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Book The Begak  Ida an  Language of Sabah

Download or read book The Begak Ida an Language of Sabah written by Nelleke Elisabeth Goudswaard and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book North Borneo Sourcebook

Download or read book North Borneo Sourcebook written by Jason William Lobel and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2016-01-31 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: North Borneo Sourcebook seeks to address the lack of available data for the languages of northern Borneo, where forty to fifty distinct languages are spoken in the Malaysian state of Sabah alone. While members of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) have worked in Sabah for several decades and have published articles on individual languages, until now no comprehensive survey of the languages of Sabah had yet been done. In addition to the languages native to Sabah, also included in this monograph are closely related Southwest Sabah languages spoken in neighboring parts of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, the Indonesian province of Kalimantan Utara, and Brunei Darussalam. The author has included 594 entries with equivalents in each of the forty-six languages that represent the linguistic variation in north Borneo, along with introductory sections listing the personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, and case markers for each language. This sourcebook thus fills a critical need in surveying the languages of a single large area in an island of Southeast Asia. Many language communities in this region are endangered and likely to disappear as functioning entities within the next generation or two; this book may be the only record we will ever have of their existence. Linguists and those with an interest in Austronesian languages will appreciate the breadth and detail that illuminate the linguistic scene in an area where before there had been only pinpoints of light.

Book The Oxford Guide to the Malayo Polynesian Languages of Southeast Asia

Download or read book The Oxford Guide to the Malayo Polynesian Languages of Southeast Asia written by Alexander Adelaar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-08-29 with total page 1089 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents the most wide-ranging treatment available today of the Malayo-Polynesian languages of Southeast Asia and their outliers, a group of more than 800 languages belonging to the wider Austronesian family. It brings together leading scholars and junior researchers to offer a comprehensive account of the historical relations, typological diversity, and varied sociolinguistic issues that characterize this group of languages, including current debates in their prehistories and descriptive priorities for future study. The book is divided into four parts. Part I deals with historical linguistics, including discussion of human genetics, archaeology, and cultural history. Chapters in Part II explore language contact between Malayo-Polynesian and unrelated languages, as well as sociolinguistic issues such as multilingualism, language policy, and language endangerment. Part III provides detailed overviews of the different groupings of Malayo-Polynesian languages, while Part IV offers in-depth studies of important typological features across the whole linguistic area. The Oxford Guide to the Malayo-Polynesian Languages of Southeast Asia will be an essential reference for students and researchers specializing in Austronesian languages and for typologists and comparative linguists more broadly.

Book The Negative Existential Cycle

Download or read book The Negative Existential Cycle written by Ljuba Veselinova and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2022-12-20 with total page 670 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1991, William Croft suggested that negative existentials (typically lexical expressions that mean ‘not exist, not have’) are one possible source for negation markers and gave his hypothesis the name Negative Existential Cycle (NEC). It is a variationist model based on cross-linguistic data. For a good twenty years following its formulation, it was cited at face-value without ever having been tested by (historical)-comparative data. Over the last decade, Ljuba Veselinova has worked on testing the model in a comparative perspective, and this edited volume further expands on her work. The collection presented here features detailed studies of several language families such as Bantu, Chadic and Indo-European. A number of articles focus on the micro-variation and attested historical developments within smaller groups and clusters such as Arabic, Mandarin and Cantonese, and Nanaic. Finally, variation and historical developments in specific languages are discussed for Ancient Hebrew, Ancient Egyptian, Moksha-Mordvin (Uralic), Bashkir (Turkic), Kalmyk (Mongolic), three Pama-Nyungan languages, O’dam (Southern Uto-Aztecan) and Tacana (Takanan, Amazonian Bolivia). The book is concluded by two chapters devoted to modeling cyclical processes in language change from different theoretical perspectives. Key notions discussed throughout the book include affirmative and negative existential constructions, the expansion of the latter into verbal negation, and subsequently from more specific to more general markers of negation. Nominalizations as well as the uses of negative existentials as standalone negative answers figure among the most frequent pathways whereby negative existentials evolve as general negation markers. The operation of the Negative Existential Cycle appears partly genealogically conditioned, as the cycle is found to iterate regularly within some families but never starts in others, as is the case in Bantu. In addition, other special negation markers such as nominal negators are found to undergo similar processes, i.e. they expand into the verbal domain and thereby develop into more general negation markers. The book provides rich information on a specific path of the evolution of negation, on cyclical processes in language change, and it show-cases the historical-comparative method in a modern setting.

Book Endangered Languages of Austronesia

Download or read book Endangered Languages of Austronesia written by Margaret Florey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the challenges to linguistic vitality confronting many minority languages in the highly diverse and geographically far-flung Austronesian language family. The contributions bring together Indigenous language activists and academic researchers with a long-standing commitment to language documentation.

Book Adverbial Clauses in Cross Linguistic Perspective

Download or read book Adverbial Clauses in Cross Linguistic Perspective written by Katja Hetterle and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-11-13 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study investigates adverbial clauses from a cross-linguistic perspective. In line with other recent typological research in the context of complex sentences and clause-linkage, it proceeds from a detailed, multivariate analysis of the morphosyntactic characteristics of the phenomenon under scrutiny.

Book The Typology of Semantic Alignment

Download or read book The Typology of Semantic Alignment written by Mark Donohue and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-01-24 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Semantic alignment refers to a type of language that has two means of morphosyntactically encoding the arguments of intransitive predicates, typically treating these as an agent or as a patient of a transitive predicate, or else by a means of a treatment that varies according to lexical aspect. This collection of new typological and case studies is the first book-length investigation of semantically aligned languages for three decades. Leading international typologists explore the differences and commonalities of languages with semantic alignment systems and compare the structure of these languages to languages without them. They look at how such systems arise or disappear and provide areal overviews of Eurasia, the Americas, and the south-west Pacific, the areas where semantically aligned languages are concentrated. This book will interest typological and historical linguists at graduate level and above.

Book The Study of Words

Download or read book The Study of Words written by Lewis Gebhardt and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-03-31 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Study of Words introduces the study of word structure, also known as morphology, without assuming any prior knowledge of linguistics. Introducing concepts in an accessible way, Gebhardt illustrates how to understand and produce both existing and new words. This book: • Provides an overview of words, word components and the rules by which components can and cannot be assembled into words; • Introduces the area of morphology with a data-driven approach, exposing readers to sets of words in a variety of languages and prompting them to identify their components and seek patterns; • Features exercises and questions throughout to provoke thought and point readers to unresolved morphological issues. Aimed at students at undergraduate level with no background in linguistics, The Study of Words is essential reading for those studying morphology for the first time as part of linguistics, language and general education courses.

Book A Dictionary of Austronesian Monosyllabic Roots  Submorphemes

Download or read book A Dictionary of Austronesian Monosyllabic Roots Submorphemes written by Robert Blust and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-05-09 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book documents an understudied phenomenon in Austronesian languages, namely the existence of recurrent submorphemic sound-meaning associations of the general form -CVC. It fills a critical gap in scholarship on these languages by bringing together a large body of data in one place, and by discussing some of the theoretical issues that arise in analyzing this data. Following an introduction which presents the topic, it includes a critical review of the relevant literature over the past century, and discussions of the following: 1. problems in finding the root (the "needle in the haystack" problem), 2. root ambiguity, 3. controls on chance as an interfering factor, 4. unrecognized morphology as a possible factor in duplicating evidence, 5. the shape/structure of the root, 6. referents of roots, 7. the origin of roots, 8. the problem of distinguishing false cognates produced by convergence in root-bearing morphemes from legitimate comparisons resulting from divergent descent, and 9. the problem of explaining how submorphemes are transmitted across generations of speakers independently of the morphemes that host them. The remainder of the book consists of a list of sources for the 197 languages from which data is drawn, followed by the roots with supporting evidence, a short appendix, and references.

Book Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity II

Download or read book Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity II written by Francesca Di Garbo and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The many facets of grammatical gender remain one of the most fruitful areas of linguistic research, and pose fascinating questions about the origins and development of complexity in language. The present work is a two-volume collection of 13 chapters on the topic of grammatical gender seen through the prism of linguistic complexity. The contributions discuss what counts as complex and/or simple in grammatical gender systems, whether the distribution of gender systems across the world’s languages relates to the language ecology and social history of speech communities. Contributors demonstrate how the complexity of gender systems can be studied synchronically, both in individual languages and over large cross-linguistic samples, and diachronically, by exploring how gender systems change over time. Volume two consists of three chapters providing diachronic and typological case studies, followed by a final chapter discussing old and new theoretical and empirical challenges in the study of the dynamics of gender complexity. This volume is preceded by volume one, which, in addition to three chapters on the theoretical foundations of gender complexity, contains six chapters on grammatical gender and complexity in individual languages and language families of Africa, New Guinea, and South Asia.

Book Discourse Phenomena in Typological Perspective

Download or read book Discourse Phenomena in Typological Perspective written by Alessandra Barotto and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2023-03-15 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book aims at investigating discourse phenomena (i.e., linguistic elements and constructions that help to manage the organization, flow, and outcome of communication) from a typological and cross-linguistic perspective. Although it is a well-established idea in functional-typological approaches that grammar is shaped by discourse use, systematic typological cross-linguistic investigations on discourse phenomena are relatively rare. This volume aims at bridging this gap, by integrating different linguistic subfields, such as discourse analysis, pragmatics, and typology. The contributions, both theoretically and empirically oriented, focus on a broad variety of discourse phenomena (ranging from discourse markers to discourse function of grammatical markers, to strategies that manage the discourse and information flow) while adopting a typological perspective and considering typologically distant languages.

Book The Oxford Handbook of the Word

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Word written by John R. Taylor and published by Oxford Handbooks. This book was released on 2015 with total page 897 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The word is central to both naive and expert theories of language. Yet the definition of 'word' remains problematic. The 42 chapters of this Handbook offer a variety of perspectives on this most basic and elusive of linguistic units.

Book Modality  Subjectivity  and Semantic Change

Download or read book Modality Subjectivity and Semantic Change written by Heiko Narrog and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-19 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a cross-linguistic exploration of semantic and functional change in modal markers. With a focus on Japanese and to a lesser extent Chinese the book is a countercheck to hypotheses built on the Indo-European languages. It also contains numerous illustrations from other languages.

Book Laboratory Phonology 10

Download or read book Laboratory Phonology 10 written by Cécile Fougeron and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2010-08-31 with total page 811 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present volume contains a selection of the papers and commentaries which were originally presented at the Tenth Conference of Laboratory Phonology (LabPhon10) held in Paris from June 29 to July 1, 2006. The theme of the volume is Variation, Phonetic Detail and Phonological Representation. It brings together specialists of different fields of speech research with the goal to discuss the relevance of patterns of variation and phonetic details on phonological representations and theories. The topic is addressed from the angles of speech production, perception, acquisition, speech disorders, and language universals. The contributions are grouped thematically in five sections, each of which is commented by invited discussants. Section I contains the contributions to the special '10th anniversary session' of the conference which represent in a prototypical way some of the different research questions that have been at the core of important debates over the last 20 years in the laboratory phonology community. Issues of phonological universals and language typology are addressed in section II. In section III, the notions of variation and phonetic detail are examined with regard to how they are acquired and dealt with in the formation of phonological representation in emerging systems. Section IV focuses on recent work at the crossroad between normal and disordered speech.

Book The Routledge Handbook of Asian Linguistics

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Asian Linguistics written by Chris Shei and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-07-28 with total page 894 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Asian Linguistics provides a comprehensive overview of the ways in which Asian languages should be conceptualized as a whole, the distinct characteristics of each language group, and the relationships and results of interactions between the languages and language families in Asia. Asia is the largest and the most populous continent on Earth, and the site of many of the first civilizations. This Handbook aims to provide a systematic overview of Asian languages in both theoretical and functional perspectives, optimally combining the two in intercultural settings. In other words, the text will provide a reference for researchers of individual Asian languages or language groups against the background of the entire range of Asian languages. Not only does the Handbook act as a reference to a particular language, it also connects each language to other Asian languages in the perspective of the entire Asian continent. Cultural roles and communicative functions of language are also emphasized as an important domain where the various Asian languages interact and shape each other. With extensive coverage of both theoretical and applied linguistic topics, The Routledge Handbook of Asian Linguistics is an indispensable resource for students and researchers working in this area.

Book The polyfunctionality of  still  expressions

Download or read book The polyfunctionality of still expressions written by Bastian Persohn and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2024-06-28 with total page 783 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Expressions from the semasiological domain of phasal polarity (ʻstillʼ, ʻalreadyʼ, etc.) tend to be highly polyfunctional, with their various uses often extending into a wide range of other linguistic domains, both time-related and non-temporal. Yet these patterns have hitherto been investigated mostly for individual languages or smaller groups. This volume presents the first ever larger-scale survey of the numerous functions of expressions whose meanings include the notion of ʻstill’, making use of a global sample of 76 varieties from 45 distinct phyla. It is aimed at semanticists, typologists and descriptive grammarians alike.

Book The Encyclopedia of Malaysia  Languages and literature

Download or read book The Encyclopedia of Malaysia Languages and literature written by and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: