes in English grammar, including how they has replaced the tabooed he as a pronoun referring to either gender, as in When a student reads this book, they will learn a lot about English grammar in a most enjoyable manner.
Download or read book The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland written by Robert Malcolm Ward Dixon and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Dyirbal Song Poetry the Oral Literature of an Australian Rainforest People written by Robert M. W. Dixon and published by University of Queensland Press(Australia). This book was released on 1996 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Words with interlinear glosses of 124 songs in Girramay, Jirrbal, Gulngay, Jirru, Mamu, some with musical transcriptions; linguistic and musical analysis of five song styles - Gama and Marrga styles performed at corroborees and lovesong styles Jangala, Burran and Gaynyil; notes on vocabulary, grammar and phonology; brief history of Dyirbal people and effects of contacts with Europeans after 1864 when Cardwell established; survival of Murray Upper community.
Download or read book On Case Grammar written by John M. Anderson and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1977 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Grammar of Knowledge written by Aleksandra I︠U︡rʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014-02 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the expression of information source, inferences, assumptions, probability and possibility, and gradations of doubt and beliefs across a wide range of languages in different cultural settings. Like others in the series it will interest both linguists and linguistically-minded anthropologists.
Download or read book Women Fire and Dangerous Things written by George Lakoff and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-08-08 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Its publication should be a major event for cognitive linguistics and should pose a major challenge for cognitive science. In addition, it should have repercussions in a variety of disciplines, ranging from anthropology and psychology to epistemology and the philosophy of science. . . . Lakoff asks: What do categories of language and thought reveal about the human mind? Offering both general theory and minute details, Lakoff shows that categories reveal a great deal."—David E. Leary, American Scientist
Download or read book Are Some Languages Better Than Others written by Robert M. W. Dixon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sets out to answer a question that many linguists have been hesitant to ask: are some languages better than others? Written in the author's usual accessible and engaging style, the book outlines the essential and optional features of language, before concluding that the ideal language does not and probably never will exist.
Download or read book The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland written by Robert Malcolm Ward Dixon and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction, Grammar & Phonology sections superseded by greatly revised & enlarged account in authors 1972 book of same title (Cambridge U.P.); Semantics (pp.230-433) gives detailed account of lexical correspondences between everyday vocabulary & mother-in-law or avoidance vocabulary; theoretical discussion of the general form of a semantic description, combining the componential & definitional approaches; detailed semantic descriptions of individual verbs, adverbals, adjectives, time words & nouns; note on procedure followed in preparing grammatical & semantic description (omitted from 1972 published revision)
Download or read book The Unmasking of English Dictionaries written by R. M. W. Dixon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-25 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When we look up a word in a dictionary, we want to know not just its meaning but also its function and the circumstances under which it should be used in preference to words of similar meaning. Standard dictionaries do not address such matters, treating each word in isolation. R. M. W. Dixon puts forward a new approach to lexicography that involves grouping words into 'semantic sets', to describe what can and cannot be said, and providing explanations for this. He provides a critical survey of the evolution of English lexicography from the earliest times, showing how Samuel Johnson's classic treatment has been amended in only minor ways. Written in an easy and accessible style, the book focuses on the rampant plagiarism between lexicographers, on ways of comparing meanings of words, and on the need to link lexicon with grammar. Dixon tells an engrossing story that puts forward a vision for the future.
Download or read book Are Some Languages Better than Others written by R. M. W. Dixon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-28 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sets out to answer a question that many linguists have been hesitant to ask: are some languages better than others? Can we say, for instance, that because German has three genders and French only two, German is a better language in this respect? Jarawara, spoken in the Amazonian jungle, has two ways of showing possession: one for a part (e.g. 'Father's foot') and the other for something which is owned and can be given away or sold (e.g. 'Father's knife'); is it thus a better language, in this respect, than English, which marks all possession in the same way? R. M. W. Dixon begins by outlining what he feels are the essential components of any language, such as the ability to pose questions, command actions, and provide statements. He then discusses desirable features including gender agreement, tenses, and articles, before concluding with his view of what the ideal language would look like - and an explanation of why it does not and probably never will exist. Written in the author's usual accessible and engaging style, and full of personal anecdotes and unusual linguistic phenomena, the book will be of interest to all general language enthusiasts as well as to a linguistics student audience, and particularly to anyone with an interest in linguistic typology.
Download or read book A Grammar of Yidin written by R. M. W. Dixon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-08 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Professor Dixon's book The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland (CUP 1972) is acknowledge to be a classic study. His study of Yidin is directly comparable in importance. Yidin, which is also a dying language, is Dyirbal's northerly neighbour. Yet the two languages have striking and fundamental differences in each area of grammar (while still both belonging to the Australian language family). In the phonology, there is a preference for each word to consist of an even number of syllables, in order to satisfy the stress targets of Yidin. Syntactically, the language is of a 'mixed ergative' type that cannot easily be accommodated in terms of standard syntactic theory. These and a number of other special features of Yidin have a crucial bearing on several theoretical enquiries into linguistic universals.
Download or read book Celebrating Indigenous Voice written by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-01-30 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every society thrives on stories, legends and myths. This volume explores the linguistic devices employed in the astoundingly rich narrative traditions in the tropical hot-spots of linguistic and cultural diversity, and the ways in which cultural changes and new means of communication affect narrative genres and structures. It focusses on linguistic and cultural facets of the narratives in the areas of linguistic diversity across the tropics and surrounding areas — New Guinea, Northern Australia, Siberia, and also the Tibeto-Burman region. The introduction brings together the recurrent themes in the grammar and the substance of the narratives. The twelve contributions to the volume address grammatical forms and categories deployed in organizing the narrative and interweaving the protagonists and the narrator. These include quotations, person of the narrator and the protagonist, mirativity, demonstratives, and clause chaining. The contributors also address the kinds of narratives told, their organization and evolution in time and space, under the impact of post-colonial experience and new means of communication via social media. The volume highlights the importance of documenting narrative tradition across indigenous languages.
