Verbs, Clauses and Constructions

Verbs, Clauses and Constructions PDF Author: Raquel Vea Escaza
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527522156
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 463

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Book Description
This volume brings together a collection of twenty contributions which offer a diversity of methodological tools and analytical issues concerning the study of different aspects of the role of verbs, clauses and constructions in a rich variety of languages such as Present-Day English, Old English, Old Saxon, French, Spanish, Arabic, German, Upper Sorbian, Latvian, Sino-Tibetan, and the Australian dialects Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra. The use of empirical data and the wide range of languages are the two main challenges addressed here. The book will serve to contribute to current literature on functional-oriented linguistics, incorporating linguistic typology, and corpus-based and contrastive perspectives. The volume is divided into three main parts. The first brings together eight contributions centrally related to the category of the verb both from a synchronic and diachronic perspective. The second part consists of five chapters which revolve around the syntax and semantics of clauses. Finally, the seven essays in the third section explore different formal and functional aspects of the study of constructions in an assortment of languages.

Verbs, Clauses and Constructions

Verbs, Clauses and Constructions PDF Author: Raquel Vea Escaza
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527522156
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 463

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume brings together a collection of twenty contributions which offer a diversity of methodological tools and analytical issues concerning the study of different aspects of the role of verbs, clauses and constructions in a rich variety of languages such as Present-Day English, Old English, Old Saxon, French, Spanish, Arabic, German, Upper Sorbian, Latvian, Sino-Tibetan, and the Australian dialects Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra. The use of empirical data and the wide range of languages are the two main challenges addressed here. The book will serve to contribute to current literature on functional-oriented linguistics, incorporating linguistic typology, and corpus-based and contrastive perspectives. The volume is divided into three main parts. The first brings together eight contributions centrally related to the category of the verb both from a synchronic and diachronic perspective. The second part consists of five chapters which revolve around the syntax and semantics of clauses. Finally, the seven essays in the third section explore different formal and functional aspects of the study of constructions in an assortment of languages.

The Acquisition of Creole Languages

The Acquisition of Creole Languages PDF Author: Dany Adone
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521199654
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
The first study into how children acquire Creoles as their first language in the absence of a conventional language model.

Historical Change in Serial Verb Constructions

Historical Change in Serial Verb Constructions PDF Author: Carol Lord
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027276854
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
This work examines both historical and comparative evidence in documenting the sweep of diachronic change in the context of serial verb constructions. Using a wide range of data from languages of West Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, it demonstrates how shifts in meaning and usage result in syntactic, morphological and lexical change. The process by which verbs lose lexical semantic content and develop case-marking functions is described; it is argued that the change is directional, from verb to preposition (or postposition) to affix, along a grammaticalization continuum. This same grammaticalization process is shown to result in the development of complementizers, adverbial subordinators, conjunctions, adverbs and auxiliaries from verbs. Strong parallels across languages are found in the meanings of the verbs that become “defective” and in the functions they come to mark. The changes are documented in detail, with examples from a number of languages illustrating the effect of the changes on typology and word order, implications for the encoding of definiteness and aspect, and the relevance of notions such as discourse topic, foreground and transitivity. With respect to theoretical assumptions and terminology, the author has taken a relatively nonpartisan approach, and the discussion is accessible to students of language as well as of interest to theoreticians.

Thai: An Essential Grammar

Thai: An Essential Grammar PDF Author: Jay L. Nadeau
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317974573
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Praise for the First Edition “essential reading for any physical scientist who is interested in performing biological research.” ?Contemporary Physics "an ambitious text.... Each chapter contains protocols and the conceptual reasoning behind them, which is often useful to physicists performing biological experiments for the first time." –Physics Today This fully updated and expanded text is the best starting point for any student or researcher in the physical sciences to gain firm grounding in the techniques employed in molecular biophysics and quantitative biology. It includes brand new chapters on gene expression techniques, advanced techniques in biological light microscopy (super-resolution, two-photon, and fluorescence lifetime imaging), holography, and gold nanoparticles used in medicine. The author shares invaluable practical tips and insider’s knowledge to simplify potentially confusing techniques. The reader is guided through easy-to-follow examples carried out from start to finish with practical tips and insider’s knowledge. The emphasis is on building comfort with getting hands "wet" with basic methods and finally understanding when and how to apply or adapt them to address different questions. Jay L. Nadeau is a scientific researcher and head of the Biomedical Engineering in Advanced Applications of Quantum, Oscillatory, and Nanotechnological Systems (BEAAQONS) lab at Caltech and was previously associate professor of biomedical engineering and physics at McGill University.

Construction Grammar and its Application to English

Construction Grammar and its Application to English PDF Author: Martin Hilpert
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748675868
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Construction Grammar explains how knowledge of language is organized in speakers' minds. The central and radical claim of Construction Grammar is that linguistic knowledge can be fully described as knowledge of constructions, which are defined as symbolic units that connect a linguistic form with meaning.

Small Clauses in English

Small Clauses in English PDF Author: Bas Aarts
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110861453
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
The future of English linguistics as envisaged by the editors of Topics in English Linguistics lies in empirical studies which integrate work in English linguistics into general and theoretical linguistics on the one hand, and comparative linguistics on the other. The TiEL series features volumes that present interesting new data and analyses, and above all fresh approaches that contribute to the overall aim of the series, which is to further outstanding research in English linguistics.

The Verb Phrase in English

The Verb Phrase in English PDF Author: Bas Aarts
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139619659
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 475

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Book Description
The chapters in this volume feature new and groundbreaking research carried out by leading scholars and promising young researchers from around the world on recent changes in the English verb phrase. Drawing on authentic corpus data, the papers consider both spoken and written English in several genres. Each contribution pays particular attention to the methodologies used for investigating short-term patterns of change in English, with detailed discussions of controversies in this area. This cutting-edge collection is essential reading for historians of the English language, syntacticians and corpus linguists.

A Grammar of Mursi

A Grammar of Mursi PDF Author: Firew Girma Worku
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004449914
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 684

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Book Description
This volume contains 14 descriptive chapters and a collection of 4 transcribed texts in Mursi, a highly endangered language spoken in the Lower Omo Valley in Ethiopia.

Serial Verbs

Serial Verbs PDF Author: Claire Lefebvre
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027277648
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
The papers in this volume offer several analyses of verb serialization written within various theoretical frameworks: grammatical, comparative and cognitive/functional. They cover a wide range of language families. All authors address two basic questions about verb serialization: First, what is the structure and thematic constitution of the construction? The answers to this question cover the spectrum of the options that are available in current grammatical theory. Second, what aspect of the grammar differentiates between languages which have serial constructions and those which do not? The specific proposals made by the authors are discussed by R. Larson in the concluding paper. Larson opens new perspectives for research on verb serialization by posing the following question: what analogues for verb serialization can be found in the more familiar grammatical apparatus of English? It is suggested that verb serialization finds a clear parallel in the secondary predicate structures of English.

Noun-Modifying Clause Constructions in Languages of Eurasia

Noun-Modifying Clause Constructions in Languages of Eurasia PDF Author: Yoshiko Matsumoto
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027266131
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
This volume presents a cross-linguistic investigation of clausal noun-modifying constructions in genetically varied languages of Eurasia. Contrary to a common premise that, in any language, adnominal clauses that share some features of relative clauses constitute a structurally distinct construction, some languages of Eurasia exhibit a General Noun-Modifying Clause Construction (GNMCC) -- a single construction covering a wide range of semantic relations between the head noun and the clause. Through in-depth examination of naturally-occurring and elicited data from Ainu, languages of the Caucasus (e.g. Ingush, Georgian, Bezhta, Hinuq), Japanese, Korean, Marathi, Nenets, Sino-Tibetan languages (e.g. Cantonese, Mandarin, Rawang), and Turkic languages (e.g. Turkish, Sakha), the chapters discuss whether or not the language in question exhibits a GNMCC and the range of noun modification covered by such a construction. The findings afford us new facts, new theoretical perspectives and the first step toward a more global assessment of the possibilities for GNMCCs.