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Matthew Chen's study, first published in 2000, offers a most comprehensive analysis of the rich and complex patterns of tone used in Chinese languages. Chinese has a wide repertoire of tones which undergo often surprising changes when they are connected in speech flow. The term tone sandhi refers to this tonal alternation. Chen examines tone sandhi phenomena in detail across a variety of Chinese dialects. He explores a range of important theoretical issues such as the nature of tonal representation, the relation of tone to accent, the prosodic domain of sandhi rules, and the interface between syntax and phonology. His book is the culmination of a ten-year research project and offers a wealth of empirical data not previously accessible to linguists. Extensive references and a bibliography on tone sandhi complete this invaluable resource which will be welcomed as a standard reference on Chinese tone.
The basic idea behind this volume is to probe the nature of grammaticalization. Its contributions focus on the following questions: (i) In how far can grammaticalization be considered a universal diachronic process or mechanism of change and in how far is it conditioned by synchronic factors? (ii) What is the role of the speaker in grammaticalization? (iii) Does grammaticalization itself provide a cause for change or is it an epiphenomenon, i.e. a conglomeration of causal factors/mechanisms which elsewhere occur independently? (iv) If it is epiphenominal, how do we explain that similar pathways so often occur in known cases of grammaticalization? (v) Is grammaticalization unidirectional? (vi) What is the nature of the parameters guiding grammaticalization? The overall aim of the book is to enrich our understanding of what grammaticalization does or does not entail via detailed case studies in combination with theoretical and methodological discussions.
This work deals with the insolvency both of companies and of individuals. Its publication coincides with the coming into force of the radical amendments to insolvency law contained within the Enterprise Bill 2002. The book should be suitable for those studying insolvency at undergraduate or postgraduate level, and for those studying for professional examinations and practising in the area.
Phonology: Critical Concepts, the first such anthology to appear in thirty years and the largest ever published, brings together over a hundred previously published book chapters and articles from professional journals. These have been chosen for their importance in the exploration of theoretical questions, with some preference for essays that are not easily accessible.Divided into sections, each part is preceded by a brief introduction which aims to point out the problems addressed by the various articles and show their relations to one another.-
Using detailed analyses of cross-generational case studies, Smith explains the acquisition of language phonology by children.
While much has been written on asymmetric aspects of sentence structure, symmetric aspects have been largely ignored, or claimed to be non-existent. Does symmetry in syntax exist, and if it does, how do we account for it? In this book, Barbara Citko sets out to tackle these questions and offers a unified approach to a number of phenomena that have so far been studied only in isolation. Focusing on three core minimalist mechanisms: merge, move and labeling, she advances a new theory of these mechanisms, by showing that under certain well-defined circumstances merge can create symmetric structures, move can target either of two potentially moveable objects, and labels can be constructed symmetrically from the features of two objects. This book is aimed at researchers and graduate students interested in minimalist syntax, the structure of questions, relative clauses, coordination, double object constructions and copular sentences.
The phenomenon of grammaticalization - the historical process whereby new grammatical material is created - has attracted a great deal of attention within linguistics. This is an attempt to provide a general account of this phenomenon in terms of a formal theory of syntax. Using Chomsky's Minimalist Program for linguistic theory, Roberts and Roussou show how this approach gives rise to a number of important conceptual and theoretical issues concerning the nature of functional categories and the form of parameters, as well as the relation of both of these to language change. Drawing on examples from a wide range of languages, they construct a general account of grammaticalization with implications for linguistic theory and language acquisition.
This second edition presents a completely revised overview of research on intonational phonology since the 1970s, including new material on research developments since the mid 1990s. It contains a new section discussing the research on the alignment of pitch features that has developed since the first edition was published, a substantially rewritten section on ToBI transcription that takes account of the application of ToBI principles to other languages, and new sections on the phonetic research on accent and focus. The substantive chapters on the analysis and transcription of pitch contours, pitch range, sentence stress and prosodic structure have been reorganised and updated. In addition, there is an associated website with sound files of the example sentences discussed in the book. This well-known study will continue to appeal to researchers and graduate students who work on any aspect of intonation.
This 2003 study uses evidence from early English verse to reconstruct the course of some central phonological changes in the history of the language. It builds on the premise that alliteration reflects faithfully the acoustic identity and similarity of stressed syllable onsets. Individual chapters cover the history of the velars, the structure and history of vowel-initial syllable onsets, the behaviour of onset clusters, and the chronology and motivation of cluster reduction (gn-, kn-, hr-, hl-, hn-, hw-, wr-, wl-). Examination of the patterns of group alliteration in Old and Middle English reveals a hierarchy of cluster-internal cohesiveness which leads to new conclusions regarding the causes for the special treatment of sp-, st-, sk- in alliteration. The analysis draws on phonetically based Optimality-Theoretic models. The book presents valuable information about the medieval poetic canon and elucidates the relationship between orality and literacy in the evolution of English verse.