Download or read book Ika Syntax written by Paul Frank and published by Sil International, Global Publishing. This book was released on 1990 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents Ika grammar from a typological and functional perspective, which provides a good framework for writing broadly useful, descriptive grammars.
Download or read book The Syntax of Adjectives written by Guglielmo Cinque and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: other language families. --
Download or read book The Syntax Morphology Interface written by Matthew Baerman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-09-15 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Syncretism - where a single form serves two or more morphosyntactic functions - is a persistent problem at the syntax-morphology interface. It results from a 'mismatch' whereby the syntax of a language makes a particular distinction but the morphology does not. This pioneering book provides a full-length study of inflectional syncretism, presenting a typology of its occurrence across a wide range of languages. The implications of syncretism for the syntax-morphology interface have long been recognised: it argues either for an enriched model of feature structure (thereby preserving a direct link between function and form), or for the independence of morphological structure from syntactic structure. This book presents a compelling argument for the autonomy of morphology and the resulting analysis is illustrated in a series of formal case studies within Network Morphology. It will be welcomed by all linguists interested in the relation between words and the larger units of which they are a part.
Download or read book The Paradigmatic Structure of Person Marking written by Michael Cysouw and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-07-03 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates paradigms of person - both independent pronouns as well as bound person marking. Based on empirical and theoretical grounds, the author argues that the notion 'number' has to be redefined to deal with the cross-linguistic variation of person marking. Equipped with a new definition, a typology of the paradigmatic structure of person marking is presented, incorporating data from around 400 languages. Nothing appears to be impossible for the paradigmatic structure, although some patterns are clearly more probable than others are. Starting from the more commonly occurring patterns, the diachronic dynamics of paradigmatic structure are investigated by comparing close relatives that differ slightly in the structure of their person paradigms.
Download or read book Current Studies in Italian Syntax written by Guglielmo Cinque and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-10-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes sixteen contributions which are representative of the research carried out in Italy on Italian and, more generally, Romance syntax. The essays in this work are collected to pay homage to Professor Lorenzo Renzi, a scholar who has since the 1960s promoted and shaped the study of Italian syntax in Italy.
Download or read book Duroiselle s Pali Grammar written by Charles Duroiselle and published by Eisel Mazard. This book was released on 2014-12-27 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Still used as a reference book (though rarely, if ever, as an in-classroom textbook). More than a hundred years after its first publication, Duroiselle's Practical Grammar remains a highly useful resource, and there are (as of yet) quite possibly no publications that can rival its compendious treatment of the subject matter, or that demonstrate a comparable level of conversance with the classical grammatical literature. This is a lasting testament to its assiduous author, and, perhaps, reflects the neglect of this area of study in the generations that followed after him
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 Yearbook of Morphology 2004 written by Geert E. Booij and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-07-11 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revival of interest in morphology has occurred during recent years. The Yearbook of Morphology, published since 1988, has proven to be an eminent support for this upswing of morphological research, since it contains articles on topics which are central in the current theoretical debates which are frequently referred to. In the Yearbook of Morphology 2004 a number of papers is devoted to the topic ‘morphology and linguistic typology’. These papers were presented at the Fourth Mediterranean Morphology Meeting in Catania, in September 2003. Within the context of this denominator, a number of issues are discussed wich bear upon universals and typology. These issues include: universals and diachrony, sign language, syncretism, periphrasis, etc.
Download or read book Genders and Classifiers written by Aleksandra I︠U︡rʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a comprehensive account of the typology of noun classification across the world's languages. Following a detailed introduction to noun categorization, the chapters in the volume provide in-depth studies of genders and classifiers of different types in a range of South American and Asian languages and language families.
Download or read book Standard Negation written by Matti Miestamo and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2005 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a cross-linguistic study of clausal negation based on a systematic language sample. This book discusses methodological issues, especially sampling, and typologizes standard negation by paying attention to structural differences between affirmatives and negatives.
Download or read book A Grammar of Tariana from Northwest Amazonia written by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-08-07 with total page 744 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a comprehensive reference grammar of Tariana, an endangered Arawak language from a remote region in the northwest Amazonian jungle. Its speakers traditionally marry someone speaking a different language, and as a result most people are fluent in five or six languages. Because of this rampant multilingualism, Tariana combines a number of features inherited from the protolanguage with properties diffused from neighbouring but unrelated Tucanoan languages. Typologically unusual features of the language include: an array of classifiers independent of genders, complex serial verbs, case marking depending on the topicality of a noun, and double marking of case and of number. Tariana has obligatory evidentiality: every sentence contains a special element indicating whether the information was seen, heard, or inferred by the speaker, or whether the speaker acquired it from somebody else. This grammar will be a valuable source-book for linguists and others interested in natural languages.
Download or read book The Categorization of Spatial Entities in Language and Cognition written by Michel Aurnague and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite a growing interest for space in language, most research has focused on spatial markers specifying the static or dynamic relationships among entities (verbs, prepositions, postpositions, case markings ). Little attention has been paid to the very properties of spatial entities, their status in linguistic descriptions, and their implications for spatial cognition and its development in children. This topic is at the center of this book, that opens a new field by sketching some major theoretical and methodological directions for future research on spatial entities. Brought together linguistic descriptions of spatial systems, formal accounts of linguistic data, and experimental findings from psycholinguistic studies, all couched within a wide cross-linguistic perspective. Such an interdisciplinary approach provides a rich overview of the many questions that remain unanswered in relation to spatial entities, while also throwing a new light on previous research focusing on related topics concerning space and/or the relation between language and cognition.
Download or read book The Indigenous Languages of South America written by Lyle Campbell and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-01-27 with total page 765 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Indigenous Languages of South America: A Comprehensive Guide is a thorough guide to the indigenous languages of this part of the world. With more than a third of the linguistic diversity of the world (in terms of language families and isolates), South American languages contribute new findings in most areas of linguistics. Though formerly one of the linguistically least known areas of the world, extensive descriptive and historical linguistic research in recent years has expanded knowledge greatly. These advances are represented in this volume in indepth treatments by the foremost scholars in the field, with chapters on the history of investigation, language classification, language endangerment, language contact, typology, phonology and phonetics, and on major language families and regions of South America.
Download or read book The Languages of the Andes written by Willem F. H. Adelaar and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-06-10 with total page 746 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Andean and Pacific regions of South America are home to a remarkable variety of languages and language families, with a range of typological differences. This linguistic diversity results from a complex historical background, comprising periods of greater communication between different peoples and languages, and periods of fragmentation and individual development. The Languages of the Andes documents in a single volume the indigenous languages spoken and formerly spoken in this linguistically rich region, as well as in adjacent areas. Grouping the languages into different cultural spheres, it describes their characteristics in terms of language typology, language contact, and the social perspectives of present-day languages. The authors provide both historical and contemporary information, and illustrate the languages with detailed grammatical sketches. Written in a clear and accessible style, this book will be a valuable source for students and scholars of linguistics and anthropology alike.
Download or read book Meaning and Grammar written by Michel Kefer and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-07-31 with total page 440 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 Measuring Grammatical Complexity written by Frederick J. Newmeyer and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the question of whether languages can differ in grammatical complexity and, if so, how relative complexity differences might be measured. The volume differs from others devoted to the question of complexity in language in that the authors all approach the problem from the point of view of formal grammatical theory, psycholinguistics, or neurolinguistics. Chapters investigate a number of key issues in grammatical complexity, taking phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic considerations into account. These include what is often called the 'trade-off problem', namely whether complexity in one grammatical component is necessarily balanced by simplicity in another; and the question of interpretive complexity, that is, whether and how one might measure the difficulty for the hearer in assigning meaning to an utterance and how such complexity might be factored in to an overall complexity assessment. Measuring Grammatical Complexity brings together a number of distinguished scholars in the field, and will be of interest to linguists of all theoretical stripes from advanced undergraduate level upwards, particularly those working in the areas of morphosyntax, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and cognitive linguistics.
Download or read book Case Animacy and Semantic Roles written by Seppo Kittilä and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2011-09-28 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The chapters of this volume scrutinize the interplay of different combinations of case, animacy and semantic roles, thus contributing to our understanding of these notions in a novel way. The focus of the chapters lies on showing how animacy affects argument marking. Unlike previous studies, these chapters primarily deal with lesser studied phenomena, such as animacy effects on spatial cases and the differences between cases and adpositions in the coding of spatial relations. In addition, theoretical and diachronic issues related to case and semantic roles are also discussed; for example, what is case, how do cases develop and what are the functional differences between cases and adpositions? The chapters deal with a variety of different languages including Uralic languages, Indo-European languages, Basque, Korean and Vaeakau-Taumako. The book is appealing to anyone interested in case, animacy and/or semantic roles.
