Syntactic Effects of Morphological Change

Syntactic Effects of Morphological Change PDF Author: David Lightfoot
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780199250691
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
Discussing the nature and causes of language change, the authors of this text consider how far changes in morphology cause changes in syntax, and examine such phenomena from the perspective of syntactic and psycholinguistic theory.

Syntactic Effects of Morphological Change

Syntactic Effects of Morphological Change PDF Author: David Lightfoot
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780199250691
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
Discussing the nature and causes of language change, the authors of this text consider how far changes in morphology cause changes in syntax, and examine such phenomena from the perspective of syntactic and psycholinguistic theory.

How New Languages Emerge

How New Languages Emerge PDF Author: David Lightfoot
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139448951
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
New languages are constantly emerging, as existing languages diverge into different forms. To explain this fascinating process, we need to understand how languages change and how they emerge in children. In this pioneering study, David Lightfoot explains how languages come into being, arguing that children are the driving force. He explores how new systems arise, how they are acquired by children, and how adults and children play different, complementary roles in language change. Lightfoot makes an important distinction between 'external language' (language as it exists in the world), and 'internal language' (language as represented in an individual's brain). By examining the interplay between the two, he shows how children are 'cue-based' learners, who scan their external linguistic environment for new structures, making sense of the world outside in order to build their internal language. Engaging and original, this book offers an interesting account of language acquisition, variation and change.

The Final-Over-Final Condition

The Final-Over-Final Condition PDF Author: Michelle Sheehan
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262342022
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
An examination of the evidence for and the theoretical implications of a universal word order constraint, with data from a wide range of languages. This book presents evidence for a universal word order constraint, the Final-over-Final Condition (FOFC), and discusses the theoretical implications of this phenomenon. FOFC is a syntactic condition that disallows structures where a head-initial phrase is contained in a head-final phrase in the same extended projection/domain. The authors argue that FOFC is a linguistic universal, not just a strong tendency, and not a constraint on processing. They discuss the effects of the universal in various domains, including the noun phrase, the adjective phrase, the verb phrase, and the clause. The book draws on data from a wide range of languages, including Hindi, Turkish, Basque, Finnish, Afrikaans, German, Hungarian, French, English, Italian, Romanian, Arabic, Hebrew, Mandarin, Pontic Greek, Bagirmi, Dholuo, and Thai. FOFC, the authors argue, is important because it is the only known example of a word order asymmetry pertaining to the order of heads. As such, it has significant repercussions for theories connecting the narrow syntax to linear order.

The Cambridge Handbook of Morphology

The Cambridge Handbook of Morphology PDF Author: Andrew Hippisley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316712451
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1442

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Book Description
The Cambridge Handbook of Morphology describes the diversity of morphological phenomena in the world's languages, surveying the methodologies by which these phenomena are investigated and the theoretical interpretations that have been proposed to explain them. The Handbook provides morphologists with a comprehensive account of the interlocking issues and hypotheses that drive research in morphology; for linguists generally, it presents current thought on the interface of morphology with other grammatical components and on the significance of morphology for understanding language change and the psychology of language; for students of linguistics, it is a guide to the present-day landscape of morphological science and to the advances that have brought it to its current state; and for readers in other fields (psychology, philosophy, computer science, and others), it reveals just how much we know about systematic relations of form to content in a language's words - and how much we have yet to learn.

Diachronic Clues to Synchronic Grammar

Diachronic Clues to Synchronic Grammar PDF Author: Eric Fuß
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027295204
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
This volume emphasizes a new line of thinking in generative grammar which acknowledges that certain synchronic properties of languages can only be fully understood if diachronic data is taken into consideration. The central topics addressed in this collection of papers are (1) a critical assessment of the hypothesis that certain apparently synchronic generalizations are actually the result of the mechanisms of language change, (2) an inquiry into how diachronic data can be used to evaluate and shape formal analyses of particular synchronic phenomena. Reviving the interest in diachronic explanations for synchronic data, the contributions provide novel and original diachronic accounts of phenomena that up to now have escaped a deeper synchronic explanation, including the nature of EPP features, gaps in the distribution of complementizer agreement, and counterexamples to the generalization that rich verbal inflection correlates with verb movement.

The Handbook of the History of English

The Handbook of the History of English PDF Author: Ans van Kemenade
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405187867
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 678

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Book Description
The Handbook of the History of English is a collection of articles written by leading specialists in the field that focus on the theoretical issues behind the facts of the changing English language. organizes the theoretical issues behind the facts of the changing English language innovatively and applies recent insights to old problems surveys the history of English from the perspective of structural developments in areas such as phonology, prosody, morphology, syntax, semantics, language variation, and dialectology offers readers a comprehensive overview of the various theoretical perspectives available to the study of the history of English and sets new objectives for further research

Information Structure and Syntactic Change in the History of English

Information Structure and Syntactic Change in the History of English PDF Author: Anneli Meurman-Solin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199860211
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
The unifying topic of this volume is the role of information structure, broadly conceived, as it interacts with the other levels of linguistic description, syntax, morphology, prosody, semantics and pragmatics.

Syntactic Processing

Syntactic Processing PDF Author: Carlos Acuña-Fariña
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000911047
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
This book provides an overview of the structures, topics and main theories of syntactic processing. It covers the last 40 years of sentence-level psycholinguistic research and debates and makes it accessible to both theoretical linguists and experimental psychologists. Tying linguistically relevant issues to psycholinguistic theory, this book: Covers the processing of the grammatical phenomena adjunction, agreement and gap filling and discusses the relationship between grammars and parsers Discusses experimental work and theories, demonstrating how psychologists have made real strides in understanding language and how studying the processing of syntactic structure is the same as studying the nature of language Explores the key theories of psycholinguistics, including recent developments Explains the different methodologies of sentence processing, such as eye-tracking and electroencephalography Bridging the gap between psycholinguistic research and the study of language, this book is essential reading for advanced students and scholars of linguistics and experimental psycholinguistics as well as cognitive science and psychology.

Syntactic Features and the Limits of Syntactic Change

Syntactic Features and the Limits of Syntactic Change PDF Author: Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192568744
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
This volume brings together the latest diachronic research on syntactic features and their role in restricting syntactic change. The chapters address a central theoretical issue in diachronic syntax: whether syntactic variation can always be attributed to differences in the features of items in the lexicon, as the Borer-Chomsky conjecture proposes. In answering this question, all the chapters develop analyses of syntactic change couched within a formalist framework in which rich hierarchical structures and abstract features of various kinds play an important role. The first three parts of the volume explore the different domains of the clause, namely the C-domain, the T-domain and the ?P/VP-domain respectively, while chapters in the final part are concerned with establishing methodology in diachronic syntax and modelling linguistic correspondences. The contributors draw on extensive data from a large number of languages and dialects, including several that have received little attention in the literature on diachronic syntax, such as Romeyka, a Greek variety spoken in Turkey, and Middle Low German, previously spoken in northern Germany. Other languages are explored from a fresh theoretical perspective, including Hungarian, Icelandic, and Austronesian languages. The volume sheds light not only on specific syntactic changes from a cross-linguistic perspective but also on broader issues in language change and linguistic theory.

English Historical Linguistics 2006: Syntax and morphology

English Historical Linguistics 2006: Syntax and morphology PDF Author: Maurizio Gotti
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027248109
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
The papers selected for this volume were first presented at the 14th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (Bergamo, 2006). At that important event, alongside studies of phonology, lexis, semantics and dialectology (presented in two companion volumes in this series), many innovative contributions focused on syntax and morphology. A carefully peer-reviewed selection, including one of the plenary lectures, appears here in print for the first time, bearing witness to the quality of the scholarly interest in this field of research. In all the contributions, well-established methods combine with new theoretical approaches in an attempt to shed more light on phenomena that have hitherto remained unexplored, or have only just begun to be investigated. State-of-the-art tools, such as electronic corpora and concordancing software, are employed consistently, ensuring a methodological homogeneity of the contributions.