The Languages and Linguistics of Indigenous North America

The Languages and Linguistics of Indigenous North America
Author: Carmen Dagostino
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 922
Release: 2023-12-18
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 3110712814

This handbook provides broad coverage of the languages indigenous to North America, with special focus on typologically interesting features and areal characteristics, surveys of current work, and topics of particular importance to communities. The volume is divided into two major parts: subfields of linguistics and family sketches. The subfields include those that are customarily addressed in discussions of North American languages (sounds and sound structure, words, sentences), as well as many that have received somewhat less attention until recently (tone, prosody, sociolinguistic variation, directives, information structure, discourse, meaning, language over space and time, conversation structure, evidentiality, pragmatics, verbal art, first and second language acquisition, archives, evolving notions of fieldwork). Family sketches cover major language families and isolates and highlight topics of special value to communities engaged in work on language maintenance, documentation, and revitalization.

Plains Cree Morphosyntax (RLE Linguistics F: World Linguistics)

Plains Cree Morphosyntax (RLE Linguistics F: World Linguistics)
Author: Amy Dahlstrom
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1317918053

This book explores several topics in Cree morphology, syntax and discourse structure. Cree, an Algonquian language, is non-configurational: the grammatical relations of subject and object are not expressed by word order or other constituent structure relations, as they are in a configurational language like English. Instead, subjects and objects are expressed by means of the inflection on the verb. Cree is typical of non-configurational languages in allowing a great deal of word order variation. This study examines in detail aspects of the Plains Cree dialect, giving a valuable insight into the structure of this endangered language.

Clusivity

Clusivity
Author: Elena Filimonova
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 460
Release: 2005-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027229748

This book presents a collection of papers on clusivity, a newly coined term for the inclusive–exclusive distinction. Clusivity is a widespread feature familiar from descriptive grammars and frequently figuring in typological schemes and diachronic scenarios. However, no comprehensive exploration of it has been available so far. This book is intended to make the first step towards a better understanding of the inclusive–exclusive opposition, by documenting the current linguistic knowledge on the topic. The issues discussed include the categorial and paradigmatic status of the opposition, its geographical distribution, realization in free vs bound pronouns, inclusive imperatives, clusivity in the 2nd person, honorific uses of the distinction, etc. These case studies are complemented by the analysis of the opposition in American Sign Language as opposed to spoken languages. In-depth areal and family surveys of clusivity consider this opposition in Austronesian, Tibeto-Burman, central-western South American, Turkic languages, and in Mosetenan and Shuswap.

Inflectional Morphology

Inflectional Morphology
Author: Gregory T. Stump
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2001-02-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 113943182X

A new contribution to linguistic theory, this book presents a formal framework for the analysis of word structure in human language. It sets forth the network of hypotheses constituting Paradigm Function Morphology, a theory of inflectional form whose central insight is that paradigms play an essential role in the definition of a language's system of word structure. The theory comprises several unprecedented claims, chief among which is the claim that a language's realization rules serve as clauses in the definition of a paradigm function, an overarching construct which is indispensable for capturing certain kinds of generalizations about inflectional form. This book differs from other recent works on the same subject in that it treats inflectional morphology as an autonomous system of principles rather than as a subsystem of syntax or phonology and it draws upon evidence from a diverse range of languages in motivating the proposed conception of word structure.

Yearbook of Morphology 2001

Yearbook of Morphology 2001
Author: G.E. Booij
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2013-03-14
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9401737266

The Yearbook of Morphology 2001 focuses on the notion of productivity, the role of analogy in coining new words, and constraints on affix ordering in a number of Germanic languages are investigated. Other topics include the necessity and the role of the paradigm in morphological analyses, the relation between form and meaning in morphology, the accessibility of the internal morphological structure of complex words, and the interaction of morphology and prosody in truncation processes.

Papers of the Fifty-Third Algonquian Conference / Actes du cinquante-troisième Congrès des Algonquinistes

Papers of the Fifty-Third Algonquian Conference / Actes du cinquante-troisième Congrès des Algonquinistes
Author: Inge Genee
Publisher: MSU Press
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2024-05-01
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1609177592

Papers of the Algonquian Conference is a collection of peer-reviewed scholarship from an annual international forum that focuses on topics related to the languages and cultures of Algonquian peoples. This series touches on a variety of subject areas, including anthropology, archaeology, education, ethnography, history, Indigenous studies, language studies, literature, music, political science, psychology, religion, and sociology. Contributors often cite never-before-published data in their research, giving the reader a fresh and unique insight into the Algonquian peoples and rendering these papers essential reading for those interested in studying Algonquian society.

Papers of the Forty-Third Algonquian Conference

Papers of the Forty-Third Algonquian Conference
Author: Monica Macaulay
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2015-05-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1438455240

Papers of the forty-third Algonquian Conference held at University of Michigan in October 2011. The papers of the Algonquian Conference have long served as the primary source of peer-reviewed scholarship addressing topics related to the languages and societies of Algonquian peoples. Contributions, which are peer-reviewed submissions presented at the annual conference, represent an assortment of humanities and social science disciplines, including archeology, cultural anthropology, history, ethnohistory, linguistics, literary studies, Native studies, social work, film, and countless others. Both theoretical and descriptive approaches are welcomed, and submissions often provide previously unpublished data from historical and contemporary sources, or novel theoretical insights based on firsthand research. The research is commonly interdisciplinary in scope and the papers are filled with contributions presenting fresh research from a broad array of researchers and writers. These papers are essential reading for those interested in Algonquian world views, cultures, history, and languages. They build bridges among a large international group of people who write in different disciplines. Scholars in linguistics, anthropology, history, education, and other fields are brought together in one vital community, thanks to these publications.

The Grammar of Multiple Head-Movement

The Grammar of Multiple Head-Movement
Author: Phil Branigan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2023-02-09
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0197677037

Head-movement has played a central role in morpho-syntactic theory, but its nature has remained unclear. While it is widely accepted that the main grammatical constraint controlling head-movement is the Head Movement Constraint (HMC), this constraint is flouted in many of the linguistic structures examined in this book. More specifically, the strictures of the HMC turn out to be sometimes inactive for specific grammars allowing multiple head-movement to take place in particular syntactic contexts. In The Grammar of Multiple Head-Movement, Phil Branigan shows that multiple head-movement is far from rare, forming a part of the grammar in Finnish, in English, in Perenakan Javanese, in northern Norwegian and Swedish dialects, and generally in the Slavic and Algonquian language families. Basing his analysis on a new model of the grammatical parameters which control word formation in the human brain, Branigan shows how careful attention to the contexts in which multiple head-movement takes place allows new generalizations to be identified. And these, in turn, allow a new model to be formulated of how head-movement fits into the overall architecture of grammatical computation. Through careful comparative study, Branigan not only provides a better understanding of head-movement, but also provides new opportunities to address larger questions concerning the architecture of the grammatical system and the theory of linguistic parameters. A new account of how complex words are formed in languages as different as Russian or Innu-aimun, as well as in English, this study deepens our understanding of how languages vary and of the mental computational system of human grammars.

World Lexicon of Grammaticalization

World Lexicon of Grammaticalization
Author: Bernd Heine
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2002-03-14
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780521005975

While the comparative method is concerned with regularities in phonological change, grammaticalization theory deals with regularities of grammatical change. In an A-Z format, this 2002 book summarizes the most salient generalizations that have been made on the unidirectional change of grammatical forms and constructions. The product of ten years of research, World Lexicon of Grammaticalization provides the reader with the tools to show how different grammatical meanings can be related to one another in a principled way, how to deal with issues such as polysemy and heterosemy, or why certain linguistic forms have simultaneous lexical and grammatical functions. It covers several hundred grammaticalization processes, in each case offering definitions of lexical concepts, suitable examples from a variety of languages, and references to the relevant research literature. Indices organized by source and target concepts allow for flexible use, and the findings delineated in the book are relevant to students of language across theoretical boundaries.