On the Nature of Ergativity
Author | : Beth Carol Levin |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 752 |
Release | : 1986 |
Genre | : Grammar, Comparative and general |
ISBN | : |
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Author | : Beth Carol Levin |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 752 |
Release | : 1986 |
Genre | : Grammar, Comparative and general |
ISBN | : |
Author | : Jessica Coon |
Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | : 1297 |
Release | : 2017 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 0198739370 |
This volume examines the phenomenon of ergativity, a grammatical patterning whereby direct objects are in some way treated like intransitive subjects, to the exclusion of transitive subjects. It includes theoretical approaches from generative, typological, and functional paradigms, as well as 16 language-specific case studies.
Author | : Alana Johns |
Publisher | : Springer Science & Business Media |
Total Pages | : 374 |
Release | : 2006-06-28 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 1402041888 |
The overarching theme of this volume is the formal expression of the range and limits of ergativity. The book contains cutting-edge theoretical papers by top authors in the field, who also conduct original field work and bring new data to light. It contains articles that apply the most recent theoretical tools to the area of ergativity, and then explore the issues that emerge. Languages investigated in the text include Basque, Georgian, and Hindi.
Author | : Robert M. W. Dixon |
Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | : 300 |
Release | : 1994-06-02 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 9780521448987 |
Although there is only one ergative language in Europe (Basque), perhaps one-quarter of the world's languages show ergative properties, and pose considerable difficulties for many current linguistic theories. R. M. W. Dixon here provides a full survey of the various types of ergativity, looking at the ways they interrelate, their semantic bases and their role in the organisation of discourse. Ergativity stems from R. M. W. Dixon's long-standing interest in the topic, and in particular from his seminal 1979 paper in Language. It includes a rich collection of data from a large number of the world's languages. Comprehensive, clear and insightful, it will be the standard point of reference for all those interested in the topic.
Author | : Maria Polinsky |
Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | : 417 |
Release | : 2016-04-01 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 0190256605 |
Nominative-accusative and ergative are two common alignment types found across languages. In the former type, the subject of an intransitive verb and the subject of a transitive verb are expressed the same way, and differently from the object of a transitive. In ergative languages, the subject of an intransitive and the object of a transitive appear in the same form, the absolutive, and the transitive subject has a special, ergative, form. Ergative languages often follow very different patterns, thus evading a uniform description and analysis. A simple explanation for that has to do with the idea that ergative languages, much as their nominative-accusative counterparts, do not form a uniform class. In this book, Maria Polinsky argues that ergative languages instantiate two main types, the one where the ergative subject is a prepositional phrase (PP-ergatives) and the one with a noun-phrase ergative. Each type is internally consistent and is characterized by a set of well-defined properties. The book begins with an analysis of syntactic ergativity, which as Polinsky argues, is a manifestation of the PP-ergative type. Polinsky discusses diagnostic properties that define PPs in general and then goes to show that a subset of ergative expressions fit the profile of PPs. Several alternative analyses have been proposed to account for syntactic ergativity; the book presents and outlines these analyses and offers further considerations in support of the PP-ergativity approach. The book then discusses the second type, DP-ergative languages, and traces the diachronic connection between the two types. The book includes two chapters illustrating paradigm PP-ergative and DP-ergative languages: Tongan and Tsez. The data used in these descriptions come from Polinsky's original fieldwork hence presenting new empirical facts from both languages.
Author | : Edith L. Bavin |
Publisher | : John Benjamins Publishing |
Total Pages | : 349 |
Release | : 2013-11-15 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 9027271232 |
Ergativity is one of the main challenges both for linguistic and acquisition theories. This book is unique, taking a cross-linguistic approach to the acquisition of ergativity in a large variety of typologically distinct languages. The chapters cover languages from different families and from different geographic areas with different expressions of ergativity. Each chapter includes a description of ergativity in the language(s), the nature of the input, the social context of acquisition and developmental patterns. Comparisons of the acquisition process across closely related languages are made, change in progress of the ergative systems is discussed and, for one language, acquisition by bilingual and monolingual children is compared. The volume will be of particular interest to language acquisition researchers, linguists, psycholinguists and cognitive scientists.
Author | : Alana Johns |
Publisher | : Springer Science & Business Media |
Total Pages | : 388 |
Release | : 2007-02-05 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 9781402041877 |
The overarching theme of this volume is the formal expression of the range and limits of ergativity. The book contains cutting-edge theoretical papers by top authors in the field, who also conduct original field work and bring new data to light. It contains articles that apply the most recent theoretical tools to the area of ergativity, and then explore the issues that emerge. Languages investigated in the text include Basque, Georgian, and Hindi.
Author | : Paul M. Noorlander |
Publisher | : Studies in Semitic Languages a |
Total Pages | : 546 |
Release | : 2021-08-26 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 9789004448179 |
This book contains a comprehensive study of constructional splits and alignment typology, especially ergativity, as found in the Neo-Aramaic languages spoken in the Mesopotamian region of West Asia.
Author | : Spike Gildea |
Publisher | : John Benjamins Publishing |
Total Pages | : 327 |
Release | : 2010-05-19 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 902728850X |
This volume presents a typological/theoretical introduction plus eight papers about ergative alignment in 16 Amazonian languages. All are written by linguists with years of fieldwork and comparative experience in the region, all describe details of the synchronic systems, and several also provide diachronic insight into the evolution of these systems. The five papers in Part I focus on languages from four larger families with ergative patterns primarily in morphology. The typological contribution is in detailed consideration of unusual splits, changes in ergative patterns, and parallels between ergative main clauses and nominalizations. The three papers in Part II discuss genetically isolated languages. Two present dominant ergative patterns in both morphology and syntax, the other a syntactic inverse system that is predominantly ergative in discourse. In each, the authors demonstrate that identification of traditional grammatical relations is problematic. These data will figure in all future typological and theoretical debates about grammatical relations.
Author | : Maria Polinsky |
Publisher | : Oxford University Press, USA |
Total Pages | : 1189 |
Release | : 2020 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 0190690690 |
The Oxford Handbook of Languages of the Caucasus is an introduction to and overview of the linguistically diverse languages of southern Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. Though the languages of the Caucasus have often been mischaracterized or exoticized, many of them have cross-linguistically rare features found in few or no other languages. This handbook presents facts and descriptions of the languages written by experts. The first half of the book is an introduction to the languages, with the linguistic profiles enriched by demographic research about their speakers. It features overviews of the main language families as well as detailed grammatical descriptions of several individual languages. The second half of the book delves more deeply into theoretical analyses of features, such as agreement, ellipsis, and discourse properties, which are found in some languages of the Caucasus. Promising areas for future research are highlighted throughout the handbook, which will be of interest to linguists of all subfields.