This book treats aspects of the syntax of Halkomelem, a Salish language spoken in southwestern British Columbia, specifically those constructions which involve objects, and seeks to accomplish two goals. First, it provides natural language fodder for the debate concerning the nature of grammatical relations and their place in syntactic theory. Second, by showing that Halkomelem draws from a familiar class of universal constructions and organizes its syntax around some simple and common parameters, the author has brought the Salish languages, which due to their phonological and morphological complexity seemed particularly fearsome, into cross-linguistic perspective.
TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.
An extensive dictionary (almost 1800 pages) of the Upriver dialects of Halkomelem, an Amerindian language of B.C.,giving information from almost 80 speakers gathered by the author over a period of 40 years. Entries include names and dates of citation, dialect information, phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic information, domain memberships of each alloseme, examples of use in sentences, and much cultural information.
This book offers a comprehensive view of the morphology, syntax, and semantics of applicatives in Salish, a language family of northwestern North America. Applicative constructions, found in many polysynthetic languages, cast a semantically peripheral noun phrase as direct object. Drawing upon primary and secondary data from twenty Salish languages, the authors catalog the relationship between the form and function of seventeen applicative suffixes. The semantic role of the associated noun phrase and the verb class of the base are crucial factors in differentiating applicatives. Salish languages have two types of applicatives: relationals are formed on intransitive bases and redirectives on transitive ones. The historical development and discourse function of Salish applicatives are elucidated and placed in typological perspective.
In this pioneering study Paul D. Kroeber examines the history of an array of important syntactic constructions in the Salish language family. This group of some twenty-three languages, centrally located in the Northwest Coast and Plateau Regions, is noted for its intriguing differences from European languages, including the possible irrelevance of a noun/verb distinction to grammatical structure and the existence of distinctive systems of articles, which also often function as marks of subordination. ø Kroeber draws on and analyzes data from a wide range of textual and other sources. Centering his detailed investigation on patterns of subordination and focusing, he situates these against the broader background of Salish syntax, examines their interrelationships, and reconstructs their historical development. The result is a study that significantly enhances understanding of the structure and history of Salish. As important, Kroeber?s critical command of sources and well-considered historical proposals are exemplary, setting a methodological standard for Americanist scholarship.
Using data from a variety of languages, this book explores a range of grammatical categories and constructions, including tense, aspect, subjunctive, case and demonstratives. It presents a new theory of grammatical categories - the Universal Spine Hypothesis - and reinforces generative notions of Universal Grammar while accommodating insights from linguistic typology.
This volume offers theoretical and descriptive perspectives on the issues pertaining to ergativity, a grammatical patterning whereby direct objects are in some way treated like intransitive subjects, to the exclusion of transitive subjects. This pattern differs markedly from nominative/accusative marking whereby transitive and intransitive subjects are treated as one grammatical class, to the exclusion of direct objects. While ergativity is sometimes referred to as a typological characteristic of languages, research on the phenomenon has shown that languages do not fall clearly into one category or the other and that ergative characteristics are not consistent across languages. Chapters in this volume look at approaches to ergativity within generative, typological, and functional paradigms, as well as approaches to the core morphosyntactic building blocks of an ergative construction; related constructions such as the anti-passive; related properties such as split ergativity and word order; and extensions and permutations of ergativity, including nominalizations and voice systems. The volume also includes results from experimental investigations of ergativity, a relatively new area of research. A wide variety of languages are represented, both in the theoretical chapters and in the 16 case studies that are more descriptive in nature, attesting to both the pervasiveness and diversity of ergative patterns.
This collection of papers is the first book ever published in English that presents detailed analyses of valency and transitivity alternations in Japanese from multifaceted standpoints: morphology, semantics, syntax, dialects, history, acquisition, and language typology.
This volume combines different perspectives on case-marking: (1) typological and descriptive approaches of various types and instances of case-marking in the languages of the world as well as comparison with languages that express similar types of relations without morphological case-marking; (2) formal analyses in different theoretical frameworks of the syntactic, semantic, and morphological properties of case-marking; (3) a historical approach of case-marking; (4) a psycholinguistic approach of case-marking. Although there are a number of publications on case related issues, there is no volume such as the present one, which exclusively looks at case marking, competition and variation from a cross-linguistic perspective and within the context of different contemporary theoretical approaches to the study of language. In addition to chapters with broad conceptual orientation, the volume offers detailed empirical studies of case in a number of diverse languages including: Amharic, Basque, Dutch, Hindi, Japanese, Kuuk Thaayorre, Malagasy and Yurakaré. The volume will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in the cognitive sciences, general linguistics, typology, historical linguistics, formal linguistics, and psycholinguistics. The book will interest scholars working within the context of formal syntactic and semantic theories as it provides insight into the properties of case from a cross-linguistic perspective. The book also will be of interest to cognitive scientists interested in the relationship between meaning and grammar, in particular, and the human mind's capacity in the mapping of meaning onto grammar, in general.
