Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (vols. 1–335, 1975–2015)

Proto-Japanese is the reconstructed language stage from which all later varieties of Japanese, including Ryukyuan, descend. It has been studied both as an end in itself (as the genetic code of the Japanese language) and as part of endeavors to clarify the genetic affiliation of Japanese. Based on the state of the field, especially as represented in Samuel E. Martin's seminal work The Japanese Language Through Time (1987), this volume singles out key areas in the reconstruction of proto-Japanese where salient progress has been or promises to be made since Martin. Contributions were invited from scholars working on the following areas: segmental phonology, use of dialect evidence, accent, morphology, and syntax. While the book first of all presents new research which advances our understanding of proto-Japanese, it also gives an overview over the state of the art in the field and its main issues.

This volume offers a selection from the papers presented at the 2005 Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The papers cover a variety of topics in Arabic Linguistics, ranging from the lexicon, phonology, syntax and computational linguistics.

The conference series Going Romance is the major European discussion forum for theoretically relevant research on Romance languages, where ideas about language and linguistics and about Romance languages are put in an interactive perspective, giving space to both universality and Romance-internal variation. The current volume features a selection of 18 articles (out of 28) that were presented during the 19th meeting at Utrecht University, December 8-10, 2005. Included in this volume are four papers that were presented by invited speakers: Belletti, Delais-Roussarie & Rialland, Notley & Van der Linden & Hulk, and Ordóñez; these reflect both issues discussed in the general session as well as themes of the workshop on acquisition. A number of reknown Romance linguists (Saltarelli, di Sciullo, Zubizarreta) also contributed to the volume. In general, contributions bear on a variety of topics in the field of morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics and include the perspective from acquisition.

This volume focuses on the phonology, phonetics and psycholinguistics of voicing-related phenomena in Dutch. Dutch phonology has played a touchstone role in the past few decades where competing phonological theories regarding laryngeal representation have been concerned. Debates have focused on the phonetic facts (Is final neutralization complete or incomplete? Are the assimilation rules phonetic or phonological?) and the most adequate phonological analyses (Is [voice] a binary feature? What constraints are necessary? What is the best way of implementing the role of morphology?). This volume summarises and adds fuel to these debates on several fronts, by providing an overview of analyses so far (rule-based as well as constraint-based) and proposing a new one, by drawing attention to new facts, such as exceptions to final devoicing in certain dialects and the behaviour of loanwords, and by re-examining the phonetic state of affairs and the behaviour of voiced, voiceless and partially devoiced segments in psycholinguistic experiments.

This volume contains 22 revised papers originally presented at the 17th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, held August 2005 in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. The papers cover a broad range of languages, including well-studied languages of Europe but also Aramaic, Zoque and Uto-Aztecan, Japanese and Korean, Afrikaans, and the Pilbara languages of Australia. The theoretical approaches taken are equally diverse, often bringing together aspects of ‘formal’ and ‘functional’ theories in a single contribution. Many of the chapters provide fresh data, including several drawing on data from electronic corpora. Topics range from traditional comparative reconstruction to prosodic change and the role of processing in syntactic change.

This volume is a collection of cutting-edge research papers written by well-known researchers in the field of Romance phonetics and phonology. An important goal of this book is to bridge the gap between traditional Romance linguistics — with its long and rich tradition in data collection, cross-language comparison, and phonetic variation — and laboratory phonology work. The book is organized around three main themes: segmental processes, prosody, and the acquisition of segments and prosody. The various articles provide new empirical data on production, perception, sound change, first and second language learning, rhythm and intonation, presenting a state-of-the-art overview of research in laboratory phonology centred on Romance languages. The Romance data are used to test the predictions of a number of theoretical frameworks such as gestural phonology, exemplar models, generative phonology and optimality theory. The book will constitute a useful companion volume for phoneticians, phonologists and researchers investigating sound structure in Romance languages, and will serve to generate further interest in laboratory phonology.

This volume includes twelve papers selected from the Twentieth Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, held in 2006 at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo. The papers in this volume address a broad range of theoretical issues pertaining to Arabic, particularly in the areas of phonology, morphology, syntax, pragmatics, computationallinguistics, and psycholinguistics. These contributions represent the emerging trend of interface research, where linguistic phenomena are investigated using the techniques, methodologies, and theoretical frameworks of different academic fields.

The articles of this volume are centered around two competing views on language change originally presented at the 2003 International Conference on Historical Linguistics in the two important plenary papers by Henning Andersen and William Croft. The latter proposes an evolutionary model of language change within a domain-neutral model of a ‘generalized analysis of selection’, whereas Henning Andersen takes it that cultural phenomena could not possibly be handled, i.e. observed, described, understood, in the same way as natural phenomena. These papers are models of succinct presentation of important theoretical framework. The other papers present and discuss additional models of change, e.g. invisible hand-processes, system-internal models, functional and cognitive models. Most papers do not subscribe to the evolutionary model; instead, they focus on functional factors in the selection and propagation of variants (as opposed to factors of code efficiency), or on cognitive and pragmatic perspectives. Several papers are inspired by the late Eugenio Coseriu and by Henning Andersen’s theories on language change. In particular, the volume contains articles proposing interesting grammaticalization studies and extended models of grammaticalization. The clear presentation of important and competing approaches to fundamental questions concerning language change will be of high interest for scholars and students working in the field of diachrony and typology. The languages referred to in the papers include Cantonese, the Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages, Danish, English, Eskimo languages, German, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish.

This volume brings together a selection of papers from the eighteenth ‘Going Romance’ symposium, held at Leiden University, 9–11 December 2004. These papers cover a broad range of topics in phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, historical linguistics, and acquisition, in a variety of Romance languages.