Download or read book Modality and Subordinators written by Jackie Nordström and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010-01-27 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book connects two linguistic phenomena, modality and subordinators, so that both are seen in a new light, each adding to the understanding of the other. It argues that general subordinators (or complementizers) denote propositional modality (otherwise expressed by moods such as the indicative-subjunctive and epistemic-evidential modal markers). The book explores the hypothesis both on a cross-linguistic and on a language-branch specific level (the Germanic languages). One obvious connection between the indicative-subjunctive distinction and subordinators is that the former is typically manifested in subordinate clauses. Furthermore, both the indicative-subjunctive and subordinators determine clause types. More importantly, however, it is shown, through data from various languages, that subordinators themselves often denote the indicative-subjunctive distinction. In the Germanic languages, there is variation in many clause types between both the indicative and the subjunctive and that and if depending on the speaker’s and/or the subject’s certainty of the truth of the proposition.
Download or read book Modality in Syntax Semantics and Pragmatics written by Werner Abraham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-17 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do we mean when we say things like 'If only we knew what he was up to!' Clearly this is more than just a message, or a question to our addressee. We are expressing simultaneously that we don't know, and also that we wish to know. Several modes of encoding contribute to such modalities of expression: word order, subordinating subjunctions, sentences that are subordinated but nevertheless occur autonomously, and attitudinal discourse adverbs which, far beyond lexical adverbials of modality, allow the speaker and the listener to presuppose full agreement, partial agreement under presupposed conditions, or negotiation of common ground. This state of the art survey proposes a new model of modality, drawing on data from a variety of Germanic and Slavic languages to find out what is cross-linguistically universal about modality, and to argue that it is a constitutive part of human cognition.
Download or read book The Germanic Languages written by Ekkehard Konig and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a unique, up-to-date survey of twelve Germanic languages from English and German to Faroese and Yiddish.
Download or read book Complementizer Semantics in European Languages written by Kasper Boye and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-07-11 with total page 910 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Complementizers may be defined as conjunctions that have the function of identifying clauses as complements. In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that they have additional functions. Some of these functions are semantic in the sense that they represent conventional contributions to the meanings of the complements. The present book puts a focus to these semantic complementizer functions.
Download or read book The clausal syntax of German Sign Language written by Fabian Bross and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2020 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a hypothesis-based description of the clausal structure of German Sign Language (DGS). The structure of the book is based on the three clausal layers CP, IP/TP, and VoiceP. The main hypothesis is that scopal height is expressed iconically in sign languages: the higher the scope of an operator, the higher the articulator used for its expression. The book was written with two audiences in mind: On the one hand it addresses linguists interested in sign languages and on the other hand it addresses cartographers.
Download or read book Adverbial Subordination written by Bernd Kortmann and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-08-07 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research on language universals and research on linguistic typology are not antagonistic, but rather complementary approaches to the same fundamental problem: the relationship between the amazing diversity of languages and the profound unity of language. Only if the true extent of typological divergence is recognized can universal laws be formulated. In recent years it has become more and more evident that a broad range of languages of radically different types must be carefully analyzed before general theories are possible. Typological comparison of this kind is now at the centre of linguistic research. The series empirical approaches to language typology presents a platform for contributions of all kinds to this rapidly developing field. The distinctive feature of the series is its markedly empirical orientation. All conclusions to be reached are the result of a deepened study of empirical data. General problems are focused on from the perspective of individual languages, language families, language groups, or language samples. Special emphasis is given to the analysis of phenomena from little known languages, which shed new light on long-standing problems in general linguistics. The series is open to contributions from different theoretical persuasions. It thus reflects the methodological pluralism that characterizes the present situation. Care is taken that all volumes be accessible to every linguist and, moreover, to every reader specializing in some domain related to human language. A deeper understanding of human language in general, based on a detailed analysis of typological diversity among individual languages, is fundamental for many sciences, not only for linguists. Therefore, this series has proven to be indispensable in every research library, be it public or private, which has a specialization in language and the language sciences. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert.
Download or read book Tense Mood and Aspect written by Louis de Saussure and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2007 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of articles dealing with theoretical issues in the study of tense, mood and aspect, as well as with specific semantic and syntactic problems raised by linguistic expressions dedicated to these domains across a variety of languages. Through these papers, strong variations are explored, but also crosslinguistic convergences are investigated. Numerous phenomena so far often left aside in linguistics are described and enlightened by different scientific standpoints, which they serve to illustrate. The languages investigated in this volume include Germanic languages (Dutch, English, German), Romance (French, Catalan, Italian), Slavic (Serbo-Croatian, Czech, Russian), Greek, and non-indoeuropean languages such as Thai, Digo and Kikuyu. Related topics such as grammaticalization, presuppositions, questions in dialogue, illocutionary acts and acquisition are incidentally called upon in order to shed light from the outside onto tense, mood (and modality) and aspect. This volume is of great interest for all scholars engaged in contemporary research on the linguistic expression of tense, mood and aspect. The papers gathered in this volume are a tight selection of the ones that were presented at the 6th Chronos colloquium.
Download or read book Basque and Romance written by Ane Berro and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a collection of articles describing and analyzing several of the most important morphosyntactic features for which the formal comparison between Basque and its surrounding Romance languages is relevant, such as word order, inflection, case, argument structure and causatives. In the context of a language virtually all of whose speakers are bilingual in either Spanish or French, the theoretically informed in-depth description offered in this volume focuses on the fine grain of linguistic structures from languages typologically quite apart but coexisting and probably interacting in the minds of speakers. It therefore aims at shedding some light on the types of interactions between different systems and on the systems themselves.
Download or read book The Evolution of Grammar written by Joan Bybee and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1994-11-15 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joan Bybee and her colleagues present a new theory of the evolution of grammar that links structure and meaning in a way that directly challenges most contemporary versions of generative grammar. This study focuses on the use and meaning of grammatical markers of tense, aspect, and modality and identifies a universal set of grammatical categories. The authors demonstrate that the semantic content of these categories evolves gradually and that this process of evolution is strikingly similar across unrelated languages. Through a survey of seventy-six languages in twenty-five different phyla, the authors show that the same paths of change occur universally and that movement along these paths is in one direction only. This analysis reveals that lexical substance evolves into grammatical substance through various mechanisms of change, such as metaphorical extension and the conventionalization of implicature. Grammaticization is always accompanied by an increase in frequency of the grammatical marker, providing clear evidence that language use is a major factor in the evolution of synchronic language states. The Evolution of Grammar has important implications for the development of language and for the study of cognitive processes in general.
Download or read book The Emergence of Conditional Subordinators in Swedish written by Henrik Rosenkvist and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Grammaticalization Scenarios from Europe and Asia written by Walter Bisang and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-09-21 with total page 670 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume intends to fill the gap in the grammaticalization studies setting as its goal the systematic description of grammaticalization processes in genealogically and structurally diverse languages. To address the problem of the limitations of the secondary sources for grammaticalization studies, the editors rely on sketches of grammaticalization phenomena from experts in individual languages guided by a typological questionnaire.
Download or read book Issues in vdalian Syntax written by Piotr Garbacz and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book First Language Attrition Use and Maintenance written by Monika S. Schmid and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Accompanying CD, also called a CD-ROM by publisher, contains ... "excerpts from more than twenty of the interviews analyzed." -- p. [4] of cover.
Download or read book The Final Over Final Condition written by Michelle Sheehan and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-10-27 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the evidence for and the theoretical implications of a universal word order constraint, with data from a wide range of languages. This book presents evidence for a universal word order constraint, the Final-over-Final Condition (FOFC), and discusses the theoretical implications of this phenomenon. FOFC is a syntactic condition that disallows structures where a head-initial phrase is contained in a head-final phrase in the same extended projection/domain. The authors argue that FOFC is a linguistic universal, not just a strong tendency, and not a constraint on processing. They discuss the effects of the universal in various domains, including the noun phrase, the adjective phrase, the verb phrase, and the clause. The book draws on data from a wide range of languages, including Hindi, Turkish, Basque, Finnish, Afrikaans, German, Hungarian, French, English, Italian, Romanian, Arabic, Hebrew, Mandarin, Pontic Greek, Bagirmi, Dholuo, and Thai. FOFC, the authors argue, is important because it is the only known example of a word order asymmetry pertaining to the order of heads. As such, it has significant repercussions for theories connecting the narrow syntax to linear order.
Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Romani Language and Linguistics written by Yaron Matras and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 599 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Romani is the first language, and family and community language, of upwards of 3-4 million people and possibly many more in Europe, the Americas, and Australia. Documentation and research on the language draws on a tradition of more than two centuries, yet it remains relatively unknown and often engulfed by myths. In recent decades there has been an upsurge of interest in the language including language maintenance and educational projects, the creation of digital resources, language policy initiatives, and a flourishing community of online users of the language. This Handbook presents state of the art research on Romani language and linguistics. Bringing together key established scholars in the field of linguistics and neighbouring disciplines, it introduces the reader to the structures of Romani and its dialect divisions, and to the history of research on the language. It then goes on to explore major external influences on the language through contact with other key languages, aspects of language acquisition, and interventions in support of the language through public policy provisions, activism, translation, religious and literary initiatives, and social media. This comprehensive and groundbreaking account of Romani will appeal to students and scholars from across language and linguistics.
Download or read book Syntactic Reconstruction and Proto Germanic written by George Walkden and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers reconstructions of various syntactic properties of Proto-Germanic, including verb position in main clauses, the syntax of the wh-system, and the (non-)occurrence of null pronominal subjects and objects. Although previous studies have looked at the lexical and phonological reconstruction of Proto-Germanic, little is currently known about the syntax of the language, and it has even been argued that the reconstruction of syntax is impossible. Dr Walkden uses extensive evidence from the early Germanic languages - Old English, Old High German, Old Saxon, Old Norse, and Gothic - to show that syntactic reconstruction is not only possible but also profitable. He argues that while the reconstruction of syntax differs from lexical-phonological reconstruction due to the so-called 'correspondence problem', this is not insurmountable. In fact, the approach taken in current Minimalist theories, in which syntactic variation is attributed to the properties of lexical items, opens the door for syntactic reconstruction as lexical reconstruction. The book also discusses practical solutions for circumventing the correspondence problem, in particular the use of both distributional properties of lexical items and the phonological forms of such items in order to establish cognacy. The book will be of interest to historical linguists working on syntactic reconstruction and the Germanic languages, from graduate level upwards, as well as to advanced students of syntactic change more generally.
Download or read book Clause Linking and Clause Hierarchy written by Isabelle Bril and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 645 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collective volume explores clause-linkage strategies in a cross-linguistic perspective with greater emphasis on subordination. Part I presents some theoretical reassessment of syntactic terminologies and distinctive criteria for subordination, as well as typological methods based on sets of variables and statistics allowing cross-linguistic comparability. Part II deals with strategies relating to clause-chaining, conjunctive conjugations, converbial constructions, masdars. Part III centers on the interaction between the syntax, pragmatics, and semantics of clause-linking and subordination, in relation to informa-tional structure, to referential hierarchy, and correlative constructions. Part IV presents insights in the clause-linking and subordinating functions of some T.A.M. markers, verbal inflectional morphology and conjugation systems, which may also interact with informa-tional hierarchy, via the backgrounding effects and lack of illocutionary force of some aspect and mood forms. The volume is of particular interest to linguists and typologists working on clause-linkage systems and on the interface between syntax, pragmatics, and semantics.
