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The book contains ten papers discussing issues of the relation between syntax and morphology from the perspective of morphologically rich languages including, among others, Indo-European languages, indigenous languages of the Americas, Turkish, and Hungarian. The overall question discussed in this book is to what extent morphological information shows up in syntactic structures and how this information is represented. The authors adopt different theoretical frameworks such as the Derivational Theory of Morphology, Distributed Optimality, Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical-Functional Grammar, Lexical Decomposition Grammar combined with Linking Theory and OT-like constraints, Paradigm-Based Morphosyntax as well as the Principles and Parameters Approach of Generative Grammar.
Recent years have seen intense debates between formal (generative) and functional linguists, particularly with respect to the relation between grammar and usage. This debate is directly relevant to diachronic linguistics, where one and the same phenomenon of language change can be explained from various theoretical perspectives. In this, a close look at the divergent and/or convergent evolution of a richly documented language family such as Romance promises to be useful. The basic problem for any approach to language change is what Eugenio Coseriu has termed the paradox of change: if synchronically, languages can be viewed as perfectly running systems, then there is no reason why they should change in the first place. And yet, as everyone knows, languages are changing constantly. In nine case studies, a number of renowned scholars of Romance linguistics address the explanation of grammatical change either within a broadly generative or a functional framework.
This volume focuses on different aspects of language development. The contributions are concerned with similarities and differences between first and second language acquisition, the acquisition of sentence structure and functional categories, cross-linguistic influence in bilingual first language acquisition as well as the relation between language acquisition, language contact and diachronic change. The recurrent topic of the volume is the link between linguistic variation and the limitation of structural variability in the framework of a well-defined theory of language. In this respect, the volume opens up new perspectives for future research.
This volume presents selected papers from the 5th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference within the area of discourse analysis. The topics addressed include pronominal anaphora in English and Russian narratives, the subtleties of the definite article in English and Spanish, the use of discourse particles in Dutch, and the function of prosody as a marker of text structure in spoken narratives. The papers illustrate the potential of the emerging cognitive linguistic paradigm to provide fresh, revealing insights in the study of discourse.
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This book provides a detailed introduction to the development of the German language from the earliest reconstructible prehistory to the present day. It is supported by a companion website and is suitable for language learners and teachers and students of linguistics, from undergraduate level upwards.
The study of language variation in social context continues to hold the attention of a large number of linguists. This research is promoted by the annual colloquia on New Ways of Analyzing Variation in English' (NWAVE). This volume is a selection of revised papers from the NWAVE XI, held at Georgetown University. It deals with a number of items, some of which have often been discussed, others that have been less emphasized. The first group of articles in the volume center on a frequent theme: speech communities as the essential setting for understanding variation in language. Earlier work in linguistic variation dealt for the most part with phonological variation and change. Syntactic and morphological change and variation in syntax are also discussed. A selection on the role of variation in understanding first language acquisition comprises three papers. Articles in the last section of the volume concern theoretical controversy and methodological advances.
During several decades, syntactic reconstruction has been more or less regarded as a bootless and an unsuccessful venture, not least due to the heavy criticism in the 1970s from scholars like Watkins, Jeffers, Lightfoot, etc. This fallacious view culminated in Lightfoot’s (2002: 625) conclusion: “[i]f somebody thinks that they can reconstruct grammars more successfully and in more widespread fashion, let them tell us their methods and show us their results. Then we’ll eat the pudding.” This volume provides methods for the identification of i) cognates in syntax, and ii) the directionality of syntactic change, showcasing the results in the introduction and eight articles. These examples are offered as both tastier and also more nourishing than the pudding Lightfoot had in mind when discarding the viability of reconstructing syntax.
This book is about the nature of morphology and its place in the structure of grammar. Drawing on a wide range of aspects of Romance inflectional morphology, leading scholars present detailed arguments for the autonomy of morphology, ie morphology has phenomena and mechanisms of its own that are not reducible to syntax or phonology. But which principles and rules govern this independent component and which phenomena can be described or explicated by the mechanisms of the morphemic level? In shedding light on these questions, this volume constitutes a major contribution to Romance historical morphology in particular, and to our understanding of the nature and importance of morphomic structure in language change in general.
This book offers the most exhaustive and comprehensive treatment available of the Verb Second property. It includes formal theoretical work alongside psycholinguistic and language acquisition studies, examines data from a range of languages, and shows that V2 phenomena are much more widely attested cross-linguistically than previously thought.