Grammar, syntax and morphology Books

Book SynopsisThis Greek grammar, newly revised and reset for the second edition, can be used profitably in three ways: as an instrucitve handbook, as an intermediate level textbooks and as a basic reference work to the Greek of the New Testament. Students needing a tool to guide them from elementary textbooks to fully fledged reference grammars will welcome Idioms of the Greek New Testament. The major topics of Greek grammar are treated in a useful pedagogical sequence. Substantial discussions are provided on Greek verb structure, the case system, the use of prepositions, particles, and various types of clauses, among others. This book charts new ground in many of its chapters. Among the innovative treatments are those on tense and aspectm mood and attitude, conditional clauses, word order and clause structure, and discourse analysis. The entire grammar is written with one eye on the traditional categories of Greek grammar and with the other on recent discussions of structural linguistics. Reference to other Greek grammars is made throughout, and a glossary of terms and full indexes are provided.

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Book SynopsisFirst published in 1867 and later revised, this grammar incorporates an account of morphology and accidence, a detailed and exemplified syntax and a final section on prosody (metrics). A Latin and English index and list of citations from individual authors is also included.

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Book SynopsisFirst published in 1879 and later revised and enlarged, this work contains an introduction to the Greek language and its dialects. It includes five major sections: letters; syllables and their accentuation; morphology; syntax, including multiple examples; and the metrics of Greek verse. There is also a catalogue of Greek verbs and full indexes, both Greek and English.Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION -THE GREEK LANGUAGE AND DIALECTS 3-6 PART I LETTERS, SYLLABLES, AND ACCENTS PART II INFLECTION NOUNS FIRST DECLENSION SECOND DECLENSION THIRD DECLENSION FORMATION OF CASES PARADIGMS OF THIRD DECLENSION ADJECTIVES COMPARISON OF ADJECTIVES ADVERBS AND THEIR COMPARISON NUMERALS THE ARTICLE PRONOUNS VERBS CONJUGATION OF VERBS IN n CONJUGATION OF VERBS IN AUGllllENT AND REDUPLICATION ENDINGS TENSE STEMS AND FORMS OF INFLECTION FORMATION AND INFLECTION OF TENSE SYSTEll& BBCTIONS FORMATION OF DEPENDENT MOODS AND PARTICIPLE DIALECTS ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATION OF Ml-FORMS PART III FORMATION OF WORDS SIMPLE WORDS FORMATION OF NOUNS COMPOUND WORDS PART IV SYNTAX SUBJECT AND PREDICATE APPOSITION ADJECTIVES THE ARTICLE PRONOUNS THE CASES NOMINATIVE AND VOCATlVE ACCUSATIVE GENITIVE DATIVE PREPOSITIONS ADVERBS SYNTAX OF THE VERB VOICES TENSES I. TENSES OF THE INDICATIVE II. TENSES OF THE DEPENDENT MOODS 8BOTION8 A. NOT IN INDIRECT DISCOURSE PJ.GBB B. IN INDIRECT DISCOURSE III. TENSES OF THE PARTICIPLE IV. GNOMIC AND ITERATIVE TENSES THE PARTICLE Av THE MOODS GENERAL STATEMENT AND CLASSIFICATION I. POTENTIAL OPTATIVE AND INDICATIVE II. IMPERATIVE AND SUBJUNCTIVE IN INDEPENDENT SEN• TENCES. - INDEPENDENT SENTENCES WITH p.~ OR 0'11'~ III. HOMERIC SUBJUNCTIVE LIKE FUTURE INDICATIVE - INTERROGATIVE SUBJUNCTIVE IV. SUBJUNCTIVE AND FUTURE INDICATIVE WITH ov un V. FINAL AND OBJECT CLAUSES AFTER I. PURE FINAL CLAUSES (AFTER ALL THE FINAL PARTICLES) II. OBJECT CLAUSES WITH ~'lfii/S AFTER VERBS OF Striving ETC.

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Book SynopsisFirst published in 1955, this is a comprehensive, compact and concise guide to the syntax of Attic Greek as written by Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato and Demosthenes. It is suitable for anyone who wishes to write Greek prose or read Attic prose authors with the fluency which stems from a fuller syntactical understanding.

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Book SynopsisThis version of Goodwin's text is the one enlarged in 1899 from its original 1860 form. The aim of this paperback edition is to make the work available to new generations of Greek scholars who should find its comprehensiveness, clarity and its profusion of specific examples from the major Greek authors a valuable source of reference.

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Book SynopsisThis handbook contains a classified list, with English equivalents, of 1500 words in common use among classical Greek historians, orators and philosophers. One hundred of these are dealt with at greater length in a supplement, which also focuses on a number of crucial idioms. The aim of the book is that learners drilled in these words over the course of a semester or two should find that they can read the texts of such authors as Thucydides, Plato and Demosthenes with a high degree of fluency. An alphabetical index is provided.

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Book SynopsisThe aim of this title is to provide a reference work for both students and teachers on every kind of Latin metre from the early "saturnian" to medieval accentual verse. The information provided aims to be in its simplest form to make the subject more accessible and jargon free.

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Book SynopsisThe order of words in a Greek sentence is much freer and less predictable than in most European languages. The author explains and illustrates the principles which govern word order in Greek. He finds three: the tendency of certain words to take a constant position; certain types of logical relation between the sentence and its context; and the tendency to adhere to familiar patterns. His three main chapters discuss word order dictated by lexical or semantic, by syntactical, and by logical determinants.

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Book SynopsisThis book is a significant novelty in the scientific and editorial landscape. Morphology is both an ancient and a new discipline that rests on Goethe's heritage and re-forms it in the present through the concepts of form and image. The latter are to be understood as structural elements of a new cultural grammar able to make the late modern world intelligible. In particular, compared to the original Goethean project, but also to C.P. Snow's idea of unifying the “two cultures”, the fields of morphological culture that are the object of this glossary have profoundly changed. The ever-increasing importance of the image as a polysemic form has made the two concepts absolutely transitive, so to speak. This is concomitant with the emergence of a culture that revolves around the image, attracting the verbal logos into its orbit. Incidentally, even the hermeneutic relationship between past and present relies more and more on the image, causing deep changes in cultural environments. Form and image are not just bridging concepts, as in the field of ancient morphology, but real transitive concepts that define the state of a culture. From the Internet to smartphones, television, advertising, etc., we are witnessing – as Horst Bredekamp observes – an immense mass of images that fill our time and affect the most diverse areas of our culture. The ancient connection between science and art recalled by Goethe emerges with unusual evidence thanks to intersecting patterns and expressive forms that are sometimes shared by different forms of knowledge. Creating a glossary and a culture of these intersections is the task of morphology, which thus enters into the boundaries between aesthetics, art, design, advertising, and sciences (from mathematics to computer science, to physics, and to biology), in order to provide the founding elements of a grammar and a syntax of the image. The latter, in its formal quality, both expressive and symbolic, is a fundamental element in the unification of the various kinds of knowledge, which in turn come to be configured, in this regard, also as styles of vision. The glossary is subdivided into contiguous sections, within a complex framework of cross-references. In addition to the two curators, the book features the collaboration of a team of scholars from the individual disciplines appearing in the glossary. Table of ContentsAesthetics.- Analogy.- Artefact.- Artifex.- Artistic Morphology.- Atmosphere.- Attractors/Basin of Attraction.- Biopolitics.- Body.- Character/State.- Chreod.- Classics.- Code (Biological).- Code (Juridical).- Colour.- Complexity.- Contour/Outline/Silhouette.- Dance.- Degeneration.- Demography.- Development/Evolution.- Device.- Diagrams.- Diaphane.- Drawing.- Dynamic System.- Eidetics.- Emergence.- Enactivism.- Epidemiology.- Epigenesis / Preformation(ism).- Epigenetic Landscape.- Epigenetics.- Ethics of image.- Evidence/Intuibility.- Extension.- Figuration/Figure/Form.- Folktale, Morphology.- Food.- Form Constancy.- Formation.- Formula

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Book SynopsisThis volume focuses on the interface of different motivating factors that contribute to language change. It combines linguistic case studies with current theoretical debate and contains hitherto unpublished data from English, French, Karaim, Modern Greek, Jordanian, Spanish, Latin and Arabic.

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Book SynopsisNoam Chomsky's first book on syntactic structures is one of the first serious attempts on the part of a linguist to construct within the tradition of scientific theory-construction a comprehensive theory of language which may be understood in the same sense that a chemical, biological theory is understood by experts in those fields. It is not a mere reorganization of the data into a new kind of library catalogue, nor another specualtive philosophy about the nature of man and language, but rather a rigorus explication of our intuitions about our language in terms of an overt axiom system, the theorems derivable from it, explicit results which may be compared with new data and other intuitions, all based plainly on an overt theory of the internal structure of languages; and it may well provide an opportunity for the application of explicity measures of simplicity to decide preference of one form over another form of grammar.Trade Review"Chomsky's book on syntactic structures is one of the first serious attempts on the part of a linguist to construct within the tradition of scientific theory-construction a comprehensive theory of language which may be understood in the same sense that a chemical, biological theory is ordinarily understood by experts in those fields. It is not a mere reorganization of the data into a new kind of library catalog, nor another speculative philosophy about the nature of Man and Language, but rather a rigorous explication of our intuitions about our language in terms of an overt axiom system, the theorems derivable from it, explicit results which may be compared with new data and other intuitions, all based plainly on an overt theory of the internal structure of languages; and it may well provide an opportunity for the application of explicit measures of simplicity to decide preference of one form over another form of grammar."Robert B. Lees in : 'Language' "I had already decided I wanted to be a linguist when I discovered this book. But it is unlikely that I would have stayed in the field without it. It has been the single most inspiring book on linguistics in my whole career." HenkvanRiemsdijkTable of ContentsFrontmatter -- Table of Contents -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The Independence of Grammar -- 3. An elementary Linguistic Theory -- 4. Phrase Structure -- 5. Limitations of Phrase Structure Description -- 6. On the Goals of Linguistic Theory -- 7. Some Transformations in English -- 8. The explanatory Power of Linguistic Theory -- 9. Syntax and Semantics -- 10. Summary -- 11. Appendix I. Notations and Terminology -- 12. Appendix II. Examples of English Phrase Structure and transformational Rules -- Backmatter

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Unlike the notion of "argument" that is central to modern linguistic theorizing, the phenomena that are commonly subsumed under the complementary notion "adjunct" so far have not attracted the attention they deserve. In this volume, leading experts in the field present current approaches to the grammar and pragmatics of adjuncts. The contributions scrutinize i.a. the argument-adjunct distinction, specify conditions of adjunct placement, discuss compositionality issues, and propose new analyses of event-related modification. They are meant to shed new light on an area of linguistic structure that is deemed to be notoriously overlooked.

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Book SynopsisDieses (Lese-)Wörterbuch verzeichnet die wichtigsten Schlagwörter der unmittelbaren Nachkriegszeit (Demokratie, Wiederaufbau, Einheit usw.) und rekonstruiert damit Grundlagen des öffentlichen Diskurses in der "Zwischenzeit" vor der Gründung der Bundesrepublik bzw. der DDR. Die Quellen des Wörterbuchs sind zahlreiche Zeitungen, Parteiprogramme und Plakattexte. Jeder Artikel bietet Informationen zu Varianten des Lemmas, zur lexikalischen Umgebung und zum Aktualitätszeitraum, rekonstruiert die Wort- und Begriffsgeschichte, entfaltet den sachlich-historischen Kontext und bietet reichhaltiges Zitat- und Belegmaterial aus den Quellen. Ost- und Westzone(n) werden gleichermaßen untersucht. Im Vorspann führt der Autor in die Schlagwort-Theorie und historische Grunddaten der untersuchten Epoche "Nachkriegszeit" ein.

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Book SynopsisThis book investigates the distribution and interpretation of Covert Modality. Covert Modality is modality which we interpret but which is not associated with any lexical item in the structure that we are interpreting. This dissertation investigates a class of environments that involves covert modality. Examples of covert modality include wh-infinitival complements, infinitival relative clauses, purpose clauses, the 'have to' construction, and the 'is to' construction (cf. 1): 1a. Tim knows [how to solve the problem]. ("Tim knows how one/he could/should solve the problem.")1b. Jane found [a book to draw cartoons in] for Sara. ("Jane found a book for Sara one could/shoulddraw cartoons in.")1c. [The man to fix the sink] is here. ("The man whose purpose is to fix the sink is here.")1d. Sue went to Torino [to buy a violin]. ("Sue went to Torino so that she could buy a violin.") 1e. Bill has to reach Philadelphia before noon. ("Bill must reach Philadelphia before noon.")1f. Will is to leave tomorrow. ("Will is scheduled/supposed to leave tomorrow.") The interpretation of (1a-f) involves modality; however, there is no lexical item that seems to be the source of the modality. What (1a-f) have in common is that they involve infinitivals. This book addresses the following questions about covert modality: what is the source of this modality, what are its semantic properties, why are some but not all infinitival relatives modal, and why are all infinitival questions modal? The infinitival [+wh] Complementizer is identified as the source of the covert modality. The apparent variability of the force of this modality is related to the particular semantics of this Complementizer. Infinitival relatives that receive a non-modal interpretation are analyzed as being reduced relatives and thus not involving the infinitival [+wh] Complementizer.Table of ContentsContentsAcknowledgements iv1 Introduction 11.1 Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 Dissertation Outline and Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31.2.1 Chapter 2: The Syntax of Infinitival Relatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31.2.2 Chapter 3: Non-Modal Infinitival Relative Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . 41.2.3 Chapter 4: The Distribution and Interpretation of Infinitival Questions 61.2.4 Chapter 5: Ability Modals and their Actuality Entailments . . . . . . 82 The syntax of Infinitival Relatives 92.1 Subject infinitival relatives as Reduced Relatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92.2 Non-subject Infinitival Relatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112.3 The Modality of Infinitival Relatives and Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142.3.1 Proposal for Object Infinitival Relatives and Infinitival Questions . . 152.3.2 Proposal for Subject Infinitival Relatives and Infinitival Questions . . 162.4 Structures for Reduced Relatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172.4.1 Kayne (1994)’s proposal for Reduced Relatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172.4.1.1 Kayne (1994)’s general proposal for Relative Clauses . . . . 172.4.1.2 Kayne (1994)’s proposal for Reduced Relatives . . . . . . . 182.5 Arguments for a Raising Analysis of Relative Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212.5.1 The Candidates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212.5.2 The Argument from ‘Idioms’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22x2.5.2.1 A related argument from Subcategorization . . . . . . . . . 232.5.3 The argument from Binding Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242.5.4 Amount Relatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252.5.5 Scope Reconstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262.5.6 Lower Readings of Adjectival Modifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272.6 My proposal for Reduced Relatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282.6.1 Version 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282.6.2 On the nature of Direct Predication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302.6.3 Version 2: Accommodating Reconstruction into Reduced and FiniteRelatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322.6.3.1 A comparison with Sauerland (1998) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372.6.4 Reduced Relatives and Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382.6.5 Interpreting the New Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392.7 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 Non-Modal Subject Infinitival Relatives 423.1 Properties of Non-modal Infinitival Relatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423.1.1 Non-Modal Infinitival Relatives allow for Modal Readings too . . . . 463.2 A Raising Relative Clause analysis of Non-modal Infinitival Relatives . . . . 473.2.1 Raising Analysis of Relative Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473.2.2 Interpreting the Raising Analysis (for Reduced Relatives) . . . . . . . 493.2.3 Raising Analysis applied to Non-modal Infinitival Relatives . . . . . 503.3 Motivations for the Movement of Superlative est/Ordinals/only . . . . . . . 513.3.1 A semantics for Superlatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543.3.2 Ordinals and Nominal only: Focus Sensitivity and Analysis . . . . . 563.4 More on the Raising Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593.4.1 Structural Characterization of Superlatives, Ordinals, and only . . . . 593.4.2 Licensing from inside the infinitival clause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 613.5 A prediction: Loss of Association with Focus with Non-modal InfinitivalRelatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 633.5.1 Loss of Focus-sensitivity of Superlatives, only, ordinals . . . . . . . . 64xi3.5.2 A Further Prediction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 673.6 Lower Readings: Further evidence for the Raising Analysis . . . . . . . . . . 693.6.1 Evidence for Reconstruction from NPI licensing . . . . . . . . . . . . 713.6.2 Evidence for Reconstruction from the behavior of Numeral Modifiers 723.6.3 Low Readings and Negative Island Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 733.6.4 Parentheticals: a potential alternative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 743.7 Interpretation of the non-modal infinitival clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 753.7.1 A first semantics for first . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 753.7.1.1 first with possessive NPs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 763.7.1.2 Digression: Larson & Cho (1998)’s Analysis of former . . . . 773.7.1.3 Back from the Digression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 773.7.2 first with Non-modal Infinitival Relatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 793.7.3 Simultaneity between ‘head’ NP and Relative Clause . . . . . . . . . 803.7.3.1 Simultaneity effects with Finite Relative Clauses and first . 823.7.3.2 On why there is Reconstruction with first . . . . . . . . . . . 843.7.4 A Prediction: Locus of Change of State is Undetermined . . . . . . . 873.7.5 Temporal Properties of the Infinitival Clause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 883.7.5.1 When is first(P) evaluated? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 893.7.5.2 Aspectual Characterization of the Infinitival Clause . . . . 913.7.5.3 A covert Perfect? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 923.7.5.4 A problem with assuming a Covert Perfect and a solution . 933.7.5.5 A Difference between the Covert and the Overt Perfect . . 963.7.5.6 Perfective Aspect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 973.7.5.7 A Minimal Crosslinguistic Variation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 993.7.6 Future interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1003.8 Appendix A: A semantics for Raising Analysis of Relative Clauses . . . . . 1023.9 Appendix B: Semantics of only and first . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1083.9.1 only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1083.9.2 Ordinals (‘first’, ‘second’, : : :, ‘last’) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1093.10 Appendix C: An in situ licensor analysis of Non-modal Infinitival Relatives 1103.11 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112xii4 The Distribution and Interpretation of Wh-infinitivals 1144.1 Infinitival Question Complements: Distribution and Subcategorization . . . 1154.1.1 The Distribution of Infinitival Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1154.1.1.1 A Classification of Predicates that take Finite InterrogativeComplements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1154.1.1.2 Infinitival Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1164.1.2 Infinitival Questions and Subcategorization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1204.1.2.1 Non-interrogative Infinitival Complements of Predicates thattake Infinitival Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1204.1.2.2 Some Subcategorizational Generalizations . . . . . . . . . . 1214.1.2.3 One Predicate or Many . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1244.2 Modality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1274.2.1 Nature of Infinitival Modality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1274.2.2 Force of Infinitival Modality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1324.2.2.1 The effect of the wh-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1334.2.2.2 The effect of the embedding predicate . . . . . . . . . . . . 1344.2.2.3 The effect of the infinitival question predicate . . . . . . . . 1354.2.2.4 The effect of the context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1354.3 The Modality in Infinitival Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1364.3.1 Could Readings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Book SynopsisThis volume aims to arrive at a fine-grained and grammar-based understanding of the notions of (inter-)subjectivity and (inter-)subjectification in their application to grammaticalization research. In terms of linguistic theory, position is taken vis-à-vis existing approaches to (inter-)subjectification which are either too narrow or too general by addressing two questions: (i) what is the relation between (inter-)subjectivity and pragmatics, and (ii) on what grounds can subjective and intersubjective meanings be distinguished? In the descriptive sections of the volume, these theoretical considerations are confronted with extensive analytical, and often also quantitative, study of empirical data mainly from English but also from Romance languages. The focus in these case studies is on the analytical and diachronic relations between subjectivity and intersubjectivity, with particular emphasis on the question how linguistic syntagms may shift towards the expression of meanings of which the hearer is an essential part. The domains covered include adverbials and modals, but also the noun phrase, to date a relatively under-researched area in grammaticalization studies. Together these three areas ensure broad verification of existing hypotheses about the relative order in which subjectification and intersubjectification take place. This volume is mainly of interest to researchers and graduate students with a special interest in subjectification, intersubjectification and grammaticalization, and with a general interest in language change. The volume will also be welcomed by functional linguists (in a broad sense), since it is the first to bring eclectic functionalists' reflections to bear so explicitly on grammaticalization.

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Book SynopsisNew Perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax: Complex Sentences, Grammaticalization, Typology is the fourth in a set of four volumes dealing with the long-term evolution of Latin syntax, roughly from the 4th century BCE up to the 6th century CE. As in the other volumes, the non-technical style and extensive illustration with classical examples makes the content readable and immediately useful to the widest audience.

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Book SynopsisThis 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.Trade Review"This volume is of interest to any linguist working on Oceanic languages, general typology, and various aspects of sentential and nominal morphosyntax. It is a significant contribution to the field, mainly because of the rich original data, innovative methodologies and useful comparative overviews the different articles provide."Kilu von Prince in: Linguist List 23.2290

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Book SynopsisThis book offers an introduction to the derivation of meaning that is accessible and worked out to facilite an understanding of key issues in compositional semantics. The syntactic background offered is generative, the major semantic tool used is set theory. These tools are applied step-by-step to develop essential interface topics and a selection of prominent contrastive topics with material from English and German.

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Book SynopsisAsheninka Perene belongs to the Kampa group of the Arawak family, located in the central Peruvian Amazon in the foothills of the Andes mountains. While limited grammatical studies of Kampa languages exist, this grammar is by far the most comprehensive study of any language of this sub-family, and is one of only two or three comparable studies of Arawak languages more generally.

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Book SynopsisBridging theoretical modelling and advanced empirical techniques is a central aim of current linguistic research. The progress in empirical methods contributes to the precise estimation of the properties of linguistic data and promises new ways for justifying theoretical models and testing their implications. The contributions to the present collective volume take up this challenge and focus on the relevance of empirical results achieved through up-to-date methodology for the theoretical analysis and modelling of argument structure. They tackle issues of argument structure from different perspectives addressing questions related to diverse verb types (unaccusatives, unergatives, (di)transitives, psych verbs), morpho-syntactic operations (prefixation, simple vs. particle verbs), case distinctions (dative vs. accusative, case vs. prepositions), argument and voice alternations (dative vs. benefactive alternation, active vs. passive), word order alternations and the impact of animacy, agentivity, and eventivity on argument structure. The volume will be of interest to theoretical linguists, psycholinguists, and corpus linguists interested in the syntax of argument structure and its modelling using precise empirical methods.

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Book SynopsisThis book examines the Romanian mihi est construction (Mi-e foame/frică, me.dat = is hunger/fear ‘I am hungry/ afraid’). While it disappeared from all other Romance languages to be replaced with a habeo structure, the mihi est pattern is in Romanian the most common way of expressing psychological or physiological states. By means of synchronic and diachronic corpus studies, the book investigates the status of the core arguments of the mihi est structure, i.e. the dative experiencer and the nominative state noun, as well as its evolution throughout the centuries. The data analysis reveals that the dative experiencer syntactically behaves like nominative subjects, whereas the state noun shows predicate behavior. As for the evolution of the mihi est structure, the analysis shows a certain tendency toward innovation, since in present-day Romanian it can coerce nouns coming from other semantic fields into the construction’s psychological or physiological interpretation. Could this be another unique trait of Romanian, which causes it to seemingly go against the tendency of most Romance languages toward canonical marking of core arguments?

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Book SynopsisThis book provides a usage-based perspective to the study of multi-word compounding, analyzing the structural, functional and cognitive aspects of tripartite compounds (e.g. day care center, football game, hotel bedroom). It highlights the heterogeneity of these word-formation products, but also carves out surprising differences to two-word compounds. In order to reveal the step from two-word compounding to multi-word compounding, the book explains why only some compounds are used productively for the formation of more complex compounds. Building on the idea of entrenchment, it provides a theoretical account that allows understanding speakers’ ability to produce multi-word compounds.

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Book SynopsisThis volume is the first book-length presentation of the grammatical category of Associated Motion. It provides a framework for understanding a grammatical phenomenon which, though present in many languages, has gone unrecognized until recently. Previously known primarily from languages of Australia and South America, grammatical AM marking has now been identified in languages from most parts of the world (except Europe) and is becoming an important topic in linguistic typology. The chapters provide a thorough introduction to the subject, discussion of the relation between AM and related grammatical concepts, detailed descriptions of AM in a wide range of the world’s languages, and surveys of AM in particular language families and areas. 　

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Book SynopsisThe monograph presents the Meaning-Text approach applied to the domain of syntax from a typological angle; it deals with several long-standing syntactic problems on the basis of a dependency description.Its content can be presented in five parts + an Introduction:The Introduction explains the architecture of the book and sketches the Meaning-Text linguis-tic model, underlying the subsequent discussion.I. Surface-syntactic relations in the languages of the world, with special studies of subjects and objects.II. Grammatical voice in the dependency framework: the “passive” construction in Chinese.III. The relative clause: a calculus and analysis of possible types; the pseudo-relative (“headless”) clause.IV. Binary conjunctions (such as IF …, THEN …), free indefinite pronouns ([He went] nobody knows where), and syntactic idioms.V. Word order: linearization of dependency structures.The monograph offers a new perspective in syntactic studies. It is strongly typology-oriented (using the data from typologically diverse languages: English, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Basque, Georgian, etc.) and based on a system of rigorous definitions of the notions involved, which ensures a link with computational linguistics and Natural Language Processing

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Book SynopsisThis grammar provides the first modern, comprehensive description of Coastal Marind. It is a Papuan language spoken by the coastal-dwelling Marind-Anim, formerly expansionistic head-hunters of the Southern New Guinea lowlands. Like the other languages of the poorly known Anim family, Coastal Marind features astonishingly complex verb morphology and a range of unusual phenomena, including indexing of up to four arguments on the verb, verbal marking of focus (the 'Orientation' system), engagement prefixes tracking the attention of the addressee, and a system of four genders realised by intricate agreement patterns. The structure of the language is examined in a detailed but accessible way, and its many complexities are brought to life by contextualised spontaneous data, drawn from a rich audio-visual corpus.

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Book SynopsisElement Theory (ET) covers a range of approaches that consider privativity a central tenet defining the internal structure of segments. This volume provides an overview and extension of this program, exploring new lines of research within phonology and at its interface (phonetics and syntax). The present collection reflects on issues concerning the definition of privative primes, their interactions, organization, and the operations that constrain phonological and syntactic representations. The contributions reassess theoretical questions, which have been implicitly taken for granted, regarding privativity and its corollaries. On the empirical side, it explores the possibilities ET offers to analyze specific languages and phonological phenomena.

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Book SynopsisThis volume assembles contributions addressing clausal complementation across the entire South Slavic territory. The main focus is on particular aspects of complementation, covering the contemporary standard languages as well as older stages and/or non-standard varieties and the impact of language contact, primarily with non-Slavic languages. Presenting in-depth studies, they thus contribute to the overarching collective aim of arriving at a comprehensive picture of the patterns of clausal complementation on which South Slavic languages profile against a wider typological background, but also diverge internally if we look closer at details in the contemporary stage and in diachronic development. The volume divides into an introduction setting the stage for the single case-studies, an article developing a general template of complementation with a detailed overview of the components relevant for South Slavic, studies addressing particular structural phenomena from different theoretical viewpoints, and articles focusing on variation in space and/or time.

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Book Synopsis Felicity Meakins was awarded the Kenneth L. Hale Award 2021by the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) for outstanding work on the documentation of endangered languages Gurindji is a Pama-Nyungan language of north-central Australia. It is a member of the Ngumpin subgroup which forms a part of the Ngumpin-Yapa group. The phonology is typically Pama-Nyungan; the phoneme inventory contains five places of articulation for stops which have corresponding nasals. It also has three laterals, two rhotics and three vowels. There are no fricatives and, among the stops, voicing is not phonemically distinctive. One striking morpho-phonological process is a nasal cluster dissimilation (NCD) rule. Gurindji is morphologically agglutinative and suffixing, exhibiting a mix of dependent-marking and head-marking. Nominals pattern according to an ergative system and bound pronouns show an accusative pattern. Gurindji marks a further 10 cases. Free and bound pronouns distinguish person (1st inclusive and exclusive, 2nd and 3rd) and three numbers (minimal, unit augmented and augmented). The Gurindji verb complex consists of an inflecting verb and coverb. Inflecting verbs belong to a closed class of 34 verbs which are grammatically obligatory. Coverbs form an open class, numbering in the hundreds and carrying the semantic weight of the complex verb

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Book SynopsisBridging theoretical modelling and advanced empirical techniques is a central aim of current linguistic research. The progress in empirical methods contributes to the precise estimation of the properties of linguistic data and promises new ways for justifying theoretical models and testing their implications. The contributions to the present collective volume take up this challenge and focus on the relevance of empirical results achieved through up-to-date methodology for the theoretical analysis and modelling of argument structure. They tackle issues of argument structure from different perspectives addressing questions related to diverse verb types (unaccusatives, unergatives, (di)transitives, psych verbs), morpho-syntactic operations (prefixation, simple vs. particle verbs), case distinctions (dative vs. accusative, case vs. prepositions), argument and voice alternations (dative vs. benefactive alternation, active vs. passive), word order alternations and the impact of animacy, agentivity, and eventivity on argument structure. The volume will be of interest to theoretical linguists, psycholinguists, and corpus linguists interested in the syntax of argument structure and its modelling using precise empirical methods.

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Book SynopsisKopar is a very moribund, close to extinct, language spoken in three villages at the mouth of the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea. This is the only description of the language available. It also discusses areas where rapid language shift is affecting the structure of Kopar. Although the period of fieldwork was necessarily short, this book provides as comprehensive a description as possible of the grammatical structure of this complex and fascinating language. It is quite thorough and detailed and goes well beyond what is normally considered a sketch grammar. It covers all the phenomena essential to description and comparison and gives clear, typologically sound definitions and explanations. The grammar is written with the research interests of language typologists and comparative grammarians foremost in mind. Typologically, Kopar can be described as a split ergative, polysynthetic language. The language lacks nominal case marking so ergativity or lack thereof is signaled by verbal agreement affixes. Tenses and moods which describe as yet unrealized events, like future and imperative, pattern accusatively for agreement affixes, while those express realized events, like past and present, pattern ergatively. In addition, the ergative case schema is overlaid by a direct-inverse inflectional schema determined by a person hierarchy, a feature Kopar shares with other languages in its Lower Sepik family. As a polysynthetic language, incorporation of sentential elements like temporals, locationals, adverbials and verbals is extensive, though noun incorporation is not. Sadly, this work is all the documentation we will likely ever have of Kopar, a language of potentially very high theoretical interest, given its rare typological profile. It will certainly be of interest to language typologists and comparative grammarians, and anyone who wants to explore the range of language variation

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Book SynopsisHow can insights from Construction Grammar (CxG) be applied to foreign language learning (FLL) and foreign language teaching (FLT)? This volume explores several aspects of Pedagogical Construction Grammar, with a specific look at issues relevant to second language acquisition, FLL, and FLT. The contributions in this volume discuss a wide range of constructions, as well as different resources, methodologies, and data used to learn constructions in the language classroom. More specifically, they seek to provide answers to the following questions: What do new constructional approaches to teaching and learning foreign language look like that take the insights of CxG seriously? What should electronic resources using constructions and semantic frames for foreign language instruction look like? How should constructions (pairings of form with meaning/function) in the foreign language classroom be introduced? What role does frequency play in learning constructions in the language classroom? What types of strategies does CxG offer to facilitate the acquisition of a second language? This volume is relevant for anyone interested in second language acquisition, foreign language pedagogy, Construction Grammar, and Cognitive Linguistics. Endorsements: If first language learning flows forth from language use, teaching language should be based on relevant usage-patterns, modified in accordance with the advanced cognitive and linguistic knowledge of older learners. The current volume shows how insights from first and second language learning and usage-based Construction Grammar can be turned into evidence-based teaching strategies.Heike Behrens, University of Basel Usage-based Construction Grammar has changed our view of language learning, but it is only recently that researchers have begun to apply the insights of the constructionist approach to language pedagogy. This volume brings together a collection of articles in which experts of Construction Grammar and Usage-based Linguistics make concrete proposals for teaching constructions by using corpora and other resources. A must read for everybody interested in grammar teaching.Holger Diessel, University of Jena With Directions for Pedagogical Construction Grammar, Boas has produced an impressive and much-needed volume which excels at illustrating the immense potential of constructionist approaches to improve language pedagogy. The contributions to this volume, all authored by leading cognitive and corpus linguists, convincingly describe what a successful future of language teaching could look like—one that is founded in usage-based linguistics and takes language patterns seriously. I consider this volume essential reading for any applied linguist.Ute Römer, Georgia State University

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Book SynopsisThis book documents modern Baba Malay, a critically endangered Austronesian-based contact language with a Sinitic substrate. Formed via intermarriage between Hokkien-speaking male traders and indigenous women in the Malay Peninsula, the language has less than 1,000 speakers in Singapore and less than 1,000 speakers in Malacca, Malaysia. This volume fills a gap for reference grammars of contact languages in general. Reference grammars written on contact languages are rare, and much rarer is a reference grammar written about a critically endangered Austronesian-based contact language. The reference grammar, which aims to be useful to linguists and general readers interested in Baba Malay, describes the language’s sociohistorical background, its circumstances of endangerment, and provides information regarding the phonology, parts of speech, and syntax of Baba Malay as spoken in Singapore. A chapter that differentiates this variety from that spoken in Malacca is also included. The grammar demonstrates that the nature of Baba Malay is highly systematic, and not altogether simple, providing structural information for those who are interested in the typology of contact languages.

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Book SynopsisThis is a comprehensive description of a language spoken some 450 km offshore from the mainland of Papua New Guinea. The language is remarkable for its phonological, morphological and syntactic complexity. As the sole surviving member of its language family, and with little historical contact with surrounding languages, the language provides evidence of the kind of languages spoken in this part of the world before the Austronesian expansion. The grammar provides detailed information on the phoneme inventory, morphology, syntax and select semantic fields. Remarkable features include a 90 phoneme inventory including unique sounds, a morphology with thousands of non-compositional portmanteau elements, complex rules for negation, and extensive ergative syntax. Unusual patterns are also found in the organization of semantic fields, for example in partonymies of the body, taxonomies of the natural world, verbal semantics and kinship terms. The combination of linguistic ‘rara’ suggest that linguistic evolution under low contact can yield baroque and unusual patterns. The volume should be of special interest to linguists, typologists, sociolinguists, anthropologists and researchers in Oceania and Melanesia. Endorsement: "This long-awaited grammar is a major contribution to Papuan and general linguistics, providing as it does by far the most comprehensive and accurate grammatical description of a language that has already assumed a position as one of the world's most complicated. Hitherto, the most extensive grammatical description of the language has been the survey-like Henderson (1995), and while Levinson explicitly acknowledges his debt to this earlier grammar and to unpublished work by Henderson, his own detailed grammar clearly takes the level of description and analysis of the language to a completely new level. In particular, Levinson's grammar makes clear precisely to what extent and in what ways the language's morphology is complex beyond even what most studies on morphologically complex languages envisage. In addition, it provides a much more detailed account of the language's syntax, based on a judicious combination of corpus attestation and careful elicitation (incl. using the kits developed by Levinson's group at the MPI for Psycholinguistics). The grammar thus not only fills a major lacuna in our knowledge of the non-Austronesian languages of the New Guinea area, but also provides grist for future studies on the implications of the language's complexities."Bernard Comrie, University of California, Santa Barbara

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