Download or read book Historical Change in Serial Verb Constructions written by Carol Lord and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1993-08-06 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work examines both historical and comparative evidence in documenting the sweep of diachronic change in the context of serial verb constructions. Using a wide range of data from languages of West Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, it demonstrates how shifts in meaning and usage result in syntactic, morphological and lexical change. The process by which verbs lose lexical semantic content and develop case-marking functions is described; it is argued that the change is directional, from verb to preposition (or postposition) to affix, along a grammaticalization continuum. This same grammaticalization process is shown to result in the development of complementizers, adverbial subordinators, conjunctions, adverbs and auxiliaries from verbs. Strong parallels across languages are found in the meanings of the verbs that become “defective” and in the functions they come to mark. The changes are documented in detail, with examples from a number of languages illustrating the effect of the changes on typology and word order, implications for the encoding of definiteness and aspect, and the relevance of notions such as discourse topic, foreground and transitivity. With respect to theoretical assumptions and terminology, the author has taken a relatively nonpartisan approach, and the discussion is accessible to students of language as well as of interest to theoreticians.
Download or read book The Syntax of Serial Verbs written by Mark Sebba and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1987-01-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph is about the chains of verbs commonly found in Creole Languages, West African languages, in particular the Kwa sub-group of Niger-Congo, Chinese and certain other languages and have acquired the name of 'serial verbs' in the literature. As a case study, the serial constructions of Sranan, a creole language of Surinam with an English lexical base, are examined in detail.
Download or read book Serial Verbs in White Hmong written by Nerida Jarkey and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-06-02 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Serial Verbs in White Hmong Nerida Jarkey investigates verb serialization, a highly productive grammatical strategy in this dynamic Southeast Asian language in which multiple verbs are simply concatenated within a single clause to depict a single event. The investigation identifies four major types of serial verb construction (SVC) in White Hmong and finds that the key function of all these types is to depict a single event in an elaborate and vivid way, a much-favoured method of description in this language. These findings concerning the nature and function of SVCs in White Hmong contribute to broader discussions on the nature of events as both cognitive and cultural constructs.
Download or read book Serial Verbs in Oceanic written by Terry Crowley and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2002 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Terry Crowley introduces the idea of serial verbs which are clauses that include multiple verbs or verb-like items that are used to convey a single meaning like wash the plates clean. The author argues that their formation is a consequence of contact between different languages.
Download or read book Serial Verb Constructions written by Aleksandra I︠U︡rʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2006 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A serial verb construction is a sequence of verbs which acts together as one. This oustanding book is the first to study the phenomenon across languages of different typological and genetic profiles. The authors, all experienced linguistic fieldworkers, follow a unified typological approach and avoid formalisms.
Download or read book Serial Verbs written by Aleksandra I︠U︡rʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd and published by Oxford Studies in Typology and. This book was released on 2018 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an in-depth typological account of the forms, functions, and histories of serial verb constructions, in which several verbs combine to form a single predicate. It uses an inductively-based framework for the analysis and draws on data from languages with different typological profiles and genetic affiliations.
Download or read book Serial Verbs written by Claire Lefebvre and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1991 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The papers in this volume offer several analyses of verb serialization written within various theoretical frameworks: grammatical, comparative and cognitive/functional. They cover a wide range of language families. All authors address two basic questions about verb serialization: First, what is the structure and thematic constitution of the construction? The answers to this question cover the spectrum of the options that are available in current grammatical theory. Second, what aspect of the grammar differentiates between languages which have serial constructions and those which do not? The specific proposals made by the authors are discussed by R. Larson in the concluding paper. Larson opens new perspectives for research on verb serialization by posing the following question: what analogues for verb serialization can be found in the more familiar grammatical apparatus of English? It is suggested that verb serialization finds a clear parallel in the secondary predicate structures of English.
Download or read book Serial Verb Constructions written by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2005-12-22 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of new work explores the forms and functions of serial verbs. The introduction sets out the cross-linguistic parameters of variation, and the final chapter draws out a set of conclusions. These frame fourteen explorations of serial verb constructions and similar structures in languages from Asia, Africa, North, Central and South America, and the Pacific. Chapters on well-known languages such as Cantonese and Thai are set alongside the languages of small hunter-gatherer and slash-and-burn agriculturalist groups. A serial verb construction (sometimes just called serial verb) is a sequence of verbs which acts together as one. Each describes what can be conceptualized as a single event. They are monoclausal; their intonational properties are those of a monoverbal clause; they generally have just one tense, aspect, mood, and polarity value; and they are an important tool in cognitive packaging of events. Serial verb constructions are a pervasive feature of isolating languages of Asia and West Africa, and are also found in the languages of the Pacific, South, Central and North America, most of them endangered. Serial verbs have been a subject of interest among linguists for some time. This outstanding book is the first to study the phenomenon across languages of different typological and genetic profiles. The authors, all experienced linguistic fieldworkers, follow a unified typological approach and avoid formalisms. The book will interest students, at graduate level and above, of syntax, typology, language universals, information structure, and language contact, in departments of linguistics and anthroplogy.
Download or read book Historical Change in Serial Verb Constructions written by Carol Lord and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work examines both historical and comparative evidence in documenting the sweep of diachronic change in the context of serial verb constructions. Using a wide range of data from languages of West Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, it demonstrates how shifts in meaning and usage result in syntactic, morphological and lexical change.The process by which verbs lose lexical semantic content and develop case-marking functions is described; it is argued that the change is directional, from verb to preposition (or postposition) to affix, along a grammaticalization continuum. This same grammaticalization process is shown to result in the development of complementizers, adverbial subordinators, conjunctions, adverbs and auxiliaries from verbs. Strong parallels across languages are found in the meanings of the verbs that become defective and in the functions they come to mark. The changes are documented in detail, with examples from a number of languages illustrating the effect of the changes on typology and word order, implications for the encoding of definiteness and aspect, and the relevance of notions such as discourse topic, foreground and transitivity.With respect to theoretical assumptions and terminology, the author has taken a relatively nonpartisan approach, and the discussion is accessible to students of language as well as of interest to theoreticians.
Download or read book The Serial Verb Construction Parameter written by Osamuyimen Thompson Stewart and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation of the serial verb construction, this work engages central issues in syntactic theory-complex predicates, clausal architecture and syntactic variation.
Download or read book The Acquisition of Creole Languages written by Dany Adone and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-28 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first study into how children acquire Creoles as their first language in the absence of a conventional language model.
Download or read book Serial Verbs written by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an in-depth typological account of the forms, functions, and histories of serial verb constructions. Serial verbs, in which several verbs combine to form a single predicate, describe what is conceptualized as a single event. The verbs in the construction have the same tense, aspect, mood, modality, and evidentiality values, cannot be negated or questioned separately, and usually share the same subject and object. They are a powerful means of portraying various facets of one event, and can express grammatical meanings such as aspect, direction, and causation, particularly in languages where few other means are available. In this volume, Alexandra Aikhenvald seeks to answer unresolved questions such as: What are the parameters of variation in serial verbs? How do serial verbs differ from other, superficially similar multi-verb constructions? How do serial verbs emerge, and what happens to them over time? What role do they play in the representation of event structure? The book uses an inductively-based framework for the analysis and draws on data from languages with different typological profiles and genetic affiliations. It will be of interest to researchers and students from a wide range of fields of linguistics, especially typology, anthropological linguistics, and language contact.
Download or read book A Grammar of Lavukaleve written by Angela Terrill and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2003 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The series builds an extensive collection of high quality descriptions of languages around the world. Each volume offers a comprehensive grammatical description of a single language together with fully analyzed sample texts and, if appropriate, a word list and other relevant information which is available on the language in question. There are no restrictions as to language family or area, and although special attention is paid to hitherto undescribed languages, new and valuable treatments of better known languages are also included. No theoretical model is imposed on the authors; the only criterion is a high standard of scientific quality.
Download or read book Kambera written by Margaretha Anna Flora Klamer and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 1998 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No detailed description available for "A Grammar of Kambera".
Download or read book A Grammar of Rapa Nui written by Paulus Kieviet and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on with total page 666 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a comprehensive description of the grammar of Rapa Nui, the Polynesian language spoken on Easter Island. After an introductory chapter, the grammar deals with phonology, word classes, the noun phrase, possession, the verb phrase, verbal and nonverbal clauses, mood and negation, and clause combinations. The phonology of Rapa Nui reveals certain issues of typological interest, such as the existence of strict conditions on the phonological shape of words, word-final devoicing, and reduplication patterns motivated by metrical constraints. For Polynesian languages, the distinction between nouns and verbs in the lexicon has often been denied; in this grammar it is argued that this distinction is needed for Rapa Nui. Rapa Nui has sometimes been characterised as an ergative language; this grammar shows that it is unambiguously accusative. Subject and object marking depend on an interplay of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic factors. Other distinctive features of the language include the existence of a ‘neutral’ aspect marker, a serial verb construction, the emergence of copula verbs, a possessive-relative construction, and a tendency to maximise the use of the nominal domain. Rapa Nui’s relationship to the other Polynesian languages is a recurring theme in this grammar; the relationship to Tahitian (which has profoundly influenced Rapa Nui) especially deserves attention. The grammar is supplemented with a number of interlinear texts, two maps and a subject index.
Download or read book A Grammar of Hinuq written by Diana Forker and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 860 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first thorough description of the Nakh-Daghestanian language Hinuq. Hinuq has about 600 speakers living primarily in a single village in the Caucasus mountains in southern Russia (Daghestan). During several fieldwork trips, the author collected an extensive corpus of texts. Based on the data, Forker provides a comprehensive analysis of Hinuq grammar with reference to other Nakh-Daghestanian languages, to Caucasian studies and to typological and general linguistic topics.
Download or read book An Introduction to African Languages written by George Tucker Childs and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces beginning students and non-specialists to the diversity and richness of African languages. In addition to providing a solid background to the study of African languages, the book presents linguistic phenomena not found in European languages. A goal of this book is to stimulate interest in African languages and address the question: What makes African languages so fascinating? The orientation adopted throughout the book is a descriptive one, which seeks to characterize African languages in a relatively succinct and neutral manner, and to make the facts accessible to a wide variety of readers. The author's lengthy acquaintance with the continent and field experiences in western, eastern, and southern Africa allow for both a broad perspective and considerable depth in selected areas. The original examples are often the author's own but also come from other sources and languages not often referenced in the literature. This text also includes a set of sound files illustrating the phenomena under discussion, be they the clicks of Khoisan, talking drums, or the ideophones (words like English lickety-split) found almost everywhere, which will make this book a valuable resource for teacher and student alike.
