Studies in Brythonic Word Order

Studies in Brythonic Word Order
Author: James Fife
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 372
Release: 1991-11-30
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027277877

While Celtic languages are nominally VSO in basic word order, the languages of the Brythonic branch have exhibited striking synchronic and historical variations from the prototype. This volume comprises the very latest research in word order in Welsh, reton and Cornish from nine of the leading scholars in the field. The studies deal with historical, typological and descriptive issues from several approaches (including philological, functional and government and binding). The scope ranges over all the Brythonic languages, as well as the entire diachronic spectrum from the proto-language up to the most recent colloquial trends. The volume provides the expert with a collection of state-of-the-art research and the non-specialist with a comprehensive survey of the problems and debates in a language grouping fraught with intricate questions of word order and word order change.

Stability, Variation and Change of Word-Order Patterns over Time

Stability, Variation and Change of Word-Order Patterns over Time
Author: Rosanna Sornicola
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2000-12-21
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027284717

The issue of permanence and change of word-order patterns has long been debated in both historical linguistics and structural theories. The interest in this theme has been revamped by contemporary research in typology with its emphasis on correlation or ‘harmonies’ of structures of word-order as explicative principles of both synchronic and diachronic processes. The aim of this book is to stimulate a critical reconsideration of perspectives and methods in the study of continuities and discontinuities of word-order patterns. Bringing together contributions by specialists of various theoretical backgrounds and with expertise in different language families or groups (Caucasian, Hamito-Semitic, and — among Indo-European — Hittite, Greek, Celtic, Germanic, Slavonic, Romance), the book addresses issues like the notions of stability, variation and change of word-order and their interrelations, the interplay of syntactic and pragmatic factors, and the role of internal and external factors in synchronic and diachronic dynamics of word-order. The book contains a selection of papers presented at a workshop held at the XIII International Conference on Historical Linguistics (Düsseldorf, August 1997) and additonal invited contributions.

Syntax - Theory and Analysis. Volume 1

Syntax - Theory and Analysis. Volume 1
Author: Tibor Kiss
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 816
Release: 2015-02-17
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110377403

This Handbook represents the development of research and the current level of knowledge in the fields of syntactic theory and syntax analysis. Syntax can look back to a long tradition. Especially in the last 50 years, however, the interaction between syntactic theory and syntactic analysis has led to a rapid increase in analyses and theoretical suggestions. This second edition of the Handbook on Syntax adopts a unifying perspective and therefore does not place the division of syntactic theory into several schools to the fore, but the increase in knowledge resulting from the fruitful argumentations between syntactic analysis and syntactic theory. It uses selected phenomena of individual languages and their cross-linguistic realizations to explain what syntactic analyses can do and at the same time to show in what respects syntactic theories differ from each other. It investigates how syntax is related to neighbouring disciplines and investigate the role of the interfaces especially the relationship between syntax and phonology, morphology, compositional semantics, pragmatics, and the lexicon. The phenomena chosen bring together renowned experts in syntax, and represent the consensus reached as to what has to be considered as an important as well as illustrative syntactic phenomenon. The phenomena discuss do not only serve to show syntactic analyses, but also to compare theoretical approaches with each other.

Studies in Brythonic Word Order

Studies in Brythonic Word Order
Author: James Fife
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1991
Genre: Brythonic languages
ISBN: 9781556191381

While Celtic languages are nominally VSO in basic word order, the languages of the Brythonic branch have exhibited striking synchronic and historical variations from the prototype. This volume comprises the very latest research in word order in Welsh, reton and Cornish from nine of the leading scholars in the field. The studies deal with historical, typological and descriptive issues from several approaches (including philological, functional and government and binding). The scope ranges over all the Brythonic languages, as well as the entire diachronic spectrum from the proto-language up to the most recent colloquial trends. The volume provides the expert with a collection of state-of-the-art research and the non-specialist with a comprehensive survey of the problems and debates in a language grouping fraught with intricate questions of word order and word order change.

The Celtic Languages

The Celtic Languages
Author: Martin J. Ball
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 959
Release: 2009-09-10
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1134100345

The Celtic Languages describes in depth all the Celtic languages from historical, structural and sociolinguistic perspectives with individual chapters on Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Welsh, Breton and Cornish. This second edition has been thoroughly revised to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the modern Celtic languages and their current sociolinguistic status along with complete descriptions of the historical languages. This comprehensive volume is arranged in four parts. The first part offers a description of the typological aspects of the Celtic languages followed by a scene setting historical account of the emergence of these languages. Chapters devoted to Continental Celtic, Old and Middle Irish, and Old and Middle Welsh follow. Parts two and three are devoted to linguistic descriptions of the contemporary languages. Part two has chapters on Irish, Scots Gaelic and Manx, while Part three covers Welsh, Breton and Cornish. Part four is devoted to the sociolinguistic situation of the four contemporary Celtic languages and a final chapter describes the status of the two revived languages Cornish and Manx. With contributions from a variety of scholars of the highest reputation, The Celtic Languages continues to be an invaluable tool for both students and teachers of linguistics, especially those with an interest in typology, language universals and the unique sociolinguistic position which the Celtic languages occupy. Dr Martin J. Ball is Hawthorne-BoRSF Endowed Professor, and Director of the Hawthorne Research Center, at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Dr Ball has over 120 academic publications. Among his books are The Use of Welsh, Mutation in Welsh, and Welsh Phonetics. Dr Nicole Müller is Hawthorne-BoRSF Endowed Professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Among her books are Mutation in Welsh, and Agents in Early Irish and Early Welsh.

The Syntax of Welsh

The Syntax of Welsh
Author: Robert D. Borsley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 21
Release: 2007-10-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1139467514

Welsh, like the other Celtic languages, is best known amongst linguists for its verb-initial word order and its use of initial consonant mutations. However it has many more characteristics which are of interest to syntacticians. This book, first published in 2007, provides a concise and accessible overview of the major syntactic phenomena of Welsh. A broad variety of topics are covered, including finite and infinitival clauses, noun phrases, agreement and tense, word order, clause structure, dialect variation, and the language's historical Celtic background. Drawing on work carried out in both Principles and Parameters theory and Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, it takes contemporary colloquial Welsh as its starting point and draws contrasts with a range of literary and dialectal forms of the language, as well as earlier forms (Middle Welsh) were appropriate. An engaging guide to all that is interesting about Welsh syntax, this book will be welcomed by syntactic theorists, typologists, historical linguists and Celticists alike.

Morphosyntactic Variation in Medieval Celtic Languages

Morphosyntactic Variation in Medieval Celtic Languages
Author: Elliott Lash
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 431
Release: 2020-10-12
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110680793

This book showcases the state of the art in the corpus-based linguistics of medieval Celtic languages. Its chapters detail theoretical advances in analysing variation/change in the Celtic languages and computational tools necessary to process/analyse the data. Many contributions situate the Celtic material in the broader field of corpus-based diachronic linguistics. The application of computational methods to Celtic languages is in its infancy and this book is a first in medieval Celtic Studies, which has mainly concentrated on philological endeavours such as editorial and literary work. The Celtic languages represent a new frontier in the development of NLP tools because they pose special challenges, like complicated inflectional morphology with non-straightforward mappings between lemmata and attested forms, irregular orthography, and consonant mutations. With so much data available in non-electronic form and ongoing efforts to convert these data to computer-readable format, there is much room for the developing/testing of new tools. This books provides an overview of this process at a crucial time in the development of the field and aims to the data accessible to computational linguists with an interest in diachronic change.

Pragmatic Organization of Discourse in the Languages of Europe

Pragmatic Organization of Discourse in the Languages of Europe
Author: Giuliano Bernini
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 657
Release: 2011-12-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110892227

The volume is a collection of papers reporting the results of investigations on the interaction of discourse and sentence structure in the languages of Europe. The subjects discussed in the book include: morphosyntactic characteristics of spontaneous spoken texts; different patterns of word order in a pragmatic perspective; the coding of the pragmatic functions topic and focus in sentences with non-canonical word orders (e.g. dislocations, clefts); the range of functions of verb-subject order in declarative clauses and the notion of theticity; prosodic patterns of de-accenting of given information; deixis and anaphora; coding of definiteness and article systems. The book provides the empirical basis for the comparative survey of major phenomena found in the languages of Europe which have pragmatic relevance. Beside traditional areas of investigation at the interface between syntax and pragmatics such as dislocations, new areas are explored, such as the prosody of given information. Data are considered within a functional-typological approach.

English and Celtic in Contact

English and Celtic in Contact
Author: Markku Filppula
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2008-06-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1134501722

This book provides the first comprehensive account of the history and extent of Celtic influences in English. Drawing on both original research and existing work, it covers both the earliest medieval contacts and their linguistic effects and the reflexes of later, early modern and modern contacts, especially various regional varieties of English.

Segmental and Prosodic Issues in Romance Phonology

Segmental and Prosodic Issues in Romance Phonology
Author: Pilar Prieto
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2007-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027247971

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.