Dative constructions in Romance and beyond

Dative constructions in Romance and beyond
Author: Anna Pineda
Publisher: Language Science Press
Total Pages: 440
Release:
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 396110249X

This book offers a comprehensive account of dative structures across languages –with an important, though not exclusive, focus on the Romance family. As is well-known, datives play a central role in a variety of structures, ranging from ditransitive constructions to cliticization of indirect objects and differentially marked direct objects, and including also psychological predicates, possessor or causative constructions, among many others. As interest in all these topics has increased significantly over the past three decades, this volume provides an overdue update on the state of the art. Accordingly, the chapters in this volume account for both widely discussed patterns of dative constructions as well as those that are relatively unknown.

The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Morphology

The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Morphology
Author: Antonio Fábregas
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 857
Release: 2021-05-03
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1000371603

The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Morphology presents a state-of-the-art, detailed and exhaustive overview of all aspects of Spanish morphology, paying equal attention to the empirical complexities of the morphological system and the theoretical issues that they raise. As such, this handbook is relevant both for those interested in the facts of Spanish morphology and those interested in general morphology that want to explore how the Spanish facts illuminate our understanding of human language and current theories of morphology. This volume is also unique in its extent and coverage. Written by an international team of leading experts in the field, it contains 42 chapters divided into four sections, covering all synchronic and diachronic aspects of Spanish morphology, including inflection; derivation; compounding and other processes of word formation; the interaction of morphology with other modules of grammar and the role of morphology in language acquisition, psycholinguistics and language teaching.

Manual of Brazilian Portuguese Linguistics

Manual of Brazilian Portuguese Linguistics
Author: Johannes Kabatek
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 640
Release: 2022-10-24
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110405954

This manual is the first comprehensive account of Brazilian Portuguese linguistics written in English, offering not only linguists but also historians and social scientists new insights gained from the intensive research carried out over the last decades on the linguistic reality of this vast territory. In the 20 overview chapters, internationally renowned experts give detailed yet concise information on a wide range of language-internal as well as external synchronic and diachronic topics. Most of this information is the fruit of large-scale language documentation and description projects, such as the project on the linguistic norm of educated speakers (NURC), the project “Grammar of spoken Portuguese”, and the project “Towards a History of Brazilian Portuguese” (PHPB), among others. Further chapters of high contemporary interest and relevance include the study of linguistic policies and psycholinguistics. The manual offers theoretical insights of general interest, not least since many chapters present the linguistic data in the light of a combination of formal, functional, generative and sociolinguistic approaches. This rather unique feature of the volume is achieved by the double authorship of some of the relevant chapters, thus bringing together and synthesizing different perspectives.

Ditransitive structures : the English preposition TO and the Romanian preposition LA

Ditransitive structures : the English preposition TO and the Romanian preposition LA
Author: Tania MORARU-ZAMFIR
Publisher: Editura Universității din București - Bucharest University Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2023-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 6061613865

This book examines the syntactic properties of the English preposition to and the Romanian preposition la ”at/to” within ditransitive structures. Being a study of comparative syntax from a generative perspective, it aims at bringing into discussion the properties of these two functional prepositions, in both English and Romanian. The comparative approach shows that the English to is a functional preposition, fully predictable from the structure of the verb which can be deleted. To is a case marker and the dative arguments introduced by this preposition are DPs. By way of contrast, Romanian la has shifted from a case marker to a [Person] marker. La has a double status, as follows: it has a functional status only when the Dat argument, analysed as DP can be doubled by the clitic, where la is a [Person] marker. In the absence of the clitic, la-phrases are interpreted as PPs and la will be attributed a lexical status. Thus, unlike the functional to, la is both (a) a functional dative marker and (b) a core lexical preposition of the location and movement frames where la assigns accusative case to its object.

Elementary Predicates and Related Categories

Elementary Predicates and Related Categories
Author: Ludovico Franco
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2024-07-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027246629

This book offers a fresh perspective on how natural languages encode grammatical relations, by delving into the interplay between oblique cases, adpositions, serial verbs, and applicatives. This book reveals, through a series of case studies, the pervasive role of the 'inclusion' relator across diverse linguistic contexts. Departing from traditional views that obliques lack interpretive content, this work presents a unified conceptual framework of relations in grammar. Drawing on minimalist principles, the book posits a preeminence of the lexicon in syntactic projection, shedding light on the underlying ontology of language. By exploring cross-categorial variation and syncretism, it outlines an inventory of primitives shaping morpho-syntactic derivations.

Deconstructing Language Structure and Meaning

Deconstructing Language Structure and Meaning
Author: Mihaela Tănase-Dogaru
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2021-07-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1527571815

This volume brings together a number of researchers working on generative syntax and semantics, language acquisition and phonology to explore various theoretical frameworks, ranging from generative grammar and formal semantics to more descriptive approaches. The contributions gathered here investigate various aspects in the syntax, semantics, phonology and acquisition of Romanian in comparison with other (mainly Romance) languages. The book will be of interest to linguists who are keen on keeping up with the latest advances in the field of Romance studies, as well as those whose research bears on languages such as Hungarian, German, and Maltese, among others.

Understanding and Teaching the Indirect Object in Spanish

Understanding and Teaching the Indirect Object in Spanish
Author: Luis H. González
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 93
Release: 2023-06-30
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1000937658

Understanding and Teaching the Indirect Object in Spanish presents an easy-to-understand approach to all aspects of direct and indirect objects in Spanish. Distinguishing between direct and indirect objects can pose challenges for learners and is almost impossible to do using the tools that linguists have traditionally used. This book offers two simple, all-encompassing inferences that allow learners to tackle this area of language by intuitively inferring the distinction, as native speakers do, between verber and verbed. This book will be of interest to teachers and learners of Spanish and other second languages, as well as linguists interested in argument structure, second language acquisition, second language teaching or pedagogy, and multilingualism.

Language Patterns in Spanish and Beyond

Language Patterns in Spanish and Beyond
Author: Juan J. Colomina-Almiñana
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2020-10-25
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1000193144

The scholarly articles included in this volume represent significant contributions to the fields of formal and descriptive syntax, conversational analysis and speech act theory, as well as language development and bilingualism. Taken together, these studies adopt a variety of methodological techniques—ranging from grammaticality judgments to corpus-based analysis to experimental approaches—to offer rich insights into different aspects of Ibero-Romance grammar. The volume consists of three parts, organized in accordance with the topics treated in the chapters they comprise. Part I focuses on structural patterns, Part II analyzes pragmatic ones, and Part III investigates the acquisition of linguistic aspects found in the speech of L1, L2 and heritage speakers. The authors address these issues by relying on empirically rooted linguistic approaches to data collection, which are coupled with current theoretical assumptions on the nature of sentence structure, discourse dynamics and language acquisition. The volume will be of interest to anyone researching or studying Hispanic and Ibero-Romance linguistics.

Convergence and divergence in Ibero-Romance across contact situations and beyond

Convergence and divergence in Ibero-Romance across contact situations and beyond
Author: Miriam Bouzouita
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2021-10-25
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 3110736314

This book aims to provide a better understanding of convergence and non-convergence phenomena, such as divergence, from different theoretical perspectives. It brings together nine case studies that deal with contact between languages found in the Iberian Peninsula (Castilian, Catalan, Portuguese and Basque), between Spanish or Portuguese and another language (such as English), and between different varieties from Europe and other continents. The volume thus unites views from two fields that rarely interact: contact linguistics and dialectology. It discusses the mechanisms and consequences of language contact within the Ibero-Romance world, a geographical space characterised by a high rate of multilingual speakers and settings. The contributions deal with various combinations of convergence and divergence, for example between different varieties of the same language, language stability despite contact, as well as less studied aspects, such as the relation between language contact and second language acquisition, the linguistic landscape perspective of language contact, and divergence in linguistic identity construction.