This book presents a critical assessment of research on grammaticalization, a central element in the process by which grammars are created. Leading scholars discuss its core theoretical and methodological bases, report on work in the field, and point to directions for new research. They represent every relevant theoretical perspective and approach.
This handbook compares the main analytic frameworks and methods of contemporary linguistics. It offers a unique overview of linguistic theory, revealing the common concerns of competing approaches. By showing their current and potential applications it provides the means by which linguists and others can judge what are the most useful models for the task in hand. Distinguished scholars from all over the world explain the rationale and aims of over thirty explanatory approaches to the description, analysis, and understanding of language. Each chapter considers the main goals of the model; the relation it proposes from between lexicon, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and phonology; the way it defines the interactions between cognition and grammar; what it counts as evidence; and how it explains linguistic change and structure. The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis offers an indispensable guide for everyone researching any aspect of language including those in linguistics, comparative philology, cognitive science, developmental philology, cognitive science, developmental psychology, computational science, and artificial intelligence. This second edition has been updated to include seven new chapters looking at linguistic units in language acquisition, conversation analysis, neurolinguistics, experimental phonetics, phonological analysis, experimental semantics, and distributional typology.
Leading scholars examine the history of linguistics from ancient origins to the present. They consider every aspect of the field from language origins to neurolinguistics, explore the linguistic traditions in different parts of the world, examine how work in linguistics has influenced other fields, and look at how it has been practically applied
This Handbook is the first authoritative reference work solely dedicated to the theory, method, and applications of Construction Grammar, and will be a resource that students and scholars alike can turn to for a representative overview of its many sub-theories and applications.
Its twenty-one commissioned chapters serve two functions: they provide a general and theoretical introduction to comparative syntax, its methodology, and its relation to other domains of linguistic inquiry; and they also provide a systematic selection of the best comparative work being done today on those language groups and families where substantial progress has been achieved." "This volume will be an essential resource for scholars and students in formal linguistics."--Jacket.
This Handbook is a comprehensive, authoritative, and accessible guide to the topics and theories that current form the front line of research into tense, aspect, and related areas.
This handbook provides an authoritative, critical survey of current research and knowledge in the grammar of the English language. The volume's expert contributors explore a range of core topics in English grammar, covering a range of theoretical approaches and including the relationship between 'core' grammar and other areas of language.
This textbook introduces and explains the fundamental issues, major research questions, and current approaches in the study of grammaticalization - the development of new grammatical forms from lexical items, and of further grammatical functions from existing grammatical forms. Grammaticalization has been a vibrant research field in recent years, and has proven effective in explaining a wide range of phenomena; it has even been claimed that the only true language universals are diachronic, and are related to cross-linguistic processes of grammaticalization. The chapters provide a detailed account of the major issues in the field: foundational questions such as directionality, criteria and parameters of grammaticalization, and phases and cycles; the much-debated issue of the motivations behind grammaticalization, including the role of language contact and typological influences; the advantages and disadvantages of different theoretical approaches; and the relationship between grammaticalization and process such as lexicalization, exaptation, and the development of discourse markers. Each chapter offers guidance on further reading, and concludes with study questions to encourage further discussion; there is also a glossary of key terminology in the field. Thanks to its comprehensive approach, the volume will serve as both a textbook for undergraduate and graduate students and a valuable reference work for researchers in the field.
This book is a cross-linguistic exploration of semantic and functional change in modal markers. With a focus on Japanese and to a lesser extent Chinese the book is a countercheck to hypotheses built on the Indo-European languages. It also contains numerous illustrations from other languages.