Barayin Morphosyntax
Barayin Morphosyntax

Author: Joseph Lovestrand

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-01-06

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0192591835

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This volume offers a Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) analysis of the morphosyntax of Barayin, a Chadic language spoken by about 6000 people in the Guera region of Chad. The core chapters of the book draw on rich empirical data to provide analyses of the basic clause, noun phrases, verb phrases, and serial verb constructions. The version of LFG adopted here includes two recent innovations: the first is minimal c-structure, which results in simpler phrase structure representations; the second is the assumption that glue semantics accounts for argument selection, rejecting the need for a level of a-structure or for Completeness and Coherence in f-structure. Argument sharing in serial verb constructions can thus be modeled in a connected s-structure. This method of modeling semantic composition in complex predicates is extended to directional and associated motion complex predicates in Choctaw and Wambaya, removing the need to appeal to a special mechanism to unite semantic forms in such constructions.

Niuean
Niuean

Author: Diane Massam

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 0198793553

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This volume explores predication in Niuean, an endangered Polynesian language spoken on the island of Niue and in New Zealand. It extends our understanding of cross-linguistic sentence structure and grammatical case, and will be of interest to scholars in the fields of Austronesian linguistics, typology, and theoretical linguistics.

Ikpana Interrogatives
Ikpana Interrogatives

Author: Jason Kandybowicz

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-03-16

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0192845004

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This book documents the interrogative system of Ikpana, an endangered indigenous Ghana-Togo Mountain language of eastern Ghana also known as Logba. The system is notable in several respects. It exhibits features that buck certain typological trends, act as counterexamples to some claims about language universals, and exemplify fascinating patterns that are either rare or unfamiliar in interrogative systems cross-linguistically. Drawing on original fieldwork and a combination of formal/theoretical, experimental, and comparative methodologies, the book provides a theoretically-informed description and analysis of Ikpana interrogative grammar, encompassing both syntactic and phonological aspects of question formation in the language. The chapters explore a range of phenomena including polar question formation, wh- movement, wh- in-situ, interrogative intonation, and prosody, among others. The authors demonstrate that theoretically-guided language documentation does not only contribute to language description, but can also increase understanding of the human Language Faculty and expand the empirical base of language typologies: bringing formal and theoretical concerns to the fore facilitates richer descriptions of the grammar than purely descriptive approaches allow.

The Algonquian Inverse
The Algonquian Inverse

Author: Will Oxford

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-11-28

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 0192699873

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This book serves as a definitive reference for the inverse morphology of the Algonquian languages, which has attracted much attention in typological and theoretical linguistics. Will Oxford describes the patterning of inverse morphology across the Algonquian family and presents a framework for understanding the structure and function of the Algonquian inverse that is empirically driven and typologically grounded. He presents data from all documented Algonquian languages and considers not only the morphology of the inverse construction but also its syntax and pragmatics, giving equal weight to diachronic, typological, functional, and formal perspectives. From the integration of these perspectives, a simple and coherent understanding of the nature of the inverse emerges. The key proposal is that the inverse is "deep" in some contexts and "shallow" in others. In interactions between two third persons, the inverse is a "deep" patient voice construction that inverts the canonical morphology, syntax, and pragmatics of a transitive clause. In interactions between a third person and a first or second person, the inverse is a "shallow" hierarchical agreement pattern implemented through a spurious use of patient voice morphology, inverting the canonical morphology of a transitive clause but having no effect on syntax or pragmatics. This split analysis, which reflects the likely diachronic development of the Algonquian inverse, is argued to have various benefits, including the resolution of a longstanding controversy over the syntactic status of the inverse.

The Handbook of Lexical Functional Grammar
The Handbook of Lexical Functional Grammar

Author: Mary Dalrymple

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2023-12-14

Total Pages: 2192

ISBN-13: 3961104247

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Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) is a nontransformational theory of linguistic structure, first developed in the 1970s by Joan Bresnan and Ronald M. Kaplan, which assumes that language is best described and modeled by parallel structures representing different facets of linguistic organization and information, related by means of functional correspondences. This volume has five parts. Part I, Overview and Introduction, provides an introduction to core syntactic concepts and representations. Part II, Grammatical Phenomena, reviews LFG work on a range of grammatical phenomena or constructions. Part III, Grammatical modules and interfaces, provides an overview of LFG work on semantics, argument structure, prosody, information structure, and morphology. Part IV, Linguistic disciplines, reviews LFG work in the disciplines of historical linguistics, learnability, psycholinguistics, and second language learning. Part V, Formal and computational issues and applications, provides an overview of computational and formal properties of the theory, implementations, and computational work on parsing, translation, grammar induction, and treebanks. Part VI, Language families and regions, reviews LFG work on languages spoken in particular geographical areas or in particular language families. The final section, Comparing LFG with other linguistic theories, discusses LFG work in relation to other theoretical approaches.

Barayin Morphosyntax
Barayin Morphosyntax

Author: Joseph Lovestrand

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-01-21

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0198851154

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This volume offers a Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) analysis of the morphosyntax of Barayin, a Chadic language spoken by about 6000 people in the Guera region of Chad. The core chapters of the book draw on rich empirical data to provide analyses of the basic clause, noun phrases, verb phrases, and serial verb constructions. The version of LFG adopted here includes two recent innovations: the first is minimal c-structure, which results in simpler phrase structure representations; the second is the assumption that glue semantics accounts for argument selection, rejecting the need for a level of a-structure or for Completeness and Coherence in f-structure. Argument sharing in serial verb constructions can thus be modeled in a connected s-structure. This method of modeling semantic composition in complex predicates is extended to directional and associated motion complex predicates in Choctaw and Wambaya, removing the need to appeal to a special mechanism to unite semantic forms in such constructions.

Ay-Inversion in Tagalog
Ay-Inversion in Tagalog

Author: Patrick Nuhn

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2021-10-11

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 3110755467

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Tagalog, an Austronesian language, is widely spoken and understood throughout the Philippine archipelago where it served as the basis for the national language Filipino. The language is often cited for its many unusual linguistic properties. Drawing on both spoken fieldwork data and written data from novels, this study investigates several phenomena at Tagalog’s interface of information structure and morphosyntax. Aside from the default predicate-initial word order, the Tagalog language has several information-structurally marked constructions that allow other constituents to appear in the sentence initial position. One of these constructions is ay-inversion. Although it is often labeled a topic-marking construction, it is actually far more versatile. This book aims to explore some of its many facets. The investigation of ay-inversion begins with a survey of its various uses that appear in the data, including some that have to date received very little if any attention in the literature, such as reversed ang-inversion, which combines two of the language’s inversion constructions. Selected observations are then modeled in Role and Reference Grammar and their implications for Tagalog syntax are explored. Finally, the role of ay-inversion in anaphora resolution is investigated and selected processes are modeled in a frame-based account.

Kayardild Morphology and Syntax
Kayardild Morphology and Syntax

Author: Erich R. Round

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 0199654875

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This book presents new data and analyses of the inflectional system and syntax of Kayardild, a typologically striking language of Australia. By virtue of the technical format employed, the book makes Kayardild accessible to mainstream formal linguistic theory, and so will appeal to a broad new audience as well as to those who know Kayardild well.

The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic
The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic

Author: Janet C. E. Watson

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2007-11-01

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0191607754

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This book is the first comprehensive account of the phonology and morphology of Arabic. It is a pioneering work of scholarship, based on the author's research in the region. Arabic is a Semitic language spoken by some 250 million people in an area stretching from Morocco in the West to parts of Iran in the East. Apart from its great intrinsic interest, the importance of the language for phonological and morphological theory lies, as the author shows, in its rich root-and-pattern morphology and its large set of guttural consonants. Dr Watson focuses on two eastern dialects, Cairene and San'ani. Cairene is typical of an advanced urban Mediterranean dialect and has a cultural importance throughout the Arab world; it is also the variety learned by most foreign speakers of Arabic. San'ani, spoken in Yemen, is representative of a conservative peninsula dialect. In addition the book makes extensive reference to other dialects as well as to classical and Modern Standard Arabic. The volume opens with an overview of the history and varieties of Arabic, and of the study of phonology within the Arab linguistic tradition. Successive chapters then cover dialectal differences and similarities, and the position of Arabic within Semitic; the phoneme system and the representation of phonological features; the syllable and syllabification; word stress; derivational morphology; inflectional morphology; lexical phonology; and post-lexical phonology. The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic will be of great interest to Arabists and comparative Semiticists, as well as to phonologists, morphologists, and linguists more generally.

Lexical Relatedness
Lexical Relatedness

Author: Andrew Spencer

Publisher: Oxford University Press (UK)

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 474

ISBN-13: 0199679924

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Andrew Spencer argues that inflection and derivation cannot be properly distinguished and that conventional approaches to morphology are fatally flawed. He uses intermediate types of lexical relatedness in a variety of languages (including Slavic, Australian, Germanic, and Romance) to develop an enriched and morphologically-informed model of the lexical entry. He then uses this to build the foundations for a model of lexical relatedness that is consistent withparadigm-based models. This profound and stimulating book will interest morphologists, lexicographers, and theoretical linguists more generally.