Endoclitics and the Origins of Udi Morphosyntax

Endoclitics and the Origins of Udi Morphosyntax PDF

Author: Alice C. Harris

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 9780199246335

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This book provides a description and analysis of a phenomenon that appears to be unique among languages that have been brought to the attention of linguists, namely the possibility of small words occurring inside other words. Examination of this is important because it helps us to understand what a word is from a cross-linguistic point of view. The second part of the book shows how Udi came to be so different from other languages, and how in this sense it explains the phenomenon.

A Natural History of Infixation

A Natural History of Infixation PDF

Author: Alan C. L. Yu

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2007-07-05

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 0191535443

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This book presents the first cross-linguistic study of the phenomenon of infixation, typically associated in English with words like "im-bloody-possible", and found in all the world's major linguistic families. Infixation is a central puzzle in prosodic morphology: Professor Yu explores its prosodic, phonological, and morphological characteristics, considers its diverse functions, and formulates a general theory to explain the rules and constraints by which it is governed. He examines 154 infixation patterns from over a hundred languages, including examples from Asia, Europe, Africa, New Guinea, and South America. He compares the formal properties of different kinds of infix, explores the range of diachronic pathways that lead to them, and considers the processes by which they are acquired in first language learning. A central argument of the book concerns the idea that the typological tendencies of language may be traced back to its origins and to the mechanisms of language transmission. The book thus combines the history of infixation with an exploration of the role diachronic and functional factors play in synchronic argumentation: it is an exemplary instance of the holistic approach to linguistic explanation. Alan Yu's pioneering study will interest phonologists and morphologists of all theoretical persuasions, as well as typologists and historical linguists.

Yearbook of Morphology 2003

Yearbook of Morphology 2003 PDF

Author: G.E. Booij

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2007-11-23

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1402015135

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The Yearbook of Morphology series, published since 1988, has proven to be an eminent support for the current upswing of morphological research and has set a standard for morphological research. The 2003 volume deals with the phenomenon of complex predicates consisting of a verb preceded by a preverb, presents historical evidence on the change of preverbal elements into prefixes, and discusses morphological parsing, and the role of paradigmatical relations in analogical change. It is relevant to theoretical, descriptive, and historical linguists, morphologists, phonologists, computational linguists, and psycholinguists.

Caucasian Albania

Caucasian Albania PDF

Author: Jost Gippert

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2023-06-19

Total Pages: 752

ISBN-13: 3110794683

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By consequence of the Karabakh War in 2020 and due to Azerbaijanian revisionism concerning the history, culture and cultural monuments of the region, the discussion on Caucasian "Albania", which is little known in the West in both academic and public circles, has been reignited. The handbook provides an overview of the current state of research on the Caucasian "Albanians" in an objective, scientifically sound manner. The contributions are not necessarily intended to reveal new scientific findings but rather to summarise approved knowledge. The volume brings together internationally renowned scholars, researchers and practitioners from various fields of studies reporting on and reviewing the state of research concerning the Caucasian "Albanians", their history and archaeology, their language and written monuments, their religion, church history and their art, including their relation to the Udi people of today. The companion is intended to neutrally introduce the readership to the subject of Caucasian Albania from various perspectives.

The Semantics of Verbal Categories in Nakh-Daghestanian Languages

The Semantics of Verbal Categories in Nakh-Daghestanian Languages PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-03-20

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 9004361804

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This book explores the semantics of tense, aspect, modality and evidentiality in the North-East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) language family. It offers an overview of the most challenging features and provides in-depth studies of selected TAME systems in a number of languages.

The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Syntax

The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Syntax PDF

Author: Adam Ledgeway

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-03-09

Total Pages: 1321

ISBN-13: 1316720586

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Change is an inherent feature of all aspects of language, and syntax is no exception. While the synchronic study of syntax allows us to make discoveries about the nature of syntactic structure, the study of historical syntax offers even greater possibilities. Over recent decades, the study of historical syntax has proven to be a powerful scientific tool of enquiry with which to challenge and reassess hypotheses and ideas about the nature of syntactic structure which go beyond the observed limits of the study of the synchronic syntax of individual languages or language families. In this timely Handbook, the editors bring together the best of recent international scholarship on historical syntax. Each chapter is focused on a theme rather than an individual language, allowing readers to discover how systematic descriptions of historical data can profitably inform and challenge highly diverse sets of theoretical assumptions.

Grammaticalization Scenarios from Europe and Asia

Grammaticalization Scenarios from Europe and Asia PDF

Author: Walter Bisang

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-09-21

Total Pages: 670

ISBN-13: 3110563142

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This volume intends to fill the gap in the grammaticalization studies setting as its goal the systematic description of grammaticalization processes in genealogically and structurally diverse languages. To address the problem of the limitations of the secondary sources for grammaticalization studies, the editors rely on sketches of grammaticalization phenomena from experts in individual languages guided by a typological questionnaire.

Clitics

Clitics PDF

Author: Andrew Spencer

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-07-12

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 0521682924

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In most languages we find 'little words' which resemble a full word, but which cannot stand on their own. Instead they have to 'lean on' a neighbouring word, like the 'd, 've and unstressed 'em of Kim'd've helped'em ('Kim would have helped them'). These are clitics, and they are found in most of the world's languages. In English the clitic forms appear in the same place in the sentence that the full form of the word would appear in but in many languages clitics obey quite separate rules of placement. This book is the first introduction to clitics, providing a complete summary of their properties, their uses, the reasons why they are of interest to linguists and the various theoretical approaches that have been proposed for them. The book describes a whole host of clitic systems and presents data from over 100 languages.

Current Trends in Caucasian, East European, and Inner Asian Linguistics

Current Trends in Caucasian, East European, and Inner Asian Linguistics PDF

Author: Howard Isaac Aronson

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 9781588114617

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This volume is a collection of seventeen papers, on languages of all three indigenous Caucasian families as well as other languages spoken in the territory of the former Soviet Union. Several papers are concerned with diachronic questions, either within individual families, or at deeper time depths. Some authors utilize their field data to address problems of general linguistic interest, such as reflexivization. A number of papers look at the evidence for contact-induced change in multilingual areas. Some of the most exciting contributions to the collection represent significant advances in the reconstruction of the prehistory of such understudied language families as Northeast Caucasian, Tungusic and the baffling isolate Ket. This book will be of interest not only to specialists in the indigenous languages of the former USSR, but also to historical and synchronic linguists seeking to familiarize themselves with the fascinating, typologically diverse languages from the interior of the Eurasian continent.Dee Ann Holisky is Professor of English and Linguistics, and Associate Dean for Academic Programs of the College of Arts & Sciences at George Mason University. She is the author of Aspect and Georgian Medial Verbs (Caravan Books, 1981) and of numerous articles on Georgian and Kartvelian linguistics. Kevin Tuite is Professor of Anthropology at the Universite de Montreal. Among his books are An Anthology of Georgian Folk Poetry (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994) and Ethnolinguistics and Anthropological Theory (co-edited with Christine Jourdan; Montreal: Editions Fides, 2003).

Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction

Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction PDF

Author: Gisella Ferraresi

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2008-12-03

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 9027289883

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This is a collection of state-of-the-art papers in the field of syntactic reconstruction. It treats a range of topics which are representative of current debates in historical syntax. The novelty and merit of the present book is, the editors believe, that, in contrast to most previous work on diachronic syntax, it combines the perspectives of the traditional philological research on syntactic reconstruction with the insights of modern syntactic theory, as it is emphasised in the Foreword by Giuseppe Longobardi. The volume includes articles by well-recognized researchers in historical linguistics with a focus on syntactic change. In the present volume syntactic reconstruction is discussed from a variety of angles, including historical linguistics, phenomena of language contact, generative approaches as well as typological and variationist research. In the articles, languages from a diverse range of families are discussed, including Indo-European, North and South Caucasian, Sino-Tibetan, and Turkic.