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Cyclical Change Continued
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 439

Cyclical Change Continued

This book presents new data and additional questions regarding the linguistic cycle. The topics discussed are the pronoun, negative, negative existential, analytic-synthetic, distributive, determiner, degree, and future/modal cycles. The papers raise questions about the length of time that cycles take, the interactions between different cycles, the typical stages and their stability, and the areal factors influencing cycles. The languages and language families that are considered in depth are Central Pomo, Cherokee, Chinese, English, French, Gbe, German, Hmong-Mien, Maipurean, Mayan, Mohawk, Mon-Khmer, Niger-Congo, Nupod, Quechuan, Sino-Tibetan, Tai-Kadai , Tuscarora, Ute, and Yoruboid. One paper covers several of the world’s language families. Cyclical change connects linguists working in various frameworks because it is exciting to find a reason behind this fascinating phenomenon.

Empirical Approaches to Linguistic Theory
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 360

Empirical Approaches to Linguistic Theory

The mental representation of language cannot be directly observed but must be inferred and modelled from its effects at second hand. Linguists have traditionally responded to this in two ways, either going for a fairly data-light approach and valuing theoretical creativity, or pursuing just those goals for which data is available and trusting to data-driven descriptive work. More recently, advances in technology and experimental techniques have made data gathering easier and more accessible, so that a theoretically informed but empirically based approach is rapidly growing in popularity. This synthesis permits linguists to combine the intellectual hypothesis generation of the theoreticians with the ability to deliver hard answers of the empiricist. This volume is a collection of papers in this direction, using mostly experiment methods to yield insights into syntactic and semantic structures, language processing, and acquisition. Papers report corpus data, neurological investigations, child language studies, and fieldwork from minority languages.

Language Change at the Syntax-Semantics Interface
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 368

Language Change at the Syntax-Semantics Interface

Bringing together diachronic research from a variety of perspectives, notably typology, formal syntax and semantics, this volume focuses on the interplay of syntactic and semantic factors in language change - an issue so far largely neglected both in (mostly lexical) historical semantics as well as historical syntax, but recently brought into focus by grammaticalization theory as well as Minimalist diachronic syntax. The contributions draw on data from numerous Indo-European languages including Vedic Sanskrit, Middle Indic, Greek as well as English and German, and discuss a range of phenomena such as change in negation markers, indefinite articles, quantifiers, modal verbs, argument structure among others. The papers analyze diachronic evidence in the light of contemporary syntactic and semantic theory, addressing the crucial question of how syntactic and semantic change are linked, and whether both are governed by similar constraints, principles and systematic mechanisms. The volume will appeal to scholars in historical linguistics and formal theories of syntax and semantics.

Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2008
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 263

Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2008

This volume assembles a significant number of selected papers that were presented at the 22nd edition of Going Romance, held at the University of Groningen in December 2008. Though it contains a variety of topics, 'tense, mood and aspect' is represented most extensively. This volume contains a rich variety of Romance languages: Cape Verdean, European Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian and Spanish. The collection of papers is representative of the research carried out nowadays on Romance languages within theoretical linguistics and shows the vitality of this research.

Locality and the Architecture of Syntactic Dependencies
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 288

Locality and the Architecture of Syntactic Dependencies

  • Type: Book
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  • Published: 2007-03-28
  • -
  • Publisher: Springer

A study on minimalist syntax this book develops an empirical argument for a crash-proof computational system. This framework allows for novel analyses of quirky subjects in Icelandic and Spanish, indefinite SE in Spanish and different types of expletive constructions in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Icelandic.

The Oxford Handbook of Modality and Mood
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 762

The Oxford Handbook of Modality and Mood

This handbook offers an in depth and comprehensive state of the art survey of the linguistic domains of modality and mood. An international team of experts in the field examines the full range of methodological and theoretical approaches to the many facets of the phenomena involved. Parts 1 and 2 of the volume present the basic linguistic facts about the systems of modality and mood in the languages of the world, covering the semantics and the expression of different subtypes of modality and mood respectively. The authors also examine the interaction of modality and mood, mutually and with other semantic categories such as aspect, time, negation, and evidentiality. In Part 3, authors discuss the features of the modality and mood systems in five typologically different language groups, while chapters in Part 4 deal with wider perspectives on modality and mood: diachrony, areality, first language acquisition, and sign language. Finally, Part 5 looks at how modality and mood are handled in different theoretical approaches: formal syntax, functional linguistics, cognitive linguistics and construction grammar, and formal semantics.

Die Berliner Abendblätter Heinrich von Kleists : ihre Quellen und ihre Redaktion
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 265

Die Berliner Abendblätter Heinrich von Kleists : ihre Quellen und ihre Redaktion

This volume assembles a significant number of selected papers that were presented at the 22nd edition of Going Romance, held at the University of Groningen in December 2008. Though it contains a variety of topics, 'tense, mood and aspect' is represented most extensively. This volume contains a rich variety of Romance languages: Cape Verdean, European Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian and Spanish. The collection of papers is representative of the research carried out nowadays on Romance languages within theoretical linguistics and shows the vitality of this research.

The Influence of the Lexifier
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 296

The Influence of the Lexifier

The study of language contact in the „new" English varieties is frequently influenced by sociolinguistic approaches and reference to substrate languages but much less often to functionally-based contact linguistic theory. In The Influence of the Lexifier, Ziegeler applies grammaticalization and other explanations of language change to many under-researched features of Singapore English, highlighting the role of the co-existing lexifier in the unique contact setting of Singapore.

On Information Structure, Meaning and Form
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 584

On Information Structure, Meaning and Form

This collection of articles offers a new and compelling perspective on the interface connecting syntax, phonology, semantics and pragmatics. At the core of this volume is the hypothesis that information structure represents the common interface of these grammatical components. Information structure is investigated here from different theoretical viewpoints yielding typologically relevant information and structural generalizations. In the volume's introductory chapter, the editors identify two central approaches to information structure: the formal and the interpretive view. The remainder of the book is organized accordingly. The first part examines information structure and grammar, concentrating on generalizations across languages. The second part investigates information structure and pragmatics, concentrating on clause structure and context. Through concrete analyses of topic, focus, and related phenomena across different languages, the contributors add new and convincing evidence to the research on information structure.

Modality and Ellipsis
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 280

Modality and Ellipsis

This book offers a detailed analysis of modal syntax and examines its grammatical interaction with the process of ellipsis. The author approaches the connection between the two areas by drawing on developments in the history of English and on effects obtaining in modern grammars. In addition, the volume closely investigates from a syntactic perspective how the mechanism of ellipsis licensing hinges on interpretable features