Discourse Configurationality in Bantu Morphosyntax

Discourse Configurationality in Bantu Morphosyntax PDF Author: Yukiko Morimoto
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 750

Get Book

Book Description

Discourse Configurationality in Bantu Morphosyntax

Discourse Configurationality in Bantu Morphosyntax PDF Author: Yukiko Morimoto
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 750

Get Book

Book Description


Morphosyntactic variation in East African Bantu languages

Morphosyntactic variation in East African Bantu languages PDF Author: Hannah Gibson
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3985540918
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 446

Get Book

Book Description
The approximately 500 Bantu languages spoken across vast areas of Central, Eastern and Southern Africa are united by the presence of a number of broad typological similarities, including, for example, complex noun class system and agglutinative verbal morphology. However, the languages also exhibit a high degree of micro-variation. Recent work has demonstrated fine-grained morphosyntactic variation across many Bantu languages focusing on grammatical topics such as double object constructions, inversion constructions, or object marking, adopting formal, comparative and typological perspectives. Continuing in this vein, this volume builds on the momentum of the dynamic field of morphosyntactic variation in Bantu and contributes to the growing body of work which examines morphosyntactic variation, with a regional focus on the Bantu languages of East Africa. The East African region is characterized by high linguistic complexity in terms of the number of languages spoken, in terms of the four different linguistic phyla present, and in terms of the inherent sociolinguistic dynamics. The current volume explores this complexity further by bringing together studies which investigate features of morphosyntax of an individual language as well as those which develop an in-depth examination of a single morphosyntactic phenomena in a small sample of languages. The book seeks also to add to the descriptive status of the languages under examination, as well as raising questions relating to language, language contact, language change, and micro-variation in related languages spoken in close geographic proximity.

Rich Descriptions and Simple Explanations in Morphosyntax and Language Acquisition

Rich Descriptions and Simple Explanations in Morphosyntax and Language Acquisition PDF Author: Giuliano Bocci
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198889488
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 481

Get Book

Book Description
This volume offers new perspectives on the tension between the rich patterns of language variation that emerge from comparative studies and the quest for simple theoretical primitives. The chapters explore the debate between Cartography and Minimalism: on the one hand, the need for detailed and articulated descriptions of the clausal architecture, and on the other, the endeavor to reduce the theoretical apparatus to fundamental computational mechanisms. The first part of the book begins with a reflection on the goals of modern linguistic theory, and investigates the principles of human language, in an effort to subsume the regularities of particular grammars under a small set of morphosyntactic and semantic primitives. The second part examines the clausal structure - both the CP-layer and the IP-layer - from a comparative perspective, which directly relates to the fundamental questions of universality, linguistic variation, and learnability addressed in the first part of the book. With chapters written by world-leading linguists who analyze a wide range of old and new phenomena, the volume will be a valuable resource for researchers and students interested in theoretical linguistics and language development.

Dislocated Elements in Discourse

Dislocated Elements in Discourse PDF Author: Benjamin Shaer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134156340
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 542

Get Book

Book Description
This volume is about 'dislocation' – the removal of phrases from their canonical positions in a sentence to its left or right edge. Dislocation encompasses a wide range of linguistic phenomena, related to nominal and adverbial expressions and to the information structuring notions of topic and focus; and takes intriguingly different forms across languages. This book reveals some of the empirical richness of dislocation and some key puzzles related to its syntactic, semantic, and discourse analysis.

Syntax - Theory and Analysis. Volume 3

Syntax - Theory and Analysis. Volume 3 PDF Author: Tibor Kiss
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110363682
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 708

Get Book

Book Description
This Handbook represents the development of research and the current level of knowledge in the fields of syntactic theory and syntax analysis. Syntax can look back to a long tradition. Especially in the last 50 years, however, the interaction between syntactic theory and syntactic analysis has led to a rapid increase in analyses and theoretical suggestions. This second edition of the Handbook on Syntax adopts a unifying perspective and therefore does not place the division of syntactic theory into several schools to the fore, but the increase in knowledge resulting from the fruitful argumentations between syntactic analysis and syntactic theory. It uses selected phenomena of individual languages and their cross-linguistic realizations to explain what syntactic analyses can do and at the same time to show in what respects syntactic theories differ from each other. It investigates how syntax is related to neighbouring disciplines and investigate the role of the interfaces especially the relationship between syntax and phonology, morphology, compositional semantics, pragmatics, and the lexicon. The phenomena chosen bring together renowned experts in syntax, and represent the consensus reached as to what has to be considered as an important as well as illustrative syntactic phenomenon. The phenomena discuss do not only serve to show syntactic analyses, but also to compare theoretical approaches with each other.

The Bantu Languages

The Bantu Languages PDF Author: Mark Van de Velde
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317628683
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 925

Get Book

Book Description
Written by an international team of experts, this comprehensive volume presents grammatical analyses of individual Bantu languages, comparative studies of their main phonetic, phonological and grammatical characteristics and overview chapters on their history and classification. It is estimated that some 300 to 350 million people, or one in three Africans, are Bantu speakers. Van de Velde and Bostoen bring together their linguistic expertise to produce a volume that builds on Nurse and Philippson’s first edition. The Bantu Languages, 2nd edition is divided into two parts; Part 1 contains 11 comparative chapters, and Part 2 provides grammar sketches of 12 individual Bantu languages, some of which were previously undescribed. The grammar sketches follow a general template that allows for easy comparison. Thoroughly revised and updated to include more language descriptions and the latest comparative insights. New to this edition: • new chapters on syntax, tone, reconstruction and language contact • 12 new sketch grammars • thoroughly updated chapters on phonetics, aspect-tense-mood and classification • exhaustive catalogue of known languages with essential references This unique resource remains the ideal reference for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of Bantu linguistics and languages. It will be of interest to researchers and anyone with an interest in historical linguistics, linguistic typology and grammatical analysis.

A Featural Typology of Bantu Agreement

A Featural Typology of Bantu Agreement PDF Author: Jenneke van der Wal
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019884428X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book

Book Description
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.

The Bantu-Romance Connection

The Bantu-Romance Connection PDF Author: Cécile De Cat
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027255148
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book

Book Description
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.

The Conjoint/Disjoint Alternation in Bantu

The Conjoint/Disjoint Alternation in Bantu PDF Author: Jenneke van der Wal
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110490838
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 468

Get Book

Book Description
This volume brings together descriptions and analyses of the conjoint/disjoint alternation, a typologically significant phenomenon found in many Bantu languages. The chapters provide in-depth documentation, comparative studies and theoretical analyses of the alternation from a range of Bantu languages, showing its crosslinguistic variation in constituent structure, morphology, prosody and information structure.

The Bantu–Romance Connection

The Bantu–Romance Connection PDF Author: Cécile de Cat
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027290679
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 378

Get Book

Book Description
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.