Grammatical Categories in Linguistics and Education
Grammatical Categories in Linguistics and Education

Author: Holden Härtl

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2024-11-04

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 3111140806

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This volume explores how grammatical categories, as defined by theoretical linguistics, are effectively implemented in language education. Aiming to bridge the gap between linguistic research and language pedagogy, it offers a detailed inquiry that spans theoretical frameworks and empirical data. By presenting a series of insightful studies, this work illustrates how findings from theoretical linguistics can be applied to enhance practical language instruction, demonstrating the reciprocal enrichment of both fields. Essential for linguists, language educators, and researchers interested in the intersections of grammar, cognition, and pedagogy, the volume is organized into four engaging sections. Each section illuminates the nuances of grammar teaching and language acquisition. It begins with a theoretical analysis of linguistic categories across diverse languages, progresses through the links between linguistic research and teaching methodologies, and delves into the role of empirical data in classroom applications. The final section focuses on the practical implementation of linguistic categories in language teaching, promoting a deeper understanding of grammar as a dynamic component of language learning.

Logic, Language and Meaning
Logic, Language and Meaning

Author: Maria Aloni

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2012-06-24

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 3642314821

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This book contains the revised papers presented at the 8th Amsterdam Colloquium 2011, held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in December 2011. The 46 thoroughly refereed and revised contributions out of 137 submissions presented together with 2 invited talks are organized in five sections. The first section contains the invited contributions. The second, third and fourth sections incorporate submitted contributions to the three thematic workshops that were hosted by the Colloquium and addressed the following topics: inquisitiveness; formal semantics and pragmatics of sign languages, formal semantic evidence. The final section presents the submitted contributions to the general program.

Labels and Roots
Labels and Roots

Author: Leah Bauke

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2017-09-25

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1501502131

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This volume provides in-depth exploration of the issues of labeling and roots, with a balance of empirical and conceptual/theoretical analyses. The papers explore key questions that must ultimately be addressed in the development of generative theories: how do theories of labels and roots relate to syntax-internal computation, to semantics, to morphology, and to phonology?

The Development of Latin Clause Structure
The Development of Latin Clause Structure

Author: Lieven Jozef Maria Danckaert

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0198759525

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This book examines Latin word order, and in particular the relative ordering of i) lexical verbs and direct objects (OV vs VO) and ii) auxiliaries and non-finite verbs (VAux vs AuxV). In Latin these elements can freely be ordered with respect to each other, whereas the present-day Romance languages only allow for the head-initial orders VO and AuxV. Lieven Danckaert offers a detailed, corpus-based description of these two word order alternations, focusing on their diachronic development in the period from c. 200 BC until 600 AD. The corpus data reveal that some received wisdom needs to be reconsidered: there is in fact no evidence for any major increase in productivity of the order VO during the eight centuries under investigation, and the order AuxV only becomes more frequent in clauses with a modal verb and an infinitive, not in clauses with a BE-auxiliary and a past participle. The book also explores a more fundamental question about Latin syntax, namely whether or not the language is configurational, in the sense that a phrase structure grammar (with 'higher-order constituents' such as verb phrases) is needed to describe and analyse Latin word order patterns. Four pieces of evidence are presented that suggest that Latin is indeed a fully configurational language, despite its high degree of word order flexibility. Specifically, it is shown that there is ample evidence for the existence of a verb phrase constituent. The book thus contributes to the ongoing debate regarding the status of configurationality as a language universal.

The Structure of Words at the Interfaces
The Structure of Words at the Interfaces

Author: Heather Newell

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 0198778260

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This volume takes a variety of approaches to the question 'what is a word?', with particular emphasis on where in the grammar wordhood is determined. Chapters in the book all start from the assumption that structures at, above, and below the 'word' are built in the same derivational system: there is no lexicalist grammatical subsystem dedicated to word-building. This type of framework foregrounds the difficulty in defining wordhood. Questions such as whether there are restrictions on the size of structures that distinguish words from phrases, or whether there are combinatory operations that are specific to one or the other, are central to the debate. In this respect, chapters in the volume do not all agree. Some propose wordhood to be limited to entities defined by syntactic heads, while others propose that phrasal structure can be found within words. Some propose that head-movement and adjunction (and Morphological Merger, as its mirror image) are the manner in which words are built, while others propose that phrasal movements are crucial to determining the order of morphemes word-internally. All chapters point to the conclusion that the phonological domains that we call words are read off of the morphosyntactic structure in particular ways. It is the study of this interface, between the syntactic and phonological modules of Universal Grammar, that underpins the discussion in this volume.

The Phonology of Turkish
The Phonology of Turkish

Author: Öner Özçelik

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-10-24

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0192696777

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This book offers a comprehensive account of the phonological structure of modern Turkish within the framework of recent linguistic models. While phenomena at both the segmental and suprasegmental levels are discussed, the emphasis is on the latter, with analysis of phonological processes that extend over a number of different domains. Lower-level prosodic constituents, including syllables, feet, and prosodic words, are incorporated into a general theory alongside higher-level constituents - the phonological phrase and the intonational phrase - on the assumption that phonological structure is hierarchical in nature and that phonological representations consist of more than a single linear sequence of segments. The approach employed here draws on theories of both representation - Prosodic Phonology and Autosegmental Phonology - and computation, in the form of Optimality Theory. An overarching theme that emerges in every chapter is that not only regular but also apparently “exceptional” phonological forms demonstrate a systematic pattern, and that both can be captured by the same grammar. The volume provides a critical synthesis of research in Turkish phonology, as well as offering new analyses and data from a theoretically-oriented perspective.

Symmetrizing Syntax
Symmetrizing Syntax

Author: Hiroki Narita

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2021-11-29

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 1317371569

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Symmetrizing Syntax seeks to establish a minimal and natural characterization of the structure of human language (syntax), simplifying many facets of it that have been redundantly or asymmetrically formulated. Virtually all past theories of natural language syntax, from the traditional X-bar theory to the contemporary system of Merge and labeling, stipulate that every phrase structure is "asymmetrically" organized, so that one of its elements is always marked as primary/dominant over the others, or each and every phrase is labeled by a designated lexical element. The two authors call this traditional stipulation into question and hypothesize, instead, that linguistic derivations are essentially driven by the need to reduce asymmetry and generate symmetric structures. Various linguistic notions such as Merge, cyclic derivation by phase, feature-checking, morphological agreement, labeling, movement, and criterial freezing, as well as parametric differences among languages like English and Japanese, and so on, are all shown to follow from a particular notion of structural symmetry. These results constitute novel support for the contemporary thesis that human language is essentially an instance of a physical/biological object, and its design is governed by the laws of nature, at the core of which lies the fundamental principle of symmetry. Providing insights into new technical concepts in syntax, the volume is written for academics in linguistics but will also be accessible to linguistics students seeking an introduction to syntax.

Africa's Endangered Languages
Africa's Endangered Languages

Author: Jason Kandybowicz

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-07-10

Total Pages: 521

ISBN-13: 0190675284

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Relatively little is known about Africa's endangered languages. Unlike indigenous languages in Australia, North Asia, and the Americas, which are predominantly threatened by colonizers, African languages are threatened most immediately by other local languages. As a result, the threat of language extinction is perceived as lower in Africa than in other parts of the globe, and a disproportionate amount of research is devoted to the study of endangered African languages when compared to any other linguistically threatened region in the world. There are approximately 308 highly endangered languages spoken in Africa (roughly 12% of all African languages) and at least 201 extinct African languages. This volume hopes to illuminate and challenge this trend. Chapters offer both documentary and theoretical perspectives, emphasizing the symbiotic relationship between the two approaches and its implications for the preservation of endangered languages, both in the African context and more broadly. Documentary-oriented chapters deal with key issues in African language documentation including language preservation and revitalization, community activism, and data collection and dissemination methodologies, among others. Theoretically-oriented chapters provide detailed descriptions and analyses of phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic phenomena, and connect these to current theoretical issues and debates. Africa's Endangered Languages provides thorough coverage of a continent's neglected languages that will spur linguists and Africanists alike to work to protect them.

The Cambridge Handbook of Slavic Linguistics
The Cambridge Handbook of Slavic Linguistics

Author: Danko Šipka

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2024-05-31

Total Pages: 1177

ISBN-13: 1108967906

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The linguistic study of the Slavic language family, with its rich syntactic and phonological structures, complex writing systems, and diverse socio-historical context, is a rapidly growing research area. Bringing together contributions from an international team of authors, this Handbook provides a systematic review of cutting-edge research in Slavic linguistics. It covers phonetics and phonology, morphology and syntax, lexicology, and sociolinguistics, and presents multiple theoretical perspectives, including synchronic and diachronic. Each chapter addresses a particular linguistic feature pertinent to Slavic languages, and covers the development of the feature from Proto-Slavic to present-day Slavic languages, the main findings in historical and ongoing research devoted to the feature, and a summary of the current state of the art in the field and what the directions of future research will be. Comprehensive yet accessible, it is essential reading for academic researchers and students in theoretical linguistics, linguistic typology, sociolinguistics and Slavic/East European Studies.

Endocentric Structuring of Projection-free Syntax
Endocentric Structuring of Projection-free Syntax

Author: Hiroki Narita

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2014-12-15

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 9027269629

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Endocentric Structuring of Projection-free Syntax puts forward a novel theory of syntax that rigidly adheres to the principle of Minimal Computation, in which a number of traditional but extraneous stipulations such as referential indices and representational labels/projections are eliminated. It specifically articulates the overarching hypothesis that every syntactic object is composed by recursive, phase-by-phase embedding of the endocentric structure {H, α}, where H is a head lexical item and α is another syntactic object (order irrelevant). The proposed mechanism achieves both theory-internal simplicity and broad empirical coverage at the same time, advancing a radically reduced conception of endocentricty/headedness while deriving a number of empirically grounded constraints on human language.