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This book sets up a consistent theoretical and terminological framework for the study of the phenomena that are commonly subsumed under the terms transitivity, valency, and voice. These three concepts are at the heart of the most basic aspects of clausal structure in any language; however, there is considerable cross-linguistic variation in the constraints on how verbs combine with noun phrases that refer to participants in the event that they denote or to the circumstances of the event. In this book, Denis Creissels explores and accounts for the extent of this cross-linguistic variation, capturing its regularities and examining the historical phenomena that have resulted in the emergence of constructions and markers. The novel framework developed in the book allows similar phenomena to be identified across typologically diverse languages, and facilitates systematic comparison of the manifestations of these phenomena in the grammars of individual languages.
The first ever textbook devoted to the cross-linguistic study of voice, covering various topics and discussing data from numerous languages.
This book serves as a definitive reference for inverse morphology across all documented Algonquian languages. It considers not only the morphology of the inverse construction but also its syntax and pragmatics, giving equal weight to diachronic, typological, functional, and formal perspectives.
The sixteen chapters in this volume are written by typologists and typologically oriented field linguists who have completed their Ph.D. theses in the first four years of this millennium. The authors address selected theoretical questions of general linguistic relevance drawing from a wealth of data hitherto unfamiliar to the general linguistic audience. The general aim is to broaden the horizons of typology by revisiting existing typologies with larger language samples, exploring domains not considered in typology before, taking linguistic diversity more seriously, strengthening the connection between typology and areal linguistics, and bridging the gap to other fields, such as historical l...
This handbook provides broad coverage of the languages indigenous to North America, with special focus on typologically interesting features and areal characteristics, surveys of current work, and topics of particular importance to communities. The volume is divided into two major parts: subfields of linguistics and family sketches. The subfields include those that are customarily addressed in discussions of North American languages (sounds and sound structure, words, sentences), as well as many that have received somewhat less attention until recently (tone, prosody, sociolinguistic variation, directives, information structure, discourse, meaning, language over space and time, conversation structure, evidentiality, pragmatics, verbal art, first and second language acquisition, archives, evolving notions of fieldwork). Family sketches cover major language families and isolates and highlight topics of special value to communities engaged in work on language maintenance, documentation, and revitalization.
This volume brings together work from leading specialists in Indo-European languages to explore the macro- and micro-dynamic factors that contribute to variation and change in alignment and argument realization. Alignment is taken to include both basic alignment patterns associated with major construction types, as well as various valency-decreasing constructions such as passives, anticausatives, and impersonals. The chapters explore synchronic and diachronic aspects of alignment morphosyntax based on data from Anatolian, Indo-Iranian, Greek, Italic, Armenian, and Slavic. All have a strong empirical focus, drawing on both qualitative and quantitative methods, and range from broad comparative studies to detailed investigations of specific constructions in individual languages. The book is one of very few studies to examine variation and change in alignment typology across languages in a single family. It contributes to a greater understanding of the roles played by analogy/extension, reanalysis, and areal factors in alignment change, and demonstrates the extent of variation found in the morphosyntax of argument realization in genetically-related languages.
This handbook offers an extensive crosslinguistic and cross-theoretical survey of polysynthetic languages, in which single multi-morpheme verb forms can express what would be whole sentences in English. These languages and the problems they raise for linguistic analyses have long featured prominently in language descriptions, and yet the essence of polysynthesis remains under discussion, right down to whether it delineates a distinct, coherent type, rather than an assortment of frequently co-occurring traits. Chapters in the first part of the handbook relate polysynthesis to other issues central to linguistics, such as complexity, the definition of the word, the nature of the lexicon, idioma...
The present volume is a broad overview of methods and methodologies in linguistics, illustrated with examples from concrete research. It collects insights gained from a broad range of linguistic sub-disciplines, ranging from core disciplines to topics in cross-linguistic and language-internal diversity or to contributions towards language, space and society. Given its critical and innovative nature, the volume is a valuable source for students and researchers of a broad range of linguistic interests.
Soon to be a junior at JFK High School, David Fisher spends his summer with friends at a theme park. Things are looking up. David not only conquers his fear of thrill rides, but also wins the affection of Carrie Cox, a tall, beautiful girl. When the school year starts, however, David and his friends realize JFK is under attack. A vicious gang of bullies roams the halls and threatens the career of headmaster Jack Lucas. Mr. Lucas has just applied for a promotion at a prestigious New England prep school, but to get the job he must prove he can keep up a peaceful, productive environment at JFKand the bullies are ruining his chances. In order to save Mr. Lucass career, David must become the Bullynator. With his newfound bravery acquired over the summer and the help of his friends, David will find a way to stand up to this gang of thugs. Even so, it could be a suicide missionbecause if they dont die as martyrs, the heroes of JFK will surely die laughing. Let the games begin!
This volume presents new research by the Topoi group "The Conception of Spaces in Language" on the expression of spatial relations in ancient languages. The six articles in this volume discuss static and dynamic aspects of the spatial grammars of Ancient to Medieval Greek, Akkadian, Hittite, and Hieroglyphic Ancient Egyptian, as well as field data on eight modern languages (Arabic, Hebrew, English, German, Russian, French, Italian, and Spanish). Among the grams discussed are spatial particles, motion verbs, case and, most prominently, spatial prepositions. All ancient language data are fully explained in linguistic word-by-word glosses and are therefore accessible to scholars who are not themselves experts on the respective languages. Taken together, these contributions extend the scope of research on spatial grammar back to the third millennium BCE.