Studies in Ditransitive Constructions
Studies in Ditransitive Constructions

Author: Andrej Malchukov

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2010-12-23

Total Pages: 793

ISBN-13: 3110220377

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This rich volume deals comprehensively with cross-linguistic variation in the morphosyntax of ditransitive constructions: constructions formed with verbs (like give) that take Agent, Theme and Recipient arguments. For the first time, a broadly cross-linguistic perspective is adopted. The present volume, consisting of an overview article and twenty-odd in-depth studies of ditransitive constructions in individual languages from different continents, arose from the conference on ditransitive constructions held at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig) in 2007. It opens with the editors' survey article providing an overview of cross-linguistic variation in ditransitive constructions, followed by the questionnaire on ditransitive constructions, compiled by the editors in order to elicit various properties of these patterns. The editors' overview discusses formal properties of ditransitive constructions as well as behavioral (or syntactic) and lexical properties (i.e., the extension of ditransitive constructions across different verb classes). The volume includes 23 contributions describing properties of ditransitive constructions in languages from all over the world, written by leading experts. Care has been taken that the contributions to the volume will be representative of structural, geographic and genealogical diversity in the domain of ditransitive constructions. Thus the present volume provides a unique source of information on typological diversity of ditransitive constructions. It is expected that it will be of central interest to all scholars and advanced students of linguistics, especially to those working in the field of language typology and comparative syntax.

The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Minimalism
The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Minimalism

Author: Cedric Boeckx

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2011-03-03

Total Pages: 736

ISBN-13: 0199549362

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This Handbook provides a complete assessment of the current achievements and challenges of the Minimalist Program. Leading researchers explore the origins of the program, the course of its research, and its connections with other disciplines, such as developmental biology, cognitive science, computational science, and philosophy of mind.

Argument Realization
Argument Realization

Author: Miriam Butt

Publisher: Center for the Study of Language and Information Publica Tion

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13:

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This volume presents seven essays that survey fundamental argument realization issues within a typologically broad range of languages. The papers examine, within the architecture of Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG), the variety of ways in which arguments of a predicate may be realized in the syntax. LFG allows for the complex interactions of arguments, syntactic positions and grammatical functions. Regardless of the complexity or simplicity of the predicational structure of a clause, the papers included show how the relationship between arguments and their overt realization can be dealt with. The papers also treat multiple case marking in Australian languages, possessor alternation in Welsh, directional complex predicates in American Indian languages and causatives in Japanese. They discuss representational issues that encompass underspecification and the encoding of semantic information needed to determine the correspondence of thematic arguments to their overt syntactic realization.

The Amazonian Languages
The Amazonian Languages

Author: R. M. W. Dixon

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1999-09-23

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 9780521570213

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The Amazon Basin is arguably both one of the least-known and the most complex linguistic regions in the world. It is the home of some 300 languages belonging to around twenty language families, plus more than a dozen genetic isolates, and many of these languages (often incompletely documented and mostly endangered) show properties that constitute exceptions to received ideas about linguistic universals. This book provides an overview in a single volume of this rich and exciting linguistic area. The editors and contributors have sought to make their descriptions as clear and accessible as possible, in order to provide a basis for further research on the structural characteristics of Amazonian languages and their genetic and areal relationships, as well as a point of entry to important cross-linguistic data for the wider constituency of theoretical linguists.

Language Change and Generative Grammar
Language Change and Generative Grammar

Author: Ellen Brandner

Publisher: Linguistische Berichte Sonderhefte

Published: 1996-12

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13:

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Ellen Brandner, Gisella Ferraresi The strong connection between language change and language acquisition has been known for a long time in traditional linguistics. The neogrammarian Paul wrote in 1920: "Es liegt auf der Hand, daß die Vorgänge der Spracherlernung von der al lergrößten Wichtigkeit für die Erklärung der Veränderung des Sprachusus sind, weil sie die wichtigste Ursache für diese Veränderung abgeben." But what is the reason why a child's grammar differs from that of his or her environ ment? Can we say that there are some principles which govern this change? Many linguists have tried to answer these important questions from different view points. We will sketch he re some of the most interesting ones. Sapir (1921) develops the principle of drift which was meant to describe the laws of diachronic change in linguistic systems. This concerns long-term tendencies of gram matical change, which probably are of universal character but result in one or another effect, according to the specific structure of a given language. The tendencies concerning syntactical change are determined by morphological change; morphological change, for its part, is determined by phonological change. All such instances of change aim at the one and only goal to always provide sufficient means for expressing all those grammatical relations which are necessary to keep up communication.

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.

A Grammar of Cavineña
A Grammar of Cavineña

Author: Antoine Guillaume

Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 944

ISBN-13:

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The series builds an extensive collection of high quality descriptions of languages around the world. Each volume offers a comprehensive grammatical description of a single language together with fully analyzed sample texts and, if appropriate, a word list and other relevant information which is available on the language in question. There are no restrictions as to language family or area, and although special attention is paid to hitherto undescribed languages, new and valuable treatments of better known languages are also included. No theoretical model is imposed on the authors; the only criterion is a high standard of scientific quality.

The Mesoamerican Indian Languages
The Mesoamerican Indian Languages

Author: Jorge A. Suarez

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1983-04-14

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9780521296694

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At least a hundred indigenous Indian languages are known to have been spoken in Mesoamerica, but it is only in the past fifty years that many of them have been adequately described. Professor Suárez draws together this considerable mass of scholarship in a general survey that will provide an invaluable source of reference.

The Syntax of Old Norse
The Syntax of Old Norse

Author: Jan Terje Faarlund

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2004-09-30

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0191533815

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This book offers the first account of Old Norse syntax for almost a hundred years and the first ever in a non-Scandinavian language. The language of the Vikings and of the Old Icelandic sagas is the best documented medieval Germanic language and the author is able to present a comprehensive analysis of its syntax and overviews of its phonology and morphology. He supports his analyses with examples taken from Norwegian and Icelandic manuscript editions. Professor Faarlund's approach is descriptive, in a generative framework with a minimum of technical detail. He includes a complete bibliography of Old Norse syntax. The book is intended for advanced students and scholars of historical linguistics, Germanic and Scandinavian languages, Norse philology, and all others with a serious interest in Nordic languages, civilizations, and history.

A Comparative Syntax of the Dialects of Southern Italy
A Comparative Syntax of the Dialects of Southern Italy

Author: Adam Ledgeway

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Published: 1991-01-16

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780631221661

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The book investigates the little studied syntax of the dialects of southern Italy. In addition to providing a descriptive account of a wide range of syntactic phenomena , the discussion shows how the model of language embodied in Chomsky's (1995) Minimalist Program can be profitably extended to the study of the syntax of southern Italian dialects, focusing on such topics as Case-marking and finite, infinitival and participial complementation.