Systems of Nominal Classification

Systems of Nominal Classification

Author: Gunter Senft

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2000-08-03

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 9780521770750

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A major linguistic study of nominal classification systems across a variety of languages, first published in 2000.


Number – Constructions and Semantics

Number – Constructions and Semantics

Author: Anne Storch

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2014-03-19

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 9027270635

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This book is the outcome of several decades of research experience, with contributions by leading scholars based on long-term field research. It combines approaches from descriptive linguistics, anthropological linguistics, socio-historical studies, areal linguistics, and social anthropology. The key concern of this ground-breaking volume is to investigate the linguistic means of expressing number and countable amounts, which differ greatly in the world’s languages. It provides insights into common number-marking devices and their not-so-common usages, but also into phenomena such as the absence of plurals, or transnumeral forms. The different contributions to the volume show that number is of considerable semantic complexity in many languages worldwide, expressing all kinds of extendedness, multiplicity, salience, size, and so on. This raises a number of challenging questions regarding what exactly is described under the slightly monolithic label of ‘number’ in most descriptive approaches to the languages of the world.


The Dynamics of Nominal Classification

The Dynamics of Nominal Classification

Author: Ruth Singer

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2016-02-22

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1614513694

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The use of grammatical gender in the Australian language Mawng calls into question prevailing ideas about the functions of nominal classification systems. Mawng’s gender system has a strong semantic basis and plays an important role in the construction of meaning in discourse. Gender agreement in verbs is frequently lexicalized, creating idioms called lexicalised agreement verbs that are structurally similar to noun-verb idioms. This book will be of interest to anyone interested in nominal classification or cross-linguistic approaches to idioms.


Nominal Classification

Nominal Classification

Author: Marcin Kilarski

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2013-12-18

Total Pages: 421

ISBN-13: 9027270902

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This book offers the first comprehensive survey of the study of gender and classifiers throughout the history of Western linguistics. Based on an analysis of over 200 genetically and typologically diverse languages, the author shows that these seemingly arbitrary and redundant categories play in fact a central role in the lexicon, grammar and the organization of discourse. As a result, the often contradictory approaches to their functionality and semantic motivation encapsulate the evolving conceptions of such issues as cognitive and cultural correlates of linguistic structure, the diverse functions of grammatical categories, linguistic complexity, agreement phenomena and the interplay between lexicon and grammar. The combination of a typological and historiographic perspective adopted here allows the reader to appreciate the detail and insight of earlier, supposedly ‘prescientific’ accounts in light of the data now available and to examine contemporary discussions in the context of prevailing conceptions in the study of language at different points in its history since antiquity.


Nominal Classification in Asia and Oceania

Nominal Classification in Asia and Oceania

Author: Marc Allassonnière-Tang

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2023-12-01

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 9027249245

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Linguists have long been interested in systems of nominal classification due to their diverse functions as well as cognitive and cultural correlates. Among others, ongoing research has focused on semantic, functional and morphosyntactic properties of complex systems such as co-occurring gender and numeral classifiers. Such approaches have typically focused on the languages of north-western South America and Papua New Guinea. This volume proposes to fill in a gap in existing research by focusing on Asia, based on case studies from languages belonging to a wide range of families, i.e., Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Dravidian, Hmong-Mien, Indo-European, Mongolic, Sino-Tibetan and Tai-Kadai as well as the language isolate Nivkh. Gender and classifiers in these languages are approached within several different perspectives, i.e., functional, typological and diachronic, thus revealing complex patterns in their lexical and pragmatic functions as well as origin, development and loss. Describing and analysing such properties is a unique and innovative contribution of the volume.


Perspectives on Classifier Constructions in Sign Languages

Perspectives on Classifier Constructions in Sign Languages

Author: Karen Emmorey

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2003-04-02

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 1135632960

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This text is the result of work discussed and presented at the Workshop on Classifier Constructions. It aims to bring to light issues related to the study of classifier constructions and to present contemporary linguistic and psycholinguistic analyses of these constructions.


Verb Classification in Australian Languages

Verb Classification in Australian Languages

Author: William B. McGregor

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2013-06-10

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 3110870878

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This book deals with systems of verb classification in Australian Aboriginal languages, with particular focus on languages of the north-west. It proposes a typology of the systems according to their main formal and semantic characteristics. It also makes some proposals concerning the historical origins and grammaticisation of these systems, and suggestions regarding the grammatical relations involved. In addition, an attempt is made to situate the phenomenon of verb classification within the context of related verbal phenomena such as serial verb constructions, nominal incorporation, and complex predicates.


Categorization and Category Change

Categorization and Category Change

Author: Gianina Iordăchioaia

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2014-07-08

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 1443863815

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This collection of selected papers addresses theoretical and empirical issues related to lexical categories, categorization and category change. Any grammatical description makes use of parts-of-speech. The proper set of lexical categories and the definitions of their properties cross-linguistically has been a remnant issue in linguistics since the beginnings of grammatical description. Besides, the traditional classification of lexical classes with their morphological, syntactic and/or interpretational properties has led to the emergence of mixed categories, which are problematic in linguistic theory, since the current systems, either feature-based or syntactic, have no means to express fuzziness. This volume addresses both these issues in two thematic parts. The first part, “Categories and categorization”, consists of papers that tackle the problem of defining categories and mixed categories and its reflex on the inventory. The second part, “Issues in category change”, comprises investigations on category change, focusing on nominalizations, which is the test ground for a theory of category change and word formation. The papers included in this part discuss, among others, the similarities and mismatches between derived nominals and the corresponding verbs in terms of argument realization and eventive interpretation. The languages investigated in the volume include English, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. This book targets researchers and advanced students in theoretical linguistics.