Systems of Nominal Classification

Systems of Nominal Classification PDF Author: Gunter Senft
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521770750
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
A major linguistic study of nominal classification systems across a variety of languages, first published in 2000.

Systems of Nominal Classification

Systems of Nominal Classification PDF Author: Gunter Senft
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521770750
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
A major linguistic study of nominal classification systems across a variety of languages, first published in 2000.

The Diachrony of Classification Systems

The Diachrony of Classification Systems PDF Author: William B. McGregor
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027264139
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Classification is a popular topic in typological, descriptive and theoretical linguistics. This volume is the first to deal specifically with the diachrony of linguistic systems of classification. It comprises original papers that examine the ways in which linguistic classification systems arise, change, and dissipate in both natural circumstances and in circumstances of attrition. The role of diffusion in such processes is explored, as well as the question of what can be diffused. The volume is not restricted to nominal systems of classification, but also includes papers dealing with the less well-known phenomenon of verbal classification. Languages from a wide spread of world regions are examined, including Africa, Amazonia, Australia, Eurasia, Oceania, and Mesoamerica. The volume will be of interest to linguistic typologists, descriptive linguists, historical linguists, and grammaticalization theorists.

Nominal Classification

Nominal Classification PDF Author: Marcin Kilarski
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027270902
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
This book offers the first comprehensive survey of the study of gender and classifiers throughout the history of Western linguistics. Based on an analysis of over 200 genetically and typologically diverse languages, the author shows that these seemingly arbitrary and redundant categories play in fact a central role in the lexicon, grammar and the organization of discourse. As a result, the often contradictory approaches to their functionality and semantic motivation encapsulate the evolving conceptions of such issues as cognitive and cultural correlates of linguistic structure, the diverse functions of grammatical categories, linguistic complexity, agreement phenomena and the interplay between lexicon and grammar. The combination of a typological and historiographic perspective adopted here allows the reader to appreciate the detail and insight of earlier, supposedly ‘prescientific’ accounts in light of the data now available and to examine contemporary discussions in the context of prevailing conceptions in the study of language at different points in its history since antiquity.

Systems of Norminal Classification: a Concluding Discussion

Systems of Norminal Classification: a Concluding Discussion PDF Author:
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 17

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Book Description


Numeral Classifier Systems

Numeral Classifier Systems PDF Author: Pamela Downing
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027226148
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
Numeral Classifier Systems considers the functional significance of the Japanese numeral system, its conclusions based on a corpus of 500 uses of classifier constructions drawn from oral and written Japanese texts. Interestingly, although the Japanese system appears to conform at least superficially to universalistic predictions about its semantic structure, this study reports that in actual usage, the semantic role of classifiers is slight — only very rarely do they carry any lexical information unavailable from the context or the noun with which the classifier occurs. It does appear, however, that the system has an important role to play in providing pronoun-like anaphoric elements and in marking pragmatic distinctions such as the individuatedness of referents and the newness of numerical information. For these reasons, the classifier system is deeply involved in a number of subsystems of Japanese grammar, and the demise of the system (sometimes rumored to be impending) would have substantial implications for the structure of the language as a whole.

The Dynamics of Nominal Classification

The Dynamics of Nominal Classification PDF Author: Ruth Singer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1614513694
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
The use of grammatical gender in the Australian language Mawng calls into question prevailing ideas about the functions of nominal classification systems. Mawng’s gender system has a strong semantic basis and plays an important role in the construction of meaning in discourse. Gender agreement in verbs is frequently lexicalized, creating idioms called lexicalised agreement verbs that are structurally similar to noun-verb idioms. This book will be of interest to anyone interested in nominal classification or cross-linguistic approaches to idioms.

Explaining Language Structure Through Systems Interaction

Explaining Language Structure Through Systems Interaction PDF Author: Zygmunt Frajzyngier
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027229632
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
This book proposes a framework for describing languages through the description of relationships among lexicon, morphology, syntax, and phonology. The framework is based on the notion of formal coding means; the principle of functional transparency; the notion of functional domains; and the notion of systems interaction in the coding of functional domains. The study is based on original analyses of cross-linguistic data.The fundamental finding of the study is that different languages may code different functional domains, which must be discovered by analyzing the formal means available in each language. The first part of the book proposes a methodology for discovering functional domains and the second part describes the properties of various functional domains. The book presents new cross-linguistic analyses of theoretical issues including agreement; phenomena attributed to government; nominal classification; prerequisites for and implications of linear order coding; and defining characteristics of lexical categories. The study also contributes new analyses of specific problems in individual languages.

Classifiers

Classifiers PDF Author: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 9780199264667
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 535

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Book Description
Almost all languages have some ways of categorizing nouns. Languages of South-East Asia have classifiers used with numerals, while most Indo-European languages have two or three genders. They can have a similar meaning and one can develop from the other. This book provides a comprehensive and original analysis of noun categorization devices all over the world. It will interest typologists, those working in the fields of morphosyntactic variation and lexical semantics, as well as anthropologists and all other scholars interested in the mechanisms of human cognition.

The Categorization of Spatial Entities in Language and Cognition

The Categorization of Spatial Entities in Language and Cognition PDF Author: Michel Aurnague
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027223746
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
Despite a growing interest for space in language, most research has focused on spatial markers specifying the static or dynamic relationships among entities (verbs, prepositions, postpositions, case markings ). Little attention has been paid to the very properties of spatial entities, their status in linguistic descriptions, and their implications for spatial cognition and its development in children. This topic is at the center of this book, that opens a new field by sketching some major theoretical and methodological directions for future research on spatial entities. Brought together linguistic descriptions of spatial systems, formal accounts of linguistic data, and experimental findings from psycholinguistic studies, all couched within a wide cross-linguistic perspective. Such an interdisciplinary approach provides a rich overview of the many questions that remain unanswered in relation to spatial entities, while also throwing a new light on previous research focusing on related topics concerning space and/or the relation between language and cognition.

Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity I

Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity I PDF Author: Francesca Di Garbo
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961101787
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
The many facets of grammatical gender remain one of the most fruitful areas of linguistic research, and pose fascinating questions about the origins and development of complexity in language. The present work is a two-volume collection of 13 chapters on the topic of grammatical gender seen through the prism of linguistic complexity. The contributions discuss what counts as complex and/or simple in grammatical gender systems, whether the distribution of gender systems across the world’s languages relates to the language ecology and social history of speech communities. Contributors demonstrate how the complexity of gender systems can be studied synchronically, both in individual languages and over large cross-linguistic samples, and diachronically, by exploring how gender systems change over time. In addition to three chapters on the theoretical foundations of gender complexity, volume one contains six chapters on grammatical gender and complexity in individual languages and language families of Africa, New Guinea, and South Asia. This volume is complemented by volume two, which consists of three chapters providing diachronic and typological case studies, followed by a final chapter discussing old and new theoretical and empirical challenges in the study of the dynamics of gender complexity.