Download or read book A Featural Typology of Bantu Agreement written by Jenneke van der Wal and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-31 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores variation in Bantu subject and object marking on the basis of data from 75 Bantu languages. It specifically addresses the question of which features are involved in agreement and nominal licensing, and examines how parametric variation in those features accounts for the settings and patterns that are attested crosslinguistically.

Download or read book A Featural Typology of Bantu Agreement written by Jenneke Van der Wal and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Bantu languages are in some sense remarkably uniform (subject, verb, order (SVO) basic word order, noun classes, verbal morphology), but this extensive language family also show a wealth of morphosyntactic variation. Two core areas in which such variation is attested are subject and object agreement. The book explores the variation in Bantu subject and object marking on the basis of data from 75 Bantu languages, discovering striking patterns (the Relation between Asymmetry and Non-Doubling Object Marking (RANDOM), and the Asymmetry Wants Single Object Marking (AWSOM) correlation), and providing a novel syntactic analysis. This analysis takes into account not just phi agreement, but also nominal licensing and information structure. A Person feature, associated with animacy, definiteness, or givenness, is shown to be responsible for differential object agreement, while at the same time accounting for doubling vs. non-doubling object marking--a hybrid solution to an age-old debate in Bantu comparative morphosyntax. It is furthermore proposed that low functional heads can Case-license flexibly downwards or upwards, depending on the relative topicality of the two arguments involved. This accounts for the properties of symmetric object marking in ditransitives (for Appl), and subject inversion constructions (for v). By keeping Agree constant and systematically determining which featural parameters are responsible for the attested variation, the proposed analysis argues for an emergentist view of features and parameters (following Biberauer 2018, 2019), and against both Strong Uniformity and Strong Modularity"--Publisher's description.

Download or read book Angles of Object Agreement written by Andrew Nevins and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-11-30 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume draws on insights from a range of theoretical perspectives to explore objects, agreement, and their intersecting angles, based on novel data from multiple language families. The chapters explores the mechanics of object agreement, constraints on symmetry, features of object agreement, and issues relating to the left periphery.

Download or read book African Languages from a Role and Reference Grammar Perspective written by Jens Fleischhauer and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-05-08 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume is a collection of papers which apply Role & Reference Grammar (RRG) to African languages. RRG is a functional theory of syntax which has been developed on the basis of two leading questions: First, how would a syntactic theory look like which starts from 'exotic' languages rather than English? Second, how can the interaction between syntax, semantics and pragmatics in different grammatical systems best modelled and explained? Although RRG took linguistic diversity serious from its very beginning, African languages have been underrepresented in the development of the theory. Given the sheer number African languages deserve a wider coverage in a syntactic theory which takes linguistic diversity seriously. The volume is intended to fill this gap and comprises a selection of papers which investigate different aspects related to the syntax-semantics-pragmatics interface of different African languages. This includes: argument doubling and dislocation in iziZulu, complex referential phrases in Gĩkũyũ, serial verb constructions in Igbo, locative complements in Hausa and Zarma Chiine and focus constructions in Emai. The papers will extent the current RRG approach to new languages and phenomena.

Download or read book ACAL in SoCAL written by Yaqian Huang and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2024-05-23 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains a selection of papers that were presented at the 53rd Annual Conference on African Linguistics, which was held virtually at the University of California San Diego. There are 21 papers covering phonology, morphology, syntax, lexical semantics, sociolinguistics, typology and historical linguistics. The volume features a keynote paper that proposes a novel community-based approach to language documentation. African languages investigated in detail include Wolof, Mende, Dangme, Kusaal, Nzema, Anii, Nigerian Pidgin, Tunen, Nyokon, Vale, Lokoya, Lopit, Otuho, Kalenjin, Tiriki, Oromo, Tigrinya, Asá, Qwadza, and Ikalanga.

Download or read book When Minoritized Languages Change Linguistic Theory written by Andrew Nevins and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-01 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, a small set of major world languages have formed the basis of the vast majority of linguistic theory. However, minoritized languages can also provide fascinating contributions to our understanding of the human language faculty. This pioneering book explores the transformative effect minoritized languages have on mainstream linguistic theory, which, with their typically unusual syntactic, morphological and phonological properties, challenge and question frameworks that were developed largely to account for more widely-studied languages. The chapters address the four main pillars of linguistic theory – syntax, semantics, phonology, and morphology – and provide plenty of case studies to show how minoritized language can disrupt assumptions, and lead to modifications of the theory itself. It is illustrated with examples from a range of languages, and is written in an engaging and accessible style, making it essential reading for both students and researchers of theoretical syntax, phonology and morphology, and language policy and politics.

Download or read book Parameter Hierarchies and Universal Grammar written by Ian Roberts and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019-06-27 with total page 730 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops a minimalist approach to cross-linguistic morphosyntactic variation. Ian Roberts argues that the essential insight of the principles-and-parameters approach to variation can be maintained - albeit in a somewhat different guise - in the context of the minimalist program for linguistic theory. The central idea is to organize the parameters of Universal Grammar (UG) into hierarchies that define the ways in which properties of individually variant categories and features may act in concert. A further leading idea, which is consistent with the overall goal of the minimalist programme to reduce the content of UG, is that the parameter hierarchies are not directly determined by UG, and are instead emergent properties stemming from the interaction of the three factors in language design. Cross-linguistic variation in word order, null subjects, incorporation, verb-movement, case/alignment, wh-movement, and negation are all analyzed in the light of this approach. This book represents a significant new contribution to the formal study of cross-linguistic morphosyntactic variation on both the empirical and theoretical levels, and will appeal to researchers and students in all areas of theoretical linguistics and comparative syntax.

Download or read book Rethinking Verb Second written by Rebecca Woods and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 979 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides the most exhaustive and comprehensive treatment available of the Verb Second property, which has been a central topic in formal syntax for decades. While Verb Second has traditionally been considered a feature primarily of the Germanic languages, this book shows that it is much more widely attested cross-linguistically than previously thought, and explores the multiple empirical, theoretical, and experimental puzzles that remain in developing an account of the phenomenon. Uniquely, formal theoretical work appears alongside studies of psycholinguistics, language production, and language acquisition. The range of languages investigated is also broader than in previous work: while novel issues are explored through the lens of the more familiar Germanic data, chapters also cover Verb Second effects in languages such as Armenian, Dinka, Tohono O'odham, and in the Celtic, Romance, and Slavonic families. The analyses have wide-ranging consequences for our understanding of the language faculty, and will be of interest to researchers and students from advanced undergraduate level upwards in the fields of syntax, historical linguistics, and language acquisition.

Download or read book Determiner Sharing in German written by Luise Schwarzer and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-08-06 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph presents the first in-depth empirical and theoretical study of determiner sharing in German, addressing both its language-specific properties and its comparative syntax. Determiner sharing poses an interesting problem for syntactic theory as it seemingly relies on a parasitic relationship with another form of ellipsis, such as gapping. The first part provides an empirical basis by presenting three acceptability judgment studies for German. The results reveal the novel generalization that determiner sharing is not uniquely dependent on gapping, but can also occur in stripping contexts. The analysis that is developed in the second part shows that the apparent parasitism of determiner sharing can be derived by combining two independently available processes, namely a type of ellipsis like gapping, and a type of movement like split topicalization. The analysis thus avoids any construction-specific additions to the syntactic framework. The findings constitute an argument for approaches to ellipsis that posit an obligatory movement step and thereby contribute to an ongoing debate in the field.

Download or read book The Bantu Romance Connection written by Cécile de Cat and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008-09-26 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This landmark volume is the first work specifically designed to explore the extent to which striking surface morpho-syntactic similarities between Bantu and Romance languages actually represent similar syntactic structures. In particular, it explores the timely and much debated issues of verbal morphology and agreement, the structure of DPs, and word order/information structure, with the goal of providing a better understanding of the structure of the different languages investigated, and the implications this holds for syntactic theory more generally. All of the papers draw on data from both Bantu and Romance languages, providing a framework for much-needed further comparative research on the nature of linguistic structure, its diversity and constraints, and the implications this has for learnability/acquisition. The volume also provides an important precedent for incorporating insights from Bantu linguistic structure into mainstream of syntax research.

Download or read book Argument Licensing and Agreement written by Claire Halpert and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The strikingly unrestricted syntactic distribution of nouns in many Bantu languages often leads to proposals that syntactic case does not play an active role in the grammar of Bantu. This book offers a different conclusion that the basis of Zulu that Bantu languages have not only a system of structural case, but also a complex system of morphological case that is comparable to systems found in languages like Icelandic. By comparing the system of argument licensing found in Zulu to those found in more familiar languages, Halpert introduces a number of insights onto the organization of the grammar. First, while this book argues in favor of a case-licensing analysis of Zulu, it locates the positions where case is assigned lower in the clause than what is found in nominative-accusative languages. In addition, Zulu shows evidence that case and agreement are two distinct operations in the language, located on different heads and operating independently of each other. Despite these unfamiliarities, there is evidence that the timing relationships between operations mirror those found in other languages. Second, this book proposes a novel type of morphological case that serves to mask many structural licensing effects in Zulu; the effects of this case are unfamiliar, Halpert argues that its existence is expected given the current typological picture of case. Finally, this book explores the consequences of case and agreement as dissociated operations, showing that given this situation, other unusual properties of Bantu languages, such as hyper-raising, are a natural result. This exploration yields the conclusion that some of the more unusual properties of Bantu languages in fact result from small amounts of variation to deeply familiar syntactic principles such as case, agreement, and the EPP.

Download or read book The Syntax of Chichewa written by Sam Mchombo and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-10-14 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive book provides a detailed description of the major syntactic structures of Chichewa. Assuming no prior knowledge of current theory, it covers topics such as relative clause and question formation, interactions between tone and syntactic structure, aspects of clause structure such as complementation, and phonetics and phonology. It also provides a detailed account of argument structure, in which the role of verbal suffixation is examined. Sam Mchombo's description is supplemented by observations about how the study of African languages, specifically Bantu languages, has contributed to progress in grammatical theory, including the debates that have raged within linguistic theory about the relationship between syntax and the lexicon, and the contributions of African linguistic structure to the evaluation of competing grammatical theories. Clearly organised and accessible, The Syntax of Chichewa will be an invaluable resource for students interested in linguistic theory and how it can be applied to a specific language.

Download or read book Theory and description in African Linguistics written by Emily Clem and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 788 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The papers in this volume were presented at the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics at UC Berkeley in 2016. The papers offer new descriptions of African languages and propose novel theoretical analyses of them. The contributions span topics in phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and reflect the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa. Four papers in the volume examine Areal Features and Linguistic Reconstruction in Africa, and were presented at a special workshop on this topic held alongside the general session of ACAL.

Download or read book Introductory Sketch of the Bantu Languages written by Alice Werner and published by Theclassics.Us. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 edition. Excerpt: ... mwivhu, but the sound--see p. 7 of his Grammar--is clearly that of ' bilabial v.' 8 We should have expected kumbadi hwa menxhi, mbadi 9 being placed in CI. 17 by prefixing the locative ku, but see Smith, p. 223. Mbadi is not given in the vocabulary as a. noun, but cf. Nyanja mbali 9 ' edge, side, rim;' no doubt the same word used in Swahili as an adverb ' far, ' etc. 10 tia ' be afraid ' (cf. Swahili tisha 'frighten '--probably a causative of the verb usually written cha ' fear '), and so 'run away ': tiana reciprocal, but apparently with the meaning 'run against' (or, ' in competition with') and not 'run away from' each other. 11 Present Subjunctive, used in place of Imperative. u Nguni, interrogative (Smith, p. 101), lit.: 'it is who?' A relative is understood after it, or rather, it is an example of a construction very common in the Bantu languages, even where relative pronouns exist: the demonstrative, or even the ordinary personal pronoun are often preferred, as though it were less trouble to make a fresh assertion than to link up the clause with the preceding one. 13 Second. Future (Smith, p. 157)--probably distinguished from the Preterite by tone.--languna, evidently a derived form of tanga 'begin, ' but the force of the termination is not very clear: it can scarcely be reversive (Smith, p. 130). 14 Dimwi ' another' (agreeing with izuba 5 'day, ' or some similar noun, understood), and preceded by the instrumental preposition 0 (Smith, p. 224), so meaning ' again.' 15 Same tense as in line 4--see above, note 7. 16 Obashanasulwc, a kind of collective pl., including the person named and those with him--see above, p. 48, and Smith, p. 18. This, or a similar idiom seems to be universal in Bantu--e.g. Sumbwa: nge Bandega, ' ce sont des

Download or read book Person Case and Agreement written by András Bárány and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides both language-specific and cross-linguistic comparative analyses of phenomena relating to person, case and case-marking, and agreement. The book combines data from eight different language families with theory and explicit analyses, and will be of interest to both formal and data-oriented linguists and typologists alike.

Download or read book Nasalization Neutral Segments and Opacity Effects written by Rachel Walker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-21 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores cross linguistic variation in nasalization.

Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of African Linguistics written by H. Ekkehard Wolff and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an in-depth and comprehensive state-of-the-art study of 'African languages' and 'language in Africa' since its beginnings as a 'colonial science' at the turn of the twentieth century in Europe. Compiled by 56 internationally renowned scholars, this ground breaking study looks at past and current research on 'African languages' and 'language in Africa' under the impact of paradigmatic changes from 'colonial' to 'postcolonial' perspectives. It addresses current trends in the study of the role and functions of language, African and other, in pre- and postcolonial African societies. Highlighting the central role that the 'language factor' plays in postcolonial transformation processes of sociocultural modernization and economic development, it also addresses more recent, particularly urban, patterns of communication, and outlines applied dimensions of digitalization and human language technology.