The Linguistic Typology of Templates
The Linguistic Typology of Templates

Author: Jeff Good

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-03-11

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1316425150

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book represents the first comprehensive examination of templatic constructions - namely, linguistic structures involving unexpected linear stipulation - in both morphology and syntax from a typological perspective. It provides a state-of-the-art overview of the previous literature, develops a new typology for categorizing templatic constructions across grammatical domains, and examines their cross-linguistic variation by employing cutting-edge computational methods. It will be of interest to descriptive linguists seeking to gain a better sense of the diversity of the world's templatic constructions, theoretical linguists developing restrictive models of possible templates, and typologists interested in the attested range of patterns of linear stipulation and the application of new kinds of multivariate methods to cross-linguistic data. The new typological framework is illustrated in detail via a number of case studies involving languages of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas, and numerous other templatic constructions are also considered over the course of the book.

The Linguistic Typology of Templates
The Linguistic Typology of Templates

Author: Jeff Good

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-03-11

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1107015022

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This first comprehensive study of linguistic templatic constructions in morphology and syntax employs cutting-edge computational methods to study templates typologically.

Explanation in typology
Explanation in typology

Author: Karsten Schmidtke-Bode

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published:

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 3961101477

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume provides an up-to-date discussion of a foundational issue that has recently taken centre stage in linguistic typology and which is relevant to the language sciences more generally: To what extent can cross-linguistic generalizations, i.e. statistical universals of linguistic structure, be explained by the diachronic sources of these structures? Everyone agrees that typological distributions are the result of complex histories, as “languages evolve into the variation states to which synchronic universals pertain” (Hawkins 1988). However, an increasingly popular line of argumentation holds that many, perhaps most, typological regularities are long-term reflections of their diachronic sources, rather than being ‘target-driven’ by overarching functional-adaptive motivations. On this view, recurrent pathways of reanalysis and grammaticalization can lead to uniform synchronic results, obviating the need to postulate global forces like ambiguity avoidance, processing efficiency or iconicity, especially if there is no evidence for such motivations in the genesis of the respective constructions. On the other hand, the recent typological literature is equally ripe with talk of "complex adaptive systems", "attractor states" and "cross-linguistic convergence". One may wonder, therefore, how much room is left for traditional functional-adaptive forces and how exactly they influence the diachronic trajectories that shape universal distributions. The papers in the present volume are intended to provide an accessible introduction to this debate. Covering theoretical, methodological and empirical facets of the issue at hand, they represent current ways of thinking about the role of diachronic sources in explaining grammatical universals, articulated by seasoned and budding linguists alike.

Creole Languages and Linguistic Typology
Creole Languages and Linguistic Typology

Author: Parth Bhatt

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2013-12-15

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 9027271070

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

It is generally assumed that Creole languages form a separate category from the rest of the world’s languages. The papers in this volume, written by internationally renowned scholars in the field of Creole studies, seek to explore more deeply this commonly held assumption by comparing the linguistic properties of specific Creole languages to each other and also to non-Creole languages. Using a variety of methodological and analytical approaches, the contributions to this volume show that the linguistic classification of Creole languages continues to be a topic of intense debate that requires the re-examination of the premises of linguistic typology. What is the linguistic motivation for considering that languages are related or unrelated? How and why do common linguistic properties arise? Are Creoles indeed exceptional? This volume examines these questions and provides a strong foundation for continued research into the phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic features found in Creole languages. Most of these articles were previously published in the Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 26:1 (2011). The article by Jeff Good was previously published in the Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 27:1 (2012).

The Alor-Pantar languages
The Alor-Pantar languages

Author: Marian Klamer

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2017-06-23

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 3944675940

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Alor-Pantar family constitutes the westernmost outlier group of Pa\-puan (Non-Austronesian) languages. Its twenty or so languages are spoken on the islands of Alor and Pantar, located just north of Timor, in eastern Indonesia. Together with the Papuan languages of Timor, they make up the Timor-Alor-Pantar family. The languages average 5,000 speakers and are under pressure from the local Malay variety as well as the national language, Indonesian. This volume studies the internal and external linguistic history of this interesting group, and showcases some of its unique typological features, such as the preference to index the transitive patient-like argument on the verb but not the agent-like one; the extreme variety in morphological alignment patterns; the use of plural number words; the existence of quinary numeral systems; the elaborate spatial deictic systems involving an elevation component; and the great variation exhibited in their kinship systems. Unlike many other Papuan languages, Alor-Pantar languages do not exhibit clause-chaining, do not have switch reference systems, never suffix subject indexes to verbs, do not mark gender, but do encode clusivity in their pronominal systems. Indeed, apart from a broadly similar head-final syntactic profile, there is little else that the Alor-Pantar languages share with Papuan languages spoken in other regions. While all of them show some traces of contact with Austronesian languages, in general, borrowing from Austronesian has not been intense, and contact with Malay and Indonesian is a relatively recent phenomenon in most of the Alor-Pantar region. This is the second edition of the volume that was originally published in 2014. In this edition, typographical errors have been corrected, small textual improvements have been implemented, broken URL links repaired or removed, and references updated. The overall content of the chapters has not been changed.

A typology of questions in Northeast Asia and beyond
A typology of questions in Northeast Asia and beyond

Author: Andreas Hölzl

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2018-08-29

Total Pages: 546

ISBN-13: 3961101027

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This study investigates the distribution of linguistic and specifically structural diversity in Northeast Asia (NEA), defined as the region north of the Yellow River and east of the Yenisei. In particular, it analyzes what is called the grammar of questions (GQ), i.e., those aspects of any given language that are specialized for asking questions or regularly combine with these. The bulk of the study is a bottom-up description and comparison of GQs in the languages of NEA. The addition of the phrase and beyond to the title of this study serves two purposes. First, languages such as Turkish and Chuvash are included, despite the fact that they are spoken outside of NEA, since they have ties to (or even originated in) the region. Second, despite its focus on one area, the typology is intended to be applicable to other languages as well. Therefore, it makes extensive use of data from languages outside of NEA. The restriction to one category is necessary for reasons of space and clarity, and the process of zooming in on one region allows a higher resolution and historical accuracy than is usually the case in linguistic typology. The discussion mentions over 450 languages and dialects from NEA and beyond and gives about 900 glossed examples. The aim is to achieve both a cross-linguistically plausible typology and a maximal resolution of the linguistic diversity of Northeast Asia.

Adjective attribution
Adjective attribution

Author: Michael Rießler

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2016-07-15

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 3944675657

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book is the first typological study of adjective attribution marking. Its focus lies on Northern Eurasia, although it covers many more languages and presents an ontology of morphosyntactic categories relevant to noun phrase structure in general. Beside treating synchronic data, the study contributes to historical linguistics by reconstructing the origin of new types specifically in the language contact area between the Indo-European and Uralic families.

Highly Complex Syllable Structure
Highly Complex Syllable Structure

Author: Shelece Easterday

Publisher: Saint Philip Street Press

Published: 2020-10-09

Total Pages: 612

ISBN-13: 9781013294563

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The syllable is a natural unit of organization in spoken language whose strongest cross-linguistic patterns are often explained in terms of a universal preference for the CV structure. Syllable patterns involving long sequences of consonants are both typologically rare and theoretically marginalized, with few approaches treating these as natural or unproblematic structures. This book is an investigation of the properties of languages with highly complex syllable patterns. The two aims are (i) to establish whether these languages share other linguistic features in common such that they constitute a distinct linguistic type, and (ii) to identify possible diachronic paths and natural mechanisms by which these patterns come about in the history of a language. These issues are investigated in a diversified sample of 100 languages, 25 of which have highly complex syllable patterns. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity I
Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity I

Author: Francesca Di Garbo

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 3961101787

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The many facets of grammatical gender remain one of the most fruitful areas of linguistic research, and pose fascinating questions about the origins and development of complexity in language. The present work is a two-volume collection of 13 chapters on the topic of grammatical gender seen through the prism of linguistic complexity. The contributions discuss what counts as complex and/or simple in grammatical gender systems, whether the distribution of gender systems across the world’s languages relates to the language ecology and social history of speech communities. Contributors demonstrate how the complexity of gender systems can be studied synchronically, both in individual languages and over large cross-linguistic samples, and diachronically, by exploring how gender systems change over time. In addition to three chapters on the theoretical foundations of gender complexity, volume one contains six chapters on grammatical gender and complexity in individual languages and language families of Africa, New Guinea, and South Asia. This volume is complemented by volume two, which consists of three chapters providing diachronic and typological case studies, followed by a final chapter discussing old and new theoretical and empirical challenges in the study of the dynamics of gender complexity.

Subatomic quantification
Subatomic quantification

Author: Marcin Wągiel

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published:

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 3961103151

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The goal of this book is to explore the relationship between the cognitive notion of parthood and various grammatical devices expressing this concept in natural language. The monograph aims to investigate syntactic constructions and lexical categories, e.g., partitives, whole-adjectives, and multipliers, encoding different kinds of part-whole structures both in Slavic and non-Slavic languages. It is envisioned to inspire radical rethinking of the ontology of models accounting for nominal semantics. Specifically, it provides novel evidence for a mereotopological approach to meaning, i.e., a theory of wholes that captures not only parthood but also topological relations holding between parts. This evidence comes from the phenomenon of subatomic quantification, i.e., quantification over parts of referents of concrete count nouns.