Topics in Oceanic Morphosyntax

Topics in Oceanic Morphosyntax PDF Author: Claire Moyse-Faurie
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110259915
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
This monograph is a collection of selected papers on Oceanic languages. For the first time, aspects of the morphology and syntax of Oceanic languages such as the encoding of sentence types, the structure of the noun phrase, noun incorporation, constituent order, and ergative vs. accusative alignment are discussed from a comparative point of view, thus drawing attention to genetic, areal and language-specific features. The individual papers are based on the field work of the authors on lesser-described and endangered languages and are basically descriptive studies. At the same time they also explore the theoretical implications of the data presented and analyzed, as well as the historical development of certain morpho-syntactic phenomena, without basing these explorations on a single theoretical framework. The book provides new insights into the morphosyntactic structures of Oceanic languages and is of interest primarily for linguists working on Austronesian, in particular Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian languages, but also for typologists and linguists working on language change.

Topics in Oceanic Morphosyntax

Topics in Oceanic Morphosyntax PDF Author: Claire Moyse-Faurie
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110259915
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Get Book Here

Book Description
This monograph is a collection of selected papers on Oceanic languages. For the first time, aspects of the morphology and syntax of Oceanic languages such as the encoding of sentence types, the structure of the noun phrase, noun incorporation, constituent order, and ergative vs. accusative alignment are discussed from a comparative point of view, thus drawing attention to genetic, areal and language-specific features. The individual papers are based on the field work of the authors on lesser-described and endangered languages and are basically descriptive studies. At the same time they also explore the theoretical implications of the data presented and analyzed, as well as the historical development of certain morpho-syntactic phenomena, without basing these explorations on a single theoretical framework. The book provides new insights into the morphosyntactic structures of Oceanic languages and is of interest primarily for linguists working on Austronesian, in particular Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian languages, but also for typologists and linguists working on language change.

A grammar of Vamale

A grammar of Vamale PDF Author: Jean Rohleder
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961104794
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Vamale is an endangered South Oceanic > Northern New Caledonian language, spoken by around 180 people on the northeastern coast of Grande Terre. This grammar was written as a PhD dissertation, on the basis of 11 months of fieldwork funded by ELDP. The data consists both of elicitation and relatively free interviews, as well as recordings of ceremonial speeches and casual conversations. ELAR contains open-access archive of all recordings and a dictionary, as well as a FLEx database in which many examples can be found in context. The appendix includes three texts, an oral history account of the 1917 colonial war, a traditional fable, and a longer modern retelling of a legend. The grammar intends to give a general overview of Vamale to a general linguistics audience. Its focus on syntax, and comparison with related languages should particularly interest Oceanists and areal typologists. With a dedicated chapter on the community's history and cultural information throughout the book, this account hopes to show the beauty and wealth of both the Vamale language and culture.

Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective

Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective PDF Author: Heiko Narrog
Publisher:
ISBN: 019879584X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 493

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Book Description
This volume explores the way in which grammaticalization processes converge and differ across languages and language areas. Chapters systemically explore these processes languages of Africa, Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and the Americas, and in creole languages, revealing a number of unique pathways as well as shared features.

World Lexicon of Grammaticalization

World Lexicon of Grammaticalization PDF Author: Tania Kouteva
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107136245
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 647

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Book Description
Based on analysis of more than 1,000 languages, this volume reconstructs more than 500 processes of grammatical change in the languages of the world.

Variation in P

Variation in P PDF Author: Jacopo Garzonio
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190931248
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Variation in P is an essential follow-up to the seminal proposals of the generative tradition regarding prepositional syntax. Recent research shows that prepositional phrases have a complex internal structure, and that the grammatical encoding of locative meaning has its own place in universal grammar. The papers collected in the first part of this volume not only test these proposals against new comparative data, but also shed light on the relation between spatial expressions and other semantic relations like possession. The second part of the volume explores the role of prepositions in non-spatial environments as well as in more general phenomena like verbal affixation, ellipsis, and complementation. By drawing on evidence from less studied languages, and by considering prepositional syntax in interaction with clausal syntax as well as within prepositional phrases, Variation in P refines and develops theories introduced by previous generative studies.

Prominence in Austronesian

Prominence in Austronesian PDF Author: Bethwyn Evans
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110730812
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
The cognitive concept of prominence is increasingly seen as key to understanding the organisation of grammar. This volume explores the encoding of prominence in languages from across the Austronesian family. The contributions show how prominence is relevant to understanding asymmetries at different levels of grammatical structure, from discourse and information structure to argument expression and socio-pragmatics. Moreover, common themes across contributions point to crosslinguistic tendencies that underpin the conventionalisation of communicative patterns for coordinating interlocutors' attention, and to points of departure for further crosslinguistic exploration of how grammatical asymmetries can be explained in terms of prominence.

A Grammar of Rapa Nui

A Grammar of Rapa Nui PDF Author: Paulus Kieviet
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3946234755
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 666

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Book Description
This book is a comprehensive description of the grammar of Rapa Nui, the Polynesian language spoken on Easter Island. After an introductory chapter, the grammar deals with phonology, word classes, the noun phrase, possession, the verb phrase, verbal and nonverbal clauses, mood and negation, and clause combinations. The phonology of Rapa Nui reveals certain issues of typological interest, such as the existence of strict conditions on the phonological shape of words, word-final devoicing, and reduplication patterns motivated by metrical constraints. For Polynesian languages, the distinction between nouns and verbs in the lexicon has often been denied; in this grammar it is argued that this distinction is needed for Rapa Nui. Rapa Nui has sometimes been characterised as an ergative language; this grammar shows that it is unambiguously accusative. Subject and object marking depend on an interplay of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic factors. Other distinctive features of the language include the existence of a ‘neutral’ aspect marker, a serial verb construction, the emergence of copula verbs, a possessive-relative construction, and a tendency to maximise the use of the nominal domain. Rapa Nui’s relationship to the other Polynesian languages is a recurring theme in this grammar; the relationship to Tahitian (which has profoundly influenced Rapa Nui) especially deserves attention. The grammar is supplemented with a number of interlinear texts, two maps and a subject index.

Syntactic architecture and its consequences I

Syntactic architecture and its consequences I PDF Author: András Bárány
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961102759
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 562

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Book Description
This volume collects novel contributions to comparative generative linguistics that “rethink” existing approaches to an extensive range of phenomena, domains, and architectural questions in linguistic theory. At the heart of the contributions is the tension between descriptive and explanatory adequacy which has long animated generative linguistics and which continues to grow thanks to the increasing amount and diversity of data available to us. The chapters address research questions on the relation of syntax to other aspects of grammar and linguistics more generally, including studies on language acquisition, variation and change, and syntactic interfaces. Many of these contributions show the influence of research by Ian Roberts and collaborators and give the reader a sense of the lively nature of current discussion of topics in synchronic and diachronic comparative syntax ranging from the core verbal domain to higher, propositional domains.

Nominalization in Asian Languages

Nominalization in Asian Languages PDF Author: Foong Ha Yap
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027287244
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 818

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Book Description
Research on nominalization, a process that gives rise to referring expressions, has always played a central role in linguistic investigations. Over the years there has also been growing evidence that nominalization constructions often extend to non-referential domains. They participate in noun-modifying expressions (e.g. genitive and relative clauses), subordinate clauses and topic constructions, finite structures with the nominalizers reanalyzed as TAM markers, and stance constructions with evaluative, attitudinal, evidential and epistemic overtones. This volume brings together historical and crosslinguistic evidence from more than 20 different languages representing six different language families spanning the Asian continent and the Pacific and Indian oceans to elucidate the strategies and grammaticalization pathways that give rise to both referential and non-referential uses of nominalization constructions. This collection highlights the diversity of strategies and at the same time the robust cyclical nature of change within and across languages. The combined diachronic and typological analyses in this volume are particularly valuable for linguistic research on diachronic morphosyntax and linguistic ‘universals’, and are also an important supplementary cross-referencing tool for linguistic investigations of versatile and ubiquitous morphemes in under-documented languages.

Noun phrases in early Germanic languages

Noun phrases in early Germanic languages PDF Author: Kristin Bech
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961104670
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
On the premise that syntactic variation is constrained by factors that may not always be immediately obvious, this volume explores various perspectives on the nominal syntax in the early Germanic languages and the syntactic diversity they display. The fact that these languages are relatively well attested and documented allows for individual cases studies as well as comparative studies. Due to their well-observable common ancestry at the time of their earliest attestations, they moreover permit close-up comparative investigations into closely related languages. Besides the purely empirical aspects, the volume also explores the methodological side of diagnosing, classifying and documenting the details of syntactic diversity. The volume starts with a description by Alexander Pfaff and Gerlof Bouma of the principles underlying the Noun Phrases in Early Germanic Languages (NPEGL) database, before Alexander Pfaff presents the Patternization method for measuring syntactic diversity. Kristin Bech, Hannah Booth, Kersti Börjars, Tine Breban, Svetlana Petrova, and George Walkden carry out a pilot study of noun phrase variation in Old English, Old High German, Old Icelandic, and Old Saxon. Kristin Bech then considers the development of Old English noun phrases with quantifiers meaning ‘many’. Alexandra Rehn’s study is concerned with the inflection of stacked adjectives in Old High German and Alemannic. Old High German is also the topic of Svetlana Petrova’s study, which looks at inflectional patterns of attributive adjectives. With Hannah Booth’s contribution we move to Old Icelandic and the use of the proprial article as a topic management device. Juliane Tiemann investigates adjective position in Old Norwegian. Alexander Pfaff and George Walkden then take a broader view of adjectival articles in early Germanic, before Alexander Pfaff rounds off the volume with a study of a peculiar class of adjectives, the so-called positional predicates, which occur across the early Germanic languages.