Download or read book The Alamblak Language of Papua New Guinea East Sepik written by Les Bruce and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Manambu Language of East Sepik Papua New Guinea written by Alexandra Aikhenvald and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-06-17 with total page 992 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first comprehensive description of the Manambu language of Papua New Guinea and is based entirely on the author's immersion fieldwork. Manambu belongs to the Ndu language family, and is spoken by about 2,500 people in five villages: Avatip, Yawabak, Malu, Apa:n, and Yambon (Yuanab) in East Sepik Province, Ambunti district. Manambu can be considered an endangered language. The Manambu language has many unusual properties. Every noun is considered masculine or feminine. Feminine gender - which is unmarked - is associated with small size and round shape, and masculine gender with elongated shape, large size, and importance. The Manambu culture is centered on ownership of personal names, and is similar to that of the Iatmul, described by Gregory Bateson. After an introductory account of the language and its speakers, Professor Aikhenvald devotes chapters to phonology, grammatical relations, word classes, gender, semantics, number, case, possession, derivation and compounding, pronouns, morphohology, verbs, mood and modality, negation, clause structure, pragmatics, discourse, semantics, the lexicon, current directions of change, and genetic relationship to other languages. The description is presented in a clear style in a framework that will be comprehensible to all linguists and linguistically oriented anthropologists.

Download or read book The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area written by Bill Palmer and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-12-04 with total page 1036 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide is part of the multi-volume reference work on the languages and linguistics of all major regions of the world. The island of New Guinea and its offshore islands is arguably the most diverse and least documented linguistic hotspot in the world - home to over 1300 languages, almost one fifth of all living languages, in more than 40 separate families, along with numerous isolates. Traditionally one of the least understood linguistic regions, ongoing research allows for the first time a comprehensive guide. Given the vastness of the region and limited previous overviews, this volume focuses on an account of the families and major languages of each area within the region, including brief grammatical descriptions of many of the languages. The volume also includes a typological overview of Papuan languages, and a chapter on Austronesian-Papuan contact. It will make accessible current knowledge on this complex region, and will be the standard reference on the region. It is aimed at typologists, endangered language specialists, graduate and advanced undergraduate students, and all those interested in linguistic diversity and understanding this least known linguistic region.

Download or read book The Papuan Languages of New Guinea written by William A. Foley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1986-11-20 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This introduction to the descriptive and historical linguistics of the Papuan languages of New Guinea provide an accessible account of one of the richest and most diverse linguistic situations in the world. The Papuan languages number over 700 (or 20 per cent of the world's total) in more than sixty language families. Less than a quarter of the individual languages have yet been adequately documented, and in this sense William Foley's book might be considered premature. However, in the search for language universals and generalisations in linguistic typology, it would be foolhardy to neglect the information that is available. In this respect alone, the present volume, systematically organised on mainly typology principles, is particularly timely and useful. In addition, the processes of linguistic diffusion are present in New Guinea to an extent probably paralleled elsewhere on the globe. The Papuan Languages of New Guinea will be of interest not only to general and comparative linguists and to typologists, but also to sociolinguists and anthropologists for the information it provides on the social dynamics of language content.

Download or read book A Survey of Word Accentual Patterns in the Languages of the World written by Harry van der Hulst and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2010 with total page 897 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains a wealth of information on the word accentual (metrical, stress) phenomena that we encounter in natural languages. Two types of information will be supplied: language profiles in 'tabular form' and survey articles. Of the total of 10 chapters in Part I, 3 are general in nature, while the other 7 describe and analyze word accentual systems in all continents. The volume's point of departure is a database called StressTyp. StressTyp developed into a database on word prosodic systems of the languages of the world. The over 500 languages, representing a wide geographical distribution, taken from the StressTyp database will be represented in this volume. For all these languages, information regarding identity, sources and stress location(s) will be included, accompanied by some examples in nearly all cases. These language data packages will be organized by language family. This information constitutes Part II of the volume.

Download or read book Noun Phrase Structure in the Languages of Europe written by Frans Plank and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2008-08-22 with total page 878 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The result of over five years of close collaboration among an international group of leading typologists within the EUROTYP program, this volume is about the morphology and syntax of the noun phrase. Particular attention is being paid to nominal inflectional categories and inflectional systems and to the syntax of determination, modification, and conjunction. Its areal focus, like that of other EUROTYP volumes, is on the languages of Europe; but in order to appreciate what is peculiarly European about their noun phrases, a more comprehensive and genuinely typological view is being taken at the full range of cross-linguistic variation within this structural domain. There has been no shortage lately of contributions to the theory of noun phrase structure; the present volume is, however, unique in the extent to which its theorizing is empirically grounded.

Download or read book Causatives and Causation written by Jae Jung Song and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-11 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Causatives and Causation is the first comprehensive study of causative constructions found in the world's languages. This important new research, based on a data base of more than 600 languages, not only investigates fully the richness and variety of causative types, but also presents an alternative perspective to the traditional typological approach. The new typology enables a better understanding of how the human mind cognizes causation and how this is reflected in language. Causatives and Causation is also an important attempt to integrate language typology with diachrony by constructing a diachronic model of causative affixes on the basis of this new typology. Drawing on the theoretical insight of Role and Reference Grammar, this book provides a case study of the causative constructions in Korean, providing additional support for both the proposed new typology and the diachronic model. It also examines the pragmatic foundations of causatives, an important but previously unexplored area of study.

Download or read book The Role of Theory in Language Description written by William A. Foley and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-06-15 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks, as well as studies that provide new insights by approaching language from an interdisciplinary perspective. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert.

Download or read book A Grammar of Tukang Besi written by Mark Donohue and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-05-12 with total page 605 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. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert.

Download or read book Nominal Classification written by Marcin Kilarski and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2013-12-18 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers the first comprehensive survey of the study of gender and classifiers throughout the history of Western linguistics. Based on an analysis of over 200 genetically and typologically diverse languages, the author shows that these seemingly arbitrary and redundant categories play in fact a central role in the lexicon, grammar and the organization of discourse. As a result, the often contradictory approaches to their functionality and semantic motivation encapsulate the evolving conceptions of such issues as cognitive and cultural correlates of linguistic structure, the diverse functions of grammatical categories, linguistic complexity, agreement phenomena and the interplay between lexicon and grammar. The combination of a typological and historiographic perspective adopted here allows the reader to appreciate the detail and insight of earlier, supposedly ‘prescientific’ accounts in light of the data now available and to examine contemporary discussions in the context of prevailing conceptions in the study of language at different points in its history since antiquity.

Download or read book Talk Is Cheap Sarcasm Alienation and the Evolution of Language written by Minnesota John Haiman Professor of Linguistics Macalester College and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1998-02-26 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Putting aside questions of truth and falsehood, the old "talk is cheap" maxim carries as much weight as ever. Indeed, perhaps more. For one need not be an expert in irony or sarcasm to realize that people don't necessarily mean what they say. Phrases such as "Yeah, right" and "I couldn't care less" are so much a part of the way we speak--and the way we live--that we are more likely to notice when they are absent (for example, Forrest Gump). From our everyday dialogues and conversations ("Thanks a lot!") to the screenplays of our popular films (Pulp Fiction and Fargo), what is said is frequently very different from what is meant. Talk is Cheap begins with this telling observation and proceeds to argue that such "unplain speaking" is fundamentally embedded in the way we now talk. Author John Haiman traces this sea-change in our use of language to the emergence of a postmodern "divided self" who is hyper-conscious that what he or she is saying has been said before; "cheap talk" thus allows us to distance ourselves from a social role with which we are uncomfortable. Haiman goes on to examine the full range of these pervasive distancing mechanisms, from cliches and quotation marks to camp and parody. Also, and importantly, this text highlights several new ways in which the English language is evolving (and has evolved) in response to our postmodern world view. In other words, this study shows us how what we are saying is gradually separating itself from how we say it. As provocative as it is timely, the book will be fascinating reading for students of linguistics, literature, communication, anthropology, philosophy, and popular culture.

Download or read book Constituent Order in the Languages of Europe written by Anna Siewierska and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2010-12-14 with total page 849 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Pronouns written by D. N. Shankara Bhat and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the basis of a cross-linguistic study of over 250 languages, this book brings to light several fascinating characteristics of pronouns. It argues that these words do not form a single category, but rather two different categories called 'personal pronouns' and 'proforms'. It points outseveral differences between the two, such as the occurrence of a dual structure among proforms but not among personal pronouns. These differences are shown to derive from the distinct functions that the two categories have to perform in language.The book also shows that the so-called interrogative pronouns of familiar languages do not actually have interrogation as their meaning. One can only assign the meaning of indefiniteness to them. Further, the notion of indefiniteness that can be associated with these and other pronouns is quitedifferent from the one that can be associated with noun phrases. Other interesting aspects of this book include the postulation of certain typological distinctions like 'two-person' and 'three-person' languages and 'free-pronoun' and 'bound-pronoun' languages.

Download or read book Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable written by Geoffrey Sampson and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-02-26 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a challenge to the widely-held assumption that human languages are both similar and constant in their degree of complexity. For a hundred years or more the universal equality of languages has been a tenet of faith among most anthropologists and linguists. It has been frequently advanced as a corrective to the idea that some languages are at a later stage of evolution than others. It also appears to be an inevitable outcome of one of the central axioms of generative linguistic theory: that the mental architecture of language is fixed and is thus identical in all languages and that whereas genes evolve languages do not. Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable reopens the debate. Geoffrey Sampson's introductory chapter re-examines and clarifies the notion and theoretical importance of complexity in language, linguistics, cognitive science, and evolution. Eighteen distinguished scholars from all over the world then look at evidence gleaned from their own research in order to reconsider whether languages do or do not exhibit the same degrees and kinds of complexity. They examine data from a wide range of times and places. They consider the links between linguistic structure and social complexity and relate their findings to the causes and processes of language change. Their arguments are frequently controversial and provocative; their conclusions add up to an important challenge to conventional ideas about the nature of language. The authors write readably and accessibly with no recourse to unnecessary jargon. This fascinating book will appeal to all those interested in the interrelations between human nature, culture, and language.

Download or read book Cross linguistic Semantics of Tense Aspect and Modality written by Lotte Hogeweg and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2009-11-30 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, we have witnessed, on the one hand, an increased interest in cross-linguistic data in formal semantic studies, and, on the other hand, an increased concern for semantic issues in language typology. However, only few studies combine semantic and typological research for a particular semantic domain (such as the papers in Bach et al. (1995) on quantification and Smith (1997) on aspect). This book brings together formal semanticists with a cross-linguistic perspective and/or those working on lesser-known languages, and typologists interested in semantic theory, to discuss semantic variation in the specific domain of Tense, Aspect, and Mood/Modality.

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 Converbs in Cross Linguistic Perspective written by Martin Haspelmath and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-08-10 with total page 576 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.