Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (vols. 1–335, 1975–2015)
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Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (vols. 1–335, 1975–2015)
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From Case to Adposition
More LessIn the historical development of many languages of the IE phylum the loss of inflectional morphology led to the development of a configurational syntax, where syntactic position marked syntactic role. The first of these configurations was the adposition (preposition or postposition), which developed out of the uninflected particle/preverbs in the older forms of IE, by forming fixed phrases with nominal elements, a pattern later followed in the development of a configurational NP (article + nominal) and VP (auxiliary + verbal). The authors follow this evolution through almost four thousand years of documentation in all twelve language families of the Indo-European phylum, noting the resemblances between the structure of the original IE case system and the systemic oppositions to be found in the sets of adpositions that replaced it.
Quite apart from its theoretical analyses and proposals which in themselves amount to a new look at many traditional problems, this study has a value in the collected store of information on cases, and on adpositions and their usage. There is also a considerable store of etymological information that is relevant to the description of the systemic development.
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Features and Interfaces in Romance
More LessThis volume brings together new research on theoretical Romance Linguistics; its intended audience is scholars in the field of formal grammar, especially those specializing in Romance languages. It represents the latest work on the structure of Romance languages, with relevant comparisons to other languages such as English and Basque. As the volume's title indicates, two related themes recur in these studies: the role of grammatical features in sub-modules of the grammar, and the interaction of sub-modules with each other and with external systems at the “interfaces”. The contributions to this volume, all framed within current theoretical models, explore these and related problems in the analysis of Romance. The volume contains studies on morphology, phonology, syntax and semantics, and includes language and subject indices.
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Functional Approaches to Language, Culture and Cognition
More LessThis volume contains functional approaches to the description of language and culture, and language and cultural change. The approaches taken by the authors range from cognitive approaches including Stratificational grammar to more socially oriented ones including Systemic Functional linguistics. The volume is organized into two sections.
The first section ‘Functional Approaches to the Structure of Language: Theory and Practice’ starts with contributions developing a Stratificational model; these are followed by contributions focusing on some related functional model of language; and by articles describing some particular set of language phenomena.
In the second section ‘Functional Approaches to the History of Language and Linguistics’ general studies of language change are addressed first; a second group of contributions examines language change, lexicon and culture; and the last cluster of contributions treats the history of linguistics and culture.
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Formal Perspectives on Romance Linguistics
More LessThis volume presents current research in the formal treatment of linguistic phenomena in the Romance languages. It focuses on a variety of issues in phonology, second language acquisition, semantics, and syntax. Topics in phonological theory include the analysis of geminates, assimilation, rhotics, aspiration, syllabification, the interaction of phonology with morphology, the phonology-phonetics interface, and issues of transderivation and allomorphy selection. The primary question addressed in the area of second language acquisition theory is the issue of learners' access to Universal Grammar. The studies in semantic theory examine the proper analysis of indefinites, bare plurals, and specificity, with a particular emphasis on the syntax-semantics interface. Finally, the essays on syntactic theory discuss issues pertaining to argument structure, functional projections, phrase structure and adjunction, feature checking, and the syntactic representation of tense.
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Functional Descriptions
More LessThis volume focuses on the relation between theory and description by examining aspects of transitivity in different languages. Transitivity — or case grammar, to use the popular term — has always occupied a centre-stage position in linguistics, not least because of its supposedly privileged relation to states of affairs in the real world. Using a systemic functional perspective, the ten papers in this volume make a contribution to this scholarship by focusing on the transitivity patterns in language as the expression of the experiential metafunction. Through a study of different languages — English, Dutch, German, Finnish, Chinese and Pitjantjatjara — the contributors provide functional descriptions of the various categories of process, their participants and circumstances, including phenomena such as di-transitivity, causativity, the get-passive, etc. With the relation between theories and descriptions running through the ten chapters of this volume as sometimes an overt and sometimes a covert theme, the chapters point to the nature of the linguistic fact which is linked ineluctably on the one hand to the nature of the theory and on the other to the speakers’ experience of the world in which they live.
The majority of papers included in the volume derive from the 19th International Systemic Functional Congress at Macquarie University.
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From Indo-European to Latin
More LessThis study aims to describe the typological characteristics of the original Indo-European structure, called the derivative-flectional stage (or (sub)type), and to trace its developments to the paradigmatically organized structure of the individual Indo-European languages, called the paradigmatic-flectional stage (or (sub)type). This development is demonstrated in Latin, a language characterized by highy developed inflection, which attests, especially by its verbal system, an alternative way of paradigmatizing the original structure, differing from Old Indian and Greek on which traditional reconstruction was based.The notion of derivative-flectional type is used to try to penetrate to the original form and historical sources of the IE flectional type without presupposing radical typological change between Proto-IE and IE. The author's view differs from the traditional theory of prehistoric change in IE structure (from isolation to flection via agglutination) in that she assumes the origins of flection lie in lexico-derivative categorization.
The book is divided into three parts: 1. The Origins and Evolution of the Indo-European Flectional Type 2. The Basic Principles and Origins of the Nominal System and Inflections 3. The Indo-European Origins of the Latin Verbal System.
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Fucus
More LessThis is a memorial volume for Albert Ehrman. The contributions of this Gedenkschrift testify to his scholarly excellence in the field of Judaic-Semitic lexicography and etymology, and do full justice to the richness and thought inspiring qualities of his publications. Besides the papers in honour of Ehrman the volume contains four reprints of the Aramaic 'Fucus, Red Lichen', and a full bibliography of the works of Albert Ehrman.
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Foundations for a Science of Language
More LessThis volume presents, for the first time in English, a representative view of Gustave Guillaume's thought. The texts, drawn mainly from his manuscript notes for lectures at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, were selected as far as possible for their accessibility, as requiring no prior knowledge of his work. The result is a panorama of the far-ranging and often provocative thought of one of the twentieth century's most original linguists.
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