Tonal Morphology of the Setswana Verb

Tonal Morphology of the Setswana Verb PDF Author: A. M. Chebanne
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : South Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description

Tonal Morphology of the Setswana Verb

Tonal Morphology of the Setswana Verb PDF Author: A. M. Chebanne
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : South Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description


Tone and Inflection

Tone and Inflection PDF Author: Enrique L. Palancar
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110450364
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
Tone is about melody and meaning, inflection is about grammar, and this book is about a bit of both. The contributions to this volume study possible and sometimes complex ways in which the tones of a language engage in the expression of grammatical categories. There is a widespread conception that tone is a lexical phenomenon only. This is partly a consequence of the main interest in tone coming from phonology, while the main interest in inflection has stemmed from segmental morphology. Similarly, textbooks on inflection and textbooks on tone give very few examples of the inflectional use of tone, and such examples are often the same ones or too similar. This volume aims to broaden our understanding of the link between tone and inflection by showing that there is more to tone than meets the eye. The book includes general chapters as well as case studies on lesser known languages of Asia, Africa and Papua New Guinea, with a special focus on the Oto-Manguean languages, a large and diverse linguistic stock of Mexico that inspired Kenneth Pike’s 1948 seminal work on tone. Most of the contributions to this volume provide first-hand data from recent fieldwork that stems from important language documentation activities.

Intonation in African Tone Languages

Intonation in African Tone Languages PDF Author: Laura J. Downing
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110503522
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
This volume brings together two under-investigated areas of intonation typology. While tone languages make up to 70 percent of the world’s languages, only few have been explored for intonation. And even though one third of the world’s languages are spoken in Africa, and most sub-Saharan languages are tone languages, recent collections on tone and intonation typology have almost entirely ignored African languages. This book aims to fill this gap.

The Grammar of Focus

The Grammar of Focus PDF Author: Georges Rebuschi
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027227454
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
The grammar of focus has been studied in generative grammar from its inception. It has been the subject of intense, detailed cross-linguistic investigation for over 20 years, particularly within the Principles and Parameters framework. It is appropriate at this point, therefore, to take stock. Appraisal at this particular point is all the more legitimate because it comes at a time of general evaluation of the results of the profound activity that has characterized the Principles and Parameters framework. This general assessment has produced a radical new direction within that framework. The volume starts off with an introductory chapter that aims to provide an outline for the assessment, to be followed by an overview of the evolution of the study of focus in generative grammar, and a recapitulation of the principal issues associated with focus. These issues are taken up in the remaining chapters of the book, where various grammatical means of marking focus (as well as grammaticalization of focus marking) are analyzed in a wide variety of languages.

Tense and Aspect in Bantu

Tense and Aspect in Bantu PDF Author: Derek Nurse
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191553603
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 423

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Book Description
Derek Nurse looks at variations in the form and function of tense and aspect in Bantu, a branch of Niger-Congo, the world's largest language phylum. Bantu languages are spoken in central, eastern, and southern sub-Saharan Africa south of a line between Nigeria and Somalia. By current estimates there are between 250 and 600 of them, as yet neither adequately classified nor fully described. Professor Nurse's account is based on data from more than 200 Bantu languages and varieties, a representative sample of which is freely available on the publisher's website. He devotes substantial chapters to the analysis and comparison of the different tense and aspect systems found in Bantu. He also examines the verbal categories with which they interact, including negation and focus. Synchronic and diachronic perspectives are interwoven throughout the book. Following a brief history of Bantu over the last five thousand years, the final two chapters look systematically at the history of tense and aspect in Bantu. The first deals with the reconstruction of the earlier forms from which contemporary structures, morphemes, and categories are derived, and the second with the processes of change, including grammaticalization, by means of which older analytical structures and independent lexical items moved as they became incorporated as grammatical inflections and categories.

Monosyllables

Monosyllables PDF Author: Thomas Stolz
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3050060352
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Dieser Band versammelt zehn Aufsätze, in denen Monosyllaba in verschiedenen Sprachen Asiens, Afrikas und Europas aus unterschiedlichsten Perspektiven betrachtet werden. Einsilber sind in fast allen Sprachen der Welt vertreten. Sprachen wie das Chinesische bevorzugen bekanntermaßen diesen Silbentyp. In anderen, wie z. B. den Bantusprachen, muss ein Wort aus mindestens zwei Silben bestehen. In den europäischen Sprachen rücken Einsilber gerade erst in den Fokus linguistischen Interesses. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes beschäftigen sich sowohl mit phonetischen und phonologischen als auch mit morphologischen und funktionalen Aspekten von Einsilbern. Der Fokus richtet sich auf das Zusammenwirken von Silben- und Wortstruktur, wie auch auf die phonologischen und morphologischen Regeln der Wohlgeformtheit. Es wird sowohl die Entwicklung von Einsilbern in Sprachen, die diesen Silbentyp bevorzugen (ostasiatische Sprachen, aber auch Dänisch), als auch ihre spezielle Rolle als Ausnahmeform innerhalb des Lexikons und bei speziellen Wortformen wie z.B. den Imperativen diskutiert. Methodisch reicht die Spannweite von experimenteller Phonetik, über quantitative Linguistik und Analysen von Einzelsprachen bis hin zu großangelegten typologischen Vergleichen.

Applicative Constructions in the World’s Languages

Applicative Constructions in the World’s Languages PDF Author: Fernando Zuniga
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110730952
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1100

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Book Description
This book presents a state-of-the-art cross-linguistic survey of applicative constructions in the functional-typological tradition. An introductory section sets the terminological and analytical stage, presents the methodology used by the different chapters, and provides a typological outlook. The individual contributions address the morphological, syntactic and semantic variation of applicatives, as well as their discourse-pragmatic function. They cover all major language families and some isolates that feature some illuminating version of the phenomenon, paying special attention to language-internal variation and unity. The phenomena surveyed range from those instances usually considered canonical (valency-increasing, syntactically and semantically predictable, productive, dedicated, and optional) to those occasionally understudied in descriptive works and frequently neglected in comparative studies (valency-neutral, rather unpredictable, lexicalized, syncretic, and/or obligatory).

Grammaticalization Scenarios from Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific

Grammaticalization Scenarios from Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific PDF Author: Walter Bisang
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110712792
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 634

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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.

Theory and description in African Linguistics

Theory and description in African Linguistics PDF Author: Emily Clem
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961102058
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 788

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Book Description
The papers in this volume were presented at the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics at UC Berkeley in 2016. The papers offer new descriptions of African languages and propose novel theoretical analyses of them. The contributions span topics in phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and reflect the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa. Four papers in the volume examine Areal Features and Linguistic Reconstruction in Africa, and were presented at a special workshop on this topic held alongside the general session of ACAL.

Number in the World's Languages

Number in the World's Languages PDF Author: Paolo Acquaviva
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110619547
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 822

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Book Description
The strong development in research on grammatical number in recent years has created a need for a unified perspective. The different frameworks, the ramifications of the theoretical questions, and the diversity of phenomena across typological systems, make this a significant challenge. This book addresses the challenge with a series of in-depth analyses of number across a typologically diverse sample, unified by a common set of descriptive and analytic questions from a semantic, morphological, syntactic, and discourse perspective. Each case study is devoted to a single language, or in a few cases to a language group. They are written by specialists who can rely on first-hand data or on material of difficult access, and can place the phenomena in the context of the respective system. The studies are preceded and concluded by critical overviews which frame the discussion and identify the main results and open questions. With specialist chapters breaking new ground, this book will help number specialists relate their results to other theoretical and empirical domains, and it will provide a reliable guide to all linguists and other researchers interested in number.