The Distribution of Pronoun Case Forms in English

The Distribution of Pronoun Case Forms in English

Author: Heidi Quinn

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2005-01-01

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 9789027228062

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book offers an in-depth analysis of Modern English pronoun case. The author examines case trends in a wide range of syntactic constructions and concludes that case variation is confined to strong pronoun contexts. Data from a survey of 90 speakers provide new insights into the distributional differences between strong 1sg and non-1sg case forms and reveal systematic case variation within the speech of individuals as well as across speakers. The empirical findings suggest that morphological case is best treated as a PF phenomenon conditioned by semantic, syntactic, and phonological factors. In order to capture the way in which these linguistic factors interact to produce the pronoun case patterns exhibited by individual speakers, the author introduces a novel constraint-based approach to morphological case. Current case trends are also considered in a wider historical context and are related to a change in the licensing of structural arguments.


Corpus Interrogation and Grammatical Patterns

Corpus Interrogation and Grammatical Patterns

Author: Kristin Davidse

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2014-11-15

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 9027269742

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The studies in this volume approach English grammatical patterns in novel ways by interrogating corpora, focusing on patterns in the verb phrase (tense, aspect and modality), the noun phrase (intensification and focus marking), complementation structures and clause combining. Some studies interrogate historical corpora to reconstruct the diachronic development of patterns such as light verb constructions, verb-particle combinations, the be a-verbing progressive and absolute constructions. Other studies analyse synchronic datasets to typify the functions in discourse of, amongst others, tag questions and it-clefts, or to elucidate some long-standing problems in the syntactic analysis of verbal or adjectival complementation patterns, thanks to the empirical detail only corpora can provide. The volume documents the practices that have been developed to guarantee optimal representativeness of corpus data, to formulate definitions of patterns that can be operationalized in extractions, and to build dimensions of variation such as text type and register into rich grammatical descriptions.


Language Contacts Meet English Dialects

Language Contacts Meet English Dialects

Author: Esa Penttilä

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2020-06-12

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1527554791

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book presents a collection of fresh research on language contacts and dialects, and the interface between the two. The volume celebrates the work of Professor Markku Filppula, an eminent scholar in the fields of Irish English, Celtic contacts in the history of English, and language contacts and vernacular universals in nonstandard Englishes. The articles in this volume explore theories and methods employed in the study of language contacts and variation, Celtic substrata in Irish and British English, and dialect in the British Isles. The writers’ perspectives range from cognitive processing to sociolinguistics, and from theoretical and comparative discussions to new empirical, corpus-based studies.


Mysteries of English Grammar

Mysteries of English Grammar

Author: Andreea S. Calude

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-09-30

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 1000451720

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Despite a history of hundreds of years of research analysing aspects of English grammar, there are still open problems which continue to baffle language researchers today. Such ‘grammar mysteries’ arise for a number of reasons: because the language is changing; because different speakers of the language adhere to distinct norms and thus introduce and maintain variation in the system; because there are differences between the grammar of spoken and written English. This book illuminates some of the complexities of the subject, the areas where new discoveries await and why it matters. Through a series of accessible and engaging case studies on various aspects of grammar, from multiple negation to possession, the authors present grammar as an intellectual challenge. This book brings out into the open questions about language usage to which we still do not have good answers in a bid to make variation overt and to revel in the mystery of the English language. Both aimed at the interested general reader and the beginning student of English language and linguistics, this is a fresh take on grammar.


Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English

Comparative Studies in Australian and New Zealand English

Author: Pam Peters

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2009-01-01

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 9027248990

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This anthology brings together fresh corpus-based research by international scholars. It contrasts southern and northern hemisphere usage on variable elements of morphology and syntax. The nineteen invited papers include topics such as irregular verb parts, pronouns, modal and quasimodal verbs, the perfect tense, the progressive aspect, and mandative subjunctives. Lexicogrammatical elements are discussed: light verbs (e.g. "have a look)," informal quantifiers (e.g. "heaps of)," "no"-collocations, concord with "government "and other group nouns, alternative verb complementation (as with "help, prevent)," zero complementizers and connective adverbs (e.g. "however)." Selected information-structuring devices are analyzed, e.g. "there is/are," "like" as a discourse marker, final "but "as a turn-taking device, and swearwords. Australian and New Zealand use of hypocoristics and changes in gendered expressions are also analyzed. The two varieties pattern together in some cases, in others they diverge: Australian English is usually more committed to colloquial variants in speech and writing. The book demonstrates linguistic endonormativity in these two southern hemisphere Englishes.


Language Use and Linguistic Structure. Proceedings of the Olomouc Linguistic Colloquium 2023

Language Use and Linguistic Structure. Proceedings of the Olomouc Linguistic Colloquium 2023

Author: Janebová, Markéta

Publisher: Palacký University Olomouc

Published:

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 8024465086

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The latest volume of OLINCO proceedings is a selected set of sixteen papers that grew from presentations at OLINCO 2023 - the international Olomouc Linguistics Colloquium held at Palacký University in June 2021. The papers collected here are unified by the topic of the colloquium: Language Use and Linguistic Structure, in that they all, in one way or the other, address the central questions of the study of human language. They all use standard scientific methodology and theory and solidly researched empirical evidence in favor of formalized structural representations of the language system.


Handbook of Child Language Acquisition

Handbook of Child Language Acquisition

Author: Tej K. Bhatia

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-11-27

Total Pages: 762

ISBN-13: 9004653023

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What allows children to acquire language so effortlessly, with such speed, and with such amazing accuracy? Capitalizing on the most recent developments in linguistics and cognitive psychology, this volume sheds new light on the what, why, and how of the child's ability to acquire one or more languages. The "Handbook" is one of a kind in a number of respects. It includes state-of-the-art treatments of acquisition from a variety of theoretical viewpoints ranging from functionalist approaches and the implications of the creolization of languages for the study of acquisition to the relevance of Chomsky's Minimalist Program. It contains overviews of the acquisition of all components of linguistic structure, treats the acquisition of the sign languages of the deaf, and discusses the specific problems of bilingual acquisition. This handbook addresses the following questions: 'Is the capacity for language acquisition constant throughout the career of the language learner (that is, is it 'continuous') or does that capacity change in significant ways as the learner matures?' ; 'Is the language capacity a separate module of the mind or does it follow from general, 'all-purpose' cognitive capacities?'; 'What is innate in language acquisition and what is acquired on the basis of experience?'; 'What research/methodological issues arise in the study of child language acquisition?'; 'How might input from the language (or languages) of the environment, including visual/gestural input in the case of the sign languages of the deaf, affect the process and result of acquisition?'; and, 'How are the facts of non-normal acquisition to be explained?'


Varieties of English

Varieties of English

Author: Peter Siemund

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-05-09

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0521764963

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This coursebook is an introduction to the fascinating range of regional and social varieties of English encountered around the world. It is specially designed to meet the needs of students, each chapter contains useful exercises targeted at three different ability levels and succinct summaries help students to review important facts.