The Role of Semantic, Pragmatic, and Discourse Factors in the Development of Case

The Role of Semantic, Pragmatic, and Discourse Factors in the Development of Case
Author: Jóhanna Barðdal
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 458
Release: 2009-03-11
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027289921

The aim of this volume is to bring non-syntactic factors in the development of case into the eye of the research field, by illustrating the integral role of pragmatics, semantics, and discourse structure in the historical development of morphologically marked case systems. The articles represent fifteen typologically diverse languages from four different language families: (i) Indo-European: Vedic Sanskrit, Russian, Greek, Latin, Latvian, Gothic, French, German, Icelandic, and Faroese; (ii) Tibeto-Burman, especially the Bodic languages and Meithei; (iii) Japanese; and (iv) the Pama-Nyungan mixed language Gurindji Kriol. The data also show considerable diversity and include elicited, archival, corpus-based, and naturally occurring data. Discussions of mechanisms where change is obtained include semantically and aspectually motivated synchronic case variation, discourse motivated subject marking, reduction or expansion of case marker distribution, case syncretism motivated by semantics, syntax, or language contact, and case splits motivated by pragmatics, metonymy, and subjectification.

Investigations of the Syntax–Semantics–Pragmatics Interface

Investigations of the Syntax–Semantics–Pragmatics Interface
Author: Robert D. Van Valin, Jr.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2008-11-21
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027290334

Investigations of the Syntax-Semantics-Pragmatics Interface presents on-going research in Role and Reference Grammar in a number of critical areas of linguistic theory: verb semantics and argument structure, the nature of syntactic categories and syntactic representation, prosody and syntax, information structure and syntax, and the syntax and semantics of complex sentences. In each of these areas there are important results which not only advance the development of the theory, but also contribute to the broader theoretical discussion. In particular, there are analyses of grammatical phenomena such as transitivity in Kabardian, the verb-less numeral quantifier construction in Japanese, and an unusual kind of complex sentence in Wari’ (Chapakuran, Brazil) which not only illustrate the descriptive and explanatory power of the theory, but also present interesting challenges to other approaches. In addition, there are papers looking at the implications and applications of Role and Reference Grammar for neurolinguistic research, parsing and automated text analysis.

Dependency in Linguistic Description

Dependency in Linguistic Description
Author: Alain Polguère
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2009
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027205787

The book covers three major topics crucial for contemporary syntactic research. Firstly, it offers a sketch of a general theory of dependency in natural language. Different types of linguistic dependencies are distinguished (semantic, syntactic, and morphological), the criteria for their recognition are formulated, and all possible combinations are discussed in some detail. Secondly, it demonstrates the application of the general theory in two specific domains: establishing the system of Surface-Syntactic Relations in French and linear positioning of clitics in Serbian. Thirdly, it presents a formal sketch of Head-Driven Phrase-Structure Grammar modelled in terms of syntactic dependencies.

Modality in Japanese

Modality in Japanese
Author: Heiko Narrog
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2009-02-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027289751

Hierarchical clause structure is an important feature of most theories of grammar. While it has been an indispensable part of formal syntactic theories, functional theories have more recently discovered for themselves a ‘layered structure of the clause’. A major focus of the current discussion on semanto-syntactic clause structure is the hierarchical ordering of grammatical categories such as tense, aspect and modality. However, there are very few empirical studies yet to provide systematic evidence for presumably universal hierarchical structures. This book presents a systematic corpus-based study of the semantic and morphosyntactic interaction of modality with tense, aspect, negation, and modal markers embedded in subordinate clauses. The results are critically compared with extant theories of hierarchies of grammatical categories, including those in Functional Grammar, Role and Reference Grammar, and the Cartography of Syntactic Structures. Also provided is an extensive description of the expression of modality and related categories in Modern Japanese.

Coding Participant Marking

Coding Participant Marking
Author: Gerrit J. Dimmendaal
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 410
Release: 2009-04-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027289611

Whereas Africa as a typological area is often associated with extensive verb morphology and verb serialization, this collection of studies shows that there is tremendous typological diversity at the clausal level. Verb serialization in the Khoisan area contrasts with extensive case-marking in languages of northeastern Africa, which also use converbs and light verb plus coverb constructions. Although the categorial distinction between nouns and verbs is generally clear in African languages, a number of them nevertheless provide intricate analytical challenges in this respect. Whereas some languages are strongly head marking at the clausal level, others manifest an interesting mixture of alternative strategies for the coding of participants. The analysis of information packaging, and related issues such as split ergativity, Differential Object Marking, and discourse-configurational properties also play a role in several contributions. The collection contains not only innovative analyses for the respective language families these languages belong to, but also material relevant for the current debate in theoretical linguistics concerning lexical specification as against construction-based approaches towards argument structure.

Focus and Background in Romance Languages

Focus and Background in Romance Languages
Author: Andreas Dufter
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2009
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027205795

Papers presented at a workshop, Focus and background in Romance languages, that convened during the 30th Romanistentag, in Vienna, Austria, 23-27 September 2007.

Latinitatis rationes

Latinitatis rationes
Author: Paolo Poccetti
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 878
Release: 2016-12-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110431939

This volume assembles 50 contributions presented at the XVII International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics. They embrace essential topics of Latin linguistics with different theoretical and methodological approaches: phonetics, syntax, etymology and semantics, pragmatics and textual analysis. It is a useful resource for the study of comparative and general linguistics, not only for linguists but also for scholars of classical philology.

Quantifying Language Dynamics

Quantifying Language Dynamics
Author: Soren Wichmann
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2014-09-04
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9004281525

Quantifying Language Dynamics: On the Cutting Edge of Areal and Phylogenetic Linguistics contains specially-selected papers introducing new, quantitative methodologies for understanding language interaction and evolution. It draws upon data from the phonologies, morphologies, numeral systems, constituent orders, case systems, and lexicons of the world’s languages, bringing large datasets and sophisticated statistical techniques to bear on fundamental questions such as: how to identify and account for areal distributions, when language contact leads to grammatical simplification, whether patterns of morphological borrowing can be predicted, how to deal with contact within phylogenetic models, and what new techniques are most effective for classification of the world’s languages. The book is relevant for students and scholars in general linguistics, typology, and historical and comparative linguistics.

The Complexities of Morphology

The Complexities of Morphology
Author: Peter Arkadiev
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 411
Release: 2020-09-24
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0198861281

This volume explores the multiple aspects of morphological complexity, offering typological, acquisitional, sociolinguistic, and diachronic perspectives. The analyses are based on rich empirical data from a wide range of languages, as well as experimental data from artificial language learning.