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This volume explores the grammatical properties of body-part expressions across a range of languages and language families in the Americas, including Arawakan, Eastern Tukano, Mataguayan, Panoan, and Takanan. Expressions denoting parts of the body often exhibit specific grammatical propertiesthat are intrinsically related to their semantics, and frequently appear in dedicated constructions, many of which are found exclusively in association with these expressions.Following a detailed introduction and discussion of the foundations of body-part grammar, the chapters in the first part of the book investigate categorialization, lexicalization, and the semantic processes associated with body-part...
This volume presents a typological/theoretical introduction plus eight papers about ergative alignment in 16 Amazonian languages. All are written by linguists with years of fieldwork and comparative experience in the region, all describe details of the synchronic systems, and several also provide diachronic insight into the evolution of these systems. The five papers in Part I focus on languages from four larger families with ergative patterns primarily in morphology. The typological contribution is in detailed consideration of unusual splits, changes in ergative patterns, and parallels between ergative main clauses and nominalizations. The three papers in Part II discuss genetically isolated languages. Two present dominant ergative patterns in both morphology and syntax, the other a syntactic inverse system that is predominantly ergative in discourse. In each, the authors demonstrate that identification of traditional grammatical relations is problematic. These data will figure in all future typological and theoretical debates about grammatical relations.
This volume presents fifteen original papers dealing with various aspects of causative constructions ranging from morphology to semantics with emphasis on language data from Central and South America. Informed by a better understanding of how different constructions are positioned both synchronically (e.g., on a semantic map) and diachronically (e.g., through grammaticalization processes), the volume affords a comprehensive up-to-date perspective on the perennial issues in the grammar of causation such as the distribution of competing causative morphemes, the meaning distinctions among them, and the overall form-meaning correlation. Morphosyntactic interactions of causatives with other phenomena such as incorporation and applicativization receive focused attention as such basic issues as the semantic distinction between direct and indirect causation and the typology of causative constructions.
Spoken on Kurima, a miniscule island in the Miyakojima municipality in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, Kurima-Miyako is a South Ryukyuan topolect, a regional variant of the Miyako language. With most fluent speakers aged 80 or older and the island’s depopulation progressing, the topolect of Kurima faces imminent extinction, a reflection of a common pattern in the Ryukyus, whereupon the vernaculars of small islands and isolated remote areas have been facing multifold minorization for decades on the part of the dominant variety/varieties of the area (Shimoji and Hirara in the case of Kurima), Okinawan, and standard Japanese. Responding to the urgent task of producing a comprehensive description while it still has native speakers, the present volume is the first ever attempt at a systemic presentation of the Kurima topolect in any language. It also uses comparative evidence from Ryukyuan and Mainland Japonic languages to provide new proto-language reconstructions and offer insights into the history of Japonic languages.
A complement clause is used instead of a noun phrase; for example one can say either I heard [the result] or I heard [that England beat France]. Languages differ in the grammatical properties of complement clauses, and the types of verbs which take them. Some languages lack a complement clause construction but instead employ other construction types to achieve similar ends; these are called complementation strategies. The book explores the variety of types of complementation foundacross the languages of the world, their grammatical properties and meanings. Detailed studies of particular languages, including Akkadian, Israeli, Jarawara, and Pennsylvania German, are framed by R. M. W. Dixon's introduction, which sets out the range of issues, and his conclusion, which drawstogether the evidence and the arguments. This book will interest scholars of typology, language universals, syntax, information structure, and language contact in departments of linguistics and anthropology, as well as advanced and graduate students taking courses in these subjects.
This handbook provides the first broadly comprehensive, typologically-informed descriptive overview of the languages of Greater Amazonia. Organized by genealogical units, the chapters provide empirically rich descriptions of the phonology and grammar of all Amazonian families and isolates for which data and descriptions exist. Volume 1 focuses on the many isolates of the region – those languages for which no extant sisters can be identified.
This volume explores the way in which grammaticalization processes converge and differ across languages and language areas. Chapters systemically explore these processes languages of Africa, Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and the Americas, and in creole languages, revealing a number of unique pathways as well as shared features.
This handbook explores multiple facets of the study of word classes, also known as parts of speech or lexical categories. These categories are of fundamental importance to linguistic theory and description, both formal and functional, and for both language-internal analyses and cross-linguistic comparison. The volume consists of five parts that investigate word classes from different angles. Chapters in the first part address a range of fundamental issues including diversity and unity in word classes around the world, categorization at different levels of structure, the distinction between lexical and functional words, and hybrid categories. Part II examines the treatment of word classes acr...
Marsupial Biology developed from contributions commissioned from those attending an international symposium held in honour of Hugh Tyndale Biscoe, Australia's most celebrated marsupial biology authority and co-author of the previous leading marsupial biology text published more than 15 years ago. The book does not comprise papers of narrow focus read at the symposium, but chapters reviewing the knowledge in each key area, written to a book format. It has been tightly edited to ensure a great degree of harmony and is suitable as a comprehensive reference text for graduate and undergraduate students.
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