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

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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.

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.

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.

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 Modern English Word-order in Clauses with Demonstrative and Determinative Verbal Modifiers

The Modern English Word-order in Clauses with Demonstrative and Determinative Verbal Modifiers PDF Author: August Dahlstedt
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description


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.

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.

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.

A Grammar of Kwaza

A Grammar of Kwaza PDF Author: Hein van der Voort
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110197286
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1066

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Book Description
This work contains a comprehensive description of Kwaza, which is an endangered and unclassified indigenous language of Southern Rondônia, Brazil. The Kwaza language, also known in the literature as Koaiá, is spoken by around 25 people today. Until recently, our knowledge of Kwaza was based on only three short word lists, from 1938, 1943 and 1984. Like the language, the culture and the history of its speakers are undocumented. The Kwaza people as an ethnic group have been decimated by increasing ecological, physical, social and cultural pressure from Western civilisation since contact in the past century. This is the situation for many indigenous peoples of Rondônia and of the Amazon region in general. Linguists expect that the majority of these peoples will cease to exist as distinct language communities during the coming decades. The present work is intended as a contribution to the documentation and preservation of the languages of the Amazon basin. In this respect, Kwaza has represents an especially urgent case in view of its undetermined classification, the lack of documentation and its endangered status. This work is based on the author ́s personal fieldwork conducted between 1995 and 2002, and it consists of three parts. Part I contains a thorough description of the phonology and morphosyntax of the language and a concise overview of its social, cultural and historical context. Part II contains a diverse selection of transcribed and translated texts with interlinear morphological analyses. Part III is a dictionary of Kwaza, including many examples and an English-Kwaza register. This complete description is of interest to linguists in general, scholars of South American languages in particular, and anthropologists and historians interested in the Guaporé region.

Parenthetical Verbs

Parenthetical Verbs PDF Author: Stefan Schneider
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110376148
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Parenthesis has recently seen a considerable surge in interest. This volume presents the – often contrasting – theoretical positions on parenthetical verbs and examines them from different analytical perspectives. It covers parenthetical verbs in English as well as in several other languages. Methodologically, the volume is marked by its empirical orientation: Most contributions are based on data from experiments or corpora.