A Typological Perspective on Latvian Grammar
A Typological Perspective on Latvian Grammar

Author: Andra Kalnaca

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2014-01-01

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 3110426986

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Theoretical studies of Latvian grammar have a great deal to offer to contemporary linguistics. Although traditionally Lithuanian has been the most widely studied Baltic language in diachronic and synchronic linguistics alike, Latvian has a number of distinctive features that can prove valuable both for historical, and perhaps even more so, for synchronic language research. Therefore, at the very least, contemporary typological, areal, and language contact studies involving Baltic languages should account for data from Latvian. Typologically, Latvian grammar is a classic Indo-European (Baltic) system with well-developed inflection and derivation. However, it also bears certain similarities to the Finno-Ugric languages, which can be reasonably explained by its areal and historical background. This applies, for example, to the mood system and its connections with modality and evidentiality in Latvian, also to the correlation between aspect and quantity as manifested in verbal and nominal (case) forms. The relations between debitive mood, certain constructions with reflexive verbs, and voice in Latvian are intriguing examples of unusual morphosyntactic features. Accordingly, the book focuses on the following topics: case system and declension (with emphasis on the polyfunctionality of case forms), gender, conjugation, tense and personal forms, aspect, mood, modality and evidentiality, reflexive verbs, and voice. The examples included in this book have been taken from the Balanced Corpus of Modern Latvian (Lidzsvarots musdienu latviešu valodas tekstu korpuss, available at www.korpuss.lv), www.google.lv, mass media, and fiction texts (see the List of language sources) without regard to relative frequency ratios.

Typology of Pluractional Constructions in the Languages of the World
Typology of Pluractional Constructions in the Languages of the World

Author: Simone Mattiola

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2019-04-24

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 9027262586

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The aim of this book is to give the first large-scale typological investigation of pluractionality in the languages of the world. Pluractionality is defined as the morphological modification of the verb to express a plurality of situations that can additionally involve a plurality of participants and/or spaces. Based on a 246-language sample, the main characteristics of pluractionality are described and discussed throughout the book. Firstly, a description of the functions that pluractional markers cross-linguistically express is presented and the relationships occurring among them are explained through the semantic map model. Then, the marking strategies that languages display to express such functions are illustrated and some issues concerning the formal identification are briefly discussed as well. The typological generalizations are corroborated showing how pluractional markers work in three specific languages (Akawaio, Beja, Maa). In conclusion, the theoretical conceptualization of pluractionality is discussed referring to the Radical Construction Grammar approach.

Verbs, Clauses and Constructions
Verbs, Clauses and Constructions

Author: Raquel Vea Escaza

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2018-11-22

Total Pages: 463

ISBN-13: 1527522156

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This volume brings together a collection of twenty contributions which offer a diversity of methodological tools and analytical issues concerning the study of different aspects of the role of verbs, clauses and constructions in a rich variety of languages such as Present-Day English, Old English, Old Saxon, French, Spanish, Arabic, German, Upper Sorbian, Latvian, Sino-Tibetan, and the Australian dialects Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra. The use of empirical data and the wide range of languages are the two main challenges addressed here. The book will serve to contribute to current literature on functional-oriented linguistics, incorporating linguistic typology, and corpus-based and contrastive perspectives. The volume is divided into three main parts. The first brings together eight contributions centrally related to the category of the verb both from a synchronic and diachronic perspective. The second part consists of five chapters which revolve around the syntax and semantics of clauses. Finally, the seven essays in the third section explore different formal and functional aspects of the study of constructions in an assortment of languages.

Word-Formation across Languages
Word-Formation across Languages

Author: Pavol Štekauer

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2017-01-06

Total Pages: 435

ISBN-13: 1443869295

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Research into cross-linguistic aspects and typology of word-formation has not been paid relevant and systematic attention by morphologists, and only a few articles dealing with various word-formation issues of this kind appear in journals. The chapters in this volume address this issue by discussing, on contrastive principles, important questions of word-formation in a sample of 26 languages. The focus of the book, as a whole, is on typological features of word-formation in the languages sampled. It is aimed at researchers that have an interest in word-formation in a variety of languages.

Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity II
Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity II

Author: Francesca Di Garbo

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 3961101809

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The many facets of grammatical gender remain one of the most fruitful areas of linguistic research, and pose fascinating questions about the origins and development of complexity in language. The present work is a two-volume collection of 13 chapters on the topic of grammatical gender seen through the prism of linguistic complexity. The contributions discuss what counts as complex and/or simple in grammatical gender systems, whether the distribution of gender systems across the world’s languages relates to the language ecology and social history of speech communities. Contributors demonstrate how the complexity of gender systems can be studied synchronically, both in individual languages and over large cross-linguistic samples, and diachronically, by exploring how gender systems change over time. Volume two consists of three chapters providing diachronic and typological case studies, followed by a final chapter discussing old and new theoretical and empirical challenges in the study of the dynamics of gender complexity. This volume is preceded by volume one, which, in addition to three chapters on the theoretical foundations of gender complexity, contains six chapters on grammatical gender and complexity in individual languages and language families of Africa, New Guinea, and South Asia.

Derivational Networks Across Languages
Derivational Networks Across Languages

Author: Lívia Körtvélyessy

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-06-08

Total Pages: 609

ISBN-13: 3110686805

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This pioneering research brings a new insight into derivational processes in terms of theory, method and typology. Theoretically, it conceives of derivation as a three-dimensional system. Methodologically, it introduces a range of parameters for the evaluation of derivational networks, including the derivational role, combinability and blocking effects of semantic categories, the maximum derivational potential and its actualization in relation to simple underived words, and the maximum and average number of orders of derivation. Each language-specific chapter has a unified structure, which made it possible to identify – in the final, typologically oriented chapter – the systematicity and regularity in developing derivational networks in a sample of forty European languages and in a few language genera and families. This is supported by considerations about the role of word-classes, morphological types, and the differences and similarities between word-formation processes of the languages belonging to the same genus/family.

Contemporary Approaches to Baltic Linguistics
Contemporary Approaches to Baltic Linguistics

Author: Peter Arkadiev

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2015-08-17

Total Pages: 562

ISBN-13: 3110343959

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This book is a collection of articles dealing with various aspects of the Baltic languages (Lithuanian, Latvian and Latgalian), which have only marginally featured in the discourse of theoretical linguistics and linguistic typology. The aim of the book is to bridge the gap between the study of the Baltic languages, on the one hand, and the current agenda of the theoretical and typological approaches to language, on the other. The book comprises 13 articles dealing with various aspects of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, lexicon, and their interactions, plus a lengthy introduction, whose aim is to outline the state of the art in the research on the Baltic languages. The contributions are data-driven, being based on field-work, corpus research, and data published in the sources not accessible to the general linguistic audience. On the other hand, all contributions are informed in the relevant contemporary linguistic theories and in the advances of linguistic typology. Some of the contributions aim at a more detailed, accurate and theoretically informed description of the data, others look at the Baltic material from a more theoretical point of view, still others assume an areal-typological or contact perspective.

Circum-Baltic Languages
Circum-Baltic Languages

Author: Östen Dahl

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2001-12-31

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 9027297282

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The area around the Baltic Sea has for millennia been a meeting-place for people of different origins. Among the circum-Baltic languages, we find three major branches of Indo-European — Baltic, Germanic, and Slavic, the Baltic-Finnic languages from the Uralic phylum and several others. The circum-Baltic area is an ideal place to study areal and contact phenomena in languages. The present set of two volumes look at the circum-Baltic languages from a typological, areal and historical perspective, trying to relate the intricate patterns of similarities and dissimilarities to the societal background. In Volume I, surveys of dialect areas and language groups bear witness to the immense linguistic diversity in the area with special attention to less well-known languages and language varieties and their contacts.

Argument Realization in Baltic
Argument Realization in Baltic

Author: Axel Holvoet

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2016-01-21

Total Pages: 570

ISBN-13: 9027267537

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The third volume in the VARGReB series explores different aspects of varying argument realization in Baltic. It presents original studies on differential marking of both core and non-core verbal arguments, on argument structures of nouns and the encoding of nominal arguments, as well as on constructions reflecting the expansion of argument structure through the addition of causative, resultative or applicative predications. The discussion of phenomena of argument realization and marking often touches on fundamental problems of syntax and the syntax-semantics interface, such as the putative locality of case assignment, event-structural factors determining case marking, the inheritance of argument structure across phrase types, or the status of arguments and adjuncts. The contributions to this volume use different approaches and frameworks to analyze a wealth of authentic data from contemporary Latvian and Lithuanian.

Inflectional Defectiveness
Inflectional Defectiveness

Author: Andrea D. Sims

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-11-12

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 131635203X

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Paradigmatic gaps ('missing' inflected forms) have traditionally been considered to be the random detritus of a language's history and marginal exceptions to the normal functioning of its inflectional system. Arguing that this is a misperception, Inflectional Defectiveness demonstrates that paradigmatic gaps are in fact normal and expected products of inflectional structure. Sims offers an accessible exploration of how and why inflectional defectiveness arises, why it persists, and how it is learned. The book presents a theory of morphology which is rooted in the implicative structure of the paradigm. This systematic exploration of the topic also addresses questions of inflection class organization, the morphology-syntax interface, the structure of the lexicon, and the nature of productivity. Presenting a novel synthesis of established research and new empirical data, this work is significant for researchers and graduate students in all fields of linguistics.