Download or read book The Grammatical Units of Ewe written by Gilbert Ansre and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Grammar of Inalienability written by Hilary Chappell and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-08-25 with total page 948 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 Semantic and Lexical Universals written by Cliff Goddard and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1994-05-04 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This set of papers represents a unique collection; it is the first attempt ever to empirically test a hypothetical set of semantic and lexical universals across a number of genetically and typologically diverse languages. In fact the word 'collection' is not fully appropriate in this case, since the papers report research undertaken specifically for the present volume, and shaped by the same guidelines. They constitute parallel and strictly comparable answers to the same set of questions, coordinated effort with a common aim, and a common methodology.The goal of identifying the universal human concepts found in all languages, is of fundamental importance, both from a theoretical and a practical point of view, since these concepts provide the basis of the “psychic unity of mankind”, underlying the clearly visible diversity of human cultures. They also allow us to better understand that diversity itself, because they provide a common measure, without which no precise and meaningful comparisons are possible at all. A set of truly universal (or even near-universal) concepts can provide us with an invaluable tool for interpreting, and explaining all the culture-specific meanings encoded in the language-and-culture systems of the world. It can also provide us with a tool for explaining meanings across cultures — in education, business, trade, international relations, and so on. The book contains 13 chapters on individual languages including Japanese (by Masayuki Onishi), Chinese (by Hilary Chappel), Thai (by Anthony Diller), Ewe (Africa, by Felix Ameka), Miskitu languages of South America (by Kenneth Hall), Australian Aboriginal languages Aranda, Yankunytjatjara and Kayardild (by Jean Harkins & David Wilkins, Cliff Goddard, and Nicholas Evans), the Austronesian languages Samoan, Longgu, Acehnese and Mangap-Mbula (by Ulrike Mosel, Deborah Hill, Mark Durie and Robert Bugenhagen), the Papuan language Kalam (by Andrew Pawley), and, last but not least French (by Bert Peters).In addition to the chapters on individual languages the book includes three theoretical chapters; “Semantic theory and semantic universals” (by Goddard), “Introducing lexical primitives” (by Goddard and Wierzbicka), and “Semantic primitives across languages: a critical review” (by Wierzbicka).

Download or read book Catching Language written by Felix K. Ameka and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2008-08-22 with total page 671 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Descriptive grammars are our main vehicle for documenting and analysing the linguistic structure of the world's 6,000 languages. They bring together, in one place, a coherent treatment of how the whole language works, and therefore form the primary source of information on a given language, consulted by a wide range of users: areal specialists, typologists, theoreticians of any part of language (syntax, morphology, phonology, historical linguistics etc.), and members of the speech communities concerned. The writing of a descriptive grammar is a major intellectual challenge, that calls on the grammarian to balance a respect for the language's distinctive genius with an awareness of how other languages work, to combine rigour with readability, to depict structural regularities while respecting a corpus of real material, and to represent something of the native speaker's competence while recognising the variation inherent in any speech community. Despite a recent surge of awareness of the need to document little-known languages, there is no book that focusses on the manifold issues that face the author of a descriptive grammar. This volume brings together contributors who approach the problem from a range of angles. Most have written descriptive grammars themselves, but others represent different types of reader. Among the topics they address are: overall issues of grammar design, the complementary roles of outsider and native speaker grammarians, the balance between grammar and lexicon, cross-linguistic comparability, the role of explanation in grammatical description, the interplay of theory and a range of fieldwork methods in language description, the challenges of describing languages in their cultural and historical context, and the tensions between linguistic particularity, established practice of particular schools of linguistic description and the need for a universally commensurable analytic framework. This book will renew the field of grammaticography, addressing a multiple readership of descriptive linguists, typologists, and formal linguists, by bringing together a range of distinguished practitioners from around the world to address these questions.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Linguistics written by Philipp Strazny and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 1304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utilizing a historical and international approach, this valuable two-volume resource makes even the more complex linguistic issues understandable for the non-specialized reader. Containing over 500 alphabetically arranged entries and an expansive glossary by a team of international scholars, the Encyclopedia of Linguistics explores the varied perspectives, figures, and methodologies that make up the field.

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 A Comparative Phonology of Gbe written by Hounkpati B.C. Capo and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2010-10-13 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Comparative Phonology of Gbe (Publications in African Languages and Linguistics, No 14).

Download or read book The Languages of Ghana written by Mary E. Kropp Dakubu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-03 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1988, this book provides an easily accessible handbook of knowledge about the languages of Ghana; their geographical distribution, their relationships with each other, the social patterns of their use, and their structures. Besides the general introduction, it contains chapters on each of the individually recognised families of languages spoken in Ghana: Gur, Volta-Comoé, Gbe, Ga-Dangme, Central-Tongo and Mande. An additional chapter outlines the use of non-indigenous languages in the country.

Download or read book The Grammar of the English Language Made Easy Etc written by William Nicholson (of Halifax.) and published by . This book was released on 1864 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Aspect and Modality in Kwa Languages written by Felix K. Ameka and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the thesis that in the Kwa languages of West Africa, aspect and modality are more central to the grammar of the verb than tense. Where tense marking has emerged it is invariably in the expression of the future, and therefore concerned with the impending actualization or potentiality of an event, hence with modality, rather than the purely temporal sequencing associated with tense. The primary grammatical contrasts are perfective versus imperfective. The main languages discussed are Akan, Dangme, Ewe, Ga and Tuwuli while Nzema-Ahanta, Likpe and Eastern Gbe are also mentioned. Knowledge about these languages has deepened considerably during the past decade or so and ideas about their structure have changed. The volume therefore presents novel analyses of grammatical forms like the so-called S-Aux-O-V-Other or “future” constructions, and provides empirical data for theorizing about aspect and modality. It should be of considerable interest to Africanist linguists, typologists, and creolists interested in substrate issues.

Download or read book Ideophones written by Erhard Friedrich Karl Voeltz and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present volume represents a selection of papers presented at the International Symposium on Ideophones held in January 1999 in St. Augustin, Germany. They center around the following hypotheses: Ideophones are universal; and constitute a grammatical category in all languages of the world; ideophones and similar words have a special dramaturgic function that differs from all other word classes: they simulate an event, an emotion, a perception through language. In addition to this unique function, a good number of formal parallels can be observed. The languages dealt with here display strikingly similar patterns of derivational processes involving ideophones. An equally widespread common feature is the introduction of ideophones via a verbum dicendi or complementizer. Another observation concerns the sound-symbolic behavior of ideophones. Thus the word formation of ideophones differs from other words in their tendency for iconicity and sound-symbolism. Finally it is made clear that ideophones are part of spoken language — the language register, where gestures are used — rather than written language.

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 Morphosyntax of Complement head Sequences written by Enoch Oladé Aboh and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book on the syntax of the Niger-Conger language family, which includes most of the languages of sub-Saharan Africa. Aboh, who is a native speaker of one of the languages (Gungbe) discussed, analyzes different aspects of the syntax of the "Kwa" language group. Aboh also suggests how grammatical pictures for these languages can shed some light on Universal Grammar in general.

Download or read book A Grammar of the English Language written by Geo. F. Holmes and published by . This book was released on 1878 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Key Features and Parameters in Arabic Grammar written by Abdelkader Fassi Fehri and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In light of recent generative minimalism, and comparative parametric theory of language variation, the book investigates key features and parameters of Arabic grammar. Part I addresses morpho-syntactic and semantic interfaces in temporality, aspectuality, and actionality, including the Past/Perfect/Perfective ambiguity akin to the very synthetic temporal morphology, collocating time adverb construal, and interpretability of verbal Number as pluractional. Part II is dedicated to nominal architecture, the behaviour of bare nouns as true indefinites, the count/mass dichotomy (re-examined in light of general, collective, and singulative DP properties), the mirror image ordering of serialized adjectives, and N-to-D Move in synthetic possession, proper names, and individuated vocatives. Part III examines the role of CP in time and space anchoring, double access reading (in a DAR language such as Arabic), sequence of tense (SOT), silent pronominal categories in consistent null subject languages (including referential and generic pro), and the interpretability of inflection. Semantic and formal parameters are set out, within a mixed macro/micro-parametric model of language variation. The book is of particular interest to students, researchers, and teachers of Arabic, Semitic, comparative, typological, or general linguistics.

Download or read book A Handbook of Eweland The northern Ewes in Ghana written by Francis Agbodeka and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The difficulties of English grammar and punctuation removed To which is added a treatise on punctuation written by John Best Davidson and published by . This book was released on 1846 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: