Download or read book Three participant Constructions in English written by An Laffut and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study aims to give a systematic and comprehensive description of the constructions involved in three important types of alternation: the locative alternation, which is by far the most researched of the three, the image impression alternation and the material/product alternation. The author looks at the constructions as part of alternation, but also looks beyond the alternations, and analyzes and describes the constructions in their own right. They are analyzed as three-participant constructions with relational complements, construing causation of the three main subtypes of relations, namely intensive, circumstantial and possessive relations. Particular attention is paid to the concept of holicity, to the status of the prepositional phrase, and to collocational properties, which play a key role in the decision as to which alternate should be regarded as the unmarked one within its construction paradigm. The approach taken is inspired by systemic functional grammar and can broadly be characterized as cognitive-functional.
Download or read book Linguistic Perspectives on English Grammar written by Martin J. Endley and published by IAP. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The proposed book is best described as a linguistically oriented textbook taking the grammar of English as its subject matter. It is directed to professional teachers of English (ESL and EFL) and their students, as well as those currently training to become teachers of English. The book is also likely to be of interest to interpreters, translators and other English language professionals. It will explore selected aspects and problem areas of English from a broadly “functional” linguistic perspective. My experience as a teacher and teacher trainer has shown me that this perspective has the potential to inspire teachers and students with a genuine enthusiasm for the grammatical features of English and that it often enables them to “make sense” of the grammar in a way that all too often other approaches signally fail to do. An important focus of the book is on understanding grammar as a series of conventionalized patterns rather than a set of rules (which is how grammar has traditionally been presented). Moreover, unlike many other grammar books, this book emphasizes how the grammatical constructions under consideration are employed in various types of communicative situation, attention being given to the importance of discourse context in interpreting the target forms. In line with contemporary linguists generally, the approach adopted is descriptive rather than prescriptive. While the main focus is on English, I offer occasional comments on how the issue under discussion is expressed in languages other than English. Apart from the inherent interest which I hope such comparisons may have for the reader, I take the view that these can be helpful in casting further light on the grammar of English.
Download or read book Experiential Constructions in Yucatec Maya written by Elisabeth Verhoeven and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book combines a fieldwork-based language-specific analysis with a typological investigation. It offers a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the form and semantics of experiencer constructions in Yucatec, the Mayan language of the Yucatecan peninsula in Mexico. Since the linguistic expression of experience is not restricted to a specific grammatical area the study touches a great variety of grammatical fields in the language such as argument structure, grammatical relations, possessive constructions, subordinate constructions, etc. The empirical analysis of the Yucatec data is preceded by a thorough examination of the functional domain and the cross-linguistic coding of experience which until now could not be found in the literature. This study will be of interest to scholars working in the fields of typology and Native American linguistics, and especially to those interested in argument structure and the syntax-semantics interface.
Download or read book Verbs written by William Croft and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a model of event structure for the analysis of aspectual constructions and argument structure constructions in English and other languages. Representing the culmination of two decades of the author's research and thought, it explores the contribution of semantics to the argument-structure and tense-aspect constructions in which verbs occur, integrating the aspectual and causal structures of events. The argument is framed in relation to current and previous scholarship and takes full account of diachronic and usage-based research. Professor Croft's analysis encompasses the full range of English verb classes and is enriched throughout by a strong typological dimension: the syntax and semantics of verbs are always seen from a crosslinguistic perspective. This allows the author to demonstrate the generality of his theory and to show how it breaks new ground in predicting and explaining linguistic facts. The subject of the book is at the heart of current work in syntax and semantics and the interface between them. It will interest semanticists, syntacticians and cognitive and functional-typological linguists. The transparency of the author's style and his avoidance of theory-dependent constructs will extend its appeal to linguists of all theoretical stripes.
Download or read book Focus and Background in Romance Languages written by Andreas Dufter and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2009-06-18 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focus–background structure has taken center stage in much current theorizing about sentence prosody, syntax, and semantics. However, both the inventory of focus expressions found cross-linguistically and the interpretive consequences associated with each of these continue to be insufficiently described. This volume aims at providing new observations on the availability and the use of focus markings in Romance languages. In doing so, it documents the plurality of research on focus in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian. Topics covered include constituent fronting and clefting, the position of subjects and focus particles, clitic doubling of objects, and information packaging in complex sentences. In addition, some contributions explore focus–background structure from acquisitional and diachronic angles, while others adopt a comparative perspective, studying differences between individual Romance and Germanic languages. Therefore, this volume is of interest to a broad audience within linguistics, including syntacticians, semanticists, and historical linguists.
Download or read book Causatives and Transitivity written by Bernard Comrie and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together 18 typological studies of causative and related constructions (transitivity, voice, other expressions of cause) by 19 scholars from North America, Western Europe, and Russia. The inspirations for the volume is the pioneering work on causative constructions by the Leningrad Typology Group; several of the contributors have close connections to the charter members of that group, others have appreciated this work from a distance. The volume as a whole is based on the concept of causative constructions as embracing both morphology and syntax, with an important semantic component as well. In addition to general studies concerning the morpho syntactic and semantic typology and the history of causative constructions and relations to other phenomena, the following individual languages are treated in detail: Russian, English, Dutch, Svan, Even, Korean, Yukaghir, Alutor, Aleut, Haruai, Dogon, Athabaskan languages. The volume will be of interest to typologists, to other linguists interested in causative constructions and transitivity relations, and to all who are interested in the linguistic expression of causal relations.
Download or read book Anaphors in Text written by Monika Schwarz-Friese and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains a careful selection of papers concerned with actual research questions on anaphoric reference, a subject of current interest with various linguistic subdisciplines. This is reflected in this book as it methodically covers broadly invested approaches from cognitive, neurolinguistic, formal and computational perspectives, each contribution representing the respective 'state of the art' on a high theoretical and empirical level. The volume contains three thematic parts: Anaphors in Cognitive, Text- and Discourse Linguistics; The Syntax and Semantics of Anaphors; and Neurolinguistic Studies on the reception of anaphoric reference. The contributions investigate several Indo-European languages.
Download or read book Europe and the Mediterranean as Linguistic Areas written by Paolo Ramat and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-07-13 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a collection of 12 papers which originated from a research project on ‘Europe and the Mediterranean from a linguistic point of view: history and prospects’. The papers deal with specific morphosyntactic aspects of language structure and evolution. The comparative perspective is adopted both from a synchronic (typological) and a diachronic (historical) angle, focusing in particular on possible contact phenomena. Therefore, methodological key words of this book are areal typology and linguistic area. The issues addressed cover such diverse aspects of language structure and change as verb morphology, relative clause formation, Noun Phrase determination, demonstrative systems, possessive markers in Noun Phrases, conjunctive, disjunctive and adversative constructions, non-canonical object marking, impersonal constructions, reduplication and early translations of the Gospels. These topics are discussed particularly in relation to Romance, Germanic, Celtic and Semitic languages, both modern and ancient. This book will interest researchers in typological, historical, functional and general linguistics.
Download or read book New Approaches to Slavic Verbs of Motion written by Viktoria Hasko and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume unifies a wide breadth of interdisciplinary studies examining the expression of motion in Slavic languages. The contributors to the volume have joined in the discussion of Slavic motion talk from diachronic, typological, comparative, cognitive, and acquisitional perspectives with a particular focus on verbs of motion, the nuclei of the lexicalization patterns for encoding motion. Motion verbs are notorious among Slavic linguists for their baffling idiosyncratic behavior in their lexical, semantic, syntactical, and aspectual characteristics. The collaborative effort of this volume is aimed both at highlighting and accounting for the unique properties of Slavic verbs of motion and at situating Slavic languages within the larger framework of typological research investigating cross-linguistic encoding of the motion domain. Due to the multiplicity of approaches to the linguistic analysis the collection offers, it will suitably complement courses and programs of study focusing on Slavic linguistics as well as typology, diachronic and comparative linguistics, semantics, and second language acquisition. "This important book is a model of in-depth exploration that is much needed: intra-typological, diachronic, and synchronic exploration of contrasting ways of encoding a particular semantic domain û in this case the domain of motion events. The various Slavic languages present contrasting but related solutions to the intersection of motion and aspect. And, as a group, they offer alternate forms of satellite-framed typology, in contrast to the more heavily studied Germanic languages of this general type. The up-to-date and interdisciplinary nature of the volume makes it essential reading in cognitive and typological linguistics."-Dan I. Slobin, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley "A feast for the mind, with untold riches and variety: different approaches, patterns and usage, diachronic as well as synchronic, Slavic and not just Russian. All on a high intellectual level from capable scholars. Ful besy were the editors in every thing, That to the feste was appertinent."-Alan Timberlake, Columbia University
Download or read book Mental States written by Andrea C. Schalley and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-12-13 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collecting the work of linguists, psychologists, neuroscientists, archaeologists, artificial intelligence researchers and philosophers this volume presents a richly varied picture of the nature and function of mental states. Starting from questions about the cognitive capacities of the early hominin homo floresiensis, the essays proceed to the role mental representations play in guiding the behaviour of simple organisms and robots, thence to the question of which features of its environment the human brain represents and the extent to which complex cognitive skills such as language acquisition and comprehension are impaired when the brain lacks certain important neural structures. Other papers explore topics ranging from nativism to the presumed constancy of categorization across signed and spoken languages, from the formal representation of metaphor, actions and vague language to philosophical questions about conceptual schemes and colours. Anyone interested in mental states will find much to reward them in this fine volume.
Download or read book Talking about Motion written by Luna Filipovi? and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-12-06 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a corpus-based study of lexicalization of motion events in Serbo-Croatian and English, with contrasting examples from Spanish, French, Italian, Mandarin Chinese and Albanian. Talmy’s typology (1985) provides the backdrop for the analysis and the focus is on intratypological differences that affect habitual presence or absence of information in motion expressions crosslinguistically as well as “pattern clashing” in translation. This fresh look at issues regarding linguistic typology, lexical and construction meaning and spatio-temporal construals in language and experience results in a more finely grained classification of verbalized motion events. The study offers an eclectic overview of different theoretical approaches and insists on theoretically unbiased set of tools and principles that can be used in studies of any cognitive domain in any language. It provides an in-depth discussion of current issues in cognitive linguistics in particular and suggests systematic implementation of the research findings in applied and interdisciplinary studies of language.
Download or read book The Development and Acquisition of Japanese Benefactive Constructions written by Kiyono Fujinaga-Gordon and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-09-12 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you were to travel to Japan, you would likely hear 'giving' and 'receiving' verbs in conversations quite frequently. In Japanese, giving and receiving verbs are not only used to describe an object being transferred, but also metaphorically, for example to describe giving/receiving a favor or involvement in an event. Giving and receiving verbs in all of these situations are known as benefactive constructions. Role and Reference Grammar analysis allows us to analyze which structures of benefactive constructions correspond to different meanings. This book will explore the historic evolution of Japanese benefactive constructions and how children acquire these constructions.
Download or read book Motion Transfer and Transformation written by Loretta OConnor and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-10-18 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Typologies are critical tools for linguists, but typologies, like grammars, are known to leak. This book addresses the question of typological overlap from the perspective of a single language. In Lowland Chontal of Oaxaca, a language of southern Mexico, change events are expressed with three types of predicates, and each predicate type corresponds to a different language type in the well-known typology of lexicalization patterns established by Talmy and elaborated by others. O’Connor evaluates the predictive powers of the typology by examining the consequences of each predicate type in a variety of contexts, using data from narrative discourse, stimulus response, and elicitation. This is the first detailed look at the lexical and grammatical resources of the verbal system in Chontal and their relation to semantics of change. The analysis of how and why Chontal speakers choose among these verbal resources to achieve particular communicative and social goals serves both as a documentation of an endangered language and a theoretical contribution towards a typology of language use.
Download or read book Mood in the Languages of Europe written by Björn Rothstein and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 669 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first comprehensive survey of mood in the languages of Europe. It gives readers access to a collection of data on mood. Each article presents the mood system of a specific European language in a way that readers not familiar with this language are able to understand and to interpret the data. The articles contain information on the morphology and semantics of the mood system, the possible combinations of tense and mood morphology, and the possible uses of the non-indica-tive mood(s). The papers address the explanation of mood from an empirical and descriptive perspective. This book is of interest to scholars of mood and modality, language contact, and areal linguistics and typology.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar written by Thomas Hoffmann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-22 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last decade has seen a rise in popularity in construction-based approaches to grammar. The various approaches within the rubric 'construction grammar' all see language as a network of constructions-pairings of form and meaning. Construction Grammar, as a kind of cognitive linguistics, differs significantly from mainstream generative grammar as espoused by Chomsky and his followers. Advocates of Construction Grammar see it as a psychologically plausible theory of human language. As such, it is capable of providing a principled account of language acquisition, language variation and language change. Research in Construction Grammar also includes multidisciplinary cognitive studies in psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and computational linguistics. The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar is the first authoritative reference work solely dedicated to Construction Grammar. Divided into five sections, the book will be an invaluable resource that students and scholars alike can turn to for a comprehensive account of current work on Construction Grammar, its theoretical foundations, and its applications to and relationship with other kinds of linguistic enquiry.
Download or read book Understanding English Grammar written by Thomas E. Payne and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-09 with total page 581 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language is primarily a tool for communication, yet many textbooks still treat English grammar as simply a set of rules and facts to be memorised by rote. This new textbook is made for students who are frustrated with this approach and would like instead to understand grammar and how it works. Why are there two future tenses in English? What are auxiliaries and why are they so confusing? Why are English motion verbs hard to use? Why are determiners so important in English? These and many other frequently asked questions are answered in this handy guide. Student learning is supported with numerous exercises, chapter summaries and suggestions for further reading. An accompanying website offers further resources, including additional classroom exercises and a chance to interact with the author. It is the essential grammar toolkit for students of English language and linguistics and future teachers of English as a Second Language.
Download or read book Language Complexity written by Matti Miestamo and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language complexity has recently attracted considerable attention from linguists of many different persuasions. This volume a thematic selection of papers from the conference Approaches to Complexity in Language, held in Helsinki, August 2005 is the first collection of articles devoted to the topic. The sixteen chapters of the volume approach the notion of language complexity from a variety of perspectives. The papers are divided into three thematic sections that reflect the central themes of the book: Typology and theory, Contact and change, Creoles and pidgins. The book is mainly intended for typologists, historical linguists, contact linguists and creolists, as well as all linguists interested in language complexity in general. As the first collective volume on a very topical theme, the book is expected to be of lasting interest to the linguistic community.
