J. Bresnan - Böcker

For decades, generative linguistics has said little about the differences between verbs, nouns, and adjectives. This book seeks to fill this theoretical gap by presenting simple and substantive syntactic definitions of these three lexical categories. Mark C. Baker claims that the various superficial differences found in particular languages have a single underlying source which can be used to give better characterizations of these 'parts of speech'. These definitions are supported by data from languages from every continent, including English, Italian, Japanese, Edo, Mohawk, Chichewa, Quechua, Choctaw, Nahuatl, Mapuche, and several Austronesian and Australian languages. Baker argues for a formal, syntax-oriented, and universal approach to the parts of speech, as opposed to the functionalist, semantic, and relativist approaches that have dominated the few previous works on this subject. This book will be welcomed by researchers and students of linguistics and by related cognitive scientists of language.

Comparison of the grammars of human languages reveals systematic patterns of variation. Typology and universals research uncovers those patterns to formulate universal constraints on language and seek their exploration. In this essential textbook, William Croft presents a comprehensive introduction to the method and theory used in studying typology and universals. The theoretical issues discussed range from the most fundamental to the most abstract. The book provides students and researchers with extensive examples of language universals in phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. This second edition has been thoroughly rewritten and updated to reflect advances in typology and universals in the past decade, including: new methodologies such as the semantic map model and questions of syntactic argumentation; discussion of current debates over deeper explanations for specific classes of universals; and comparison of the typological and generative approaches to language.

Guglielmo Cinque is one of the world's leading theoretical syntacticians, and is particularly known for his application of recent theory to the analysis of Italian. This volume brings together ten of Professor Cinque's essays, some of which are published here for the first time, and some of which have not hitherto been easily available. They explore a wide range of aspects of Italian syntax, including the grammar of relative and 'pseudo-relative' clauses in the complement of perception verbs, impersonal si constructions, and the position and argument structure of adjectives in the noun phrase. The volume considers the implications of Cinque's work on Italian syntax for generative grammar more broadly, and compares Italian with the syntax of other Romance and also Germanic languages. It will be welcomed by all those working on Italian syntax, and on theoretical syntax generally.

Dr Backhouse undertakes a semantic study of taste terms in modern spoken Japanese. Through an investigation of the range of vocabulary available for the description of taste qualities, and their interrelationship in terms of meaning, Dr Backhouse presents a sensitive elucidation of the structure of Japanese taste terms, which has significant implications for anthropological linguistics. He explores important semantic issues, such as the relationship between evaluative and descriptive meaning, the intralinguistic mechanisms at work in metaphor, and draws illuminating connections between the lexical field of colour and that of taste.

In central cases of switch-reference, a marker on the verb of one clause is used to indicate whether its subject has the same or different reference from the subject of an adjacent, syntactically related clause. In central cases of logophoricity, a special pronoun form is used within a reported speech context, to indicate coherence with the source of reported speech. Lesley Stirling argues that these types of anaphoric linkage across clause boundaries cannot be adequately accounted for by Binding Theory. Her detailed examination of the two phenomena, including a case study of the Papuan language Amele, proposes an account for them which is formalized in Discourse Representation Theory, and explores how far it is possible for such an account to be compositional morpho-syntactic/semantic, while at the same time taking seriously the range of linguistic and cross-linguistic data to be explained. Switch-reference's indication of agreement or disagreement between clauses (or larger discourse units) is shown to function along various parameters contributing to discourse continuity: their major protagonists, spatial and temporal location, and their status as describing actual or non-actual situations. The arguments bear also on general debates around the nature of linguistically marked referential relations and the analysis of logophoric phenomena.

In this book Liliane Haegeman presents an account of sentential negation within a Government and Binding framework. Building on the work of Klima and Lasnik, Haegeman demonstrates the parallelism between negative sentences and interrogative sentences, and gives a unified analysis in terms of a well-formedness condition on syntactic representations: the AFFECT criterion, instantiated as the WH-criterion in interrogative sentences and as the NEG-criterion in negative sentences. It is shown that in the same way that in many languages the WH-criterion gives rise to WH-movement, the NEG-criterion may also give rise to NEG-movement. This is particularly clear in the Germanic languages. In the analysis of sentential negation in Romance languages the author makes extensive use of the notion of representational chain, showing that in these languages too the NEG-criterion applies at the level of S-structure. In addition to providing a syntactic analysis of sentential negation the book also raises a number of theoretical issues such as that of the distinction between A-positions and A'-positions and the level of application of well-formedness conditions. This book will be of interest to all those working on theoretical syntax, particularly of the Germanic and Romance languages.

Luigi Burzio's Principles of English Stress challenges many of the assumptions that have underpinned the generative description of English stress and more generally 'standard' metrical theory. Central to Burzio's analysis is a novel typology of metrical constituents that includes ternary feet and excludes monosyllabic feet. The analysis is essentially nonderivational in character: principles of well-formedness check for the presence of stress and weight in the output. The principles themselves are organized into a hierarchy consisting of a hardcore-controlling foot form that in cases of conflict may override principles of metrical consistency and alignment of edges. The interplay among these competing principles accounts for the cyclic effects of the standard theory. A special role is accorded phonetically null syllables that analyse hidden metrical structure to preserve a simple foot inventory and sharply curtail the standard theory's extrametricality.

Ayhan Aksu-Koç's empirical research on Turkish children's acquisition of the past tense forms the basis for this original and important contribution to the current debate among psycholinguistics on the interrelationship between language and cognitive development. Turkish, in its grammar, makes a clear distinction between direct and indirect experiencing, separating personal observation of processes from both inference and narrative. This distinction thus provides an ideal means by which linguistic and nonlinguistic conceptual development can be observed. Dr Aksu-Koç has exploited this to full advantage in her broadly based longitudinal and cross-sectional study, conducted across a wide age range. The data are meticulously analyzed, and the theoretical implications for a neo-Piagetian paradigm are carefully considered.

In this new work, Bernd Heine claims that the structure of grammatical categories is predictable to a large extent once we know the range of possible cognitive structures from which they are derived. The author uses as his example the structure of predicative possession, and shows how most of the possessive constructions to be found in the world's languages can be traced back to a small set of basic conceptual patterns. Heine identifies these patterns, and using grammaticalization theory he describes how each affects the word order and morphosyntax of the resulting possessive construction. He argues that grammaticalization theory explains much of the observable typological diversity which characterizes 'have'-constructions in the world's languages. Illustrated by a wealth of examples, this is an original and important statement from a leading linguist.

This book offers a new and in-depth analysis of English conditional sentences. In a wide-ranging discussion, Dancygier classifies conditional constructions according to time-reference and modality. She shows how the basic meaning parameters of conditionality correlate to formal parameters of the linguistic constructions which are used to express them. Dancygier suggests that the function of prediction is central to the definition of conditionality, and that conditional sentences display certain formal features which correlate to aspects of interpretation. Although the analysis is based primarily on English, it provides a theoretical framework that can be extended cross-linguistically to a broad range of grammatical phenomena. It will be essential reading for scholars and students concerned with the role of conditionals in English and many other languages.

In this book, Nomi Erteschik-Shir develops a new theory of focus structure, integrating insights from syntax, semantics, phonology and pragmatics. She explores the role of focus structure in grammar, examining the interface between focus structure and syntax, the semantics of focus structure and the intonation associated with it. Dr Shir defines a grammatical level of f-structure (focus structure) which is an annotated s-structure in which topic and focus constituents are marked. F-structure feeds both PF (Phonological Form) and semantics and is sensitive to lexical information. Dr Shir argues that f-structure and not LF (Logical Form) is the input to a semantic rule of predication. One of the major results of Dr Shir's analysis is that wh-movement turns out to be subject to the same constraint which accounts for anaphora and other subject-object asymmetries.

A new contribution to linguistic theory, this book presents a formal framework for the analysis of word structure in human language. It sets forth the network of hypotheses constituting Paradigm Function Morphology, a theory of inflectional form whose central insight is that paradigms play an essential role in the definition of a language's system of word structure. The theory comprises several unprecedented claims, chief among which is the claim that a language's realization rules serve as clauses in the definition of a paradigm function, an overarching construct which is indispensable for capturing certain kinds of generalizations about inflectional form. This book differs from other recent works on the same subject in that it treats inflectional morphology as an autonomous system of principles rather than as a subsystem of syntax or phonology and it draws upon evidence from a diverse range of languages in motivating the proposed conception of word structure.

One of the basic premises of the theory of syntax is that clause structures can be minimally identified as containing a verb phrase, playing the role of predicate, and a noun phrase, playing the role of subject. In this study Andrea Moro identifies a new category of copular sentences, namely inverse copular sentences, where the noun phrase which co-occurs with the verb phrase plays the role of predicate, occupying the position which is canonically reserved for subjects, and the subject is embedded in the verb phrase. The consequences of such a discovery are pervasive. Four distinct areas of syntax are unified into a unique natural class. Along with inverse copular sentences, existential sentences, sentences with seem and unaccusative constructions are analysed as involving the raising of a predicative noun phrase to the most prominent position in the clause structure. In addition, new light is shed on some classical issues such as the distribution and nature of expletives, locality theory, cliticization phenomena, possessive constructions, and the cross-linguistic variations of the Definiteness Effect.

The Dravidian languages are spoken by over 200 million people in South Asia and in Diaspora communities around the world, and constitute the world's fifth largest language family. It consists of about 26 languages in total including Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu, as well as over 20 non-literary languages. In this book, Bhadriraju Krishnamurti, one of the most eminent Dravidianists of our time, provides a comprehensive study of the phonological and grammatical structure of the whole Dravidian family from different aspects. He describes its history and writing systems, discusses its structure and typology, and considers its lexicon. Distant and more recent contacts between Dravidian and other language groups are also discussed. With its comprehensive coverage this book will be welcomed by all students of Dravidian languages and will be of interest to linguists in various branches of the discipline as well as Indologists.

Why are there more English words ending in -ness than ending in -ity? What is it about some endings that makes them more widely usable than others? Can we measure the differences in the facility with which the various affixes are used? Does the difference in facility reflect a difference in the way we treat words containing these affixes in the brain? These are the questions examined in this book. Morphological productivity has, over the centuries, been a major factor in providing the huge vocabulary of English and remains one of the most contested areas in the study of word-formation and structure. This book takes an eclectic approach to the topic, applying the findings for morphology to syntax and phonology. Bringing together the results of twenty years' work in the field, it provides new insights and considers a wide range of linguistic and psycholinguistic evidence.

In Slavic Prosody, first published in 1998, Professor Bethin gives a coherent account of the Slavic languages at the time of their differentiation and relates these developments to issues in phonological theory. First Professor Bethin argues that the syllable structure of Slavic changed before the fall of the jers and suggests that intrasyllabic and intersyllabic reorganization in Late Common Slavic was far more significant for Slavic prosody than the loss of weak jers. She then makes a case for the existence of a bisyllabic prosodic domain in Late Common Slavic and trochaic metrical organization. Finally, she explores the implications of Slavic data for phonological theory, discussing sonority, skeletal structure, the representation of length and prominence, and language typology in some detail.

This book proposes a theory of the distribution of adverbial adjuncts in a Principles and Parameters framework, claiming that there are few syntactic principles specific to adverbials; rather, for the most part, adverbials adjoin freely to any projection. Adjuncts' possible hierarchical positions are determined by whether they can receive a proper interpretation, according to their selectional (including scope) requirements and general compositional rules, while linear order is determined by hierarchical position along with a system of directionality principles and morphological weight, both of which apply generally to adjuncts and all other syntactic elements. A wide range of adverbial types is analysed; predicational adverbs (such as manner, and modal adverbs), domain expressions like financially, temporal, frequency, duration and focusing adverbials; participant PPs (e.g. locatives and benefactives); resultative and conditional clauses, and others, taken primarily from English, Chinese, French and Italian, with occasional reference to others (such as German and Japanese).

This book uses Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory to show that connectivity in discourse is a pragmatic rather than a semantic matter: it results from relevance relations between text and context rather than from relations linguistically encoded in the text. In two introductory chapters, Regina Blass argues that relevance theory offers a more explanatory account of discourse connectivity than do alternative approaches based on notions of cohesion, coherence and topic. In subsequent chapters, she introduces data from the language Sissala and shows how relevance theory can play an important role in guiding and constraining semantic and pragmatic analyses of these data. This approach reveals unexpected results - for example the detection of an interpretive use marker in Sissala, with implications for the analysis of so-called 'hearsay phenomena' in other languages - and leads to an alternative basis for particle typology.

Matthew Chen's study, first published in 2000, offers a most comprehensive analysis of the rich and complex patterns of tone used in Chinese languages. Chinese has a wide repertoire of tones which undergo often surprising changes when they are connected in speech flow. The term tone sandhi refers to this tonal alternation. Chen examines tone sandhi phenomena in detail across a variety of Chinese dialects. He explores a range of important theoretical issues such as the nature of tonal representation, the relation of tone to accent, the prosodic domain of sandhi rules, and the interface between syntax and phonology. His book is the culmination of a ten-year research project and offers a wealth of empirical data not previously accessible to linguists. Extensive references and a bibliography on tone sandhi complete this invaluable resource which will be welcomed as a standard reference on Chinese tone.

This book presents an innovative theory of syntactic categories and the lexical classes they define. It revives the traditional idea that these are to be distinguished notionally (semantically). It allows for there to be peripheral members of a lexical class which may not obviously conform to the general definition. The author proposes a notation based on semantic features which accounts for the syntactic behaviour of classes. The book also presents a case for considering this classification - again in rather traditional vein - to be basic to determining the syntactic structure of sentences. Syntactic structure is thus erected in a very restricted fashion, without recourse to movement or empty elements.

This book has two main goals: the re-establishment of a rule-based phonology as a viable alternative to current non-derivational models and the rehabilitation of historical evidence as a focus of phonological theory. Although Lexical Phonology includes several constraints such as the Derived Environment Condition and Structure Preservation, intended to reduce abstractness, previous versions have not typically exploited these fully. The model of Lexical Phonology presented here imposes the Derived Environment Condition strictly; introduces a new constraint on the shape of underlying representations; excludes underspecification; and suggests an integration of Lexical Phonology with Articulatory Phonology.

This book is an introduction to psycholinguistics, the study of human language processing. It deals with the central area of this field, the language abilities of the linguistically mature, monolingual adult. It aims to be comprehensive in its coverage, dealing with both written and spoken language, and their comprehension and production, and the nature of linguistic systems and models of processing. The book is divided into two parts. Part I identifies and investigates the main contributory areas of study, concerning the nature of the language signal, the biological foundations of language (including auditory and visual systems, the organisation of language in the brain, and articulatory and manual systems), and the sources of evidence on the abstract language system. Part II reviews a number of processing models and issues, covering perception and production of speech and writing, lexical storage and retrieval, and the comprehension and production of multiword utterances. The final chapter examines the issues that arise in the context of brain damage and the consequent impairment of language processing (in aphasia and related disorders), an additional important source of evidence and area of process modelling. Psycholinguistics provides an overview of the major contemporary issues surrounding the psychological foundations of language, most of which have roots in the last decade of research. It assumes a basic grounding in linguistic theory, but it is drawn from the author's considerable experience of teaching this subject, and has thus been designed to be accessible to students of linguistics and psychology, as well as for any reader with an interest in the psychological foundations of human language. It will be an essential work for students and specialists alike.

Bernard Comrie defines tense as the grammaticalisation of location in time. In this textbook he introduces readers to the range of variation found in tense systems across the languages of the world, bringing together a rich collection of illustrative material that student and specialist alike will find invaluable. This systematic account of the data is carefully integrated with a theoretical discussion of tense that is sensitive both to the range of tense oppositions found cross-linguistically and also to the constraints on that variation. For the most part the book is written without formalism, nor is it written within the framework of any specific current theory of linguistics. Nevertheless, as the final chapter makes clear, a formal theory of tense can build upon the insights gained here. For all readers, Dr Comrie's coherent and characteristically elegant account of this complex grammatical category will provide a solid basis for further research on tense, even in a language as thoroughly studied as English.

What is a Romance language? How is one Romance language related to others? How did they all evolve? And what can they tell us about language in general? In this comprehensive survey Rebecca Posner, a distinguished Romance specialist, examines this group of languages from a wide variety of perspectives. Her analysis combines philological expertise with insights drawn from modern theoretical linguistics, both synchronic and diachronic. She relates linguistic features to historical and sociological factors, and teases out those elements which can be attributed to divergence from a common source and those which indicate convergence towards a common aim. Her discussion is extensively illustrated with new and original data, and an up-to-date and comprehensive bibliography is included. This volume will be an invaluable and authoritative guide for students and specialists alike.

Dr Atkinson's work has grown out of a deep satisfaction with the state of theorising in child language development. Critical analysis of superficially attractive theories showed that they had no real explanatory power. Yet no coherent framework had been proposed for evaluating theorising in this area. A central tenet of this volume is that theories of language development should be relatable to some general view of human development and, on this basis, Dr Atkinson presents a number of conditions that any adequate theory of language development should satisfy. The major theories in most areas of language acquisition, in particular work in semantic, syntactic and functional development, are then systematically examined in the light of these conditions and found wanting. In a final chapter, the author relates his work to recent studies in the formal theory of learnability. This scholarly critique should be read by anyone with a serious interest in the study of child language development and will undoubtedly have a singular impact on the field.

A description of the phonology of modern Greek dialects from the point of view of their historical development in so far as this may be reconstructed from their modern form. An introductory chapter explains the basis of the approach adopted, and makes the book readily intelligible to the students of Greek with no special training in linguistics. Throughout the work the historical development of numerous sample words is presented in order to illustrate the rules.

Dr Brown examines the functions of different types of rules in the phonological component of a generative grammar with examples especially from Lumasaaba, a Bantu language of eastern Uganda.

Historical Linguistics is concerned with the process of language change through time. It investigates how and why the language of individuals, a social group or a whole 'speech community' develops in respect of its pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. Dr Bynon regards language as essentially a dynamic phenomenon, whose character can be at best only partly understood by a static, and necessarily idealized, synchronic approach. In Part I she establishes the theoretical framework by providing a systematic survey of the three main models of language development - the neogrammarian, structuralist, and transformational generative. Examples drawn substantially from English and German, but also from classical languages, French, Welsh and a variety of others, are used to explain and compare these approaches. In Part II she turns to sociolinguistics and shows how changes within a language over a period of time, and changes brought about by contact between languages, are both indicators and agents of more general cultural developments. Accounts of bilingualism and of pidgin and Creole languages are included as well as wider-ranging examples of different kinds of borrowing such as loan words, loan translations and extensions of meaning. The student is provided with a practical and critical guide both to what has been done and what can be done to discover and verify these linguistic relationships. Designed primarily as a textbook for linguistics and philology students, this book will also be of interest to those studying English language, classics and modern languages.

At least a hundred indigenous Indian languages are known to have been spoken in Mesoamerica, the cultural area that includes most of Mexico and part of South America, but it is only in the past fifty years that many of them have been adequately described. For some we still have no more than a partial description, often in an obscure source. Professor Suárez draws together this considerable mass of scholarship in a general survey that will provide an invaluable source of reference. The approach is primarily descriptive, and a major part of the volume is concerned with synchronic descriptions of phonology, morphology and syntax. The volume will be of interest and importance both to general linguists and to others with a serious interest in Mesoamerican culture and society.