A Grammar of (Western) Garrwa

A Grammar of (Western) Garrwa PDF Author: Ilana Mushin
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 1614512418
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 494

Get Book Here

Book Description
Mushin provides the first full grammatical description of Garrwa, a critically endangered language of the Southwest Gulf of Carpentaria region in Northern Australia. Garrwa is typologically interesting because of its uncertain status in the Australian language family, its pronouns and its word order syntax. This book covers Garrwa phonology, morphology and syntax, with a particular focus on the use of grammar in discourse. The grammatical description is supplemented with a word list and text collection, including transcriptions of ordinary conversation.

A Grammar of (Western) Garrwa

A Grammar of (Western) Garrwa PDF Author: Dr Ilana Mushin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781614512424
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 476

Get Book Here

Book Description
Mushin provides the first full grammatical description of Garrwa, a critically endangered language of the Southwest Gulf of Carpentaria region in Northern Australia. Garrwa is typologically interesting because of its uncertain status in the Australian language family, its pronouns and its word order syntax. This book covers Garrwa phonology, morphology and syntax, with a particular focus on the use of grammar in discourse. The grammatical description is supplemented with a word list and text collection, including transcriptions of ordinary conversation.

Discourse and Grammar in Australian Languages

Discourse and Grammar in Australian Languages PDF Author: Ilana Mushin
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 902720571X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Get Book Here

Book Description
Discourse and Grammar in Australian Languages is the first major survey to address the issue of the effects of information packaging on Australian languages, widely known for nonconfigurationality. The papers are based on individual fieldwork and describe a wide range of Australian languages of different types, ranging from the polysynthetic languages of Arnhem Land and the Kimberley to the classical types represented by Walpiri. Topics covered include the pragmatics of information exchange, the interaction of noun class marking with polarity and referentiality, the effects of specificity on argument indexing, the discourse uses of the ergative case, the contribution of pronouns to NP reference, the interaction of tense and aspect clitics with information structure, clause-initial position, and discourse and grammar in Australian languages. The volume will appeal to scholars interested in discourse, typology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

Language Description Informed by Theory

Language Description Informed by Theory PDF Author: Rob Pensalfini
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027270910
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 405

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume explores how linguistic theories inform the ways in which languages are described. Theories, as representations of linguistic categories, guide the field linguist to look for various phenomena without presupposing their necessary existence and provide the tools to account for various sets of data across different languages. A goal of linguistic description is to represent the full range of language structures for any given language. The chapters in this book cover various sub-disciplines of linguistics including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, language acquisition, and anthropological linguistics, drawing upon theoretical approaches such as prosodic Phonology, Enhancement theory, Distributed Morphology, Minimalist syntax, Lexical Functional Grammar, and Kinship theory. The languages described in this book include Australian languages (Pama-Nyungan and non-Pama-Nyungan), Romance languages as well as English. This volume will be of interest to researchers in both descriptive and theoretical linguistics.

Noun Phrases in Australian Languages

Noun Phrases in Australian Languages PDF Author: Dana Louagie
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501512935
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book presents a first comprehensive typological analysis of noun phrases in Australian languages, covering the domains of classification, qualification, quantification, determination and constituency. The analysis is based on a representative sample of 100 languages. Among other points, the results call into question the classic idea that Australian languages tend to lack phrasal structures in the nominal domain, with over two thirds of the languages showing evidence for phrasehood. Moreover, it is argued that it may be more interesting to typologise languages on the basis of where and how they allow phrasal structure, rather than on the basis of a yes-no answer to the question of constituency. The analysis also shows that a determiner slot can be identified in about half of the languages, even though they generally lack 'classic' determiner features like obligatory use in particular contexts or a restriction to one determiner per NP. Special attention is given to elements, which can be used both inside and beyond determiner slots, demonstrating how part of speech and functional structure do not always align. The book is of interest to researchers documenting Australian languages, as well as to typologists and theorists.

Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective

Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective PDF Author: Heiko Narrog
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192515357
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 493

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume explores the way in which grammaticalization processes - whereby lexical words eventually become markers of grammatical categories - converge and differ across various types of language. While grammaticalization at its core is a unidirectional phenomenon, in which the same pathways of change are replicated across languages, certain language types and language areas have distinct preferences with respect to what they grammaticalize and how. Previous work has principally addressed this question with specific reference to languages of Southeast and East Asia that do not seem to grammaticalize paradigms of categories in the same manner as Indo-European languages, or form extensive grammaticalization chains. This volume takes a broader approach and proceeds systematically area by area: specialists in the field address the processes of grammaticalization in languages of Africa, Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and the Americas, and in creole languages. The studies reveal a number of unique pathways of grammaticalization in each language area, as well as identifying the universal shared features of the phenomenon.

Between Turn and Sequence

Between Turn and Sequence PDF Author: John Heritage
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027264287
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 497

Get Book Here

Book Description
The last two decades have witnessed a remarkable growth of interest in what are variously termed discourse markers or discourse particles. The greatest area of growth has centered on particles that occur in sentence-initial or turn-initial position, and this interest intersects with a long-standing focus in Conversation Analysis on turn-taking and turn-construction. This volume brings together conversation analytic studies of turn-initial particles in interactions in fourteen languages geographically widely distributed (Europe, America, Asia and Australia). The contributions show the significance of turn-initial particles in three key areas of turn and sequence organization: (i) the management of departures from expected next actions, (ii) the projection of the speaker's epistemic stance, and (iii) the management of overall activities implemented across sequences. Taken together the papers demonstrate the crucial importance of the positioning of particles within turns and sequences for the projection and management of social actions, and for relationships between speakers.

Here – Hither – Hence and Related Categories

Here – Hither – Hence and Related Categories PDF Author: Julia Nintemann
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110672723
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 618

Get Book Here

Book Description
As a follow-up study to the global comparison of spatial interrogatives (Studia Typologica 20), the present book examines the spatial declarative counterparts which are provided by the expression class of spatial deictic adverbs. In a functionally motivated typological approach, equivalents of Early Modern English here – hither – hence and there – thither – thence are identified across a sample of 250 languages from all macro-areas. These are also quantitatively assessed to extrapolate areal and global trends of coding patterns. The formal relationships between spatial interrogative and spatial declarative paradigms are analyzed with a focus on the syncretism of categories and of individual cells. Qualitative discussions of patterns precede in-depth treatments of problematic cases and other relevant issues related to the research topic. The quantitative results strongly point to areal linguistic trends concerning the distribution of distinct and non-distinct coding of the three spatial relations Place, Goal, and Source. Additional aspects such as quantitative evaluations of constructional complexity are addressed subsequently.

An Areal Typology of Agreement Systems

An Areal Typology of Agreement Systems PDF Author: Ranko Matasović
Publisher:
ISBN: 1108420974
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first areal-typological exploration of agreement systems in the world's languages.

Reconnecting Form and Meaning

Reconnecting Form and Meaning PDF Author: Caroline Gentens
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027254494
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 315

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume is intended as a celebration of Kristin Davidse’s work and its impact within the broad traditions of cognitive, functional and usage-based grammars. Reflecting this wide functionalist lens, the contributions develop ideas central to Neo-Firthian theories of grammar (in particular, Semiotic Grammar and SFL), the Prague School, Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG), and broader cognitive-functional (e.g. Construction Grammar) and usage-based approaches (e.g. Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization theory, corpus-based sociolinguistics). The range of topics addressed makes the volume particularly relevant to linguists investigating information structure, construction grammar, functional discourse grammar, spatial deixis, pronoun and case systems, and/or the semantics of verbal constructions.