Systems of Nominal Classification

Systems of Nominal Classification
Author: Gunter Senft
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2000-08-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780521770750

A major linguistic study of nominal classification systems across a variety of languages, first published in 2000.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 10
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A History of the Study of the Indigenous Languages of North America

A History of the Study of the Indigenous Languages of North America
Author: Marcin Kilarski
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 459
Release: 2021-12-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 902725897X

The languages indigenous to North America are characterized by a remarkable genetic and typological diversity. Based on the premise that linguistic examples play a key role in the origin and transmission of ideas within linguistics and across disciplines, this book examines the history of approaches to these languages through the lens of some of their most prominent properties. These properties include consonant inventories and the near absence of labials in Iroquoian languages, gender in Algonquian languages, verbs for washing in the Iroquoian language Cherokee and terms for snow and related phenomena in Eskimo-Aleut languages. By tracing the interpretations of the four examples by European and American scholars, the author illustrates their role in both lay and professional contexts as a window onto unfamiliar languages and cultures, thus allowing a more holistic view of the history of language study in North America.

Development of Nominal Inflection in First Language Acquisition

Development of Nominal Inflection in First Language Acquisition
Author: Ursula Stephany
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 461
Release: 2009
Genre: Grammar, Comparative and general
ISBN: 3110188406

The crosslinguistic studies of the early developmental stages of number, case, and gender in twelve typologically different languages with eight genetic affiliations follow a functional-constructivist approach. Some issues addressed are mean size of paradigms, percentage of base forms, and productivity. One of the main findings is that the typological characteristics of the language acquired influence the process of inflectional development.

Classifiers

Classifiers
Author: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 562
Release: 2000-03-30
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0191543985

Almost all languages have some ways of categorizing nouns. Languages of South-East Asia have classifiers used with numerals, while most Indo-European languages have two or three genders. They can have a similar meaning and one can develop from the other. This book provides a comprehensive and original analysis of noun categorization devices all over the world. It will interest typologists, those working in the fields of morphosyntactic variation and lexical semantics, as well as anthropologists and all other scholars interested in the mechanisms of human cognition.

Count and Mass Across Languages

Count and Mass Across Languages
Author: Diane Massam
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2012-09-13
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0191613185

This volume explores the expression of the concepts count and mass in human language and probes the complex relation between seemingly incontrovertible aspects of meaning and their varied grammatical realizations across languages. In English, count nouns are those that can be counted and pluralized (two cats), whereas mass nouns cannot be, at least not without a change in meaning (#two rices). The chapters in this volume explore the question of the cognitive and linguistic universality and variability of the concepts count and mass from philosophical, semantic, and morpho-syntactic points of view, touching also on issues in acquisition and processing. The volume also significantly contributes to our cross-linguistic knowledge, as it includes chapters with a focus on Blackfoot, Cantonese, Dagaare, English, Halkomelem, Lithuanian, Malagasy, Mandarin, Ojibwe, and Persian, as well as discussion of several other languages including Armenian, Hungarian, and Korean. The overall consensus of this volume is that while the general concepts of count and mass are available to all humans, forms of grammaticalization involving number, classifiers, and determiners play a key role in their linguistic treatment, and indeed in whether these concepts are grammatically expressed at all. This variation may be reflect the fact that count/mass is just one possible realization of a deeper and broader concept, itself related to the categories of nominal and verbal aspect.

Sign Language and Linguistic Universals

Sign Language and Linguistic Universals
Author: Wendy Sandler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 580
Release: 2006-02-02
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780521483957

Sign languages are of great interest to linguists, because while they are the product of the same brain, their physical transmission differs greatly from that of spoken languages. In this pioneering and original study, Wendy Sandler and Diane Lillo-Martin compare sign languages with spoken languages, in order to seek the universal properties they share. Drawing on general linguistic theory, they describe and analyze sign language structure, showing linguistic universals in the phonology, morphology, and syntax of sign language, while also revealing non-universal aspects of its structure that must be attributed to its physical transmission system. No prior background in sign language linguistics is assumed, and numerous pictures are provided to make descriptions of signs and facial expressions accessible to readers. Engaging and informative, Sign Language and Linguistic Universals will be invaluable to linguists, psychologists, and all those interested in sign languages, linguistic theory and the universal properties of human languages.