Bøker i Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TiLSM]-serien

Brings together areas of research that so far do not interact to any significant extent: traditional South Asian descriptive linguistics and sociolinguistics, documentary linguistics, issues of intellectual and cultural property and fieldwork ethics, and language technology.

Presents a cognitive view of language by examining linguistic structure and its use in communication from the point of view of memory, thus providing a novel way of analysing language. This book discusses core linguistic areas in the contributions embracing syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis.

How are ontological structures reflected in intra- and cross-linguistic regularities? This volume unites contributions from Linguistics, Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Artificial Intelligence into the outline of an approach that promises to develop into a vital branch of cognitive science.

Language users are creatures of habit with a tendency to re-use morphosyntactic material that they have produced or heard before. In other words, linguistic patterns and tokens, once used, persist in discourse. The present book is the first large-scale corpus analysis to explore the determinants of this persistence, drawing on regression analyses of a variety of functional, discourse-functional, cognitive, psycholinguistic, and external factors. The case studies investigated include the alternation between synthetic and analytic comparatives, between the s-genitive and the of-genitive, between gerundial and infinitival complementation, particle placement, and future marker choice in a number of corpora sampling different spoken registers and geographical varieties of English. Providing a probabilistic framework for examining the ways in which persistence - among several other internal and external factors - influences speakers' linguistic choices, the book departs from most writings in the field in that it seeks to bridge several research traditions. While it is concerned, in a classically variationist spirit, with internal and external determinants of grammatical variation in English, it also draws heavily on ideas and evidence developed by psycholinguists and discourse analysts. In seeking to construct a comprehensive model of how speakers make linguistic choices, the study ultimately contributes to a theory of how spoken language works. The book is of interest to graduate students and researchers in variationist sociolinguistics, probabilistic linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics.

Looks at Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, and explores the changing habitat of languages since pre-colonial times. This book contains contributions that treat the languages from a structural and functional linguistic perspective, move on to the issue of cultural maintenance and then turn to language policy.

Relying on a functional-typological methodology, this book approaches historical Latin syntax from a non-traditional perspective, investigating diachronic phenomena primarily from their discourse function as revealed in Latin texts.

This book proposes a new synthesis of the functions of proper names, from a semantic, pragmatic and syntactic perspective. Proper names are approached constructionally, distinguishing prototypical uses from more marked ones such as those in which names are used as common nouns. Since what is traditionally regarded as 'the' class of names turns out to be only one possible function of name-forms (though a prototypical one), the notion of 'proprial lemma' is introduced as the concept behind both proprial and appellative uses of such categories as place names and personal names. New formal arguments are adduced to distinguish proper name function from common noun or pronoun function. The special status of proper names is captured in a unified pragmatic-semantic-syntactic theory: a proper name denotes a unique entity at the level of langue to make it psychosocially salient within a given basic level category. The meaning of the name, if any, does not determine its denotation. An important formal reflection of this characterization of names is their ability to appear in such close appositional constructions as the poet Burns or Fido the dog. The neurolinguistic finding that proper names constitute a separate category is introduced and interpreted within a general linguistic frame of reference. The different kinds of meanings associated with names (categorical, associative, emotive, and grammatical) are shown to be presuppositional in nature. In addition, the book proposes an entirely new classification of proper names as forming a continuum ranging from prototypical (personal and place names) to nonprototypical categories (brand and language names) to citations and autonyms, and a new diachronic classification of family names and nicknames. This book fills an important gap in the current literature, because the most recent linguistic book in English on name theory dates back to 1973. It is explicitly interdisciplinary, taking into account linguistic, philosophical, neurolinguistic, sociolinguistic and dialect geographical aspects of proper names.

Based on Chinese historical data collected over the past three thousand years, the articles in the volume investigate the development of new grammatical categories and the process of lexicalization and grammaticalization of unique grammatical words.

This edition brings together some lesser known grammaticalization paths travelled by `come' and `go' in familiar and less familiar languages. This study will increase our insight in grammaticalization processes in general as they force us to rethink certain aspects of grammaticalization.

Over the past decades functionalism has gained more ground, and we now have a substantial body of literature from various perspectives making a positive impact on the field of linguistics.

Vocatives have rarely been discussed in their various facets. With 12 contributions covering the diversity of vocative marking, structures, and functions, as well as the relevance of vocatives for theoretical and methodological reasoning, this volume provides a detailed picture of the vocative as a structure between 'system' and 'performance'.

This volume focuses on the interplay of syntactic and semantic factors in language change. The contributions draw on data from numerous Indo-European languages and address the question of how syntactic and semantic change are linked and whether both are governed by similar constraints, principles and systematic mechanisms.

A book for the studies of temporality and language, in particular regarding syntax and semantics. It investigates tenses, aspect and modality both at the theoretical and at the descriptive levels, involving many different Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages.

In its evolution from a synthetic to an analytic language, Bulgarian acquired a grammaticalized category of definiteness. The book presents the first attempt to explore in detail how this happened by comparing the earliest Modern Bulgarian texts with contemporary dialect and standard Bulgarian data. The basic units of analysis are the various types of nominal structures headed by nouns or pronouns. The analysis requires the strict terminological disentanglement of form from content and the adoption of a default inheritance model of definiteness that allow the exhaustive classification and tagging of nominal structures encountered in the texts. Tagging makes it possible to apply quantitative analysis to nominal structure and to assess the types available in the early texts from a current native-speaker perspective. Based on an S-curve model of language change, the study establishes that overt markers of definiteness were first made available to identifiability-based definites, then to inclusiveness-based definites, quantitative generics and unique referents. The overt markers of indefiniteness followed suit, separating indefinites from non-specifics and typifying generics. This progression of definiteness was directed by variables such as person, animacy, gender, number and noun-class, and started in contexts in which definiteness closely interacted with possessivity. Such an analysis leads to the realization that the two-dimensional S-curve model does not account for all language change and that there is a need for a three-dimensional model. It also demonstrates that, contrary to previous assumptions, there is continuity between the early Slavic marker of definiteness (long-form adjectives) and the Modern Bulgarian article. This discovery, in conjunction with geolinguistic arguments, sheds new light on the role that relations inside the Balkan Sprachbund played in the grammaticalization of Bulgarian definiteness.

A collection of articles which focus on the issue of complementation within different theoretical frameworks. It addresses questions ranging from discussions about the appropriate treatment of valency in syntactic theory to particular descriptive issues, contrastive studies and cognitive aspects such as the role of valency in language acquisition.

Brings together work by scholars engaging in comparative sign linguistics research. This title includes articles that discuss data from many different signed and spoken languages. It focuses on empirical and descriptive aspects of sign language variation and covers a range of topics from different areas of grammar.

Although linguists working on South Asian region have made significant contributions to our understanding of language, society, and language in society on a global scale, there is no recognized international forum for the exchange of ideas amongst linguists working on South Asia. This title is designed to be just that forum.

The book presents up-to-date theoretical and methodological findings by gifted typologists and field linguists. The authors address selected theoretical questions of general linguistic relevance drawing from a wealth of data hitherto unfamiliar to the general linguistic audience.

The book contains a collection of articles on focus in the Niger-Congo and Afro-Asiatic language groups. It investigates focus-related phenomena from different theoretical and methodological perspectives: the interaction of focus and prosody, the effect of focus on word order, the inventory of focus-marking devices, and others.

It combines formal approaches, case studies on individual languages and broad typological surveys in one volume, showing that the interaction of formal linguistics and typology may lead to new insights and results in both fields.

The authors investigate a wide range of issues - the coherence and function of particular metaphorical models, the interaction of form and meaning, the identification of source domains of metaphorical expressions, the relationship between metaphor and discourse, the priming of metaphors, and the historical development of metaphors.

The impressive selection of languages and linguistic topics dealt with in this book underlines the diversity of the Tibeto-Burman languages in Central and South Asia and highlights their place within present-day linguistic research.

The volume advances our understanding of the role of scales and hierarchies across the linguistic sciences. Although scales and hierarchies are widely assumed to play a role in the modelling of linguistic phenomena, their status remains controversial, and it is these controversies that the present volume tackles head-on.

The relation between the Surinam Creoles and the languages of West Africa, where slaves who created the creoles originated, has been hotly debated. It brings in new historical and linguistic evidence for an extremely close relationship between the creoles, the Gbe languages, and Kikongo, where bilingual practices led to new language forms.

Addresses the constructional variability with transitive and causative verbs from the point of view of their respective action and motion patterns. Drawing on the theoretical advances, this volume provides evidence from various languages to refine or adjust analyses of transitivity, causation and motion.

TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks, as well as studies that provide new insights by approaching language from an interdisciplinary perspective. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert.

After reviewing, from a grammaticalization perspective, the main stages in the evolution of Italian object clitic pronouns, the book discusses the distinctive morphosyntactic, semantic, and pragmatic features of Italian clitics. In particular, the book offers an original study of the most common examples of so-called verbi procomplementari, verbs which are characterized by the incorporation of clitics that no longer function as pronouns, and which are widely used in present-day Italian. Their emergence involves both grammaticalization of the clitic pronoun into an obligatory element, and lexicalization of the verb+clitic sequence. This study is essentially descriptive and maximally data-driven. The discussion of grammaticalization and lexicalization is reduced to the essentials and aims primarily at defining how these terms, which have received different and at times divergent interpretations, are employed in the book. The book is accessible to a wide and varied readership, which includes Italian and Romance linguists of functional and formal orientation, Italian language scholars, grammaticalization scholars interested in new case studies, as well as students of language change and variation.

Can language change be modelled as an evolutionary process? Can notions like variation, selection and competition be fruitfully applied to facts of language development? This volume offers a spectrum of ways to elucidate these questions.

This book is a collection of articles dealing with various aspects of the Baltic languages (Lithuanian, Latvian and Latgalian), which have only marginally featured in the discourse of theoretical linguistics and linguistic typology. The aim of the book is to bridge the gap between the study of the Baltic languages, on the one hand, and the current agenda of the theoretical and typological approaches to language, on the other. The book comprises 13 articles dealing with various aspects of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, lexicon, and their interactions, plus a lengthy introduction, whose aim is to outline the state of the art in the research on the Baltic languages. The contributions are data-driven, being based on field-work, corpus research, and data published in the sources not accessible to the general linguistic audience. On the other hand, all contributions are informed in the relevant contemporary linguistic theories and in the advances of linguistic typology. Some of the contributions aim at a more detailed, accurate and theoretically informed description of the data, others look at the Baltic material from a more theoretical point of view, still others assume an areal-typological or contact perspective.