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This book brings together cutting-edge research on grammatical variation and change in English showcasing the state of the art in contemporary corpus linguistics. The studies apply corpus-based and variationist methods to a wide range of grammatical categories (nominal adjectival verbal adverbial prepositional) across synchronic and diachronic perspectives. Its central aim is to demonstrate how empirical corpus evidence can enhance grammatical theory especially within usage-based cognitive constructionalist frameworks. Of special interest is the volume’s diversity of data sources innovative methodologies and in general contemporary treatments of ongoing variation and change with an emphasis on World Englishes. Continuing the tradition of the Studies in Corpus Linguistics series this book advances beyond existing research by providing new case studies and insights addressed to researchers higher-education instructors and advanced students of English linguistics with interests in corpus linguistics grammar and variation.

In chapters encompassing phonology reading and writing the lexicon morphology syntax and semantics Acquisition of Korean: The state of the art offers a comprehensive overview of research in each area along with cutting-edge original studies. Designed to document support and inspire research in these areas and beyond the volume also includes dedicated chapters on emerging areas such as discourse pragmatics and the impact of socio-environmental factors. Chapters on second-language and heritage learners of Korean provide timely information about multicultural families in Korea while atypical development is addressed in chapters on children with dyslexia autism spectrum disorder and Deaf children acquiring Korean sign language. With reviews of existing research and studies showcasing current trends and methodological advances Acquisition of Korean is an invaluable reference for students scholars and practitioners in linguistics language acquisition developmental psychology education and speech-language pathology; it can also serve as a textbook and data source for cross-linguistic research.

This volume places topicality at the very heart of grammatical explanation drawing on richly annotated discourse corpora from lesser-studied languages across the Americas and beyond. Through nine original studies it demonstrates how aspects of discourse relevance (rather than just abstract syntactic relations) shape word order argument encoding case marking and voice systems in natural speech. Several chapters revisit and critically reassess Givón's seminal work on topic continuity and discourse motivation and re-examine classic frameworks such as “Preferred Argument Structure” through contemporary corpus-based work. The volume spans a remarkable typological range of linguistic systems combining methodological innovation with fine-grained empirical analysis. Essential reading for linguists working on information structure typology and language documentation this book demonstrates why topicality remains a powerful engine of grammatical design diversity and change.

This book offers the first systematic investigation of the instrumental role across syntax semantics and language acquisition. Focusing primarily on Italian within a comparative perspective the book addresses a long-standing puzzle: why Instruments can be syntactically omitted even when they remain semantically present.Combining theoretical analysis with experimental evidence corpus data and innovative methodologies the study redefines the status of Instruments with respect to the argument-adjunct distinction and introduces a new principled account of their syntactic omission based on semantic recoverability. It proposes a refined typology of Instruments grounded in verb meaning and contextual factors and tests its predictions through behavioral experiments and large-scale corpus analyses.The book also breaks new ground in acquisition research presenting the first experimental investigation of how Italian-speaking children acquire Instruments. The results reveal a striking dissociation between early syntactic mastery and the slower development of Instrument semantic recoverability shedding new light on the acquisition of syntactically optional elements.By integrating syntax semantics and acquisition Silent Instruments provides a robust and empirically grounded framework that is readily applicable to cross-linguistic research and to other phenomena at the syntax-semantics interface. It will be of interest to linguists working on argument structure optionality language acquisition and experimental and corpus-based approaches to grammar.

Root syntax with roots as primitive lexical units is an influential theme in building the lexicon in linguistic theory typically in Distributed Morphology and the generative model of minimal computation. Implementing important fragments of the Arabic lexicon the book presents a comprehensive view of word formation and argument structure providing robust evidence that favors root-based rather than stem-based derivations of words. Tested on Arabic a language wearing DM ‘on its sleeve’ the DM model gains substantial support and refinement. Significant templatic affixes turn out to be roots. Valency changing causatives anti-causatives reflexives or nominalizations implicate root complexity not category change. Psych perception and cognition eventuality classes are born as root subtypes not ‘verb’ classes. Category changing deverbalizations deadjectivations or denominalizations are supplemented by complex root derivations. Melodic templates operate ‘templatization’ (e.g. with adjectives) or act as functional templates for Voice and Aspect (e.g. with passives) or gradation (with synthetic comparatives) after category typing. The book is of interest to generative and comparative linguists cognitivists typologists lexicographers and students teachers and researchers of Arabic or Semitic

Zero elements are used by several theories in morphology and syntax as analytical tool but the question of whether phonologically empty elements should be structurally present or not has been a controversial issue from the very beginning. In addition to analyses that work with zero there are also a whole series of works that explicitly reject a description with zero or allow them only under restricted circumstances. This volume aims at getting a more complete picture of zero elements as a theoretic construct its empirical necessity and its nature in different components of grammar by focusing on Romance languages. The volume presents multi-facetted viewpoints and methodologies such as formal theoretic and data-based ones addressing researchers advanced students and everyone interested in linguistics. Furthermore this volume deals with various Romance languages and varieties such as Catalan (Old and Modern) French Italian and Sicilian (Brazilian and European) Portuguese and Spanish.

This book explores the development of the Chinese cleft construction through the lens of Diachronic Construction Grammar. Focusing on shi as an invariant copula it examines the VP de cleft the V de O cleft and the bare shi cleft showing how each signals contrastive and specificational meaning. Tracing their origins from the copular construction in Middle Chinese the study reveals distinct developmental paths and semantic-pragmatic uses for each cleft type. Offering the first diachronic constructional analysis of Chinese cleft sentences it sheds light on the evolution of focus structures the expansion of constructional networks and the typology of focus devices across languages making a key contribution to historical linguistics and Chinese grammar research.

The last two decades have seen a series of publications focused on time. So why another book? It now appears that a kairos moment has arrived to reconsider from a more holistic point of view the manifold ways in which we think about time and talk about it. The book is divided into four major parts: Fundamental issues; Conceptualization of temporality across languages and cultures; Metaphor metonymy and time conceptualization; and Time and grammar. Following the two chapters that prefigure the main topics of the volume we move from chapters dealing with the cultural embeddedness of our conceptualizations of time to those discussing the instrumental role of figurativity in the conceptualization of time finishing with a series of chapters focusing on a range of phenomena revolving around the grammatical reflexes of temporality.

This book brings together some of the most prominent linguists working in the field of East and Southeast Asian syntax to create a special collection of papers which highlight new developments in the analysis of the syntax of Chinese Japanese Korean Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian languages. Generative syntactic theory has regularly been influenced by discoveries made in Asian languages and the present volume connects a broad range of striking patterns found in Asian languages with Minimalist syntactic theory and provides arguments for fresh approaches to a variety of fundamental problems and puzzles within formal syntax. The volume has also been created as a tribute to Professor C.-T. James Huang one of the most influential of generative linguists active in the study of Chinese and other Asian languages.

Habitual constructions such as those based on English used to and Spanish soler are linguistic expressions denoting situations that typically occur. This volume proposes a novel approach to such expressions arguing that habituality is not a unified semantic category but rather a family of related meanings which differ in their scopal position within the clause. The volume contains a detailed account of habitual meaning from the perspective of Functional Discourse Grammar as well as in-depth empirical studies of habitual constructions in ten languages: Coptic Plains Cree Dolgan Ancient Greek Kwaza Mandarin Portuguese Russian Slovak and Spanish. It will be of interest not just to specialists of these languages but to anyone working on habituality and other aspectual categories in the languages of the world.