A Grammar of the Kuku Yalanji Language of North Queensland

A Grammar of the Kuku Yalanji Language of North Queensland PDF Author: Elisabeth Patz
Publisher: Pacific Linguistics
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description

A Grammar of the Kuku Yalanji Language of North Queensland

A Grammar of the Kuku Yalanji Language of North Queensland PDF Author: Elisabeth Patz
Publisher: Pacific Linguistics
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description


A Grammar of the Kuku Yalanji Language of North Queensland

A Grammar of the Kuku Yalanji Language of North Queensland PDF Author: Elisabeth Patz
Publisher: Pacific Linguistics
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description


A Grammar of Warrongo

A Grammar of Warrongo PDF Author: Tasaku Tsunoda
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110238772
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 783

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Book Description
Warrongo is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language that used to be spoken in northeast Australia. This volume is largely based on the rich data recorded from the last fluent speaker. It details the phonology, morphology and syntax of the language. In particular, it provides a truly scrutinizing description of syntactic ergativity - a phenomenon that is rare among the world's language. It also shows that, unlike some other Australian languages, Warrongo has noun phrases that are configurational. Overall this volume shows what can be documented of a language that has only one speaker.

The Evolution of Grammar

The Evolution of Grammar PDF Author: Joan Bybee
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226086658
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Joan Bybee and her colleagues present a new theory of the evolution of grammar that links structure and meaning in a way that directly challenges most contemporary versions of generative grammar. This study focuses on the use and meaning of grammatical markers of tense, aspect, and modality and identifies a universal set of grammatical categories. The authors demonstrate that the semantic content of these categories evolves gradually and that this process of evolution is strikingly similar across unrelated languages. Through a survey of seventy-six languages in twenty-five different phyla, the authors show that the same paths of change occur universally and that movement along these paths is in one direction only. This analysis reveals that lexical substance evolves into grammatical substance through various mechanisms of change, such as metaphorical extension and the conventionalization of implicature. Grammaticization is always accompanied by an increase in frequency of the grammatical marker, providing clear evidence that language use is a major factor in the evolution of synchronic language states. The Evolution of Grammar has important implications for the development of language and for the study of cognitive processes in general.

The Languages and Linguistics of Australia

The Languages and Linguistics of Australia PDF Author: Harold Koch
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110279770
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 523

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Book Description
The Languages and Linguistics of Australia: A Comprehensive Guide is part of the multi-volume reference work on the languages and linguistics of the continents of the world. The volume provides a thorough overview of Australian languages, including their linguistic structures, their genetic relationships, and issues of language maintenance and revitalisation. Australian English, Aboriginal English and other contact varieties are also discussed.

Discourse and Grammar in Australian Languages

Discourse and Grammar in Australian Languages PDF Author: Ilana Mushin
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027290342
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Discourse and Grammar in Australian Languages is the first major survey to address the issue of the effects of information packaging on Australian languages, widely known for nonconfigurationality. The papers are based on individual fieldwork and describe a wide range of Australian languages of different types, ranging from the polysynthetic languages of Arnhem Land and the Kimberley to the classical types represented by Walpiri. Topics covered include the pragmatics of information exchange, the interaction of noun class marking with polarity and referentiality, the effects of specificity on argument indexing, the discourse uses of the ergative case, the contribution of pronouns to NP reference, the interaction of tense and aspect clitics with information structure, clause-initial position, and discourse and grammar in Australian languages. The volume will appeal to scholars interested in discourse, typology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

Basic Linguistic Theory Volume 3

Basic Linguistic Theory Volume 3 PDF Author: R. M. W. Dixon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199571090
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 568

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Book Description
R.M.W. Dixon provides a comprehensive guide to the nature of human languages and their description and analysis. The books are a one-stop text for undergraduate and graduate students, the outcome of a lifetime's immersion in every aspect of language.

Languages of Australia’s First Peoples in Narrative

Languages of Australia’s First Peoples in Narrative PDF Author: David Rose
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350413917
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
Celebrating the diverse languages of Australia's First Peoples, this book presents stories told by elders in eighteen languages from around the continent, and explores their patterns of meaning. The stories recount the experiences of the tellers and histories of their communities, from tales of anti-colonial resistance to origin stories of the Dreaming. The book aims to make the languages accessible and engaging through the voices of the elders, while building readers' knowledge about language and language learning. It opens with some basic language knowledge for reading the stories. Each chapter then begins with the cultural and historical contexts of the stories, which are first previewed in English translation, then presented sentence-by-sentence, setting out the original sounds and wordings, glossed with plain English. Extracts are selected to illustrate patterns of meanings that are characteristic of each language. The final chapter sums up the various meaning patterns the stories use, and interprets their evolution in the light of First Peoples' deep histories, as recorded by archaeology and traditional knowledge. The book will be useful for language learning programs in communities and schools, for researchers of language and language teaching, and for any reader with an interest in the languages and cultures of Australia's First Peoples.

Morphology and Language History

Morphology and Language History PDF Author: Claire Bowern
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027290962
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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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.

Noun Phrases in Australian Languages

Noun Phrases in Australian Languages PDF Author: Dana Louagie
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501512935
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
This book presents a first comprehensive typological analysis of noun phrases in Australian languages, covering the domains of classification, qualification, quantification, determination and constituency. The analysis is based on a representative sample of 100 languages. Among other points, the results call into question the classic idea that Australian languages tend to lack phrasal structures in the nominal domain, with over two thirds of the languages showing evidence for phrasehood. Moreover, it is argued that it may be more interesting to typologise languages on the basis of where and how they allow phrasal structure, rather than on the basis of a yes-no answer to the question of constituency. The analysis also shows that a determiner slot can be identified in about half of the languages, even though they generally lack 'classic' determiner features like obligatory use in particular contexts or a restriction to one determiner per NP. Special attention is given to elements, which can be used both inside and beyond determiner slots, demonstrating how part of speech and functional structure do not always align. The book is of interest to researchers documenting Australian languages, as well as to typologists and theorists.