Download or read book Complex Sentence Constructions in Australian Languages written by Peter Austin and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1988 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past fifteen years, descriptions of Australian Aboriginal languages have provided important data for the typological study of morpho-syntactic phenomena. The present volume presents descriptions of complex sentence phenomena in ten Australian languages and provides important new material in this area of current concern in linguistics. Complex sentences are described either from a syntactic or from a semantic (discourse-functional) point of view. The papers draw on data from widely distributed and, in some instances, previously undescribed languages. Among others descriptions of the (so-far) poorly known non-Pama-Nyungan languages of northern Australia, as well as Pama-Nyungan languages central and northern Australia are included in this volume.
Download or read book A Grammar of Kuuk Thaayorre written by Alice R. Gaby and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This grammar offers a comprehensive description of Kuuk Thaayorre, a Paman language spoken on the west coast of Cape York Peninsula, Australia. The Paman languages of Cape York have long been recognized for their exhibition of considerable phonological, semantic and morphosyntactic change (e.g. Hale 1964, Dixon 1980). Yet there has until now been no published full reference grammar of a language from this area (some excellent dictionaries, theses and sketch grammars notwithstanding, e.g. Hall 1972, Alpher 1973, 1991, Crowley 1983, Kilham et al. 1986, Sutton 1995, Smith & Johnson 2000). On the basis of elicited data, narrative and semi-spontaneous conversation recorded between 2002 and 2008, as well as archival materials, this grammar details the phonetics and phonology, morphosyntax, lexical and constructional semantics and pragmatics of one of the few indigenous Australian languages still used as a primary means of communication. Kuuk Thaayorre possesses features of typological interest at each of these levels.
Download or read book Thematic Structure written by Iggy Roca and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 1992 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Verb Classification in Australian Languages written by William B. McGregor and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-06-10 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with systems of verb classification in Australian Aboriginal languages, with particular focus on languages of the north-west. It proposes a typology of the systems according to their main formal and semantic characteristics. It also makes some proposals concerning the historical origins and grammaticisation of these systems, and suggestions regarding the grammatical relations involved. In addition, an attempt is made to situate the phenomenon of verb classification within the context of related verbal phenomena such as serial verb constructions, nominal incorporation, and complex predicates.
Download or read book The Languages and Linguistics of Australia written by Harold Koch and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2014-08-19 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Languages and Linguistics of Australia: A Comprehensive Guide is part of the multi-volume reference work on the languages and linguistics of the continents of the world. The volume provides a thorough overview of Australian languages, including their linguistic structures, their genetic relationships, and issues of language maintenance and revitalisation. Australian English, Aboriginal English and other contact varieties are also discussed.
Download or read book Australian Languages written by R. M. W. Dixon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-11-14 with total page 780 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Professor Dixon presents a comprehensive study of the indigenous languages of Australia.
Download or read book Number in the World s Languages written by Paolo Acquaviva and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 822 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The strong development in research on grammatical number in recent years has created a need for a unified perspective. The different frameworks, the ramifications of the theoretical questions, and the diversity of phenomena across typological systems, make this a significant challenge. This book addresses the challenge with a series of in-depth analyses of number across a typologically diverse sample, unified by a common set of descriptive and analytic questions from a semantic, morphological, syntactic, and discourse perspective. Each case study is devoted to a single language, or in a few cases to a language group. They are written by specialists who can rely on first-hand data or on material of difficult access, and can place the phenomena in the context of the respective system. The studies are preceded and concluded by critical overviews which frame the discussion and identify the main results and open questions. With specialist chapters breaking new ground, this book will help number specialists relate their results to other theoretical and empirical domains, and it will provide a reliable guide to all linguists and other researchers interested in number.
Download or read book The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages written by Claire Bowern and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-16 with total page 1179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages is a wide-ranging reference work that explores the more than 550 traditional and new Indigenous languages of Australia. Australian languages have long played an important role in diachronic and synchronic linguistics and are a vital testing ground for linguistic theory. Until now, however, there has been no comprehensive and accessible guide to the their vast linguistic diversity. This volume fills that gap, bringing together leading scholars and junior researchers to provide an up-to-date guide to all aspects of the languages of Australia. The chapters in the book explore typology, documentation, and classification; linguistic structures from phonology to pragmatics and discourse; sociolinguistics and language variation; and language in the community. The final part offers grammatical sketches of a selection of languages, sub-groups, and families. At a time when the number of living Australian languages is significantly reduced even compared to twenty year ago, this volume establishes priorities for future linguistic research and contributes to the language expansion and revitalization efforts that are underway.
Download or read book A Grammar of Ngardi written by Thomas Ennever and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-11-08 with total page 795 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ngardi is a highly endangered language with fewer than 10 remaining speakers and is no longer being acquired by children. Despite the limited circulation of a draft dictionary (Cataldi, 2011), there has been no published reference grammar of this language. Upon publication, this work will constitute the most comprehensive grammar of any Ngumpin-Yapa language. The Ngardi language exhibits many of the same typologically interesting features first identified in the related language Warlpiri—namely phenomena of non-configurational syntax and null anaphora. This grammar also brings to light a number of unique properties which will be of interest to linguistic typologists and formal theorists. The registration of arguments both through case marking on free NPs as well as in pronominal enclitics is similar to Warlpiri but differs in its detail—particularly in the ability to register various non-core cases (e.g. locative and allative) as ‘arguments’ in the pronominal complex. Within the verbal system, Ngardi is notably for a large number of verbal inflections (~20) which mark various distinctions in tense, aspect and mood, as well as associated motion and speaker-centric directionality. Ngardi exhibits a highly articulated system of complex predication, covering both complex verb and serial verb constructions. Other typologically interesting aspects of the language include the presence of dedicated apprehensional constructions and interesting interactions between negation and clausal modality. The descriptive value of this grammar is enhanced by its sustained regional comparison of the linguistic features of Ngardi with those of neighbouring Ngumpin-Yapa and Western Desert languages. This grammar (and a forthcoming dictionary) of Ngardi will be of great significance to both those few remaining Ngardi speakers as well as the next generation of Ngardi people for whom accessible published materials will be an invaluable resource.
Download or read book New Challenges in Typology written by Matti Miestamo and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2008-09-25 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sixteen chapters in this volume are written by typologists and typologically oriented field linguists who have completed their Ph.D. theses in the first four years of this millennium. The authors address selected theoretical questions of general linguistic relevance drawing from a wealth of data hitherto unfamiliar to the general linguistic audience. The general aim is to broaden the horizons of typology by revisiting existing typologies with larger language samples, exploring domains not considered in typology before, taking linguistic diversity more seriously, strengthening the connection between typology and areal linguistics, and bridging the gap to other fields, such as historical linguistics and sociolinguistics. The papers cover grammatical phenomena from phonology, morphology up to the syntax of complex sentences. The linguistic phenomena scrutinized include the following: foot and stress, tone, infixation, inflection vs. derivation, word formation, polysynthesis, suppletion, person marking, reflexives, alignment, transitivity, tense-aspect-mood systems, negation, interrogation, converb systems, and complex sentences. More general methodological and theoretical issues, such as reconstruction, markedness, semantic maps, templates, and use of parallel corpora, are also addressed. The contributions in this volume draw from many traditional fields of linguistics simultaneously, and show that it is becoming harder and maybe also less desirable to keep them separate, especially when taking a broadly cross-linguistic approach to language. The book is of interest to typologists and field linguists, as well as to any linguists interested in theoretical issues in different subfields of linguistics.
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 Grammar of Bilinarra written by Felicity Meakins and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-12-12 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Felicity Meakins was awarded the Kenneth L. Hale Award 2021 by the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) for outstanding work on the documentation of endangered languages This volume provides the first comprehensive description of Bilinarra, a Pama-Nyungan language of the Victoria River District of the Northern Territory (Australia). Bilinarra is a highly endangered language with only one speaker remaining in 2012 and no child learners. The materials on which this grammatical description is based were collected by the authors over a 20 year period from the last first-language speakers of the language, most of whom have since passed away. Bilinarra is a member of the Ngumpin subgroup of Pama-Nyungan which forms a part of the Ngumpin-Yapa family, which also includes Warlpiri. It is non-configurational, with nominals commonly omitted, arguments cross-referenced by pronominal clitics and word order grammatically free and largely determined by information structure. In this grammatical description much attention is paid to its morphosyntax, including case morphology, the pronominal clitic system and complex predicates. A particular strength of the volume is the provision of sound files for example sentences, allowing the reader access to the language itself.
Download or read book Associated Motion written by Antoine Guillaume and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-03-08 with total page 702 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first book-length presentation of the grammatical category of Associated Motion. It provides a framework for understanding a grammatical phenomenon which, though present in many languages, has gone unrecognized until recently. Previously known primarily from languages of Australia and South America, grammatical AM marking has now been identified in languages from most parts of the world (except Europe) and is becoming an important topic in linguistic typology. The chapters provide a thorough introduction to the subject, discussion of the relation between AM and related grammatical concepts, detailed descriptions of AM in a wide range of the world’s languages, and surveys of AM in particular language families and areas.
Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics written by Raymond Hickey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-20 with total page 1687 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing a contemporary and comprehensive look at the topical area of areal linguistics, this book looks systematically at different regions of the world whilst presenting a focussed and informed overview of the theory behind research into areal linguistics and language contact. The topicality of areal linguistics is thoroughly documented by a wealth of case studies from all major regions of the world and, with chapters from scholars with a broad spectrum of language expertise, it offers insights into the mechanisms of external language change. With no book currently like this on the market, The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics will be welcomed by students and scholars working on the history of language families, documentation and classification, and will help readers to understand the key area of areal linguistics within a broader linguistic context.
Download or read book Crosslinguistic Perspectives on Argument Structure written by Melissa Bowerman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-10-16 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a unique interdisciplinary perspective on argument structure and its role in language acquisition. Drawing on a broad range of crosslinguistic data, this volume shows that languages are much more diverse in their argument structure properties than has been realized.The volume is the outcome of an integrated research project and com
Download or read book A Grammar of Kunbarlang written by Ivan Kapitonov and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-07-05 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a comprehensive linguistic description of Kunbarlang (Gunbalang), a highly endangered polysynthetic language of northern Australia. Kunbarlang belongs to the non-Pama-Nyungan Gunwinyguan language family and is currently spoken by nearly 40 people. This work draws on elicitations and analysis of narratives from the author's original field work (2015--2018), as well as those from previous recordings. The main areas covered are the sound system, morphology, syntax, and aspects of lexical and constructional semantics. Dictated by the polysynthetic structure of the language and the patterns of its use, the principal focus of the work is the analysis of the verbal complex and the interaction between the verb and other constituents of the clause. The analysis strike a balance between taking into consideration the areal and genetic context, being informed by linguistic typology and theory, yet at the same time remaining data-driven and theory-neutral in the way generalisations are stated. Against the Australian and a broader cross-linguistic background, Kunbarlang possesses remarkable features at all levels of its organisation.
Download or read book Grammatical Constructions written by Mirjam Fried and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based mostly on papers presented at the First International Conference on Construction Grammar, 2001.
