Download or read book Deixis and Demonstratives in Oceanic Languages written by Gunter Senft and published by Pacific Linguistics Research School of Pacific and Asian Stu. This book was released on 2004 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When we communicate, we communicate in a certain context, and this context shapes our utterances. Natural languages are context-bound and deixis 'concerns the ways in which languages encode or grammaticalise features of the context of utterance or speech event, and thus also concerns ways in which the interpretation of utterances depends on the analysis of that context of utterance' (Stephen Levinson). The systems of deixis and demonstratives in the Oceanic languages represented in the contributions to this volume illustrate the fascinating complexity of spatial reference in these languages. Some of the studies presented here highlight social aspects of deictic reference illustrating de Leon's point that 'reference is a collaborative task' . It is hoped that this anthology will contribute to a better understanding of this area and provoke further studies in this extremely interesting, though still rather underdeveloped, research area.
Download or read book Demonstratives in discourse written by Åshild Næss and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2020-11-09 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the use of demonstratives in the structuring and management of discourse, and their role as engagement expressions, from a crosslinguistic perspective. It seeks to establish which types of discourse-related functions are commonly encoded by demonstratives, beyond the well-established reference-tracking and deictic uses, and also investigates which members of demonstrative paradigms typically take on certain functions. Moreover, it looks at the roles of non-deictic demonstratives, that is, members of the paradigm which are dedicated e.g. to contrastive, recognitional, or anaphoric functions and do not express deictic distinctions. Several of the studies also focus on manner demonstratives, which have been little studied from a crosslinguistic perspective. The volume thus broadens the scope of investigation of demonstratives to look at how their core functions interact with a wider range of discourse functions in a number of different languages. The volume covers languages from a range of geographical locations and language families, including Cushitic and Mande languages in Africa, Oceanic and Papuan languages in the Pacific region, Algonquian and Guaykuruan in the Americas, and Germanic, Slavic and Finno-Ugric languages in the Eurasian region. It also includes two papers taking a broader typological approach to specific discourse functions of demonstratives.
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 Demonstratives Deictic Pointing and the Conceptualization of Space written by Holger Diessel and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2021-05-19 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Manual of Deixis in Romance Languages written by Konstanze Jungbluth and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-10-16 with total page 878 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deixis as a field of research has generated increased interest in recent years. It is crucial for a number of different subdisciplines: pragmatics, semantics, cognitive and contrastive linguistics, to name just a few. The subject is of particular interest to experts and students, philosophers, teachers, philologists, and psychologists interested in the study of their language or in comparing linguistic structures. The different deictic structures – not only the items themselves, but also the oppositions between them – reflect the fact that neither the notions of space, time, person nor our use of them are identical cross-culturally. This diversity is not restricted to the difference between languages, but also appears among related dialects and language varieties. This volume will provide an overview of the field, focusing on Romance languages, but also reaching beyond this perspective. Chapters on diachronic developments (language change), comparisons with other (non-)European languages, and on interfaces with neighboring fields of interest are also included. The editors and authors hope that readers, regardless of their familiarity with Romance languages, will gain new insights into deixis in general, and into the similarities and differences among deictic structures used in the languages of the world.
Download or read book The Lexicon of Proto Oceanic written by Malcolm Ross and published by ANU E Press. This book was released on 2007-03-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the second in a series of five volumes on the lexicon of Proto Oceanic, the ancestor of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian language family. Each volume deals with a particular domain of culture and/or environment and consists of a collection of essays each of which presents and comments on lexical reconstructions of a particular semantic field within that domain. Volume 2 examines how Proto Oceanic speakers described their geophysical environment. An introductory chapter discusses linguistic and archaeological evidence that locates the Proto Oceanic language community in the Bismarck Archipelago in the late 2nd millennium BC. The next three chapters investigate terms used to denote inland, coastal, reef and open sea environments, and meteorological phenomena. A further chapter examines the lexicon for features of the heavens and navigational techniques associated with the stars. How Proto Oceanic speakers talked about their environment is also described in three further chapters which treat property terms for describing inanimate objects, locational and directional terms, and terms related to the expression of time.
Download or read book Topics in Oceanic Morphosyntax written by Claire Moyse-Faurie and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-10-27 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph is a collection of selected papers on Oceanic languages. For the first time, aspects of the morphology and syntax of Oceanic languages such as the encoding of sentence types, the structure of the noun phrase, noun incorporation, constituent order, and ergative vs. accusative alignment are discussed from a comparative point of view, thus drawing attention to genetic, areal and language-specific features. The individual papers are based on the field work of the authors on lesser-described and endangered languages and are basically descriptive studies. At the same time they also explore the theoretical implications of the data presented and analyzed, as well as the historical development of certain morpho-syntactic phenomena, without basing these explorations on a single theoretical framework. The book provides new insights into the morphosyntactic structures of Oceanic languages and is of interest primarily for linguists working on Austronesian, in particular Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian languages, but also for typologists and linguists working on language change.
Download or read book Demonstratives written by Holger Diessel and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1999 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All languages have demonstratives, but their form, meaning and use vary tremendously across the languages of the world. This book presents the first large-scale analysis of demonstratives from a cross-linguistic and diachronic perspective. It is based on a representative sample of 85 languages. The first part of the book analyzes demonstratives from a synchronic point of view, examining their morphological structures, semantic features, syntactic functions, and pragmatic uses in spoken and written discourse. The second part concentrates on diachronic issues, in particular on the development of demonstratives into grammatical markers. Across languages demonstratives provide a frequent historical source for definite articles, relative and third person pronouns, nonverbal copulas, sentence connectives, directional preverbs, focus markers, expletives, and many other grammatical markers. The book describes the different mechanisms by which demonstratives grammaticalize and argues that the evolution of grammatical markers from demonstratives is crucially distinct from other cases of grammaticalization.
Download or read book Perspectives on information structure in Austronesian languages written by Sonja Riesberg and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Information structure is a relatively new field to linguistics and has only recently been studied for smaller and less described languages. This book is the first of its kind that brings together contributions on information structure in Austronesian languages. Current approaches from formal semantics, discourse studies, and intonational phonology are brought together with language specific and cross-linguistic expertise of Austronesian languages. The 13 chapters in this volume cover all subgroups of the large Austronesian family, including Formosan, Central Malayo-Polynesian, South Halmahera-West New Guinea, and Oceanic. The major focus, though, lies on Western Malayo-Polynesian languages. Some chapters investigate two of the largest languages in the region (Tagalog and different varieties of Malay), others study information-structural phenomena in small, underdescribed languages. The three overarching topics that are covered in this book are NP marking and reference tracking devices, syntactic structures and information-structural categories, and the interaction of information structure and prosody. Various data types build the basis for the different studies compiled in this book. Some chapters investigate written texts, such as modern novels (cf. Djenar’s chapter on modern, standard Indonesian), or compare different text genres, such as, for example, oral narratives and translations of biblical narratives (cf. De Busser’s chapter on Bunun). Most contributions, however, study natural spoken speech and make use of spoken corpora which have been compiled by the authors themselves. The volume comprises a number of different methods and theoretical frameworks. Two chapters make use of the Question Under Discussion approach, developed in formal semantics (cf. the chapters by Latrouite & Riester; Shiohara & Riester). Riesberg et al. apply the recently developed method of Rapid Prosody Transcription (RPT) to investigate native speakers’ perception of prosodic prominences and boundaries in Papuan Malay. Other papers discuss theoretical consequences of their findings. Thus, for example, Himmelmann takes apart the most widespread framework for intonational phonology (ToBI) and argues that the analysis of Indonesian languages requires much simpler assumptions than the ones underlying the standard model. Arka & Sedeng ask the question how fine-grained information structure space should be conceptualized and modelled, e.g. in LFG. Schnell argues that elements that could be analysed as “topic” and “focus” categories, should better be described in terms of ‘packaging’ and do not necessarily reflect any pragmatic roles in the first place.
Download or read book Dynamics of Language Changes written by Keith Allan and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-08-31 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the dynamics of language changes from sociolinguistic and historical linguistic perspectives. With in-depth case studies from all around the world, it uses diverse approaches across sociolinguistics and historical linguistics to answer questions such as: How and why do language changes begin?; how do language changes spread?; and how can they ultimately be explained? Each chapter explores a different component of language change, including typology, syntax, morphology, phonology, semantics, lexicology, discourse strategies, diachronic change, synchronic change, how the deafblind modify sign language, and the accommodation of language to song. This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics of language change over time, simultaneously advancing current research and suggesting new directions in sociolinguistic and historical linguistic approaches.
Download or read book Language Structure and Environment written by Rik De Busser and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language Structure and Environment is a broad introduction to how languages are shaped by their environment. It makes the argument that the social, cultural, and natural environment of speakers influences the structures and development of the languages they speak. After a general overview, the contributors explain in a number of detailed case studies how specific cultural, societal, geographical, evolutionary and meta-linguistic pressures determine the development of specific grammatical features and the global structure of a varied selection of languages. This is a work of meticulous scholarship at the forefront of a burgeoning field of linguistics.
Download or read book Language and Action in Cognitive Neuroscience written by Yann Coello and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book collates evidence from behavioural, brain imagery and stroke-patient studies, to discuss how cognitive and neural processes are responsible for language.
Download or read book Language and Culture in Dialogue written by Andrew J. Strathern and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-31 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Andrew J. Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart delineate the relationship between “language in particular” and “culture in general” by focusing on language as both social practice and a means of classifying and interpreting the world. A traditional linguistic approach to a focus on language is illuminated by their anthropological emphasis on the embodiment of relationships and experience. In the book, the body is placed in the foreground for understanding language in culture, which helps in turn to understand how it enables us to adapt to the world of lived material experience. Written in an accessible style and drawing on an extensive corpus of primary field research from Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Japan, Taiwan, Scotland, and Ireland, Strathern and Stewart present a world anthropology which links together European, North American, and Asia-Pacific approaches to the topic. Students and scholars alike of sociocultual anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and linguistics will benefit from this engaging work on how the various components of our culture are informed and shaped through language.
Download or read book A Grammar of Papapana written by Ellen Smith-Dennis and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-01-18 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph is not only the first comprehensive grammar of Papapana (a previously undocumented and under-described endangered language) but the first full reference grammar of any Oceanic language of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, despite this region displaying considerable linguistic innovation and language contact phenomena with numerous typologically significant features. This book describes Papapana on various levels, including phonology, morphology and syntax in noun phrases and the verb complex, and syntax at the clause- and sentence-level. Throughout the grammar, the described phenomena are related to the current research on typological and Oceanic linguistics. Typologically unusual features of Papapana include multiple reduplication, inverse-number marking in the noun phrase and postverbal subject-indexing. The book also describes the sociolinguistic and historical context within which Papapana is spoken and highlights linguistic changes resulting from language contact. The monograph fills an important gap in terms of grammatical descriptions of Bougainville Oceanic languages, and makes a significant contribution to the field of Oceanic linguistics, and to future comparative linguistic and typological research.
Download or read book Historical Linguistics 2011 written by Ritsuko Kikusawa and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2013-11-14 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of selected papers from the 20th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (Osaka, Japan, July 2011) presents a set of stimulating and ground-breaking studies on a wide range of languages and language families. As the scope of studies that can be characterized as ‘Historical Linguistics’ has expanded, ICHL conferences have likewise seen a broadening of topics presented, and this conference was no exception, reflected by the inclusion in this volume of a plenary presentation on the grammaticalization of expressions of negation and gendered kinship in American Sign Language. Three other papers propose new views of the role of grammaticalization in English, Chinese, and Niger-Congo languages. Four of the papers discuss specific problems that arise in the comparison and reconstruction of linguistic features in a range of languages from Asia, Europe and South America. The last six studies deal with innovative approaches to the historical development of suppletion in Romance languages, possessive classifiers in Austronesian, universal quantifiers in Germanic, adjectival sequences in English, exaptation in Celtic and Early English, and drift in Ancient Egyptian.
Download or read book A Grammar of Darma written by Christina Willis Oko and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-08-26 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Grammar of Darma provides a comprehensive description of this threatened Tibeto-Burman language spoken in India’s Himalayan region. The description is based on a corpus that includes natural discourse and elicited data. The analysis is informed by a functional-typological framework.
Download or read book Say it in Samoan written by Ulrike Mosel and published by Better English Language Teaching. This book was released on 1997 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
