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This book is a functional-typological study of possession splits in European languages. It shows that genetically and structurally diverse languages such as Icelandic, Welsh, and Maltese display possessive systems which are sensitive to semantically based distinctions reminiscent of the alienability correlation. These distinctions are grammatically relevant in many European languages because they require dedicated constructions. What makes these split possessive systems interesting for the linguist is the interaction of semantic criteria with pragmatics and syntax. Neutralisation of distinctions occurs under focus. The same happens if one of the constituents of a possessive construction is syntactically heavy. These effects can be observed in the majority of the 50 sample languages. Possessive splits are strong in those languages which are outside the Standard Average European group. The bulk of the European languages do not behave much differently from those non-European languages for which possession splits are reported. The book reveals interesting new facts about European languages and possession to typologists, universals researchers, and areal linguists.
For the first time, proper names are made the topic of a cross-linguistic account of morphosyntactic properties which formally distinguish place names, personal names, and common nouns. It is shown that the behaviour of place names and personal names in morphology and syntax frequently disagrees with the rules established for other word classes independent of the language’s genetic affiliation, grammatical structure, and geographic location. Place names and personal names each boast a grammar of their own. They are candidates for the status of a distinct word class. Their special grammar comes frequently to the fore in the domain of spatial and possessive relations. This fact is explained with reference to functional notions.
The papers collected in this volume (including a comprehensive introduction) investigate semantic and discourse-related aspects of subordination and coordination, in particular the relationship between subordination/coordination at the sentence level and subordination/coordination - or hierarchical/non-hierarchical organization - at the discourse level. The contributions in part I are concerned with central theoretical questions; part II consists of corpus-based cross-linguistic studies of clause combining and discourse structure, involving at least two of the languages English, German, Dutch, French and Norwegian; part III contains papers addressing specific - predominantly semantic - topics relating to German, English or French; and the papers in part IV approach the topic of subordination, coordination and rhetorical relations from a diachronic (Old Indic and Early Germanic) perspective. The book aims to contribute to a better understanding of information packaging on the sentence and text level related, within a particular language as well as cross-linguistically.
This book explores the linguistic expression of identity, intended as the social positioning of self and others, by focusing mostly on a scenario of prolonged language contact, namely the ancient Mediterranean area. The volume includes studies on language contact and on identity strategies developed at different levels of analysis, from phonetics to pragmatics, in, among others, Latin, Greek, Coptic, Syriac, (Cypriot) Arabic, Medieval Sardinian.
Repetition is a well-studied phenomenon in morphology and lexicology but has received less attention on the syntactic level. The book sheds light on syntactic constructions with lexical repetition in East Slavic languages. Several contributions address syntactic constructions that have developed in form and meaning in accordance with general tendencies found in many languages, for example, English Boys will be boys. However, most chapters focus on constructions that resist typological explanation, for example Rus. Беда так беда ‘trouble- nom.sg so trouble- nom.sg’, Ukr. дурень дурнем ‘fool- nom.sg fool- ins.sg’. .
The book provides an encyclopaedic overview of the language contact between Slavic languages and Romani in Eastern, South-Eastern and East-Central Europe. It is based on Yaron Matras’ pragmatic-functional approach to language contact and follows a new direction in Romani linguistics that conceives Romani as a subgroup of closely related languages rather than a single language. The central topics discussed in the book are: Slavic impact on Romani phonetics and phonology, morphology and syntax; forms and functions of Slavic verbal prefixes in Romani; Slavic impact on the Romani lexicon; Romani elements in the nonstandard lexicon of the Slavic languages; writing Romani with ‘Slavic’ alphabets.
This collective volume explores clause-linkage strategies in a cross-linguistic perspective with greater emphasis on subordination. Part I presents some theoretical reassessment of syntactic terminologies and distinctive criteria for subordination, as well as typological methods based on sets of variables and statistics allowing cross-linguistic comparability. Part II deals with strategies relating to clause-chaining, conjunctive conjugations, converbial constructions, masdars. Part III centers on the interaction between the syntax, pragmatics, and semantics of clause-linking and subordination, in relation to informa-tional structure, to referential hierarchy, and correlative constructions. Part IV presents insights in the clause-linking and subordinating functions of some T.A.M. markers, verbal inflectional morphology and conjugation systems, which may also interact with informa-tional hierarchy, via the backgrounding effects and lack of illocutionary force of some aspect and mood forms. The volume is of particular interest to linguists and typologists working on clause-linkage systems and on the interface between syntax, pragmatics, and semantics.
This book is the first comprehensive survey of mood in the languages of Europe. It gives readers access to a collection of data on mood. Each article presents the mood system of a specific European language in a way that readers not familiar with this language are able to understand and to interpret the data. The articles contain information on the morphology and semantics of the mood system, the possible combinations of tense and mood morphology, and the possible uses of the non-indica-tive mood(s). The papers address the explanation of mood from an empirical and descriptive perspective. This book is of interest to scholars of mood and modality, language contact, and areal linguistics and typology.
This book connects two linguistic phenomena, modality and subordinators, so that both are seen in a new light, each adding to the understanding of the other. It argues that general subordinators (or complementizers) denote propositional modality (otherwise expressed by moods such as the indicative-subjunctive and epistemic-evidential modal markers). The book explores the hypothesis both on a cross-linguistic and on a language-branch specific level (the Germanic languages). One obvious connection between the indicative-subjunctive distinction and subordinators is that the former is typically manifested in subordinate clauses. Furthermore, both the indicative-subjunctive and subordinators determine clause types. More importantly, however, it is shown, through data from various languages, that subordinators themselves often denote the indicative-subjunctive distinction. In the Germanic languages, there is variation in many clause types between both the indicative and the subjunctive and "that" and "if "depending on the speaker s and/or the subject s certainty of the truth of the proposition."
This book lies at the crossroads of areal typology, language contact and genetic affiliation. Concerned with mainland Southeast Asia in particular, the various grammatical sketches lay emphasis on characteristics shared by unrelated languages.