Argument Structure in Flux
Argument Structure in Flux

Author: Elly van Gelderen

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2013-06-15

Total Pages: 588

ISBN-13: 902727228X

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The present volume is centered around five linguistic themes: argument structure and encoding strategies; argument structure and verb classes; unexpressed arguments; split intransitivity; and existential and presentational constructions. The articles also cover a variety of typologically different languages, and they offer new data from under-researched languages on the issues of event and argument structure. In some cases novel perspectives from widely discussed languages on highly debated topics are offered, also addressing more theoretical aspects concerning the predictability and derivation of linking. Several contributions apply current models of the lexicon–syntax interface to synchronic data. Other contributions focus on diachrony and are based on extensive use of corpora. Yet others, although empirically and theoretically grounded, privilege a methodological discussion, presenting analyses based on thorough and long-standing fieldwork.

Words and Sounds
Words and Sounds

Author: Nigel Holmes

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-01-20

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 3110647583

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These volumes assemble contributions presented at the XIX International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics in Munich (2017). They embrace essential topics of Latin linguistics with different theoretical and methodological approaches: The volumes contain chapters on Latin lexicography, etymology, morphology, phonology, Greek-Latin language contact, Latin syntax, semantics, and discourse-pragmatics.

Rich Descriptions and Simple Explanations in Morphosyntax and Language Acquisition
Rich Descriptions and Simple Explanations in Morphosyntax and Language Acquisition

Author: Giuliano Bocci

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-09-24

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 019888947X

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This volume offers new perspectives on the tension between the rich patterns of language variation that emerge from comparative studies and the quest for simple theoretical primitives. The chapters analyze a wide range of phenomena, and relate them to fundamental questions of universality, linguistic variation, and learnability.

The Oxford Handbook of Languages of the Caucasus
The Oxford Handbook of Languages of the Caucasus

Author: Maria Polinsky

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-11-21

Total Pages: 600

ISBN-13: 0190690712

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The Oxford Handbook of Languages of the Caucasus is an introduction to and overview of the linguistically diverse languages of southern Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. Though the languages of the Caucasus have often been mischaracterized or exoticized, many of them have cross-linguistically rare features found in few or no other languages. This handbook presents facts and descriptions of the languages written by experts. The first half of the book is an introduction to the languages, with the linguistic profiles enriched by demographic research about their speakers. It features overviews of the main language families as well as detailed grammatical descriptions of several individual languages. The second half of the book delves more deeply into theoretical analyses of features, such as agreement, ellipsis, and discourse properties, which are found in some languages of the Caucasus. Promising areas for future research are highlighted throughout the handbook, which will be of interest to linguists of all subfields.

Language Processing and Grammars
Language Processing and Grammars

Author: Brian Nolan

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2014-04-15

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9027270643

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There is a growing awareness of the significance and value that modelling using information technology can bring to the functionally oriented linguistic enterprise. This encompasses a spectrum of areas as diverse as concept modelling, language processing and grammar modelling, conversational agents, and the visualisation of complex linguistic information in a functional linguistic perspective. This edited volume offers a collection of papers dealing with different aspects of computational modelling of language and grammars, within a functional perspective at both the theoretical and application levels. As a result, this volume represents the first instance of contemporary functionally oriented computational treatments of a variety of important language and linguistic issues. This book presents current research on functionally oriented computational models of grammar, language processing and linguistics, concerned with a broadly functional computational linguistics that also contributes to our understanding of languages within a functional and cognitive linguistic, computational research agenda.

Manual of Grammatical Interfaces in Romance
Manual of Grammatical Interfaces in Romance

Author: Susann Fischer

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2016-09-12

Total Pages: 755

ISBN-13: 3110394839

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Different components of grammar interact in non-trivial ways. It has been under debate what the actual range of interaction is and how we can most appropriately represent this in grammatical theory. The volume provides a general overview of various topics in the linguistics of Romance languages by examining them through the interaction of grammatical components and functions as a state-of-the-art report, but at the same time as a manual of Romance languages.

Existentials and Locatives in Romance Dialects of Italy
Existentials and Locatives in Romance Dialects of Italy

Author: Delia Bentley

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 0198745265

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This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book provides the first ever large-scale comparative treatment of there sentences (there copula NP), in over 100 Italo-Romance and Sardinian dialects spoken in Italy. It comprises detailed discussions of focus structure, predication and argument realization, definiteness effects, and the linking between semantics and syntax in there sentences, advancing novel proposals in each case. The authors test influential hypotheses on existential constructions against first-hand dialect evidence; they argue that existential and locative there sentences differ in focus structure and semantics, even though they display similar morphosyntactic features. The volume also provides the historical background of Romance there sentences, relying on the findings of the analysis of a substantial corpus of early Italo-Romance vernacular texts. Couched in the framework of Role and Reference Grammar, the discussion fully engages with the vast available literature on existentials and locatives, thus being of interest to linguists of any theoretical persuasion. Through the investigation of existentials and locatives, the volume addresses key issues in linguistic theory, while offering an invaluable source of data for research on the Romance languages and a model in fieldwork-based microvariational analysis.

Valency over Time
Valency over Time

Author: Silvia Luraghi

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2021-10-25

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 3110755718

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Valency patterns and valency orientation have been frequent topics of research under different perspectives, often poorly connected. Diachronic studies on these topics is even less systematic than synchronic ones. The papers in this book bring together two strands of research on valency, i.e. the description of valency patterns as worked out in the Leipzig Valency Classes Project (ValPaL), and the assessment of a language's basic valency and its possible orientation. Notably, the ValPaL does not provide diachronic information concerning the valency patterns investigated: one of the aims of the book is to supplement the available data with data from historical stages of languages, in order to make it profitably exploitable for diachronic research. In addition, new research on the diachrony of basic valency and valency alternations can deepen our understanding of mechanisms of language change and of the propensity of languages or language families to exploit different constructional patterns related to transitivity.

Exact Repetition in Grammar and Discourse
Exact Repetition in Grammar and Discourse

Author: Rita Finkbeiner

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2018-09-24

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 3110592495

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Most scholars define reduplication as a formally restricted grammatical process, neatly distinguishing it from 'mere' repetition as a discoursal option. However, there is a fuzzy grey area between the two processes that has rarely been explored so far. In this timely collection, the phenomenon of exact repetition, understood broadly as the systematic iteration of one and the same linguistic item within relatively close syntactic proximity, is investigated from a number of angles. The volume contains studies from phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and deals with a broad range of languages, including alleged 'reduplication avoiders'. In bringing together different theoretical perspectives, phenomenological domains, and methodologies, and in linking the fields of syntax and discourse to those of morphology and morphophonology, the volume provides new insights into the structure and meaning of exact repetition phenomena, and, more generally, into their status within a theory of language. The collection will appeal to formally and functionally oriented scholars from all subfields of linguistics, including typology.

Preferred Argument Structure
Preferred Argument Structure

Author: John W. Du Bois

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2003-09-29

Total Pages: 469

ISBN-13: 9027296138

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Preferred Argument Structure offers a profound insight into the relationship between language use and grammatical structure. In his original publication on Preferred Argument Structure, Du Bois (1987) demonstrated the power of this perspective by using it to explain the origins of ergativity and ergative marking systems. Since this work, the general applicability of Preferred Argument Structure has been demonstrated in studies of language after language. In this collection, the authors move beyond verifying Preferred Argument Structure as a property of a given language. They use the methodology to reveal more subtle aspects of the patterns, for example, to look across languages, diachronically or synchronically, to examine particular grammatical relations, and to examine special populations or particular genres. This volume will appeal to linguists interested in the relationship of pragmatics and grammar generally, in the typology of grammatical relations, and in explanations derived from data- and corpus-based approaches to analysis.