Definiteness in Balkan Romance

Definiteness in Balkan Romance PDF Author: Daniela Isac
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198865708
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores the micro-variation in the realization of definiteness across languages belonging to the Balkan Romance family: Romanian, Aromanian, Istro-Romanian and Megleno-Romanian. Daniela Isac offers a unified analysis of the different patterns observed, based on a post-syntactic spell-out rule.

Definiteness in Balkan Romance

Definiteness in Balkan Romance PDF Author: Daniela Isac
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198865708
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores the micro-variation in the realization of definiteness across languages belonging to the Balkan Romance family: Romanian, Aromanian, Istro-Romanian and Megleno-Romanian. Daniela Isac offers a unified analysis of the different patterns observed, based on a post-syntactic spell-out rule.

Congruence in Contact-Induced Language Change

Congruence in Contact-Induced Language Change PDF Author: Juliane Besters-Dilger
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110338459
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : de
Pages : 420

Get Book Here

Book Description
Modern contact linguistics has primarily focused on contact between languages that are genetically unrelated and structurally distant. This compendium of articles looks instead at the effects of pre–existing structural congruency between the affected languages at the time of their initial contact, using the Romance and Slavic languages as examples. In contact of this kind, both genetic and typological similarities play a part.

Definiteness in Bulgarian

Definiteness in Bulgarian PDF Author: Olga M. Mladenova
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110198894
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 485

Get Book Here

Book Description
In its evolution from a synthetic to an analytic language, Bulgarian acquired a grammaticalized category of definiteness. The book presents the first attempt to explore in detail how this happened by comparing the earliest Modern Bulgarian texts with contemporary dialect and standard Bulgarian data. The basic units of analysis are the various types of nominal structures headed by nouns or pronouns. The analysis requires the strict terminological disentanglement of form from content and the adoption of a default inheritance model of definiteness that allow the exhaustive classification and tagging of nominal structures encountered in the texts. Tagging makes it possible to apply quantitative analysis to nominal structure and to assess the types available in the early texts from a current native-speaker perspective. Based on an S-curve model of language change, the study establishes that overt markers of definiteness were first made available to identifiability-based definites, then to inclusiveness-based definites, quantitative generics and unique referents. The overt markers of indefiniteness followed suit, separating indefinites from non-specifics and typifying generics. This progression of definiteness was directed by variables such as person, animacy, gender, number and noun-class, and started in contexts in which definiteness closely interacted with possessivity. Such an analysis leads to the realization that the two-dimensional S-curve model does not account for all language change and that there is a need for a three-dimensional model. It also demonstrates that, contrary to previous assumptions, there is continuity between the early Slavic marker of definiteness (long-form adjectives) and the Modern Bulgarian article. This discovery, in conjunction with geolinguistic arguments, sheds new light on the role that relations inside the Balkan Sprachbund played in the grammaticalization of Bulgarian definiteness.

The Diachrony of Differential Object Marking in Romanian

The Diachrony of Differential Object Marking in Romanian PDF Author: Virginia Hill
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192654098
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive investigation of the origins, development, and stabilization of differential object marking (DOM) in Romanian. DOM, a means by which a grammar distinguishes between objects based on semantic features such as animacy or definiteness, has been a fruitful area of research in syntax, historical linguistics, and typology. In this volume, Virginia Hill and Alexandru Mardale demonstrate that Romanian DOM reflects a typological mix of Balkan and Romance patterns, and is in fact composed of three distinct mechanisms. Their analysis of these mechanisms reveals that DOM triggers in Romanian are located in the nominal domain, in contrast to languages such as Spanish, where they are located in the verbal domain. The cross-linguistic perspective adopted in the volume sheds light on existing typologies of DOM, particularly in relation to the variation observed in the merging location of the DOM particle and of the doubling pronominal clitic.

Congruence in Contact-Induced Language Change

Congruence in Contact-Induced Language Change PDF Author: Juliane Besters-Dilger
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110373017
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Get Book Here

Book Description
Modern contact linguistics has primarily focused on contact between languages that are genetically unrelated and structurally distant. This compendium of articles looks instead at the effects of pre–existing structural congruency between the affected languages at the time of their initial contact, using the Romance and Slavic languages as examples. In contact of this kind, both genetic and typological similarities play a part.

Balkan Syntax and (Universal) Principles of Grammar

Balkan Syntax and (Universal) Principles of Grammar PDF Author: Iliyana Krapova
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110393379
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 406

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book investigates morpho-syntactic convergences that characterize the languages of the Balkan Sprachbund: Balkan Slavic, Greek, Romanian, Albanian, Balkan Romani. Apart from new data, the volume features contributions within different theoretical frameworks (contact linguistics, functional linguistics, typology, areal linguistics, and generative grammar).

The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact

The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact PDF Author: Salikoko Mufwene
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009115774
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 947

Get Book Here

Book Description
Language contact - the linguistic and social outcomes of two or more languages coming into contact with each other - has been pervasive in human history. However, where histories of language contact are comparable, experiences of migrant populations have been only similar, not identical. Given this, how does language contact work? With contributions from an international team of scholars, this Handbook - the first in a two-volume set - delves into this question from multiple perspectives and provides state-of-the-art research on population movement and language contact and change. It begins with an overview of how language contact as a research area has evolved since the late 19th century. The chapters then cover various processes and theoretical issues associated with population movement and language contact worldwide. It is essential reading for anybody interested in the dynamics of social interactions in diverse contact settings and how the changing ecologies influence the linguistic outcomes.

Languages of the World

Languages of the World PDF Author: Asya Pereltsvaig
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108788513
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 503

Get Book Here

Book Description
Are you curious to know what all human languages have in common and in what ways they differ? Do you want to find out how language can be used to trace different peoples and their past? Then this book is for you! Now in its third edition, it guides beginners through the rich diversity of the world's languages. It presupposes no background in linguistics, and introduces the reader to linguistic concepts with the help of problem sets, end of chapter exercises and an extensive bibliography. Charts of language families provide geographical and genealogical information, and engaging sidebars with demographic, social, historical and geographical facts help to contextualise and bring languages to life. This edition includes a fully updated glossary of all linguistic terms used, new problem sets, and a new chapter on cartography. Supplementary online materials include links to all websites mentioned, and answers to the exercises for instructors.

Balkan Sprachbund Morpho-Syntactic Features

Balkan Sprachbund Morpho-Syntactic Features PDF Author: Olga M. Tomic
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402044887
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 750

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book discusses the morpho-syntactic Balkan Sprachbund features in nine languages in which they are most numerous. It contains a wealth of Balkan linguistic material. The focus is on displaying similarities and differences in the representation of the most widely acknowledged Balkan Sprachbund morpho-syntactic features and their interaction with other features in the structure of the DP or the sentence of individual languages.

The Place of Case in Grammar

The Place of Case in Grammar PDF Author: Christina Sevdali
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192635417
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 641

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book deals with the category of case and where to place it in grammar. The crux of the debate lies in how the morphological expression of grammatical function should relate to formal syntax. In the generative tradition, this issue was addressed by the influential proposal that abstract syntactic Case should be dissociated from the morphological expression of case. The chapters in this book deal with a number of key issues in the ongoing debates that have emerged from this proposal. The first part discusses the modes that we need for structural case assignment, and how Case would relate to a theory of parameters. In the second part, contributors explore the division of labour between structural and inherent case, synchronically and diachronically, while the third part investigates individual cases and how they can illuminate case theory. The chapters discuss a wide range of phenomena, including differential object marking (DOM), global case splits, prepositional genitives and other prepositional phrases, nominative infinitival subjects, nominalizations of deponent verbs, and three-place predicates. They also draw on data from a variety of languages and language families, such as Hindi, Lithuanian, Kashmiri, Kinande, Greek, Hiberno-English, Romance, and Sahapatin.