Author: Patience Epps
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110219050
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 441
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Book Description
In his (1921) book, Language, Sapir made the famous observation, “All grammars leak” (38). By this he meant that within the systematic paradigms, rules and routinized patterns of any grammar, we always find a few irregularities and surprises. The same can be said for linguistic typologies. Typological theories are critical tools for linguists, for exploring differences and similarities among languages, for learning about the cognitive factors and social practices that make languages the way they are, and for making predictions about other properties of languages that are members of a certain type. So what do we do when a typology leaks? This paper follows the spirit of such work as Aske (1989) on path types and Mithun and Chafe (1999) on grammatical relations types to understand the grammatical and functional motivations of language-internal typological diversity: that is, why and how a single language uses patterns and constructions of more than one type. .
Author: Viveka Velupillai
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027211981
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 540
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Book Description
Offers an introduction to linguistic typology that covers various linguistic domains from phonology and morphology over parts-of-speech, the NP and the VP, to simple and complex clauses, pragmatics and language change. This title also includes a discussion on methodological issues in typology.
Author: Andrea Ender
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110275686
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 550
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Book Description
The present volume is a broad overview of methods and methodologies in linguistics, illustrated with examples from concrete research. It collects insights gained from a broad range of linguistic sub-disciplines, ranging from core disciplines to topics in cross-linguistic and language-internal diversity or to contributions towards language, space and society. Given its critical and innovative nature, the volume is a valuable source for students and researchers of a broad range of linguistic interests.
Author: Aleksandra I︠U︡rʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198759517
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 929
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Book Description
The first volume to offer a thorough and systematic account of evidentiality and the expression of information source, Illustrated with extensive data from a range of typologically diverse languages, Introductory chapter offers practical advice for fieldworkers investigating evidentially, Interdisciplinary in nature with insights from typology, semantics, pragmatics, language description, anthropology, cognitive psychology, and psycholinguistics Book jacket.
Author: Andrej Malchukov
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110338815
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 886
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Book Description
Earlier empirical studies on valency have looked at the phenomenon either in individual languages or a small range of languages, or have concerned themselves with only small subparts of valency (e.g. transitivity, ditransitive constructions), leaving a lacuna that the present volume aims to fill by considering a wide range of valency phenomena across 30 languages from different parts of the world. The individual-language studies, each written by a specialist or group of specialists on that language and covering both valency patterns and valency alternations, are based on a questionnaire (reproduced in the volume) and an on-line freely accessible database, thus guaranteeing comparability of cross-linguistic results. In addition, introductory chapters provide the background to the project and discuss its main characteristics and selected results, while a series of featured articles by leading scholars who helped shape the field provide an outside perspective on the volume’s approach. The volume is essential reading for anyone interested in valency and argument structure, irrespective of theoretical persuasion, and will serve as a model for future descriptive studies of valency in individual languages.
Author: Isabelle Bril
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027205884
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 645
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Book Description
This collective volume explores clause-linkage strategies in a cross-linguistic perspective with greater emphasis on subordination. Part I presents some theoretical reassessment of syntactic terminologies and distinctive criteria for subordination, as well as typological methods based on sets of variables and statistics allowing cross-linguistic comparability. Part II deals with strategies relating to clause-chaining, conjunctive conjugations, converbial constructions, masdars. Part III centers on the interaction between the syntax, pragmatics, and semantics of clause-linking and subordination, in relation to informa-tional structure, to referential hierarchy, and correlative constructions. Part IV presents insights in the clause-linking and subordinating functions of some T.A.M. markers, verbal inflectional morphology and conjugation systems, which may also interact with informa-tional hierarchy, via the backgrounding effects and lack of illocutionary force of some aspect and mood forms. The volume is of particular interest to linguists and typologists working on clause-linkage systems and on the interface between syntax, pragmatics, and semantics.
Author: Kenneth L. Rehg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190610034
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 977
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Book Description
The endangered languages crisis is widely acknowledged among scholars who deal with languages and indigenous peoples as one of the most pressing problems facing humanity, posing moral, practical, and scientific issues of enormous proportions. Simply put, no area of the world is immune from language endangerment. The Oxford Handbook of Endangered Languages, in 39 chapters, provides a comprehensive overview of the efforts that are being undertaken to deal with this crisis. A comprehensive reference reflecting the breadth of the field, the Handbook presents in detail both the range of thinking about language endangerment and the variety of responses to it, and broadens understanding of language endangerment, language documentation, and language revitalization, encouraging further research. The Handbook is organized into five parts. Part 1, Endangered Languages, addresses the fundamental issues that are essential to understanding the nature of the endangered languages crisis. Part 2, Language Documentation, provides an overview of the issues and activities of concern to linguists and others in their efforts to record and document endangered languages. Part 3, Language Revitalization, includes approaches, practices, and strategies for revitalizing endangered and sleeping ("dormant") languages. Part 4, Endangered Languages and Biocultural Diversity, extends the discussion of language endangerment beyond its conventional boundaries to consider the interrelationship of language, culture, and environment, and the common forces that now threaten the sustainability of their diversity. Part 5, Looking to the Future, addresses a variety of topics that are certain to be of consequence in future efforts to document and revitalize endangered languages.
Author: Heiko Narrog
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192515357
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 493
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Book Description
This volume explores the way in which grammaticalization processes - whereby lexical words eventually become markers of grammatical categories - converge and differ across various types of language. While grammaticalization at its core is a unidirectional phenomenon, in which the same pathways of change are replicated across languages, certain language types and language areas have distinct preferences with respect to what they grammaticalize and how. Previous work has principally addressed this question with specific reference to languages of Southeast and East Asia that do not seem to grammaticalize paradigms of categories in the same manner as Indo-European languages, or form extensive grammaticalization chains. This volume takes a broader approach and proceeds systematically area by area: specialists in the field address the processes of grammaticalization in languages of Africa, Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and the Americas, and in creole languages. The studies reveal a number of unique pathways of grammaticalization in each language area, as well as identifying the universal shared features of the phenomenon.
Author: Gilles Authier
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110227738
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 396
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Book Description
This volume is a collection of articles concerned with the typology of valency and valence change in a large and diversified sample of languages that display ergative alignment in their grammar. The sample of languages represented in these descriptive contributions covers most of the geographical areas and linguistic families in which ergativity has been known to exist jointly with well-developed morphological voice, and some languages belonging to families in which ergativity or voice were not previously recognized or adequately described up to now.
Author: Jessica Coon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191059773
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1297
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Book Description
This volume offers theoretical and descriptive perspectives on the issues pertaining to ergativity, a grammatical patterning whereby direct objects are in some way treated like intransitive subjects, to the exclusion of transitive subjects. This pattern differs markedly from nominative/accusative marking whereby transitive and intransitive subjects are treated as one grammatical class, to the exclusion of direct objects. While ergativity is sometimes referred to as a typological characteristic of languages, research on the phenomenon has shown that languages do not fall clearly into one category or the other and that ergative characteristics are not consistent across languages. Chapters in this volume look at approaches to ergativity within generative, typological, and functional paradigms, as well as approaches to the core morphosyntactic building blocks of an ergative construction; related constructions such as the anti-passive; related properties such as split ergativity and word order; and extensions and permutations of ergativity, including nominalizations and voice systems. The volume also includes results from experimental investigations of ergativity, a relatively new area of research. A wide variety of languages are represented, both in the theoretical chapters and in the 16 case studies that are more descriptive in nature, attesting to both the pervasiveness and diversity of ergative patterns.
