A Natural History of Infixation (Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics)
By Alan C. L. Yu
* Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages:256
* Publication Date:2007-08-23
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0199279381
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780199279388
* Binding:Hardcover
Product Description:
This book presents the first cross-linguistic study of the phenomenon of infixation, typically associated in English with words like "im-bloody-possible", and found in all the world's major linguistic families. Infixation is a central puzzle in prosodic morphology: Professor Yu explores its prosodic, phonological, and morphological characteristics, considers its diverse functions, and formulates a general theory to explain the rules and constraints by which it is governed. He examines 154 infixation patterns from over a hundred languages, including examples from Asia, Europe, Africa, New Guinea, and South America. He compares the formal properties of different kinds of infix, explores the range of diachronic pathways that lead to them, and considers the processes by which they are acquired in first language learning. A central argument of the book concerns the idea that the typological tendencies of language may be traced back to its origins and to the mechanisms of language transmission. The book thus combines the history of infixation with an exploration of the role diachronic and functional factors play in synchronic argumentation: it is an exemplary instance of the holistic approach to linguistic explanation.
Alan Yu's pioneering study will interest phonologists and morphologists of all theoretical persuasions, as well as typologists and historical linguists.
Canonical Forms in Prosodic Morphology (Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics)
By Laura J. Downing
* Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages:296
* Publication Date:2006-07-27
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0199286396
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780199286393
* Binding:Hardcover
Product Description:
This book considers the interaction of morphological and phonological determinants of linguistic form and the degree to which one determines the other. It considers the operation of canonical forms, the invariant syllabic shapes of morphemes and the defining characteristic of prosodic morphology. Dr Downing presents an original theory which she tests on data from a wide variety of languages. Her book will be of central interest to scholars and advanced students of phonology and morphology, and of linguistic theory more generally.
Aspects of the Theory of Clitics (Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics)
By Stephen R. Anderson
* Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages:328
* Publication Date:2005-11-24
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:019927990X
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780199279906
* Binding:Hardcover
Product Description:
This is the first book to cover the grammar of clitics from all points of view, including their phonology and syntax and relation to morphology. In the process, it deals with the relation of second position clitics to verb-second phenomena in Germanic and other languages, the grammar of contracted auxiliary verbs in English, noun incorporation constructions, and several other much discussed topics in grammar. Stephen Anderson includes analyses of a number of particular languages, and some of these--such as Kwakw'ala (Kwakiutl) and Surmiran Rumantsch--are based on his own field research. The study of clitics has broad implications for a general understanding of sentence structure in natural language. Stephen Anderson's clearly-written, wide-ranging, and original account will be of wide interest to scholars and advanced students of phonology, morphology, and syntax.
The Syntax of Aspect: Deriving Thematic and Aspectual Interpretation (Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics)
By Nomi Erteschik-Shir, Tova Rapoport
* Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages:330
* Publication Date:2005-07-15
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0199280444
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780199280445
* Binding:Paperback
Book Description:
This book investigates the way grammar deals with the representation of aspectual (aktionsart) concepts, focussing on issues of the lexicon-syntax interface. The authors' innovative analyses of this interface significantly advance our understanding of the role that syntax plays in determining verbal meaning, aspectual interpretation, and thematic information. Various theories are developed in this collection, including those that take as their starting point the lexical-syntactic framework of Hale and Keyser, prominent among which is the chapter by Hale and Keyser themselves. By examining different phenomena in a cross-linguistic perspective, this book develops insights into the general theoretical question of universal grammar and acquisition as well as into the specific nature of the lexicon-syntax interface. It is a major contribution to modern syntactic theory.
The Logic of Conventional Implicatures (Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics)
By Christopher Potts
* Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages:258
* Publication Date:2005-02-17
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0199273820
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780199273829
* Binding:Hardcover
Product Description:
This book revives the study of conventional implicatures in natural language semantics. H. Paul Grice first defined the concept. Since then his definition has seen much use and many redefinitions, but it has never enjoyed a stable place in linguistic theory. Christopher Potts returns to the original and uses it as a key into two presently under-studied areas of natural language: supplements (appositives, parentheticals) and expressives (e.g., honorifics, epithets). The account of both depends on a theory in which sentence meanings can be multidimensional. The theory is logically and intuitively compositional, and it minimally extends a familiar kind of intensional logic, thereby providing an adaptable, highly useful tool for semantic analysis. The result is a linguistic theory that is accessible not only to linguists of all stripes, but also philosophers of language, logicians, and computer scientists who have linguistic applications in mind.
Direct Compositionality (Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics)
By Chris Barker, Pauline Jacobson
* Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages:320
* Publication Date:2007-05-03
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0199204373
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780199204373
* Binding:Hardcover
Product Description:
This book examines the hypothesis of "direct compositionality", which requires that semantic interpretation proceed in tandem with syntactic combination. Although associated with the dominant view in formal semantics of the 1970s and 1980s, the feasibility of direct compositionality remained unsettled, and more recently the discussion as to whether or not this view can be maintained has receded. The syntax-semantics interaction is now often seen as a process in which the syntax builds representations which, at the abstract level of logical form, are sent for interpretation to the semantics component of the language faculty. In the first extended discussion of the hypothesis of direct compositionality for twenty years, this book considers whether its abandonment might have been premature and whether in fact direct compositionality is not after all a simpler and more effective conception of the grammar than the conventional account of the syntax-semantics interface in generative grammar. It contains contributions from both sides of the debate, locates the debate in the setting of a variety of formal theories, and draws on examples from a range of languages and a range of empirical phenomena.
Adjectives and Adverbs: Syntax, Semantics, and Discourse (Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics)
By Louise McNally, Christopher Kennedy
* Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages: 376
* Publication Date: 2008-06-02
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0199211620
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780199211623
* Binding: Paperback
Product Description:
In this volume leading researchers present new work on the semantics and pragmatics of adjectives and adverbs, and their interfaces with syntax. Its concerns include the semantics of gradability; the relationship between adjectival scales and verbal aspect; the relationship between meaning and
the positions of adjectives and adverbs in nominal and verbal projections; and the fine-grained semantics of different subclasses of adverbs and adverbs. Its goals are to provide a comprehensive vision of the linguistically significant structural and interpretive properties of adjectives and
adverbs, to highlight the similarities between these two categories, and to signal the importance of a careful and detailed integration of lexical and compositional semantics.
The editors open the book with an overview of current research before introducing and contextualizing the remaining chapters. The work is aimed at scholars and advanced students of syntax, semantics, formal pragmatics, and discourse. It will also appeal to researchers in philosophy,
psycholinguistics, and language acquisition interested in the syntax and semantics of adjectives and adverbs.
Editorial Reviews
Product Description
This book investigates the temporal structure of language. It deals with central issues in the understanding of tense and aspect, proposes a new approach to the main problems in the area, and seeks to establish the universal semantic properties of two important and contentious aspectual categories, perfectivity and imperfectivity. In doing so it reveals previously unsuspected similarities between Russian and English.
About the Author
Olga Borik is Lecturer at the Department of Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication at the New University of Russia. After her BA in linguistics at the Moscow State University in 1995 she obtained an MPhil from the University of Tronso in 1998 and a PhD from the University of Utrecht in 2002.
Product Details
* Paperback: 240 pages
* Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (November 9, 2006)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0199291292
* ISBN-13: 978-0199291298
* Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
Three Studies in Locality and Case (Theoretical Linguistics)
By Alexander Grosu
* Publisher:Routledge
* Number Of Pages:272
* Publication Date:1994-12-13
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0415108276
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780415108270
* Binding:Hardcover
Product Description:
Three Studies in Locality and Case treats a central issue in modern linguistic theory: the issue of locality as expressed in the behavior of non-overt categories. Alexander Grosu presents a detailed study of nominal phrases, free relatives and their semantic and syntaxical relationship to restricted relatives, and provides a critical re-evaluation of earlier views of pro. In addition, he offers evidence of a variety of constructions in Rumanian involving null operators, and makes a thorough analysis of the genetive case in Rumanian.
Grosu argues that a variety of syntactic properties which distinguish the relatives at issue from restrictives are traceable to two causal factors: that their internal relativized nominal is semantically weak and that the relative clause must function as an identifier of pro.
This work will be of interest to linguists working on theoretical issues, and also to those concerned with descriptive linguistics. Professor Grosu's study provies an original analysis of major constructions in Rumanian which have hitherto never been thoroughly investigated.
Applicative Constructions (Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory)
By David A. Peterson
* Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages:305
* Publication Date:2007-03-01
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0199270929
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780199270927
* Binding:Hardcover
Product Description:
This book presents the first systematic typological analysis of applicatives across African, American Indian, and East Asian languages. It is also the first to address their functions in discourse, the derivation of their semantic and syntactic properties, and how and why they have changed over time.
Co-Compounds and Natural Coordination (Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory)
By Bernhard Walchli
* Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages:362
* Publication Date:2005-08-18
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0199276218
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780199276219
* Binding:Hardcover
Product Description:
This book presents a typological survey and analysis of the co-compound construction. This understudied phenomenon is essentially a compound whose meaning is the result of coordinating the meanings of its components, as when in some varieties of English 'mother-father' denotes 'parents'. In the course of the work Dr Walchi examines and discusses topics of great theoretical and linguistic interest. These include the notion of word, markedness, the syntax and semantics of coordination, grammaticalization, lexical semantics, the distinction between compounding and phrase formation, and the constructional meanings languages can deploy. The book makes many observations and points about typology and areal features and includes a wealth of unfamiliar data. It will be invaluable for typologists and of considerable interest to a variety of specialists including lexicologists, morphologists, construction grammarians, cognitive linguists, semanticists, field linguists, and syntacticians.
Subordination (Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory)
By Sonia Cristofaro
* Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages:372
* Publication Date:2005-08-11
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0199282005
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780199282005
* Binding:Paperback
Product Description:
This book presents a typology of subordination systems across the world's languages. Traditional definitions of subordination are based on morphosyntactic criteria, such as clausal embedding or non-finiteness. The book shows that these definitions are untenable in a cross-linguistic perspective, and provides a cognitively based definition of subordination.
Auxiliary Verb Constructions (Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory)
By Gregory D. S. Anderson
* Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages: 496
* Publication Date: 2006-07-11
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0199280312
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780199280315
* Binding: Hardcover
Book Description:
This is the most comprehensive survey ever published of auxiliary verb constructions, as in 'he could have been going to drink it' and 'she does eat cheese'. Drawing on a database of over 800 languages Dr Anderson examines their morphosyntactic forms and semantic roles. He investigates and explains the historical changes leading to the cross-linguistic diversity of inflectional patterns, and he presents his results within a new typological framework. The book's impressive range includes data on variation within and across languages and language families. In addition to examining languages in Africa, Europe, and Asia the author presents analyses of languages in Australasia and the Pacific and in North, South, and Meso-America. In doing so he reveals much that is new about the language families of the world and makes an important contribution to the understanding of their nature and evolution. His book will interest scholars and researchers in language typology, historical and comparative linguistics, syntax, and morphology.
The Emergence of Distinctive Features (Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory)
By Jeff Mielke
* Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages:256
* Publication Date:2008-05-25
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0199207917
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780199207916
* Binding:Hardcover
Product Description:
This book makes a fundamental contribution to phonology, linguistic typology, and the nature of the human language faculty. Distinctive features in phonology distinguish one meaningful sound from another. Since the mid-twentieth century they have been seen as a set characterizing all possible phonological distinctions and as an integral part of Universal Grammar, the innate language faculty underlying successive versions of Chomskyan generative theory. The usefulness of distinctive features in phonological analysis is uncontroversial, but the supposition that features are innate and universal rather than learned and language-specific has never, until now, been systematically tested. In his pioneering account Jeff Mielke presents the results of a crosslinguistic survey of natural classes of distinctive features covering almost six hundred of the world's languages drawn from a variety of different families. He shows that no theory is able to characterize more than 71 percent of classes, and further that current theories, deployed either singly or collectively, do not predict the range of classes that occur and recur. He reveals the existence of apparently unnatural classes in many languages. Even without these findings, he argues, there are reasons to doubt whether distinctive features are innate: for example, distinctive features used in signed languages are different from those in spoken languages, even though deafness is generally not hereditary.
The author explains the grouping of sounds into classes and concludes by offering a unified account of what previously have been considered to be natural and unnatural classes. The data on which the analysis is based are freely available in a program downloadable from the publisher's web site.
Classifiers: A Typology of Noun Categorization Devices (Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory)
By Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
* Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages:480
* Publication Date:2000-05-15
* Sales Rank:2805351
* ISBN / ASIN:019823886X
* EAN:9780198238867
* Binding:Hardcover
* Manufacturer:Oxford University Press, USA
* Studio:Oxford University Press, USA
* Average Rating:
* Total Reviews:
Book Description:
Almost all languages have some grammatical means for the linguistic categorization of nouns. Well-known systems such as the lexical numeral classifiers of South-East Asia, on the one hand, and the highly grammaticalized gender agreement classes of Indo-European languages, on the other, are the extremes of a contiuum. They can have a similar semantic basis, and one can develop from the other. Classifiers come in different morphological forms; they can be free nouns, clitics, or affixes. Some languages combine several varieties of classifiers. Different types of classifiers show varying correlations with other grammatical categories. In addition, they differ in their semantics, in the way they develop, and in the way they become obsolescent and disappear. These parameters are the basis for the typology of classifiers presented here. This book is almost certainly the most substantial cross-linguistic account of classifiers ever published. Its range of exemplification includes major and minor languages from every continent (several from the author's own fieldwork). The work combines original research with innovative analysis and will interest typologists, those working in the field of morphosyntactic variation and lexical semantics, and exponents of formal theories who wish to explain the range of linguistic diversity found in natural language.
Grammars in Contact: A Crosslinguistic Typology
By Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (Editor), Dixon Robert M. W., R. M. Dixon (Editor)
* Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages:375
* Publication Date:2007-02-05
* Sales Rank:1930664
* ISBN / ASIN:0199207836
* EAN:9780199207831
* Binding:Hardcover
* Manufacturer:Oxford University Press, USA
* Studio:Oxford University Press, USA
* Average Rating:0
* Total Reviews:0
Book Description:
The present volume examines the ways in which linguistic traits may change in a contact situation. It contains an encyclopaedic introduction, which sets out a general theory of contact-induced change, and twelve subsequent chapters, which analyse the effects of language contact on grammatical
systems in a variety of languages belonging to different geographical areas and diverse types.
Serial Verb Constructions: A Cross-Linguistic Typology (Explorations in Linguistic Typology)
By Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, R.M.W. Dixon
* Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages: 402
* Publication Date: 2006-01-21
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0199279152
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780199279159
* Binding: Hardcover
Book Description:
This volume of new work explores the forms and functions of serial verbs. The introduction sets out the cross-linguistic parameters of variation, and the final chapter draws out a set of conclusions. These frame fourteen explorations of serial verb constructions and similar structures in languages from Asia, Africa, North, Central and South America, and the Pacific. Chapters on well-known languages such as Cantonese and Thai are set alongside the languages of small hunter-gatherer and slash-and-burn agriculturalist groups. A serial verb construction (sometimes just called serial verb) is a sequence of verbs which acts together as one. Each describes what can be conceptualized as a single event. They are monoclausal; their intonational properties are those of a monoverbal clause; they generally have just one tense, aspect, mood, and polarity value; and they are an important tool in cognitive packaging of events. Serial verb constructions are a pervasive feature of isolating languages of Asia and West Africa, and are also found in the languages of the Pacific, South, Central and North America, most of them endangered. Serial verbs have been a subject of interest among linguists for some time. This outstanding book is the first to study the phenomenon across languages of different typological and genetic profiles. The authors, all experienced linguistic fieldworkers, follow a unified typological approach and avoid formalisms. The book will interest students, at graduate level and above, of syntax, typology, language universals, information structure, and language contact. in departments of linguistics and anthroplogy.
A Semantic Approach to English Grammar (Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics)
By R. M. W. Dixon
* Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages:512
* Publication Date:2005-09-01
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0199247404
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780199247400
* Binding:Paperback
Product Description:
This book shows how grammar helps people communicate and looks at the ways grammar and meaning interrelate. The author starts from the notion that a speaker codes a meaning into grammatical forms which the listener is then able to recover: each word, he shows, has its own meaning and each bit of grammar its own function, their combinations creating and limiting the possibilities for different words. He uncovers a rationale for the varying grammatical properties of different words and in the process explains many facts about English - such as why we can say I wish to go, I wish that he would go, and I want to go but not I want that he would go.
The first part of the book reviews the main points of English syntax and discusses English verbs in terms of their semantic types including those of Motion, Giving, Speaking, Liking, and Trying. In the second part Professor Dixon looks at eight grammatical topics, including complement clauses, transitivity and causatives, passives, and the promotion of a non-subject to subject, as in Dictionaries sell well.
This is the updated and revised edition of A New Approach to English Grammar on Semantic Principles. It includes new chapters on tense and aspect, nominalizations and possession, and adverbs and negation, and contains a new discussion of comparative forms of adjectives. It also explains recent changes in English grammar, including how they has replaced the tabooed he as a pronoun referring to either gender, as in When a student reads this book, they will learn a lot about English grammar in a most enjoyable manner.
Diachronic Syntax (Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics)
By Ian Roberts
* Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages:528
* Publication Date:2007-02-05
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0199253986
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780199253982
* Binding:Paperback
Book Description:
This book shows how the generative approach to linguistics may be used to understand how languages change. Generative diachronic syntax has developed since the inception of the principles and parameters approach to comparative syntax in the early 1980s: it has become increasingly important in historical linguistics and generative theory, acting as a bridge between them and providing insights to both. Ian Roberts relates work in historical linguistics to contemporary work on universal grammar and historical syntactic variation. He explains how standard questions in historical linguistics - including word-order change, grammaticalization, and reanalysis - can be explored in terms of current generative theory. He examines the nature of the links between syntactic change and first-language acquisition and considers the short and long-term effects of language contact. Professor Roberts provides numerous examples from a range of different languages, guides to further reading, and a comprehensive glossary. This is the ideal textbook introduction for students of syntactic change.
The Grammar of Words: An Introduction to Linguistic Morphology (Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics)
By Geert Booij
* Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages:322
* Publication Date:2005-01-27
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0199258473
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780199258475
* Binding:Paperback
Book Description:
This text provides an up-to-date introduction to the morphological analysis of words. Morphology deals with the internal structure of words and how this structure affects their phonological, syntactic and semantic properties. This book covers both inflection (the different forms of a word), and word formation, the ways in which new words can be added to the vocabulary of a language. The enormous variety of morphological operations that we find in natural languages is quite intriguing. The first part of the book gives a cross-linguistic survey of these operations: affixation, compounding, reduplication, and several kinds of phonological operation. The specific properties of word formation and inflection are dealt with in subsequent chapters. The second part of the book focuses on the ways in which the morphological structure of words determines their phonological, syntactic, and semantic properties. These different 'interfaces' are dealt with systematically, again with illustrations from a number of languages. In the last part of the book the reader is introduced to present-day research on the acquisition of morphological knowledge, and on the way in which complex words are processed. This will give insight as to how lexical knowledge is structured and how it is stored in memory.