Morphology and Language History

Morphology and Language History PDF Author: Claire Bowern
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027248141
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
This volume aims to make a contribution to codifying the methods and practices linguists use to recover language history, focussing predominantly on historical morphology. The volume includes studies on a wide range of languages: not only Indo-European, but also Austronesian, Sinitic, Mon-Khmer, Basque, one Papuan language family, as well as a number of Australian families. Few collections are as cross-linguistic as this, reflecting the new challenges which have emerged from the study of languages outside those best known from historical linguistics. The contributors illustrate shared methodological and theoretical issues concerning genetic relatedness (that is, the use of morphological evidence for classification and subgrouping), reconstruction and processes of change with a diverse range of data. The volume is in honour of Harold Koch, who has long combined innovative research on understudied languages with methodological rigour and codification of practices within the discipline.

Morphology and Language History

Morphology and Language History PDF Author: Claire Bowern
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027248141
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume aims to make a contribution to codifying the methods and practices linguists use to recover language history, focussing predominantly on historical morphology. The volume includes studies on a wide range of languages: not only Indo-European, but also Austronesian, Sinitic, Mon-Khmer, Basque, one Papuan language family, as well as a number of Australian families. Few collections are as cross-linguistic as this, reflecting the new challenges which have emerged from the study of languages outside those best known from historical linguistics. The contributors illustrate shared methodological and theoretical issues concerning genetic relatedness (that is, the use of morphological evidence for classification and subgrouping), reconstruction and processes of change with a diverse range of data. The volume is in honour of Harold Koch, who has long combined innovative research on understudied languages with methodological rigour and codification of practices within the discipline.

Introduction to English Morphology

Introduction to English Morphology PDF Author: Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474428983
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
What exactly are words? Are they the things that get listed in dictionaries, or are they the basic units of sentence structure? Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy explores the implications of these different approaches to words in English. He explains the various ways in which words are related to one another, and shows how the history of the English language has affected word structure. Topics include: words, sentences and dictionaries; a word and its parts (roots and affixes); a word and its forms (inflection); a word and its relatives (derivation); compound words; word structure; productivity; and the historical sources of English word formation. Requiring no prior linguistic training, this textbook is suitable for undergraduate students of English - literature or language - and provides a sound basis for further linguistic study.

The Evolution of Morphology

The Evolution of Morphology PDF Author: Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191559628
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
This book considers the evolution of the grammatical structure of words in the more general contexts of human evolution and the origins of language. The consensus in many fields is that language is well designed for its purpose, and became so either through natural selection or by virtue of non-biological constraints on how language must be structured. Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy argues that in certain crucial respects language is not optimally designed. This can be seen, he suggests, in the existence of not one but two kinds of grammatical organization - syntax and morphology - and in the morphological and morpho-phonological complexity which leads to numerous departures from the one-form-one-meaning principle. Having discussed the issue of good and bad design in a wider biological context, the author shows that conventional explanations for the nature of morphology do not work. Its poor design features arose, he argues, from two characteristics present when the ancestors of modern humans had a vocabulary but no grammar. One of these was a synonymy-avoidance expectation, while the other was an articulatory and phonological apparatus that encouraged the development of new synonyms. Morphology developed in response to these conflicting pressures. In this stimulating and carefully argued account Professor McCarthy offers a powerful challenge to conventional views of the relationship between syntax and morphology, to the adaptationist view of language evolution, and to the notion that language in some way reflects 'laws of form'. This fundamental contribution to understanding the nature and evolution of language will be of wide interest to linguists of all theoretical persuasions as well as to scholars in cognitive science and anthropology.

Historical Morphology

Historical Morphology PDF Author: Jacek Fisiak
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110823128
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 493

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Book Description
TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.

A Historical Morphology of English

A Historical Morphology of English PDF Author: Don Ringe
Publisher: Edinburgh Textbooks on the Eng
ISBN: 9781474459778
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
A detailed survey of how English morphology has evolved from Old English to the present

Edinburgh Handbook of Evaluative Morphology

Edinburgh Handbook of Evaluative Morphology PDF Author: Nicola Grandi
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748681779
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 847

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Book Description
Reviews and debates the latest theoretical approaches to evaluative morphology

A History of Indo-European Verb Morphology

A History of Indo-European Verb Morphology PDF Author: Kenneth Shields
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 902727746X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
This book explores the origin and evolution of important grammatical categories of the Indo-European verb, including the markers of person, tense, number, aspect, and mood. Its central thesis is that many of these markers can be traced to original deictic particles which were incorporated into verbal structures in order to indicate the 'hic and nunc' and various degrees of remoteness from the 'hic and nunc'. The alterations to which these deictic elements were subject are viewed here in the context of an Indo-European language very different from Brugmannian Indo-European, many features of which, it is argued, appeared only in the period of dialectal development. This book challenges numerous traditional proposals about the Indo-European verb; all reconstructions contained in it are firmly based on extant data and are consonant with established principles of linguistic change.

A History of the English Language

A History of the English Language PDF Author: Richard Hogg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139451294
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
The history and development of English, from the earliest known writings to its status today as a dominant world language, is a subject of major importance to linguists and historians. In this book, a team of international experts cover the entire recorded history of the English language, outlining its development over fifteen centuries. With an emphasis on more recent periods, every key stage in the history of the language is covered, with full accounts of standardisation, names, the distribution of English in Britain and North America, and its global spread. New historical surveys of the crucial aspects of the language are presented, and historical changes that have affected English are treated as a continuing process, helping to explain the shape of the language today. This complete and up-to-date history of English will be indispensable to all advanced students, scholars and teachers in this prominent field.

All Things Morphology

All Things Morphology PDF Author: Sedigheh Moradi
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027259747
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
This book provides a view of where the field of morphology has been and where it is today within a particular theoretical framework, gathering up new and representative work in morphology by both eminent and emerging scholars, and touching on a very wide range of topics, approaches, and theoretical points of view. These seemingly disparate articles have a common touchstone in their focus on a word-based, paradigmatic approach to morphology. The chapters in this book elaborate on these basic themes, from the further exploration of paradigms, to studies involving words, stems, and affixes, to examinations of competition, inheritance, and defaults, to investigations of morphomes, to ways that morphology interacts with other parts of the language from phonology to sociolinguistics and applied linguistics. The editors and contributors dedicate this volume to Prof. Mark Aronoff for his profound influence on the field.

The Oxford Handbook of Computational Linguistics

The Oxford Handbook of Computational Linguistics PDF Author: Ruslan Mitkov
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019927634X
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 808

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Book Description
This handbook of computational linguistics, written for academics, graduate students and researchers, provides a state-of-the-art reference to one of the most active and productive fields in linguistics.