The Hittite Middle Voice
The Hittite Middle Voice

Author: Guglielmo Inglese

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-07-13

Total Pages: 654

ISBN-13: 9004432302

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Prize winner: Eugenio Coseriu Award (2021) This book offers a new treatment of the middle voice in Hittite. The book features two main parts. In the first part, the author provides an updated synchronic description of the Hittite middle based on the existing typology of voice systems and valency changing operations. Moreover, based on a careful analysis of a chronologically ordered corpus of original Hittite texts, the book offers the first ever diachronic account of the Hittite middle. As Inglese argues, the findings of this book greatly enrich our general knowledge of the diachronic typology of middle voice systems. The second part of the book features a thorough description of more than 100 Hittite verbs in original texts.

Voice syncretism
Voice syncretism

Author: Nicklas N. Bahrt

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published:

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 3961103194

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This book provides a comprehensive typological account of voice syncretism, focusing on resemblance in formal verbal marking between two or more of the following seven voices: passives, antipassives, reflexives, reciprocals, anticausatives, causatives, and applicatives. It covers voice syncretism from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives, and has been structured in a manner that facilitates convenient access to information about specific patterns of voice syncretism, their distribution and development. The book is based on a survey of voice syncretism in 222 geographically and genealogically diverse languages, but also thoroughly revisits previous research on the phenomenon. Voice syncretism is approached systematically by establishing and exploring patterns of voice syncretism that can logically be posited for the seven voices of focus in the book: 21 simplex patterns when one considers two of the seven voices sharing the same marking (e.g. reflexive-reciprocal syncretism), and 99 complex patterns when one considers more than two of the voices sharing the same marking (e.g. reflexive-reciprocal-anticausative syncretism). In a similar vein, 42 paths of development can logically be posited if it is assumed that voice marking in each of the seven voices can potentially develop one of the other six voice functions (e.g. reflexive voice marking developing a reciprocal function). This approach enables the discussion of both voice syncretism that has received considerable attention in the literature (notably middle syncretism involving the reflexive, reciprocal, anticausative and/or passive voices) and voice syncretism that has received little or not treatment in the past (including seemingly contradictory patterns such as causative-anticausative and passive-antipassive syncretism). In the survey almost all simplex patterns are attested in addition to seventeen complex patterns. In terms of diachrony, evidence is presented and discussed for twenty paths of development. The book strives to highlight the variation found in voice syncretism across the world’s languages and encourage further research into the phenomenon.

Grammatical Change in Indo-European Languages
Grammatical Change in Indo-European Languages

Author: Vít Bubeník

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 9027248214

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The product of a group of scholars who have been working on new directions in Historical Linguistics, this book is focused on questions of grammatical change, and the central issue of grammaticalization in Indo-European languages. Several studies examine particular problems in specific languages, but often with implications for the IE phylum as a whole. Given the historical scope of the data (over a period of four millennia) long range grammatical changes such as the development of gender differences, strategies of definiteness, the prepositional phrase, or of the syntax of the verbal diathesis and aspect, are also treated. The shifting relevance of morphology to syntax, and syntax to morphology, a central motif of this research, has provoked lively debate in the discipline of Historical Linguistics.

Proto-Indo-European Syntax and its Development
Proto-Indo-European Syntax and its Development

Author: Leonid Kulikov

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2015-07-15

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 9027268282

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Although for some scholars the very possibility of syntactic reconstruction remains dubious, numerous studies have appeared reconstructing a variety of basic elements of Proto-Indo-European syntax based on evidence available particularly from ancient and/or archaic Indo-European languages. The papers in this volume originate from the Workshop “PIE Syntax and its Development” (Thessaloniki 2011), which aimed to bring together scholars interested in these problems and to shine new light on current research into ancient Indo-European syntax. Special attention was paid to the development of the hypothetical reconstructed features within the documented history of Indo-European languages. The articles in this volume were originally published in the Journal of Historical Linguistics Vol. 3:1 (2013).

The Laws of the Hittites
The Laws of the Hittites

Author: Harry A Hoffner Jr

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-08-14

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 9004669086

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A complete tool for understanding this oldest collection (about 1650 BC) of laws made by an Indo-European people. Incorporating many tablets published since the 1959 edition, and utilizing the latest lexical and grammatical insights, the author presents the text in the "score" format with translation, commentary, glossary, indexes, plates and bibliography.

Vagueness, Ambiguity, and All the Rest
Vagueness, Ambiguity, and All the Rest

Author: Ilaria Fiorentini

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2024-10-15

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 9027246564

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This book aims to address a gap in the existing literature on the relationship between vagueness and ambiguity, as well as on their differences and similarities, both in synchrony and diachrony, and taking into consideration their relation to language use. The book is divided into two parts, which address specific and broader research questions from different perspectives. The former part examines the differences between ambiguity and vagueness from a bird-eye perspective, with a particular focus on their respective functions and roles in language change. It also presents innovative linguistic resources and tools for the study of these phenomena. The second part contains case studies on vagueness and ambiguity in language change and use. It considers different strategies and languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Medieval Latin, and Old Italian. The readership for this volume is broad, encompassing scholars in a range of disciplines, including pragmatics, spoken discourse, conversation analysis, discourse genres (political, commercial, notarial discourse), corpus studies, language change, pragmaticalization, and language typology.

Transitivity, Valency, and Voice
Transitivity, Valency, and Voice

Author: Denis Creissels

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-10-29

Total Pages: 849

ISBN-13: 0198899580

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This book sets up a consistent theoretical and terminological framework for the study of the phenomena that are commonly subsumed under the terms transitivity, valency, and voice. These three concepts are at the heart of the most basic aspects of clausal structure in any language; however, there is considerable cross-linguistic variation in the constraints on how verbs combine with noun phrases that refer to participants in the event that they denote or to the circumstances of the event. In this book, Denis Creissels explores and accounts for the extent of this cross-linguistic variation, capturing its regularities and examining the historical phenomena that have resulted in the emergence of constructions and markers. The novel framework developed in the book allows similar phenomena to be identified across typologically diverse languages, and facilitates systematic comparison of the manifestations of these phenomena in the grammars of individual languages.

A New Look at the Indo-European Verb
A New Look at the Indo-European Verb

Author: Luca Panieri

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2015-09-25

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 1326431021

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In this book there is described a new and innovative hypothesis on the Proto-Indoeuropean verb system. Many unresolved issues of historical-comparativereconstruction can find a straightforward solution in the light of this hypothesis; such as the origin of tense, mood, aspect, diathesis, etc. You will see that the original verb system was quite different from both the Hittite and the Greek one. Many verb categories, which were very important for the daughter languages, did not even exist in the protolanguage, and other categories, which were originally central to the protolanguage, have disappeared in all the descendant languages. In this regard, the key concept is the "control on action by the subject". This was what really mattered in the protolanguage.

A Grammar of the Hittite Language
A Grammar of the Hittite Language

Author: Harry A. Hoffner Jr.

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2024-09-04

Total Pages: 711

ISBN-13: 1646023064

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Since its publication in 2008, A Grammar of the Hittite Language has been the definitive Hittite reference and teaching tool. This new edition brings Hoffner and Melchert’s essential work up to date, incorporating the dramatic progress achieved in the field over the past fifteen years. Heavily revised and expanded, the second edition recasts the discussion of topics to better serve the linguistically informed reader. A reorganized presentation of the synchronic facts makes them accessible to both Hittitologists and linguists interested in Hittite for historical or typological purposes. Part 1 provides a thorough overview of Hittite grammar that is grounded in abundant textual examples. Part 2 is a tutorial that guides students through a series of graded lessons with illustrative sentences for translation. The tutorial is keyed to the reference grammar and includes extensive updated notes. Taken together with Part 2: Tutorial, which guides students through a series of graded lessons keyed to this reference grammar, the work remains the most comprehensive and detailed Hittite grammar ever produced.

Valency over Time
Valency over Time

Author: Silvia Luraghi

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2021-10-25

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 3110755718

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Valency patterns and valency orientation have been frequent topics of research under different perspectives, often poorly connected. Diachronic studies on these topics is even less systematic than synchronic ones. The papers in this book bring together two strands of research on valency, i.e. the description of valency patterns as worked out in the Leipzig Valency Classes Project (ValPaL), and the assessment of a language's basic valency and its possible orientation. Notably, the ValPaL does not provide diachronic information concerning the valency patterns investigated: one of the aims of the book is to supplement the available data with data from historical stages of languages, in order to make it profitably exploitable for diachronic research. In addition, new research on the diachrony of basic valency and valency alternations can deepen our understanding of mechanisms of language change and of the propensity of languages or language families to exploit different constructional patterns related to transitivity.