Diachrony of differential argument marking

Diachrony of differential argument marking PDF Author: Ilja A. Seržant
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961100853
Category : Historical linguistics
Languages : en
Pages : 566

Get Book Here

Book Description
While there are languages that code a particular grammatical role (e.g. subject or direct object) in one and the same way across the board, many more languages code the same grammatical roles differentially. The variables which condition the differential argument marking (or DAM) pertain to various properties of the NP (such as animacy or definiteness) or to event semantics or various properties of the clause. While the main line of current research on DAM is mainly synchronic the volume tackles the diachronic perspective. The tenet is that the emergence and the development of differential marking systems provide a different kind of evidence for the understanding of the phenomenon. The present volume consists of 18 chapters and primarily brings together diachronic case studies on particular languages or language groups including e.g. Finno-Ugric, Sino-Tibetan and Japonic languages. The volume also includes a position paper, which provides an overview of the typology of different subtypes of DAM systems, a chapter on computer simulation of the emergence of DAM and a chapter devoted to the cross-linguistic effects of referential hierarchies on DAM.

Diachrony of differential argument marking

Diachrony of differential argument marking PDF Author: Ilja A. Seržant
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961100853
Category : Historical linguistics
Languages : en
Pages : 566

Get Book Here

Book Description
While there are languages that code a particular grammatical role (e.g. subject or direct object) in one and the same way across the board, many more languages code the same grammatical roles differentially. The variables which condition the differential argument marking (or DAM) pertain to various properties of the NP (such as animacy or definiteness) or to event semantics or various properties of the clause. While the main line of current research on DAM is mainly synchronic the volume tackles the diachronic perspective. The tenet is that the emergence and the development of differential marking systems provide a different kind of evidence for the understanding of the phenomenon. The present volume consists of 18 chapters and primarily brings together diachronic case studies on particular languages or language groups including e.g. Finno-Ugric, Sino-Tibetan and Japonic languages. The volume also includes a position paper, which provides an overview of the typology of different subtypes of DAM systems, a chapter on computer simulation of the emergence of DAM and a chapter devoted to the cross-linguistic effects of referential hierarchies on DAM.

Diversity and Diachrony

Diversity and Diachrony PDF Author: David Sankoff
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027235473
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 445

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume contains a selection of papers originally presented at the 12th Conference on New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAVE), held in Montréal in 1983. It is divided into three sections: 1. Varieties of English and their history; 2. Change and variation in Romance; 3. Functions and discourse.

Unity and diversity in grammaticalization scenarios

Unity and diversity in grammaticalization scenarios PDF Author: Walter Bisang
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3946234992
Category : Grammar, Comparative and general
Languages : en
Pages : 343

Get Book Here

Book Description
The volume contains a selection of papers originally presented at the symposium on “Areal patterns of grammaticalization and cross-linguistic variation in grammaticalization scenarios” held on 12-14 March 2015 at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. The papers, written by leading scholars combining expertise in historical linguistics and grammaticalization research, study variation in grammaticalization scenarios in a variety of language families (Slavic, Indo-Aryan, Tibeto-Burman, Bantu, Mande, "Khoisan", Siouan, and Mayan). The volume stands out in the vast literature on grammaticalization by focusing on variation in grammaticalization scenarios and areal patterns in grammaticalization. Apart from documenting new grammaticalization paths, the volume makes a methodological contribution as it addresses an important question of how to reconcile universal outcomes of grammaticalization processes with the fact that the input to these processes is language-specific and construction-specific.

Language Creation and Language Change

Language Creation and Language Change PDF Author: Michel DeGraff
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN: 9780262041683
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 592

Get Book Here

Book Description
Research on creolization, language change, and language acquisition has been converging toward a triangulation of the constraints along which grammatical systems develop within individual speakers--and (viewed externally) across generations of speakers. The originality of this volume is in its comparison of various sorts of language development from a number of linguistic-theoretic and empirical perspectives, using data from both speech and gestural modalities and from a diversity of acquisition environments. In turn, this comparison yields fresh insights on the mental bases of language creation.The book is organized into five parts: creolization and acquisition; acquisition under exceptional circumstances; language processing and syntactic change; parameter setting in acquisition and through creolization and language change; and a concluding part integrating the contributors' observations and proposals into a series of commentaries on the state of the art in our understanding of language development, its role in creolization and diachrony, and implications for linguistic theory.Contributors : Dany Adone, Derek Bickerton, Adrienne Bruyn, Marie Coppola, Michel DeGraff, Viviane D�prez, Alison Henry, Judy Kegl, David Lightfoot, John S. Lumsden, Salikoko S. Mufwene, Pieter Muysken, Elissa L. Newport, Luigi Rizzi, Ian Roberts, Ann Senghas, Rex A. Sprouse, Denise Tangney, Anne Vainikka, Barbara S. Vance, Maaike Verrips.

Historical Linguistics and Endangered Languages

Historical Linguistics and Endangered Languages PDF Author: Patience Epps
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429641613
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Get Book Here

Book Description
This collection showcases the contributions of the study of endangered and understudied languages to historical linguistic analysis, and the broader relevance of diachronic approaches toward developing better informed approaches to language documentation and description. The volume brings together perspectives from both established and up-and-coming scholars and represents a globally and linguistically diverse range of languages.The collected papers demonstrate the ways in which endangered languages can challenge existing models of language change based on more commonly studied languages, and can generate innovative insights into linguistic phenomena such as pathways of grammaticalization, forms and dynamics of contact-driven change, and the diachronic relationship between lexical and grammatical categories. In so doing, the book highlights the idea that processes and outcomes of language change long held to be universally relevant may be more sensitive to cultural and typological variability than previously assumed. Taken as a whole, this collection brings together perspectives from language documentation and historical linguistics to point the way forward for richer understandings of both language change and documentary-descriptive approaches, making this key reading for scholars in these fields.

On Understanding Grammar

On Understanding Grammar PDF Author: Talmy Givón
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 1483259935
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 396

Get Book Here

Book Description
On Understanding Grammar covers the interdependencies among the various aspects of linguistics and the human language. This eight-chapter text considers some pertinent topics in linguistics, such as discourse-pragmatics, diachronic syntax, topology, creology, method, and ontology. Chapter 1 describes the notions of fact, theory, and explanation, particularly about how these notions manifest themselves in actual practice. Chapter 2 redefines syntax in terms of communicative function and discourse-pragmatics, and about the relation between the function of grammatical devices and their formal properties. Chapter 3 deals with discourse-pragmatics and how it transcends the narrow bounds of deductive logic, as well as the function and ontology of negation in language, and how those relate to the fundamental information-theoretic principle of figure versus ground. Chapter 4 explores the two major aspects of case systems, namely, the semantic role and pragmatic function, and how the two interact in determining the typological characteristics of grammars. Chapter 5 examines the relation between discourse and syntax based on diachronic, ontogenetic, phylogenetic viewpoints. Chapter 6 tackles the relation between synchronic grammar and diachronic change, while Chapter 7 describes the relationship between human language and its phylogenetic evolution. Chapter 8 is about language and ontology, as well as the relation between cognition and the universe. This book will prove useful to linguistics and language researchers.

Syntax

Syntax PDF Author: Talmy Givón
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9781588110664
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 526

Get Book Here

Book Description
This new edition of Syntax: A functional-typological introduction is at many points radically revised. In the previous edition (1984) the author deliberately chose to de-emphasize the more formal aspects of syntactic structure, in favor of a more comprehensive treatment of the semantic and pragmatic correlates of syntactic structure. With hindsight the author now finds the de-emphasis of the formal properties a somewhat regrettable choice, since it creates the false impression that one could somehow be a functionalist without being at the same time a structuralist. To redress the balance, explicit treatment is given to the core formal properties of syntactic constructions, such as constituency and hierarchy (phrase structure), grammatical relations and relational control, clause union, finiteness and governed constructions. At the same time, the cognitive and communicative underpinning of grammatical universals are further elucidated and underscored, and the interplay between grammar, cognition and neurology is outlined. Also the relevant typological database is expanded, now exploring in greater precision the bounds of syntactic diversity. Lastly, Syntax treats synchronic-typological diversity more explicitly as the dynamic by-product of diachronic development or grammaticalization. In so doing a parallel is drawn between linguistic diversity and diachrony on the one hand and biological diversity and evolution on the other. It is then suggested that — as in biology — synchronic universals of grammar are exercised and instantiated primarily as constraints on development, and are thus merely the apparent by-products of universal constraints on grammaticalization.

On Understanding Grammar

On Understanding Grammar PDF Author: T. Givón
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027264716
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 323

Get Book Here

Book Description
In his foreword to the original edition of this classic of functionalism, typology and diachrony, Dwight Bolinger wrote: "I foresee it as one of the truly prizes statements of our current knowledge...a book about understanding done with deep understanding – of language and its place in Nature and in the nature of humankind... The book is rich in insights, even for those who have been with linguistics for a long time. And beginners could be thankful for having it as a starting point, from which so many past mistakes have been shed". Thoroughly revised, corrected and updated, On Understanding Grammar remains, as its author intended it in 1979, a book about trying to make sense of human language and of doing linguistics. Language is considered here from multiple perspectives, intersecting with cognition and communication, typology and universals, grammaticalization, development and evolution. Within such a broad cross-disciplinary context, grammar is viewed as an automated, structured language-processing device, assembled through evolution, diachrony and use. Cross-language diversity is not arbitrary, but rather is tightly constrained and adaptively motivated, with the balance between universality and diversity mediated through development, be it evolutionary or diachronic. The book's take on language harkens back to the works of illustrious antecedents such as F. Bopp, W. von Humbold, H. Paul, A. Meillet, O. Jespersen and G. Zipf, offering a coherent alternative to the methodological and theoretical strictures of Saussure, Bloomfield and Chomsky.

Bio-linguistics

Bio-linguistics PDF Author: Talmy Givón
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9781588112262
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines the parallels between language evolution and language diachrony. Sociality, co-operation and communication are shown to be rooted in a common evolutionary source, the kin-based hunting and gathering society of intimates.

Teaching Diverse Populations

Teaching Diverse Populations PDF Author: Etta R. Hollins
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438406983
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book presents current knowledge about teaching culturally diverse populations, traditionally underserved in the nation's public schools. It approaches the challenge of improving public school education for these students in a variety of ways including relating of cultural and experiential knowledge to classroom instruction, examining the behaviors of teachers who are effective with culturally diverse populations, analyzing effective school models, reviewing models of effective instruction, and exploring ethnic identity as a variable in the formula for school success. The discussions reveal significant insights about the implications and shortcomings of existing knowledge and its application, and offer directions for future research.