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This volume presents novel cross-linguistic insights into how olfactory experiences are expressed in typologically (un-)related languages both from a synchronic and from a diachronic perspective. It contains a general introduction to the topic and fourteen chapters based on philological investigation and thorough fieldwork data from Basque Beja Fon Formosan languages Hebrew Indo-European languages Japanese Kartvelian languages Purepecha and languages of northern Vanuatu. Topics discussed in the individual chapters involve inter alia lexical olfactory repertoires and naming strategies non-literal meanings of olfactory expressions and their semantic change reduplication colexification mimetics and language contact. The findings provide the reader with a range of fascinating facts about perception description contribute to a deeper understanding of how olfaction as an understudied sense is encoded linguistically and offer new theoretical perspectives on how some parts of our cognitive system are verbalized cross-culturally. This volume is highly relevant to lexical typologists historical linguists grammarians and anthropologists.

The chapters in this volume focus on how we might understand the concept of ‘unit’ in human languages. It is an analytical notion that has been widely adopted by linguists of various theoretical and applied orientations but has recently been critically examined by both typologically oriented and interactional linguistics. This volume contributes to and extends this discussion by examining the nature of units in actual usage in a range of genetically and typologically unrelated languages English Finnish Indonesian Japanese and Mandarin engaging with fundamental theoretical issues. The chapters show that categories originally created for the description of Indo-European languages have limited usefulness if our goal is to understand the nature of human language in general. The authors thus question the status of traditionally accepted linguistic units especially their static understanding as a priori entities and suggest instead that an emergent and interactional view of both structure and function offers a better fit with the data from the languages examined. Originally published as special issue 43:2 (2019) of Studies in Language.

This cognitive contrastive study of ten languages (Chinese Dalabon English French Spanish Romanian Kurdish Khmer Polish Tibetan) focuses on the concept of giving from six main points of view namely argument structure lexical semantics and event structure role marking in the three argument construction and in other constructions lexicalization grammaticalization and constructionalization of the verb from a cognitive construction grammar point of view and central and extended meanings. It is proposed that a continuum approach to grammar and lexicon is needed in order to describe the typological and historical facts. The volume argues for a concrete and abstract transfer ‘cluster model’ involving coverage of lexical and grammatical extension or bleaching phenomena and that the semantic extensions (metaphorical and otherwise) exploit various portions of this schema. The volume is deeply anchored in the Cognitive Construction Grammar theoretical movement and proposes analyses of constructional phenomena to illustrate a grammar to lexicon continuum in synchrony and diachrony: language change grammaticalization chains constructionalization analysis and an invariant hypothesis of giving as a basic activity in human cognition.

This book provides a comprehensive treatment of the morpho-syntactic and semantic aspects of the antipassive construction from synchronic diachronic and typological perspectives. The nineteen contributions assembled in this volume address a wide range of aspects pertinent to the antipassive construction such as lexical semantics the properties of the antipassive markers as well as the issue of fuzzy boundaries between the antipassive construction and a range of other formally and functionally similar constructions in genealogically and areally diverse languages. Purely synchronically oriented case studies are supplemented by contributions that shed light on the diachronic development of the antipassive construction and the antipassive markers. The book should be of central interest to many scholars in particular to those working in the field of language typology semantics syntax and historical linguists as well as to specialists of the language families discussed in the individual contributions.

In this book the traditional definition of ‘grammaticalization’ is challenged in the light of current developments in grammar theory. The main innovation of this approach is the focus on the feature composition of lexical items. From this perspective the loss of past participle agreement in Catalan is analyzed on the basis of newly collected data as a consequence of the grammaticalization of formal features. The emergence of syntactic formal features through grammaticalization is understood as a last-resort repair mechanism for pragmatically costly derivations. Further far-reaching implications of this proposal under discussion are: the interplay between (re-)parametrization economy cyclicity and grammaticalization; the characterization of free variation under a modified version of the Interface Hypothesis; and the precedence of syntactic over morphological change. This book is not only of interest to specialists in Romance languages but also to anyone working on diachronic linguistics.

The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns that is generally taken to have semantic content. This content is generally taken to reflect a conceptual cognitive or ontological distinction and relates to philosophical and cognitive notions of unity identity and counting. The mass-count distinction is certainly one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in syntax and semantics that bears on ontology and cognitive science. In many ways the topic remains under-researched though across languages and with respect to particular phenomena within a given language with respect to its connection to cognition and with respect to the way it may be understood ontologically. This volume aims to contribute to some of the gaps in the research on the topic in particular the relation between the syntactic mass-count distinction and semantic and cognitive distinctions diagnostics for mass and count the distribution and role of numeral classifiers abstract mass nouns and object mass nouns (furniture police force clothing).The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns that is generally taken to have semantic content. This content is generally taken to reflect a conceptual cognitive or ontological distinction and relates to philosophical and cognitive notions of unity identity and counting. The mass-count distinction is certainly one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in syntax and semantics that bears on ontology and cognitive science. In many ways the topic remains under-researched though across languages and with respect to particular phenomena within a given language with respect to its connection to cognition and with respect to the way it may be understood ontologically. This volume aims to contribute to some of the gaps in the research on the topic in particular the relation between the syntactic mass-count distinction and semantic and cognitive distinctions diagnostics for mass and count the distribution and role of numeral classifiers abstract mass nouns and object mass nouns (furniture police force clothing).

Words are not just labels for conceptual categories. Words construct conceptual categories frame situations and influence behavior. Where do they get their meaning? <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>This book describes how words acquire their meaning. The author argues that mechanisms based on associations pattern detection and feature matching processes explain how words acquire their meaning from experience and from language alike. Such mechanisms are summarized by the distributional hypothesis a computational theory of meaning originally applied to word occurrences only and hereby extended to extra-linguistic contexts. <br/>By arguing in favor of the cognitive foundations of the distributional hypothesis which suggests that words that appear in similar contexts have similar meaning this book offers a theoretical account for word meaning construction and extension in first and second language that bridges empirical findings from cognitive and computer sciences. Plain language and illustrations accompany the text making this book accessible to a multidisciplinary academic audience.

While verb classes are a mainstay of linguistic research the field lacks consensus on precisely what constitutes a verb class. This book presents a novel approach to verb classes employing a bottom-up corpus-based methodology and combining key insights from Frame Semantics Construction Grammar and Valency Grammar. <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>On this approach verb classes are formulated at varying granularity levels to adequately capture both the shared semantic and syntactic properties unifying verbs of a class and the idiosyncratic properties unique to individual verbs. In-depth analyses based on this approach shed light on the interrelations between verbs frame-semantics and constructions and on the semantic richness and network organization of grammatical constructions.<br/>This approach is extended to a comparison of Change and Theft verbs revealing unexpected lexical and syntactic differences across semantically distinct classes. Finally a range of contrastive (German–English) analyses demonstrate how verb classes can inform the cross-linguistic comparison of verbs and constructions.

Mood modality and evidentiality are popular and dynamic areas in linguistics. Re-Assessing Modalising Expressions – Categories co-text and context focuses on the specific issue of the ways language users express permission obligation volition (intention) possibility and ability necessity and prediction linguistically.

Using a range of evidence and corpus data collected from different sources the authors of this volume examine the distribution and functions of a range of patterns involving modalising expressions as predominantly found in standard American English British English or Hong Kong English but also in Japanese. The authors are particularly interested in addressing (co-)textual manifestations of modalising expressions as well as their distribution across different text-types and thus filling a gap research was unable to plug in the past. Thoughts on categorising or re-categorising modalising expressions initiate and complement a multi-perspectival enterprise that is intended to bring research in this area a step forward.

This monograph studies stative predicates from a neo-constructionist perspective and integrates them in a comprehensive theory of event and argument structure. It focuses on two sets of stative verbs: govern-type verbs and object experiencer psychological verbs. For govern-verbs it shows how notions such as causativity and resultativity can also be ingredients of stative predicates and be derived syntactically. The consequences of this proposal are further pursued in a crosslinguistic investigation of adjectival passives which are stative predicates of sorts. For object-experiencer psychological verbs it is shown that their Experiencer theta-role can and should be derived as an aspectual entailment mediated by prepositional structure. In defending this view this monograph reveals a syntactic parallelism between location verbs and object-experiencer psychological verbs in many languages that has hitherto gone unnoticed. This book will primarily appeal to researchers interested in lexical aspect and its connection to morphosyntax.

Many Austronesian languages exhibit isolating word structure. This volume offers a series of investigations into these languages which are found in an "isolating crescent" extending from Mainland Southeast Asia through the Indonesian archipelago and into western New Guinea. Some of the languages examined in this volume include Cham Minangkabau colloquial Malay/Indonesian and Javanese Lio Alorese and Tetun Dili.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/> <br/>The main purpose of this volume is to address the general question of how and why languages become isolating by examination of a number of competing hypotheses. While some view morphological loss as a natural process others argue that the development of isolating word structure is typically driven by language contact through various mechanisms such as creolization metatypy and Sprachbund effects. This volume should be of interest not only to Austronesianists and historians of Insular Southeast Asia but also to grammarians typologists historical linguists creolists and specialists in language contact.

Issues in multilingualism and its implications for communities and society at large language acquisition and use language diversification and creative language use associated with new linguistic identities have become hot topics in both scientific and popular debates. A ubiquitous aspect of multilingualism is language contact. This book contains twelve articles that discuss specific aspects of Contact Linguistics. These articles cover a wide range of topics in the field including creoles areal linguistics language mixing and the sociolinguistic aspects of interactions with audiences. The book is dedicated to Pieter Muysken whose work on pidgin and creole languages mixed languages code-switching bilingualism and areal linguistics has been ground-breaking and inspirational for the authors in this book as well as numerous other scholars working on the various facets of this rapidly expanding field.

This volume provides a detailed investigation of perfects from all the branches of the Indo-European language family in some cases representing the first ever comprehensive description. Thorough philological examinations result in empirically well-founded analyses illustrated with over 940 examples. The unique temporal depth and diatopic breadth of attested Indo-European languages permits the investigation of both TAME (Tense-Aspect-Mood-Evidentiality) systems over time and recurring cycles of change as well as synchronic patterns of areal distribution and contact phenomena. These possibilities are fully exploited in the volume. Furthermore the cross-linguistic perspective adopted by many authors as well as the inclusion of contributions which go beyond the boundaries of the Indo-European family per se facilitates typological comparison. As such the volume is intended to serve as a springboard for future research both into the semantics of the perfect in Indo-European itself and verb systems across the world’s languages.

This volume brings together twelve usage-based studies conducted by leading researchers in language and cognition that explore core issues of figurativeness from the Cognitive Linguistics perspective. <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The individual chapters reveal the central function of figurativeness in thought and its impact on language. Cognition relies on knowledge-structuring tools in the construction of meaning both mentally and linguistically. Collectively the chapters delve into an array of topics that are crucial to future research in figurative meaning construction especially on questions of identification and structure of figures the figurative motivation of constructions the impact of figurativeness on pragmatic and multimodal communication and the correlation between figures and cognitive models.

This book aims to explain the syntax and semantics of Norwegian verb particles. While particles have been claimed to be distributed optionally to the left (as LPrt) or right (as RPrt) of an associated DP in the linguistic literature the dialectologically oriented literature has shown for a long time that many Norwegian particles are preferred as LPrt (corresponding to English ‘throw out the dog’). While spatial particles can appear in both positions non-spatial particles primarily appear as LPrt. A complex predicate analysis is adopted for non-spatial particles and a small clause analysis for spatial particles. It is argued that a non-spatial LPrt construction triggers an atelic reading and the RPrt counterpart identifies a result state.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The book combines traditional dialectology with modern linguistic theories and includes much Norwegian data that has not been shed theoretical light on before: simplex and complex spatial and non-spatial constructions phrasal particles ground promotion and unaccusatives. Several earlier theoretical accounts of Norwegian particles are reviewed in a separate chapter.

This volume presents a collection of seven peer-reviewed articles on Arabic phonetics phonology syntax semantics and applied linguistics. The authors address stress assignment the phenomenon of 'imala the place of articulation of the dorsal fricative the structure of correlatives the CP layer sluicing and sprouting and clinical linguistics. They do so by using data from Standard Arabic and from Egyptian Jordanian Palestinian and Saudi Arabian varieties of Arabic. The book will be of interest to linguists working in descriptive and theoretical areas of Arabic linguistics.

This book is a collection of original studies analyzing how different internal and external factors affect Spanish language variation and evolution across a number of (socio)linguistic scenarios. Its primary goal is to expand our understanding of how native and non-native varieties of Spanish co-exist with other languages and dialects under the influence of several linguistic and extra-linguistic forces. While some papers analyze the linguistic dynamics affecting Spanish grammars from a cross-dialectal perspective others focus more closely on the relations established between Spanish and other languages with which it is in contact. In particular some of these studies show how power and prestige may support (or not) the use of Spanish in different social contexts and educational realities given that the attitudes toward this language vary greatly across the Spanish-speaking world. On the one hand in some regions Spanish represents the variety spoken by the majority of the population typically related to prestige and power (Spain and Latin America). On the other hand in other contexts the same language is conceived as a minority variety which may or may not be associated with stigmatized immigrant groups (i.e. in the US).

This book presents a novel account of syntactic and semantic variation in copular and existential sentences in Classical Hebrew. Like many languages the system of Classical Hebrew copular sentences is quite complex containing zero pronominal and verbal forms as well as eventive and inchoative semantics. Approaching this subject from the framework of Distributed Morphology provides an elegant and comprehensive explanation for both the syntactic and semantic variation in these sentences. This book also presents a theoretical model for analyzing copular sentences in other languages included related phenomena– such as pseudo-copulas. It is also a demonstration of what can be gained by applying modern linguistic analyses to dead languages. Citing and building off previous studies on this topic this book will be of interest to those interested in the theoretical examination of copular and existential sentences and to those interested in Classical Hebrew more specifically.

This volume brings together a collection of original articles investigating state-of-the-art themes in morphology. The papers in the volume provide an in-depth analysis for spoken and sign languages within morphological word domain morphosyntax and morphophonology. Bringing data from a variety of languages including Turkish some understudied ones (e.g. Turkish Sign Language Late Ottoman Turkish) and also endangered languages (e.g. Karachay-Balkar Sauzini Cappadocian Aivaliot and Pharasiot Greek) the volume will be of special interest to a wide audience ranging from typologists to theoretical linguists and graduate students in linguistics and is expected to generate further research on the above mentioned languages as well as to contribute to the cross-linguistic literature on the themes explored in the volume.

The ‘NP’ is one of the least controversial grammatical units that linguists work with. The NP is often assumed to be universal and appears to be robust cross-linguistically (compared to ‘VP’ or even ‘clause’) in that it can be manipulated in argument positions in constructed examples. Furthermore for any given language its internal structure (order and type of modifiers) tends to be relatively fixed. Surprisingly however the empirical basis for ‘NP’ has never been established. The chapters in this volume examine the NP in everyday interactions from diverse languages including little-studied languages as well as better-researched ones in a variety of interactional settings. Together these chapters show that cross-linguistically the category NP is not as robust as has been assumed: in the context of temporally unfolding human interaction its structural status is constantly negotiated in terms of participants’ evolving social agendas.

The expression of temporal relations notably through tense and aspect is central in all processes of communication but commonly perceived and described as a major hurdle for non-native speakers. While this topic has already received considerable attention in the SLA literature it features less prominently in recent corpus-based studies of learner language. This volume intends to close this gap. It shows which additional insights into the area of tense and aspect in learner language can be gained using corpus data addressing the following questions: In which ways do corpus-based studies complement work based on other methods?; How can a corpus-based approach inform theories on the acquisition of tense and aspect specifically and of language acquisition in general?; Are results language-specific or can universal principles be established?; How pervasive are effects of mode/register within learner corpus data?; What role does native and non-native input play?; Which methodological challenges come to the fore when using corpus data instead of elicited data?; How can the notion of “target(-like)” performance be operationalized for corpus material?; Which implications do the findings from the learner corpora have for the teaching and learning of the target language?

Originally published as special issue of International Journal of Learner Corpus Research 4:2 (2018)

Current Theoretical and Applied Perspectives on Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics is a 15-chapter compilation written by both established and emerging scholars representing a wide array of theoretical methodological and empirical perspectives. Each chapter presents original and significant findings contextualizes them within the broader empirical work and identifies directions for future research on a variety of subfields of study such as phonetics/phonology studies formal acquisition theory second and heritage language acquisition language variation and linguistic landscapes. Given its scope and significance this volume will be of relevance to not only academics and researchers of all theoretical stripes but also to a more general audience new to the field of Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics.

This book opens with Angelika Kratzer and Luigi Rizzi talking about contemporary issues such as non-recursiveness of focus and the semantics of topics. The chapters climb down the spine from the left periphery to DP: the value of subjunctive across the history of German expressive expressions in Brazilian Portuguese left and right dislocation and the speaker’s perspective in Italian Brazilian double subjects and left dislocated topic long versus short wh-movement in Brazilian Portuguese and Quebec French low adverbs and the raising of the verb in Brazilian Portuguese ellipsis and null objects in Brazilian and European Portuguese and bare singulars in Brazilian Portuguese. The chapters propose original accounts for language variation and historical changes most of them focusing on Brazilian Portuguese a challenge to syntax and semantics. Thus the volume contributes to Brazilian and Portuguese Linguistics as well as to general and contemporary research on syntax and semantics of natural languages.

Whether you wish to deliver on a promise take a walk down memory lane or even on the wild side phraseological units (also often referred to as phrasemes or multiword expressions) are present in most communicative situations and in all world’s languages. Phraseology the study of phraseological units has therefore become a rare unifying theme across linguistic theories.

In recent years an increasing number of studies have been concerned with the computational treatment of multiword expressions: these pertain among others to their automatic identification extraction or translation and to the role they play in various Natural Language Processing applications. Computational Phraseology is a comparatively new field where better understanding and more advances are urgently needed. This book aims to address this pressing need by bringing together contributions focusing on different perspectives of this promising interdisciplinary field.

The production and processing of collocations and formulaic language is a field of growing interest in corpus linguistics and experimental psycholinguistics. In the past this fascinating field at the interface of grammar and the lexicon has been mainly studied based on English native speakers while research focusing on second language speakers and language learners has been comparatively rare. This book proposes an integration of corpus-based and experimental methods by analysing language processing of collocation by advanced learners of English. In using corpus-derived collocational stimuli of native-like and learner-typical language use in an experimental setting it shows how advanced German L1 learners of English process native-like collocations L1-based interferences and non-collocating lexical combinations. This book is of interest to anyone interested in the psycholinguistic validity of collocation from a bilingual point of view as it explores methods of tracking collocational processing of speakers working with different sets of ‘collocational preferences’.