Complementizer Semantics in European Languages

Complementizer Semantics in European Languages
Author: Kasper Boye
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 910
Release: 2016-07-11
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110416611

Complementizers may be defined as conjunctions that have the function of identifying clauses as complements. In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that they have additional functions. Some of these functions are semantic in the sense that they represent conventional contributions to the meanings of the complements. The present book puts a focus to these semantic complementizer functions.

Complementizer Semantics in European Languages

Complementizer Semantics in European Languages
Author: Kasper Boye
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 883
Release: 2016-07-11
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110416662

Complementizers may be defined as conjunctions that have the function of identifying clauses as complements. In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that they have additional functions. Some of these functions are semantic in the sense that they represent conventional contributions to the meanings of the complements. The present book puts a focus to these semantic complementizer functions.

Evidential Marking in European Languages

Evidential Marking in European Languages
Author: Björn Wiemer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 749
Release: 2022-03-07
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110726076

How are evidential functions distinguished by means other than grammatical paradigms, i.e. by function words and other lexical units? And how inventories of such means can be compared across languages (against an account also of grammatical means used to mark information source)? This book presents an attempt at supplying a comparative survey of such inventories by giving detailed “evidential profiles” for a large part of European languages: Continental Germanic, English, French, Basque, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Modern Greek, and Ibero-Romance languages, such as Catalán, Galician, Portuguese and Spanish. Each language is treated in a separate chapter, and their profiles are based on a largely unified set of concepts based on function and/or etymological provenance. The profiles are preceded by a chapter which clarifies the theoretical premises and methodological background for the format followed in the profiles. The concluding chapter presents a synthesis of findings from these profiles, including areal biases and the formulation of methodological problems that call for further research.

The Fate of Mood and Modality in Language Death

The Fate of Mood and Modality in Language Death
Author: Petar Kehayov
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 406
Release: 2017-07-24
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110524082

Research into the “grammar of language death” is often biased toward formal processes (e.g. paradigmatic levelling). In this study the author changes the perspective and shows that the relative susceptibility of linguistic elements to loss, change and innovation in language death circumstances can be dependent on meaning and thus organized along semantic notions rather than along structure.

Complementizers on edge: On the boundaries between syntax and pragmatics in Ibero-Romance

Complementizers on edge: On the boundaries between syntax and pragmatics in Ibero-Romance
Author: Anna Kocher
Publisher: Language Science Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2022-11-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3961103917

This book offers a comparative perspective on the structural and interpretive properties of root-clause complementizers in Ibero-Romance. The driving question the author seeks to answer is where the boundaries between syntax and pragmatics lie in these languages. Contrary to most previous work on these phenomena, the author argues in favor of a relatively strict distribution of labor between the two components of grammar. The first part of the book is devoted to root complementizers with a reportative interpretation. The second part deals with root complementizers and commitment attribution. Finally, the last part presents the results of empirical studies on the topic.

Clausal Complementation in South Slavic

Clausal Complementation in South Slavic
Author: Björn Wiemer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2021-11-08
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110725851

This volume assembles contributions addressing clausal complementation across the entire South Slavic territory. The main focus is on particular aspects of complementation, covering the contemporary standard languages as well as older stages and/or non-standard varieties and the impact of language contact, primarily with non-Slavic languages. Presenting in-depth studies, they thus contribute to the overarching collective aim of arriving at a comprehensive picture of the patterns of clausal complementation on which South Slavic languages profile against a wider typological background, but also diverge internally if we look closer at details in the contemporary stage and in diachronic development. The volume divides into an introduction setting the stage for the single case-studies, an article developing a general template of complementation with a detailed overview of the components relevant for South Slavic, studies addressing particular structural phenomena from different theoretical viewpoints, and articles focusing on variation in space and/or time.

The Oxford Guide to the Uralic Languages

The Oxford Guide to the Uralic Languages
Author: Marianne Bakró-Nagy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1172
Release: 2022-03-24
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 0198767668

This volume offers the most comprehensive and wide-ranging treatment available today of the Uralic language family, a group of languages spoken in northern Eurasia. While there is a long history of research into these languages, much of it has been conducted within several disparate national traditions; studies of certain languages and topics are somewhat limited and in many cases outdated. The Oxford Guide to the Uralic Languages brings together leading scholars and junior researchers to offer a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the internal relations and diversity of the Uralic language family, including the outlines of its historical development, and the contacts between Uralic and other languages of Eurasia. The book is divided into three parts. Part I presents the origins and development of the Uralic languages: the initial chapters examine reconstructed Proto-Uralic and its divergence, while later chapters provide surveys of the history and codification of the three Uralic nation-state languages (Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian) and the Uralic minority languages from Baltic Europe to Siberia. This part also explores questions of endangerment, revitalization, and language policy. The chapters in Part II offer individual structural overviews of the Uralic languages, including a number of understudied minority languages for which no detailed description in English has previously been available. The final part of the book provides cross-Uralic comparative and typological case studies of a range of issues in phonology, morphology, syntax, and the lexicon. The chapters explore a number of topics, such as information structure and clause combining, that have traditionally received very little attention in Uralic studies. The volume will be an essential reference for students and researchers specializing in the Uralic languages and for typologists and comparative linguists more broadly.

Diachronic Slavonic Syntax

Diachronic Slavonic Syntax
Author: Björn Hansen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2018-03-05
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110531437

The book is dedicated to the study of the causes and mechanisms of syntactic change in Slavonic languages, including internally motivated syntactic change, syntactic change under contact conditions (structural convergence, pattern replication, shift-induced transfer etc.): It also explores metalinguistic factors such as ideologically driven selection and propagation of syntactic structures.

The Oxford Handbook of Languages of the Caucasus

The Oxford Handbook of Languages of the Caucasus
Author: Maria Polinsky
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 600
Release: 2020-11-21
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0190690712

The Oxford Handbook of Languages of the Caucasus is an introduction to and overview of the linguistically diverse languages of southern Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. Though the languages of the Caucasus have often been mischaracterized or exoticized, many of them have cross-linguistically rare features found in few or no other languages. This handbook presents facts and descriptions of the languages written by experts. The first half of the book is an introduction to the languages, with the linguistic profiles enriched by demographic research about their speakers. It features overviews of the main language families as well as detailed grammatical descriptions of several individual languages. The second half of the book delves more deeply into theoretical analyses of features, such as agreement, ellipsis, and discourse properties, which are found in some languages of the Caucasus. Promising areas for future research are highlighted throughout the handbook, which will be of interest to linguists of all subfields.