Gender in Indo-European

Gender in Indo-European PDF Author: Ranko Matasović
Publisher: Universitatsverlag Winter
ISBN:
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This book discusses the origin and history of the grammatical category of gender in the Indo-European family of languages. Gender systems of Proto-Indo-European (PIE), and of the various daughter languages are assessed from historical, typological, and areal points of view. In addition, common properties and tendencies (or drift) in the development of gender in different Indo-European branches are presented. The formal and semantic principles of gender assignment in PIE are examined on the basis of a reconstructed lexicon of PIE nouns, and the scope of gender agreement in the proto-language is reconstructed by comparing the agreement rules in the early Indo-European dialects. The Early PIE two-gender system and the development of the feminine gender in Late PIE are also discussed, and finally the PIE gender system is contrasted with the typologically rather different gender systems found in the neighboring areas of Eurasia.

Gender in Indo-European

Gender in Indo-European PDF Author: Ranko Matasović
Publisher: Universitatsverlag Winter
ISBN:
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This book discusses the origin and history of the grammatical category of gender in the Indo-European family of languages. Gender systems of Proto-Indo-European (PIE), and of the various daughter languages are assessed from historical, typological, and areal points of view. In addition, common properties and tendencies (or drift) in the development of gender in different Indo-European branches are presented. The formal and semantic principles of gender assignment in PIE are examined on the basis of a reconstructed lexicon of PIE nouns, and the scope of gender agreement in the proto-language is reconstructed by comparing the agreement rules in the early Indo-European dialects. The Early PIE two-gender system and the development of the feminine gender in Late PIE are also discussed, and finally the PIE gender system is contrasted with the typologically rather different gender systems found in the neighboring areas of Eurasia.

The Tocharian Gender System

The Tocharian Gender System PDF Author: Alessandro Del Tomba
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004532897
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
As one of the most debated categories of Tocharian nominal morphology, grammatical gender is in this book investigated from the point of view of Indo-European comparative reconstruction, by applying the methods of historical linguistics, Tocharian philology, and typological linguistics.

Non-canonical Gender Systems

Non-canonical Gender Systems PDF Author: Sebastian Fedden
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198795432
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
This book explores the boundaries of the category of gender and their theoretical significance within the framework of Canonical Typology. International experts analyse a variety of gender systems from a range of typologically diverse languages from across the world, from South America to Melanesia, and from Central Italy to Northern Australia.

The Cambridge Handbook of Germanic Linguistics

The Cambridge Handbook of Germanic Linguistics PDF Author: Michael T. Putnam
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108386350
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 1207

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Book Description
The Germanic language family ranges from national languages with standardized varieties, including German, Dutch and Danish, to minority languages with relatively few speakers, such as Frisian, Yiddish and Pennsylvania German. Written by internationally renowned experts of Germanic linguistics, this Handbook provides a detailed overview and analysis of the structure of modern Germanic languages and dialects. Organized thematically, it addresses key topics in the phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics of standard and nonstandard varieties of Germanic languages from a comparative perspective. It also includes chapters on second language acquisition, heritage and minority languages, pidgins, and urban vernaculars. The first comprehensive survey of this vast topic, the Handbook is a vital resource for students and researchers investigating the Germanic family of languages and dialects.

A Language of Our Own

A Language of Our Own PDF Author: Peter Bakker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195357086
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
The Michif language -- spoken by descendants of French Canadian fur traders and Cree Indians in western Canada -- is considered an "impossible language" since it uses French for nouns and Cree for verbs, and comprises two different sets of grammatical rules. Bakker uses historical research and fieldwork data to present the first detailed analysis of this language and how it came into being.

Nominal Classification

Nominal Classification PDF Author: Marcin Kilarski
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027270902
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
This book offers the first comprehensive survey of the study of gender and classifiers throughout the history of Western linguistics. Based on an analysis of over 200 genetically and typologically diverse languages, the author shows that these seemingly arbitrary and redundant categories play in fact a central role in the lexicon, grammar and the organization of discourse. As a result, the often contradictory approaches to their functionality and semantic motivation encapsulate the evolving conceptions of such issues as cognitive and cultural correlates of linguistic structure, the diverse functions of grammatical categories, linguistic complexity, agreement phenomena and the interplay between lexicon and grammar. The combination of a typological and historiographic perspective adopted here allows the reader to appreciate the detail and insight of earlier, supposedly ‘prescientific’ accounts in light of the data now available and to examine contemporary discussions in the context of prevailing conceptions in the study of language at different points in its history since antiquity.

Gender from Latin to Romance

Gender from Latin to Romance PDF Author: Michele Loporcaro
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199656541
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
This book explores grammatical gender in the Romance languages and dialects and its evolution from Latin. Michele Loporcaro investigates the significant diversity found in the Romance varieties in this regard; he draws on data from the Middle Ages to the present from all the Romance languages and dialects, discussing examples from Romanian to Portuguese and crucially also focusing on less widely-studied varieties such as Sursilvan, Neapolitan, and Asturian. The investigation first reveals that several varieties display more complex systems than the binary masculine/feminine contrast familiar from modern French or Italian. Moreover, it emerges that traditional accounts, whereby neuter gender was lost in the spoken Latin of the late Empire, cannot be correct: instead, the neuter gender underwent a range of different transformations from Late Latin onwards, which are responsible for the different systems that can be observed today across the Romance languages. The volume provides a detailed description of many of these systems, which in turns reveals a wealth of fascinating data, such as varieties where 'husbands' are feminine and others where 'wives' are masculine; dialects in which nouns overtly mark gender, but only in certain syntactic contexts; and one Romance variety (Asturian) in which it appears that grammatical gender has split into two concurrent systems. The volume will appeal to linguists from a range of backgrounds, including Romance linguistics, historical linguistics, typology, and morphosyntax, and is also of relevance to those working in sociology, gender studies, and psychology.

Studies on the Collective and Feminine in Indo-European from a Diachronic and Typological Perspective

Studies on the Collective and Feminine in Indo-European from a Diachronic and Typological Perspective PDF Author: Sergio Neri
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004264957
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
This volume contains thirteen contributions on the origin of the feminine gender and its relation to the collective in the Indo-European parent language. The Indo-European daughter languages have got mostly a three-gender system, however the early attested Anatolian languages owned only two genders. In this respect, it is debatable whether the feminine gender is primary or arose secondarily from another morphological category. Due to special morphological and morphosyntactic phenomena it is also questionable whether the neuter plural of the individual languages continues an inflectional category or it was rather grammaticalized from an original word formation category collective. The authors suggest different approaches on the question of the relationship between feminine and collective.

Grammatical Change in Indo-European Languages

Grammatical Change in Indo-European Languages PDF Author: Vit Bubenik
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027289298
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
The product of a group of scholars who have been working on new directions in Historical Linguistics, this book is focused on questions of grammatical change, and the central issue of grammaticalization in Indo-European languages. Several studies examine particular problems in specific languages, but often with implications for the IE phylum as a whole. Given the historical scope of the data (over a period of four millennia) long range grammatical changes such as the development of gender differences, strategies of definiteness, the prepositional phrase, or of the syntax of the verbal diathesis and aspect, are also treated. The shifting relevance of morphology to syntax, and syntax to morphology, a central motif of this research, has provoked lively debate in the discipline of Historical Linguistics.

Grammaticalization Scenarios from Europe and Asia

Grammaticalization Scenarios from Europe and Asia PDF Author: Walter Bisang
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110563142
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 670

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Book Description
This volume intends to fill the gap in the grammaticalization studies setting as its goal the systematic description of grammaticalization processes in genealogically and structurally diverse languages. To address the problem of the limitations of the secondary sources for grammaticalization studies, the editors rely on sketches of grammaticalization phenomena from experts in individual languages guided by a typological questionnaire.